99 Percent News

Surveillance is a growth industry across the West nowadays. The revelations that governments are claiming new powers to track citizens, almost always using “terrorism” as an excuse, are coming fast and furious. Powers that were never debated, never authorized, but simply claimed are the order of the day.

“Curveball”, the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi’s lies used to justify the Iraq war.

Most of the people of southern Europe have stayed surprisingly stoical up to now in the face of some of the most painful budget cuts in living memory, but signs are stirring that patience may soon run out.

(Reuters) – Unemployment in the euro zone reached its highest level in almost 15 years in February, with more than 17 million people out of work, and economists said they expected job office queues to grow even longer later this year.

Producers of toxic BPA are now boasting $8 billion in sales for 2012 thanks to the FDA rejecting a potential ban on the cancer-linked chemical on March 30th. According to GlobalData, manufacturers will produce 4.7 million metric tons of BPA this year to be dispersed into the daily lives of millions worldwide.

This one is by Lisa Benson

Emails obtained from intelligence gathering outfit Stratfor and leaked by Wikileaks show that a former director of Blackwater, the US mercenary contractor organization, was sent by the US government to fight alongside rebels in Libya, and was even involved in the killing of Muammar Gaddafi.

Instead, the primary pupils are being encouraged to play in large groups.

Educational psychologist Gaynor Sbuttoni said the policy has been used at schools in Kingston, South West London, and Surrey.

This one is by Ed Stein