In the news:

Interesting news stories continue to roll in:

1. Solar Max approaching:

Forecasters keep eye on looming 'Solar Max'

The coming year will be an important one for space weather as the Sun pulls out of a trough of low activity and heads into a long-awaited and possibly destructive period of turbulence.

At its angriest, the Sun can vomit forth tides of electromagnetic radiation and charged matter known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs.

They can unleash static discharges and geomagnetic storms that can disrupt or even knock out the electronics on which our urbanised, Internet-obsessed, data-saturated society depends.

2. Update on Hamas:

Report: Hamas captures, tortures African migrants in Sinai

It has been known for some time that the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas is operating in the Egyptian Sinai. But Israel is not the only victim of this development. African migrants and refugees seeking asylum in Israel have reportedly been captured and grossly ill treated by the Palestinian militants.

The Africans have been kept in abysmal conditions. What’s worse, EveryOne reported that eight of the migrants were murdered and four others disappeared. All of them are believed to be victims of organ harvesting and trafficking. About 100 of the Africans have been moved to another facility purportedly in preparation to have their organs harvested, too.

A statement released by EveryOne said that the women and children among the African captives are regularly beaten and raped, and many are contemplating suicide.

3. How to achieve celebrity status in the Arab World:

Skull-bashing child killer a celebrity in Arab world

Samir Kuntar has been a rising star in the Arab Middle East since his release from an Israeli prison in 2008 as part of a prisoner exchange between the Jewish state and Lebanon’s Hizballah terrorist militia. On Monday, Kuntar was the honored guest of Syrian leader Bashar Assad at the presidential palace in Damascus.

Kuntar is a celebrity because in 1979 he led a team of Palestinian terrorists in an amphibious infiltration of the Israeli coastal town of Nahariya. After landing on the beach, the terrorists executed an off-duty police officer and then entered a nearby home. That’s what the horror truly began.

Inside the house, Kuntar and his team found Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter, Einat. Kuntar took the two down to the beach and executed Danny in front of his mortified little girl. Kuntar then personally bashed in the skull of little Einat with the butt of his rifle.

For this act and his subsequent years in an Israeli prison, Kuntar is celebrated across the Muslim world and welcomed as an honored guest by heads of state.

These are the kinds of people Israel is expected to make peace with.

4. The continual rise of the "Kings of the East":

China steps up anti-carrier missile tests

China is stepping up efforts to deploy a "carrier-killer" missile system, the commander of the US Pacific Command has said in an interview with a Japanese newspaper, published Tuesday.

US military analysts have warned China is developing a new version of its Dongfeng 21 missile that could pierce the defences of even the most sturdy US naval vessels and has a range far beyond Chinese waters.

Washington has expressed rising concern over China's military intentions following a string of double-digit increases in Chinese military spending and the rapid modernisation of its armed forces.

5. The reality of CO2 and the weather:

The Utter Futility of Reducing Carbon Emissions

The Climate Catastrophe Confab in Cancun, Mexico, is now over. Once again we heard the cries from the 20,000 delegates about how the wealthy nations of the world have stolen the future from developing nations by using up all the carbon space in the air by their reckless and selfish use of fossil fuels. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon proclaimed:

"We need to fundamentally transform the global economy, based on low carbon, clean energy resources."

It’s quite interesting and revealing — when one looks at the decisions made at the conference, nearly all of them are about money, not climate.

The problem with this transformation of the world economy to low carbon resources? Even if we could eliminate all fossil fuel use around the world, it would have virtually no effect on Earth’s temperature.

If we were somehow able to shut down all sources of carbon dioxide emissions from the United States, the effect on the global average temperature would be 20% of .1 degree, or .02 degrees. And that’s with shutting down everything that makes carbon dioxide! This decrease of .02 degrees is so small it is completely irrelevant.

6. More and more governmental control of citizens:

The Plan for Food Dependency

What does any would-be tyrant need in order to gain control over the lives of citizens? Three things come to mind: martial law, socialized medicine, and food dependency.

The greatest tyrants in history have used food as a method of control. To state the obvious, people must eat to live. By controlling the flow of food to people who side with the political intelligentsia, rule is established.

Meet the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), a new legislative proposal designed to centralize control over food stocks to protect Americans from "terror."

The FSMA doesn't merely wrest control of the food supply from citizens. Dangerously, the FSMA proceeds to transfer U.S. food sovereignty to the WTO, with one provision reading, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the U.S. is a party."

This provision is significant, since the WTO draws all its food safety standards from the controversial Codex Alimentarius, which is thought by some to be a vast postwar scheme to control the world's population by means of food. The bottom line vis-à-vis food is that Americans lose control, and foreign bureaucrats gain control.

These are just a few of the pertinent headlines today.

Its a brave new world indeed.