Category: National News

Chaos erupted in East Point, Ga., a city southwest of Atlanta, after reportedly 30,000 residents clamored August 11 to pick up federal housing aid applications. The crowd consisted of only a few hundred people on August 9, but by August 11, the crowd had swelled to an estimated 30,000. “We have a lot of homeless […]

Months after the devastating earthquake that ravaged Haiti, new economic hope is beginning to emerge for the people of the impoverished country. A U.S.-backed textile training center formally opened for business August 11 and will train about 2,000 people per year to make sheets, T-shirts and high quality clothing items. More than 80 percent of […]

Republican leaders are calling for hearings to repeal parts of the 14th Amendment that, critics say, provide a pathway to immigration reform. The cornerstone of American civil liberties, the amendment was adopted in 1868 after the Civil War and guaranteed citizenship to anyone born in the United States, including newly emancipated slaves. The GOP has […]

Two families’ day of fun quickly turned tragic when six teenagers at the gathering drowned in a Louisiana river on August 2. According to the Associated Press, the outing began as a typical family get-together with a large group of relatives and friends. The children waded in Shreveport, La.’s Red River to beat the heat […]

Black farmers were again denied a $1.25 billion settlement in a racial bias case against the federal government, when Senate Republicans on August 5 failed to support a unanimous consent on the measure. With Congress now in recess, those farmers have been put on hold again after waiting for more than a decade. “The Black […]

The Senate has confirmed Elena Kagan as the 112th justice of the Supreme Court, making her the fourth woman to serve on the nation’s highest court. Members of the Senate voted 63-37 for Kagan, President Barack Obama’s nominee, to succeed Justice John Paul Stevens. Only five Republicans supported Kagan and one Democrat, Sen. Ben Nelson […]

Missouri voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a measure that blocks the government from forcing people to buy health insurance and penalizing those who don’t. Proposition C, one of several challenges to the Obama administration’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, was supported by 71.1 percent of voters in the state’s Aug. 3 primary election. The […]

WASHINGTON (AP) – California Democrat Maxine Waters faces a House trial this fall on three charges of ethical wrongdoing, setting the stage for a second election-season public airing of ethics problems for a longtime Democratic lawmaker. The charges focus on whether Waters broke the rules in requesting federal help for a bank where her husband […]

Omar Thornton shot and killed eight people, before committing suicide at his workplace in Manchester, Conn., Tuesday morning after reportedly facing disciplinary action for stealing beer. Chris Roos, a representative for Teamsters Local 1035 said in a statement that the 34-year-old truck driver at Hartford Distributors met with company and union officials on the morning […]

When will the checks arrive? That’s the question to which John Boyd, president of the National Black Farmers Association, has been seeking an answer to for more than a decade. But with a Senate vote slated to take place this week, the Virginia-based farmer said he hopes the government will finally pay its debt. “This […]

Maryland and Washington, D.C., are among 19 finalists recognized for their “bold” plans for education reforms, according to the U.S. Education Department. The jurisdictions beat out 17 other applicants for more than $3 billion available in the second round of funding in the Race to the Top program, said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan […]

WASHINGTON – President Obama defended his education initiative in a speech to the National Urban League conference July 29, days after the League and other civil rights groups sent him a 17-page letter criticizing the program, known as Race to the Top. “ fight for Race to the Top with everything I’ve got, including using […]