Archive - Jun 9, 2009

• Deadly hotel bombing underscores violence in Pakistan; FSRN speaks to displaced minorities
• Senate committee hearing reviews prolonged detention of Guantanamo prisoners
• US lawmakers discuss health care options
• Continental economic leaders meet at Montreal summit
• Brazil plans to build one million affordable homes

• Shell settles human rights suit for $15.5 million – avoids open court
• Leader of Indigenous movement in Peru seeks asylum
• Boston Globe workers face 23 percent pay cut after contract negotiation vote fails
• New York Senate shifts power balance – Republicans stage coup

While the United States has been melting down financially in part due to mortgages that went bad, Brazil is launching a plan to build one million homes. Forty percent of these homes will be allocated to people of the lowest income levels.  Brazil´s government is hoping this plan will help it to avoid the financial and housing disaster created  in the United States.

Finance ministers and policy makers from the Americas are meeting in Montreal, Canada, to discuss the current economic crisis. Participants at the 15th International Economic Forum of the Americas are also discussing ways to promote free trade and decrease protectionism.  But is this the best strategy to get the world economy back on its feet?  FSRN's Amy Miller, is following developments in Montreal.

Each day that passes in Washington, is a day where more details of health care reform legislation are falling into place. But as health care reform moves forward, lawmakers are drawing more lines in the sand, designating what they will, and will not, support.  Much of the debate centers around a public option, or a government run option for health insurance.   FSRN’s Leigh Ann Caldwell reports.

CIA Director Leon Panetta has argued against the release of any and all records pertaining to the destruction and content of the agency's 92 interrogation videotapes.  This comes in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.  The FOIA lawsuit is part of a pending motion to make public the treatment of prisoners held in US custody overseas.  The Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution held a hearing on the moral, legal and national security  consequences of prolonged detention for Guantanamo Bay detainees.  President Obama recently said some detainees are too dangerous to release or transfer for trial, meaning that they could be held indefinitely.  At today's hearing, human rights advocates and lawyers contested such ideas and if the “war or on terror”  justifies the detention of those held at Guantanamo in the first place.  FSRN's Karen Miller reports.

An explosion at a five-star hotel in Pakistan has injured over 50 people and killed at least 11 according local reporters.  The blast occurred at the Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's troubled Northwest province. The hotel was reportedly the future home of the region´s US consulate.  Pakistan's army is fighting Taliban militants in the Northwest Province, but the civilian population is paying a great price. Thousands of Pakistani Sikhs and Hindus are among the estimated 3 million people displaced by the government's campaign to rid northwestern districts of the Taliban. Many of these minorities have been living with harassment, threats of death and extortion at the hands of the Islamic insurgents. Now they say the government has abandoned them, offering little or no aid since they fled the fighting.  Many have taken refuge at one the Sikh religion's holiest sites, the Gurdwara Punja Sahib. Catherine Komp reads for our reporter Gabe Matthews.