April 29, 2006

NEW YORK — Throngs of supporters gathered around Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint as he led a huge April 24 march over the Brooklyn Bridge to the Manhattan jail where he began serving a 10-day sentence.

SAN FRANCISCO — The labor movement, the faith community, a broad spectrum of immigrant rights organizations and just plain folks joined in a river of 15,000 marchers that flooded city streets from the Mission District’s Dolores Park to the downtown federal building April 23. Observers called it the largest such demonstration in the city to date.

The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s office have launched an investigation into the death of a 14-year-old at a Florida “boot camp.” Martin Lee Anderson, an African American youth, died Jan. 5 shortly after collapsing at the Bay County Sheriff’s Office Boot Camp. Anderson was the third young Black male to die in state custody in Florida in the last three years.

Huge protests planned for April 25, on what would have been day 20 of a nationwide general strike to restore parliamentary democracy, turned into victory rallies after King Gyanendra announced the previous night that the House of Representatives, dissolved in May 2002, would be reinstated.

Orlando Bosch, a former pediatrician, lives a quiet life in a beige stucco Miami home, his family close at hand. He’s been well treated by the authorities. In 1983, the city declared an “Orlando Bosch Day.” However, Bosch is a confessed terrorist and murderer. And in a recent interview on Miami’s Channel 41, he attempted to justify his killings.

The U.S. will push for sanctions against Tehran at the upcoming meeting of the UN Security Council and has not ruled out taking military action to compel Iran’s government to discontinue its uranium enrichment program, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on April 13.

A warning by a senior UN official this week that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is reaching a “potentially dangerous deterioration” was but one of many signs pointing to a deepening crisis. A humanitarian catastrophe is already unfolding among Palestinians in the occupied territories, relief workers say.

President Bush proposes to cut $1.4 million from the program for early detection and screening of breast and cervical cancer, denying services to 4,000 women. The Iraq war costs $1.4 million every 7 minutes, 22 seconds.