The spiralling inflation has forced homemakers to tweak their budgets, slashing consumption of nutrient-rich food by almost 40 percent, a survey by an industry chamber said here Sunday.

The survey, which was conducted in October-November, revealed that the maximum impact was felt in major cities led by Delhi-NCR and followed by Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and Chandigarh.

The Assocham survey claimed that nearly 72 percent of lower middle-class families covered by the survey said they have been forced to squeeze their budgets for fruits, vegetables and milk because of consistently high retail prices. The survey was conducted on 2,000 housewives and 1,000 working people.

"The price rise of essential commodities and expenses on other necessities like education, transport and health have stayed higher than the pace at which earnings have increased, making life difficult for the poor, lower income and even middle class families," Assocham secretary general D.S. Rawat said.

A pregnant woman has had her baby forcibly removed by caesarean section by social workers.

Essex social services obtained a High Court order against the woman that allowed her to be forcibly sedated and her child to be taken from her womb.

The council said it was acting in the best interests of the woman, an Italian who was in Britain on a work trip, because she had suffered a mental breakdown.

The baby girl, now 15 months old, is still in the care of social services, who are refusing to give her back to the mother, even though she claims to have made a full recovery.

The case has developed into an international legal row, with lawyers for the woman describing it as "unprecedented".

A prominent analyst says Britain is becoming submerged in racism, noting that this sinister phenomenon is eating away at the very fabric of the United Kingdom.

"In fact, a tragic sense of racism and hatred is permeating through the very fabric of the British society, eating it away like a kind of canker," Ismail Salami wrote in a column for Press TV on Sunday.

"With racism being institutionalized across the country, there is little hope for the burgeoning of multiculturalism, hybridity and the possibility of a reliable future for immigrants and alike," he added.

Salami outlined the depth of racism in Britain where a disabled Iranian man, Bijan Ebrahimi, was brutally murdered in July by his neighbor Lee James. Ebrahimi had contacted the police a number of times complaining that he was a victim of anti-social behavior, but police officers had ignored the calls.

"The Bijans of our time are the victims of blind prejudice and loathsome ignorance of those who consciously choose to relegate some people to the category of subhumans and put themselves instead on a pedestal of supremacy," wrote Salami.

The analyst noted that Ebrahimi's death is "just the tip of the iceberg."

A new study has revealed that more than one in four people in the United Kingdom have skipped thier meals and gone hungry over the past year to feed their families.

The research carried out by the UK's biggest provider of food bank the Trussell Trust, food distribution organization FareShare and supermarket giant Tesco, found that 40 per cent of households across Britain have seen their financial situation deteriorate over the last year as they can barely make ends meet amid rising costs of living and stagnant wages.

The report further noted that only over a quarter of the respondents said they have managed to purchase the same amount of healthy and nutritious food as they did a year ago, while almost two thirds stated that they will be cutting back on heating in order to be able to provide food for their families.

Moreover, the study showed that 33 per cent of lower-income consumers are concerned about their job security, 33 per cent are worried about mortgage or rental payments and 53 per cent are concerned about household bills.

Hunter Alford is the happy kid next door with a big grin who idolizes country music star Blake Shelton. His parents call him a "wild, fun loving, zombie-killing boy who loves the military and police."

He is normal in every way, except this 7-year-old already plays guitar and keyboards and has his heart set on learning to fiddle.

Something else sets Hunter apart. He was born with a rare form of cancer and lost his health insurance just after Obamacare went into effect.

Americans were told the health-care law was designed to help children just like Hunter, born with a deadly pre-existing condition and little means to pay for expensive treatments.

The Affordable Care Act was not supposed to take away the insurance these most-vulnerable children already had and leave them utterly defenseless against a life-threatening disease.

Answers are hard to come by, but it looks like that's what the president's signature achievement has done in the small town of Gainesville, Texas.

At least four people were killed on Sunday and 63 injured, 11 of them critically, when a passenger train heading into New York City derailed in the Bronx.

Two carriages were flipped onto their sides in the early morning incident, which occurred at 7.20am about 100 yards north of Spuyten Duyvil station on the Hudson line of the Metro-North Railroad.

The New York Fire Department, which coordinated a rescue effort involving hundreds of firefighters, police and railway workers, said 63 people were hurt when the seven-carriage, southbound 5.54am service from Poughkeepsie to Manhattan's Grand Central Station left the rails on a sharp bend.

Three of the dead were killed as they were thrown from the train, according to FDNY chief of department Edward Kilduff. Numerous passengers were taken away on stretchers to local hospitals, officials said at a press conference three hours after the derailment.

Kilduff said he believed all the passengers and train crew were accounted for after a rescue operation that included divers searching for survivors in the adjacent Harlem River, and that he thought the casualty count was unlikely to rise further.

"Three of the four fatalities were thrown as the train came off the track and was twisting and turning somewhat," he said. "The train is pretty beat up. There was substantial damage inside and a lot of personal possessions thrown around.

"We believe we've searched the entire area and we don't have any other victims we're aware of." Kilduff added that he did not yet know exactly how many people had been aboard the train.

Eyewitnesses said they saw dozens of scratched and bloodied passengers leaving the wreckage, several holding ice packs to their heads. Frank Tatulli, a passenger in the front carriage, which came to rest just inches from the edge of the Harlem River, told a local TV station that he felt the train was travelling "a lot faster" than it usually would coming into the station.

At least four people were killed after a Metro-North Railroad train derailed Sunday morning in the Bronx along the Hudson River, officials said.

A total of 67 people were injured - 11 critically - a New York Fire Department spokesman, Jim Long, said.

The derailment occurred when several cars of a train headed south from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., left the tracks about 7:20 a.m. near the Spuyten Duyvil station under the Henry Hudson Bridge on the Hudson Line, according to a Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman, Aaron Donovan.

Thousands of cyclists lay across a South London street on Friday evening to protest against dangerous traffic conditions in the capital. The 15-minute vigil, which remembered the six cyclists killed in November, took place outside Transport for London's Blackfriars office. TFL says it is working to develop better cycle safety

A woman reportedly used some sort of a stun gun on a fellow shopper during a vicious Black Friday brawl at the Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia.

The incident, which was caught on video, occurred at around 2:30 a.m. Friday. Two women can be seen exchanging punches and wrestling on floor. Suddenly, one of the women pulls out what appears to be a stun gun to shock her foe.

Some bystanders can be heard pleading with the women to stop while others stand around and watch. The cause of the fight was not immediately clear.

Watch the shocking video via the Daily Mail:


While mall security confirmed to NBC Philadelphia that a fight did break out at the mall, they denied that a "Taser" was used. They reportedly did not confirm or deny that a stun gun was used.

As TheBlaze reported earlier today, Black Friday violence has been seen across the United States.

Number of winter deaths in Wales increases by half

Health boards in Wales have warned of 'unprecedented demand' on services this winter as figures show big rise in excess deaths last winter

The number of excess winter deaths in Wales increased by 50% last year, according to new figures.

Statistics released this morning show that there were 1,900 excess winter deaths in 2012-2013, up from 1,260 in 2011-2012.

This is an 18.8% increase that the number of deaths outside the winter months.

Of these, 1,100 were in aged 85 and above, while 400 were aged between 75-85 and 200 were aged between 65-74.

Last year saw one of the coldest winters in recent times, with the impact of the cold temperatures taking its toll on many services.