culture

Have you ever felt a twinge of mistrust as you handed your credit card to a restaurant server? How about the grocery clerk? No worries. They probably feel the same about you. A new poll shows that Americans’ trust in each other has been on the decline for about four decades, the Associated Press reports.…

Dozens of protesters were arrested at demonstrations around the country on Black Friday as some workers and their supporters tried to shine the spotlight on low wages at the world’s largest retailer, NBC News reports. The protesters want Wal-Mart to raise wages by 42 percent from $8.81 an hour to $12.50 an hour, which would…

What will the president’s opponents think of next? Controversial birther preacher the Rev. James David Manning is peddling a new and wild conspiracy theory, claiming that President Barack Obama fathered a child with the woman who this fall was fatally shot outside the White House. Manning, pastor of Atlah World Missionary Church, asserts that the…

Residents and leaders of parts of New York City’s Brooklyn community on Friday held a rally to denounce the so-called “knockout game,” a violent trend in which youths punch unwary victims as they walk down the street, CBS New York reports. “We are stressed out, but we refuse to be knocked out in our community,”…

If Sasha Obama suffers from “youngest child syndrome,” it will likely be dampened in 2016 when the first family turns to her for an important decision. President Barack Obama said she would be one of the deciding factors in where the family lands after leaving the White House. At that time, she will be a…

An Alabama man who once served as the Grand Cyclops for the Ku Klux Klan, has been indicted by a grand jury on charges of burning a cross at the entrance to an African-American neighborhood, the Raw Story reports. Steven Joshua Dinkle, 28, was indicted Wednesday on five counts, including obstruction of justice, in the…

An Ohio couple who brought their adopted 9-year-old son to a child services center, saying that they no longer wanted to care for the boy, is facing criminal charges, according to ABC News. Cleveland and Lisa Cox took the boy to Butler County Children’s Services in early November after the boy’s behavioral issues became too…

Marissa Alexander, the Florida woman who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing what she argued was a warning shot at her abusive husband, was freed late Wednesday in time to spend Thanksgiving with her family, MSNBC reports. Her bond was set at $200,009. Alexander was convicted on multiple counts of aggravated assault…

Black Friday’s gotten a pretty bad rap. Whether it’s “the High Holy Day for the state religion of overconsumption,” as one commenter wrote on the New York Times’ website, or just the starting line of the holiday rat race, the “black” in Black Friday is more ominous than awe-inspiring. So why not take it back?…

“Our last name is odd. We get it from my mother’s father, Herbert Mungin, who was born in 1924, somewhere in the American South—South Carolina, we think. I know that last names were picked up in various ways in the late 1800s, but I’ve actually never met a white person who shares this last name.…