Dear Readers,

On behalf of nearly 100 volunteer editors located around the world, we would like to wish you all very happy holidays and a fruitful New Year. That's the standard holiday greeting, but let's not kid ourselves: obviously, from SOTT's perspective, a mass awakening of humanity and unified action to take back control of our lives from the psychopaths steering our planet to destruction is what would make the coming year fruitful and happy for all. The task can be compared to turning an ocean liner around: as big as it is (over 200,000 tons), it only takes a rudder to do it! Nothing is impossible with your support!

As many of you know, SOTT refuses commercial advertising and support, and achieves its objectives via its own resources and reader donations. Any and all "advertisements" you see on our site are either ads for our own products, which directly support our work, or non-commercial support for others engaged in the fight against psychopathy and its effects on our world. This is how we manage to keep this website going, and try to provide you with as objective a picture of the global reality as possible every day.

Over the years, we've held fund-raisers for specific goals, and the response has always been gratifying; obviously, many people do appreciate our work. YOUR contributions - whether as direct donations or product purchases - keep us up and running on a daily basis and we are immensely thankful to all. What you have helped us accomplish over the past eleven years is amazing. Thanks to you, our readers and your support, SOTT readership has increased from merely thousands to the millions. To give you an example, according to Google Analytics: December 8, 2012 SOTT had 92,072 page views and one year later, on December 4, 2013 SOTT had 166,209 page views. That's an 80% increase to a consistent 5 million page views per month! In addition, you have spoken via Facebook, and we currently have over 74,000 likes across our 4 SOTT sites: English, Spanish, French, and German.

Thanks to you, our readers, the information about psychopathy in power which we began publishing back in 2002, has spread so far and wide that now, the mainstream media is being forced to deal with the issue with concerted programs of damage control! Thanks to YOU, our readers and supporters, the words "Political Ponerology" have entered the lexicon of cyberspace and we are sure it won't be long before they, too, receive a directed reaction from the psychopaths in power. In short, SOTT is making waves, even in the face of long-term and ongoing efforts to slander and marginalize us.

Together, we are making a difference!

All of this highlights how important YOUR SUPPORT is, especially in the face of a tanking economy. The Fight Against Lies goes on and we very much need your help to keep the lighthouse going until we reach that point where knowledge and awareness goes exponential, at which point, that Happy New Year we all hope for might become a real possibility. This is why your help now is more important than ever. And so, before the end of the fiscal year, we would just like to remind you that if you have extra income this year, donating to SOTT, a program of Quantum Future Group, Inc., a U.S. non-profit organization, is tax-deductible in the US. Wouldn't you rather give your money to a good cause, to the fight for truth and real information, than be funding War and Corruption?

Make your (tax deductible in the US) donation today. You can send a check or money-order by mail to:

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A Pennsylvania woman lost an arm due to injuries she claims were inflicted on her by sheriff's deputies and ignored by jail staff. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that Amy J. Needham, 35, filed suit in Allegheny County Court on Monday after events in April of this year left her arm amputated above the elbow.

Needham was arrested on a warrant in April because she failed to appear at a preliminary hearing on charges of simple assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. Her attorney told the Post-Gazette that the woman was using the bathroom when sheriff's department officers broke down the door, shocked her with a taser and bound her in wrist and arm restraints that were too tight.

The rough treatment and confinement caused Needham's left arm to develop compartment syndrome, a medical condition in which muscle tissue is injured and swells, cutting off circulation to a compartment of the muscle.

Deprived of oxygen and nutrients, the muscle tissue in the blocked compartment dies and becomes necrotic. The damage then spreads to other tissues. Left unchecked, compartment syndrome can cost limbs and lives.

An official from the Chinese government announced Monday that approximately 3.33 million hectares, or 8 million acres, of China's farmland is now too polluted to grow crops, according to a Reuters report from Beijing.

China's Vice Minister of Land and Resources Wang Shiyuan reportedly told a news conference that current farming on the now-too-contaminated land - roughly the size of Belgium - will be halted and rehabilitated in order to ensure food safety. It was unclear late Monday whether food that had already been grown on that land would be sought out or recalled.

"These areas cannot continue farming," Wang said, noting that the Ministry of Environmental Protection had deemed all of the 8 million acres as having "moderate to severe pollution."

The Chinese government has said that the country needs at least 120 million hectares of arable land to ensure it is able to meet the vastly populated country's food needs. Though China started 2013 with a strong 135 million hectares of arable land, contamination - paired with recent efforts to convert farmland to forests, grasslands and wetlands - has caused the amount of stable cultivated land to drop to 120 million hectares, Wang said. Wang also said the country is committed to spending "tens of billions of yuan" a year for projects aimed at rehabilitating polluted land.

A giant yellow duck on display in a northern Taiwan port exploded Tuesday, just hours before it was expected to attract a big crowd to count down the new year.

The 18-metre-tall (59-feet) duck on show at Keelung burst around noon and deflated into a floating yellow disc, only 11 days after it went on display.

It was the second time that a giant inflatable duck -- a bath toy replica created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman -- had burst while on show in Taiwan.

"We want to apologise to the fans of the yellow rubber duck.... the weather is fine today and we haven't found the cause of the problem. We will carefully examine the duck to determine the cause," organiser Huang Jing-tai told reporters.

Organisers had planned to stay open past midnight Tuesday in anticipation of a large new year crowd.

The Central News Agency cited an eyewitness as saying the rubber bird might have fallen victim to eagles which scratched it with their claws.

Three Taiwanese cities exhibited their versions of the yellow duck in 2013. But all were forced temporarily to suspend the exhibit due to bad weather or damage.

From Harlem to the Bowery, the sentiment is the same: the man whose campaign told a tale of two cities has plenty of work to do

On a chilly Christmas Eve, it took only a minute for a group of staff and residents at a homeless shelter in Harlem to list what the city's new mayor, Bill de Blasio, needs to do when he takes office on 1 January.

"Reinstate rent-subsidy vouchers, bring back after-school programs to keep the kids away from drugs and violence, supply more affordable housing for low-income families, sort out food stamps," one woman rattled off sternly, as she dashed from the anonymous red-brick building on a quiet residential block to talk to a staff member on a cigarette break. "You want me to go on?"

The woman wasn't a user of the facility, listing demands for herself. She was a security guard, angry at the deterioration in the circumstances of the people she is employed to supervise and protect. Her colleague, shivering in the freezing temperatures, flicked his cigarette butt into the road and pointed to a building across the street - a typical example of low-income housing subsidized by the city but owned and run by a private landlord, he said.

"Housing like that is becoming less affordable. Landlords used to take families that made as little as $17,000 per household but now they demand $30,000 or sometimes $40,000, and who can afford that on minimum wage or disability payments? That keeps people in the shelters."

In Cleveland on Monday, convicted sex offender Elias Acevedo Sr. pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated murder and 295 other counts related to kidnapping and the chronic sexual abuse of his three daughters.

Acevedo was convicted, in part, on DNA evidence from rape kits that were only tested in the wake of the Ariel Castro case. On May 6, 2013, Amanda Berry, Georgina "Gina" DeJesus, and Michelle Knight were rescued after having been kidnapped, held captive, raped and tortured by Castro for over a decade.

When investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigations' Violent Crime Task Force first presented Acevedo with evidence that he had chronically abused his three daughters for over thirty years, he denied having done so.

The FBI then confronted him with evidence that he was involved in the 1995 disappearance of Christina Adkins. At first, Acevedo denied any involvement in Adkins's disappearance, but when the FBI offered to remove the death penalty from the table, he confessed.

Toward the end of his Blaze Radio show Saturday, Buck Sexton received a phone call from a nearly 84-year-old woman who he said gave "one of the most compelling calls I've ever heard on any radio show."

Irma lives in Massachusetts today, but she was born in 1930 under German fascism. She said her father battled tyranny for years, culminating with his imprisonment under the Nazis and another stint behind bars "under the worst conditions" after communism took over in then-East Germany.

"He had his ideas and he wouldn't bend to them," she told Sexton in a strong German accent, her voice breaking at times. "He did everything he could to prevent them from coming into power."

But the tone of Irma's voice shifted to nearly tearful anguish after Sexton remarked that accounts like hers demonstrate that there is such a thing as tyranny, that there is such a thing as evil, and "people need to understand that."

The BBC One program Antiques Roadshow has discovered a "lost masterpiece" by 17th Century master Anthony van Dyck.

A priest in Nottingham, Father Jaime, had purchased the painting for $660, and brought it to a filming of Antiques Roadshow to be professionally appraised. Host Fiona Bruce initially thought the painting a fake, but something about it caught her eye.

She had just "spent weeks looking at nothing but Van Dyck paintings" with art expert Philip Mould, and suspected it might be genuine, so she called him in and he believed it was worth investigating.

After months of careful restoration, the pair consulted Van Dyck expert Christopher Brown, who verified it as a genuine Van Dyck worth approximately $661,000.

A train is derailed west of Casselton, North Dakota. It happened at 35th Street and 154th Avenue Southeast just before 2:20 p.m. Monday.

No injuries have been reported so far. Several area emergency teams are on scene and are setting up an incident command center. A viewer who is about a half mile from the derailment tells Valley News Live she can see large flames.

Several train cars are on fire and huge plumes of black smoke can be seen for miles. Emergency crews are urging people to stay inside and a code red alert has been sent out to residents in a two mile radius of the accident.

Richland County deputies say a 34-year-old woman stabbed her fiance on Christmas Day after they argued over what colors should be used in their wedding.

Krysta James, who was charged in the incident near Blythewood, has been released on bond.

Investigators say the incident began when the man was trying to leave a home on Twin Pond Road after the argument.

Then, investigators say that is when James attacked him around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday. Deputies say the man was stabbed in the upper body, but his injuries weren't life threatening.

James is charged with criminal domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature. She was released from the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center on a $10,000 bond.