culture
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Jay Z Scores 9 Grammy Nominations
Veteran rapper Jay Z led all artists, with nine Grammy nominations on Friday, but newbies Lorde, Kendrick Lamar and Macklemore and Ryan Lewis surpassed other heavyweights like Justin Timberlake for rankings in the top categories of the annual music awards, Yahoo News reports. In second place with seven nods apiece were Timberlake and Pharrell Williams,…
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President Obama Jokes About Post-White House Dream Gig
Although he has a few more years in his second term, President Barack Obama is beginning to open up about plans after the White House. And one thing the avid sports fan would like to do is to become an ESPN anchor. He reportedly made the statement to Disney executive Robert Iger, whose company includes…
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Black Officer Alleges Racial Profiling in Arrest
An African-American member of the Long Island, N.Y. police force alleges that she was racially profiled by colleagues during an arrest on Nov. 29, despite identifying herself as a member of the force, reports show. Officer Dolores Sharpe was charged with resisting arrest and harassment while off-duty, after she was confronted by an unidentified white…
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My Ancestral Town Disappeared From the Map!
“I have been researching my genealogy since 1996. This year, I discovered the names of my grandmother’s grandparents. However, their birthplace is proving to be a mystery. It is listed as Hacot Eurville, Ga. I have searched the Web for information about this place and find nothing. My grandmother and her parents lived in Lowndes County, Ga., and Hamilton County,…
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10 Films and Songs of the Anti-Apartheid Movement
We gathered 10 moments in film and song that capture the essence of the anti-apartheid movement. 1. Invictus The 2009 film starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon documents Nelson Mandela in his first term as president of South Africa as he enlists the national rugby team to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Mandela’s embrace…
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Scandal Recap: Who’s the Bad Guy, Again?
Have you ever played that game where you try to one-up Scandal’s writers’ room and come up with the craziest thing that could happen next? No? Good, because you’ll lose. Every. Single. Time. In last night’s episode, “YOLO,” our favorite Washington wunderkinds put on their white hats to ride in and save Olivia’s mom, the…
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Unemployment Rate Drops to a 5-Year Low
November marks the fourth straight month in which the job market has been looking up, the Associated Press reports. On Friday the Labor Department announced 203,000 added jobs, causing the unemployment rate to dip to 7 percent, a five-year low and down from 7.3 in October, which also saw impressive job gains. On average, the…
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Unarmed Man Charged With Wounding Bystanders Who Were Shot by Police
An unarmed New York City man who was shot at by police has now been slapped with charges of assault, the theory being that he was responsible for two bystanders being hit by the bullets, the New York Times reports. Brooklyn resident Glenn Broadnax, 35, who was emotionally disturbed, caused a commotion downtown near Times…
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Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s Harvard Address to Nelson Mandela
Editor’s note: Henry Louis Gates Jr. addressed President Nelson Mandela with the following words on the conferring of a special honorary degree on Mandela by Harvard University on Sept. 18, 1998: Like so many of my fellow faculty members, I attended university in the late ’60s and early ’70. Ours was a generation that came…
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Mandela’s Legacy: Tributes From Around the World
“The soul of Africa has departed, and there is nothing miraculous left in the world.” —Wole Soyinka, Nigerian writer “All that I can do is thank God that I had a grandfather who loved and guided all of us in the family. The best lesson that he taught all of us was the need for…