culture
-
4 Black Filmmakers Make Waves at Sundance
This year’s Sundance Film Festival concluded with four black directors leaving Park City, Utah, with awards. Although none of the four won the prestigious Grand Jury Prize, as Fruitvale Station did last year, the fact that so many black filmmakers took home honors shows that black independent films are thriving. This year’s Audience Award for…
-
West Virginia Man Kills New Black Neighbor
A man from Barboursville, W.Va., fatally shot his new neighbor and the neighbor’s brother without warning as the two men were inspecting their property, New York’s Daily News reports. Rodney Bruce Black, 62, told authorities that he thought his victims were breaking into a building he owned. However, although the building is on land that…
-
Government Looks to Prevent Spying on Its Spying
The U.S. government doesn’t want people looking at the phone records of the people whom they are spying on. The Associated Press has learned that while the Obama administration is considering moving its collection of phone-surveillance records from the National Security Agency to be stored at phone companies or elsewhere, it is also funding research…
-
2nd Grand Jury Indicts Officer in Fatal Shooting of Unarmed Man
A North Carolina grand jury on Monday has rectified what many considered an injustice by indicting an officer who shot and killed an unarmed former Florida A&M football player, the New York Daily News reports. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer Randall Kerrick, 27, now faces a voluntary-manslaughter charge for the September 2013 shooting in which Kerrick is…
-
Sen. Chuck Schumer Wants Tracking Devices on Autistic Kids
Sen. Chuck Schumer is demanding that the federal government create a program to outfit autistic kids with tracking devices after the disappearance of autistic teen Avonte Oquendo, whose remains were recently discovered, the New York Daily News. The senator plans to introduce “Avonte’s Law” this week. Oquendo disappeared from the Riverview School in Long Island…
-
Pharrell’s Hat Has Hip-Hop Roots
Turns out superproducer Pharrell Williams’ hat wasn’t just a fashion faux pas but was actually a nod to hip-hop history. While the rest of us were on Twitter laughing at the images of his oversized real-life re-creation of the Arby’s insignia, photoshopped atop the heads of some of our favorite celebrities, the folks over at…
-
Joy-Ann Reid to Host New Daytime Show on MSNBC
Joy-Ann Reid has secured a spot as host of one of the two new daytime programs MSNBC is launching on Feb. 24, according to Variety. Reid’s new show will begin at 2 p.m. EST, Monday through Friday. Ronan Farrow, the son of actress Mia Farrow, will also be hosting a new show on the network…
-
The Death of a Friend Inspires Reflections on Mortality
Something there is about the death of a friend or colleague close to your own age that makes you contemplate your own mortality. It happened to me several years ago when my good friend Ed Bradley passed, and it seems to be happening more frequently now as I am fully ensconced in my 70s. On…
-
Indiana Woman Admits to Selling Baby for Sex
An Indiana woman is admitting to allowing a man from her community to “buy” a baby eight times and being in the room for all the encounters, except the last one, the Sun-Times Media Wire reports. Natisha Hillard, a 25-year-old from Gary, Ind., pleaded guilty in a U.S. District Court in Hammond to her crimes.…
-
33 Weddings, Robots, a Goofy Hat and Major Snubs: Must Be the Grammys
This year’s 56th Annual Grammy Awards show was filled with head-scratchers, from Pharrell’s hat to a mass wedding officiated by Queen Latifiah to robots winning best album and song and then being unable to deliver an acceptance speech because they are nonverbal futuristic machines. The biggest head-scratcher of them all was a Compton, Calif.-raised rapper,…