• Listen to this segment

• Listen to the entire program

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

A major chemical spill in West Virginia has left hundreds of thousands of residents without water. A company named Freedom Industries in Charleston was responsible for the spill from a leaking storage unit, into the Elk river, upstream from a major water treatment plant. Residents have been warned not to ingest or come into contact with the water from their faucets as it is tainted with a toxic chemical called 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol used in the coal industry. Stores are running out of bottled water and schools have been shut down. The National Guard has been mobilized to provide emergency water supplies. Click here for a Guardian article about the story.

Just a day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai defied the US by ordering the release of prisoners that the US deems security threats, another incident has added to the increasing tensions between the two nations. Reports emerged this morning of US forces fatally shooting a 4 year old Afghan boy earlier in the week. Two NATO troops were also killed this morning. Karzai has refused to sign a bi-lateral security agreement with the US that was meant to be in place by the end of 2013. Q. How do you respond to the killing of the 4 year old? Reuters reports that US marines “mistakenly shot the boy on Wednesday because visibility was poor.” Click here for a Guardian article about the story.

The great American poet Amiri Baraka has died at the age of 79. Considered one of the greatest modern poets of his generation, Baraka passed away yesterday afternoon at a hospital in Newark, New Jersey after being hospitalized for several weeks. Baraka began writing and performing his work in the 1950s as part of the Beat poets movement. He was later deeply influenced by Malcolm X and black militant politics, and went on to influence a generation of hip hop artists. His later career became marked by parts of a poem he wrote called Somebody Blew Up America, which included controversial lines widely considered to be Anti-Semitic, leading to the loss of his position as poet-laureate of New Jersey. Baraka refused to apologize. Click here for a Washington Post article about the story.