Noam Chomsky, the MIT professor, author and dissident intellectual, just turned eighty years old this past December. He has written over 100 books, but despite being called “the most important intellectual alive” by the New York Times, he is rarely heard in the corporate media. We spend the hour with Noam Chomsky. He spoke recently here in New York at an event sponsored by the Brecht Forum. More than 2,000 people packed into Riverside Church in Harlem to hear his address, titled “Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours.” In his talk, Chomsky discussed the global economic crisis, the environment, wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, resistance to American empire and much more. [includes rush transcript]

We play an excerpt of an extended interview with Australian investigative journalist, John Pilger. Speaking about the US healthcare system, Pilger says, “What is it about US legislators that they appear to be so in bed with such powerful interests, such as the insurance companies, that they can’t represent their own people’s needs, their own people’s basic human rights.” [includes rush transcript]

President Obama signed into law a bill last week that gives the US government broad regulatory power over cigarettes and other tobacco products. Obama said the law would curb the ability of tobacco companies to market their products to children. But several public health professionals have come out strongly against the new legislation. They argue that it was largely shaped by Philip Morris, now called Altria Group, the largest cigarette company in the country. We speak with Dr. Joel Nitzkin, chair of the Tobacco Control Task Force of the American Association of Public Health Physicians. [includes rush transcript]

We speak with NYU professor Greg Grandin about his new book, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City. The book tells the story of Henry Ford, the richest man in the world in the 1920s, and his attempt to build a rubber plantation and a miniature Midwest factory town deep in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon. [includes rush transcript]

The ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has vowed to return to Honduras within the next few days in an attempt to reclaim power. Zelaya was forced out of office in a military coup d’etat on Sunday. He will reportedly return to Honduras accompanied by the OAS Secretary General, the presidents of Argentina and Ecuador, and the head of the UN General Assembly. But Roberto Micheletti, who was appointed interim leader by the Honduran congress, has given warning that Zelaya will be arrested should he return, regardless of who is traveling with him. We speak with Latin American historian Greg Grandin. [includes rush transcript]

Irish Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire speaks to us from her jail cell in Israel. She was taken into custody along with twenty others, including former US Congress member Cynthia McKinney, when the Israeli military boarded their ship in international waters as it tried to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. [includes rush transcript]

In Iraq, a deadly car bomb in the northern city of Kirkuk has killed up to forty people and injured another 100. Tuesday’s bombing came hours after US troops withdrew from major Iraqi towns and cities, marring celebrations on a day that is now officially declared as “National Sovereignty Day,” a public holiday. We go to Iraq to speak with Sahar Issa, an Iraqi reporter working with the Baghdad Bureau of McClatchy Newspapers. We also speak with investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill about his article, “Iraq’s ‘National Sovereignty Day’ is US-Style Hallmark Hype.” [includes rush transcript]

We take a look at ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya with journalist Nikolas Kozloff, author of Revolution!: South America and the Rise of the New Left. Despite initial conservative leanings, Zelaya took on powerful vested interests in Honduras. " [Zelaya] was at odds politically with the Honduran elite for the past few years and had become one of Washington’s fiercest critics in the region," writes Kozloff. “Even if the Obama Administration did not play an underhanded role in this affair, the Honduran coup highlights growing geo-political tensions in the region.” [includes rush transcript]

Romeo Vasquez, a general who led the military coup in Honduras against President Manuel Zelaya, received training at the US School of the Americas. The SOA has trained more than 60,000 soldiers, many of whom have returned home and committed human rights abuses, torture, extrajudicial execution and massacres. According to School of the Americas Watch, Vasquez attended the SOA in 1976 and 1984. The head of the Air Force, Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo, also studied there in 1996. We speak with Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of the School of the Americas Watch. [includes rush transcript]

The ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya is expected to meet with US diplomats in Washington today before attempting to return to Honduras Thursday, five days after being deposed by a military coup. Meanwhile, the streets in Honduras remain tense, and the crackdown on the media has reportedly not been lifted. We go to Honduras to speak with human rights activist, Dr. Juan Almendares. [includes rush transcript]

In a dramatic blow to SEIU’s efforts to raid UNITE HERE members and jurisdictions, fifteen of the nation’s leading unions pledged Monday to provide UNITE HERE with “material and moral” support, according to an article in the Huffington Post. Democracy Now! co-host and Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez says this is “a seminal moment in the American labor movement.”

Fans around the world are still mourning the passing of Michael Jackson, the “King of Pop.” Jackson catapulted to fame on the Motown Records label as the youngest member of the Jackson 5 but soon embarked on a solo career that made him the biggest star in the country and one of the most globally recognized entertainers. Michael Jackson’s immensely popular music, dance moves and videos were known and loved across the world, but in the last decade of his life, it was his multiple plastic surgeries and allegations of child molestation that dominated media attention. We take a look at the life and legacy of the pop icon with Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Margo Jefferson, author of On Michael Jackson, and Duke University professor Mark Anthony Neal. [includes rush transcript]

Bernard Madoff, the convicted mastermind behind one of the biggest financial frauds in US history, was ordered Monday to serve 150 years in prison, the maximum sentence allowed. Madoff pleaded guilty in March to running a massive Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of some $50 billion. Federal District Judge Denny Chin said it was important that the severity of the sentence serve as a deterrent to future offenders. We speak with financial journalist, Bethany McLean of Vanity Fair. [includes rush transcript]

In a national broadcast exclusive, we speak with the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa. He was in New York attending the United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development. In a wide-ranging interview, we speak with President Correa about global capitalism, his decision not to renew the license for the US military base in Manta, the $12 billion lawsuit against Chevron brought by thousands of Amazon residents for toxic oil pollution, Ecuador’s relationship with Colombia, and his advice to President Obama: “To learn more and come to better understand the region, and that [Obama] not let himself be taken along by the power of certain media outlets that are compromised with certain ideological fundaments, and that the heroes aren’t necessarily heroes, and the villains aren’t necessarily villains.” [includes rush transcript]

In the first military coup in Central America in a quarter of a century, the Honduran military has ousted the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. Former Parliamentary speaker Roberto Micheletti, who was sworn in as Zelaya’s replacement on Sunday, has imposed a two-day nationwide curfew. But hundreds of Zelaya supporters remain on the streets, and shots were fired at protesters near the presidential palace early Monday morning. We go to Honduras to speak with Honduran medical doctor and award-winning human rights activist, Dr. Juan Almendares, and NYU professor of Latin American history, Greg Grandin. [includes rush transcript]

Forty years after Stonewall, where is the gay rights movement headed? What does the focus on marriage equality mean for the goals of gay liberation? We speak with activist, writer and historian, Lisa Duggan. “It remains to be seen whether a call for full civil equality can produce mass mobilization, or whether it might soon be reduced to a call for gay marriage only, or worse, to the production of just another commercially sponsored gay parade,” Duggan writes. “The devil will be in the details, which will be settled in the weeks to come.” [includes rush transcript]

Today is the fourth annual Trans Day of Action for Social and Economic Justice. A rally to the Stonewall Inn is planned for this afternoon to “let the world know, that on the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, the rebellion is not over.” We speak with transgender activist, Mya Leilani Vazquez. [includes rush transcript]

Commemorations are being held across the world this weekend to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising that launched the modern gay and lesbian rights movement. The uprising began in the morning on June 28, 1969, when New York City police officers raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. As the police began dragging some of the patrons out, members of the gay community decided to fight back, sparking three days of rioting. We play a documentary, Remembering Stonewall, with the voices of people who were there and speak with historian David Carter. [includes rush transcript]

Ahead of congressional debates on the Employee Free Choice Act, or EFCA, we take a look at a long struggle of over 600 Rite Aid workers in California to form a union. The workers are based in Lancaster, California, at the Southwest distribution center for the nation’s third largest drugstore. After a two-year struggle, a majority of Rite Aid workers at the site voted to join the International Longshore Workers Local 26. The story has gained national attention and focused attention in the fight over the Employee Free Choice Act. We speak with a Rite Aid worker and with Ken Silverstein about his article in Harper’s Magazine, “Labor’s Last Stand: The Corporate Campaign to Kill the Employee Free Choice Act.” [includes rush transcript]

In a Democracy Now! exclusive interview, we speak with Andrew Stepanian, an animal rights activist who was jailed at a secretive prison known as a Communication Management Unit, or CMU. Stepanian is believed to be the first prisoner released from a CMU and will talk about his experience there for the first time. He was sentenced to three years along with six other activists for violating a controversial law known as the Animal Enterprise Protection Act. The ACLU has filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of CMUs. We also speak with Stepanian’s lawyer and a reporter covering the story. [includes rush transcript]

More than thirty people were arrested on Tuesday, including NASA climate scientist James Hansen and actress Daryl Hannah, protesting mountaintop removal in West Virginia. The protesters were charged with obstructing officers and impeding traffic after they sat down in the middle of the road outside of the facility run by Massey Energy. It was the latest protest in a growing civil disobedience campaign against mountaintop removal. We speak with actress Daryl Hannah and community activist Bo Webb. [includes rush transcript]

In Iran, supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have called for another protest in Tehran today in defiance of the government ban. At least nineteen demonstrators have been killed in the ten days since the election of June 12th. The government continues to detain journalists and activists and has set up a special court for demonstrators. We speak with Columbia University Professor Hamid Dabashi. He writes, “I see the moment we are witnessing as a civil rights movement rather than a push to topple the regime.” [includes rush transcript]

At least sixty people have reportedly died in the South Waziristan region of western Pakistan after a US drone attack Tuesday. The attack came as the Pakistani army and air force expanded their military operations from Swat into South Waziristan. We speak with Pakistani opposition figure and cricketing legend Imran Khan, the leader of the political party known as the Movement for Justice. Khan has been an outspoken critic of both US drone attacks as well as the Pakistani military’s offensive against the Taliban. [includes rush transcript]

A federal judge has ordered the release of another prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay, thirty-year-old Syrian national Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak al-Janko. In the year 2000, al-Janko was tortured by al-Qaeda, who accused him of being a Western spy, and he was imprisoned by the Taliban for eighteen months. He was then captured by the United States in 2002 and spent the next seven years in Guantanamo. On Monday, District Court Judge Richard Leon rejected the government’s position that al-Janko had once been a part of al-Qaeda, saying it “defies common sense.” We speak with British journalist Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison. [includes rush transcript]

As thousands in Iran turn to the web to make their voices heard around the world, a new report finds telecoms in Europe have helped the Iranian government develop one of the world’s most sophisticated mechanisms to censor the internet. It’s called deep packet inspection, and it’s also being used here at home. We speak with Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press. [includes rush transcript]

The Obama administration has made opening more charter schools one of its top priorities in its plans to improve the nation’s education system. On Monday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke at the annual gathering of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in Washington, DC. His address came on the heels of a new Stanford University report that found that, on average, students in charter schools were not faring as well as students in traditional public schools. [includes rush transcript]

In Somalia, thousands have fled the capital of Mogadishu as government forces continue to fight opposition Islamist fighters. Fierce street fighting over the past month has claimed hundreds of lives. Just last week, bombs killed two lawmakers, the country’s security minister, the police commander of Mogadishu and nearly two dozen civilians. We speak to Somali American writer and human rights activist Sadia Ali Aden. [includes rush transcript]

The Guardian newspaper reports staff at Goldman Sachs can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm’s 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms. We speak to Nomi Prins, a former managing director for Goldman Sachs in New York, about the possible record bonuses, President Obama’s proposed reforms of the financial regulatory system and the “The Big Bank Bailout Payback Bamboozle.” [includes rush transcript]

Iran’s powerful Guardian Council has admitted that voting irregularities took place in at least fifty cities and that the number of votes cast exceeded the number of voters by a difference of as many as three million ballots. This comes as reformist presidential hopeful Mir Hossein Mousavi has called for another round of big street protests after a brutal crackdown this weekend. We speak to Iranian American independent filmmaker and journalist Kouross Esmaeli. [includes rush transcript]

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama vowed to work to overturn the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays and lesbians in the military. But since taking office, Obama has made no specific move to do so. Last week, the Supreme Court decided not to hear a challenge to “don’t ask, don’t tell.” In a brief, the Obama administration had said the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is "rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion.” We speak to former Army Secretary Clifford Alexander and Nathaniel Frank, author of Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America. [includes rush transcript]

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama signed a memorandum to extend some, but not all, benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees. Comprehensive healthcare, for example, is not included. President Obama’s promise to work to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, Wednesday came one week after his administration filed a controversial legal brief supporting DOMA, an action which greatly disappointed activists fighting for marriage equality. We speak with Cleve Jones, one of the giants of the gay rights and AIDS awareness movements. He is the founder of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and the co-founder of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. In the 1970s, Cleve Jones was a friend of the gay rights leader Harvey Milk. [includes rush transcript]

In his first public remarks after days of demonstrations, Ayatollah Khamenei denied any possibility that last week’s vote had been rigged and defended President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad as the rightful winner of the election. At the same time, the Iranian government continues to arrest journalists, prominent reformists and associates of the opposition candidates, including twenty-six-year-old Mohammadreza Jalaeipour, the top strategist for presidential challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi. We speak to Toronto Globe and Mail reporter George McLeod. On Sunday, he was arrested, briefly detained, and beaten by Iranian security forces. [includes rush transcript]

Twenty years ago today, I.F. Stone died at the age of eighty-one. He was the premier investigative reporter of the twentieth century, a self-described radical journalist. I.F. Stone’s legacy of work spanned the New Deal, World War II, McCarthyism, the Cold War, Israel/Palestine, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and beyond. He scooped reporters right and left. As the FBI tracked him, he tracked down the story. He is best remembered for his self-published I.F. Stone’s Weekly. At its peak in the 1960s, the one-man publication had a circulation of about 70,000. We speak to his biographer, D.D. Guttenplan, and air historic recordings of I.F. Stone at the 1965 Vietnam teach-in in Berkeley, CA, and on The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. [includes rush transcript]

Sen. Hiram Monserrate has switched sides—again. Monserrate stunned the New York’s political establishment and paralyzed the legislature a week ago when he rebelled against his own party and voted with fellow Democrat, Sen. Pedro Espada, Jr., of the Bronx, to hand control of the Senate to the Republican minority. On Monday, the mercurial Monserrate returned to the Democratic caucus—without Espada. His decision creates an astonishing 31-31 deadlock in the Senate and further muddles the question of which party controls that body. [includes rush transcript]

In the weeks before a bitter power struggle at one of the country’s biggest unions, UNITE HERE, erupted into an open split, the union’s general president ordered more than $12 million be transferred to local affiliates loyal to him and to outside groups. Bruce Raynor disbursed the money without the knowledge or required approval of the union’s co-president, John Wilhelm, UNITE HERE leaders said this week. Those funds, they claim, were then used to finance a breakaway group from the union. [includes rush transcript]

Thousands of Iranians took to the streets Tuesday as reformist politicians, including defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, rejected the Guardian Council’s offer of a limited recount of the disputed votes in Friday’s election. Both critics and supporters of President Ahmadinejad staged competing rallies in Tehran Tuesday, while Iranian security forces arrested at least three prominent reformists, including former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi, Saeed Hajjarian, as well as leading human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani. [includes rush transcript]

In his first several months in office, Obama has embraced Bush administration justifications to keep secret key government information. Most recently, the Secret Service rejected requests from two organizations for public access to White House visitors logs. The logs document the West Wing meetings that have helped shape Obama’s policies on banking regulation, environmental policy, economic recovery and foreign affairs. The group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a lawsuit yesterday against the Obama administration, seeking the release of the visits by coal company executives to the White House. [includes rush transcript]

The Supreme Court declined Monday to review the case of the five jailed Cuban nationals known as the Cuban Five. The men were convicted by a Miami jury in 2001 for being unregistered foreign agents spying on the US military and Cuban exiles in southern Florida. All five are serving time in federal prisons across the country. Attorneys for the men say they weren’t spying on the US, but trying to monitor violent right-wing Cuban exile groups that have organized attacks on Cuba. The Miami judge in the case refused to move the trial to an area less dominated by Cuban exiles. Lawyers for the five say the jury pool in Miami was biased. The Cuban Five trial was the only judicial proceeding in US history condemned by the UN Human Rights Commission. [includes rush transcript]

Congress is expected to vote today on a $106 billion supplemental war funding bill. The White House and Democratic leadership have been trying to muscle through the bill, which would support escalating the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In May, fifty-one antiwar Democrats opposed an earlier version of the bill. Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been trying to pressure some of those Democrats to switch their votes in order to get the necessary votes to pass the bill. [includes rush transcript]

Montana Senator Max Baucus, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, is the Senate’s point man on healthcare reform. A new article in the Montana Standard finds that Senator Baucus has received more campaign money from health and insurance industry interests than any other member of Congress. The article says, “In the past six years, nearly one-fourth of every dime raised by Baucus and his political-action committee has come from groups and individuals associated with drug companies, insurers, hospitals, medical-supply firms, health-service companies and other health professionals.” [includes rush transcript]

President Obama is ramping up efforts for his proposed overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system. On Monday, the President spoke at the annual conference of the American Medical Association in Chicago, opening a week in which healthcare will dominate attention in Congress. Obama’s speech before the AMA on Monday came just days after the group signaled opposition to his proposal for a public health plan to compete with private insurers. We speak with Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator for Physicians for a National Health Program, and Dr. Chris McCoy, an instructor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic and the chair of the policy committee for the National Physicians Alliance. He recently withdrew his membership from the American Medical Association in protest over their position regarding a public healthcare option. [includes rush transcript]

In Iran, protests against Friday’s election results continue for the fourth day, and the powerful Guardian Council says it is ready to hold a recount of disputed votes. The announcement follows a mass rally Monday in Tehran of several hundred thousand people who defied an official ban on a public rally to protest the election results. Iranian state radio reports that seven people were killed at the rally. [includes rush transcript]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered what was billed as a major policy speech on Sunday, accepting the creation of a Palestinian state on the condition that it would be completely demilitarized and have no control over its airspace. He also said that Israel would refuse to engage with Hamas. Palestinian officials condemned Netanyahu’s speech, saying it closed the door to permanent status negotiations. [includes rush transcript]

Iran remains in a state of turmoil after Friday’s much-anticipated elections ended in a result strongly disputed by opposition candidates and many thousands of their supporters. Today, Iranian officials refused to allow the leading opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and his supporters to hold a major rally protesting the re-election of President Ahmadinejad. Demonstrators began calling for the election to be canceled after the Interior Ministry announced that President Ahmadinejad had won over 62 percent of the vote. The official results gave Mousavi less than 34 percent of the vote. Heavily armed riot police have been cracking down on street protests that continued through the weekend. Early Monday morning, security forces raided a dormitory at Tehran University, injuring fifteen. Opposition websites report that over a hundred prominent opposition members were detained and then released over the weekend. We speak to Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council and David Makovsky, co-author with Dennis Ross of a new book called Myths, Illusions, and Peace. [includes rush transcript]

Events are being held today around the world to mark what would have been Anne Frank’s eightieth birthday. In Amsterdam, the Anne Frank House museum has announced it will put her diaries on permanent display. Anne Frank died at the age of fifteen of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in the spring of 1945, just weeks before the concentration camp was liberated. Her diary was first published in 1947 and has since become one of the most widely read books in the world. We play a reading from the Anne Frank Diary Recording Project. [includes rush transcript]

The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, if passed, would amend New York state labor law and guarantee the over 200,000 nannies and housekeepers in New York state a living wage, overtime pay, sick leave, severance and health benefits, and protection from employment discrimination. It would be the first such bill in the country to challenge the exclusion of the nearly two million domestic workers countrywide from national labor law and set an important precedent for other states. We speak with a nanny-turned-organizer. [includes rush transcript]

A new report in the New England Journal of Medicine reveals US, Canadian and British health and life insurance firms hold at least $4.4 billion of investments in companies whose subsidiaries manufacture cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco and related products. We speak with the co-author of the report, Dr. Wesley Boyd. [includes rush transcript]

On Monday, President Obama is scheduled to address the American Medical Association, the nation’s largest doctors’ group with 250,000 members. They have expressed strong opposition to a government-run plan. We take a look at how the AMA has fought almost every major effort at healthcare reform over the past seventy years. [includes rush transcript]

Iran goes to the polls today following an acrimonious election campaign that has polarized the country between the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and three opposition candidates. A record turnout is expected for this presidential election, and the enormous mobilization generated by some of the candidates has been described as unseen since the early days of the Iranian revolution. We speak with Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council. [includes rush transcript]

Longtime white supremacist James W. von Brunn opened fire at Washington, DC’s Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday, killing a security guard and injuring another. It was the third recent shooting involving a gunman with ties to the white nationalist movement, following last month’s slaying of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller and the shooting of three police officers in Philadelphia in April. We speak with one of the nation’s leading researchers on right-wing hate groups, Leonard Zeskind, author of Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream. Zeskind has been closely monitoring white nationalist and anti-Semitic groups for over thirty years. [includes rush transcript]

Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez analyzes the Republican takeover of the New York State Senate following the surprise defection of two Democratic lawmakers. The political upheaval has held up legislation on issues affecting millions of New Yorkers, including gay marriage, rent controls and mayoral control of New York City’s schools. [includes rush transcript]

We speak with a genetic counselor who has been a member of the National Society of Genetic Counselors for the past three years. She is critical of the NSGC for not putting out a public statement condemning Dr. Tiller’s murder.

Teachers, parents and community members are on a hunger strike protesting cuts and layoffs at Los Angeles schools, which have come as part of a statewide effort by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to reduce education funding by nearly $1 billion. We speak to LA high school teacher and “Hungry for a Better Education” participant Sean Leys, now on his fifteenth day of the hunger strike. [includes rush transcript]

Peruvian indigenous leader Alberto Pizango has been granted asylum in Nicaragua after leading protests against oil and mining projects in the northern Peruvian Amazonian province of Bagua. Over the weekend, an estimated sixty people died after police tried to break up a blockade. We speak to actor Q’orianka Kilcher, of part Indigenous Quechua descent, who is heading to Peru to support the Amazonian protest. [includes rush transcript]

The family of murdered abortion provider Dr. George Tiller has announced the permanent closure of his Wichita, Kansas clinic, eliminating one of the few medical practices in the country that performed late-term abortions. We speak with a close friend of Dr. Tiller’s, Dr. Warren Hern, who is one of the last doctors in the country to perform late-term abortions. [includes rush transcript]

President Obama is expected to host a group of Democratic Congress members at the White House later today. The meeting comes one week after Obama said he would consider supporting a mandate-based approach to healthcare and the creation of a public insurance option. [includes rush transcript]

The oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to pay a $15.5 million settlement to avoid a trial over its alleged involvement in human rights violations in the Niger Delta. The case was brought on behalf of ten plaintiffs who accused Shell of complicity in the 1995 executions of Nigerian writer and environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others. We speak to Ken Wiwa, the son of Ken Saro-Wiwa, and attorney Judith Brown Chomsky. [includes rush transcript]

President Obama followed up his trip to Saudi Arabia and Egypt with a visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany on Friday, where 56,000 were killed during World War II. Obama invoked his great-uncle who had helped liberate a Buchenwald prison camp and returned a haunted man. Israeli journalist Amira Hass, columnist for Ha’aretz newspaper, comes from a family of Holocaust survivors. Her mother, Hanna Levy-Hass, survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Amira Hass edited her mother’s diary from that period, and it’s being published this month from Haymarket Books. [includes rush transcript]

Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal formerly served as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command from 2003 to 2008. During that time, he oversaw a secretive program to hunt down and assassinate suspected terrorists around the globe. Last year, lawmakers delayed Stanley McChrystal’s nomination for a key position because of questions about prisoner abuse by forces under his command. Many of the reports of abuse center on Camp Nama, a US base near Baghdad’s airport where Special Operations troops ran an interrogation and detention center. [includes rush transcript]

Dozens of people are estimated to have been killed in clashes between police and indigenous activists protesting oil and mining projects in the northern Peruvian Amazonian province of Bagua. Peruvian authorities have declared a military curfew, and troops are patrolling towns in the Amazon jungle. Authorities say up to twenty-two policemen have been killed, and two remain missing. The indigenous community says at least forty people, including three children, were killed by the police this weekend. [includes rush transcript]