The concept of "peak food," that the production will reach an apex that can't be topped, is more a function of population than of agricultural limits. The world should be able to produce enough food to feed everyone when the human numbers peak late this century, says José Graziano da Silva, director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). However, the strains on the global pantry are real. While the Earth has plenty of natural inputs - land, nutrients and water - humans face a growing challenge to manage them.

The human population is headed to 9.3 billion by 2050, with the middle class expanding from 1.8 billion to 4.9 billion consumers, according to estimates by the UN and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Global farm output must rise 70 percent by 2050 to nourish everyone, as more people seek a higher calorie count every day, according to the FAO. “We need to improve production," Graziano da Silva said.

"The problem is how to do that without destroying the natural reserves, as we are doing now, wasting water, erosion of soils, destroying forests." For the last five years, assurances by agriculture specialists that food production will hold up were overshadowed by surging food bills, price swings and shortages, caused mostly by drought and flooding, that prompted social unrest. During the food price spike in 2007-2008, more than 60 food riots occurred from Haiti to Egypt. Anger over food prices fueled the Tunisian unrest that toppled dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011.

Three of the world's greatest rivers, the Colorado in the US, the Nile in Egypt and the Yellow River in China, have been so depleted by cities, farms, factories and dams along their banks that they often no longer reach the sea. Growth in the desert city of Las Vegas, which depends on Colorado River water contained by the Hoover Dam, has been stunted not only by a spectacular real estate crash, but by a 46 percent drop in the amount of water in Lake Mead, behind the dam. Simply put, there's no more water to be taken.

"It's not that the world is running out of water," says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, an environmental research organization in San Francisco. "It’s that there's not enough water where it's needed, and it can't be easily transported. There are limits to how much water we can get and use, and how we use it and where we use it," Gleick said. "People think of water as a renewable resource, and mostly it is. But there are very important nonrenewable stocks of water that society depends on."

Gleick coined the term "peak water" and in 2010, with colleague Meena Palaniappan, laid out the case that much of the world - the US especially - may have already passed its greatest possible rate of consumption. Citizens, government and business must realize that the taps are about to slow.

Enrico Letta said the growing popularity of Britain's UK Independence Party, France's National Front (FN) - as well as Italy's anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) - was the 'most dangerous phenomenon' facing the EU and could scupper hopes of an economic recovery. He said if they manage to harness 25 per cent of the vote in parliamentary elections next May a 'very negative' effect could befall Brussels.

As president of the Food Bank for New York City, Margaret Purvis expects those cuts will draw even more people to organizations that already provide 400,000 meals a day to hungry city folks. "Our members are panicking," she said as time wound down before the benefit decreases go into effect. "We're telling everyone to make sure that you are prepared for longer lines."

Needy Americans who receive food stamps through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are expected to suffer an average loss of $36 a month from a $275.13 per household benefit. There are a near-record 47.6 million Americans, representing 23.1 million households, on the program. The cost of the program will hit $63.4 billion in 2013.

SNAP allocations built into President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill are coming to an end, leading to the cuts. Over the past few years, a bipartisan group of Democrats and Republicans have voted in favor of the cuts in exchange for increased education funding and school nutrition programs. Benefit cuts to food stamp recipients kick in Friday, a move by Congress that will siphon $5 billion off a program that helps one in seven Americans put breakfast, lunch and dinner on the table.

The spike in deaths for October has created an atmosphere of anxiety and fear amongst the population since most of last month’s victims were civilians, according to government figures. A total of 855 civilians, 65 policemen and 44 soldiers were killed, according to information from the Iraqi ministries of health, interior and defense, released on Friday.

According to data gathered by iraqbodycount.org, an independent organization that tracks the death toll in the country, the preliminary death toll in Iraq for October is 1,095 – the highest since April 2008, when 1,273 people were killed.

Of the 1,600 people who sustained injuries, 1,445 were civilians, while just 67 were soldiers, and 88 policemen. The data also showed that 33 fighters were killed and 167 arrested. The grim data was released as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is in Washington for a meeting with President Barack Obama on Friday. The two leaders are expected to discuss the disturbing spike in Iraqi violence during his White House visit.

Israel, which had refused to comment on the strike, is fuming behind the scenes and accusing the US – which gives Israel $3 billion in funding annually – of not behaving like a proper ally: Israel’s Channel 10 TV on Friday night quoted Israeli officials branding the American leak as “scandalous.” For Israel’s ally to be acting in this way was “unthinkable,” the officials were quoted as saying.

This “leaked” anger from officials within Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government is quite rich. After all, the Netanyahu government – which receives more US aid than any other government in the world – routinely, embarrasses the United States, despite all the financial and military support it receives from their American allies.

"The German Federation of Journalists recommends journalists to avoid until further notice the use of search engines and e-mail services from Google and Yahoo for their research and digital communication," the union said in a statement.

It cited "scandalous" reports of interception of both companies' web traffic by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain's GCHQ. "The searches made by journalists are just as confidential as the contact details of their sources and the contents of their communication with them," said Michael Konken, head of the union which represents about 38,000 journalists. He said there were safe alternatives for both searches and email.

And while in the US having one's dirty laundry is almost perceived as a status symbol by a culture that encourages online exhibitionism via Facebook and other social media (so what if some bureaucrat in Virginia knows more than what is public), in Germany privacy is actually taken seriously.

The Revolutionary Guards, the elite Iranian regime's army, said Saturday they are committed to the slogan "Death to America," chanted at official ceremonies, just days before the 34th anniversary of the storming of the American Embassy in Tehran.

"The slogan Death to America is the symbol of strength and determination of the Iranian nation against the dominance of the United States, which is an oppressive and untrustworthy nation," said the Revolutionary Guards on their official website.

In recent weeks, a debate was launched in Iran on the merits of continuing to chant "Death to America " during official ceremonies, while some relaxation occurred in relations between Tehran and Washington since the election in June of moderate President Hassan Rohani.

On Monday, leading media outlets including China Central TV, the People’s Daily, the Global Times, the PLA Daily, the China Youth Daily and the Guangmin Daily ran identical, top-headlined reports about the “awesomeness” of the People's Liberation Army navy’s strategic submarine force.

Chinese calculations for nuclear attacks on the US are chillingly macabre. “Because the Midwest states of the US are sparsely populated, in order to increase the lethality, [our] nuclear attacks should mainly target the key cities on the West Coast of the United States, such as Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego,” the Global Times said.

“If we launch our DF 31A ICBMs over the North Pole, we can easily destroy a whole list of metropolises on the East Coast and the New England region of the US, including Annapolis, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Portland, Baltimore and Norfolk, whose population accounts for about one-eighth of America’s total residents,” the Global Times said.

All the state-run press reports stressed the point that the PLA’s missile submarines are now on routine strategic patrol, “which means that China for the first time has acquired the strategic deterrence and second strike capability against the United States.”

Spilling out through the open door of the 400-year-old church came voices united in a rendering of Queen's Don't Stop Me Now. Inside, a couple of hundred people - average age about 35 - clapped rhythmically, swaying in the venerable pews.

But for the choice of music it was just like a certain sort of church. There was an overhead projector, a small team to lead the singing and a charismatic figure using his rangy body to urge on the congregation. He is one of two stand-up comedians who co-founded the Sunday Assembly - Sanderson Jones.

The event is a brazen copy of a church service. As well as emotional and uplifting songs, there was a talk from a woman who had turned her life around by volunteering, another from a scientist about the human propensity to misperceive reality and a minute's silent reflection. During a rendering of Dire Straits' Walk Of Life a collection was taken. "We both wanted to do something like church but without God and we just nicked the order of service," admits Mr Jones.

An Obama administration official told AP that the attack happened overnight on Thursday, but provided no details. Another security official told the news agency that it took place in the Syrian port city of Latakia, and that the targets were Russian-made SA-125 missiles.

Another US official told CNN that the Israelis believed the base near Snobar Jableh, south of Latakia, had sensitive and sophisticated missile equipment that may have been transferred to the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah. Earlier, Dubai-based broadcaster al-Arabiya reported two attacks carried out by the Israeli Air Forces – one in Latakia and the other one in Damascus.

Neither the Syrian nor Israeli governments have commented on the alleged attacks. No casualties have been reported. In the past, Damascus has threatened to strongly retaliate against such attacks.

A day after a US Treasury Department report bluntly denounced Germany's economic model, accusing it of hampering the euro zone recovery and hurting global growth, Germany called the conclusions "incomprehensible" and challenged the US to "analyze its own economic situation."

The Treasury's semiannual currency report criticized Germany's overreliance on exports, a high current-account surplus and weak domestic demand. These factors "have hampered rebalancing at a time when many other euro-area countries have been under severe pressure," the report concluded, citing budget tightening in the euro periphery. "The net result has been a deflationary bias for the euro area, as well as for the world economy."

The German Economics Ministry responded in a statement with equally harsh words, saying that Germany's surplus is "a sign of the competitiveness of the German economy and global demand for quality products from Germany."

“It would be wrong of me not to admit that headcount reductions and pay restraint have impacted adversely on morale,” Lord Astor said, speaking in the House of Lords. Thousands of soldiers have been fired and others have accepted voluntary redundancy under Ministry of Defence plans to shrink the regular Army from 102,000 troops to 82,000 by 2020.

The admission came as peers accused the Government of behaving like Robert Maxwell, the late newspaper tycoon, for firing soldiers days before they become entitled to a full pension. The MoD is accused of targeting redundancies at soldiers who are within touching distance of generous lifelong pay outs.

In one case exposed in the Daily Telegraph, a 40-year-old sergeant serving in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers was sacked when he was only three days away from serving 22 years and qualifying for an immediate pension pot worth £108,000. He will now have to wait until he is 65 to receive the pension. In other cases, officers who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan were fired weeks short of serving 16 years, at which point they would get an immediate annual stipend of around £12,000.

"Not since the notorious crook Robert Maxwell plundered his employees' pensions have we seen an employer, in this case Her Majesty's Government, so contrive a redundancy package to deny a small group who have put their lives on the line for Britain their rightful pension,” he told peers.

The ranks of the jobless swelled by 60,000 to a record 19.45 million, according to Eurostat, the European Union's statistics agency. Though the unemployment rate remained steady at 12.2 percent, the previous month was revised up from 12 percent.

"The latest figures put a dent in hopes that the labor market may have reached a turning point," said analyst Ben May of Capital Economics. A sharp and unexpected drop in inflation also cast doubts over the recovery of the eurozone, which just emerged from recession, and put pressure on the European Central Bank to act. The euro dropped sharply, from above $1.3700 before the news to about $1.3615 in afternoon trading.

A particularly gloomy stat was on youth unemployment - it rose to 24.1 percent from 24 percent in August. It was lowest in Germany and Austria, with 7.7 percent and 8.7 percent, and highest in Europe's southern economies, which have been hit hard by the debt crisis and government austerity measures. They were around 57 percent in Greece and 56 percent in Spain.

Revised Bank of England data on Thursday showed that unsecured consumer credit rose by £864 million in September. This was the highest monthly level in 2013, and up from an increase of £680 million in August.

A Bank of England error meant the figure was reported as £411 million earlier this week. "This release was reissued on 31 October 2013 due to an error in implementing a change to the reporting population for September 2013," the Bank said in a statement on Thursday.

The revised figure also means unsecured lending rose to an annualised rate of 5.8 percent in the third quarter, a pace not seen since April 2008.