It’s the food banks that are popping up all over the place, even in affluent areas amongst the tree-lined squares where the posh au-pairs languish over frothy lattes and even the hired help do their groceries at the local delicatessen tucked away in some secluded cul-de-sac.

The UK has a problem. No, correction the UK has many problems at the present time economically and socially-speaking, but one of the major problems is the complete failure of the social safety net of the inventors of the welfare state and the national health system that inspired hundreds of countries around the world. There is little else that is growing in the UK at the moment, but one thing growing beyond all expectations is: food aid.

Research carried out by the British charity, the Trussell Trust in conjunction with the Citizens’ Advice Bureau points to the fact that 50% of those that are today using food banks are having to do so because benefit payments and financial aid that is provided by the government has either been withdrawn or is being substantially delayed.

It’s not just the delay in benefit payments and withdrawals that are causing problems but also the fact that there are rising numbers of people who are unemployed and also underemployed in the UK. That means that incomes are falling and the food prices are also increasing at the same time.

There are understood to be some official German concerns that the way Britain marks the centenary could cool relations between the two countries, against a backdrop of possible negotiations over the future of the EU and the UK’s membership of it.

Norman Walter, from the country’s London embassy, said that a “less declamatory tone”, which did not dwell on issues such as who was responsible for the conflict, “would be easier”. He also suggested that commemorations should include a focus on the achievements of the European Union in helping to bring peace to the continent.

The tone of Britain’s commemorations has been the subject of debate, with historians accusing the Government of concentrating too much on the carnage of the conflict and depicting it as accidental and futile out of a desire to avoid upsetting the Germans by appearing triumphalist.

The critics argue that the war was a just, necessary fight for survival against a Germany bent on European domination and, as such, its centenary should see greater attention paid to Britain’s achievements.

Abby Wetherell, who apparently saved her life by playing dead, is among at least seven people injured in five states over just four days when hunters, nature-lovers and runners were attacked by bears. The surge in bear attacks this summer has raised concerns about the dangers of increasing encounters with wild animals, as humans move into bears’ natural habitats to live and vacation.

Abby suffered deep puncture wounds, gashes and bruises when a black bear chased her down as she was running along a dirt track in woods near her grandfather’s cabin. Playing dead is in fact not the usual tactic recommended by experts to escape a black bear, but it seems to have worked for Abby. Black bear attacks on humans are extremely rare and there were not believed to be cubs in the area.

Late summer is the time when bears start to forage and devour large quantities of food to bulk up before the hibernation season so there are usually more attacks as autumn approaches and the animals are at their hungriest. Mother bears are of course also fiercely protective of their young.

However, wildlife experts say that the annual preparations for hibernation and the defence instinct of sows do not account alone for this year’s surge in attacks. Officials at Yosemite national park have noted a 64 per cent increase in encounters between bears and humans over the same time period last year.

His campaign promises were so much better sounding than anyone else’s – no lobbyists in his administration, waiting five days before signing all non-emergency bills so people would have time to read them, putting health care negotiations on C-SPAN, reading every bill line by line to make sure money isn’t being wasted, prosecution of Wall Street criminals, ending raids against medical marijuana in states where it’s legal, high levels of transparency.

Obama’s promises of these wonderful things sounded inspiring and sincere. They sounded so much better than the promises of any other President. So when Obama broke these promises, it felt so much worse than when other Presidents broke their promises.

1) Carried out military interventionism in Libya without Congressional approval

2) Gave a no-bid contract to Halliburton – just like Bush did

3) Has an administration full of lobbyists, after promising he wouldn’t have any

4) Has close ties to Wall Street, but pretends to support Occupy Wall Street

5) Broke his promise to close Guantanamo Bay

6) Supported the $700 billion TARP corporate-welfare bailout just like Bush

7) Waged the biggest war against medical marijuana of any president, which was the opposite of what he had promised

8) Nominated a six-time tax cheater to head the government agency that enforces the tax laws

9) Gave tax dollars to AIG executives, then pretended to be outraged about it

10) Expanded Bush’s unconstitutional government faith based programs

Speaking at Westmead Hospital in Sydney on Sunday, Mr Rudd said those who do not vaccinate their children will not get the Family Tax Benefit A end-of-year supplement. The payment is worth $726 per child, per year and is paid when children are vaccinated at one, two and five years of age.

Since last year, parents who have not immunised their children have not received the benefit; however, those registering as so-called conscientious objectors have. Under Labor's policy, exemptions would only be made on religious or medical grounds.

Labor says it wants to boost immunisation rates and prevent children who are not vaccinated from getting diseases like whooping cough and measles, and putting others at risk. The Government says the science of immunisation "cannot be disputed".

The meeting between Tzipi Livni and Saeb Erekat, chief negotiators for Israel and the Palestinians respectively, was the first act of a new American-brokered negotiating process aimed at ending the Middle East’s most enduring conflicts. The session began hours after Israel released the first 26 of 104 Palestinian long-term prisoners it has agreed to free in the coming months as the price of re-starting the long-stalled talks.

That aim has become progressively more difficult as Israel continues to build and expand settlements, with the result that at least half-a-million Israelis now live on land where the Palestinians want to build a future state.

The issue threatened to de-rail last week’s talks before they even started, when Israel approved plans for 2,200 new homes in seven settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, enraging the Palestinians who briefly threatened to withdraw.

Sources close to Mr Netanyahu linked the new homes to the prisoner releases, saying it had been agreed that Israel would be allowed to continue “limited” settlement building as the price of meeting Mr Abbas’s demand to free inmates with “blood on their hands”. The prisoners’ release was only confirmed after Israel’s supreme court rejected a last minute appeal by the victims’ families to block it.

Amid a general clamour against freeing “terrorists”, some commentators suggested that the prime minister had timed the settlements announcement to appease Right-wingers in his coalition, which includes hard-line settlers who oppose a Palestinian state or even peace negotiations at all.

But Mr Netanyahu also sees settlement expansion as necessary to ensure a permanent Israeli presence in the West Bank, regarded as essential for Israel’s security interests. While the Palestinians have insisted that their future state be based on pre-1967 borders, the Israeli leader regards those frontiers as militarily indefensible. He has said repeatedly that large settlement blocs in the West Bank and East Jerusalem will remain part of Israel under any future deal.

Unrest has reawakened in Egypt after a brief period of stabilization, and with protesters taking to the streets and the death toll mounting, oil prices are soaring over fears of instability. Egypt declared a month-long national state of emergency on Wednesday, following deadly clashes between police and supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi. Local news reported Morsi would be held in detention for another 30 days, which could further fan protest movements.

“Investors can’t ignore such a situation, as in the race for power the Suez Canal will be a weighty asset, the ownership of which will give a chance to one of the parties to come to terms with the outside. This is exactly the background against which oil prices are growing,” Aleksey Pukhaev, of Investcafe, wrote in an e-mail.

Traders are most concerned turmoil in Egypt could escalate to a level where protesters could feasibly disrupt oil and commodity shipping through the Suez Canal, situated about 125 kilometers east of Cairo. “Disruptions at the Suez Canal are unlikely, but markets never move on what’s likely. They move on fear. If people are fearful about supply, they buy even if the market is fundamentally well supplied,” said Michael Hewson, an analyst at CMC Markets.

A crucial trade route, the canal handles 800,000 barrels of crude a day. “If there is any disruption or if the violence results in the shutting down of the canal, the impact will be quite severe," said Carl Larry, president of Houston-based consultancy Oil Outlook and Opinions. Egypt’s military has made safeguarding the Suez Canal and the Suez-Mediterranean Pipeline from protesters a priority.

But his ideas seemed to run counter to a suggestion by the prime minister to dissolve the Islamist organization, the target of a crackdown by the army-backed government last week. The authorities declared a state of emergency and killed hundreds of people in raids on Wednesday on two protest camps set up in Cairo to demand Mursi's reinstatement.

The capital's frenetic streets, unusually empty in the past few days, were returning to normal on Sunday, although the army kept several big squares closed and enforced a curfew overnight. At night, soldiers standing by armored personnel carriers man checkpoints and vigilantes inspect cars for weapons.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso urged all sides to show restraint and prevent further violence, saying the EU would urgently review its relations with Egypt and act accordingly. The crackdown has, however, drawn messages of support from wealthy Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia, which have long feared the spread of Brotherhood ideology to the Gulf monarchies.

The UN says the reasons are not fully clear. The UN agencies, the Kurdish regional government and NGOs are struggling to cope, correspondents say. It comes as UN chemical weapons inspectors arrived in Damascus on Sunday on a much-delayed mission. The team will visit three sites over two weeks, including the northern town of Khan al-Assal which is at the centre of allegations of chemical weapons use.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says this is one of the biggest single waves of refugees it has had to deal with since the uprising against the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011.

One question is, why this sudden rush for the Iraqi border in this remote corner of Syria? In many areas, the Turkish border is much closer, but the Turkish authorities seem to be much less receptive to new arrivals than they were in the past. Conversely, the leadership in Iraqi Kurdistan seems to have decided to play a more prominent role in dealing with the fallout from the Syrian crisis.

He also compared ‘emergency powers’ adopted by EU leaders during the euro crisis to Adolf Hitler’s suspension of democracy in 1930s Germany. His remarks came in interviews with controversial US Right-wing radio host Alex Jones.

They were broadcast last year and little-noticed at the time but are still available online. Speaking against the backdrop of massive public protests in Greece over being forced by Brussels to implement huge spending cuts, Mr Farage said the way southern European nations were ordered around was ‘a recipe for revolution’. He added: ‘I see the suffering of people in the Mediterranean reaching a real crisis point and I think the danger that Southern Europe faces is there could be a spark and that spark could lead to something akin to violent revolution.’

'The whip hand is now so firmly with the bureaucrats – they hold all the cards – that possibly violence is the only way out of this.’ Last night, Mr Farage stood by his remarks and denied they were inflammatory. He said the ‘last thing’ he wanted was people resorting to violence but insisted: ‘As far as the Mediterranean is concerned, I think it will be a violent end.’

That's almost three times greater than previous estimates. Obesity - particularly preventing it in children - has been a priority for First Lady Michelle Obama, whose "Let's Move" program focuses on teaching kids about the importance of staying active and eating healthy, non-processed food.

At least five percent of children and teenagers in the US are considered seriously obese, according to the latest report from the Robert Wood Foundation. Extreme obesity - which is defined as being more than 100 pounds overweight - is on the rise in the US.

It’s easy to forget that just a couple of miles down the road is the heavily fortified frontier that cuts this contented little peninsular off from the rest of the continent. But as far as the locals are concerned, this is their patch of soil. They say they will never be forced to hand it over to the vast, brooding nation to which they are attached by a narrow bit of land. That would be, well, completely undemocratic.

‘We are Spanish to the death!’ says retired fisherman Andre Leon, 77, sitting beneath a tree in the centre of Ceuta, the resolutely Spanish territory on the northern tip of Morocco, where he was born and bred. It’s a nice enough spot, with ancient monuments and air-conditioned shopping plazas. And it neatly illustrates the ocean-going Spanish hypocrisy to be found on either side of the 18-mile stretch of water separating Europe and Africa.

For, just across one of the world’s busiest seaways, we find the 30,000 British citizens of Gibraltar enduring threats, siege conditions and even physical abuse from a clapped-out Spanish regime mired in a slush-fund corruption scandal. The centre-Right People’s Party hopes to divert the attentions of a disgusted Spanish electorate by shouting the oldest war cry in the book: ‘Give us back Gibraltar!’

Yet try to point out Spain’s own string of post-colonial possessions on the African coast, such as Ceuta — clearly visible on Gibraltar’s horizon — and the response is a furious outburst of sanctimonious shrieking, table-thumping and general spilling of Rioja. ‘That is completely different,’ declares Spanish officialdom, citing a 15th-century legal technicality.

Fukushima operator TEPCO wants to extract 400 tons worth of spent fuel rods stored in a pool at the plant’s damaged Reactor Number 4. The removal would have to be done manually from the top storey of the damaged building in the radiation-contaminated environment.

In the worst-case scenario, a mishandled rod may go critical, resulting in an above-ground meltdown releasing radioactive fallout with no way to stop it, said Consolo, who is the founder and host of Nuked Radio. But leaving the things as they are is not an option, because statistical risk of a similarly bad outcome increases every day, she said.

Right now, the Beaver Creek Fire has burned 145 square miles, and has forced 2,250 homes into a mandatory evacuation order. Another 7,700 homes are under what is known as pre-evacuation, giving them time to pack up essential belongings and get ready to go at a moment's notice if the fire grows closer. A total of nearly 10,000 homes are impacted by the massive fire that a public information officer termed "a beast."

The large, unpredictable fire is burning through both sage and pine trees toward the resort areas of Hailey, Ketchum. The area, known around the world as Sun Valley is anything but sunny - socked in by a thick layer of soot and ash. More than 800 state and federal firefighters were dispatched to the blaze in the affluent resort region. Crews from around the state and across the nation are working together to battle the nation's number one fire priority.