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> Wed., Aug. 25, 2004
FSRN
FREE SPEECH RADIO NEWS
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Today's lead stories:
Fish Mercury Levels
Immigrants in NYC Losing Drivers Licenses
Health Cost Recovery in Africa
Senegalese Businessmen Respond to Chinese Merchants
German Expellee Restitution Claims
FSRN Headlines
Today is being called a National Day of Conscience by as
many as 3-thousand hunger strikers hoping to bring attention
to the crisis in Sudan. Catherine Komp has more.
An Israeli judge is ordering the deportation of a journalist
on the grounds that her political beliefs make her more likely
to be used by terrorists. Naomi Fowler has more from London.
Usage of so-called non-lethal weapons at the U.S. Mexican
border is being questioned by some in the Mexican parliament.
Vladamir Flores reports from Oaxaca City.
Nigeria’s senate has directed the multinational oil
company Shell Petroleum to pay 1 point 5 billion dollars as
compensation to communities in the Niger Delta. Sam Olukoya
reports from Lagos.
Today, Iraq’s top Shi’a leader reached country
through Basra. Grand Ayat Allah Ali al-Sistani left a London
hospital earlier in the week and encouraged followers to march
to Najaf with him. U.S. occupational forces along with some
Iraqi troops are clamping down hard on Najaf against fighters
who say they are defending cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Al-Sadr
has refused to stand down his army until all foreign armies
leave Iraq. Under a heavy barrage of tank fire and air strikes,
Sadr supporters barricaded themselves in the Imam Ali shrine
– one of their holiest of sites as glass shards and
dust flew around them in a nearby mausoleum. Tens of thousands
of Iraqis from Baghdad and southern Iraq pledged to answer
the ayatollah's call to march on the holy city to help resolve
the crisis peacefully.
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Fish Mercury Levels - 3:47
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, fish caught
in nearly all lakes and rivers within the United States are
contaminated with Mercury, a toxic material that interferes
with the brain and nervous system and poses a particular health
risk to pregnant women and children. Mitch Jeserich reports
from Washington DC.
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Immigrants in NYC Losing Drivers Licenses
- 3:34
Authorities around the nation are cracking down on undocumented
immigrants with drivers licenses. The Department of Motor
Vehicles in New York is now taking a role in assisting federal
immigration agencies, including the Department of Homeland
Security, to smonitor immigrants. Leigh Ann Caldwell has more
from WBAI in New York City.
[top]
Health Cost Recovery in Africa - 4:24
In recent years, donors and international financial institutions
have pushed for the cost-recovery of national health expenditure
across Africa. In many often impoverished, African countries
health costs have become unsustainable. The idea is that every
patient should have to pay for treatment, regardless of their
personal financial situation, but with the theoretical safeguard
of free treatment for those who can't afford to pay. Yet,
in practice, in countries where the vast majority of people
live in abject poverty, governments don't yet have the capacity
to provide universal means-testing - which in turn entails
that thousands go without health-care. The impact is especially
acute in those countries where years of conflict have devastated
the national infrastructure. Rupert Cook reports.
[top]
Senegalese Businessmen Respond to Chinese Merchants
- 3:33
Since 1998, Chinese shops are opening in growing numbers
in Senegal’s capital Dakar. The phenomenon has triggered
the anger of national businessmen who complain about illegal
settlement and illegal competition. But the Chinese know the
support of Senegal people, consumers, trade unionists and
human rights groups as they rallied last week to contest what
Senegalese press dubbed terrorism of Senegalese businessmen
against Chinese commerce. The thin line between safeguarding
national interest and xenophobia is yet to cross, which would
break Senegal’s image of a hospitable country. Human
rights activists press the alarm button to draw the authorities’
attention. Can Senegal’s 10 million market support People’s
Republic of China? The answer is yet to come. From Senegal,
Ndiaga Seck reports.
[top]
German Expellee Restitution Claims - 3:25
Those are words of Charles de Gaule 60 years ago, declaring
that Paris is destroyed, but Paris is liberated. Tanks lined
the French capital's Place de la Concorde today, as it celebrates
the 60-year anniversary of its liberation from the Nazis.
The liberation was seen as a largely symbolic event that culminated
in the end of French cooperation with the Nazis. Meanwhile,
the league of German Expellees headed by Erika Steinbach is
made up of people forced from their homes in Eastern Europe
after World War II. The league's membership said they were
willing to drop any financial claims against Poland if the
German government clears up legal ambiguities. Meanwhile,
"Prussian Trust", a right-wing organization representing
Germans resettled from Poland on Stalin's orders in 1946,
has announced it will file ten lawsuits in Polish and international
courts demanding the return of German expellees' property
left in Poland after World War II. This conflicts with German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's statement that Germany would
argue against such cases in international tribunals, and Berlin's
belief that there are no legal foundations for such claims
towards Poland and that the lawsuits have no chance for success.
Although analysts welcomed Schroeder's stance and apology
for "German shame" during the Warsaw Uprising, they
say that much needs to be done to undone damage done by expellees'
organisations on the way to full reconciliation. Danuta Szafraniec
reports from Warsaw.
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