Archive - Jun 18, 2010

• Democrats take on court decision on campaign spending
• Feds refuse entry to US citizens
• Poor People's Campaign fights racism and manufacturers in Benton Harbor, Michigan
• Drop out rates stay high in America's urban high schools

• BP CEO Hayward yanked from oil spill clean-up supervision
• Unemployment benefit extension fails again in Senate
• Somali government says it will investigate child soldier allegations
• Puerto Rican University student strike ends in apparent victory
• Fallout continues from controversial Bhopal ruling in India
• Utah man executed by firing squad

Since January, some Democratic lawmakers have been looking for a way to “fix” a Supreme Court decision lifting restrictions on corporate campaign spending. Just as they thought they were getting
close, Democratic leaders withdrew the bill that was scheduled for a vote on Friday. Tanya Snyder has more.

The Obama Administration's expansion of the no-fly list is barring American citizens from returning to the country --  at times, leaving them in limbo in third party countries.

The FBI says it's necessary to keep air travel safe, especially after federal lapses in security over the failed bomb attempt at a Detroit-bound plane last Christmas and other recent incidents. Civil rights groups warn that the policy could violate constitutional protection and, in some cases, amount to rendition, when US citizens are sent to other countries to be interrogated.

Yusuf Wehelie is a 19-year old US citizen detained with his brother by the FBI in Egypt. Although he was eventually allowed to return home, US officials took away his brother Yahya's passport and have not allowed him entry into the US. Yusuf spoke to reporters about the situation earlier this week:

"A man wearing a suit soon entered and asked me some questions.  When I asked him who he was, he claimed to be the CIA and said that I would not go home until I answered his questions and he put me in prison.  He interrogated me for a short time, I then asked to use the restroom and I was taken to a small prison in the airport.  I was kept there overnight.  The next day, after only eating a small piece of bread, I was taken before an egyptian judge who allowed me to be released.  But I wasn't released.  Instead I was put into the back of an Egyptian police car, handcuffed, blindfolded and driven to what I believe to be the police ministry.  I was there and I was placed in a corridor with other prisoners shackled to the wall."

For more on this issue, FSRN’s Dorian Merina spoke with Khadija Athman, she's the civil rights manager with the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is in the midst of a 12 week, 24 city march from the Mississippi Delta to Detroit for the US Social Forum that begins next week. Kelly Benjamin is embedded with the march as it makes it's way to Detroit and files this report from Benton Harbor, Michigan.

President Obama pledged to reform the country’s education system during his 2008 campaign for president. And recently, the president released a plan to help America high school students graduate with the highest rate in the world. But there's significant obstacles to implementing the plan. In at least a dozen of the country's urban cities, drop out rates remain high and only half of all students are graduating. To understand what is causing students in the nation's urban schools to drop put, we sent FSRN’s Matthew Petrillo inside the halls of Philadelphia’s public high schools.