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Uprising’s guest expert Adele Stan, longtime chronicler of the right wing, and senior Washington correspondent for RHRealityCheck.org, analyzes today’s news headlines:

Nelson Mandela has died at the age of 95. The legendary South African liberation fighter and former President of South Africa has died. He had struggled with a lung infection for several months, finally letting go at 8:50 pm last night in Johannesburg. US President Obama, who says that Mandela was a great inspiration to him, reacted to Mandela’s passing yesterday by calling him, “one of the most influential, courageous, and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this Earth.” Click here for a Guardian article about the story.

Just weeks after the news that many Congressional members vowed to fight the President’s request for Fast Track Authority on the Trans Pacific Partnership, the press is now reporting that intense negotiations have made much headway. The TPP is a sweeping trade deal between the US and many nations, which critics say, severely undermines labor, environmental, and human rights laws. Click here for a New York Times article about the story.

The US Labor Department has released its unemployment figures for the month of November, showing a drop in the official rate of joblessness to 7%. Wall Street firms are closely watching the numbers to anticipate whether the Federal Reserve under its new chairperson, Janet Yellen, will pull back stimulus efforts. The New York Times reports on the very last line of its coverage of the report that “the unemployment rate among workers aged 16 to 19 remains above 20 percent. And for workers with less than a high school diploma, the jobless rate stood at 10.8 percent.” Click here for a New York Times article about the story.