BOOK REVIEW: Alaskan landscape teems with life
Author Lesley Thomas recently passed a milestone. Her first novel, “Flight of the Goose: A Story of the Far North,” has now sold over 1,000 copies, a magic number that means critics are taking notice. It is a saga set in the Bering Strait region of Alaska where she grew up in an interracial Inupiaq-white family.
Fight to defend undocumented youth
BOSTON — Mario Rodas graduated from Chelsea High School last year with honors and hoped to go to college to study computer science. But that was not to happen for the 19-year-old Guatemalan youth. Immigration and Customs (ICE) agents arrested Rodas for being an undocumented immigrant.
GOP schemes to gut Voting Rights Act
WASHINGTON — The civil rights movement has appealed for an outpouring of messages to Congress demanding that it stop far-right Republican stalling and pass HR 9, a bipartisan bill to extend the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for another 25 years.
Forest Service auctions timber from national forest
MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — To the dismay of environmentalists, the U.S. Forest Service auctioned off timber from a remote, burned-over section of a national forest June 9 in the first such sale since the Bush administration eased logging restrictions.
Conservatives favor purity over cancer vaccine
On June 8 the Food and Drug Administration approved a vaccine for the human papillomavirus (HPV). The vaccine appears to be 100 percent effective at protecting against the most prevalent viruses that cause cervical cancer.
Autoworkers want traction on jobs, health care
LAS VEGAS — The fight for jobs and national health care were uppermost on the minds of 2,000 autoworkers and retirees who gathered here for the United Auto Workers convention June 12.
Progressives set sights to Take back America
WASHINGTON — Ask Steve Robinson, a local Democratic committeeman from Lawrence, Kan., if his state is posed to help reverse right-wing rule in Congress, and he looks you straight in the eye and answers a firm “yes.”
EPA proposes no regulation of polluted water transfers
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency said June 1 it will not regulate transfers of water from one place to another — no matter how polluted the water is at the start.
Inconvenient for whom?
Former presidential candidate Al Gore’s new documentary makes him look really good and global warming look really bad. Both concepts seem really credible, thanks to the director’s skill and Gore’s years of dedication to explaining this vital issue.
Torturing national parks
Whenever an administration comes to power that possesses a philosophy totally at odds with an agency’s purpose, mission and traditions, you can expect fireworks. Since January 2001, the Interior Department has been transformed from a department of professionals concerned about the long-term preservation and sustained use of our nation’s resources to a cadre of politically-driven corporate puppets whose mission is to turn over America’s resources to the private business interests and the “wreckreation” movement.
