news
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Chicago Ends a Violent 2016 With 762 Murders
Chicago ended 2016 with a record number of shooting incidents and the most homicides in two decades, ABC News reports. According to the report, Chicago closed out the year with 3,550 shooting incidents—in which more than 4,000 people were shot—and 762 murders. That averaged out to more than two murders and almost 10 shootings every…
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NM Mother Who Allegedly Beat and Sexually Assaulted Her Son Arrested
Police in Albuquerque, N.M., say a mom accused of beating and sexually assaulting her son before taking her six other children and fleeing police has been arrested, KRQE reports. Genoveva Fazio was arrested Sunday in Arizona and taken to the Navajo County Jail in Holborok. Fazio had been on the run from police since Friday…
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SC Church Shooter Dylann Roof Deemed Competent to Face Penalty Phase of Trial
A federal judge has once again deemed white supremacist Dylann Roof competent to face trial, the New York Times reports. According to the report, on Monday, Judge Richard M. Gergel echoed the decision he made in a separate ruling in late November when Gergel found that Roof did not meet the legal standard to be…
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Iconic Hollywood Sign Defaced to Read ‘Hollyweed’
A creative prankster changed the iconic ”Hollywood” sign over Los Angeles by manipulating it to read “Hollyweed,” CNN reports. The vandal used tarps to change the O’s in the sign to E’s. He (police think the perpetrator is probably a man) was caught on security-camera footage between midnight and 2 a.m. local time Sunday, but…
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Colin Kaepernick Voted Most Courageous Player by 49ers
San Francisco 49ers backup quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who defied professional football’s usual fear of confronting racial unrest, was voted the 49ers’ most courageous and inspirational player by his teammates, the NFL club announced Friday, the New York Daily News reports. Kaepernick, who knelt during the national anthem in protest against police brutality this season, was…
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Donna Brazile Says Obama Response to Russia ‘Insufficient’
Donna Brazile, interim chairperson of the Democratic National Committee, said that the Obama administration’s retaliatory measures against Russia for hacking Democratic groups are “insufficient,” according to The Hill. Brazile and the DNC definitely have skin in this game, since it was DNC emails that were hacked and released, forcing DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign,…
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19 States Will Increase Minimum Wage in 2017
Indeed, 2017 will be a great reprieve for many who are happy to see 2016 go, and it will be especially sweet for some of America’s lowest-paid hourly workers. Nineteen states will ring in the year with an increase in the minimum wage. Increasingly, states have had to step in where the federal government has…
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Black Billionaire Will Pay for Education of Kidnapped Chibok Girls
An African-American billionaire has offered to sponsor the education of 24 girls from the Chibok, Nigeria, community, including the 21 girls who were released from Boko Haram captivity in October, reports Forbes. Private-equity titan Robert Smith will pay for the young women to attend American University of Nigeria in Yola and will pay for tuition,…