Latin America

For the first time in Puerto Rico’s history, a majority of the island’s voters have supported a non-binding referendum to become a full U.S. state. The measure will require approval from the U.S. Congress, but President Obama has said he will respect the vote.

While much attention was fixed on the presidential race, the 2012 election also saw voters decide on a series of landmark ballot initiatives at the state level. Advocates of marriage equality ended Tuesday with four out of four victories, as voters legalized same-sex marriage in Maine and Maryland, upheld same-sex marriage in Washington state, and defeated a measure to ban same-sex marriage in Minnesota.

President Obama has been re-elected to a second term with a resounding victory over Republican challenger Mitt Romney. By the end of the night, Obama won 50 percent of the popular vote, securing 303 electoral votes to Romney’s 206.

Election Day 2012 has arrived, and the battle over voter suppression has reached a fever pitch in battleground states. We go to Virginia, where volunteers with the tea party-linked group True the Vote are challenging voters at the polls.

In our first broadcast since the Democracy Now! studio regained power, we’re joined by three staffers who have been on the ground taking part in and reporting on the tri-state’s response to Superstorm Sandy: Democracy Now! senior producer Mike Burke, who visited the devastated peninsula of Far Rockaway; Democracy Now! producer Steve Martinez, who lives in northwestern New Jersey and has a family home on the Jersey Shore; and Democracy Now! social media coordinator Jessica Lee, who lives in Red Hook, one of the hardest-hit areas of Brooklyn.

Welcome to this Week in Palestine, a service of the International Middle East Media Center. As Palestinians marked the 95th anniversary of Belford declaration this week, Israeli attacks targeting the Gaza Strip and the West Bank left 1 killed and four others injured.

Another area of New York City hit hard by Superstorm Sandy is Chinatown in the southeastern section of Manhattan, where many businesses remain shuttered and residents are still without power, some of them stranded on high floors of apartment buildings.

We speak with residents of the low-income and largely minority community of Manhattan’s Lower East Side who live in the shadow of a Consolidated Edison substation that flooded during Superstorm Sandy and has left thousands in the dark.

We get an update from Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president who has coordinated projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the country, about safety conditions at Oyster Creek and Indian Point nuclear power plants.