Full Coverage: United States

31.03.2004 Environmental groups are upping pressure on the Bush administration, issuing sharp critiques of a wide range of policies such as weakened controls on mercury pollution and a proposal to overturn rules that prevent mining companies from disturbing streambeds.

31.03.2004 BREMEN, Mar 31 (CSM) -- The impersonal white postcards bearing the return address "Camp X-Ray" stopped arriving more than a year ago. Rabiye Kurnaz took little comfort from the short, vague messages she received from her son, who has been a detainee at the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay for nearly two years, but they let her know he was alive.

31.03.2004 WASHINGTON, D.C., Mar 31 (OneWorld) - This week's outburst of apparently Islamist-related violence, which has killed more than 40 people in two major cities in Uzbekistan in the past three days, is spurring renewed attention to the strategically located Central Asian country's deplorable human rights record.

31.03.2004 A coalition of environmental and global justice groups will rally at the U.S. Auto Show in New York April 10 to challenge automakers to dramatically reduce the fuel economy of their cars and trucks.

31.03.2004

© Radio Netherlands

The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday over a legal remedy known as ATCA (Alien Tort Claims Act) that allows non-Americans to sue those who have violated their rights at home in American courts. ATCA has been around as long as the United States, but the Bush administration is trying to get rid of it. Learn more.

31.03.2004 The United States has some of the best schools and universities in the world. But it also has a substantial number of students who are being "left behind, falling through the cracks." Rod Paige, Secretary of Education of the United States, explains his government’s efforts to improve the quality of education and to ensure that no child is left behind.

30.03.2004 During his visit to Washington, Colombian president Álvaro Uribe is seeking continued U.S. investment in Plan Colombia and assurances of U.S.-backing for "Plan Colombia II." President Uribe is promoting his controversial plan to demobilize illegal paramilitary groups and highlighting recent reductions in the cultivation of coca.

30.03.2004

September 11 © Guardian Unlimited

National security analyst John Prados sifts through the testimony given to date at the 9-11 Commission hearings and concludes that the Bush administration gave short-shrift to warnings from Clinton-era predecessors that terrorism in general--and Al Qaeda in particular--required urgent action. But the new government was quick-on-the-draw to target Iraq.

30.03.2004 Philip Zelikow, a longtime Bush insider and executive director of the 9-11 Commission, strongly suggested to an audience at the Univ. of Virginia in 2002 that the prime motivation behind the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was to protect Israel, not the United States, from potential aggression.

30.03.2004 WASHINGTON, D.C. Mar 30 (CSM) -- The world's rising disapproval of US foreign policy stems in part from opposition to the war in Iraq and the "with us or against us" tone of the world's only superpower. But beneath the focus on geopolitics, such hot-button social issues as family planning and women's reproductive rights are also demonstrating America's shifting stature in the world--especially as the Bush administration seeks to placate its socially conservative base.

30.03.2004 WASHINGTON, Mar 29 (IPS) - U.S. Africa and AIDS activists are increasing pressure on the Bush administration to abandon its apparent efforts to block the use of U.S. aid to purchase life-preserving, generic anti-AIDS drugs for needy Africans, about 6,000 of whom die every day from the disease.

30.03.2004 'I share your dream of a Middle East replete with democracy and human rights for all,' writes a prominent Palestinian doctor to President Bush in Grassroots' Online Journal, 'but why not set a better example?'

30.03.2004 Pres. Bush's nomination of William Myers--a lawyer considered barely competent by his own peers--to a key, lifetime judicial post is expected to reach the Senate floor this week. Myers' nomination is opposed by a broad coalition of jurists and legal scholars, environmentalists, Native Americans, and civil rights groups.

30.03.2004 WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb 23 (IPS) - President Bush's new five-year, $15 billion strategy for fighting the global HIV/AIDS pandemic provoked dismay among health activists here Monday, just hours after the 103-page document was released and the first disbursements--totalling $350 million--were announced.

30.03.2004 More than 200 organisations have denounced the U.S. government's attempts to discredit cheaper generic drugs and block their use while promoting U.S. approved drugs, which cost over four times the price.

29.03.2004

Iraq, Middle East

When the strategy for achieving democracy involves a foreign invasion, a brief period of chaos, and a long occupation--as has been the case in Iraq--the whole idea looks pretty unappealing, write two analysts from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace looking at Bush administration strategy in the Middle East.

29.03.2004 The Pesticide Action Network is looking for support in efforts to stopping the chemical and pesticide industries from undermining the POPs Treaty, which seeks to eliminate 12 toxic chemicals that end up on your dinner plate. Legislation currently circulating in Congress would make things worse, says PANNA.

29.03.2004 A leading activist group today joined a growing chorus of critics of U.S. efforts to exclude generic anti-AIDS drugs from distribution through any U.S.-funded program. The EU has reportedly pulled out of a meeting to start today that is widely believed to be aimed at questioning the efficacy of generic drugs, and Canada is considering a similar move, according to AIDS activists.

26.03.2004 Nearly 50 retired senior military personnel joined the Center For Arms Control today in making public a letter to President Bush critiquing his plans to deploy a very costly "system that doesn't work to protect us against a threat that is very unlikely” and has not been adequately tested.

26.03.2004 Opposition to the Bush Administration's efforts to substantially delay a scheduled cleanup of mercury contamination gained momentum today when MoveOn.org joined forces with the Environmental Working Group (EWG), the Learning Disabilities Association, and former EPA Administrator Carol Browner at a Washington, D.C. press conference denouncing the Bush plan.