In my office, the barbershop, and on our street corners, the request I hear most often from my neighbors is: “Mr. Cummings, I need a job!” Jobs – good jobs that pay a living wage and offer benefits – remain the most important issue on people’s minds. That is why job creation continues to be […]
Author Archives: wpadmin
Posted inCommentary
Coppin State University is Not a Basket Case
There has been a concerted effort by the State of Maryland and the University System of Maryland (USM) to portray Coppin State University as a dysfunctional institution of higher education. While the Judge (Blake) was still deliberating the current HBCU lawsuit, the University System hastily put together a review (Special) committee to ostensibly investigate the […]
Posted inCommentary
Republicans Out On a Limb
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest numbers this week. Its preliminary number for people on payrolls, reported by private-sector establishments, is 116 million. That figure is higher than the last peak in January 2008, before President Barack Obama took office. This marks 49 straight months of job growth from the second year […]
Posted inBaltimore News
Baptist Hold Historic Candidates Forum
Several hundred pastors, officers and lay members representing churches affiliated with the United Baptist Missionary Convention and Auxiliaries of Maryland (UBMC) assembled at Wayland Baptist Church in West Baltimore to witness the group’s inaugural candidates’ forum. In compliance with recently adopted revisions to the UBMC constitution and by-laws, pastors seeking to become officers must compete […]
Posted inARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Paul Simon Celebrates Masekela’s 75th Birthday
NEW YORK (AP) — South African trumpeter and vocalist Hugh Masekela celebrated his 75th birthday with a little help from some old friends — Paul Simon and Harry Belafonte — in the city where he began what turned out to be a 30-year exile from his homeland. Introducing Simon near the end of Friday night’s […]
Posted inBaltimore News
Md. Lawmakers Approve Marijuana Decriminalization
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland’s legislature has given final approval to a bill that would eliminate criminal charges for possessing small amounts of marijuana, and the governor says he plans to sign it. The Senate voted Monday to accept several compromises the House added over the weekend. The bill would keep marijuana use illegal but […]
Posted inNational News
S.C. Judge Who First Wrote Separate is Not Equal Lauded
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — In a little-known chapter of American history, a federal judge who was the son of a Confederate soldier and presided in the city where the Civil War began was the first judge in the nation to write that segregated schools are unequal schools since separate but equal became the law of […]
Posted inAfro Briefs
Va. Ballpark Planned for Historical Slave-Trading Location Ignites Objection
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A proposal to build a ballpark in the slave-trading center of the former capital of the Confederacy has stirred opposition from African-Americans and others who contend it is “sacred ground” and no place to play baseball. Opponents heckled Mayor Dwight C. Jones in November when he outlined plans for the $200 […]
Posted inARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Broadway Star Lawrence Hamilton Dead at 59
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Broadway star Lawrence Hamilton, an Arkansas native who performed for a U.S. president and a Pope, has died at age 59 in a New York City hospital. His sister, Evelyn Hall, said that Hamilton died on Thursday after complications from surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital located in New York. Hamilton, […]
Posted inAfro Briefs
‘Killer Heroin’ Spiked with Fentanyl Causing Fatal Overdoses
POINT PLEASANT, N.J. (AP) — On an icy night in January, a man entered a grocery store here, walked past the displays of cake mix and paper towels, and went into the bathroom, where he injected himself with heroin. Hours later, the man was found dead in the bathroom with a needle still in his […]
Posted inAfro Briefs
Legal Pot in Colorado Hasn’t Stopped Black Market
DENVER (AP) — A 25-year-old is shot dead trying to sell marijuana the old-fashioned, illegal way. Two men from Texas set up a warehouse to grow more than they would ever need. And three people buying pot in a grocery store parking lot are robbed at gunpoint. While no one expected the state’s first-in-the-nation recreational […]
Posted inARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
In Jamaica, Reggae Star Vybz Kartel Gets Life for Murder
KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — A Jamaican judge on Thursday sentenced dancehall reggae star Vybz Kartel and three other men to life in prison for the 2011 murder of an associate. While police in riot gear watched over barricaded streets outside the court in downtown Kingston, Judge Lennox Campbell ruled the entertainer must serve 35 years […]