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USA

Satanists plan rally in support of Florida governor

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The Satanic Temple is planning a rally outside of Florida Governor Rick Scott's office to support his bill allowing students to pray at school events.

Senate Bill 98 gives students "sole discretion in determining whether an inspirational message is to be delivered" at a school assembly - including religious prayers. Scott has long advocated for students to be able to pray at school events, but he wasn't expecting Satanists to jump on the opportunity.

To celebrate the governor's signing of the bill, Satanists will rally outside of his office on Jan. 25 to show their support for Scott's decision, as well as to promote their own beliefs.

"You don't build up your membership unless people know about you," Satanic Temple spokesman Lucien Greaves told the Palm Beach Post. "So this allows us to get our message out in public. We're hoping it will reduce the stigmatism."

V

Food prices may be catalyst for 2013 revolutions

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© ReutersFood prices around the world could soar this year if there’s a repeat of 2012’s drought in the American Midwest.
What is the trigger for a revolution? Sometimes it a brutal act of repression. Sometimes it a lost war, or a natural catastrophe, that exposes the failings of a regime.

But more often than not, it is soaring food prices.

The easiest prediction to make for 2013 is that everything we eat will once again rise sharply in price. So where will the revolutions start this year? Keep an eye on Algeria and Greece - and if you want to feel very nervous, Russia and China. And if you are smart, keep your money out of those countries as well.

The link between the cost of feeding your family and political turmoil is too well-established to be ignored. We saw it most recently with the Arab Spring of 2011. The uprisings that deposed the autocracies of the Middle East had their roots in food inflation. Most of the Middle East countries import 50% or more of their food, making them acutely vulnerable to rising commodity prices. In Egypt the food inflation rate hit 19% in early 2011. For President Hosni Mubarak that was game over. The regime was finished.

Attention

Will there be a global food crisis in 2013?

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© Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRINGlobal supplies of staple grains are tight
Drought last year devastated much of the maize crop in the US, the world's biggest maize exporter, driving prices of the staple cereal to record levels.

While food experts did not anticipate the rising prices would trigger the kind of crises seen in 2008 and 2011 - when the world faced structural deficits in the more widely consumed staples wheat and rice - they are concerned about the ability of the world's poorest people to feed themselves.

Cereal prices have declined by a modest 2.4 percent, largely the result of lower demand as economies stagnate, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported last week. But we are already in an era of high prices. The price of wheat was more than 20 percent higher in October 2012 compared to the same period in 2011, according to FAO.

IRIN - with the help of food experts, the most recent reports from FAO and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) - reflects on the global food situation in 2012 and the outlook for 2013.

Dollars

We must focus on the working poor

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In many respects the economy is healing, as both the unemployment rate and hiring statistics slowly improve. But there are growing numbers of Americans being left out.

These are not just the unemployed. Rather they are families that, despite having a working adult in the home, earn less than twice the federal poverty income threshold - a widely recognized measure of family self-sufficiency. They are working, but making too little to build economically secure lives. And their number has grown steadily over the past five years.

They are cashiers and clerks, nursing assistants and lab technicians, truck drivers and waiters. Either they are unable to find good, full-time jobs, or their incomes are inadequate and their prospects for advancement are poor.

New analysis of the most recent U.S. Census American Community Survey by the Working Poor Families Project shows that the number of low-income working families in the United States has increased to 10.4 million in 2011, up from 10.2 million a year earlier. In all, nearly one third of all working families - 32 percent - may not have enough money to meet basic needs.

Bad Guys

Wave of Iraq attacks kills 42

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© AFP PhotoLocal men inspect the site of an explosion in Kirkuk, Iraq, on January 16, 2013.
Attacks in Baghdad and north Iraq killed 42 people on Wednesday as hundreds attended the funeral of a Sunni MP who died in a suicide attack a day earlier, as a political crisis grips the country.

The violence, which struck mostly in disputed territory in the north and which officials also said wounded at least 245 people, was the deadliest this year.

It comes as Iraq grapples with a long-running political dispute, with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki facing several protests in hardening opposition against his rule and calls from many of his erstwhile government partners for his ouster.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Sunni militants often launch waves of violence in a bid to destabilise the government and push Iraq back towards the sectarian violence that blighted it from 2005 to 2008.

Attention

Some 22,000 children considered missing in Turkey

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According to the Turkish statistics data, some 27,000 children were missing in the country from 2008 to 2011, CNN Turk TV channel said today. Some 16,200 of this number are girls.

According to the statistics, only 5700 children were found.

Red Flag

Pregnant? That might get you arrested

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© Matthew Benoit/Shutterstock
Abortion continues to be a hot-button issue in the US, as dozens of states have passed measures to limit women's access to the procedure. But even women who want to be pregnant are not free of legal restraints on their bodies, as a new paper in the Journal of Health, Politics, Policy and Law demonstrates. In many instances, women have been arrested, institutionalized, or subjected to unwanted medical interventions due to their pregnancies.

The paper looks at 413 criminal and civil cases from 1973 to 2005 in which women were subject to legal action related to their unborn children. In all the cases, the women were deprived of their own civil liberties by legal authorities claiming to seek protection of the fetus. Many dealt with charges related to drug or alcohol use during pregnancy, refusing to follow doctor's orders, or for miscarriages that were blamed on their actions (even if there was little to no evidence to prove that those actions led to the miscarriage).

USA

U.S. military suicides outnumbered combat deaths in Afghanistan in 2012

Dead Soldier
© Associated Press
The bigger struggle facing the U.S. military isn't how to "win" in Afghanistan, but how to get the troops home and keep them alive.

Last year, more military personnel committed suicide (349) than the total of soldiers killed in the war (295).

The suicide total was the highest ever recorded since the Department of Defense began keeping track in 2001. The new mark shattered the previous high of 301, set in 2011.

The suicides among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans may be attributed to depression, post-traumatic stress or substance abuse, according to David Rudd, a military suicide researcher and dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Utah. Suicidal military personnel who have not seen battle may face personal problems relating to financial, legal or relationship problems, Rudd told The Associated Press (AP).

People 2

Fracking the Amish

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© OnEarth/Lynn JohnsonActivist Carrie Hahn explains the potential risks of the natural gas drilling technique known as fracking to one of her Amish neighbors.
In a community that shuns technology and conflict, the intrusion of gas wells shatters tranquility and brings unexpected schisms

A bleak December sky hangs low over rural Lawrence County, Pennsylvania. Here, in areas populated by large Amish families, open fields roll toward the horizon uninterrupted by electrical wires and telephone poles. Stepping from a car that seems grossly out of place in this 19th century landscape, Carrie Hahn, a newcomer to the area, takes a deep breath of mud and cow outside an Amish farmhouse. Suddenly, like an apparition, Andy Miller appears on a flagstone path, his face hidden beneath beard and broad-brimmed hat. He quickly ushers us inside a large, unfurnished mudroom to escape the wind.

Miller, who is in his late 40s and has nine children, is a leading member of the Old Order Amish, who eschew all modern conveniences. (Like all the Amish names in this story, Miller's has been changed at his request, to respect Amish traditions and preserve his anonymity.) Standing against a western window, a silhouette of felt hat, bushy sideburns, and stiff cotton work clothes, he explains how he came to be in the uncomfortable position in which he finds himself today: dealing with multibillion-dollar energy companies that use high-tech methods to shatter the earth and release mile-deep pockets of natural gas.

Decades ago, Miller says, oil and gas companies began prowling around western Pennsylvania, locking residents into leases for conventional gas wells, which are relatively shallow and unobtrusive. Many landowners, Miller included, had no idea that once they had assigned their mineral rights, often for a thousand times less than the going rate, the leaseholders could return and burrow deeper into the same piece of property.

Attention

Glenn Beck and 'historian' guest: History proves armed elementary kids prevent school shootings

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Conservative host Glenn Beck and "historian" David Barton on Tuesday debuted a new show called "Foundations of Freedom" and suggested that history proved that school shootings could be prevented if all elementary school children were armed.

After pointing out that some areas of the United States required every household to own a gun in the late 1800s, Beck told Barton that "everybody grew up with a gun" and it was "part of school."

Barton noted that guns were only fired in schools at the time to stop criminal activity.