But the typhoon wasn’t the only incidence of extreme weather this year. From the tornado that tore apart the Oklahoma town of Moore in May to the floods that drowned parts of Colorado in September, 2013 saw more than its share of storms, heat waves and other natural disasters.

2013 may not be as bad as 2012, which was the hottest year in US history and featured 11 weather events that causes losses exceeding $1 billion, including superstorm Sandy. But the price of extreme weather is still high.

There was, however, one major caveat. In order for the law to be enacted, at least four other Northeastern states, together totaling a population of over 20 million people, must enact similar GMO laws. This clause, according to the Danbury Daily Voice, was included to help local farmers "by ensuring regional adoption of the new labeling system before requiring local farms to analyze and label genetically engineered products."

Those states could include Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania or New Jersey. However, on the other side of New England, Maine has already passed its own GMO labeling law, but this law also includes the same regional clause — meaning two New England states now require the labeling of GMOs, but only if the other nearby states join along.

However, while the rubik's cube of New England GMO labeling laws may seem difficult to line up, Malloy still remained confident that the move is a step in the right direction. "This is a beginning, and I want to be clear what it is a beginning of," Malloy said at the public signing outside an organic restaurant in the city of Fairfield. "It is a national movement that will requiring (food) labeling."

But the world of politics is never that simple. There was as much calculating pragmatism as there was morality in Mandela’s public stance after he was released from prison. In the heady idealism and ‘We Shall Overcome’ pop-idol politics of the 60s, the 1964 trial that convicted Mandela of sabotage and conspiracy was turned on its head into a world-wide triumph in the fight against apartheid.

To the Western liberal, Mandela was no revolutionary communist prepared to use violence to create a totalitarian Soviet state in South Africa. He was a martyr in the fight against the West’s new-found original sin of racism. From the moment of his conviction Mandela was all Sweetness and Light while South African whites were demonised throughout the West as Cromwellian puritans who refused to enter the twentieth century. That the beleaguered South African whites might have had a case was not entertained.

This Sweetness and Light image of Mandela suited not just Western liberals but the anti-Western Soviet Union and China, at the time funding violent revolution throughout Africa and themselves, of course, paragons of freedom.

Facts can be awkward. The British historian Stephen Ellis has shown that Mandela had secretly been a member of the South African Communist Party’s Central Committee at the time of his trial in 1964. Membership of the South African Communist Party was vehemently denied, but there can be little doubt that Mandela and the other defendants in the trial were serious about the use of violence and turning South Africa into a pro-Soviet totalitarian Marxist state.

As the South African journalist Rian Malan points out, almost all of Mandela’s co-conspirators were committed to ‘a Sovietist doctrine that envisaged a two-phase ending to the South African struggle - a “democratic national revolution”, followed by a second revolution in which the Marxist-Leninist vanguard took power.’ Faced with this deadly threat, the determination of the South African government to resist Mandela and the ANC [African National Congress] was perfectly reasonable. Only Western liberals, singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ at a safe distance from the battlefield could believe otherwise.

It looks as though the onboard desalinization systems that take salt out of seawater to make it drinkable, were taking-in radioactive water from the ocean for the crew to drink, cook with and bath in, before anyone realized there was a massive radiation spill into the ocean.

Charles Bonner, attorney representing sailors from the USS Ronald Reagan said “the crew members were not only going to the rescue by jumping into the water and rescuing people out of the water, but they were drinking desalinated sea water, bathing in it, until finally the captain of the USS Ronald Reagan alarmed people that they were encountering high levels of radiation.”

Bonner says that as a result of this exposure, the 51 sailors have come down with a host of medical problems, “They have testicular cancer, they have thyroid cancers, they have leukemias, they have rectal and gynecological bleeding, a host of problems that they did not have before … people are going blind, pilots who had perfect eyesight but now have tumors on the brain. And it’s only been 3 years since they went in.”

Bonner pointed out that these service men and women are young people, ages 21, 22, 23 years old and no one in their family had ever suffered any of these kinds of illnesses before.

“I think the ecumenical issue and the ecumenical challenge is very close to his heart,” Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch told CNA on December 13. From December 14-19, Cardinal Koch will travel to Russia to meet with leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church. He will meet with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow as well Metropolitan Hilarion, who is president of the Department of External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church.

“The possibility or the opportunity of a meeting between Pope Francis and his Holiness Kirill” would require “a very good and profound, deep preparation,” the cardinal explained. “I hope this trip can be a little path in the way of preparation.”

Compared to the size of our economy, Britain is now one of the most heavily indebted countries in the Western world. That’s official. Our total debts stand at more than FIVE TIMES what our entire economy is worth. Proportionally, that’s more debt than Italy… Portugal… Spain… and almost twice as much debt as Greece. Those are four countries already in the throes of financial crisis.

We’re the odd one out because we haven’t collapsed – yet. But things can’t stay that way for long. And the worst part is, even THAT isn’t the full story… Because when you add in all of Britain’s “unfunded obligations” – promises the Government has made on things like public sector pensions – our debts swell to 900% of our economy. That’s right – when you add everything up, we owe TEN TIMES what our entire economy is worth.

Our political leaders still like to see Britain as a world power. But let’s not delude ourselves. It’s clear to see: we’re totally broke. In 1982 Margaret Thatcher’s government had to pay 15% to borrow money for three years. Now, the government only has to pay 2% to borrow money over the same period. That’s seven times cheaper than in 1982. But these ‘good times’ are about to come to an abrupt end.

The simple truth is, if interest rates were at their normal rate of 5% - instead of the extremely low 2% they’re at right now – there’s absolutely no way Britain could ever repay its debts. In fact, at normal rates of interest we’re already bust. Not just ‘in over our heads’ but six feet under.

The SPD said that 76 percent of its grassroots members who took part in a postal ballot voted in a referendum in favour of joining a right-left coalition with the conservatives.

Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), won the September 22 election but fell short of a majority. They need a partner and spent much of the last three months negotiating a coalition agreement with the SPD, a distant second in September.

The leaders of the three parties will announce the 15 members of the cabinet on December 15. The coalition agreement is due to be signed on Monday and Merkel's new government could be sworn into office on December 17.

The older plants the UK has been forced to close would have produced cheaper power for longer if EU rules had not forced them out of business. That is bad enough. But surely the EU should let the UK get on with finding replacements, before the lights go out?

The EU may have a good case that the level of implied subsidy in the agreed nuclear power price is high. But what do they expect to happen, if they rule out generating power from the cheaper fuels? How can we generate CO2 free power, without massive subsidies and ramped up prices? How does the treatment of nuclear differ from windfarms, which they allow despite providing very expensive electricity with huge producer subsidies?

We used to show people the absurdities of the common agricultural and fisheries policy to show them just how expensive and unhelpful EU policies could be. Dear food in our time, and dumping fish back in the sea as they were the wrong type of fish to catch, were the hallmarks of EU policy for years. Now they control so much more.

Our energy policy is no longer our UK policy, but an imported EU one. It is driving industry out of the UK as power is so dear, and it now threatens us with insufficient power to get us through the next few winters. Give us a break EU.

A Palestinian Authority (PA) source on Friday told AFP that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas formally rejected US proposals for Israel to keep troops in a future Palestinian state along the Jordan border. The source further formally stated Abbas' position of refusing to recognize Israel as the Jewish state.

Abbas' rejection of US Secretary of State John Kerry's proposals in Ramallah Thursday night came after similar remarks to a public radio station earlier in the night. The PA source confirmed Friday that Abbas "has rejected the ideas" presented by Kerry.

The source also revealed that Abbas had given Kerry a letter on "Palestinian red lines," which include his "refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state." In November, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu remarked that the root of the conflict is the PA's refusal to recognize the Jewish state of Israel.

That is what we can now do with genetics: extreme crossbreeding. Freckles is the creation of Randy Lewis, a professor of genetics at Utah State University. The farm is a university outpost where they research modern farming techniques, teach animal husbandry and raise what are inevitably referred to as "spider-goats". Randy, like many of the other scientists here in Logan, Utah, has farming in his blood.

So although a creature that is part goat, part spider might seem like an idea born of science fiction, as far as Randy is concerned it's simply advanced farming: breeding animals to produce things that we want. "We're interested in dragline silk – the silk that spiders catch themselves with when they fall," he tells me in his midwest lilt. "It's stronger than Kevlar. It really has some amazing properties for any kind of a fibre."

We milk Freckles together and process it in the lab to leave only the silk proteins. With a glass rod, we delicately lift out a single fibre of what is very obviously spider silk and spool it on to a reel. It has amazing, and desirable, properties, which is why Randy's seemingly bizarre research is so robustly funded. "In the medical field, we already know that we can produce spider silk that's good enough to be used in ligament repair," he tells me. "We already know we can make it strong enough as an elastic. We've done some studies that show that you can put it in the body and you don't get inflammation and get ill."

Iran had threatened that new or tighter sanctions would nullify the recently reached Geneva interim deal, which is not yet in effect. The Iranians abruptly “halted” the talks and left Vienna so that they could consult with higher-level officials about how to proceed with talks following the tighter sanctions, which were announced Thursday morning by the US Treasury Department.

The White House defended it’s implementation of sanctions and directed reporters to question the Iranian delegation when asked about their departure from the nuke talks. “In terms of what the Iranians have said about their delegation, I will simply point you to the delegation and to Iran for them to speak for their actions,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters during the daily briefing.

“But let’s be clear, the designations announced yesterday were related to the enforcement of existing sanctions, and we have made clear all along that we would continue to enforce existing sanctions,” Carney said. “We have been clear with Iran throughout this process that we will continue to enforce existing sanctions, which is consistent with what was done yesterday, the action taken yesterday.”

The US contingent in Jordan, which includes Patriot missile systems and fighter aircraft, is there to help the Jordanian government as it grapples with strains from the civil war in neighboring Syria. A flood of refugees from Syria into Jordan has tested the Jordanian government of King Hussein, a close US ally.

"These forces will remain in Jordan, in full coordination with the government of Jordan, until the security situation becomes such that they are no longer needed," a White House report said.

The move has raised concerns of instability in the secretive and repressive nuclear-armed country. The US said it was consulting its regional allies. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said she would not speculate on what might be happening within the North Korean regime, but that the execution of Mr Chang had been "an incredibly brutal act" which "underscores the horrific human rights record of the North Korean regime".

"We're going to increase our discussions with our allies and partners in the region about the internal situation in North Korea," Ms Harf told reporters in Washington. "North Korea has a choice between continuing down the path of isolation and impoverishment of its own people or meeting its obligations and coming back to the international system," said Ms Harf.

The BBC's Lucy Williamson in Seoul says one theory for Mr Chang's downfall is that he was too keen an admirer of China's economic reform. The speed of his downfall has sent a powerful message to those who had hoped for change under North Korea's new leadership that he can crush any opponents, says our correspondent. But many will be asking whether it is his nephew's hand alone behind this execution, or whether the army is seeking to reassert its power, she adds.

The eruption, which began in the Porong subdistrict of Sidoarjo in East Java in 2006, is the largest of its kind. The gooey, noxious muck has displaced tens of thousands of people with economic costs that exceed $4 billion to date. Initially, more than 100,000 tonnes a day was oozing to the surface.

This has decreased tenfold, and an analysis based on Japanese satellite observations of ground subsidence suggests a further tenfold decrease can be expected in the next few years. Lusi is thought to have been triggered by a drilling operation that went wrong.

From the reports of people there, the negotiators made sure that public interest groups were excluded from even the press briefing about the negotiations, which should tell you all you need to know about what the negotiators think of the public. But, in case you weren't sure, the USTR [US Trade Representative], Michael Froman, has finally explained why the TPP negotiating positions must be kept secret.

Apparently, all of us in the public are too stupid to understand the important work that he's doing, and we might "misunderstand" it. Therefore, we peons must be kept in the dark, while important people like himself negotiate on our behalf.

According to Jamie Love: Froman said if the text was public, people would misunderstand "negotiating positions." In other words, the USTR is not a fan of democracy. If you think the public is too stupid to understand the public policy positions you're negotiating for, then you shouldn't be in that job.