Progressive news feed

We go to New Orleans to speak with poet and performer Sunni Patterson. She’s from the Lower Ninth Ward, but like thousands of the city’s residents has been forced to live outside and is now based in Houston, Texas. [includes rush transcript]

President Obama visited New Orleans on Sunday and praised the recovery of the city and the resilience of its people five years after Hurricane Katrina. We talk to lifelong New Orleans resident and civil rights attorney, Tracie Washington, and Jordan Flaherty, a community organizer and author of Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six. [includes rush transcript]

This Sunday marked the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Early on the morning of August 29th, 2005, the storm slammed into the Gulf Coast, just south of New Orleans. It ravaged the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and left over 1,800 people dead. Eighty percent of the city of New Orleans was under water after the levees failed. We go back to 2005 to air some of the voices from New Orleans in the aftermath of the storm. [includes rush transcript]

On the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a new documentary, The Big Uneasy, argues that the destruction of New Orleans was an unnatural disaster and how it could have been prevented. We speak with the filmmaker: actor and satirist Harry Shearer. [includes rush transcript]

• Fire Set at Site of Future Mosque in Tennessee
• Mexican Mayor Killed in Border State
• FDA to Begin Inspections of Factory Egg Farms
• UN Report Accuses Rwandan Troops of Committing Genocide in the Congo
• Flooding Continue in Pakistan, a Month After Disaster Began
• Influential Israel Rabbi: Palestinians Should Perish with a Plague
• Glenn Beck Hosts Rally on Anniversary of MLK's March on Washington
• Youth Unemployment Reaches Record Level
• Heavily Armed Army Veteran Shot Dead in Utah

Charity predicts more food shortages in Africa because of EU target to produce 10% of all transport fuels from biofuels by 2020 Friends of the Earth says that biofuel crops, including sugar cane, 'are competing directly with food crops for fertile land'. Photograph: Juan Carlos Ulate/Reuters European Union countries must drop their biofuels targets ...

On Wednesday, about 50 people gathered outside of Penn State's Old Main to tell PSU President Graham Spanier that there are well-informed student activists who are alive and well at Penn State .

Hong Kong locals take to the streets to show their anger after the Manila bus hostage crisis.

Yale's three-day bigotry and hate fest.

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The rival Palestinian governments in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have clamped down harder on opponents and critics in recent months - deepening a nasty split that could prevent Palestinian statehood even if peace talks with Israel kicking off this week succeed against long odds.

By Sharmeen Khan - August 29, 2010

...I don't mind suggestions of moving forward or reflections, and I appreciate all the attempts to sit down and discuss various debates. But I grow increasingly impatient when a sentence starts with, "You know, what YOU should have done is this"...[As] we reflect, I figure I would respond to my top five favorite post-G20 suggestions:

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29 August 2010 - Al Jazeera

The spiritual leader of Israel’s Shas party denounced upcoming talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and wished for the death of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas...Ovadia Yosef, a former Israeli chief rabbi, called Palestinians "evil, bitter enemies of Israel"..."[PA President Mahmoud Abbas] and all these evil people should perish from this world...God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians."

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With the melting of the polar ice cap and the opening of the fabled Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans for the first time in recorded history, the scramble for the Arctic - reported to contain 30 percent of the world's undiscovered natural gas and 13 percent of undiscovered oil according to last year's US Geological Society - is underway in earnest. The military value of the navigability of the passage is of an even greater and more pressing significance...

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This heroic man is serving a life sentence on bogus charges - for his activism.

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A former finalist in PETA's vegetarian girl next-door contest was released from jail on bond Saturday after being charged with leaving the scene of an accident last week that killed a man and his dog.

A Republican civil war is raging, with righterthanthou conservatives dominating ever more primaries in a fight for the party's soul.

John Lennon's widow, the Japanese Happening artist Yoko Ono, plans to celebrate the 70th birthday of the slain ex-Beatle in Iceland, location of one of her works of art.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska is urging the city of Hastings to repeal its ordinance limiting the display of campaign signs.

By Anthony Dimaggio - August 28, 2010

Anyone who has listened to right wing radio...or to Rush Limbaugh 'dittohead' true believers should be familiar with the “free market can solve all America’s problems” rhetoric...I thought this rhetoric was so discredited following the economic collapse that it would be a while before it resurfaced, but that turned out to be a poor assumption. Being a conservative with a megaphone, it turns out, means never having to say you’re sorry or consider alternative evidence and points of view.

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For five years, Chavia Ali's attempts to start a disability rights group were thwarted - by prejudice, a lack of money and the Syrian government's stranglehold on civic life.