The leading expert on food at the United Nations says sharp price fluctuations in the price of food has little to do with actual supply. Nowadays, rapacious out-of-control investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Barclays Capital now dominate food speculation through the commodities markets. They dwarf the amount traded by actual food producers and buyers needlessly tipping millions into hunger and poverty.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation currently estimates that about 795 million people of the 7.3 billion people in the world, or one in nine, are suffering from chronic undernourishment in the period 2014-2016. We are not talking of poverty here but life threatening food shortages driven by the pursuers of profit.

About one in eight people, or 13.5 percent of the overall population, remain chronically undernourished in developing regions. As the most populous region in the world, Asia is now home to two out of three of the world's undernourished people.

By 2014, food speculation by banks and hedge funds had risen to $126bn, a figure that has doubled from 2008. From 2000 to 2015 global food prices rose a staggering 94 percent and although they have been falling consistently over the last year, prices are still only 14 percent lower than all-time highs.

To give some perspective, speculative investment in agricultural commodities five years ago was 20 times the amount spent by all countries on agricultural aid and Goldman Sachs, for instance, earned $600 million from it. It was George Bush who deregulated this market with the Commodities Futures Modernization Act in 2000. Hence the astronomic price rises that followed and it is now estimated that 115 million people has suffered as a direct result.

Various attempts have been made to curb speculation of food prices but most countries have done nothing significant.

Series of Terror Attacks Hits Brussels

The twin blasts that rocked Brussels Airport and further explosions on the city's Metro have come just four days after Salah Abdeslam, who was wanted in connection with the November 13 Paris terror attacks, was captured by Belgian police.

While Belgium's migration minister, Theo Francken, claimed "We got him," Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said at a German Marshall Fund forum that Abdeslam was "ready to start something from Brussels." Police found a number of heavy weapons, and they also believed that a new network of terrorists was developing around him.

The man who played a key role in organizing the Paris November 13 attacks and was finally arrested in a police raid last week, was busy setting up a terror network and preparing for more attacks, on Belgian soil in particular, the country's foreign minister revealed.

Salah Abdeslam was "ready to start something from Brussels," Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said at the German Marshall Fund's forum.

"We found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons in the first investigations, and we have seen a new network of people around him in Brussels," the minister revealed.

Reynders added that while searching for 10 possible accomplices in the Paris attacks, Belgian authorities discovered more than 30 people of interest to the investigation. The PM said that EU-wide intelligence sharing helped track Abdeslam, as well as information from Turkey in particular.

"We are sure that for the moment we have found more than 30 people involved in the terrorist attacks in Paris, but we are sure there are others," Reynders said.

France seeks the extradition of the Algerian-Belgian national who was captured in a raid, along with three other people, in Molenbeek on Friday. During the raid Belgian police shot and killed an Algerian man, Samir Bouzid, was also wanted in connection with the Paris attacks.

Reynders promised to deliver Abdeslam, who has been charged with "terrorist murder" to France within three months.

A federal judge ruled on Monday that Florida's practice of using prison populations to manipulate voting districts is unconstitutional, perhaps foreshadowing Virginia's Supreme Court case questioning the constitutionality of its congressional districts.

The Third District of Florida's Jefferson County has an interesting population. Out of the entire voting age population, 43.2 percent cannot legally vote in County Commission and School Board elections, according to The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The district map for Jefferson County's Third District was drawn to include the Jefferson Correctional Institute with its 1,157 inmates, who make up more than a third of the district's population, the Palm Beach Post reports.

Gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing legislative district lines to gain political advantages, has become an issue of contention in both Florida and Virginia. For Florida's Jefferson County, including the inmate population in the Third District resulted in giving eligible voters almost twice the voting power.

Because of the additional 1,157 non-voting inmates included in the Third District's population, the amount of power that other districts - and local populations - have in local politics is diluted. The ACLU's attorney, Nancy Abudu, told ThinkProgress, "It's about access and the ability to influence, and making sure officials are responsive to their electorate."

However, a federal judge in Florida's Northern District has ruled that prison-based gerrymandering is a violation of the "one person, one vote" principle under the Equal Protection Clause of Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution. The County has until April 4 to redraw congressional district lines before the June qualifying election for commissioners and school board members. If it fails to do so, the court will impose its own interim plan.

US President Barrack Obama paid what the Western media hailed as a "historic" visit to Cuba, after decades of isolation imposed upon the island nation by the US and its Western allies.

While many claimed it was a sign of hope for US-Cuban relations, it could equally be equated with similar feigned rapprochements with nations like Syria and Libya, both of which were first offered false peace deals before betrayal and both of which have now been destroyed by years of US-backed proxy war, with Libya's government being overthrown and its leader along with three generations of his family virtually exterminated by US-NATO military operations.

And as if to prove President Obama's advocates wrong, the US president used this "historic" visit to publicly humiliate Cuban President Raul Castro regarding alleged human rights abuses the US claims are regularly carried out against "political prisoners."

Turkey's crackdown on the Kurdish population has taken a turn for the worse, with growing civilian deaths at the hands of the Turkish military amid a full-scale military operation in the southeast of the country, a French Left Front MEP told RT. Marie-Christine Vergiat, a French lawmaker from the European United Left-Nordic Green Left, was one of the 18 MEPs to have sent a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, calling for an end to a crackdown in Diyarbakir's Sur district.

Vergiat said that so far the European Parliament had not received a response, adding that the EU is looking for something more than Turkey's promises to scale back and to use "appropriate force." Left-wing MEPs are demanding more information about what is happening in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated regions.

"The situation has been worsening since July, with over 20 cities put under curfew," Vergiat said. "The European Parliament is scheduled to send a delegation to Turkey and I hope more evidence is gathered on this issue."

The harrowing example of a populated area turned into a warzone is the southeastern town of Cizre, where Ankara carried out its military operation against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels back in February. At the time, Turkish state television announced that 60 "terrorists" were killed in a building basement.

Modern state-corporate capitalism is stripping the environment bare through unsustainable levels of consumption. It is legitimized by a deceitful ideology that attempts to justify and sell a system which by its very nature is designed to benefit a minority at the expense of the majority.

This model thrives on the exploitation of peoples and the environment by powerful transnational corporations. Look no further to see how intellectual property rights and agricultural subsidies and the WTO serves the interests of these corporations, for instance, or the roles that 'free trade' agreements, 'structural adjustment' and the undermining of non-compliant governments play. Moreover, economic neoliberalism strides the world hand in glove with militarism. The outcome is a program of endless destabilizations, conflicts and wars over finite resources to enrich elite interests.

Just days after arresting French-born Belgium national and terror suspect Salah Abdeslam in Brussels, a coordinated terror attack unfolded in the very same city, killing at least 28, and injuring many more.

NBC News has already announced that European officials are linking the attack to ISIS, though it is unclear whether or not Abdeslam's network - which carried out the November 2015 Paris terror attacks - was directly involved.

Abdeslam's "Terror Ring"

Police in Brussels were still hunting for several other alleged accomplices of Abdeslam, including Najim Laachraoui and Mohamed Abrini.

Laachraoui and Abrini, like virtually every other suspect involved in a string of terrorist attacks across North America, Europe, and Australia, were well known to Western security agencies, having both been documented as having traveled to Syria to fight against Damascus under ISIS, with Abrini having been arrested and jailed several times in the past, and Laachraoui already having a 2014 international arrest warrant issued for him in connection to a trial involving recruiting Europeans to fight for ISIS.

Hillary Clinton has been deemed a sure bet for the White House, as it's widely speculated the inflammatory Donald Trump and socialist-leaning Bernie Sanders stray too far from establishment politics to be truly electable. But it wasn't until an examination using Wikileaks searchable archive of Clinton's emails that the establishment's love of the Democratic warhawk became truly apparent.

Buried in thousands of the former Secretary of State's emails sent via her personal server, are intimations of her close relationship with the infamous Rothschild banking family and hints for a potential Rockefeller-State partnership.

Lynn Forester de Rothschild wrote an email on April 18, 2010, in which she tells Hillary she would "love to catch up" — and "I remain your loyal adoring pal." Clinton responds "let's make that happen," and signs her response, "Much love, H."