Wednesday's weekly series, In the News, is where the hosts looks at the most important ongoing developments of the week and puts them into perspective. Today they talk about the First Step Act getting passed through the Senate, Mike Flynn's hearing yesterday, and the Israeli military crackdown on the West Bank.
Wednesday's regular segment, Beyond Nuclear, is about nuclear issues, including weapons, energy, waste, and the future of nuclear technology in the United States. Kevin Kamps, the Radioactive Waste Watchdog at the organization Beyond Nuclear, and Sputnik news analyst and producer Nicole Roussell, join the show.
Newly released internal documents reveal that, for years, Facebook gave some of the world's largest tech companies more intrusive access to its users private data than it had previously disclosed, effectively exempting those companies from privacy rules. In other words, Facebook sold your private data and then lied to you about it. Brian and John speak with New Haven, Connecticut by web developer and technologist Chris Garaffa.
A Defence Department official confirmed President Trump's tweet this morning that he will order the withdrawal of all US troops from Syria. The president said that the only reason the US was in Syria was to defeat ISIS. That has been accomplished and so the troops will come home. Neither the president nor the Defence Department, however, gave a timeline for the withdrawal. Rick Sterling, an investigative journalist and member of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and Sputnik news analyst Walter Smolarek, join the show.
The Federal Reserve announced at 2:00 today that it would increase the prime interest rate by 0.25 percent to ward off inflation. Steve Keen, the author of "Debunking Economics" and the world's first crowdfunded economist, whose work is at patreon.com/ProfSteveKeen, joins Brian and John.
Police in Cleveland confirmed yesterday that an African American man was denied the right to cash his paycheck because bank tellers thought he made too much money for the check to be good. When he demanded that they call his employer to confirm the check's authenticity, the tellers called 911 and the man was handcuffed and put into a police car. The police and bank officials later apologized. Kofi Ademola, an activist and organizer with the Black Lives Matter movement, and Sputnik news analyst Walter Smolarek, join the show.
In a major policy reversal, the Trump Administration is changing the way it reviews sponsors who want to care for migrant children in custody. The change could lead to thousands of children being released to family members already in the US. There are currently nearly 15,000 unaccompanied children being held in government detention centres. Brian and John speak with Isabel Garcia, co-founder of Coalición de Derechos Humanos.
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