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> Thur., July 8, 2004
FSRN
FREE SPEECH RADIO NEWS
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Today's lead stories:
Ken Lay Indicted
Pentagon Tribunal for Guantanamo Detainees
Iraq Update
Decline of the Dollar the the Rise of the Euro
Cameroonian Detainee Richard Sitcha
FSRN Headlines
Australia's government has signed a pact with United States
to help develop its controversial missile-defense shield.
Australian officials said they wanted to find a way to protect
the country, even though it faces no current threat from long-range
missiles. Under the agreement, Australia will help the United
States develop, test and possibly operate an expensive system
designed to shoot down ballistic missiles from North Korea.
Critics of the plan say the technology is probably not viable,
and far too expensive--the initial phase of the missile defense
system is budgeted to cost more than $50 billion over the
next five years.
A victory for European abortion rights advocates today: Europe's
top human rights court threw out an appeal from a woman who
wanted her doctor charged with homicide after he made a mistake
that forced her to abort her pregnancy. Naomi Fowler has more
from London.
Tomorrow the Senate intelligence committee will release its
first report on what went wrong with US intelligence leading
up to the war on Iraq. One committee member, however, says
the public will only get half the story. Senator Carl Levin
of Michigan says the report will focus exclusively on failures
at the CIA, not abuses of intelligence by the Bush administration:
sound that was senator Carl Levin of Michigan.
In the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun fresh incursions
by the Israeli military have led to fierce clashes. Laila
el-Haddad reports.
Forcing nurses to work overtime puts patient health at risk--that's
the conclusion of a new report conducted by nursing educators.
Kellia Ramares has more.
In a move that human rights activists are calling a watershed,
the Guatemalan government has released the first installment
of reparations to victims of wartime human rights violations.
It is the first time the state has accepted responsibility
for widespread atrocities committed during Guatemala's civil
war. Catherine Elton reports from Guatemala City and I'm Brian
Edwards-Tiekert for Free Speech Radio News.
[top]
Ken Lay Indicted (4:50)
Former Enron CEO Ken Lay is out on $500,000 bond today after
turning himself into to FBI agents in Houston earlier this
morning. Lay entered a plea of not guilty to charges that
he lied to investors and analysts in the days leading up to
Enron's collapse. From KPFT in Houston, Erika McDonald reports.
[top]
Pentagon Tribunal for Guantanamo Detainees
(3:22)
Today US authorities released an unidentified Swedish national
from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into the
custody of Swedish authorities. So far, the military has released
134 detainees from Guantanamo Bay. There are now just under
600 detainees being held at the detention facility. Last night
the Pentagon announced its plan to comply with the Supreme
Court ruling that it must allow detainees to challenge their
detention. But, as Mitch Jeseritch reports, lawyers for some
of the detainees say the plan falls short.
[top]
Iraq Update (2:20)
Guerillas killed five US and one Iraqi soldier in a mortar
attack on a US military base near Samara, about an hour north
of Baghdad. Twenty US soldiers were also injured in the attack.
The Filipino government also announced today it would bar
its citizens from traveling to Iraq to work, after Al Jazeera
aired a video in which insurgents threaten to kill a Filipino
hostage if his nation does not withdraw from the region. US
military subcontractors employ a number of Filipinos to clean,
cook and serve food on military bases in the country. David
Enders has more from Baghdad.
[top]
Decline of the Dollar the the Rise of the Euro
(3:49)
As the US dollar declines, the nation’s debt has surpassed
levels experienced during the Great Depression, with the country’s
debt triple its gross domestic product in 2003. The dollar
faces intensified pressure as the oil trade continues replacing
dollar with euros. Anastasia Gnezditskaia investigates the
reasons behind the weakening US currency.
[top]
Cameroonian Detainee Richard Sitcha (3:26)
In February, 2001, 9 teenagers were arrested in Cameroon
for petty theft, disappeared while in custody and likely killed.
Richard Sitcha was a paralegal who was working undercover
to investigate the crime, and was subsequently arrested and
tortured himself. He managed to flee Cameroon to the US, where
he was granted political asylum by an immigration judge in
Hartford in January, 2003. A few months later, his case was
reopened by the same judged based on what he called new evidence,
and Sitcha’s asylum was revoked. At that time, Hartford
was the site of a pilot program of the Department of Homeland
Security in which immigrants who lost their appeals were immediately
jailed rather than released on bond pending orders for deportation.
Sitcha, who has been held on $40,000 bail for ten months and
has been ordered deported, still hopes to stay in the US.
Melinda Tuhus reports from the Franklin County Jail in Greenfield
Massachusetts.
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