In Historic Vote, UN Declares Water a Fundamental Human Right
The United Nations General Assembly has declared for the first time that access to clean water and sanitation is a fundamental human right. In an historic vote, 122 countries supported the resolution, and over forty countries abstained from voting, including the United States, Canada and several European and other industrialized countries. There were no votes against the resolution.

Nearly one billion people lack clean drinking water, and over two-and-a-half billion do not have basic sanitation. Bolivia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Pablo Solon, introduced the resolution at the General Assembly.

PABLO SOLON: [translated] At the global level, approximately one out of every eight people do not have drinking water. In just one day, more than 200 million hours of the time used by women is spent collecting and transporting water for their homes. The lack of sanitation is even worse, because it affects 2.6 billion people, which represents 40 percent of the global population. According to the report of the World Health Organization and of UNICEF of 2009, which is titled "Diarrhoea: Why Children Are [Still] Dying and What We Can Do," every day 24,000 children die in developing countries due to causes that can be prevented, such as diarrhea, which is caused by contaminated water. This means that a child dies every three-and-a-half seconds. One, two, three. As they say in my village, the time is now.


Rep. Maxine Waters to Face Ethics Trial

Rep. Maxine Waters

Congressional sources have revealed that Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California will face an ethics trial later this year likely related to allegations that she sought to help OneUnited Bank receive federal bailout funds at a time when her husband owned stock in the bank and served on its board. OneUnited Bank is one of the nation’s largest minority-owned banks. Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel is also facing an upcoming trial for thirteen alleged violations of House ethics rules. Both Waters and Rangel are longtime members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The caucus has long complained that the House ethics process disproportionately targets African Americans in the chamber. The Los Angeles Times reports that since its 2009 inception, the Office of Congressional Ethics has investigated at least eight members of the Black caucus.


Wyclef Jean Considers Presidential Run in Haiti
The Grammy-award winning singer Wyclef Jean has taken legal steps toward running for president in his home country of Haiti, but he says he has not made a definite decision to run. Haiti will hold elections on November 28 to elect a new leader to replace President René Préval, whose term ends in February. Wyclef Jean spoke to reporters at the Port-au-Prince International Airport.

Wyclef Jean: "A lot of rumors going around that I am running for president. I have not declared that, despite what you’re hearing. Right now, like the press is saying, as a family, we must decide what we’re going to do, because it’s a big sacrifice, but it’s the real sacrifice of the country. But we could just say right now the voice of the youth is definitely drafting us."


Two NOLA Police Officers Charged over 2005 Beating
Two New Orleans police officers have been indicted on federal charges in the beating death of a black man named Raymond Robair one month before Hurricane Katrina. A total of eighteen New Orleans police officers are now facing charges as part of a sprawling Justice Department probe.


On Eve of Major Protests, Federal Judge Blocks Key Provisions of Arizona Anti-Immigrant Law
A federal judge in Phoenix blocked key provisions of Arizona’s notorious anti-immigrant law, hours before it was scheduled to take effect. US District Judge Susan Bolton ruled a partial injunction would apply to the portion of the law that requires police officers to stop and interrogate anyone they suspect is an undocumented immigrant. The ruling came in response to an injunction requested by the Obama administration, which had argued in a lawsuit that the law was unconstitutional and warned the provisions would result in racial profiling.

The law sparked mass protests across the country and a boycott of Arizona. Demonstrators filled the streets outside the courthouse in Phoenix and in front of the State Capitol.

Judge Bolton said in her 36-page decision that it was "not in the public interest" for Arizona to enforce provisions that preempt federal enforcement of immigration law. Also put on hold were parts of the law requiring foreigners to apply for or carry certain documents, making it a state crime for undocumented workers "to solicit, apply for or perform work," and mandating verification of the immigration status of any arrested person prior to release. Bolton ruled the partial injunction should apply until the issues are resolved by the courts.

The ruling meant that other portions of the law, known as Senate Bill 1070, took effect on midnight. Among them are provisions that prohibit state authorities from limiting enforcement of federal immigration laws, a provision that makes it a crime to impede traffic by picking up day laborers, and a part of the law that creates misdemeanor crimes for harboring and transporting undocumented immigrants.


Citigroup to Pay $75M to Settle Subprime Mortgage Claims
Citigroup has agreed to pay $75 million to settle federal claims that it hid more than $40 billion in subprime mortgage investments that were deteriorating. The holdings ultimately crippled the bank and forced the federal government to rescue the bank. As part of the settlement, two high-ranking Citigroup executives have agreed to pay a total of $180,000 in fines for their involvement in the subprime mortgage investments.


Obama Defends Sweeping Education Reforms in Face of Criticism from Minority and Teachers’ Groups
President Obama took on critics of his administration’s sweeping education reform plan in a nearly hour-long speech at the National Urban League’s 100th anniversary convention.

Through the $4.35 billion Race to the Top initiative, Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan has prodded states to lift caps on charter schools and link student achievement to teacher pay. The administration has also succeeded in getting at least twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia to sign on to common academic standards that would for the first time set shared performance goals for math and reading.

In his address, Obama said his plan for education is working, but he acknowledged it has come under criticism. Critics say that Race to the Top is building on the George W. Bush education agenda, which is to test and punish, to close schools, to evaluate teachers in ways that are unfair and unsound from a research point of view, and to increase the number of privately managed charter schools.


Google Teams Up with CIA to Fund "Recorded Future" Startup Monitoring Websites, Blogs & Twitter Accounts
Investors at the CIA and Google are both backing a company that claims to represent the next phase of intelligence gathering, according to a report from Wired. It’s called Recorded Future, and it monitors tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts in real time in order to find patterns, events and relationships that may predict the future. Google has done business with America’s spy agencies before, but this seems to be the first time the CIA and Google have funded the same startup at the same time.

The report comes on the heels of a new opinion poll released by the nonpartisan group Consumer Watchdog that shows nearly two-thirds of Americans are troubled by what’s being called Google’s "Wi-Spy" scandal. Wi-Spy refers to revelations that Google’s Street View cars operating in some thirty countries snooped on private Wi-Fi networks over the last three years. Google has admitted that its cars recorded communications from unencrypted home Wi-Fi networks as they photographed people’s homes for Google’s Street View.


US Seeks Access to More Internet Data Without Court Order
The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to obtain internet records of users without a court order. If Congress approves the plan, the FBI would be able to secretly issue a National Security Letter to an internet provider and obtain who users send email to, the times and dates of e-mails sent and received, and possibly a log of every website visited. Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said, "Our biggest concern is that an expanded [National Security Letter] power might be used to obtain Internet search queries and Web histories detailing every Web site visited and every file downloaded."


WikiLeaks Volunteer Detained, Questioned over Afghan War Logs
There have been a number of developments in the US government’s investigation into the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks and the recent leaking of over 90,000 secret military reports about Afghanistan. On Thursday, authorities at Newark Liberty International Airport detained and questioned a twenty-seven-year-old WikiLeaks volunteer named Jacob Appelbaum. He was questioned for three hours and had his laptop computer and three cellphones seized. Appelbaum is a US citizen who was arriving in Newark after an international flight.

Meanwhile, investigators in the Army’s criminal division have reportedly questioned two students in Boston about their ties to WikiLeaks and Private First Class Bradley Manning, a leading suspect in the leak. Adrian Lamo, the hacker who turned Manning in, says two students at MIT have admitted to him that they assisted Manning in downloading and distributing the leaked documents.


Greenspan Opposes Keeping Bush’s Tax Cuts on Wealthy
Former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan has come out in favor of letting the Bush administration tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire. Appearing on Meet the Press, Greenspan said the tax revenue is needed to reduce the federal budget deficit.

Alan Greenspan: "I’m very much in favor of tax cuts, but not with borrowed money. And the problem that we’ve gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money. And, at the end of the day, that proves disastrous. And my view is I don’t think we can play subtle policy here."


Life Insurance Firms Probed for Defrauding Families of Dead Soldiers
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has announced plans to investigate whether life insurance companies, including Prudential and MetLife, are defrauding the families of dead American soldiers and Marines out of their full death benefits. A recent investigation by Bloomberg News revealed Prudential earns interest of more than five-and-a-half percent on veterans’ life insurance policies and pays beneficiaries only one percent.


Massive Flooding Kills Over 1,200 in Pakistan
More than 1,200 people have died in northwest Pakistan in the region’s worst flooding in decades. 27,000 people are still trapped by rising waters, and about a million people have been displaced. The Edhi Foundation, a private relief organization, says the death toll could top 3,000 in the coming days. In Swat, floods have destroyed over 14,000 homes and twenty-two schools. Rescue efforts have been hampered in part because the flood destroyed dozens of bridges. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is facing intense criticism for his government’s slow response to the crisis and his decision not to cancel a planned trip to Europe.


Pakistan Declares Day of Mourning After Plane Crash
In Pakistan, heavy rain hampered recovery efforts at the site of a plane crash that killed all 152 people on board on July 28. Investigators say the plane crashed in bad weather. Pakistan a day of mourning after the crash.


2000-2009 Marked Warmest Decade on Record
A new scientific report has determined the last decade was the warmest on record. The report also found that each of the last three decades has been much warmer than the decade before. About 300 scientists from forty-eight countries contributed to the 2009 State of the Climate report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 2010 is already breaking temperature records. Last month was the hottest June on record. And this year had the warmest average temperature for January to June since record keeping began.


Israel Demolishes Bedouin Village in Negev Desert
Bedouin Palestinians living in Israel’s Negev Desert have become homeless after police demolished their entire village. 1,500 Israeli police arrived at the village of al-Araqib. Within hours, the entire village of forty to forty-five homes was completely razed. The village head, Sheikh Siyah al-Turi, said, "They destroyed our homes. They uprooted our trees. They took our generators, our cars and our tractors. There is nothing left. It’s as though we were never here." Israel defended the demolitions, saying the homes were built illegally.

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