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Uprising’s guest expert Arun Gupta, Independent Journalist and regular contributor to the Guardian, In These Times, The Progressive, and Truthout, and co-founder of the Occupied Wall Street Journal and the Indypendent, analyzes today’s news headlines:

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has released a report showing that carbon dioxide levels last year broke all records. The WMO, which is a United Nations agency, measured carbon dioxide levels of 393.1 parts per million in 2012, an increase of 2.2 parts from the year before. The safe limit is considered 350 parts per million in the earth’s atmosphere. The overall increase in greenhouse gases has been 32% over the last 22 years. Eighty percent of this increase is attributed to man-made “fossil fuel-related emissions.” Secretary-General Michel Jarraud of the WMO warned “time is not on our side.” Click here for a Time Magazine article about the story.

Swiss researchers have tested the remains of the late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, and come to a shocking conclusion – that he was poisoned. When Arafat mysteriously died a little over 8 years ago, many conspiracy theories were floated but now there seems to be some proof that he was poisoned with a highly toxic radioactive substance called Polonium-¬210. While the Israeli government denies any wrong doing, Arafat’s widow Suha, has called her husband’s death “a political assassination.” The revelations come 20 years after Arafat signed the Oslo Accords which were meant to be a pathway toward peace and a Palestinian state. Click here for a Washington Post article about the story.

The US Food and Drug Administration is taking steps to ban artificial transfats – an ingredient that is found in a large number of processed foods under the name of “partially hydrogenated oils.” Transfats have been strongly linked to the incidence of heart disease although for years conventional nutritional advice warned that transfats were good for you and that natural fats like butter or lard were bad for the heart. Now the FDA is imposing a high standard reminiscent of what is generally used in European countries – that the food industry has to prove transfats are safe before they can be allowed to use them. Click here for a New York Times article about the story.

Mark Lewis the Mayor of El Cajon, a city near San Diego, had resigned in late October following accusations of racist remarks he made against Iraqi immigrants. One third of all El Cajon’s residents are from Iraq. Incriminating evidence against Lewis came from an interview done by Arun Gupta this May. Click here to read the full interview with former Mayor Mark Lewis and Arun’s article in the Progressive Magazine.