Most frightening stories:

• The public today is more complacent about nuclear weapons than they were in the 1980s, even though the risk is arguably greater and leaders seem to be more ignorant and reckless.
• The NSA is trying “to identify laboratories and/or individuals who may be involved in nefarious use of genetic research”.
• We hit 410 ppm at Mauna Loa.

Most hopeful stories:

• Electric cars may be set for a boom in the next five years or so.
• The Dutch public insisted on safe streets, and got them. The Dutch are a type of human being, I think, which suggests there could be hope for the rest of us.
• Buzz Aldrin and NASA have plans for Mars colonization around the 2030s. Stephen Hawking thinks this is a good idea to hedge our bets against bad things that might happen here on Earth.

Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:

• Some experts think the idea of national sovereignty itself is now in doubt.
• Taser wants to record everything the police do, everywhere, all the time, and use artificial intelligence to make sense of the data.
• The sex robots are here.