Full Coverage: United States

31.08.2004 Researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the University of Washington are predicting that by the end of this century, increase in summer temperature could double the area affected by wildfires in eleven western states. Their prediction is based on a study of statistical relationship between observed climate change and 85-year record of area burned by wildfires in the 20th century.

31.08.2004 At this year’s X-Games - - the tenth installment of this annual alternative Olympics - - the noise, the crowd, the heat and everything is extreme. And green. From the certified wood used for the competition ramps to the solar powered music platform, the organizers incorporated an unprecedented degree of sustainability into this year’s event because they view the highly interactive nature of the games as a good opportunity educate kids about “environmental issues that affect their sport and their lives.”

31.08.2004 Web browsers who use Google are not likely to “find political advertising with an edge from either side of the ideological spectrum” because the company does not accept ads advocating against any individual, group or organization. Critics condemn this policy as being more about censorship than civility because it disproportionately affects advocacy groups which "are by nature anti-something."

31.08.2004

On board the debtmobile bus © Christian Aid

In continuation of the Freedom from Debt Campaign, September 1 is being observed as call-in day to the White House and Treasury Department to demand full debt cancellation for impoverished countries.

31.08.2004

© Comité de Solidaridad con la Causa Árabe

Psychologists for Social Responsibility, a U.S.-based organization that encourages peace, re-conciliation, solidarity, and non-violence has awarded its 2004 recognition for distinguished contribution to a culture of peace to the Gaza Community Mental Health Program in Palestine.

31.08.2004

scontri a Fallujah - da iraqwar.ru

Residents, municipal workers and volunteers started clean-up and reconstruction operations in the Iraqi city of Najaf this week. Describing the scale of destruction from three weeks of fighting as “horrible,” a government official said re-construction effort will be geared toward hospitals and other public utilities first before compensating people for their personal losses.

30.08.2004 Young media producers are providing an alternative to the mainstream media coverage of events and news in this election year by covering the political conventions and producing their own documentaries.

30.08.2004 Tens of thousands of people hit the streets of New York to protest against US President George W. Bush ahead of the Republican Party convention.

30.08.2004 An attorney representing the family of Fred Woodruff, a CIA agent murdered in Tbilisi, Georgia, is pushing for fresh investigation into the case. The attorney asserts that new documents cast doubt on the Georgian authorities’ official version of the events surrounding the 1993 murder for which a 20-year old soldier was imprisoned.

30.08.2004 Dozens of union members demonstrated against the new regulations that the Bush administration added to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) which went into effect last week. The regulations expand the definitions of “executive” and “administrative” positions, currently exempt from overtime pay requirements. The move is seen as an attempt to reduce the number of workers eligible for overtime pay.

30.08.2004

Lilliput Lab WTO

Rather than commit itself to compromises within the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Bush administration is pursuing a policy of so-called competitive liberalization by signing free trade agreements (FTA) with single nations or sub-regional groupings around the world. But, the policy could backfire, because other countries might do the same and drop their commitment to the WTO to form “regional blocs to compete against the United States.”

30.08.2004 For individuals and groups alike, expressing global public opinion - - known as the world’s “second superpower” - - through participation in protest marches is not an act of civil disobedience but an exercise of basic democratic rights that enables people to “speak truth to power.”

27.08.2004 Two congressmen have expressed concerns about the Bush administration’s security arrangements for a planned shipment of weapons grade plutonium from Charleston, South Carolina to Cherbourg in France. Their letters echo similar arguments made by Greenpeace International about the vulnerability of the trans-Atlantic shipment to possible terrorist attacks.

27.08.2004 Ruling in a lawsuit filed by several environmental groups, a federal district court has ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to publicly disclose the locations of biopharmaceutical crops test fields in Hawaii. Currently, the USDA and biotech industry grow genetically engineered crops in undisclosed locations, raising fears that regular crops could be at risk of cross pollination.

27.08.2004 The Chilean Supreme Court this week upheld a decision by a lower court to strip former president August Pinochet of his immunity from prosecution. The case was brought by relatives of victims of a joint operation by the military regimes of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay in the 1970s that entailed the "disappearance" of some dissidents as well as the kidnapping and smuggling of others to their home countries for torture, interrogation and imprisonment.

27.08.2004

©US Government, Ivy Mike - the first thermonuclear test, 1950

Documentary filmmaker Jon Else argues that the Bush administration's nuclear weapons policy - - which includes the withdrawal of support for the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the pursuit of usable nuclear bunker busters - - is erasing the "hard work and clear thinking" of two generations of American leaders who negotiated and signed strategic arms limitation agreements to keep the possibility of nuclear war at bay.

27.08.2004

Sudanese flag on hut razed by militia in Darfur © Sven Torfinn

Americans can help the people of Darfur by urging the media to cover the atrocities and by letting our government know we care, says Jerry Fowler. Fowler claims that one reason the U.S. government did little while 800,000 Rwandans were murdered in 1994 was because “it didn’t hear much from Americans who cared.”

27.08.2004 With about 600 plants, coal generates more than half of electricity used in the United States. It also causes smog, acid rain, global warming and toxic air emissions. Wind power produces less than one percent of electricity, it requires no fuel, no water and no transportation. It produces no wastes, no pollution and no emission.

26.08.2004 With the return of Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali Sistani to Iraq this week, there is the strong possibility of a negotiated withdrawal for Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi militia from the holy city of Najaf.

26.08.2004 According to data compiled by three civil society organizations, the average wages for working families in the U.S. are at their lowest point since May 2002. Middle and low income workers have seen their wages stagnate or decline and the wages of the lowest income workers further declined in 2003. The report was published in advance of the latest official income and poverty figures to be released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau.