3 most frightening stories

• The Doomsday Clock was moved to 2.5 minutes to midnight. The worst it has ever been was 2 minutes to midnight in the early 1980s. In related news, the idea of a U.S.-China war is looking a bit more plausible. The U.S. military may be considering sending ground troops to Syria.
• The evidence for a relationship between lead, violent crime and other social problems peaking around the 80s and 90s is looking even stronger.
• The strengthened but still inadequate financial stability regulations the U.S. put in place after the 2008 near-collapse are likely to be weakened.

3 most hopeful stories

• There are some ideas for fish food that is not made of fish.
• You can take a class on how to not be fooled by the news.
• Eliminating left turns against oncoming traffic can actually save time and fuel, not to mention lives.

3 most interesting stories

• The idea of growing human organs inside a pig, or even a viable human-pig hybrid, is getting very close. Tiny brains can also be grown on a microchip. Bringing back extinct animals is also getting very close.
• Russian hackers are cheating slot machines by figuring out the pattern on pseudo-random numbers they generate.
• From a new book called Homo Deus: “For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda.”