Downing Street has said that the British government will dispatch 350 troops to Mali to aid French troops stationed in the country's north, as part of a UK mission to train local forces and engage in "force protection."

British representatives are attending a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss the provision of troops as part of an EU mission to the African country. The EU estimates that 500 supplementary troops will be sent to Mali, some 350 of which will be British. This will include approximately 40 military advisers who will train soldiers in Mali and 200 British soldiers to be sent to neighboring African countries.

An ECOWAS (Economic Community Of West African States) force of West African troops - about 7,500 of them - are also coming into Mali to take over some garrison duties, and steadily take over the fighting role from the French.

The budget for the campaign, which has been set at around $950m will be financed through an international donors' conference based in Ethiopia.

Water cannons have been used against stone-throwing demonstrators in the Belgian city of Namur, as thousands rallied against the closure of a factory that will put an end to 1,300 jobs.

Dozens of riot police were deployed to quell the tensions.

Many protesters are wearing respirators to protect themselves against the police crackdown.

A new curriculum for public schools across the United States will soon make it mandatory for at least 70 percent of all assigned books to be works of non-fiction, eliminating classic works that have influenced great thinkers for centuries.

By 2014, schools in 46 out of 50 states will have adopted this new curriculum, which favors "informational texts" approved by the Common Core State Standards to prepare students for the workplace.

Suggested books included works by the Environmental Protection Agency, like the Recommended Levels of Insulation, as well as the Invasive Plant Inventory by California's Invasive Plant Council.

While the new curriculum might provide practical information, it would also deprive students of classic literary works that have long been a part of the American culture. In studying the role of fiction in education, scientists have recently learned that fictional narratives develop human social and emotional life, giving students the ability to better understand people, the New York Times reports.

An hour after expanding on a bipartisan immigration proposal on Monday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) called for an increase in security technology at the U.S.-Mexico border, including unmanned drones in a Fox News interview.

"We have to use a lot of high-tech - we've got to use drones," McCain told "Your World with Caputo" guest host Eric Bolling. "We've got to do a lot of things to get that border secure, but that must be done."

According to The Hill, the plan, crafted by McCain and seven other U.S. senators, calls for border security standards to be set by a group of officials from border states, who would have the ability to stall a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants if they are not satisfied by security efforts.

The extra technology, McCain said, would also help protect U.S. personnel.

A US government auditor has blasted the Treasury for approving high levels of executive pay at firms it bailed out in the financial crisis.

The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said that in 2012 the Treasury ignored its warnings on the "excessive" compensation for the top 25 employees each at rescued insurer American International Group, auto maker General Motors, and Ally Financial, the former finance arm of GM.

SIGTARP, the watchdog for the massive rescue of banks and auto companies in the 2008 crisis, said that 69 of those 75 got pay packages worth more than $3 million annually, and 16 of the more than $5 million, all approved by the Treasury.

"Treasury seemingly set a floor, awarding 2012 total pay of at least $1 million for all but one person" out of the 75, SIGTARP said in a report.

Transparency International estimates cost of corruption in defense sector amounts to at least $20 billion a year

Most countries, including a large majority of the world's biggest weapons importers, lack the tools to prevent corruption in the arms trade, according to an unprecedented international study of national defense ministries and armed forces.

A number of Britain's most lucrative existing and potential markets for arms, including Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Oman, are among countries where there is "a very high risk" of corruption, says Transparency International (TI) in a report released on Tuesday.

TI, a charity set up to combat corruption and promote good practice in commerce and industry, describes its study as the first index measuring how - or whether - governments counter corruption in defense.

US authorities censored part of a preliminary hearing Monday at a Guantanamo military tribunal that touched on CIA secret prisons where suspected 9/11 plotters say they were tortured.

Reporters watched the proceedings against the five 9/11 suspects at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba behind a thick, sound-proof glass wall and listened to piped-in audio with a 40-second delay.

But when a defense lawyer mentioned the CIA secret sites at Monday's hearing, a red light flashed on and the sound from the courtroom was cut off.

The audio from the proceedings was replaced by white noise, preventing journalists from listening to the courtroom debate over evidence related to the CIA "black sites," where the suspected September 11 attackers were detained and interrogated before being transferred to the Guantanamo facility.

The US military plans to set up a base for drones in northwest Africa to bolster surveillance of Al-Qaeda's affiliate in the region as well as allied Islamist extremists, a US official told AFP on Monday.

The base for the robotic, unmanned aircraft would likely be located in Niger, on the eastern border of Mali, where French forces are currently waging a campaign against Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The base was first reported by the New York Times earlier Monday.

The airfield would allow for better intelligence gathering by unarmed drones on the movement of AQIM and other militants, which Washington considers a growing threat, the official said.

If the plan gets the green light, up to 300 US military service members and contractors could be sent to the base to operate the drone aircraft, according to the New York Times.

The State Department has shut down the office of its special envoy for the closure of Guantanamo Bay, a US official said Monday, in a sign of the fading hopes of shuttering the jail.

Daniel Fried, the special envoy in charge of the dossier, will now move to coordinate the State Department's sanctions policy, including for Iran and Syria, and his "former responsibilities will be 'assumed' by the office of the department's legal adviser," The New York Times reported, citing an internal personnel memo.

A US official, who asked not to be named, told AFP that the story, which specified that Fried would not be replaced, was "accurate."

Fried, a veteran diplomat and former ambassador to Poland, was appointed special envoy in May 2009, only months after US President Barack Obama ordered the notorious jail at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to close.

"The shaping of the will of Congress and the choosing of the American president has become a privilege reserved to the country's equestrian classes, a.k.a. the 20% of the population that holds 93% of the wealth, the happy few who run the corporations and the banks, own and operate the news and entertainment media, compose the laws and govern the universities, control the philanthropic foundations, the policy institutes, the casinos, and the sports arenas." - Journalist Lewis Lapham

The pomp and circumstance of the presidential inauguration has died down. Members of Congress have taken their seats on Capitol Hill, and Barack Obama has reclaimed his seat in the White House. The circus of the presidential election has become a faint memory. The long months of debates, rallies, and political advertisements have slipped from our consciousness. Now we are left with the feeling that nothing has really changed, nor will it.

This is not by accident. The media circus leading up to the elections, the name calling in the halls of Congress, the vitriol and barbs traded back and forth among people who are supposed to be working together to improve the country, are all components of the game set up by those who run the show. The movers and shakers behind these engaging, but ultimately trite, political exercises are the elite, the so-called upper class, who benefit from the status quo. This status quo is marked by an economic crisis with no end in sight, by the slow but steady growth of a police state aimed at the lowest rungs of society, and a political circus which keeps us enraptured long enough that we don't question what's really going on.

Meanwhile, this elite, composed of corporations profiting off of our ignorance, avoid being brought to task for their destruction of democratic governance and the economy. These are the corporations who sent our economy into a tail spin and were then rewarded with taxpayer money. These are the corporations who write laws which eliminate real competition in the market in order to secure their profits through lucrative government contracts. These are the corporations who avoid criminal prosecution, and are instead slapped with meager fines which do nothing to halt their felonious activities.

We now live in a two-tiered system of justice and governance. There are two sets of laws: one set for the government and the corporations, and another set for you and me.