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.

“We want to change the look – that the curia be at the service of the Pope, and also at the service of the local Churches, the universal Church, and the episcopal conferences,” Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Bombay, India told CNA on October 7.

"It wouldn’t be wise, as some suggest, to just kick the debt ceiling can down the road for a couple months, and flirt with a first-ever intentional default right in the middle of the holiday shopping season," Obama said in his address. "Because damage to America’s sterling credit rating wouldn’t just cause global markets to go haywire; it would become more expensive for everyone in America to borrow money," Obama continued. "Students paying for college. Newlyweds buying a home,"

On Friday, Senate Republicans floated the outlines of their own plan to end the standoff. Their proposal would lift the debt ceiling through the end of January and reopen the government for six months. The dueling proposals put Obama in the enviable position of choosing between his opponents. He can reject one proposal and still look Presidential by negotiating on a competing offer. Obama said Friday he would look for the "best deal."

On Saturday, the House Republicans are meeting to finalize the details of the plan they released Friday. Obama's rejection of even the outlines of that plan make the next moves by the House uncertain. The Senate, meanwhile, moves back to center-stage of the debate with a vote Saturday afternoon on a one-year increase in the debt ceiling.

A communiqué issued at the end of a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers said the United States "needs to take urgent action to address short-term fiscal uncertainties." Officials from around the globe have warned that failing to raise the debt cap would wreak havoc on the global economy. Anton Siluanov, finance minister of this year's G20 chair, Russia, said the mention in the group's communiqué amounts to a "general wish for a fast solution."

Republicans presented a plan on Thursday to provide a short-term increase in the US debt limit, spurring hopes a deal could soon be reached. On Friday, the White House and lawmakers were still struggling to work out the details.

"Our American colleagues are doing everything possible in order to find a mutual understanding or agreement with the Congress," Siluanov told reporters. Solving the impasse is crucial for a global economy that the G20, which accounts for 90 percent of world output and two-thirds of its population, said is showing signs of improvement but still facing "downside risks."

Re-Food, the brainchild of Hunter Hadler, supports families overwhelmed by bills and mortgages, collecting unsold food from participating local cafes and restaurants who would otherwise be throwing out perfectly good products at the end of the day. “We have people who suddenly don’t have work and don’t have income – it’s a harder thing for them to take,” Hadler told RT’s Sara Firth.

While unemployment has dropped in the country slightly, having decreased to 16.4 percent in the second quarter of 2013 from 17.7 percent in the first quarter, it still remains horrendously high – above average for even the recession-devastated Eurozone – and people, including those from middle-class backgrounds, who are suddenly pushed out of work, are turning to the charity for help.

The Geneva-based charity is to start gathering and distributing food with the help of fellow charities and a supermarket chain, allocating donations to Britain’s needy. The Red Cross is traditionally recognized for its work in disaster-struck regions rather than in developed countries, and the move appears to be a by-product of “indiscriminate cuts in public health and social welfare,” according to Bekele Geleta, the Secretary General of the International Federation of the Red Cross, who spoke to the UK’s Independent [newspaper].

Surplus perishable food from supermarkets is to be redistributed to charities, lunch clubs for ageing sectors of the population, and food banks. While FareShare, which is participating in the Red Cross scheme, has been undertaking this action since roughly 2004, it has to now cope with increasing demands from food banks.

“Unbelievably, 3 million tonnes of food are wasted in the UK every year while thousands go hungry. We’re delighted to help FareShare give much-needed support to people in crisis,” said Simon Lewis, Red Cross head of emergency planning and response. It “should be a wake-up-call to David Cameron over his failure to tackle the cost of living crisis,” Maria Eagle MP, Labour’s Shadow Environment Secretary told The Independent.

The UK poverty director for Oxfam charity Chris Johnes, said that he was “genuinely shocked” that Britain was struggling to feed the poor and that the Red Cross is stepping in. “They don’t do things for reasons of grandstanding at all,” he told The Independent. “The fact that they are doing this... is a very clear signal how serious things have become.” Trussell Trust charity estimates that around 500,000 people in the UK needed support from food banks last year.

While traveling through George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Matt Miller heard a security announcement repeatedly aired on the airport intercom that left him disturbed. “You are also reminded that any inappropriate remarks or jokes concerning security may result in your arrest,” the loudspeaker message states.

These new loudspeaker warnings remind us that the TSA continues to excel at indoctrinating Americans to be well-behaved prisoners via obedience training – reminding them that they can be disappeared if they dare speak out of turn, even in a humorous way.

This is a totally unlawful and illegitimate violation of the First Amendment and is obviously designed to intimidate travelers and stop them from complaining about aggressive grope downs which in some cases involve TSA workers touching travelers’ genitals.

The island had 256 plague cases and 60 deaths last year, the world's highest recorded number. The number of cases rises each October as hot humid weather attracts fleas, which transmit the disease from rats and other animals to humans.

The final results from the 2011 census from across the UK show that more than a third of the population - around 17.8 million people - now class themselves as single. This means the number of British singletons has increased by a quarter - while the number of divorcees has risen by a fifth to 4.5 million people.

Same-sex civil partnerships, which did not even exist a decade earlier, accounted for around 113,000 people in the 2011 census.