• FDA Establishes New Advising Policy
• Wal-Mart Telling Workers to Vote Against Obama
• Portland Rethinking Transportation Infrastructure
• Policymakers Call for New National AIDS Strategy for the United States
• Colombia's Small-Scale Miners Weary of New Laws

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Baghdad Blasts Kill 20

The Food and Drug Administration is taking new steps to fight charges that the agency has become too cozy with the drug industry. It's now issued new guidelines barring experts from sitting on FDA advisory boards if they have a financial conflict of interest exceeding $50,000. But will the new standards actually keep people safer? Tanya Snyder has more.

Click here for newscast for Tuesday, August 5th, 2008   

Reports have surfaced that Wal-Mart is intimidating employees into voting against Barack Obama. Store and Department Mangers are forced to attend mandatory meetings where they are told that a vote for Democrat Barack Obama would be a vote for unions – which would mean a vote for job loss.  Retail giant Wal-Mart has long associated the formation of unions as bad for its bottom line.  Democrat Barack Obama supports a bill in Congress that proponents say would make it easier for workers to organize. FSRN's Leigh Ann Caldwell spoke with Lance Compa, labor law Professor at Cornell University.

Click here for newscast for Tuesday, August 5th, 2008   

In the year since the Interstate-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis, cities around the nation have been scrambling to restore and replace aging transportation infrastructure. In 1955, the national highway system carried some 65 million cars and trucks. Today, that number has nearly quadrupled to 246 million. At a time when the highway system is badly in need of repair, some places, like Portland, Oregon, have started to debate whether highway infrastructure should be expanded at all, in light of the looming climate crisis.  FSRN's Jenka Soderberg has more.

Click here for newscast for Tuesday, August 5th, 2008   

The Centers for Disease Control released a report indicating that the number of new people infected by HIV in the United States is much higher than previously estimated – 40% HIGHER. Previous figures estimated new infections at 40,000 per year, now the CDC says the number of new cases of HIV infection is closer to 56,000 per year. The CDC says the new data suggests a stable epidemic – but that the numbers are still unacceptably high, with a steady increase in infection rates among gay and bisexual men. On today's newscast, we hear from California Representative Barbara Lee and Paul Zeitz, who works with the Global AIDS Alliance Fund, about a new national AIDS strategy for the United States.