Category: National News

The fleet of space shuttles that has orbited the Earth for 30 years will retire as museum pieces in Washington, D.C., Florida and Los Angeles, NASA announced this week. The shuttle Discovery will call The Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center outside D.C. its home, while the Endeavor will go to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. […]

Ensuring the nation’s financial stability—at least until September—Congress approved a federal budget bill first hammered out between President Barack Obama and congressional leaders last week to avert a government shutdown. While the measure drew bipartisan support, passing through the House in a 260 to 167 vote and the Senate in a 81 to 19 vote, […]

Democracy teeters on the brink of obscurity in Cote d’Ivoire, a tropical West African nation rife with verdant cacao trees and, in recent months, bloodshed. The conflict brewing there stems from a historically sought-after triumvirate — power, money and respect — which illegitimate president Laurent Gbagbo clamored to maintain before his arrest in the nation’s […]

Forces sent by President-elect Alassane Ouattara on April 11 seized former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo. The arrest comes after months of fighting, that claimed lives and uprooted people, ignited by Gbagbo’s refusal to step down following his loss in last November’s presidential election. Gbagbo had been in office for nearly a decade. According to […]

It didn’t quite come down to the 11th hour, but with just over an hour until a midnight deadline, Congressional Democrats and Republicans on April 8 agreed on a budget deal which would keep the federal government open for business. According to multiple news sources, lawmakers reached an agreement just before 11 p.m. Friday night […]

Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) wants the House to salute the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike, when the civil rights movement and organized labor united in a 64-day protest that turned out to be Rev. Martin Luther King’s last campaign. King was lending his Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s support to the striking sanitation workers when he […]

Jurors on April 8 began their deliberations in the Barry Bonds federal perjury trial, the day after both sides made their closing statements. According to reports, the verdict is expected to come down to whether Bonds’ defense was able to discredit the government’s witnesses. “The defendant is presumed to be innocent unless and until he […]

Michel Martelly’s ascendancy to Haiti’s presidential seat marks an unexpected evolution in the Caribbean country’s history. On April 4, Martelly, 51, beat out opponent, professor and Haiti’s former first lady Mirlande Manigat, 70, with a landslide 67 percent of the votes, The Associated Press reported. The island nation’s past is peppered with corrupt leaders and […]

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on March 30 signed an abortion bill into law banning abortions in that state based on the race and gender of the baby. According to The Tucson Sentinel, Republican lawmakers in the state are convinced that race or gender-based abortions are happening in the state and point to the abortion rates […]

The Supreme Court on March 29 overturned, in a 5-4 vote, a $14 million jury award to a man who was freed from death row after it was found prosecutors withheld key evidence in his case. The money had been awarded to John Thompson, who spent 18 years in prison, including 14 years on death […]

The NAACP Legal and Educational Defense Fund is challenging a change in Florida’s rules which would require non-violent felons to wait five years after completing their sentences before they can apply to vote again. A letter protesting the state’s recent proposal to prolong the removal of convicted non-violent felons’ right to vote was sent March […]

Further denouncing U.S. military action against Libya, Minister Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam spoke out against the country’s involvement in Libya and to defend his longtime friend, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. “It’s a terrible thing for me to hear my brother being called all these terrible and filthy names, when I cannot […]