Breaking News
African American Female HIV Rates Now Rival Africa
March 12, 2012 - As we prepare to recognize National Women and Girls HIV Awareness Day, a new research study has served as a wake up call for a community that might have gone too far. The Center for Disease Control now estimates that 1 out of every 32 black women will be infected with HIV during her lifetime. Although black women represent only 14 percent of the US female population, they constitute 66 percent of all new HIV infections. The infection rates of black women in the United States rival those in the Congo and Kenya. Read more at newsone.com.
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Really? Ad Agency Uses Homeless People As 4G Hotspots At SXSW
March 12, 2012 - In a head-scratching initiative that kicked off during this month’s South By Southwest festival, New York marketing company Bartle Bogle Hogarty has given out 4G hotspots to homeless people along with a promotional T-shirt that says, “I Am a 4G Hotspot.”
Dubbed the Homeless Hotspots Project, the gist is that you can pay a small fee to one of the homeless persons from the Front Steps Shelter who are carrying 4G-to-WiFi devices. Then you can sit near one of them and access the Internet. Read more at newsone.com.
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Some students offended by Louis Farrakhan's UC Berkeley address
March 10, 2012 - Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan delivered a speech to hundreds at the University of California Berkeley Saturday and some students took issue with parts of his message.
Minister Louis Farrakhan opened the Afrikan Black Coalition Conference at UC Berkeley Saturday, bringing together black students from colleges across the state. Read more at ktvu.com.
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Bobbi Kristina: ‘She’s Always With Me’
March 12, 2012 - In her first interview since Whitney Houston’s death, daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown said she’s “doing as good as I possibly can” and recalled the tender last moments she shared with her superstar mother before her sudden death last month.
“She’s always with me,” said the 19-year-old, Houston’s only child and sole heir. “Her spirit is strong, it’s a strong spirit. I feel her pass through me all the time.” Read more at newsone.com.
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Obama On Gas Prices: We Can’t Drill Our Way To Lower Gas Prices
March 11, 2012 - President Barack Obama is hitting back at Republican criticism of his energy policies and his role in controlling gasoline prices.
Obama used his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday to underscore his administration’s work to develop alternative energy sources and increase fuel efficiency. Read more at newsone.com.
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U.S. Soldier Opens Fire On Afghan Civilians, Kills 16
March 11, 2012 - In the wake of a United States soldier opening fire on civilians near his base in southern Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai is furiously calling it an “assassination” and demanding answers from the Obama Administration, reports the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Nine children and 3 women were among those murdered, according to a statement released by Karzai. The enraged president says that he has repeatedly asked U.S. soldiers to stop slaying innocent people. Read more at newsone.com.
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Santorum takes Kansas, Romney counters in Wyoming
March 10, 2012 - Rick Santorum won the Kansas caucuses in a rout on Saturday and Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney countered in Wyoming, a weekend prelude to suddenly pivotal Southern primary showdowns in the week ahead.
"Things have an amazing way of working out," Santorum told supporters in Missouri, where he traced his campaign through a series of highs and lows. He called his showing in Kansas a "comfortable win" that would give him the vast majority of the 40 delegates at stake. Read more at newsone.com.
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Impoverished black youth publishes novel 'Nameless'
March 12, 2012 - The odds of achieving success seem slim to none for minorities with impoverished backgrounds. Having not only been poor, but also homeless, Kyle Chais has had many odds against him throughout his life. Yet, the 20-year-old is showing others that they can also rise above their challenges after releasing his first novel called Nameless.
Chais was born in Flatbush, Brooklyn into poverty and without a father. Read more at thegrio.com.
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Jesse Jackson Jr. faces tough challenge in Democratic primary
March 12, 2012 - A series of controversies have left Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. in an intense battle to win reelection in the Chicago-based congressional district he has represented for more than 16 years, facing a challenge from a fellow Democrat in a March 20 primary.
Jackson, Jr., who arrived in Congress in 1995 mainly known as the son of a famous civil rights activist, spent much of the last decade forging his own political identity as one of the most liberal members in the House and was considered a potential candidate for Chicago mayor, or as a U.S. senator from Illinois. Read more at thegrio.com.
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Pat Robertson: Right About Legalizing Pot
March 12, 2012 - Pat Robertson insists that he doesn't smoke weed, and I believe him.
Of all the wacky things the 700 Club televangelist has declared over the years -- from the Haiti earthquake being the result of God's retribution for a mythical Voodoo ritual to the recent tornadoes being the result of not enough prayer -- he wasn't stoned when he said any of them, and he sounded coherent enough to seem as if he at least took himself seriously. Read more at theroot.com.
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Dr. Juliette Bell Named New UMES President
March 10, 2012 - The University of Maryland’s Eastern Shore (UMES) campus has ended its national search for a president, officially naming Dr. Juliette Bell to the position this week.
Bell joins UMES from Wilberforce, Ohio, where she is currently serving as provost and vice president of Academic Affairs at Central State University. Read more at afro.com.
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A national project filled with Black pride
March 8, 2012 - It is official! The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall will be about Blacks, designed by Blacks, and the construction managed by Blacks. This $500 million project will be totally unlike the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Monument, which was manipulated by and profited behind-the-scenes White interests.
Let’s first look at the design/architectural team. The lead designer is David Adjaye, a native of Tanzania who now lives in London. He is arguably the best major designer in the world with a portfolio full of popular buildings, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo, Norway, and the Skolkovo Moscow School of Management in Russia. Mr. Adjaye is giving the museum a classic Yoruba (West African) design. They picked one of the best through a competitive process, and he happens to be one of us. Read more at flcourier.com.
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Nation's racial disparities are getting worse
March 10, 2012 - Because of this country's racist past, the future for people of color, and the United States overall, doesn't look too promising.
That was the conclusion of a United for a Fair Economy report. Consider that in 1980, the U.S. population was 80 percent white. Read more at charlotteobserver.com.
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TD Jakes' 'Woman Loosed' Film to Address Missing Black Persons Crisis
March 9, 2012 - Bishop T.D. Jakes of The Potter's House in Dallas, Texas, is trying to raise awareness about the alarming number of missing black Americans with his new movie, "Woman Thou Art Loosed!: On the 7th Day."
According to 2011 statistics provided by the Black and Missing Foundation, Inc. (BAM FI), which Jakes is working with, 85 percent out of all minorities missing in the U.S. are African-American. That is a glaring number, taking into account that black people make up approximately only 13 percent of the total U.S. population. Read more at christianpost.com.
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USF Bulls overcome doubts, relish spot in NCAA tournament
March 12, 2012 - The team had been lost forever. Why, then, were the final moments so difficult?
This was agony. This was torture. It was hard to watch, harder to hear. With every moment that passed, with every slot that was filled, the tension built and the stomachs tightened. Success was still possible, but increasingly, failure was a possibility. Read more at tampabay.com.
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Legislators hit hardest the pocketbooks of state workers, college students
March 11, 2012 - After a year of incremental drops in the state's unemployment rate, Florida lawmakers came to the Capitol armed with promises to jump-start jobs, but they left handcuffed by the stubborn economy.The 60-day legislative session that ended Friday was largely dominated by small reforms on a few pocketbook proposals. Read more at tampabay.com.
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Gary's National Black Political Convention, 40 years on
March 8, 2012 - In a few months Republicans and Democrats will hold their respective conventions to officially nominate candidates for president. While it’s a forgone conclusion that President Barack Obama will be the Democrats’ pick, no fewer than four Republicans candidates are still fighting it out at the polls.
While the cycle of party conventions seems to go back, unbroken, for many decades, there are a few instances when major political meetings interrupted the more predictable schedule of events. Read more at wbez.org.
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Viola Davis to Produce and Star in Barbara Jordan Biopic
March 8, 2012 - Director Paris Barclay (Glee) and Oscar-nominated actress Viola Davis (The Help) are looking to lend their talents to a biopic concerning the life of Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. Jordan holds the distinction of being the first African American elected to the Texas Senate and the first Southern black female elected to the United States House of Representatives. The posthumous pic will center on Jordan’s life from her early days in a poor Houston neighborhood to her rise through the political ranks. Read more at collider.com.
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Commentary: For African-Americans, 50 Years of High Unemployment ... and Counting
March 8, 2012 - Since the start of the Great Recession, the national unemployment rate peaked in 2010 with an annual average of 9.6 percent. Everyone would agree that 9.6 percent is a high rate of unemployment. From 2002 to 2005, however, before the Great Recession, the African-American unemployment rate was over 10 percent. Since 2008, the Black unemployment rate has exceeded 10 percent. My current projections are that the Black unemployment rate will continue to exceed 10 percent through 2015.
The sad fact is that for most of the past 50 years, the Black unemployment rate has been above 10 percent. While whites have experienced short periods of high unemployment, high unemployment has been a consistent feature of African-American life. Read more at bet.com.
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Hate groups, driven by extremist politics, on the rise in America
March 9, 2012 - Racism driven by hatred towards America’s current African-American president, ignorance fueled by bogus conspiracy theories and anger over economic hard times has spurred an alarming growth in the number of hate and anti-government groups, a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center reveals. Read more at capitalhillblue.com.
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