news
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Billionaire Selling Extensive Art Collection to Fund Harlem Children’s Zone
French-born billionaire William Louis-Dreyfus is putting his money where his mouth is by selling his extensive art collection in order to donate the proceeds to Harlem Children’s Zone, which supports disadvantaged kids, Barron’s reports. Louis-Dreyfus, 82, who lives in New York, spent about 50 years putting together his 3,500-piece collection, which he estimates to be…
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Fla. Man Cracks Bottle Over Head of Black Bar Patron and Says, ‘This Bar Is Not for Blacks’
A Florida man has been charged with a hate crime charge after assaulting a black bar patron and telling him that “this bar is not for blacks,” the Daytona Beach News-Journal reports. Jason Cuellar, 44, is accused of hitting a fellow bar patron in the head with a beer bottle and is facing charges of…
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Washington State Senator: ‘Colored’ People More Likely to Commit Crimes
During a Washington state Senate committee hearing last Thursday, Republicans were having issues understanding a proposal requiring the state to issue racial-impact statements for pieces of legislation upon request, The Stranger reports. According to the report, a racial-impact statement would assess whether certain laws would disproportionately affect certain groups of people, in either a good…
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Calif. Man Charged in Death of Transgender Woman, Rape of 11-Year-Old Girl
An Inglewood, Calif., man was charged Monday in the shooting death of a 21-year-old transgender woman during a robbery, the Los Angeles Times reports, as well as with forcing an 11-year-old girl into prostitution. Robert James Spells, 30, faces charges of capital murder with a special circumstance of killing someone during a robbery, second-degree robbery,…
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NJ Woman Caught Shoplifting Claims Cop Gave Her 2 Choices: Jail or Sex
A New Jersey woman has filed a $25 million lawsuit alleging that a police officer forced her to have sex with him after he reportedly caught her shoplifting. According to the South Jersey Times, Shakera Brown, 22, claims that Bridgeton, N.J., Police Officer Braheme Days caught her shoplifting at a Rite Aid pharmacy in January…
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Obama’s Task Force on Policing Says Cops Need Better Training to Ease Tense Situations
In December, President Barack Obama commissioned a task force to come up with recommendations on how to deal with recent police killings of unarmed black men and the distrust that working-class communities feel toward law enforcement as a result. On Monday, the President’s Task Force on 21st-Century Policing issued its proposals (pdf), including that “there should be…
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Nobody Believes These Biracial Twins Are Sisters
One twin is said to be white and the other black. The set of biracial twins, born in the United Kingdom to a white father and black mother, often stun those who don’t know them because they look nothing alike and are often mistaken as just friends, the New York Post reports. The girls have…
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Carbon Monoxide Leak at Ohio Grandmother’s House Leaves 3 Girls Dead
An Ohio family lost a third child to carbon monoxide poisoning on Sunday after four of the children were exposed to the gas, CBS News reports. Jakia Jones, 13, passed away on Sunday, two days after the initial incident. Her cousins, Dionanna Bishop, 14, and Dejah Bishop, 13, sisters, succumbed on Friday after a relative found…
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Tenn. Lawmaker Says the ‘W’ in Her ‘NAAWP’ Comment Stands for ‘Western,’ Not ‘White’
Rep. Sheila Butt, a member of Tennessee’s House of Representatives, drew the ire of her black counterparts Thursday when she tried to backpedal away from her use of the abbreviation “NAAWP.” Her critics argue that the initials make a mockery of civil rights organization the NAACP, WKRN reports. Butt responded to a Facebook post about…
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Calif. School’s Black-Only Assembly Causes Uproar
School officials at a Benicia, Calif., middle school are apologizing after a teacher held a “black students only” Black History Month assembly, KTVU reports. “It looks like segregation. Certainly does. It was,” Benicia Unified School District Superintendent Janice Adams said, according to the news station. “I understand how it looks and I’m very sorry for…