At least 20 former MPs, government ministers, judges and other prominent figures abused children for decades, claims a former child protection manager.

Whistleblower Peter McKelvie, whose allegations led initially to a 2012 police inquiry, told BBC Newsnight a "powerful elite" of pedophiles carried out "the worst form" of abuse.

He told the programme there was evidence that victims of abuse were treated like "lumps of meat," taken from place to place to be molested.

McKelvie, formerly a child protection manager in Hereford and Worcester, took his concerns to Labour MP Tom Watson in 2012, who then raised the matter in parliament, prompting a preliminary police inquiry that became a formal inquiry in 2013.

"For the last 30 years and longer than that, there have been a number of allegations made by survivors that people at the very top of powerful institutions in this country ... have been involved in the abuse of children," McKelvie told Newsnight.

Asked if claims had been made against people still in positions of power today, he said, "Very much so ... what are allegations may or may not be true, but the allegations are there and they are against very specific named individuals."

Germany may scrap its decades-old policy of not spying on key NATO allies in response to the latest spy scandal, which exposed a German intelligence officer as a double-agent leaking secret documents to the US.

After the defeat of Nazis in World War II, the new authorities of West Germany adopted a policy of turning a blind eye to the intelligence activities of some of the victors, namely the US, Britain and France. However, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government may change that situation, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière told Bild newspaper.

He said Germany urgently needs to acquire "360-degree view" on operations conducted on its soil, which means it must conduct surveillance of all foreign intelligence agents working in the country.

The newspaper says it has obtained a document detailing "concrete countermeasures" it plans to implement to that regard.

The possible change in Germany's stance follows the exposure of a German intelligence officer, who worked for the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), as an American double agent. The 31-year-old reportedly contacted the US embassy and offered "cooperation," after which he leaked at least 218 secret documents in exchange for cash payments amounting more than $34,000.

Ironically, one of the prime interests for the US that the double agent was meant to meet was Berlin's investigation into the alleged spying by the US National Security Agency on Chancellor Merkel and other German citizens.

Just a day before Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu Khudair was kidnapped and burned alive (allegedly by six Israeli Jewish youths), Israeli lawmaker Ayelet Shaked took to Facebook to call for genocide of the Palestinians people.

It was a bloodthirsty statement of intent, declaring "the entire Palestinian people is the enemy" and calling for their total destruction, "including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure." She calls for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who give birth to "little snakes."

BJP figures in the list of foreign political parties on whom the NSA was given permission to carry out surveillance, says the document made public by The Washington Post on Monday

Reacting strongly to reports of BJP being spied upon by US National Security Agency (NSA), India today summoned a top US diplomat here to raise the issue, saying it was "totally unacceptable" that an Indian organisation or Indian individual's privacy was transgressed upon.

India also sought an assurance from the US that it will not happen again.

However, officials did not say who was the US diplomat summoned by the External Affairs Ministry.

Significantly, the US currently has an interim ambassador Kathleen Stephens who came in after former US Ambassador Nancy Powell resigned from her post.

India also noted that it had raised the issue with the US administration in Washington and the Embassy here in July and November last year when reports emerged that NSA had spied upon individuals and entities and said it was still "awaiting a response from American on this".

The US Supreme Court this week once again bestowed citizenship on American corporations.

A few years back, with the Citizens United decision, the high court declared corporations were essentially people and therefore had First Amendment rights to pump any amount of money they want into election campaigns. Now in the so-called Hobby Lobby case, it declared that corporations could have religious rights as well, and therefore don't have to include contraceptives in their health insurance plans if the principal owners' faith opposes it.

So while the nation's high court is on a roll granting corporations personhood, it would be nice if the corporations themselves started acting like good citizens and, for example, paid their taxes like everyone else does.

The latest American corporation that is considering moving its headquarters overseas so it can pay lower taxes on its profits is none other than drugstore giant Walgreens. It would be the latest in a line of US companies that don't like to pay their fair share of taxes even though they owe much of their success to government programs and infrastructure that were provided by other American taxpayers over the years.

Ukraine's gas bill has risen another $838 million, after Kiev failed to make a payment for 1.7 billion cubic meters of Russian gas supplied in the first half of June.

"The deadline for paying June bills expired yesterday; we again didn't receive the money from Naftogaz Ukraine. As a result Ukraine's debt to Gazprom for the 1.7 billion cubic meters supplied from June 1 through June 16 rose to $5.296 billion," Gazprom CEO Aleksey Miller said on Tuesday.

Miller added that Ukraine needs to pay for 11.535 billion cubic meters of Russian gas, which is a "gigantic" volume, comparable to the total supplied to Poland.

"Ukraine's principle unwillingness to pay for Russian gas is becoming chronic, and once again shows the transition to a prepayment system, included in the contract, was the only correct decision," Miller added.

The new bill is calculated on a price of $485 per thousand cubic meters that came into effect in April.

"The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself...Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable." - H.L. Mencken, American journalist

It's vogue, trendy and appropriate to look to dystopian literature as a harbinger of what we're experiencing at the hands of the government. Certainly, George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm have much to say about government tyranny, corruption, and control, as does Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Philip K. Dick's Minority Report. Yet there are also older, simpler, more timeless stories - folk tales and fairy tales - that speak just as powerfully to the follies and foibles in our nature as citizens and rulers alike that give rise to tyrants and dictatorships.

One such tale, Hans Christian Andersen's fable of the Emperor's New Clothes, is a perfect paradigm of life today in the fiefdom that is the American police state, only instead of an imperial president spending money wantonly on lavish vacations, entertainment, and questionable government programs aimed at amassing greater power, Andersen presents us with a vain and thoughtless emperor, concerned only with satisfying his own needs at the expense of his people, even when it means taxing them unmercifully, bankrupting his kingdom, and harshly punishing his people for daring to challenge his edicts.

For those unfamiliar with the tale, the Emperor, a vain peacock of a man, is conned into buying a prohibitively expensive suit of clothes that is supposedly visible only to those who are smart, competent and well-suited to their positions. Surrounded by yes men, professional flatterers and career politicians who fawn, simper and genuflect, the Emperor - arrogant, pompous and oblivious to his nudity - prances through the town in his new suit of clothes until a child dares to voice what everyone else has been thinking but too afraid to say lest they be thought stupid or incompetent: "He isn't wearing anything at all!"

A child at the centre of the alleged Westminster paedophile ring in the 1980s has been traced by police and may be 'ready to spill the beans' about the politician he says abused him, it emerged today.

The unnamed man, who is now in his 40s, says he was attacked by a senior political figure when he was eight and knew then he worked in the 'big house' - a reference to the Houses of Parliament.

Scotland Yard has traced the alleged victim, who is a successful entrepreneur based in the United States but he has yet to make a formal statement to police.

But detectives have traced a copy of a statement he made more than 30 years ago when he was rescued from the abuse.

During his interview in 1982, the child said his abuser worked in 'the big house', which detectives believe refers to the Houses of Parliament.

The man subjected him to a horrific sexual assault and police working on the case at the time, who interviewed him, are said to have corroborated some of his evidence.

Western support will allow more IMF and European lending to prop the Ukrainian currency so the Ukrainian oligarchs can move their money safely to British and US banks, economist and author Michael Hudson told RT's Truthseeker.

RT: Could you summarize for us the tried and tested steps that will lead from IMF loans, to Ukraine's best assets ending up in private Western hands - the IMF's 'knee-breaker' role as you memorably described it as?

Michael Hudson: The basic principle to bear in mind is that finance today is war by non-military means. The aim of getting a country in debt is to obtain its economic surplus, ending up with its property. The main property to obtain is that which can produce exports and generate foreign exchange. For Ukraine, this means mainly the Eastern manufacturing and mining companies, which presently are held in the hands of the oligarchs. For foreign investors, the problem is how to transfer these assets and their revenue into foreign hands - in an economy whose international payments are in chronic deficit as a result of the failed post-1991 restructuring. That is where the IMF comes in.

The IMF was not set up to finance domestic government budget deficits. Its loans are earmarked to pay foreign creditors, mainly to maintain a country's exchange rate. The effect usually is to subsidize flight capital out of the country - at a high exchange rate rather than depositors and creditors getting fewer dollars or euro. In Ukraine's case, foreign creditors would include Gazprom, which already has been paid something. The IMF transfers a credit to its "Ukraine account," which then pays foreign creditors. The money never really gets to Ukraine or to other IMF borrowers. It is paid to the accounts of foreigners, including foreign government creditors, as in IMF loans to Greece. Such loans come with "conditionalities" that impose austerity. This in turn drives the economy even further into debt - forcing the government to tighten the budget even more, run even smaller budget deficits and sell off public assets.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon informed Security Council members on Monday that two cylinders reportedly seized by Syrian government forces in an opposition-held region appeared to contain the deadly nerve agent sarin.

According to the letter dispatched by Ban to the UNSC, on June 14 the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) analyzed the contents of the barrels, reported Reuters. The UN Joint Mission is currently overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles under the umbrella of the OPCW.

Syria has declared a total of 1,300 tons of chemical agents, and handed over the last portion of its stockpile on June 23 under the agreement reached in September.

"The Joint Mission confirmed that these contained sarin," read Ban's letter. The Syrian government declared the barrels "as abandoned chemical weapons," which were reportedly seized by government forces in August 2013 within an area under the control of armed rebel groups.