The first trial on human beings for an untested Ebola virus vaccination will begin next week, U.S. health officials have announced, according to USA Today. According to the report, 20 healthy participants will take part in the trial, which will take place at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. Researchers are expecting results…

Questions remain in the fatal kidnapping of a Decatur, Ga., couple as the authorities continue their search for suspects, WXIA-TV reports. Jeronta Brown and his fiancee, Briana Brooks, were returning home after taking their 8-month-old baby and teenage niece out to eat early Saturday morning. As they were walking toward the house, they were jumped…

Literature—regardless of how it is delivered, whether in song, sermon, novel, short story, poem or essay—has the unique ability to inform, to uplift, and to shape our opinions and worldviews. At least that’s how James Basker, the Richard Gilder Professor of Literary History at Barnard College at Columbia University, sees it. It’s a crucial point and…

Michael Brown’s death appears to be sparking an entire cultural movement, particularly among black musicians. A group of powerful artists—including the Game, Diddy, Rick Ross, 2 Chains, Fabolous, Wale, DJ Khaled, Swizz Beats, Yo Gotti, Curren$y, Problem, King Pharaoh and TGT—have collaborated on the just-released single “Don’t Shoot” in honor of the Ferguson, Mo., teen…

John Crawford III did not even have the BB gun pointed in the air. In fact, he wasn’t even facing the officers who shot him. At least, that’s what his family’s attorney has said after being allowed to review surveillance video from the fateful Aug. 5 incident at an Ohio Wal-Mart, the Raw Story reports.…

Update 6:56 p.m. USC football captain Josh Captain now says he made it all up, according to ESPN.com. That story about saving his drowning nephew by jumping out a second story window is just that; a story. There’s no explanation for what the young man was thinking in telling this tale, or how he really…

Police have a 19-year-old in custody as the main suspect in two violent incidents last week in the Baltimore neighborhood of Otterbein, WJZ reports. Within the span of a week in the neighborhood, there have been three attacks, with at least one victim needing surgery for his injuries. A 25-year-old victim, who has remained unidentified,…

As Michael Brown’s life was celebrated Monday during a packed ceremony at the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis, the audience and speakers never lost sight of the reason they were there: justice. The Rev. Al Sharpton delivered an emotional eulogy, bringing out cheers and applause from the crowd who came to lay…

A Louisiana man who state police claimed shot and killed himself in March while in police custody died, not of a gunshot wound to the back, as police had initially reported, but of a shot to the chest, according to an autopsy report, KATC reports.  The shooting occurred in the backseat of a patrol car…