News

President Obama is urging federal workers to cut down on business travel and commuting by car as he seeks to reduce heat-trapping emissions produced by the federal government. The White House announced that the government will aim to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from indirect sources like employee driving by 13 percent…

Democrats are going to take another stab at it and try to restore unemployment benefits to millions of unemployed Americans. Millions of people stuck on the jobless rolls would receive an extension of unemployment benefits averaging $309 a week under a Senate bill that will hopefully break the Republican filibuster, which is blocking the extension.…

A 17-year-old teen has been arrested for firing shots that injured 10 people at Indianapolis’ Black Expo Summer Celebration in the city’s downtown. The shootings started about 9:30 p.m. Saturday as several hundred young people gathered along the streets outside the Circle Centre Mall. Those wounded ranged from ages 10 to 19. All of the…

A USDA official was forced to resign after making racist remarks at a NAACP function. Shirley Sherrod, a black woman who served as the USDA’s rural development director for Georgia, says she was “forced out of her federally appointed job” after a “snippet” of a speech she gave in March appeared to show her admitting…

by Col. Charles D. Allen An evening TV news broadcast caught my attention this week and since then I have followed the reports of the death of Vernon Baker. Mr. Baker, an African American who served in World War II in the segregated units of the U.S. Army, died after 90 years of very full…

When he released his Love Alive album in 1975, the one with his Afro image on the cover that contained the gospel standards ”Changed,” ”I’m Not the Same” and ”Goin’ up Yonder,” there were limited options for listening to the music of Walter Hawkins. You could buy it on an eight-track tape, tune in to…

Expose white people to the life conditions of poor black folks and Latinos, and their state of health declines tremendously and in life-threatening ways. This was one of several startling conclusions in a study released on Monday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna that looked…

Los Angelenos are hopping mad because the city has targeted public libraries for closing because of economic woes. Supporters gathered on Monday at the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles to protest a two-day-a-week closure due to budget cuts. Hours at the city’s 64 branch libraries have been reduced, and each of the city’s 73…

Hang on to your cleanup gear: Nearly every single worker from the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster is now dead. Last week The Root informed you that black contractors had been left out of lucrative BP oil spill cleanup opportunities. That may not be such a bad thing for black folks, since most of the…