Poverty in America is only getting worse, with data showing rising income inequality and the startling fact that half of all Americans are now either in poverty or considered low-income. Were it not for the government programs that comprise the social safety net, those numbers would be even worse. More than a quarter would live in poverty without the safety net, according to one study, and Social Security alone kept 14 million out of poverty last year. Despite that, Congress - and particularly Republicans in Congress - have made cuts to various programs meant to aid the poorest Americans.

Congress reached a deal Thursday to avert a shutdown that would have begun at midnight tonight, and in doing so, Republicans found another low-income program to target, cutting funding for subsidies that help the poor stay warm during the winter by nearly 25 percent. At the same time, however, the Pentagon's budget is getting a 1 percent boost, as the Associated Press noted:

Highlights of the $1 trillion-plus 2012 spending legislation in Congress:

- $518 billion for the Pentagon's core budget, a 1 percent boost, excluding military operations overseas. [...]

- $3.5 billion for low-income heating and utility subsidies, a cut of about 25 percent.

Bankers, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds are gambling on hunger by speculating on food supply. Global regulators should step in to stop them.

Last year, the price of global food floated high as ever. That's bad news for most of us, but not for those who trade commodities. In fact, 2011 was a great year for the traders, who thrive on bad news, currency woes, drought, flood, freeze, fire and all other manifestations of imminent apocalypse.

2011 was a wild ride. One spring morning, cocoa futures dropped 12% in less than a minute. Corn ascended to all-time peaks and sugar fluctuated more in one day than it used to in a month. Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, railed against speculators in coffee, while PepsiCo forecast its own medium-term commodity cost increases to exceed $1bn. All of which meant a bumper crop for the world's commodity exchanges - even those that used to be backwaters, like the Kansas City Board of Trade and the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, both of which recorded their highest electronic trading volumes in history.

It would be a miracle for France to retain its triple-A credit rating, threatened by the eurozone debt crisis, the head of its main market regulator said on Tuesday.

"Keeping it would amount to a miracle, but I'd still like to believe it," said Jean-Pierre Jouyet, the outspoken head of the AMF regulation agency.

Ratings agencies have warned that France is exposed to the sovereign debt crisis gripping southern Europe and have threatened to downgrade its hitherto perfect rating.

The government has protested that it has embarked on an austerity programme backed by a pact with fellow eurozone members to guarantee deficit reduction.

"I find it wholly regrettable that we are accepting the loss of our triple-A with a kind of fatalism. This loss is not banal, because it will have an effect on the interest rates the state pays," he said.

As most Polish citizens can hardly fail to notice, Europe is experiencing a time of growing economic turmoil. So much so, that leaders of Euro zone countries are now desperately searching for ways to prop up their tottering national economies as well as to maintain commitments to what is termed 'monetary union' - the euro zone holy grail.

Countries outside the euro zone also find themselves caught up by the effects of the gathering financial storm and are attempting to pitch their camps as appropriately as possible to deal with it.

But one thing that countries both inside and outside the euro zone share is a common problem of 'debt'. Levels of national borrowing (sovereign debt) have, over the past decade, exceeded the ability of many countries to pay back the ensuing interest and capital within permitted time zones, thus catalysing the 'restructuring' of these loans by the lenders and the setting of new terms for repayment. The 'lenders' are thus put in a position of great power: they can pull the strings and set the agenda - so long as the countries which are borrowing wish to maintain their particular monetary policies and ambitions for 'economic growth'.

Poland, however, finds herself in a position of reasonable resilience to the euro zone storm. With a an economy that is largely internally stimulated and not overtly reliant on exports, the Country looks in fair shape to resist at least the worst consequences of the black hole which the euro zone is rapidly turning into.

All the more bizarre then, is the determination of prime minister Tusk to throw his Country right into the centre of the black hole and to thereby surrender Poland's hard won independence to a bunch of unelected technocrats who are the puppet masters of the European Commission and its various agencies.

Donald Tusk is making a name for himself by singing the praises of the European Union at every opportunity. A few months ago he he was quoted as saying that "The European Union is the greatest institution in the World." He has now been joined by the foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who seems particularly keen on supporting German leadership of radical reforms to the euro zone. Tusk and Sikorski are, it seems, absolutely determined to hook Poland into the euro and 'monetary union' within four years - "provided the euro zone undergoes necessary reforms" (Sikorsky).

Since September, at least 60 people have died in 14 reported CIA drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal regions. The Obama administration has named only one of the dead, hailing the elimination of Janbaz Zadran, a top official in the Haqqani insurgent network, as a counterterrorism victory.

The identities of the rest remain classified, as does the existence of the drone program itself. Because the names of the dead and the threat they were believed to pose are secret, it is impossible for anyone without access to U.S. intelligence to assess whether the deaths were justified.

The administration has said that its covert, targeted killings with remote-controlled aircraft in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and potentially beyond are proper under both domestic and international law. It has said that the targets are chosen under strict criteria, with rigorous internal oversight.

It has parried reports of collateral damage and the alleged killing of innocents by saying that drones, with their surveillance capabilities and precision missiles, result in far fewer mistakes than less sophisticated weapons.

Yet in carrying out hundreds of strikes over three years - resulting in an estimated 1,350 to 2,250 deaths in Pakistan - it has provided virtually no details to support those assertions.

In outlining its legal reasoning, the administration has cited broad congressional authorizations and presidential approvals, the international laws of war and the right to self-defense. But it has not offered the American public, uneasy allies or international authorities any specifics that would make it possible to judge how it is applying those laws.

Britain, France, Germany and Portugal say settler violence damaging prospects of renewed peace talks; Russia, Palestinians slam US silence on recently announced West Bank building plans.

Members of the UN Security Council voiced deep concerns on Tuesday about the impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and criticized Israel for pressing ahead with the construction of new settlements.

Council members were reacting to a briefing by UN assistant secretary-general for political affairs, Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, who told them the search for peace "remained elusive in a context of tensions on the ground, deep mistrust between the parties and volatile regional dynamics."

Iran says it has invited the UN nuclear watchdog to visit for talks and would be ready to discuss concerns about its disputed atomic ambitions.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said Iran sent a letter to IAEA chief Yukiya Amano on December 9.

Earlier this year, Amano made clear that any new IAEA visit to Tehran must address its growing concerns about potential military aims of the nuclear program, which Iran says is strictly peaceful.

Soltanieh said that Iran was "going to discuss any questions and to work towards removing the ambiguities and resolving the issue."

He said the UN agency had given a positive response to the invitation.

There was no immediate comment from the IAEA.

When South Korean President Lee Myung-bak left on a state visit for Japan last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had been dead for about four hours, indicating that neither Seoul nor Tokyo -- or Washington -- had any inkling of his death.

North Korean state media announced Kim's death two days later, on Monday, apparently catching governments around the world by surprise and plunging the region into uncertainty over the stability of the unpredictable state that is trying to build a nuclear arsenal.

Lee held talks in Tokyo with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and returned home on Sunday afternoon, apparently still unaware of the cover-up by the North, with which South Korea is still technically at war. If Washington had known, it appears likely it would have tipped off South Korea and Japan, its closest allies in Asia.

"It seems everyone learned about Kim Jong-il's death after (the announcement)," said Kim Jin-pyo, head of the intelligence committee for South Korea's parliament after discussions with officials from the National Intelligence Service.

Condemnation of President Obama is intense, and growing, as a result of his announced intent to sign into law the indefinite detention bill embedded in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). These denunciations come not only from the nation's leading civil liberties and human rights groups, but also from the pro-Obama New York Times Editorial Page, which today has a scathing Editorial describing Obama's stance as "a complete political cave-in, one that reinforces the impression of a fumbling presidency" and lamenting that "the bill has so many other objectionable aspects that we can't go into them all," as well as from vocal Obama supporters such as Andrew Sullivan, who wrote yesterday that this episode is "another sign that his campaign pledge to be vigilant about civil liberties in the war on terror was a lie." In damage control mode, White-House-allied groups are now trying to ride to the rescue with attacks on the ACLU and dismissive belittling of the bill's dangers.

For that reason, it is very worthwhile to briefly examine - and debunk - the three principal myths being spread by supporters of this bill, and to do so very simply: by citing the relevant provisions of the bill, as well as the relevant passages of the original 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), so that everyone can judge for themselves what this bill actually includes (this is all above and beyond the evidence I assembled in writing about this bill yesterday):

It was an eventful day at the fourth hearing of alleged WikiLeaker PFC Bradley Manning in Ft. Meade, Maryland Monday. Military prosecutors are attempting to court martial the former military analyst on 22 charges of violating military law in relation to his alleged disclosure of hundreds of thousands of secret government documents.

Manning's defense caught a potential break during the cross-examination of a Special Agent David Shaver, a forensic investigator with the Computer Crimes Investigations Unit. On Sunday, Shaver testified that he found 10,000 U.S. cables on Manning's computer. But in today's cross-examination Shaver said none of those cables matched the cables that WikiLeaks published. "If the cables found on Manning's computer don't match the ones WikiLeaks has, the defense can argue that Julian Assange's outfit may have had a different source for the documents," observes The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal, saying it could become a "lynchpin of the defense's case."