The SDO spacecraft is one of several sun-watching space telescopes keeping tabs on solar flares and other sun weather events. According to Spaceweather.com, sunspot AR1654 is growing more active and is now "crackling with M-class solar flares" like the one that erupted today.

"AR1654 is getting bigger as it turns toward Earth," the website reported. "Not only is the chance of flares increasing, but also the chance of an Earth-directed eruption. This could be the sunspot that breaks the recent lengthy spell of calm space weather around our planet." The sun is in an active phase of its current 11-year weather cycle, which scientists call Solar Cycle 24. The sun's activity cycle is expected to reach its peak (or "solar maximum") in 2013, astronomers have said.

”Same thing with individuals. If you live in a state like New York, New Jersey, California [or] one of these high-tax states [where] 60-plus cents of every dollar goes to taxes, you’ll say, ‘What the hell am I doing this for?’”

“A lot of people have told me that,” Hannity continued. “A lot of people are moving. … I noticed that Bobby Jindal moved to remove his state income tax. He’s not stupid. You know what’s going to happen in Louisiana? The same thing that is happening in Texas and Florida — their populations are soaring. They’re doing a lot better. State governments are fine. They’re surviving. They don’t have the property taxes they do in New York, which is obscene. In New York, you just pay and pay and pay and pay.”

States with lower taxes may soon decide they want to stop shouldering the burden of states with higher taxes, Hannity warned. “People are fed up with a power hungry, radicalized, abusive federal government intruding into every aspect of our lives,” Hannity continued.

“People are going to say they’re fed up, and states are going to want more liberty and more freedom. They’re not going to want to tax their citizens to death anymore. If this pattern continues and gets worse and worse and worse, I can see at some point the states saying, ‘Forget it. I don’t want to be a part of this union anymore.’”

China is enduring its coldest winter in nearly 30 years. Brazil is in the grip of a dreadful heat spell. Eastern Russia is so freezing — minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and counting — that the traffic lights recently stopped working in the city of Yakutsk.

Bush fires are raging across Australia, fueled by a record-shattering heat wave. Pakistan was inundated by unexpected flooding in September. A vicious storm bringing rain, snow and floods just struck the Middle East. And in the United States, scientists confirmed this week what people could have figured out simply by going outside: last year was the hottest since records began.

“Each year we have extreme weather, but it’s unusual to have so many extreme events around the world at once,” said Omar Baddour, chief of the data management applications division at the World Meteorological Organization, in Geneva. “The heat wave in Australia; the flooding in the UK, and most recently the flooding and extensive snowstorm in the Middle East — it’s already a big year in terms of extreme weather calamity.”

Such events are increasing in intensity as well as frequency, Mr Baddour said, a sign that climate change is not just about rising temperatures, but also about intense, unpleasant, anomalous weather of all kinds.

In Channel 4 documentary Gypsy Blood, cock fights are organised for entertainment and young boys are taken along to watch the illegal hunting of deer with dogs. In one scene a bird is shown on the verge of death as another pecks away at its head during a cock fight.

The animal welfare charity already faces allegations of political bias after spending £350,000 prosecuting members of the Heythrop Hunt, with whom Prime Minister David Cameron once rode. The hunt and its members were fined £6,800 after admitting four charges of unlawfully hunting a wild fox with dogs. The judge in the case drew attention to the fact that the private prosecution cost nearly 10 times more than the defence costs of £35,000. “Members of the public may feel that RSPCA funds can be more usefully employed,” District Judge Tim Pattinson suggested.

Clutching loudhailers, and watched by police officers, the demonstrators have been a fixture at the harbour-side for months, jeering as lorries filled with sheep and cows are loaded onto cargo vessels. 'Whenever there's a shipment, I'm there along with 60-plus protestors,' says Mark Johnson, the group's ringleader. 'My people will turn out any time, day or night. It's a barbaric trade, and we'll be there as long as it takes to stop it.'

Many of Johnson's fellow protestors carry placards that bear a singularly shocking image. It shows a pile of dead sheep, their bodies mutilated and their heads smashed. The white fleeces of the animals have been drenched in blood, which is liberally spattered over nearby walls.

It was released to the media by the RSPCA, which is mounting a vigorous campaign for a government ban on live exports. In public statements, Gavin Grant, the charity's chief executive, cited the gory image as evidence that 'there is no place in a civilised and compassionate society' for live animal exports, saying it lays bare 'this vile trade that causes so much suffering to animals'.

This graphic photo was taken at Ramsgate on September 12 last year, when 46 sheep died after being unloaded from a French lorry. But one fact about the photograph of these bloody carcasses might surprise animal lovers — and even some of Ramsgate's animal rights protestors. Almost every single one of the sheep was shot dead by an employee of Grant's own RSPCA.

Their deaths remain the subject of a fierce dispute which has sparked multiple legal threats and seen vituperative criticism of Grant's high-profile organisation. An official report on the matter was completed in October, but mysteriously it is still being blocked from public release. The matter has become the latest flashpoint in the increasingly bitter row between the RSPCA and the rural lobby amid concerns that the charity has lurched towards an extreme political agenda under Grant — a vegetarian and former PR man.

David Cameron is preparing to give a major speech about Britain’s future in Europe, which could pave the way for a referendum on EU membership. Some Conservatives say Britain should leave the EU if other members do not agree to much looser membership.

Mr Osborne issued his warning to EU members in an interview with the German Die Welt newspaper published today. “I very much hope that Britain remains a member of the EU,” the Chancellor said. “But in order that we can remain in the European Union, the EU must change.”

Mr Osborne’s interview came to light only a day after a senior German official warned Mr Cameron not to blackmail the EU. Gunther Kirchbaum, a politician close to German chancellor Angela Merkel said that Britain “cannot create a political future” if it is “blackmailing other states.”