Critics of the war on drugs are having one hell of a week. First California passes a law Sunday to equalize the prison sentences that black and white defendants convicted of drug crimes receive, and then, on Wednesday, Philadelphia passed legislation that will require police officers to ticket people who are in possession of small amounts of marijuana instead of…

Approximately 100 people received word from Texas health officials that they need to come in for questioning, and possibly an examination, because they may have had contact with Thomas E. Duncan, the New York Times is reporting. Duncan is the only known person to have been diagnosed in the U.S. with the Ebola virus.  The people being…

As of press time, the first Ebola victim had been diagnosed here in the U.S.—and approximately 3,000 people have died because of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. But what has been neglected and underreported are the children the dead are leaving behind. West African orphans, many of them with one or both parents deceased, are…

The only thing that stopped an anti-Islam advocacy group from running an incendiary ad in New York City’s bus and subway system is the phone call it got from the attorney representing the family of James Foley—the American journalist who was beheaded by ISIS in Syria—begging the organization not to. The ad would have featured Foley’s face…

People who have been fed up the past several months with the string of incidents in which police officers have used excessive force against unarmed black men and women will be relieved to hear that at least a dozen police departments across the nation are beginning to equip their officers with video cameras, the New York Times reports. That’s right.…

It’s sort of a weird benchmark to use to illustrate just how many sub-Saharan black Africans have immigrated to the United States over the past several years, but it’s impactful: According to a New York Times report, more black Africans moved to the U.S. between 2000 and 2010 than were brought to the North American continent by slave ship during…

Ferguson, Mo., Police Chief Thomas Jackson on Thursday issued a videotaped apology to the family of Michael Brown, and the community of Ferguson, but the olive branch he extended was not received well by some people who still feel not much has been done to address the fatal shooting of Brown, the New York Times…

It’s not quite reparations, but the U.S. government has agreed to pay the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American tribe in the country, $554 million as part of a settlement stemming from 50-year-old claims in a lawsuit, the BBC is reporting.   The Navajo Nation leases approximately 14 million acres of its land to the U.S. government…