culture

A 14-year-old Bronx, N.Y., boy underwent emergency surgery to remove shards of glass from his chest, lungs and heart after his mother says police handcuffed her son and then slammed his head through a plate-glass window for mouthing off. In a New York Daily News exclusive, Cherita Payne says her son Javier has no prior…

Over the last two days, Boko Haram, the group claiming responsibility for the abduction of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls several weeks ago, has been blamed for several attacks on villages near Chibok, where they were kidnapped. On Tuesday, the BBC reports, 118 people were killed in a bombing in the town of Jos, and…

Sam Greenlee was underappreciated, disgruntled, professionally disemboweled and perpetually agitated. His sudden death at the age of 83 offers opportunity for reflection on a man trapped in the suspended animation of one great work that briefly elevated, then haunted, him into his last days. An apprehensive and highly educated foreign service officer who abruptly quit…

In 1903 W.E.B. Du Bois opined that one of the burdens of blackness was facing down an ever-present question: “How does it feel to be a problem?” More than a century later, the changes on our social and political landscape have led us to an equally challenging question: How do you solve a problem like…

A lawsuit filed on behalf of eight former NFL players alleges that that league was so profit driven that it illegally administered narcotics and painkillers to mask severe injuries, the Associated Press reports. Those players are now claiming that the risky treatments have resulted in pricey and painful medical complications. According to AP, which got…

For many Americans, Nigeria is an enigma.  On the one hand, many Nigerian immigrants come to America and make a killing: They put their student visas to good use, gain admission to selective medical residency programs, get engineering jobs and raise first-generation African-American students who go on to attend the best universities this nation has…

Controversy over a high school senior, the periodic table, the 1999 hit “Back That Azz Up” by rapper Juvenile, and a Georgia high school yearbook reached a head Tuesday after a student used periodic elements to spell out a funny message in her yearbook quote. Paris Gray, the senior class vice president at Mundy’s Mill…

The Oakland, Calif., teen who made national headlines after he was accepted to several of the nation’s top colleges is reaping all of the rewards from his success. Akintunde Ahmad, who will be attending Yale University in the fall, has already done the newspaper circuit and was a guest on Ellen DeGeneres’ show last month,…