For years many have warned that since so many people are now dependent upon this program, ending it would result in widespread riots, looting and violence. Considering that the federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path as the world’s largest debtor nation it is quite possible that it will soon become impossible for this program to continue. Interestingly enough we got a taste of what could happen when the system that processes EBT cards went down for a short period of time over the weekend.

During the course of the outage at least two Wal-Mart stores in Louisiana began processing EBT cards with no purchase limit. Immediately EBT card holders began filling up their carts with as much as they would hold to take advantage of the glitch. This resulted in chaos with police finally called in to restore order. Photos and videos have emerged showing bare shelves and an endless amount of abandoned grocery carts filled with huge quantities of food. One has to question the morality of these people that rushed at the chance to take advantage of the broken system.

It is unbelievable that we saw such widespread civil disturbances with the system only going down for half a day. The amount of rioting and looting we would see if the system were to go down for any extended length of time would be unimaginable.

According to a new report from the Mayor’s Office, there were no murders reported across the five boroughs between last Monday, October 7th, and Sunday, October 13th. That’s right – zero, zip, zilch, nada, no murders! This also marks the lowest number of shootings and the lowest number of murders “at any time since comparable records were kept.” The City has seen a 26.0 percent decrease in murders overall – 256 so far this year, down from 346 last year.

Although over half of all murders this year were committed with firearms (57.8 percent or 148 of those 256 murders), that number is down by 28.8 percent from last year. And we’ve seen a decrease in total number of shootings as well – a whole 23.2 percent fewer than 2012! Way to go, guys. We did it. Put that gun away.

Typhoon Wipha is moving across the Pacific straight towards the capital, Tokyo, and is expected to make landfall during the morning rush hour on Wednesday, bringing hurricane-force winds to the metropolitan area of 30 million people.

The center of the storm was 860 km (535 miles) southwest of Tokyo at 0800 GMT, the Japan Meteorological Agency said on its website. It was moving north-northeast at 35 kph (22 mph). The storm had weakened as it headed north over the sea but was still packing sustained winds of about 140 kph (87 mph) with gusts as high as 194 kph (120 mph), the agency said.

The agency issued warnings for Tokyo of heavy rain, flooding and gales, and advised people to be prepared to leave their homes quickly and to avoid unnecessary travel. A spokesman for the meteorological agency said the storm was a "once in a decade event".

The US Geological Survey said the quake struck below the island of Bohol, known for its sandy beaches, where officials reported most of the casualties. People were also killed as structures collapsed in nearby Cebu province.

The quake struck at 08:12 (00:12 GMT) on a national holiday in the country. Several buildings and historic churches were damaged by the quake. At least 69 of those confirmed dead were from Bohol, reports citing disaster management officials say. Fifteen people were killed in Cebu, considered the Philippines' second major city, and another was reported dead from the neighbouring island of Siquijor.

President Barack Obama and congressional Republican leaders inched toward resolving the standoff on Friday, but struggled to agree on a short-term deal to increase US borrowing authority beyond an October 17 limit and to reopen the government.

"If it really comes to a collapse, no one knows exactly what will happen. One expects that there are chances to postpone the effects but by the end of the year at the latest it will be rather dramatic," Nowotny told Austrian broadcaster ORF in an interview aired on Saturday.

"It is apparent that it is extremely dangerous when the politics of a country whose currency is the world currency - it is still the most important currency - are driven primarily by very narrow domestic considerations," he added. "This discrepancy is very dangerous and in my view will have a negative impact on the long-term role of the dollar."

He urged US policymakers to reach a deal to raise the government's debt ceiling before Thursday's deadline. The US Treasury will start to run short of funds if no agreement is reached for it to borrow on financial markets.

Mr Kim warned this could be a "disastrous event" for the world. "The closer we get to the deadline the greater the impact will be for the developing world. "Inaction could result in interest rates rising, confidence falling and growth slowing," said Mr Kim, speaking at the World Bank's annual meeting in Washington.

"If this comes to pass it could be a disastrous event for the developing world and that will in turn greatly hurt the developed economies as well," he added. If the US does run short of cash, this could cause it to default on its debts, a development which would be likely to have a severe effect on financial markets around the world.

Excerpts from Xinhua – the official Chinese news agency: “...the US government has gone to all lengths to appear before the world as the one that claims the moral high ground, yet covertly doing things that are as audacious as torturing prisoners of war, slaying civilians in drone attacks, and spying on world leaders.”

“Moreover, instead of honoring its duties as a responsible leading power, a self-serving Washington has abused its superpower status and introduced even more chaos into the world by shifting financial risks overseas, instigating regional tensions amid territorial disputes, and fighting unwarranted wars under the cover of outright lies.”

“As a result, the world is still crawling its way out of an economic disaster thanks to the voracious Wall Street elites, while bombings and killings have become virtually daily routines in Iraq years after Washington claimed it has liberated its people from tyrannical rule.”

“Such alarming days when the destinies of others are in the hands of a hypocritical nation have to be terminated, and a new world order should be put in place ...the world's financial system also has to embrace some substantial reforms. The developing and emerging market economies need to have more say in major international financial institutions...”

“What may also be included as a key part of an effective reform is the introduction of a new international reserve currency that is to be created to replace the dominant US dollar, so that the international community could permanently stay away from the spillover of the intensifying domestic political turmoil in the United States.”

The directors of ICANN, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Architecture Board, the World Wide Web Consortium, the Internet Society and all five of the regional Internet address registries have vowed to break their associations with the US government.

In a statement, the group called for "accelerating the globalization of ICANN and IANA functions, towards an environment in which all stakeholders, including all governments, participate on an equal footing". That's a distinct change from the current situation, where the US department of commerce has oversight of ICANN. In another part of the statement, the group "expressed strong concern over the undermining of the trust and confidence of Internet users globally due to recent revelations of pervasive monitoring and surveillance".

Meanwhile, it was announced that the next Internet Governance Summit would be held in Brazil, whose president has been extremely critical of the US over web surveillance. In a statement announcing the location of the summit, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff said: "The United States and its allies must urgently end their spying activities once and for all."

Almost five years to the day since the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, Paul Tucker claimed that America's biggest banks are now in a position to go bust without state intervention. Britain and the rest of Europe are "not far behind" but draft laws still need to be ratified. In future, the cost of a bank bail out will be borne by its investors rather than nurses and teachers, Mr Tucker said.

Five years ago this month, Britain rescued its biggest lenders with a series of cash injections and state guarantees worth a total of more than £1 trillion at the peak of the crisis. Some £65 billion was ploughed directly into Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group to ensure Britain's payment systems stayed open and the country's vital financial infrastructure continued to work.

That welfare state which is providing the daily bread to the nearly 50 million Americans living in poverty and surviving only thanks to the only thing to have exploded to epic record highs under Obama (in addition to the Fed's balance sheet of course): foodstamp usage. However, the true stability of the US may be tested very soon following reports that due to a "possible computer glitch" the Electronic Benefits Transfer System, aka EBT, aka Foodstamps, is offline.

Cue mass panic among the best-weaponized population in the world. Naturally, this latest fiasco involving a country that has grown accustomed to sucking on the government's teat was immediately blamed on a "glitch" - just like everything else that is slowly but surely breaking in the New Normal.

The chaos that followed ultimately required intervention from local police, and left behind numerous carts filled to overflowing, apparently abandoned when the glitch-spurred shopping frenzy ended. Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd confirms they were called in to help the employees at Walmart because there were so many people clearing off the shelves. He says Walmart was so packed, "It was worse than any black Friday" that he's ever seen.

Lynd explained the cards weren't showing limits and they called corporate Walmart, whose spokesman said to let the people use the cards anyway. From 7 to 9 pm, people were loading up their carts, but when the cards began showing limits again around 9, one woman was detained because she rang up a bill of $700.00 and only had .49 on her card. She was held by police until corporate Walmart said they wouldn't press charges if she left the food.

Lynd says at 9 pm, when the cards came back online and it was announced over the loud speaker, people just left their carts full of food in the aisles and left. "Just about everything is gone, I've never seen it in that condition," said Mansfield Walmart customer Anthony Fuller.

In a video released by activists, the leader of the group addresses the rest of those assembled: "We are standing here in the holiest place for the nation of Israel. To our regret, at the holiest place for the nation of Israel - as they said to us at the start - it is forbidden to pray. This is something we cannot agree to." At that point, the group breaks into prayer, with one man producing and waving an Israeli flag.

Last week, Rabbi Yisrael Ariel of the Temple Institute, which educates about the Temple Mount and the Holy Temples, was arrested along with Jewish activist Yehuda Glick, as the two were visiting the site.

An eyewitness told Arutz Sheva that police used excessive violence in detaining the two, dragging them to the ground unnecessarily. But Temple Mount activists remain undeterred, buoyed on by an increasing groundswell of popular support.

Tory MP Philip Hollobone has demanded more be done to stop the persecution of Christians across the Middle East and Africa. Many Coptic Christians have been killed, tortured and raped while churches have been torched, including 100 in Egypt. Last month Taliban suicide bombers killed 85 worshippers at a Christian church in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Mr Hollobone fears Christians in Syria are now under threat of a genocide on the scale of the 1994 Rwandan massacre of 50,000 Tutsis. He said: "If Muslims were treated in this country as Christians are in Egypt and Syria, there would be international outrage."

The authoritative study, obtained by The Sunday Telegraph, shows the number of jobless European migrants coming to Britain has risen dramatically in the past five years, intensifying demands for the Government to renegotiate EU membership.

Opponents of the EU seized on the figures to suggest Britain could not afford to allow European migrants to come here at will while continuing to provide a universal benefits system.

“Twenty-five years ago, on this same day, John Paul II delivered before the European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg an inspirational speech,” Schulz wrote in the editorial. “Today, for the European Parliament, it would be a great honor to hear again the message of the Pope, his words of foresight, solidarity, and hope.”

Father Federico Lombardi, Director of the Holy See Press Office, told journalists today that President Schulz renewed his invitation to the Pope to visit and address the European Parliament. The Pope raised several topics of discussion, Father Lombardi said, including the issues of poverty, immigration, youth unemployment, the “throwaway” culture, and the current economic situation in Europe and the world.

After his audience with the Pope, President Schulz released a statement on his visit, saying that the Pope’s words were both “inspiring and thought provoking.”

“Whether we look at the protection of refugees in the Mediterranean, the fight against poverty and social exclusion or improving the prospects of young people both within and outside the EU, these are subjects on which we share similar views and on which we can join forces,” the President’s statement read.