The head of the largest food bank says the $5 billion annual cut will take a week of meals off millions' plates

Food stamp recipients face a massive benefit cut set to kick in when stimulus funds expire Friday. The nationwide cut "is equivalent to about 16 meals a month for a family of three," according to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis using the USDA's "Thrifty Food Plan." CBPP called the roughly $5 billion annual cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program "unprecedented" in "depth and breadth."

"If you look across the world, riots always begin typically the same way: when people cannot afford to eat food," Margarette Purvis, the president and CEO of the Food Bank for New York City, told Salon Monday. Purvis said that the looming cut would mean about 76 million meals "that will no longer be on the plates of the poorest families" in NYC alone - a figure that outstrips the total number of meals distributed each year by the Food Bank for New York City, the largest food bank in the country. "There will be an immediate impact," she said.

Pavlo Lapshyn hunted down a Muslim to murder before he bombed three Midlands mosques to trigger a race war.

A white supremacist who hoped to "ethnically cleanse" Muslims has been told he will serve at least 40 years imprisonment for a terror campaign in which he hunted down a Muslim to murder before he bombed three Midlands mosques aiming to kill and maim worshippers.

Pavlo Lapshyn, 25, came to Britain in April from Ukraine after winning a prize to further his studies. Instead he tried to trigger a race war, fuelled by extremist material on his computer - including a video game called "ethnic cleansing" which celebrated racist violence.

Donnachadh McCarthy used energy-saving measures and renewable power to reduce his gas bill to just £18 a year. But now he's being stung by standing charges.

A 583% gas-bill rise.

That was the shock news I received this week from British Gas. Over the last 15 years, instead of running a car, I invested about £30,000 to make my south London Victorian terrace home eco-friendly.

I installed solid-wall, under-floor and loft insulation, triple-glazing, LED lighting, wood-burner, rain-harvester, solar hot water and solar photovoltaic panels. Whilst I did this because I passionately wanted to show that it was possible to make old homes almost zero-carbon, the other plus-side was that it slashed my annual gas bill to about £18 and my electricity-bill to almost zero, helping me recoup some of the costs.

However David Cameron's new "clearer pricing policy" has resulted in British Gas imposing a new £95 standing-charge on my gas bill. This means that whereas a rich Tory MP living in a rural mansion with a £3,000 heating bill will be paying 5p per unit, the unit cost for my gas will jump to 48p. That is a 963% premium.

An actor slit his throat on stage when the prop knife for his suicide scene turned out to be a real one.

Daniel Hoevels, 30, slumped over with blood pouring from his neck while the audience broke into applause at the "special effect". Police are investigating whether the knife was a mistake or a murder plot. They are questioning the rest of the cast, and backstage hands with access to props; they will also carry out DNA tests.

The stories of police abuse have been unrelenting this week. Now we have news that a Haskell, Arkansas police officer chased a woman, at her workplace no less, finally deploying his Taser on her. All of this was solely because he had demanded to see her breasts. When she refused he unholstered his Taser and aimed it at her, saying that if she refused, he would use the weapon on her. Realizing that she had no legal obligation to comply with this clearly illegal demand, she made a run for it. That's when things got even uglier; the officer made good on his threat.

Now, Ashlea Bennett is taking the City of Haskell, Arkansas and its police officer Brandon Carter, to Federal Court. Her recent suit claims that Carter "demanded that she expose her breasts to him" after wearing his uniform, entering her work place and suggesting that the demand was carried legal authority.

"Carter's demands to the Plaintiff to expose herself to him occurred multiple times," the lawsuit articulates.

The US food stamp system is to be reduced by $5 billion starting in November. The average benefit will shrink and the overall number of people receiving it will diminish by millions. The CEO of America's largest food bank says the cuts will end in riots.

"Riots always begin typically the same way: when people cannot afford to eat food," Margaret Purvis, president and CEO of the Food bank for New York City, told online news and entertainment site Salon.com.

She added that families face the "daunting" prospect of losing a whole week's worth of food every month.

Currently, the program costs about $80 billion per year and provides food aid nearly 15 per cent of all US households - over 45 million people.

A big automatic cut is expected on November 1, taking $5 billion from federal food-stamp spending over 2014. The benefit is set to shrink by 5 per cent.

Vaud - Just when you thought the whole horse meat scandal was over, two Swiss restaurants have been caught using horse meat instead of beef in their steak tartare dishes.

The scandal was uncovered by "A Bon Entendeur", a consumer affairs program aired on Tuesday by the French language Swiss broadcaster, RTS.

Both restaurants are in the canton of Jura and the consumer affairs program tested 15 of the raw meat meals from restaurants in western Switzerland. A chemist who analyzed the phoney steak tartare said,

"One can properly talk of obvious and blatant deceit."

However, there is not just deceit involved in the incident, as apparently only four meals tested were found to be free of elevated levels of bacteria. Bearing in mind that the meat in the dish is served raw, one can only imagine the dangers.

In restaurants in the canton of Vaud, two plates of steak tartare were found to be particularly infected, and exceeded the acceptable levels for bacteria many times over.

A Bavarian taxi driver found €250,000 on the back seat of his taxi on Monday. He then tracked down the elderly couple who had left it behind and would not accept a finder's reward from them.

Thomas Güntner is a taxi driver in Würzburg, Bavaria. As reported in Die Welt (German language), he had picked up an elderly couple at the bank and shortly after he drove them home, he noticed a cloth bag sitting on the back seat of his car.

On peeking inside the cloth bag, he was shocked to find €250,000 in €500 notes.

He told the media on Tuesday, "I was totally perplexed and surprised, that people could carry around so much cash and then forget it."

He added that keeping the money just wasn't an option, as he knew that "it would probably be the downfall of the old couple."

BR.de reported (in German) that around 30 minutes after discovering the cash, he arrived at the couple's house, cash in hand. The woman met Güntner at the door, with tears in her eyes, so grateful to the man.

Despite complaints of asthma and studies proving groundwater contamination, most residents next to frac sand mines don't have any protection from industrial toxins.

The hydraulic fracturing movement has already taken off in the U.S., expanding an industry that requires the mining of silica sand, the drilling of oil and natural gas wells and the storage of toxic fracking wastewater.

Yet in the midst of the boom, Americans are still not sure how the expanding industry is impacting their health. Scientific data is still in the collection phase, and independent tests don't bode well for those living in the midst of the boom.

Now, years after the industry has been introduced, Minnesota is considering air quality mining to detect whether the silica sand mining industry is presenting a threat to area residents' health.

States like Minnesota and Wisconsin have become targets of the fracking industry, as they possess deposits of silica sand, a component of the fracking process. To frack a well, a combination of chemicals, silica sand and water is shot deep into the earth to break up and access oil and gas deposits.

The "frac sand" mining industry has created concern among those living in communities that have recently been turned into mining boom towns, as the impact of silica sand particles on local residents' health is unknown. What is known, however, is that silica sand causes silicosis. For those working in the mines, strict regulations are imposed - yet for those living next door, there are none.

While mining has been occurring for a few years, Minnesota is still in the planning phases for its first air quality monitoring studies. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is proposing erecting an air quality monitoring system on the roof of a community center - one that would not only monitor silica sand particle presence, but also air pollution caused by the increased diesel truck traffic.

The move in Minnesota is similar to those carried out in traditional fracking states. Studies conducted on groundwater in Pennsylvania have emerged this year, exposing contamination years after the industry was given a key to the state's resources.

We set up this prank downtown San Luis Obispo with a real body wand, hidden microphones and cameras. The goal was to see how far we could take this scanning and if people would let us! To our surprise, most people didn't put up much of a fight and went along with the person ahead of them in line... which was our plant that we actual scanned again and again. People along the sidelines were freaking out as well and not sure how to intervene. Of course, once the gag was pushed to the limit, we all let the customer know it was a prank and and it was all love, hugs, high fives and laughs! 100% loved to be involved... but it does make you think!

NO! The last guy in the outtakes was NOT A PLANT. He was certainly a funny character who popped up on the radar that afternoon for sure. "Isn't America free?" Awesome.