A federal prosecutor told jurors Friday that an ex-soldier deserves the death penalty in the murder of his 5-year-old daughter, saying “he knew full well how important it was to protect” her, the Associated Press reports. Steven Mellin, a trial attorney in the Justice Department’s capital case unit, made his argument during the sentencing phase…

Rashema Melson has an incredible story. She is slated to graduate from high school as valedictorian Wednesday, despite the hardship of living at D.C. General, a former hospital that is now a tumbledown homeless shelter in Washington, D.C., the Washington Post reports. Not only that, the Anacostia High School senior, 18, is to attend Georgetown…

The Koch family is giving $25 million to the United Negro College Fund, one of the largest gifts the UNCF has ever received, Time reports. It is the fifth-largest grant to the UNCF and adds to more than $1.5 million in contributions from the conservative and controversial Koch family and its businesses over nearly four…

TMZ on Sunday posted a video of a 15-year-old Justin Bieber, who is now 20, telling a racist joke to friends. “Why are black people afraid of chain saws?” he asks in the video that first surfaced Sunday on a British pay site, TMZ reports. His punchline: “Run n—ger,” repeatedly saying the n-word while laughing.…

A Michigan community is rallying behind a teacher who was suspended after showing a video of white entertainers in blackface during an African-American history lesson, according to the Monroe News. The white teacher, Alan Barron, 59, showed his Monroe Middle School eighth-grade class a video of how white people used blackface to imitate African Americans…

Los Angeles Clippers co-owner Donald Sterling’s world was turned upside down last month when an audio recording surfaced of him making racist remarks to his companion V. Stiviano. The comments prompted the NBA to ban him for life and force him to sell the team. Now it appears that turnabout is fairplay after Stiviano herself…

A grand jury has indicted six Cleveland police officers in the deaths of two unarmed suspects, who were killed in a spray of 137 bullets after a wild car chase that ended in a schoolyard, the Associated Press reports. The indictment on Friday is part of a far-reaching federal investigation into “the Cleveland Police Department’s…

Doctors, lawyers, security guards and professors are among more than 200 African-American men who signed an open letter to President Barack Obama urging him to include women and girls in his far-reaching My Brother’s Keeper initiative. The letter at African American Policy Forum comes on the heels of an announcement Friday by the president that…

The high stakes drama surrounding the life Los Angeles Clippers co-owner Donald Sterling took a new turn Friday after he filed suit against the NBA for more than $1 billion, CNN reports. The suit was provided to CNN by Sterling’s lawyer, the report says. It comes in the aftermath of his racist tirade against blacks…

Arsenio Hall, who made history in the early 1990s as the first African-American late night TV talk show host, announced Friday on social media that his new show had been canceled after the first season. The move comes even after CBS Television said in February that it had renewed the The Arsenio Hall show for…