THE FLORIDA STATE LEGISLATIVE SESSION OF 2003

In this hour WMNF featured a speech by House Speaker Johnny Byrd (R-Plant City) and a discussion of what took place during the session with St. Petersburg Times columnist Howard Troxler. The issues discussed: workers' compensation reform, term limits, the power of the phone and sugar lobby, education spending, the state's tax structure, the raids by legislators on trust funds and possible reforms.

FCAT CONTROVERSY - Amy Snider

Members of the Pinellas County School Board faced off at the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club today in St. Petersburg. The hot topic – the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. WMNF’s Amy Snider has the story….

Pinellas County School Board members Mary Russell and Nancy Bostock addressed the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club today to discuss the FCAT controversy. Students in public school must pass the FCAT in third grade, or be held back. This year, up to 43,000 Florida third graders did not pass the...

THE UNITED STATES: A ROGUE NATION?

Former Reagan administration official Clyde Prestowitz's new book argues that the U.S. should not break treaties or start wars unilaterally because it hurts America's interests in the long term. Prestowitz says that Americans are often oblivious to the way we are perceived by the rest of the world. He says while the U.S. may have good intentions, the results of our foreign policies have many times not been helpful to people in the affected countries. The book: ROGUE NATION published by Basic ...

CONGRESS DEBATES A NATIONAL ENERGY BILL

Phil Compton of the Florida Consumer Action Network and Susan Glickman of the Union Of Concerned Scientists say that a good goal for Congress to pass would be to require that at least 10% of the energy used in the U.S. be generated by renewable sources. Given the unstable world situation, these conservationists say it would be the logical thing to do.

THE TAMPA BAY CARIBBEAN FESTIVAL 2003

WMNF is a co-sponsor of this, the tenth annual festival. The event will include food, music, arts and crafts and dancing. One of the organizers, Angela B, a WMNF reggae host, was the guest for this segment. The major event of the festival is an outdoor concert this coming Sunday at Vinoy Park in St. Petersburg.

SAMI AL-ARIAN - Kristen Friend-Weaver

Intro:

Judge James Moody told lawyers for former USF professor Sami al Arian this morning that the trial for their client and his co-defenders will take place in January of 2005. Al Arian has been imprisoned since February of this year when he and three other men were arrested for terrorist related offenses, and his attorneys had hoped to begin his trial this summer. WMNF’s Kristen Friend-Weaver has more…

Lawyers for Al Arian argued that since their client had not waived his...

IS EXPANSION OF PHOSPHATE MINING IN HARDEE COUNTY A GOOD IDEA?

There are some twenty gypsum stacks distributed in Polk and Hillsborough counties and thousand upon thousands of acres of unreclaimed mines and "clay settling areas" related to phosphate operations. One former phosphate mine, the Teneroc mine south of Lakeland, is being considered as a possible Superfund clean-up site. But if the EPA designates the Teneroc site as a Superfund site, there is a problem: the EPA estimates that there are 20 more clean-up projects of equal magnitude in central Flo...

THE INCARCERATION OF DR. SAMI AL-ARIAN

Al-Arian is the fired USF professor charged earlier this year with being the head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in North America, a group designated as terrorist by the State Department in 1995. One of his attorneys, Jeffrey Brown, says that the former professor is being held in solitary confinement in a federal prison more than an hour north of Tampa. His attorney says that Al-Arian is frequently strip-searched, denied more than one phone call a week, limited to having just two pencils and ot...

TEN CHARACTERISTICS OF A FASCIST STATE

Jeffrey Britt has written an article for FREE INQUIRY MAGAZINE about the common characteristics of several fascist governments. . . Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Pinochet's Chile, Indonesia under Suharto. Britt discussed the characteristics on this segment and explained how close the United States has come to resembling this form of government.

THE ABANDONED PINEY POINT PHOSPHATE PLANT: DOES IT POSE A THREAT TO TAMPA BAY AND THE GULF OF MEXICO?

Two years ago the Mulberry Phosphate Plant went bankrupt -leaving taxpayers holding the bag for environmental cleanup at the company’s Piney Point phosphogypsum waste stack. The stack is nearly overflowing and contains a billion gallons of highly acidic wastewater. State environmental officials fear that if we get heavy rains this summer the plant will overflow - spilling millions of gallons of untreated wastewater into Tampa Bay. The Piney Point Plant is located south of Sun City Center an...