David J Fazekas

Celebrating the Civil War may not sound like a joyful party for southerners, and celebrating the Confederacy is far from politically correct. Yet some groups in the South are planning to mark the 150th anniversary of the Confederacy's secession from the United States by doing exactly that.

Bradley Manning is a 23-year-old U.S. Army intelligence analyst from a small town in Oklahoma who has gained notoriety after being arrested on charges of leaking over 250,000 diplomatic cables to wikileaks.

Who is this young man, who is currently held in a Viriginia military base, awaiting trial, and why did he do what he did?

The Senate passed a bill Tuesday that could significantly alter food safety in the United States. Right now, the FDA only steps in when a recall is underway. Under the new law, the agency would be allowed to inspect any farm and try to prevent the kind of salmonella outbreaks that made the headlines last summer.

Benjamin England worked at the FDA for 17 years and founded FDAImports.com. He believes this legislation could lead to dramatic change, but only if the government can find the funding to back up the FDA's expanded role.

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments that could have a significant impact on California's 165,000 inmates. Early last year, a panel of three federal judges ruled that California needs to reduce its inmate population by 25 percent, because of the state's inadequate health care to its prisoners — reports show that one inmate dies every eight days from inadequate medical care.

North Korea's artillery attack on a South Korean island yesterday morning remains somewhat of a mystery, but many have guesses as to rationales for the attack. North Korea says the South started it by firing recklessly into North Korean territory, which the South denies. Some say North Korea did it to gain international attention because of their severe food shortages. And others, like Charles Armstrong, director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University, believe they want to send a simple message: that they should be taken very seriously.

It's official: millions of people around the world still want to live in the U.S.A. A record-breaking 15,000,000 people have applied to the annual Green Card Lottery for 2012 — an opportunity that is only open to 50,000 winners. We talk to Munkiwe Wadak, a Nigerian marketing officer who has applied for the Green Card three times, about what opportunities he hopes our nation holds for him and his family.

We also talk to Marc Rosenblum, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, about how the whole lottery process works.

After the death of two South Korean marines in a North Korean artillery attack on Tuesday, the United States has called on countries in the region to join with the U.S. in a unified diplomatic front. Since that call, China has condemned the attack and Hong Lei, the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry called for "peace and stability on the Korean peninsula."

China has long been a strategic ally for North Korea, providing much needed food and humanitarian resources, but even the Chinese were taken by surprise by the attacks this week. And they seemed to be in the dark just a few days earlier when reports surfaced about North Korea's new uranium enrichment plant.

For this week's segment on the workplace, we look at the battle over affirmative action. Arizona just passed anti-affirmative action legislation earlier this month, and soon, Utah could follow suit.  An anti-affirmative action bill could be reintroduced for a vote in the Utah House of Representatives early next year. With a new crop of Republicans taking over for ousted Democrats after the mid-term elections, the bill looks more and more likely to pass.

For details on this bill and its implications, we speak with KCPW reporter Elizabeth Zeigler, in Utah.

With Thanksgiving approaching, how many notches you'll have to relax that belt buckle won't be the only question people will be asking. Much of the focus will be on air safety and retail sales. Many travelers are not happy about the latest security measures the TSA is using for secondary screening, including full-body scans and thorough pat-downs. Many see both as extremely invasive, but the TSA says that both measures will stay. Callie Crossley, host of "The Callie Crossley Show" at WGBH in Boston, will see if any changes will come as Thanksgiving quickly approaches.

Jim Sanborn has spent nearly 20 years watching his cryptography sculpture, "Kryptos," sit only partially-solved in the C.I.A.'s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Sanborn recently released a clue for people attempting to decipher the enigmatic and beautiful piece of sculpture (spoiler alert): one of the words in the unsolved 97-letter section is ... "BERLIN."

Viktor Bout, the inspiration for the film "Lord of War," was extradited to the U.S. yesterday. He comes to New York, after being held in a Thai jail since 2008, to face trial. He is accused of selling arms – in some cases, to both sides of a given conflict – in war zones in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and others.

We discuss Bout and his contentious extradition with David Bamford, the BBC's former West Africa correspondent.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) was convicted on 11 of 13 counts of rules violation by a House ethics panel. The Takeaway's Washington correspondent, Todd Zwillich, looks ahead to what's next for the embattled Congressman, and what his punishment will likely be.

Senate Republicans recently followed their colleagues in the House, voting behind closed doors to approve a moratorium on all Congressional earmarks for two years. President Obama supports a ban on earmarks, but many Senate Democrats don't agree: So far, only two Democrats in the Senate have publicly come out in favor of the ban. Can the new Congress find any common ground on the issue? And how would an outright ban on earmarks affect small cities and towns?

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), once a man who backed the practice of earmarks, and used them for many projects in his state of Kentucky, made a surprise announcement on the issue yesterday. He said that he will support a moritorium on earmarks. Does the Senator's reversal signal the influence of those in the Tea Party, who have called for an end to pork-barrel projects?  

After Greece's financial bailout by the European Union earlier this year, Ireland and Portugal could be next. Why? In part, because the European Union's economically stronger countries are sometimes obliged to take care of the economically weak, so a feared economic downturn doesn't spread. But when countries like Ireland and Portugal ask for help, there's an immediate problem: Their own interests don't necessarily align with the interests of the countries bailing them out.  

Louise Story, Wall Street and finance reporter for The New York Times, has the latest in this potential economic rescue.

The 110th Congress begins its lame duck session today, and the question remains: how much can lawmakers get done before the new members step in? Charlie Herman, economics editor for The Takeaway and WNYC looks at how this session of Congress handles the Bush tax cuts, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and the new START treaty.

The G20 Summit started earlier today in Seoul, South Korea, and high among the story lines we're watching is the economic skirmishing between China and the U.S. The U.S. has long been critical of how China has dealt with its currency, accusing China's central banks with keeping the RMB artificially low. China and other countries, meanwhile, are not happy with some of the White House's fiscal policies, most recently the Fed's plan to pump $600 billion back into the sluggish U.S. economy.

There may be a change for the plan to completely withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the U.S. would be open to discussions of an extended stay in Iraq, if asked by the Iraqi authorities. "In terms of the future strategic relationship beyond the end of 2011, I would say that the initiative clearly needs to come from the Iraqis," Gates told reporters yesterday in Kuala Lumpur. Is the U.S. legacy there going to be even longer than we imagined? 

President Obama's commission to investigate the causes of the Gulf oil spill revealed their results yesterday, and it seems that they couldn't find anyone specifically to blame. Fred Bartlit, lead counsel on the investigation, said "We have not seen a single instance where a human being made a conscious decision to favor dollars over safety." While the commission says it agrees "90 percent" with BP's own report on the explosion and spill — does the public need someone to blame for all of this?

After the beating Democrats took in last week's mid-term elections, all eyes, including those of our managing producer, Noel King, will be looking at what the GOP's initial moves will be this week. She'll also look at President Obama's continued trip through Asia, along with Charlie Herman, business and economics editor for The Takeaway and WNYC Radio.