News Headlines - 27 December 2013

▽2013: The Year in Pictures - The New York Times

Over and over, as I looked at these photographs, I saw the same fury and misery that had stricken Aunt Shirley’s sister, her feral lust to get even.

▽N.S.A. Phone Surveillance Is Lawful, Federal Judge Rules - NYTimes.com

A federal judge in New York on Friday ruled that the National Security Agency’s program that is systematically keeping phone records of all Americans is lawful, creating a conflict among lower courts and increasing the likelihood that the issue will be resolved by the Supreme Court.

▽BBC News - Beirut blast kills Sunni ex-minister Mohamad Chatah

Former Lebanese minister and opposition figure Mohamad Chatah has been killed by a car bomb in central Beirut. Four others were killed and at least 50 people were hurt in the attack.

▽Can Britain really overhaul the Germans? - Telegraph

It is not based on an especially rose-tinted view of Britain’s current resurgence, however. It’s true that we are now experiencing what Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, has called “one of the strongest recoveries in the advanced world”, and that almost all of our key indicators are, for once, pointing simultaneously in the right direction. But that doesn’t mean we’ve gone from limping runner-up to gleaming medallist.

▽BBC News - Is Paris prepared if Seine floods?

In 1910 the river Seine in Paris rose eight metres above its normal level. Experts are now predicting that if a similar flood happened today, half a million homes could be lost and hundreds of thousands made homeless.