Blacks in California are at odds over Proposition 19, a measure that would tax and legalize marijuana. Religious leaders have banned together to fight legalization of the drug, which many see as a gateway drug to harder drugs like crack cocaine. Alice A. Huffman, president of the California branch of the NAACP, has been a…

Gary Coleman’s ex-wife is asking a judge to formally recognize her as the child star’s surviving spouse. She maintains that she and Coleman continued living together and represented themselves as married to the public. She is seeking the declaration as an ongoing battle over his estate. We guess the money from the tabloid photos of…

President Obama is urging federal workers to cut down on business travel and commuting by car as he seeks to reduce heat-trapping emissions produced by the federal government. The White House announced that the government will aim to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from indirect sources like employee driving by 13 percent…

Democrats are going to take another stab at it and try to restore unemployment benefits to millions of unemployed Americans. Millions of people stuck on the jobless rolls would receive an extension of unemployment benefits averaging $309 a week under a Senate bill that will hopefully break the Republican filibuster, which is blocking the extension.…

A 17-year-old teen has been arrested for firing shots that injured 10 people at Indianapolis’ Black Expo Summer Celebration in the city’s downtown. The shootings started about 9:30 p.m. Saturday as several hundred young people gathered along the streets outside the Circle Centre Mall. Those wounded ranged from ages 10 to 19. All of the…

A USDA official was forced to resign after making racist remarks at a NAACP function. Shirley Sherrod, a black woman who served as the USDA’s rural development director for Georgia, says she was “forced out of her federally appointed job” after a “snippet” of a speech she gave in March appeared to show her admitting…

Los Angelenos are hopping mad because the city has targeted public libraries for closing because of economic woes. Supporters gathered on Monday at the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles to protest a two-day-a-week closure due to budget cuts. Hours at the city’s 64 branch libraries have been reduced, and each of the city’s 73…

Hang on to your cleanup gear: Nearly every single worker from the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster is now dead. Last week The Root informed you that black contractors had been left out of lucrative BP oil spill cleanup opportunities. That may not be such a bad thing for black folks, since most of the…

In a study released today, scientists report that they have designed a computer program that can distinguish between the speech of nonautistic children and those with autism. Even though this is the first time the study has been done, the program correctly identified 85 percent of autistic and nonautistic children. These findings may help doctors…