EURweb is reporting that American music legend Etta James is gravely ill. James, who has been battling Alzheimer’s disease, became sick with a blood infection and the MRSA superbug while undergoing treatment for an addiction to painkillers last year. She has also been receiving treatment for leukemia. James’ husband of 41 years, Artis Mills, is…

Fresh from the “Now that I have mine, let me keep you from getting yours” file, ColorLines is reporting that North Carolina Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx, who was appointed chair of the House Higher Education Subcommittee, doesn’t think that higher education should be publicly funded. Interesting perspective, coming from someone who is a graduate of…

MSNBC is reporting that violence in Tunis is escalating. Rioters hurled stones at trams and government buildings in Tunisia’s capital on Thursday in defiance of increasingly tough government attempts to end more than three weeks of rioting by youths angry about joblessness. Police opened fire and killed four people who defied a government curfew, opposition…

Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey and civil rights legend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have a lot in common —  both of their paternal ancestries trace to Europe, and their maternal ancestries connect them directly to Africa. While it is common knowledge that African Americans and West Indians have European and African lineage, it is just recently,…

Media mogul Oprah Winfrey is opening up about the failure of her film Beloved. Winfrey starred as a former slave in the 1998 film, based on Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The film opened up against The Bride of Chucky and failed miserably at the box office. Winfrey says that the…

The Washington Post is reporting that a new majority-Republican school board in Wake County, N.C., backed by national Tea Party conservatives, has voted to abolish the county’s integration policy. Pledging to “say no to the social engineers!” it has abolished the policy behind one of the nation’s most celebrated integration efforts. And as the board…

ColorLines is reporting that Stanley Nelson (not to be confused with the documentary filmmaker), editor of the Concordia Sentinel, is reporting compelling evidence that Leonard Spencer, an admitted former member of the Ku Klux Klan living in Richland Parish, La., helped set a 1964 fire that killed Frank Morris. Morris was a 51-year-old, black shoe-shop…

Ted “Golden Voice” Williams was detained on Monday for getting into a verbal altercation with his daughter while in Los Angeles to shoot two segments for the Dr. Phil Show reuniting Williams with his family. Williams and his daughter Janey got into a shouting match in the lobby of the Renaissance Hotel after Williams says…

MSNBC is reporting that Sarah Palin has posted a nearly eight-minute video on her Facebook page condemning those who blame political rhetoric for the Arizona shooting that gravely wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Last spring Palin targeted Giffords’ district as one of 20 that should be taken back. Palin has been criticized for marking each…

It looks like the wheels of justice are finally turning. Popeater is reporting that Dr. Conrad Murray, the physician accused of injecting Michael Jackson with a lethal amount of sedatives, was ordered to stand trial on a count of involuntary manslaughter. Judge Michael Pastor then ordered the suspension of Murray’s license as a condition of…