Obama Hosts Civil Rights Leaders on African American Unemployment
President Obama hosted a group of civil rights leaders at the White House on Wednesday to discuss the toll of the economic crisis on African Americans. The leaders—the Reverend Al Sharpton, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, and National Urban League chief executive Marc Morial—say they urged Obama to address economic woes facing people of color but backed his approach not to adopt “race-based programs.” Critics have faulted President Obama for not advancing proposals focusing on African Americans’ economic plight. The official unemployment rate for African Americans stands at 16.5 percent, though it’s believed to be higher. While the national unemployment rate dropped below ten percent for the first time in five months in January, the rate for African Americans marked a slight increase.


Study: Lowest-Income Americans Face 30% Unemployment
A new study says low-income Americans are facing a higher unemployment rate today than at the height of the Depression. The Center for Labor Market Studies at Boston’s Northeastern University divided US households into ten groups based on annual income. The lowest tenth, with an annual household income of $12,499 or less, had a fourth-quarter unemployment rate last year of 30.8 percent. The next lowest-income group had an unemployment rate of 19.1 percent. The top two groups, with incomes above $100,000, had an average unemployment of 3.6 percent.


Student Files Suit over Detention for English-Arabic Study Materials
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the federal government on behalf of a college student who was detained and interrogated for four hours because he was carrying a set of English-Arabic flashcards. The student, Nicholas George, says he was carrying the cards to help him learn Arabic as part of his college language studies. The cards had one word in English and Arabic printed on either side. George was detained at Philadelphia’s airport for over four hours, where he says he was handcuffed and harshly interrogated.

Nicholas George: “The] four hours that I was in there, I could see them just pouring over my flashcards like they were going to find some secret on them. I saw them photocopying my flashcards. I heard them describing it on their phones to some superior, like, you know, ‘Well, it’s a small piece of paper with English writing on one side and Arabic writing on the other side.’ And the longer I was in there, it went—you know, you have the time to transition from being shocked to being really angry and saying, you know, this is just wrong, that they have nothing on me, I’ve done nothing wrong, and here I am locked in a cell for four hours.”

The ACLU lawsuit accuses the Transit Security Administration, the Philadelphia police and the FBI of violating George’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizure and his First Amendment right to free speech.


Appeals Court to Hear Arguments in Cell-Phone Tracking Case
A federal appeals court in Philadelphia is expected to hear arguments tomorrow in a case challenging the constitutionality of the US government’s use of cell phone records to track the movements of suspects or persons of interest in investigations. Investigators have been able to identify an individual’s movements and locations based on GPS technology in many cell phones or the nearby phone towers used to beam a given call. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and ACLU have filed suit to block the tracking, saying it violates privacy rights.


Insurance Company Sued for Denying Treatment to 5-Year-Old Cancer Patient
In Philadelphia, the parents of a cancer-stricken five-year-old boy are suing the insurance company HealthAmerica for refusing to cover medical treatment that could prolong their son’s life. The boy, Kyler VanNocker, suffers from the rare childhood cancer neuroblastoma. HealthAmerica is refusing to pay for treatment known as MIBG, because it’s “investigational/experimental” and its effectiveness hasn’t been clinically proven. HealthAmerica had previously covered treatments that didn’t meet the same criteria and ended up helping save Kyler’s life. The hospital where Kyler is being treated has provided the MIBG treatment for free in the hopes HealthAmerica will reverse its stance or Medicaid will cover the costs. The VanNockers say the treatment has improved Kyler’s health and may even have eliminated some of his tumors.


Top Insurers Post Record Profits While Dropping 2.7M Policyholders
A new report says the nation’s five biggest insurance companies set an all-time record for combined profits last year. According to Health Care for America Now, the companies WellPoint, CIGNA, UnitedHealth Group, Aetna Inc. and Humana posted cumulative profits of $12.2 billion. That marks a $4.4 billion, or 56 percent, increase over 2008 and amounts to an average profit margin of 5.2 percent. CIGNA saw the highest profit jump, with an increase of 346 percent. Health Care for America Now says the insurers’ record year was aided by three factors: dropping customers with costly medical needs; diverting spending from medical care to administrative costs and margins; and a higher enrollment in public programs, like Medicare Advantage, that pay insurers higher fees. Overall, the insurance companies dropped 2.7 million customers from their rolls last year. The report’s release comes ahead of a day of nationwide rallies next Wednesday organized by Health Care for America Now.


Improved Corporate Profits Not Leading to Job Growth
New figures show the improving fortune of major corporations isn’t leading to a simultaneous creation of new jobs. Bloomberg News reports a majority of the Standard & Poor 500 have increased revenues to a combined $1.18 trillion—a $518 billion increase over the year before. But capital expenditures, or investments that could have helped create jobs, were down 43 percent.


Survey: Quarter of Job Losses Will Be Permanent
Around 8.4 million jobs have been lost since December 2007. According to economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal, around a quarter of the lost jobs are gone for good. The survey comes as the White House released an economic forecast projecting job growth this year will be too low to significantly address unemployment. The projection says employers will add just 95,000 jobs per month, a number just below what economists say is needed just to keep up with population growth.


Reid Touts Dems’ “Jobs Agenda”
As the figures were released, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced the Senate will soon vote on four provisions aimed at creating new jobs.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: “The American people need a message. The message that they need is that we’re doing something about jobs. We have—we don’t have a jobs bill; we have a jobs agenda. And we’re going to move forward on that jobs agenda.”

Reid’s announcement abandons a bipartisan jobs bill drafted with Republicans. The bill had come under criticism for appeasing lobbyists while failing to sufficiently create jobs.


Labor Dept. Reverses Bush-Era Farmworker Regulations
The Labor Department has unveiled new regulations it says will increase wages and labor protections for American and temporary immigrant farm workers. The new rules restore several provisions revoked in the waning days of the Bush administration, including a new method for calculating farm workers’ wages. The Labor Department says the Bush-era rules ended up reducing the wages by an average one dollar an hour for the year they were in effect.


US, UK Lose Bid to Censor Docs in British Torture Case
A British court has forced the release of classified government documents on the torture of former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Binyam Mohamed. The US and British governments had long tried to keep the documents under wraps, citing the confidentiality of intelligence sharing. The documents contain a judge’s summary of a classified CIA report on Mohamed’s imprisonment, which notes he was subjected to “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment. A British citizen, Mohamed was released from Guantanamo a year ago after seven years in US custody. Clare Algar of Reprieve, a legal group that’s represented Mohamed, said the documents prove Britain was aware of Mohamed’s torture in US custody.
Clare Algar: “Well, it makes it pretty clear that the British intelligence services did know what was going on with Binyam. I think there are a number of ways in which that impacts. Obviously, it’s relevant in relation to his claim for damages. But also, I think it’s relevant in relation to another thing which Reprieve is working on, which is trying to get the torture policy, which the government had in place at that time, the 2004 policy, disclosed, because we still haven’t seen that. And actually, it would be very interesting to know what the government’s position was in relation to what the intelligence services were allowed to do at that time.”
President Obama has continued the Bush administration’s effort to fight the documents’ release since taking office. In a statement, White House spokesperson Ben LaBolt called the court ruling “deeply disappoint[ing]” and said it could “complicate” intelligence-sharing with Britain.


Iraqi Official Calls for Expulsion of Ex-Blackwater Forces
Iraq’s Interior Minister says he’s ordered all guards formerly employed by the private military firm Blackwater to leave Iraq immediately. Jawad Bolani’s comments could lead to the expulsion of up to 250 former Blackwater employees still in Iraq with other companies. The Associated Press is reporting the ex-Blackwater forces have been told they have seven days to leave Iraq or face arrest.


Ex-Employees Accuse Blackwater of Defrauding US, Billing for Prostitutes
In other Blackwater news, two former employees are accusing the company of routinely defrauding the US government on a number of contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. In a newly unsealed lawsuit, the husband-wife plaintiffs, Brad and Melan Davis, say Blackwater officials filed bogus receipts, double billed for the same services, and charged the government for hiring strippers and prostitutes. The suit also accuses Blackwater executives of ignoring “excessive and unjustified” force against Iraqi civilians by Blackwater forces. The accusations were unsealed after the Justice Department declined to join the Davis case.


India Blocks Sale of Monsanto GM Crop
India has put a halt to plans to allow genetically modified eggplant from the agri-giant Monsanto to be sold on the Indian market. On Tuesday, the Indian government reversed a decision to allow Monsanto to sell its eggplant crop, known as Bt Brinjal. It would have been India’s first genetically modified food crop and the world’s first commercially cultivated genetically modified vegetable.


Palestinian Families Appeal to UN Over Israeli Construction of “Museum of Tolerance” on Jerusalem’s Historic Mamilla Cemetery
Palestinian families have filed a petition with the United Nations over the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s plans to build a “Museum of Tolerance” over the historic Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem. Opponents of the project have long questioned how a monument to tolerance can be built on the remains of the graves of generations of Palestinian Muslims.
Columbia University professor and author Rashid Khalidi, a petitioner whose ancestors were buried at the Mamilla Cemetery: This is a cemetery where people have been buried since the twelfth century. People who fought with Saladin in the Crusades are buried there. In fact, one of the descendants of one of the leading figures in the twelfth century is buried in that cemetery…And so, the Israeli authorities are basically pushing ahead with the desecration of a cemetery that they have been, unfortunately, slowly nibbling away at for over three decades. We and other families are taking action as a group of families to try and stop this, after other families failed in the Israeli Supreme Court.

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