Investors both in the United States and overseas were still shaking from a week destabilized first by sharp exchanges between Iran and Saudi Arabia over an executed Shiite cleric and then by major plummets on China’s stock markets that led to trading being halted twice.

North Korea’s claimed test of a hydrogen bomb this week had one immediate casualty: the Stalinist outpost’s already strained relationship with its largest and most important neighbor, China.

In Guatemala the arrests of 18 former military officials on charges of human rights violations were detailed on Jan. 6.

Supporting the president’s “modest” proposals, Dallas Bishop Kevin Farrell wrote, they represent “first steps in correcting gun laws so weak that they are ludicrous.”

When it comes to precipitation, Angelenos are easily excited.

The president was most clearly moved when remembering the particularly horrific attack on the Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Ct., in December 2012.