Of all the ways to ring in the new year, stripping down for a dip in the ocean off the coast of wintery New York City may sound insane to the uninitiated.

BBC: An icy dip off the coast of NYC

Since Somalia, Iraq and the Palestinian territories have all known worse years than 2009, it may be that Italy's deal with Libya happened to come into force just as the volume of migrants reaching the North African coast was beginning to dip anyway.

ECONOMIST: Sometimes what does not happen is the real news