At the top of a steep and ramshackle street in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan, a rusty, battered gate opens into an unremarkable house. Less than a quarter mile away, though, stand the Al Aqsa mosque and the Wailing Wall, two of Jerusalem's most venerated holy sites, making it a very attractive piece of real estate indeed.

For Mohammed Sumarin, 52, whose late uncle owned this house, this is home. He was born here, raised here, and has never lived anywhere else. But now he faces losing his home of more than half a century to the Jewish National Fund (JNF), an Israeli charity that claims the house for its own and is battling to evict the family.

Silwan, sprawled along the southern flank of Jerusalem's Old City, is the politically sensitive epicentre of the struggle for East Jerusalem, coveted by Palestinians as the capital of their future state, and claimed by Israel, which annexed the eastern sector after the 1967 Six Day War, as an integral part of an undivided Jerusalem.

The evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem are widely seen as deliberately aiding Israeli settlers in staking the Jewish claim to the eastern part of the city to thwart a final peace agreement that could cleave the city in two.

Many in the Carver Hills neighborhood knew Ms. Carulus Hines and her children had no water and were on the brink of being homeless.

They knew the woman claimed to speak to her dead dad and said she was possessed by demons.

Still no one expected what happened Monday afternoon in the green and yellow home on Abner Place.

The face of hunger in America is changing. It's a little more ex-middle class, a little more desperate and there are a lot more mouths to feed, people who run the nation's food banks say.

"We're seeing a lot more families, many who are running out of money and benefits because of long-term unemployment," said Bill Clark, executive director of food bank Philabundance. "Since 2007, the changing face of hunger has been influenced a lot by unemployment."

Clark doesn't put much credence in the monthly fluctuations in employment data from the government. Every day he sees how the long-term jobless are struggling to meet basic needs.

The food bank, which serves 450 cupboards and pantries throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey, has seen a 26 percent spike in need this year and now serves food for about 65,000 people weekly.

On Friday, the Labor Department will release employment data for November. In October, employers added 80,000 jobs, offering a glimmer of hope for the beleaguered employment market.

Police officers shot and killed a woman in an Atlanta home when she didn't comply with orders to stop stabbing her young daughter, who also died, authorities said Monday.

Police and fire rescue personnel were called to the home Monday afternoon and were told an 8-year-old boy had been assaulted by his mother and thrown out a window, said an Atlanta Police spokesman, Maj. Keith Meadows.

Meadows said witnesses told officers the mother was alone inside the home with her young daughter. He said officers entered the house and found the mother sitting in a chair, stabbing the child.

Two officers drew their service weapons and ordered the woman to drop a knife, firing at her when she did not comply, Meadows said. He said between 10 and 16 shots were fired.

As the Super Committee failed to agree on a measly $1 trillion in budget cuts, Bloomberg recently reported yet another secret bank bailout totaling $7.7 trillion courtesy of the private Federal Reserve bank. This disclosure is in addition to the first-ever Congressional audit of the Fed that revealed a startling $16 trillion in secret bailouts.

This brings the grand total of previously unknown theft to $23.7 trillion which, interestingly enough, is the exact figure Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program, estimated in July 2009.

As Americans are being told that they need to tighten their belts and that Congress must do the same or the country will fall into economic ruin, these private bank bailouts, nearly double the size of the national debt, are handed out without any benefit to the public.

A new legal regulation has come into force in Hungary making homelessness punishable by a fine of around $600 (£384) or prison.

MPs from the ruling conservative party proposed the regulation, on the grounds that Budapest could not cope with the large number of people on the streets.

Critics, including charities for the homeless, say it is unenforceable and that hostels lack sufficient places.

According to an amendment to the local government act, passed by a strong majority in parliament last month, those found sleeping on the streets will first receive a warning.

They can subsequently be imprisoned or ordered to pay the fine.

Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church votes on resolution that says the church 'does not condone interracial marriage'

A tiny church in rural Kentucky has voted to ban interracial couples from joining its congregation, pitting members against each other in an argument over race.

Members at the Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church in Kentucky voted on Sunday on the resolution, which says the church "does not condone interracial marriage".

The church member who crafted the resolution, Melvin Thompson, said he is not racist and called the matter an "internal affair".

"I am not racist. I will tell you that. I am not prejudiced against any race of people, have never in my lifetime spoke evil about a race," said Thompson, the church's former pastor who stepped down earlier this year.

"That's what this is being portrayed as, but it is not."

Hello?
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone at home?
Come on, now,
I hear you're feeling down.
Well I can ease your pain
And get you on your feet again.
Relax.
I need some information first.
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts?

Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb

As I observe the zombie like reactions of Americans to our catastrophic economic highway to collapse, the continued plundering and pillaging of the national treasury by criminal Wall Street bankers, non-enforcement of existing laws against those who committed the largest crime in history, and reaction to young people across the country getting beaten, bludgeoned, shot with tear gas and pepper sprayed by police, I can't help but wonder whether there is anyone home. Why are most Americans so passively accepting of these calamitous conditions? How did we become so comfortably numb? I've concluded Americans have chosen willful ignorance over thoughtful critical thinking due to their own intellectual laziness and overpowering mind manipulation by the elite through their propaganda emitting media machines. Some people are awaking from their trance, but the vast majority is still slumbering or fuming at erroneous perpetrators.

Both the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement are a reflection of the mood change in the country, which is a result of government overreach, political corruption, dysfunctional economic policies, and a financial system designed to enrich the few while defrauding the many. The common theme is anger, frustration and disillusionment with a system so badly broken it appears unfixable through the existing supposedly democratic methods. The system has been captured by an oligarchy of moneyed interests from the financial industry, mega-corporations, and military industrial complex, protected by their captured puppets in Washington DC and sustained by the propaganda peddling corporate media. The differences in political parties are meaningless as they each advocate big government solutions to all social, economic, foreign relations, and monetary issues.

For most people, an extended stay aboard a luxury cruise liner sounds like a dream vacation.

But Valeska Paris says she was held against her will aboard the Scientology cruise ship Freewinds for more than a decade. During her stay on the vessel, she alleges, she was forced into hard labor and never allowed to leave the ship without an escort.

In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC News) Lateline program, Paris claims that Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige sent her to the ship when she was 18 in order to prevent her family from pulling her out of the organization.

Non-renewable energy continues to violate Earth and human rights everywhere it's drilled

Although cover-ups of the causes of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico "spill" and the recent Brazil spill are similar, unlike U.S. government treatment of the companies involved in the nation's largest eco-disaster that began with the April 20 deep sea oil rig explosion, Brazil has banned California-based Chevron from the nation and jail terms for officials are expected due to Big Energy's involvement with the oil spill that leaked some 2,400 barrels of oil into the sea off Rio de Janeiro on Nov. 8.

"The company's treatment of the regulatory agency and the Brazilian government was unacceptable," director of the ANP Magda Chambriard told Bloomberg.

"We had to go aboard the platform to search for the original images even after the company was notified to provide us with the video."