culture
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Police: Fla. Man Faked Heart Attack While Friend Stole Toys
While 27-year-old Genard Dupree collapsed to the floor near the Central Florida Wal-Mart store entrance, clutching his chest, his friend, 30-year-old Tarus Scott, allegedly strolled out with a shopping cart stuffed with a motorized Power Wheels Barbie car, a LeapFrog tablet and a Barbie Glam Vacation House, authorities say, the New York Post reports. Dupree…
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George Zimmerman Regrets Not Getting Self-Defense Insurance
Woe is George Zimmerman. According to Raw Story, the former neighborhood watchman responsible for the death of unarmed Florida teen Trayvon Martin in 2012 called the Armed American Radio show on Sunday to give fellow gun carriers advice about what to do if they ever happen to shoot someone. It seems that one of Zimmerman’s…
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NJ Authorities Want Assata Shakur Back From Cuba to Finish Life Sentence
On Wednesday President Obama announced that he was easing some of the United States’ 50-year restrictions against Cuba, and shortly after that announcement, the focus for some people shifted to what a new Cuba-U.S. relationship might mean for Assata Shakur. Shakur, who has become a kind of vigilante folk hero in the black community, was…
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UN: Nearly 1 Million in West Africa at Risk of Going Hungry as Ebola Restrictions Cause Food Shortages
Approximately 1 million people living in the three West African nations most plagued by the Ebola outbreak—Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone—are at risk of going hungry because of major food shortages due to “border closures, quarantines and crop losses,” Al-Jazeera reports. Two food-monitoring groups, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the U.N. World…
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LAPD Buying 7,000 Body Cameras for Police Force
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Tuesday that the city would purchase 7,000 body cameras for police officers, reports the Los Angeles Times. The introduction of body cameras is part of an effort to increase transparency. Body cameras have become a focus since the killing of Michael Brown by now-former Ferguson, Mo., Police Officer Darren…
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Ala. Man Arrested After Allegedly Putting Heroin in Toddler’s Diaper
An Alabama man was arrested after narcotics detectives say they found 14 grams of heroin (about $2,500 worth) stashed in his 2-year-old daughter’s diaper, the New York Post reports. Detectives were assisted by 23-year-old Kenneth Bell’s 5-year-old daughter, who told authorities that “Daddy put something in Sister’s diaper,” Irondale, Ala., police spokesman Detective Michael Mangina…
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We Need Black Programming That Reflects Our True Diversity
Any cursory check of one’s Facebook or Twitter feeds—or the local newspaper—would reveal an onslaught of images of black men and women either cut down in their prime or engaged in all manner of foolishness. What’s missing is a stream of rich, varied images depicting our true diversity. When there’s a lack of such imagery, a…
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5 Things You Should Know About the US-Cuba Breakthrough
In a stunning display of mic-dropping, post-midterm comeback, days before the holiday recess set in, President Barack Obama announced the first massive thaw in tensions between the United States and Cuba in more than half a century. The implications of the move are, no doubt, enormous and far-reaching. Not only did the embattled POTUS completely…
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SC Teen George Stinney Jr. Exonerated 70 Years After Execution
It’s been 70 years since George Stinney Jr., a 14-year-old South Carolina boy, faced the electric chair for the 1944 murders of two young white girls in Alcolu, but his name has finally been cleared after a circuit court judge tossed his murder conviction, NBC News reports. George was so small, weighing just 95 pounds…
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Hillary Clinton: ‘Black Lives Matter’
On Tuesday, during her acceptance speech at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights in New York City, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke out against torture around the world and also noted that “black lives matter,” reports the New York Daily News. Clinton told attendees that she was proud to…