EURweb is reporting that British actor Idris Elba is planning to open a health care clinic in Sierra Leone to provide support for sick families in his father’s homeland. The actor was born in England to African parents and has never visited his father’s birthplace or his mother’s hometown in Ghana. So he’s putting together…

Fresh from our “Better late than never” file, the Los Angeles Times is reporting that former state insurance-claims adjuster John Floyd Thomas Jr., 74, pleaded guilty Friday to seven sexually motivated strangulation slayings of older women decades ago across Los Angeles County. Thomas, commonly known as the Westside Rapist, pleaded guilty to the murders that…

Linda Carroll of MSNBC is reporting that one in five of all American moms have kids who have different birth fathers, a new study shows. And when researchers look only at moms with two or more kids, that figure is even higher: Twenty-eight percent have kids with at least two different men. “To put it…

The Star-Ledger is reporting that a lawyer representing Al-Mustafa Shabazz today disputed an allegation that the 72-year-old Newark, N.J., man was the main assassin of Malcolm X in 1965, an accusation made in the late Manning Marable‘s book Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. “I’ve spoken to him (Shabazz), and he categorically denies he was…

The BBC is reporting that the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is urging the Ivory Coast’s internationally backed president to investigate hundreds of deaths attributed to his supporters in Duekoue. Ban Ki-moon said he was “concerned and alarmed” about the reports from the besieged town, but Alassane Ouattara said his followers were not involved. The…

David Lohr of AOL News is reporting that the FBI has joined the search for missing New Jersey teen Nadirah Ruffin, who police say was kidnapped during an armed home invasion and robbery in Atlantic City. Atlantic City Deputy Chief Ernest Jubilee said at a press conference that the bureau is offering a reward of…

Chris Isidore of CNN Money is reporting that the job market continued to improve in March as strong business hiring took the unemployment rate to its lowest level in two years. The economy gained 216,000 jobs during the month. That’s better than the gain of 180,000 predicted by economists surveyed by CNN Money, and also…

Robert Burns of the Associated Press is reporting that the Pentagon is about to pull its attack planes out of the international air campaign in Libya, hoping NATO partners can take up the slack. The announcement Thursday drew sharp reactions from some in Congress, who wondered aloud why the Obama administration would bow out of…

There’s a reason they call television the “idiot box.” Some believe that if you spend too much time watching television, it will negatively affect your ability to think. Let’s hope this isn’t true, since a recent study from Nielsen is showing that African Americans watch television more than any other group in the country. According…