After a year of traveling, I had planned a last, short trip. I was going to take the train from Montreal to New Orleans. The travels I had been undertaking earlier this year had brought me to places that were meant to form the background of my second novel.

This trip, however, was for my dad. He, a trumpet player, loved New Orleans and had died a year ago. It felt like the first sensible trip I undertook this year. I had been searching for ways to forget about the last hours at his deathbed. He had been ill for 15 years and his body just would not give up. It was a violent sight. I had decided the trip to New Orleans would put an end to those memories.

Usually, I barely plan my trips in advance. But this time I had booked everything: my train tickets, hotels and my flight back to Montreal, from which I would depart back to Amsterdam. In total the trip was supposed to take three weeks. The confirmations and tickets I had printed and tucked away in a brown envelope I had bought especially for the trip. I like things to be neatly arranged. At home, in Amsterdam, my house enjoys a slight version of OCD.

Traces of the deadly radioactive material polonium-210 have been discovered on the belongings of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, findings that "support the possibility" of poisoning, according to new study.

Toxicologists at Switzerland's University of Lausanne found the substance on a toothbrush and in underwear owned by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader, who died in a French hospital in 2004 at the age of 75.

It is the same material connected to the London death of the former Russian spy-turned-Kremlin-critic Alexander Litvinenko two years after Arafat's death.

In an article published Saturday in the medical journal The Lancet, Swiss toxicologists said they examined 38 items of Arafat's clothing, including his hat, toothbrush, hospital gown and underwear, and tested them for polonium.

President Barack Obama has signed legislation passed by Congress Wednesday to temporarily lift the debt ceiling and end the government shutdown after 16 days, averting the threat of default just hours before the October 17 deadline.

The legislation funds the government through January 15 and lifts the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling through February 7.

As promised, Obama signed the legislation shortly after it was passed in the House of Representatives.

As indicated before the US Senate vote, Republican House Speaker John Boehner did not block the fiscal deal from moving on, and it passed by a vote of 285-144 in the lower chamber.

The measure was supported by every Democratic member of the House, but was rejected by a sizeable portion of Boehner's GOP caucus.

Conservative Republicans were nearly unanimous in their opposition to the plan, as the federal health care law - the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare - they so object to will go virtually unscathed after all.

The Senate approved the proposal by a vote of 81-18 on Wednesday evening.

Republicans Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio were among the 18 'nay' votes in the Senate.

Despite the wildly over-hyped partial "shutdown" of the federal government, U.S. taxpayer dollars continue flowing to foreign lands and innumerable other unconstitutional schemes that are arbitrarily deemed "essential." The Obama administration's Department of Agriculture (USDA), however, sent a letter to states apparently ordering them to cut off food stamps for Americans by November 1, pending further notice. A welfare program for women, children, and infants known as WIC is also on the chopping block, and some analysts are forecasting potential disaster.

As part of the effort to extort funds for ObamaCare from the people's representatives in Congress, the administration has already been caught deliberately trying to make the "shutdown" feel as "painful" as possible - closing parks, evicting homeowners, shuttering businesses, harassing veterans, trying to shut down parts of the ocean, and more, often at additional expense to taxpayers. Suddenly cutting off funds to the food stamp "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program" (SNAP) that some 50 million people have come to depend on, though, would take the obscene antics to a new level - especially doing it with no warning.

The US Senate endorsed bipartisan legislation to lift the debt ceiling on Tuesday night, paving the way for legislation that pulls the country from brink of a looming debt default and signals the end of a two-week government shutdown.

The bill, a temporary fix that will last through until the start of 2014, was passed 81-18 with a majority of both Democrats and Republicans in support.

It now passes to the Republican-dominated House of Representatives, for another vote in the next few hours, where it was expected to pass the support of Democrats.

In brief remarks at the White House, shortly before the House was due to vote, president Barack Obama said he hoped the deal would "lift the cloud of uncertainty" that has hung over the country in recent weeks.

She first got into politics in Greece last year - when she bought herself a bullet-proof vest and learned how to beat up immigrants with poles hung with the national flag.

Her training over, she was a full member of Golden Dawn, the far-right party whose rage against foreigners has propelled its stiff-arm saluting leader Nikolaos Mihaloliakos and 17 others into parliament in Athens in the wake of the Greek debt crisis.

A year on and the woman is Witness B, giving evidence used to arrest Mihaloliakos and five fellow Golden Dawn lawmakers. They have been charged with belonging to a criminal organization involved in many offences including the stabbing last month of a left-wing rap artist whose death has infuriated the government.

"Abusing immigrants was fun," Witness B told prosecutors last month of her days riding with a party motorcycle gang, according to a partial transcript of testimony included in prosecutors' indictment submission and seen by Reuters.

Defense lawyers challenge the testimony and the charges.

The party denies wrongdoing. Accusing the government of tactics not seen since the military junta of 40 years ago, it says it is being persecuted for its politics after standing up for ordinary Greeks against a corrupt elite that has bankrupted the nation and flung open its borders to cheap migrant labor.

Statements filed in court by purportedly penitent members of Golden Dawn paint the most detailed picture yet of the inner workings of a group that spent three decades on the far fringes of politics before becoming the fifth biggest party last year.

That picture is one of violence and intimidation not only against migrants, the testimony suggests, but also within the party - against dissenters or some who sought to leave. As such, the witnesses may be key to proving that Golden Dawn is a criminal organization, people familiar with the case said.

No date or venue has been set for a trial of the six lawmakers, three of whom have been released on bail. They face 10 years in jail if convicted of criminal association.

No, Republicans, the Gallup Poll is not a limbo contest.

Republicans seem to be playing "how low can you go." Just 28 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of the GOP, according to the latest monthly Gallup tracking poll. The number " is the lowest favorable rating measured for either party since Gallup began asking this question in 1992," the polling company stated.

The number is 10 points lower than the party scored in the same poll in September.

Democrats, meanwhile, got a favorable rating from only 43 percent of respondents, down four points from last month.

Could the SNAP EBT (Food Stamp) disaster that occurred across 17 states last weekend have been a planned drill rather than system failure? This letter sent out by the USDA makes your brain turn.

A USDA letter has surfaced that has been sent to states across the nation. States are being told to "stop the supplemental nutrition assistance program for the month of November, pending further notice." Which could mean that if Congress doesn't reach a deal to get federal government back up and running somebody at the Whitehouse decided you will not get your benefits. Worse yet, they have not sent anyone a letter letting people across the nation know their benefits are going to be postponed.

Would the government really wait until the very last-minute to make you aware of your loss of benefits?

Lets not forget other sensible cuts that could happen for example programs like the Department of Homeland Security, The NSA, The TSA, fusion centers, unconstitutional spying programs, cameras on the street corners and armored vehicles for our local colleges are not happening. I bet all those bills are still being paid. Why can't we cut there?

The on-going disaster of the Affordable Care Act otherwise known as Obamacare is undoubtedly the most poorly planned implementation of any government program in American history. This law which forces people to buy health insurance or face a fine is one of the dumbest ideas ever conceived but it is the implementation of it that has been even dumber. The implementation has been so horrible that one has to question if this was done intentionally to plunge the entire healthcare system into chaos.

This might sound counterintuitive but it really isn't. The reason for the Obama regime to do something like this is that it would give them the pretext to justify a complete government takeover of America's healthcare system. This would be presented as the false solution to a problem that they created in the first place. If this wasn't part of a broader conspiracy, the only other explanation for the piss poor implementation is that the Obama regime put mentally retarded criminals in charge of its drafting, planning and execution.

There are so many facets to this but the Affordable Care Act should really be called the Unaffordable Care Act because it is actually increasing the cost for existing insurance policies. The amount of regulations, taxes and fees the law requires insurance companies to comply with forces them to pass on additional costs to customers. Both individuals and businesses have been severely impacted by this. Since the law has gone into effect it has caused businesses to hire more part time workers and less full time workers. This is because the law only forces businesses to provide health insurance for full time workers but not part time workers. By mandating that businesses shell out more money to provide health insurance for full time workers it discourages them from bringing on more full time help. Many businesses simply can't afford these additional costs and especially not with Obamacare dramatically increasing the cost of health insurance.

Unlike the real world, where managers and employees are judged on results and held accountable for their performance, in Washington, D.C., loyalty and partisanship almost always come first. Accountability comes later, if it comes at all.

This happens in every administration, and President Obama's is no different, as we've seen with the fatal mistakes made regarding the Fast & Furious gun program and in the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Democrats, claiming to see these as partisan witch hunts designed to hurt the administration politically, circled the wagons. Obama stood loyally by Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton

Loyalty is generally a good thing, in politics, as in life. But Kathleen Sebelius and her agency's rollout of Obamacare is different.

Sebelius' department had 3½ years to prepare to implement the Affordable Care Act. No one ever suggested that commandeering one-sixth of the American economy would be an easy task. (Many Republicans suggested the opposite and were dismissed as killjoys for their efforts.) But after the debacle of the last two weeks, liberals and Democrats - not conservatives or Republicans - should be calling for Sebelius's head.

The administration's handling of the implementation of Obamacare over the past three years has been a slow-moving train wreck: a mixture of embarrassing delays, hard-to-justify waivers, and assorted bad news about the unintended consequences of the law. Some of this was Sebelius's fault, some of it was not.

The crowning blunder came 10 days ago with the rollout of healthcare.gov website, the centerpiece of the administration's effort to sign individuals up for coverage through the government-run health care exchanges that are at the heart of the legislation. To say this was vitally important to the overall success of the law is an understatement. It is the aspect of Obamacare that the president himself has said is utterly essential - and backed up those words by letting the federal government shut down rather that give in to Republican demands to gut it. Nonetheless, its premiere was a giant flop - and Kathleen Sebelius is responsible.