Vote breaks deadlock over programme, which government hopes will fight hunger and malnutrition, and boost the economy

The lower house of the Indian national assembly, the Lok Sabha, has approved a controversial £13bn plan to provide cheap grain to the poor - a key part of the ruling Congress party's strategy to win re-election next spring.

Under the plan, the government will sell subsidised wheat and rice to more than two-thirds of its 1.2 billion population.

India is home to a quarter of the world's hungry, according to United Nations data, despite being one of the biggest food producers and experiencing years of rapid economic growth.

The vote broke a long stalemate in parliament, potentially clearing the way for several reforms aimed at spurring the flagging economy, which the government hopes to pass in an extended session that ends in two weeks. The upper house - the Rajya Sabha - must approve the decree before it becomes law.

India's main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata party, has criticised the welfare scheme, which expands an existing cheap food programme covering more than 200 million people, as still too narrow to tackle widespread malnutrition among India's poor. The country's central bank has warned that increased spending could deepen the government deficit and boost inflation.

However, the party voted for the bill, which was passed on Monday evening after nearly nine hours of debate and the inclusion of amendments that government sources say could lead to an additional requirement of about 3m tonnes of grain.

A group that for years has handed out food to the homeless in Raleigh every weekend was threatened with arrest if they continued their charity work.

This past Saturday, Rev. Hugh Hollowell and other members of Love Wins Ministries (LWM), a Christian organization based in Raleigh, shuttled over hot coffee and 100 breakfast sandwiches to feed the needy downtown. Though a Raleigh city ordinance prevents anyone from distributing food in a park without a permit, LWM had a "good working relationship with the Raleigh Police Department" and had disbursed food from the sidewalk for the past six years, according to the group's website.

However, this weekend was different, for reasons that are not yet clear. As LWM was setting up, they were approached by Raleigh police officers who informed them that if they tried to hand out their breakfast sandwiches, they would be arrested. As 70 needy people watched and waited for breakfast, LWM was forced to pack up the sandwiches and leave without distributing any food. They were told that a permit would cost $1,600 every weekend for use of the park, but the officer allegedly told them it was unlikely their application would be approved regardless.

When the Ben Swann team has conference calls we certainly do not discuss pop culture. However, after watching the Miley Cyrus video pop up in my Facebook news-feed multiple times I said to myself, "What the hell, watch it." After regaining composure from the visceral reaction- I thought, "What is wrong with this country?" This video has popped up at least 50 times in my feed, but hardly anyone is talking about Syria.

So, I ran some analytics on Google just to see how the two compared. The results were shocking. On August 25th after Miley's VMA performance her Google peak rating went from 67 to 100 in less than 24 hours. Meanwhile, during the same period of time the US military moved cruise missiles into position to strike Syria. The reason for doing so is because the Obama administration claims that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the Syrian people. However, this is extremely debatable and has not been proven. In fact, multiple sources claim that the Syrian rebels are actually the ones who used the chemical weapons- not the Assad regime. Other sources claim the opposite. Should it not be necessary to at least first verify where the chemical weapons came from? Should Congress not be yelling at the top of their lungs for the unconstitutional move by President Obama? Ben has been reporting on this developing situation for days.

The world is now positioning itself for what could possibly be the beginning of the next world war. France, Great Britain and the USA are now aligning against China, Syria, Russia and Iran. With such massive military force beginning to mobilize dependent upon the supposed use of chemical weapons one would assume that the peak search value for chemical attacks in Syria would skyrocket. On August 25th the peak search value for chemical attacks in Syria actually fell to a value of 3, which is down from a value of 4 only 24 hours earlier. The term "Syria" is valued at 56- averaging flat over the past few days.

Oklahoma City - Owners of Paseo Grill say a giant concrete monument mysteriously showed up on the front lawn of their restaurant. It weighs hundreds of pounds, and nobody knows where it came from or why it is there.

The Paseo District is home to many unique forms of art, but this new addition has not exactly had a warm welcome.

"Well, it's not straight," one Paseo District visitor said. "It's not supposed to be there."

The concrete pillar is rough in texture and appears to have been ripped from its foundation and somehow ended up in the front lawn.

The London-Beijing flight with 270 passengers and 16 crew landed in Irkutsk, Eastern Siberia, at 10.41 local time on Wednesday.

Passengers were told there was a malfunction of the flight software on board flight BA 039. The plane landed 40 minutes after the initial request from the pilot to bring the plane down in Irkutsk.

The passengers are being put up in city hotels while the airline arranges their onward travel.

'The plane made an emergency landing in Irkutsk because of the failure of navigation equipment', said Yelena Stavitskaya, the Siberian airport's spokeswoman.

'Its passengers will be accommodated in hotels Angara and Irkutsk.'

BA technical experts are expected to fly to Irkutsk to assess the damage to the jumbo aircraft. It is expected many passengers will be offered onward travel by S7 - a Siberian airline that is also part of the OneWorld alliance.

The BA website indicated that an onward flight would be available at 21.00 (9pm) local time.

A United Airlines 737 flying from Seattle to Houston made an emergency landing in Idaho after one of its two engines apparently shut down.

Police say the airplane landed safely at the Pocatello Regional Airport just after 2:50 a.m. Tuesday.

The airline said the plane's 116 passengers were waiting at the terminal for a replacement airplane to arrive, which was expected to happen Tuesday morning. The plane also had six crew members.

Pocatello airport manager David Allen tells KPVI-TV that an engine on the airplane shut down and Pocatello was the closest suitable airport to make an emergency landing.

United Airlines spokeswoman Jennifer Dohm sent an email to The Associated Press saying the plane was diverted to Pocatello due to "an issue with an engine" that maintenance workers were reviewing.

Source: Associated Press

Vadodara: At least seven persons were killed and 40 feared to be trapped under the debris as two multi-storey buildings collapsed in Madhavnagar locality here in the early hours on Wednesday.

The twin multi-storey buildings collapsed behind Atladara area around 4:30am, catching the sleeping occupants unaware, H J Tapariya, chief fire brigade officer of the Vadodara Municipal Corporation said.

According to Tapariya, about 13 to 14 families were staying in the building constructed by the Vadodara Urban Development Authority (VUDA)

A 6-year-old boy's eyes were removed in Shanxi province, and local police have offered a reward of 100,000 yuan ($16,340) for information in the case.

The incident happened in Fenxi county on Saturday evening. Guo Bin, whose parents are farmers, was discovered missing at 6 pm, when he usually returns from playing outside to eat dinner.

Five hours later, a man who had returned from catching scorpions in the local mountains said he had seen what was possibly a boy twitching in the valley.

Guo's parents then found their son lying in the place, the man described.

Approximately 614,000 Facebook users whose personal details appeared in ads on the site without their permission will each receive a $15 (£9.65) payout.

The names and pictures of an estimated 150 million Facebook members were used in Sponsored Stories, but only those who responded to an email from the site earlier this year will be compensated.

Privacy organisations will also receive some of the $20m (£12.9m) settlement.

Facebook said it was "pleased" the settlement had been approved.

The payout was approved by a US court on Monday following a class action filed against Facebook in 2011 by five of its users.

The group said their details had been used to promote products and services through the site's Sponsored Stories programme, without paying them or giving them the choice to opt-out.

A Sponsored Story is a tailored advertisement that appears on members' Facebook pages, highlighting products a user's friends have endorsed or "liked" on the site.

Because he was acquitted, state law allows him to recoup thousands

George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who killed Trayvon Martin, plans to ask the state of Florida to cover $200,000 to $300,000 of his legal expenses, his attorney told the Orlando Sentinel Monday evening.

Because Zimmerman was acquitted, state law requires Florida to pay all his legal costs, minus the biggest one: the fee that goes to his lawyers.

That includes the cost of expert witnesses, travel, depositions, photocopies, even that animated 3-D video that defense attorneys showed jurors during closing argument that depicts Trayvon punching Zimmerman.

Defense attorney Mark O'Mara said Monday that he would soon prepare a motion, asking Circuit Judge Debra S. Nelson to authorize the payments.

That motion, he said, "is in the works."