culture

(The Root) — What happens when you put the Rev. Al Sharpton and New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly in the same room, in front of a mic? You get Sharpton making a joke: “We gonna bring Kelly on after I stop and frisk him in the back,” referring to the controversial police practice…

A little something to keep fans of ABC’s Scandal going until Thursday’s episode: Kerry Washington and Tony Goldwyn — who plays President Fitzgerald Grant on the political drama — are on this week’s Entertainment Weekly cover. Inside the magazine are some teasers from Executive Producer Betsy Beers. Apparently things are going to get more intense…

Brittney Griner, at 6 feet 8, was the NCAA’s leader in blocked shots and the second-leading scorer in women’s college basketball history when she finished her career at Baylor University. It seems that if Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has anything to say about it, she might add another title to her athletic résumé: first…

It’s not as if he needs a side job to pay the bills, but rapper, entrepreneur and professional sports team part owner Jay-Z has taken on yet another venture: His Roc Nation entertainment company is launching Roc Nation Sports, a sports-management company that is partnering with another leading agency, Creative Artists, to represent New York…

A recently surfaced video showing Rutgers head coach Mike Rice being verbally and physically abusive elicited two main reactions: 1) That’s not OK, and 2) How does this guy still have a job? That question now has an answer: He doesn’t. Just one day after the practice footage was shown on the ESPN program Outside…

After he spent 40 years behind bars, today is Louis Taylor’s first full day of freedom. Although he was convicted of starting a fire in Tucson, Ariz., that killed 28 people, he had always maintained his innocence. Since then, advances in forensics have suggested that the fatal fire might not even have been caused by arson.…

Writing at Ebony, France François says that the organization’s “occupation in the time of cholera” is “despicable” and has harmed residents.  Despicable: United Nations peacekeepers from Nepal infected a quake-stricken Haiti with cholera by polluting the Artibonite River with fecal matter from a faulty septic tank in 2010. To date, the cholera epidemic has killed…