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If you're selling food in Germany, "natural" is good. It's a place that distrusts technological manipulation of what we eat.

Witness, for example, a 500-year-old law that allows beer-makers to use only three ingredients: water, barley and hops. The law has since been loosened slightly, but many brewers continue to abide by it for marketing reasons.

This helps explain a fierce court battle now underway between Ritter Sport, one of Germany's leading chocolate makers, and an organization called Stiftung Warentest, which carries out tests of products (not just food) to see how they measure up to their marketing claims. Think of it as a German version of Consumers Union.

In late November, just before the big chocolate-buying season, Stiftung Warentest released a new report on Germany's chocolate options. In a stinging blow to Ritter Sport, the testers called Voll-Nuss, the company's top-selling nut-filled product, "deficient" — although they admitted that it did taste good.

The problem? It contained a chemical called piperonal, a vanilla-like aroma that Stiftung Warentest believes was manufactured using synthetic chemistry. In other words, unnatural.

Ritter Sport reacted like a goaded bull. The company declared that the piperonal in its chocolate has been extracted from natural sources, such as dill, violet flowers, black pepper, and vanilla. (According to European Union regulations, it is permissible to use either water or alcohol to extract "natural" flavors and aromas from herbs and other plants.) Ritter Sport then went to court, demanding that Stiftung Warentest retract its report.

The judge did, in fact, order Stiftung Warentest to stop making this claim until the case is resolved. It's still possible to order the report online, but all references to piperonal in the Ritter Sport chocolate have been blacked out, as if they were state secrets.

Stiftung Warentest admits that its tests cannot distinguish between synthetic piperonal and the same aroma extracted from herbs. It continues to insist, however, that Ritter Sport must be using the synthetic aroma because naturally obtained piperonal would be too expensive.

According to an account in Der Spiegel, a German newsmagazine, the judge in the case seems reluctant to rule in the case. At a recent hearing, he suggested that the two sides simply commission an independent audit to resolve the issue. The company and Stiftung Warentest refused. A decision isn't expected until early next year.

Target Corp. said Monday that the Department of Justice is investigating the credit and debit card security breach at the retailer.

The investigation comes after Target revealed last week that data connected to about 40 million credit and debit card accounts were stolen between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15. Security experts say it's the second-largest theft of card accounts in U.S. history, surpassed only by a scam that began in 2005 involving retailer TJX Cos. That affected at least 45.7 million card users.

The Department of Justice declined to comment on whether it's investigating the breach at Target, the nation's second-largest discounter. But Target said that it's cooperating with the DOJ's probe.

The news came as Target also said that it is working with the U.S. Secret Service in the retailer's own investigation and that its general counsel held a conference call on Monday with state attorneys general to bring them up to date on the breach.

"Target remains committed to sharing information about the recent data breach with all who are impacted," Molly Snyder, a Target spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Target has been trying to deal with fallout from the breach during what is typically the busiest shopping season of the year. By Monday evening, more than a dozen Target customers had filed federal lawsuits around the country, with some accusing Target of negligence in failing to protect customer data.

Target has said that it told authorities and financial institutions once it became aware of the breach on Dec. 15. The company issued an apology to customers and doubled the number of workers taking calls from customers around the clock. It also offered 10 percent off to customers who wanted to shop in its stores on Saturday and Sunday and free credit-monitoring services to those who are affected by the issue.

But there are early signs that some shoppers are scared off by the breach. Scotty Haywood, who lives in Smiths Station, Ala., said he plans to stop shopping at the store. He said his debit card number had been stolen after he used it at Target the day after Thanksgiving.

He said the card was denied when his wife tried to use it Thursday at a grocery store. He said the couple knew something was wrong because they had $2,200 in the account.

"The possible savings of a few dollars (by going to Target) are nothing compared to the money that has been stolen from us," he said.

Overall, Customer Growth Partners LLC, a retail consultancy, estimates that the number of transactions at Target fell 3 percent to 4 percent on Saturday, compared with a year ago. The Saturday before Christmas is usually one of the top busiest days of the season.

"Before this incident, Target had a chance of at least a decent Christmas. Now, it will be mediocre at best," said Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail consultancy.

Meanwhile, consumer perception about the Target brand has dropped steeply since the news broke Wednesday night, according to YouGov BrandIndex, which surveys 4,300 people daily. The index ranges from 100 to negative 100 and is compiled by subtracting negative customer feedback from positive customer feedback.

Before the breach, Target's index was 26, higher than the rating of 12 of its peer group of retailers that include Wal-Mart. Now, it's negative 19.

Eric Hausman, a Target spokesman, declined to comment specifically on sales or the impact of its 10 percent offer, but said that stores "were busy."

Target is based in Minneapolis and has nearly 1,800 stores in the U.S. and 124 in Canada.

Being a news consumer means you're constantly on the receiving end of bad news. War, unemployment, crime, political dysfunction — it can be enough to make you think we humans aren't doing anything right. But good news: We are. As the year draws to an end, here's a look at a few areas of real progress in the U.S. and around the world.

Air Safety

Let's start with flying. It's not a lot of fun: baggage fees, pat-downs, cramped seating, disappointing snacks.

But the odds are remarkably good you will land safely. "For a person who boarded a flight anywhere in the world earlier this year, the chance of being killed in an accident is about 1 in 15 million," says Arnie Barnett, an MIT statistics professor who studies aviation safety.

So what does that mean when we're up in the air?

"At that rate, 1 in 15 million, you could go approximately 40,000 years, taking a flight every single day, before you would, on average, succumb to a fatal crash," Barnett says.

Big onboard safety improvements like collision avoidance systems were introduced more than a generation ago. "We haven't had a midair collision in the United States involving a commercial plane in more than a quarter century, when we used to have them every two years," he says. Airline safety has been improving steadily.

There have been 256 fatalities worldwide to date this year, according to the Aviation Safety Network, compared with an average of more than 700 deaths each year over the past 10 years.

Barnett says that when crashes do occur, they're more survivable, thanks in large part to fire retardant materials. A case in point is the Asiana Airlines crash in San Francisco in July; there were more than 300 people onboard, and three deaths.

"The survival rate was 99 percent, even though the plane was utterly engulfed in a conflagration," Barnett says. "But the extra time it took for the conflagration to take hold allowed hundreds of people to get off the plane and to survive."

Fewer Cancer Deaths

The next area of progress is the diminishing threat from cancer. Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, says the death rate from cancer in the U.S. has declined by 20 percent.

"A person in their mid-50s ... has a chance of dying from cancer that's 20 percent lower than a person of that same age in 1990, 1991," he says.

Part of the reason for that decline is that more people — especially men — have stopped smoking, he says. A combination of screening and improvements in treatment has contributed to about a 35 percent decline in breast cancer death rates, he adds, and colorectal cancer deaths have also fallen by about 35 percent.

That's encouraging, but we shouldn't get carried away. Brawley says there's a development that could stop much of the progress.

"Increasingly, we're figuring out that a high caloric diet, lack of exercise and obesity is a huge cause of cancer and might surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer over the next decade," he says.

Stronger Economies In Sub-Saharan Africa

OK, we can be optimistic about cancer and big advances in flight safety. But the global economy is still a mess, right? In much of the world that's true, but not necessarily in sub-Saharan Africa, one of the world's poorest regions.

"Africa is no longer a place that is purely in the future," says Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group.

Growth in sub-Saharan Africa has been running at nearly 5 percent over the past several years, well above the global average, he says. Africans are moving out of extreme rural poverty and into cities, where many start businesses or find work for better wages.

"Africa is now more urbanized as a whole continent than India is as a country," he says. "Women are getting much better education; health care is improving."

And mobile commerce is making a big difference. "You've got 800 million Africans with cellphones," says Bremmer, "and they now can act as consumers because they can have bank accounts."

Inequality is growing as more wealth is amassed, he says, but overall, the economic momentum is going in the right direction.

Need some more good news? HumanProgress.org collects indicators that show that humanity is improving.

More than 240 people have left Germany to join the civil war in Syria — the largest reported number from a European country.

One was Burak Karan, a rising German-Turkish soccer player who died in northern Syria in October at age 26. Bild newspaper quoted his brother saying Karan had gone to the border region between Turkey and Syria to help distribute aid.

But Spiegel magazine reports that a video posted on YouTube on Oct. 22 by an unknown Islamist group showed Karan posing with an assault rifle. According to Spiegel, one of the video's captions says he "stormed like a lion into the area of the (infidels) ... and took pleasure in fighting them."

Officials tell NPR that many of the people going to Syria from Germany — in what is being dubbed "jihad tourism" — are German-born Muslims of foreign descent. A few are ethnic Germans who've converted to a fundamentalist version of Islam.

The officials say all of those going are radicalized over an extended period of time via the Internet or acquaintances before being recruited to fight or help the warring factions. But authorities say there is little they can do under German law to stop people from traveling to Syria.

It's especially easy for these recruits to get to Syria, says Boris Rhein, the interior minister in the German state of Hesse, where Frankfurt is located. They can fly to Turkey, take a bus to the Syrian border and then cross on foot.

Rhein says most of those going from his state are 25 or younger, including four minors. The Berliner Zeitung reported on Dec. 19 that one 16-year-old from Rhein's state — a German boy of Turkish descent — was recently killed in Syria.

The Hesse minister says especially disturbing is that many Germans are being recruited by radical Salafists on school and college campuses.

"The contact is established by handing over a Quran and then, almost like a drug dealer, they get these young people hooked," he explains. "So the schools have become a recruitment center, and this really frightens us and is a huge challenge."

He and other officials fear the German fighters could eventually pose a security threat to Europe.

Germany's Focus magazine reported this month that al-Qaida may be using the fighters' German passports to plan terrorist attacks in Europe. Also, a German security official who spoke to NPR on the condition of not being identified says there's concern about radicalized war veterans coming back to Germany with knowledge of weapons and explosives that could be used to carry out attacks there.

Rhein says it's imperative to prevent those who want to fight in Syria from leaving home in the first place. So he's proposed an early detection system that will include telephone hotlines and counseling centers.

The Hesse minister says the system — which he's trying to get other German states to adopt — will be similar to existing German programs that identify right-wing extremists. He says the idea is to create lines of communication with relatives, friends and teachers who would likely be the first to notice when an individual is becoming radicalized.

A nationwide system would also make it easier for German states to share information on radical Islamist activities with each other. That's something authorities there would welcome.

"We always have in each state different systems," says Berlin police spokesman Stefan Redlich, "different computer programs in the police [departments] and sometimes even different laws. So it's always a good idea to have one common system to look at the problem."