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On May 26 the voters of Colombia go to the polls to elect a new president. As this program goes to air the front runner is right wing candidate Álvaro Uribe who is mounting a tough law and order campaign. The election is taking place against the backdrop of forty years of violence between the left leaning rebel group known as the FARC and the Colombian government. But violence, especially against civilians, is on the rise. Latino USA correspondent Nina Alvarez reports now from Bogota.

There are more than 1000 toxic waste sites across the country designated for cleanup by the federal government. In central California more than 200 immigrant Mexican farmworkers spent a decade living on a hazardous waste site. The majority of them are Mixteco Indians from the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Now the families have been relocated to brand new homes and as Tamara Keith reports from San Francisco station KQED this the first time the Environmental Protection Agency has relocated an entire community.

Antibalas means anti-bullets, or bullet-proof, in Spanish. It's also the name of a Brooklyn based afro-beat orchestra that takes its politics as seriously as its music. Antibalas came together partly in response to the death of Nigerian Fela Kuti, the founder of the Afrobeat sound. Joining us today in the studio is conga player and vocalist Duke Amayo, conga player Fernando Velez, and percussionist Ernesto Abreu.