The number of individuals receiving benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, otherwise known as food stamps, has exceeded 45 million for 53 straight months, according to data released by the Department of Agriculture.

There were 45,415,445 beneficiaries of the food stamp program in September 2015, the latest month for which data is available. The number declined by 48,988 from August to September.

The USDA has been tracking data on participation in the program since fiscal year 1969, at which time average participation stood at about 2,800,000. This means that since then, participation in the program has increased by roughly 16-fold.

A cafeteria worker at an Idaho middle school was fired for giving lunch to a 12-year-old student who said she was hungry and had no money for food. The worker said she tried to pay for the lunch, but the school rejected her attempt.

Dalene Bowden, a former employee of Irving Middle School in Pocatello, Idaho, said she was first placed on leave last week, then summarily fired, by the Pocatello/Chubbuck School District for the theft of school district property and inaccurate transactions in her duties as a food service worker, according to the Idaho State Journal.

Bowden, a three year worker with the school district, said that the student had told her she had no money for the $1.70 lunch. Bowden then asked her supervisor if she could purchase the meal for the girl. When the offer was denied, Bowden gave out the lunch for free. After being placed on termination leave on December 15, Bowden received a brief letter, signed by District 25 Director of Human Resources Susan Petit, informing her of her firing.

The eleven-year-old girl shrieked in horror as the shower curtain was ripped away, leaving her exposed to the view of a large male stranger. Her sense of violation was compounded by the threat of immediate, violent death: The marauder was wearing body armor and aiming an assault rifle at the naked, terrified child. Downstairs, the offender's comrades were ransacking the house and barking profane orders at the traumatized child's family. Sterling Harrison, her 19-year-old brother, was sitting in front of a game console when three of the invaders burst into his upstairs room, bound him, and shoved him down the stairway. Her terrified siblings - one thirteen years of age, the other seven - were corralled and imprisoned at gunpoint in the living room along with the rest of the family.

The invaders were police, of course. Nobody in the home was suspected of committing a criminal offense. No evidence of criminal misconduct was found. The SWAT raid was carried out after 10:00 PM, in violation of municipal ordinances. The rationale for this act of state terrorism was the drug-related arrest, nearly two weeks earlier, of Mordsen Box, the 11-year-old girl's estranged father, who hadn't resided at the address for several months.

This after-dark military raid took place at a residence located less than three miles from the White House. Thirteen days before the raid, Mr. Box was arrested by Metro D.C. Police after five ounces of marijuana were found following a pretext traffic stop. Officer Taylor Volpe, who conducted the stop, claimed - falsely, according to the family's lawsuit against the MPD - that the rear license plate of Box's car was partially obstructed by a plastic cover. Once the stop was underway, Volpe - in keeping with his indoctrination as an opportunistic road pirate - asked if there was "anything illegal" in the vehicle. Like countless others in similar situations, Box made the tragic mistake of answering a question the officer had no right to ask.

He stated that he wasn't "aware" of anything illegal in his car, and that Volpe could carry out the search "if you have to.""OK, so I can look?" Volpe reiterated, inducing the intimidated driver to make his consent explicit. Within seconds the officer had found the marijuana, which was confiscated along with $180 in cash that was found in Box's wallet. His expired driver's license listed 1054 Quebec Place NW as his home address.

You might have to make a quick detour before flying home for the holidays. In a change to the Transportation Security Administration's long-standing policy regarding body scanners — advanced imaging technology, in TSA jargon — opting out of the machines in favor of a pat-down will be tougher than before. And by tougher we mean not-an-option if the TSA agent says so.

In an update quietly released on December 18, the TSA writes: "While passengers may generally decline AIT screening in favor of physical screening, TSA may direct mandatory AIT screening for some passengers as warranted by security considerations in order to safeguard transportation security."

Which means that even if you say no to the body scanner, TSA could force you to go through one anyway.

The head of a regional Turkish legal association says the organization has filed a criminal complaint against the Turkish authorities after a German documentary alleged that Islamic State are carrying out a slave trade of women on Turkish soil.

Bektas Sarkli, the head of Gaziantep Bar Association, has brought the suit against the Turkish law enforcement and intelligence agencies following allegations that Yazidi women and children were being trafficked.

"We decided to file a complaint after the allegations were made on German ARD TV. They alleged that the Yazidi people were traded by ISIS (Islamic State/IS) in a slave market here in Gaziantep. The prosecution must investigate this," Sarkli said.

"If there is evidence, then the suspects must be caught and tried. If there has been neglect of duty on the side of the security forces or intelligence, then they must be punished," he added.

At least 30 people have been injured after a tanker caught fire near a gas pipeline in Tabasco, Mexico, according to local media reports.

A stolen fuel tank reportedly exploded near a pipeline owned by Mexico's Pemex petrol company in Cardenas, Tabasco, the company confirmed on Twitter.

The state's health department told newspaper El Universal that 30 people had been injured.

The fire occurred near a village in a rural area, the company tweeted.

It was stopped before it affected the pipeline duct, which prevented an explosion.

Authorities and Pemex staff are working to contain the incident, and no Pemex workers were injured, the company said.

Earlier this year, we covered the story of a high school student who was thrown from her desk by a school police officer and brutally slammed to the ground. A video of the incident was taken by another student, and it sparked nationwide outrage after it went public. After seeing the video, it should be obvious to anyone that the officer was guilty of assault, and that the girl was actually doing nothing wrong, aside from disobeying the officer and refusing to get out of her seat.

Disobedience from a teenager surely does not warrant this type of response, especially a teenager that is sitting down and not posing a threat to anyone. However, shockingly, the officer is facing no charges, but the girl who was assaulted is, and so is the girl who filmed the brutal attack. Officer Ben Fields, the cop guilty of the assault, was fired from his position, but he has faced no legal consequences as a result of his actions, as any normal person would in the same situation.

"If any one of us would have done a youngster or even an adult like that, we would be in jail that day," pastor and activist Thomas Dixon told the Associated Press.

Both girls face misdemeanor charges of disturbing schools, which could result in a $1,000 fine or 90 days in jail if they are found guilty.

Documents reveal a Canadian teenager and her activism on the issue of GMO labelling were the subject of emails strategizing how her message could be counterered.

At the time, Rachel Parent was 14 years old and had a growing social media following. Her message to label genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food was attracting attention - including from those who promote GMOs in the U.S. Their internal emails reveal they were discussing how they could counter her message.

"To think at this point, I was on their radar and I had no clue," Parent said.

The strategizing was revealed in emails, along with thousands of other pages of documents released in a freedom of information request by US Right to Know (USRTK), a non-profit advocacy group funded by the Organic Consumers Association concerned with the safety of GMOs.

The documents shed light into the increasingly nasty and divisive public relations war over GMOs.


"It's mostly scientists that they attack, but Rachel is a standout. The agrichemical industry is plainly quite threatened by this teenage schoolgirl, so that's why they're after her," Gary Ruskin, the co-director of USRTK said.

The threefold rise in hate crimes against Muslims since the Paris and San Bernardino attacks and the acceptance of hate speech as a legitimate form of political discourse signal the morbidity of our civil society. The body politic is coughing up blood. The daily amplification of this hate speech by a commercial media whose sole concern is ratings and advertising dollars rather than serving as a bulwark to protect society presages a descent into the protofascist nightmare of racism, indiscriminate violence against the marginalized, and a blind celebration of American chauvinism, militarism and bigotry.

The mounting attacks on Muslims, which will become a contagion when there is another catastrophic terrorist attack, are only the beginning. There is a long list to be targeted, including undocumented workers, African-Americans, homosexuals, liberals, feminists, intellectuals and artists. We are entering a new dark age, an age of idiocy and blood. These hatreds, encoded in American DNA but understood as politically toxic by the liberal wing of the capitalist class, have been embraced by an enraged and disenfranchised white underclass. Our failure to curb this hate speech will haunt us. Once a civil society tolerates the intolerant, as Karl Popper wrote, "the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."

The anti-Muslim virus begins slowly. Step by step the hate talk moves from insults, stereotyping and untruths to incendiary calls for vigilantes to attack women wearing the hijab, men wearing kufis, mosques, Islamic centers and schools, and Muslim-owned businesses. It makes sense to many in the white underclass—especially because they have been sold out by the liberals who preach tolerance—that the violent purging of a demonized group from U.S. society can cure the society's malaise and restore safety and American "greatness." But soon all marginalized groups will be at risk. Such a process is what happened in the Weimar Republic. It is what happened in Yugoslavia. It is what happened in Israel.

Sometime in July 2012, Suzan Russaw and her husband, James, received a letter from their landlord asking them to vacate their $800-a-month one-bedroom apartment in Palo Alto, California. He gave them 60 days to leave. The "no-fault" eviction is a common way to clear out low-paying tenants without a legal hassle and bring in people willing to pay thousands more in rent. James was 83 at the time and suffering from the constellation of illnesses that affect the old: He had high blood pressure and was undergoing dialysis for kidney failure and experiencing the early stages of dementia.

Their rent was actually a couple of hundred dollars more than James's monthly Social Security benefits, but he made up the rest by piecing together odd jobs. They looked for a new apartment for two months and didn't find anything close to their price range. Their landlord gave them a six-week extension, but it yielded nothing. When mid-October came, Suzan and James had no choice but to leave. With hurried help from neighbors, they packed most of their belongings into two storage units and a ramshackle 1994 Ford Explorer which they called "the van." They didn't know where they were going.

A majority of the homeless population in Palo Alto—93 percent—ends up sleeping outside or in their cars. In part, that's because Palo Alto, a technology boomtown that boasts a per capita income well over twice the average for California, has almost no shelter space: For the city's homeless population, estimated to be at least 157, there are just 15 beds that rotate among city churches through a shelter program called Hotel de Zink; a charity organizes a loose network of 130 spare rooms, regular people motivated to offer up their homes only by neighborly goodwill. The lack of shelter space in Palo Alto—and more broadly in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, which comprise the peninsula south of San Francisco and around San Jose—is unusual for an area of its size and population. A 2013 census showed Santa Clara County having more than 7,000 homeless people, the fifth-highest homeless population per capita in the country and among the highest populations sleeping outside or in unsuitable shelters like vehicles.