As the long holiday weekend kicked off, at least one person was killed and 10 others were wounded in shootings across Chicago, according to NBC Chicago. In shootings scattered across the city, one man was killed late Friday in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. And just after 5 a.m. Saturday, a 28-year-old man was…

Now that Michael Sam has been cut by the St. Louis Rams, questions abound about what’s next for the defensive end who earlier this year became the NFL’s first openly gay player. And Twitter reaction to the Rams’ decision was decidedly mixed. https://twitter.com/jemelehill/status/505845737406865408https://twitter.com/TheMadMrMartin/status/505845549908889601https://twitter.com/pcwhitegirl/status/505845188322140160 NFL analysts and insiders tell the Washington Post that after a productive…

A St. Louis County police officer, who pushed a television journalist on live television in Ferguson, Mo., and was recently suspended after a bigoted videotaped rant, has retired, the Huffington Post reports. The officer, Don Page, served his last day with the force on Aug. 25, MSNBC reported Friday. A representative of the St. Louis…

Swaziland’s royal family has found itself ensnared in the firm grip of social media users who are determined to expose the lavish lifestyle of “Africa’s last absolute monarch,” while most of the country’s people barely subsist on $1 a day per person, Agence France-Presse reports. SwaziLeaks began writing critical posts about the problem almost a…

It was bound to happen. A group of demonstrators have filed a $40 million lawsuit against Ferguson, Mo., and its police department in the aftermath of days of angry protests that swept through the city this month. The lawsuit, filed by six plaintiffs, accuses police of using “wanton and excessive force” when demonstrators took to…

As the fiery protests that erupted in Ferguson, Mo., after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen by a white police officer appeared to be on the wane, several St. Louis-area young people reflected on the incident and talked about lessons learned. While many were demoralized and saddened by the shooting of Michael Brown,…

Chicago’s Jackie Robinson West Little League team is inspiring hope in a city marked by crime and gun violence among young people. On Saturday, the all-black squad from the city’s embattled South Side, defeated Las Vegas Mountain Ridge 7-5 in the U.S. Championship baseball game at the Little League World Series in South Williamsport, Pa.,…

The Rev. Al Sharpton led thousands of marchers in a peaceful rally across the New York City borough of Staten Island to protest the choke hold death of an unarmed black father of six by a white police officer, the Associated Press reports. An estimated 2,500 people marched in a call for justice for Eric…

Three years ago a small police department in Jennings, Mo., was so bedeviled by racial strife between its white officers and black residents that the City Council fired the whole force and built a new one, the Washington Post reports. One of the fired officers was Darren Wilson, 28, accused of shooting 18-year-old Michael Brown…

A tentative calm prevailed in the streets of Ferguson, Mo., for a third night Friday, even as a smaller group of protesters and police continued to hold their respective grounds, the Associated Press reports. The fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown on Aug. 9 by Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson, who is white,…