Archive - Sep 1, 2009

• US lawmakers rev-up health care campaigns
• Attorney General seeks to revitalize Civil Rights Division
• Libya´s Gaddafi celebrates 40th anniversary
• Himalayan peoples want climate change assistance
• Getting by in America´s Rustbelt: Detroit´s green projects

• 2 firefighters die trying to save prison work crew – Angeles National Forest fires still burn
  
• Guatemalan court sentences former officer to 150 years for Civil War disappeared
  
• Hurricane Jimena looms offshore – many poor residents decline evacuation
  
• UK children of two mother families can now have both named on birth certificate
  
• Turkey and Armenia open borders and move toward restored diplomacy
  
• Chinese authorities black out media along border with Burma/Myanmar – thousands of displaced remain

As Congress is winding down its summer recess and preparing to return to Washington next week, lawmakers are attempting to set the terms of the health care debate. During August, they largely left their highly charged attacks to the pundits and the public.  But as FSRN’s Leigh Ann Caldwell reports, lawmakers are regrouping and refreshing their PR campaigns on health care.

In 1957, President Eisenhower´s Department of Justice established a Civil Rights Division to enforce anti-discrimination laws.  In recent years, a shift in priorities at the Civil Rights Division signaled that partisan politics had begun shaping how the Federal Government pursued discrimination cases.  Now, Attorney General Eric Holder is promising to revitalize the Civil Rights Division.  FSRN's Sam Greenspan reports from Washington, DC.

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is celebrating his 40th anniversary as Libia´s leader today, with events that resemble the opening ceremony of Olympics games.  Hundreds of dancers will perform choreographed routines in Tripoli´s soccer stadium. And the celebrations will continue for another six days with free concerts and military parades.

Gaddafi is Africa´s longest serving head of state; He came to power in 1969 after leading a group of young officers who overthrew the western-backed King Idriss the II.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s Gaddafi was known for backing nationalist movements and revolutionary groups in Africa and the Middle East.  Western countries regarded him as an international pariah and applied sanctions on his country after details emerged that Gaddafi´s intelligence agents had been involved in terrorist attacks, including the 1988 explosion of a Panamerican Airlines plane as it flew over Scottish territory. The attack killed 243 people.

Two years earlier, Ronald Reagan ordered US forces to bomb Libyan cities in retaliation for Libya´s apparent involvement in the bombing of a disco in Germany, where several US servicemen were injured.

But Libya is a major oil producer and sanctions against the country were lifted earlier this decade after Gaddafi dismantled his nuclear weapons program and allowed UN arms inspectors into his country.  So how will Libya´s tense relations with the west evolve as Gaddafi starts his fifth decade in power?

FSRN spoke with Professor Mansour El-Kikhia, who was born and raised in Libya and currently chairs the political science department at the Universtiy of Texas San Antonio.  El-Kikhia´s the author of Libya´s Gaddafi: the politics of contradiction.

Representatives of several South Asian countries met in Nepal Tuesday to discuss how global warming is impacting the Himalayas.  They want developed countries to help the region´s inhabitants to adapt to the changing climate. FSRN'S Yanmei Xie has more from Kathmandu.

Today FSRN continues our series; Getting by in America´s Rustbelt.  We´re looking at creative projects that could revitalize the de-industrialized region, an area that has suffered from economic crisis since long before the current recession. Today FSRN reporter Daniel Denvir takes us to Detroit, Michigan to look at two proposals for revitalizing the Motor City: green manufacturing and urban agriculture.