One thing that budget hasn’t bought, however, is subtlety. The US National Reconnaissance Office launched a top-secret surveillance satellite into space Thursday evening, and the official emblem for the spy agency’s latest mission is, well, certainly accurate, to say the least.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence live-tweeted Thursday’s launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and throughout the course of the ordeal made no effort to ignore the logo for the NROL-39 mission.

The latest spy satellite to be sent into orbit by the NRO can be recognized by its seal: a malevolent octopus with furrowed brows that also happens to be wrapping its tentacles around all corners of the Earth.

Juan Carlos Lentijo, head of IAEA’s mission to Fukushima Daiichi, December 4, 2013: “Controlled discharge is a regular practice in all the nuclear facilities in the world. And what we are trying to say here is to consider this as one of the options to contribute to a good balance of risks and to stabilize the facility for the long term.”

Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority, December 4, 2013: “You cannot keep storing the water forever. We have to make choice comparing all risks involved.”

Tepco – with no financial incentive to actually fix things – has been insanely irresponsible and has only been pretending to contain Fukushima. So instead of doing something to contain the radiation, they’re going to dump it.

Mutation breeding, after booming in the 1950s with the dawn of the Nuclear Age, is still used by seed developers from BASF SE to Dupont Corporation to create crops for markets that reject genetic engineering. Regulators don't demand proof that new varieties are harmless. The US National Academies of Science warned in 1989 and again in 2004 that regulating genetically modified crops while giving a pass to products of mutation breeding isn't scientifically justified.

Mutant breeding was developed during the Second World War and promoted during the Cold War as a peaceful use of nuclear technology. It created thousands of new plant varieties by knocking out genes with X-rays and gamma rays as well as chemicals. Atomic gardens, built around gamma-ray emitters, were popular among breeders in the 1960s and Japan still operates one. China began launching seeds into space in 1987 to take advantage of cosmic radiation and low gravity, developing more than 40 mutant crops with higher yields and better disease resistance.

Most of the world's wheat, rice and barley are descendants of mutant varieties, according to [program head Pierre] Lagoda. Mutagenesis is used to give fruits and vegetables a new colour and to make grains shorter and easier to harvest. In the US, mutagenesis was used to develop Star Ruby grapefruit and varieties of lettuce, beans, oats, rice and wheat. In the US, where only GMOs are required to pass through an approval process, the Department of Agriculture issued a memo this year verifying crops created through mutagenesis as acceptable even for organic farming.

The order from administrative law judge Robert N Spencer said Masterpiece Cakeshop in suburban Denver discriminated against a couple “because of their sexual orientation by refusing to sell them a wedding cake for their same-sex marriage.” The order says the cake-maker must “cease and desist from discriminating” against gay couples.

Although the judge did not impose fines in this case, the business will face penalties if it continues to turn away gay couples who want to buy cakes. A similar case is pending in Washington state, where a florist is accused of refusing service for a same-sex wedding. In New Mexico, the state Supreme Court ruled in August that an Albuquerque business was wrong to decline to photograph a same-sex couple’s commitment ceremony.

Colorado has a constitutional ban against gay marriage but allows civil unions. The civil union law, which passed earlier this year, does not provide religious protections for businesses.

Netanyahu, who was accompanied by his wife Sara, gifted the pope a book about the Spanish inquisition written by his father Benzion Netanyahu, a prominent historian. It bore the inscription: "To His Holiness Pope Francis, great guardian of our common heritage." The pontiff gave the Israeli premier a carved panel of Saint Paul.

At the end of the 25-minute meeting, Netanyahu's wife told the pope: "We are expecting you, we can't wait."

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said no date has been set for the trip. Netanyahu had hoped to meet the pope in October, when he visited Rome for talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry. But the Vatican said Francis was too busy, fueling Israeli media speculation of a snub.

The leader of the world's only Jewish state giving the leader of the Catholic Church a book that largely revolves about Spanish Catholics questioning, torturing, and punishing Jewish converts to Catholicism is certainly noteworthy. The Spanish inquisition is widely held up as one of the worst excesses of the Roman Catholic Church, and thousands of people were expelled from Spain or burned at the stake. Worse still, the inquisition of Catholic converts (and the use of torture to discover heretics) was first legally sanctioned by Pope Innocent IV.

So, Netanyahu's gift may seem passive aggressive (or maybe just aggressive), and perhaps it is. But it is important to think of the context of the book, which is written by Netanyahu's father Ben-Zion Netanyahu, a well-regarded historian who worked at both the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Cornell University.

The book given to the pope, titled "The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain," is considered Netanyahu's most important work, and it reflects deep pessimism. The book argues that, contrary to the widely held view that the Jewish converts persecuted by the Catholic church were secretly practicing Judaism, they were in fact devout Catholics who had forsaken their religious heritage. As such, the book argues, the persecution of the Jews was not truly based on religious grounds, but on a racial prejudice and financial envy that would be echoed years later in the Holocaust.

Kiel's HGW shipbuilding company has confirmed its decision to sell two submarines to Singapore. In the island disputes in eastern and southeastern Asia, Singapore is seen as one of the West's reliable partners. The current territorial disputes over the archipelago known as the "Diaoyu Islands" (in China) and the "Senkaku Islands" (in Japan), which are claimed by both countries, gives an indication of the conflicts emerging in the region.

Interest in these islands is based not so much on their resources but rather on conflicting geo-strategic interests: These islands are part of a chain of islands Beijing considers an important defense against possible aggression. Berlin is observing these tensions with apprehension because they could threaten German business interests.

German arms exports to the region, as well as the Bundeswehr's growing cooperation with Japan, South Korea and other Western allies, are an indication that, in the case of an escalation of conflict, Germany would take sides - against China.

The source said the security arrangements Kerry proposed were unacceptable because they would not prevent Israelis from continuing to live in the region. Kerry’s proposals were controversial among Israeli politicians. MK Moti Yogev (Jewish Home) said of the arrangements, “We are not interested in the security arrangements that the Americans are trying to sell us in the [Jordan] Valley or the [Temple] Mount."

Yogev told Kerry, "We saw what happened as a result of security arrangements like these, after Oslo and saw how you retreated from the position of pressure on Iran and allowed it to become a nuclear threshold state which threatens Israel."

“There is only one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean: the state of Israel, which defends itself, with G-d’s help,” he concluded. Earlier, Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon said Israel must clearly tell Kerry that it will not sign an agreement that would put Israeli lives at risk.

With that first mention of the “i word,” leaks began springing from the dam that had been holding back the House GOP lawmakers united by frustration with President Obama’s executive abuses. Republicans have been watching impotently as Obama has walked all over the law, with increasing brazenness the further he gets into his tenure.

His first term included major clashes over Congress’s subpoena power and, months before the election, the president’s imposition of the “DREAM Act” by fiat — something he had publicly said before was beyond his legal authority. Almost a year into Obama’s second term, his unilateral delays of Obamacare and other legally questionable actions are now routine. He even threatened to veto a bill that would have ratified something he had done on his own without any clear authority, the delay of Obamacare’s employer mandate.

“It’s a real problem,” House Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte says. One of the biggest frustrations: Senate Democrats don’t seem to give a rip. “To me, the Senate being complicit in watching the executive branch strip the powers of the Congress is absolutely despicable,” Goodlatte tells me. Having dismissed the “power of the purse” as obviously ineffective (just look at the government shutdown, several lawmakers and witnesses pointed out), move on down the line to lawsuits and, finally, the remedy that shall not be named.

“Then the next recourse is, as Mr Rozenkranz said, the i-word. “I don’t think you should be hesitant to say the word in this room. A check on executive lawlessness is impeachment. And if you find the president is willfully and repeatedly violating the Constitution... I think that would be a clear case for impeachment,” he said.

JONATHAN TURLEY: Thank you, Mr Chairman. The danger is quite severe. The problem with what the president is doing is that he's not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system. He's becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid. That is the concentration of power in every single branch.

This Newtonian orbit that the three branches exist in is a delicate one but it is designed to prevent this type of concentration. There are two trends going on which should be of equal concern to all members of Congress. One is that we have had the radical expansion of presidential powers under both President Bush and President Obama.

We have what many once called an imperial presidency model of largely unchecked authority. And with that trend we also have the continued rise of this fourth branch. We have agencies that are quite large that issue regulations. The Supreme Court said recently that agencies could actually define their own or interpret their own jurisdiction (House hearing, December 3, 2013).

Ligerod noted "we believe we are called as a nation to be an ally and to support Israel, and we as leaders want to work for change in our country, and for a repentance among the Christians in our country, we want to support Israel." The delegation of Christian leaders from all over Norway, which includes representatives of Norway's original ethnic group, the Sami, presented a 7 page declaration highlighting some of the things they repent for.

The declaration reads "forgive us Israel, as a nation, for the Oslo agreement, dividing up Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel); for not moving our embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel's eternal undivided capital city Jerusalem," as well as not standing up to defend Israel in a world of increasing hostility, including hostility from Norwegian politicians and media.

Ligerod emphasized "we want to stand on the biblical basis, the word of G-d, stating very clearly that the Jews are the chosen people of G-d, and that Eretz Yisrael belongs to the Jews." The visit was a first step in new relations according to Josh Reinstein, Director of the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus.

The latest advancement comes from the UK, where researchers from the Royal Veterinary College have successfully engineered "designer sperm" that can be passed down to future generations.

Researchers generated transgenic animals by altering the genes in the sperm of mice and inserting the custom genes into an embryo. The baby mice were born with the new genetic material intact, and it was passed on through three generations. The study was published last week in the FASEB journal.

This idea of gene therapy — manipulating DNA as a medical treatment — has long held the promise of preventing inherited disease, and researchers say the new sperm-centric approach, if it works in humans, could be a breakthrough for the health industry.

As you will read about below, the total number of banks in the United States has fallen to a brand new all-time record low and that means that the health of the too big to fail banks is now more critical to our economy than ever. In 1985, there were more than 18,000 banks in the United States. Today, there are only 6,891 left, and that number continues to drop every single year.

That means that more than 10,000 US banks have gone out of existence since 1985. Meanwhile, the too big to fail banks just keep on getting even bigger. In fact, the six largest banks in the United States (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) have collectively gotten 37 percent larger over the past five years.

If even one of those banks collapses, it would be absolutely crippling to the US economy. If several of them were to collapse at the same time, it could potentially plunge us into an economic depression unlike anything that this nation has ever seen before.

The article features on the China Military Online website, which is described as “the only authoritative media of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army,” acting with the “official authorization of the related departments of the state and the PLA.”

Some will see no coincidence in the timing of the report given the current stand-off between China and the US over the disputed Senkaku Islands. It dovetails with a separate announcement that Beijing, “has begun mass producing and delivering its J-15 carrier-based multirole fighter jet.”

China's increasingly jingoistic rhetoric has been backed by aggressive military moves in recent months, first by sending warships to the coast of Syria to in September to “observe” the actions of US and Russian vessels in the region and then by sailing a surveillance ship through Hawaiian waters for the very first time in an unprecedented move which was described as a provocative retaliation to America’s naval presence in the East China Sea.

England's east coast is experiencing the worst tidal surge in 60 years, while in north Wales residents had to be rescued by lifeboat crews. A lorry driver died after his vehicle was blown onto two cars in West Lothian, while another man was killed by a falling tree in Nottinghamshire.

The Environment Agency has more than 55 severe flood warnings in place. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has issued 15 flood warnings. It confirmed to the BBC the North Sea tidal surge is the worst since January 1953, although flood defences built since then mean many parts of the country are now better protected.

Environment Secretary Owen Paterson - who chaired two of the government's emergency Cobra meetings on Thursday - said the armed forces were on standby to help if necessary. The storm has also brought disruption to parts of northern Europe, leaving at least four people dead or missing.