Fourteen years ago, scientists developed a genetically engineered version of rice that would promote the production of vitamin A to counter blindness and other diseases in children in developing countries.
One hesitates to quote Dave Barry, but sometimes you just have to: ''Thanks to modern medical advances such as antibiotics, nasal spray and Diet Coke, it has become routine for people in the civilised world to pass the age of 40, sometimes more than once.''
''We are at a point today when the guns will fall silent and ideas will speak,'' declared Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey, on March 21.
Could a failed bank robbery in Cyprus cause the collapse of the euro?
Why did George W. Bush choose March 19, 2003, to invade Iraq, rather than some day in May, or July, or never? Because he was afraid further delay would give United Nations arms inspectors time to refute the accusation (his sole pretext for making an unprovoked attack on an independent country) that Saddam Hussein's regime was working on nuclear weapons.
The joint US-South Korean military exercises known as ''Key Resolve'' and ''Foal Eagle'' have got under way, and so far the heavens have not fallen.
''The graveyards are full of indispensable men,'' said Georges Clemenceau, the prime minster of France during World War 1, and promptly died to prove his point. He was duly replaced, and France was just fine without him. The same goes for Hugo Chavez and Venezuela.
Last week's announcement by China's Ministry of Finance that the country will introduce a carbon tax, probably in the next two years, did not dominate the international headlines.
The winner of last week's election in Italy was a mythical beast called ''Grillosconi''.
You know the storyline by now. There are one million US-dollar millionaires in China (''To get rich is glorious,'' said former leader Deng Xiao-ping). Seventy percent of the homes in China are bought for cash. China's total trade - the sum of imports and exports - is now bigger than that of the United States.
It's the ROMAN Catholic Church, not the Republican Catholic Church or the People's Revolutionary Socialist Democratic Catholic Church. Its rigid hierarchy and its centralising instincts are almost entirely because of the fact that it became the state religion of the Roman Empire more than 1600 years ago. And the Pope is still, in essence, the emperor.
When somebody is murdered and his killer is unknown, the detective's first step is to ask: who had a motive? In classic murder-mystery novels and films, the usual answer was: almost everybody. That's the only way to keep the plot going for 250 pages/90 minutes. But in real life, the suspects are generally few, and pretty obvious. So who killed Chokri Belaid?
It's hard enough to manage a fishery stock sustainably when the fish stay put. Once they start moving around, it's almost impossible. That's why the European Union and Iceland are heading into a mackerel war. It's a foretaste of things to come, as warming oceans cause ocean fish to migrate in order to stay in their temperature comfort zones.
A Chinese survey vessels go into the waters around the disputed islands and Japanese patrol ships tail them much too closely.
If North Korea's new leader, Kim Jong-un, wanted to end the brutal and destructive tyranny that his father and grandfather imposed on the country, he would need support from abroad. The military and Communist Party elites who control and benefit from that system would have to be brought round or bought off, and that would require lots of foreign aid and a global amnesty for their crimes. So how would he get the foreigners to help?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was once seen as a right-wing figure. Now he's widely considered a moderate. But it's not Mr Netanyahu who has changed; Israel has.
The most frustrating part of covering the Lebanese civil war (1975-90) was that after a while there was nothing left to say. Syria is starting to feel just the same. It's horrible, but atrocities are a daily event in all civil wars.
It's as if Paul Newman and Jane Fonda had fled the United States in protest at something or other - they were always protesting - and sought Russian citizenship instead. Americans would be surprised, but would they really care? It's a free country, as they say.
It is not known if the word ''dysfunctional'' was invented specifically to describe the Nigerian state - several other candidates also come to mind - but the word certainly fills the bill.
To begin on a happy note, the world didn't end this year.