Police: 8 shot in Texas Southern drive-by attack

AP – Police tape marks the spot where at least 5 people were shot Wednesday, July 22, 2009 none fatally, at …
Thu Jul 23, 6:52 pm ET
HOUSTON – Houston police on Thursday increased to eight the injury toll from a drive-by shooting at a community rally on the Texas Southern University campus.
University officials initially said six people were wounded when gunfire broke out as the "family block party" event was ending about 8:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Houston Police spokesman Kese Smith said Thursday that eight people ranging in age from 14 to 21 were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries after the shooting. At least one of the victims was a student at the Houston school, university officials said.
Smith said Houston police are looking for several suspects, but downplayed a possible gang connection, saying investigators did not know a motive. Campus police had raised the possibility of a gang rivalry shortly after the shooting.
The rally featured a voter registration drive, HIV testing and appearances by Houston rapper Trae the Truth, Houston City Councilman Peter Brown and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.
Witnesses said people dropped to the pavement as shots rang out in the parking lot where the rally was being held.
A statement on Texas Southern's Web site called the shooting "a bad ending to a successful family-oriented event. The TSU campus remains safe and is open for normal business and classes."
Texas Southern is a historically black university with an enrollment of around 10,000 students.

Obama Middle East Policy will Fail Unless Congress Sides with US President Instead of Israeli Lobby, Louis Farrakhan

Obama Middle East Policy will Fail Unless Congress Sides with US President Instead of Israeli Lobby, Louis Farrakhan 20/07/2009 16:37:00
Despite the sincerity of his heart, the United States President Barack Obama’s ambitious Middle East Policy will fail unless the American Congress sides with the American President instead of siding with Israel, says the most influential African-American leader the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.Minister Farrakhan also warns that the strong bonds of friendship between the United States and Israel can be strained by Israeli policies that can drag America and its soldiers, sailors and marines into another war.He suggests that US President Barack Obama does not have much power and influence with the US Congress which is largely controlled by the Israeli lobby.When asked whether Obama’s deeds with regard to solving the Middle East conflict would match his words in the famous Cairo speech in 4 June, Minister Farrakhan told The Tripoli Post “when Barack Obama spoke, he spoke from the sincerity of his heart. The question for the world is, how much power and influence he has with the Congress of the United States to bring his policies to fruition.” The interview will soon be published in full.Mr. Farrakhan is sending a signal to the people of the Middle East and the Palestinians that given such political situation in Washington they should not hold high expectations for a just peace in the region, and they should always expect the worst. “I respectfully suggest to you and your wonderful readers that this is like climbing Mt. Everest,” he told The Tripoli Post.Farrakhan’s remarks come at a time when the credibility of the United States and its national interest in the Middle East and in the World at large are at stake. In such difficult times, Farrakhan sees the stand by the Congress, whether in support of the US President or the Israeli lobby in the US, will eventually make the real difference.On Sunday, Israel rejected a US demand to suspend a planned housing project in east Jerusalem, a Palestinian part of the city that was occupied by Israel in 1967 and it is prohibited by international law to introduce any physical changes in it. Israeli officials said their ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, was summoned to the State Department over the weekend and told that a project made up of 20 apartments developed by an American millionaire should not go ahead.Minister Farrakhan highlighted the close links between Washington and Tel Aviv saying that “America has tremendous leverage with Israel because Israel gets more assistance from the taxpayers’ dollars than any nation on earth. She gets approximately 6-7 billion dollars a year, which is a huge amount of money, and whatever she gets on a yearly basis, she gets it even before the government of America gets it, she gets hers of the top.”Farrakhan says instead of the US using such leverage to get its national interest served, it is Israel which is blocking the American foreign policy from achieving its objectives.He attributes such tremendous Israeli influence to the fact that “the American-Israel Public Affairs Committeehe (AIPAC) has so much leverage in the House of Representatives and the Senate and, therefore, whatever Israel wants, Israel gets, because most of the Congressmen and Senators are absolutely afraid to do anything that would upset Israel, or the Zionists for fear that they would lose their positions in the Congress.”Minister Farrakhan sounds rather worried about the very essence of America’s greatness and its independent decision which seems to be imminently threatened by the influence of the Israeli lobby in his country. “If the Congress of the United States is afraid to back the words that came out from president Obama’s mouth, if the Congress is afraid to use the tremendous leverage that they have with Israel, to force Israel to do something that may be Israel doesn’t really want to do, …then whatever [President] Barack says the Israelis will counter him with their strength in the Senate and the House of Representatives,” Farrakhan explains.“I believe that the Congress will side with Israel before they side with the president of the United States. And therefore, his [President Obama’s] words, though good and reflect his sincere desire, may never come to fruition,” he added.Mr. Farrakhan told The Tripoli Post “If America threatens to take some of that leverage and of that money and refuse to give it to Israel, and if America is as strong to sanction Israel as she is to sanction Korea or Cuba or Libya or other nations, then you might see a change in Israel’s behavior.”But he also sounded rather skeptical in the interview. He said: “to put foot to the paddle, I learned the other day that Netanyahu has ordered fourteen hundred and fifty new homes to be built in the West Bank. That was defiance of what Barack Obama stated as American Policy. The question is, what will president Obama do? How will the Democrats who now control both Houses act in backing the president and forcing Israel to take a different course…”“I’m sorry, I believe that the Congress will side with Israel before they side with the president of the United States. And therefore, his words, though good, though they reflect his sincere desire, may never come to fruition. Thus the condition of the Palestinians might improve slightly, but they may never have a state that they can be proud of and secure as long as that shock on American Congress remains as it is,” Farrakhan concluded. In the remaining of the interview which will be published soon, Minister Farrakhan spoke about the state of African-Americans and other minorities in America after the arrival of Barack Obama to the White House. He also dealt with the death of Michael Jackson and the role of black leadership from now on, and why he won’t organize another Million-man March. He said since the success of the first Million-man March, Christian leaders in America have had taken the airwaves calling him ‘anti-Christ’. He also spoke of his relationship with the Jews and of the role that black Americans can play in the development of the African continent and the African Union. Farrakhan says America has no future if it insists to stay in the state and with the mind set it is in. “She is going down like the ancient Rome,” he said.

http://tripolipost.com/articledetail.asp?c=1&i=3379

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Farrakhan delivers personal responsibility message

By Amanda Dale

Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan speaks at the National stadium last night.
Photo: Akil Simmons
From a paradise island to armed forces killing in the streets, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan painted a dark picture of what Bermuda may become if citizens do not accept personal responsibility.
Minister Farrakhan addressed a crowd of up to 1,000 people at the National Stadium last night, invited by the Emperial Group to talk on 'unity in the community'.
Flanked by representatives from the Nation of Islam, the Minister spoke for two hours on the problems facing Bermuda and how its people must forego materialism, sexual temptation and greed.
Each citizen must accept their responsibility as a "stakeholder" in the nation's future, he said.
Minister Farrakhan last spoke in Bermuda 11 years ago, in 1998, and described this visit as "coming home".
"I'm honoured to be back in Bermuda where my mother grew up, where my grandmother and grandfather are buried, and where my uncle, cousins, the Mills, the Mannings, the Manchesters are, so I feel that I'm really coming home," he said.
"When I heard about the growing problem with your young people in gang conflict causing the loss of life, the maiming and beating of one another, I knew that I had to come because this is what is going on in America, in every major city, and throughout the Caribbean and Africa."
The Minister said there was now a "great divide" between the younger and older generations.
"There is a great divide now between the youth and their elders and some of us as elders don't know anymore how to reach our youth and we think our youth are really a lost generation," he said.
"Our young people are really the best generation we have produced and they are rejecting leadership and are disconnected from their teachers, their parents, their politicians and the general leadership of the nations.
"You have to realise not that there is something wrong with our children but there may be something wrong with us, that our children are rejecting our leadership."
Minister Farrakhan recognised the social problems in Bermuda, such as the difficulties faced by many families in keeping a roof over their head.
"We have men and women working two or three jobs to pay a $1500 a month rent or a mortgage into the thousands of dollars," he said. "If the people are groaning it's because they are under a tremendous burden."
He said he had met with gang members on the Island and they had told him the gang problem started ten years ago.
Minister Farrakhan said: "Once you opened the television and became cable ready then all the degeneracy of the US and other places began to flood into Bermuda.
"If you bring garbage, filth, debauchery, murder and violence, and the X-Box games of violence, how then can the children escape this, when a mother in Bermuda has to work three or four jobs?"
Speaking on recent violence in Bermuda, he said: "When a human being snatches a chain off another because the chain means more than the human who is being violated, and when that human is stabbed to death, that is not the act of a civilised person, that is a savage act.
"And when people from one part of town can come into town and get beaten up by others, they don't see the relationship to one another they see where they live. You may live in St. George's, in 42nd Street, in Somerset, and in other places. You mean these places where you live define who you are?
"Are you telling me a chain around your neck, bling bling, and this is what makes you who you are? The car you drive, the house you live in, the clothes you wear? We've become so materialistic, thinking gaining more and more is what makes a great human being.
"But once a thing makes the person, the person becomes a thing."
He said: "Unity in the community is just a slogan, we will never realise it unless we do the work of cleaning the house from the top to the bottom.
"Are we talking about the Prime Minister (Premier), our Governor, the Crown? I am saying that all of us have been affected by a system.
"There is no way we can produce unity in the community unless there is a willingness to sacrifice from the top to the bottom."
He said: "All of us are stakeholders in the future of Bermuda.
"This is your nation. Seventy percent of this nation is black, this is your nation. You are a stakeholder and we have a responsibility that each of us must put on our shoulders."
Minister Farrakhan also called on the pastors and educators of the country to instill change.
"Dear pastors you are the spiritual key to heal this Island. If you would come out of the church and come onto the street where the problem is and minister unto them," said Minister Farrakhan.
He added: "The shepherds should come together and stop the divisive war among the denominations that's gang warfare on another level."
Addressing those in education, he said: "How are we educating the children of Bermuda? Are we giving them standards which just came out of Manchester, England? A colonial education is not what we need. You need an education away from your colonial masters and to make you think outside of the box."
He said: "Most of the young people I'm talking to they don't look like they are being educated properly."
The Nation of Islam leader also said: "To those in authority, something is wrong here when these young people can get drugs and guns and they don't own ships."
The Minister said: "Do we want to see the people rise because the guns are coming in? Somebody is bringing them in, and the drugs. You think those gangs want to fight and destroy each other? As I talk to them they want this to die.
"If Government doesn't step up to the plate and educators don't give them an education that awakens their talent, soon it will be the army and the Police. And if revolt comes, the Queen will send the armed forces here as they once did to kill our children in the streets.
"We are all stakeholders so everyone has to do their part to make Bermuda better."
Minister Farrakhan said: "You can make Bermuda a real paradise or leave it as it is and suffer the consequences. The choice is yours."

http://www.royalgazette.com/siftology.royalgazette/Article/article.jsp?articleId=7d97aaf30030002&sectionId=60

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The Crucifixion of Michael Jackson " Responsible Black Leaders"

Farrakhan Speaks. You do not want to miss this experience.

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Boston, MA - **BLACK** Harvard Univ Professor/Scholar - Arrested For Breaking Into His "OWN" Home

Black scholar's arrest raises profiling questions

AFP/Getty Images/File – Henry Louis Gates, an acclaimed black US scholar has accused a Massachusetts police officer of racism …

• Slideshow:Harvard Scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.

By MELISSA TRUJILLO, Associated Press Writer Melissa Trujillo, Associated Press Writer – 56 mins ago

BOSTON – Supporters of a prominent Harvard University black scholar who was arrested at his own home by police responding to a report of a break-in say he is the victim of racial profiling.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. had forced his way through the front door of his home because it was jammed, his lawyer said Monday.

Cambridge police say they responded to the well-maintained two-story home near campus after a woman reported seeing "two black males with backpacks on the porch," with one "wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry."

By the time police arrived, Gates was already inside. Police say he refused to come outside to speak with an officer, who told him he was investigating a report of a break-in.

"Why, because I'm a black man in America?" Gates said, according to a police report written by Sgt. James Crowley. The Cambridge police refused to comment on the arrest Monday.

Gates — the director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research — initially refused to show the officer his identification, but then gave him a Harvard University ID card, according to police.

"Gates continued to yell at me, accusing me of racial bias and continued to tell me that I had not heard the last of him," the officer wrote.

Gates said he turned over his driver's license and Harvard ID — both with his photos — and repeatedly asked for the name and badge number of the officer, who refused. He said he then followed the officer as he left his house onto his front porch, where he was handcuffed in front of other officers, Gates said in a statement released by his attorney, fellow Harvard scholar Charles Ogletree, on a Web site Gates oversees, TheRoot.com

He was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge after police said he "exhibited loud and tumultuous behavior." He was released later that day on his own recognizance. An arraignment was scheduled for Aug. 26.

Gates, 58, also refused to speak publicly Monday, referring calls to Ogletree.

"He was shocked to find himself being questioned and shocked that the conversation continued after he showed his identification," Ogletree said.

Ogletree declined to say whether he believed the incident was racially motivated, saying "I think the incident speaks for itself."

Some of Gates' African-American colleagues say the arrest is part of a pattern of racial profiling in Cambridge.

Allen Counter, who has taught neuroscience at Harvard for 25 years, said he was stopped on campus by two Harvard police officers in 2004 after being mistaken for a robbery suspect. They threatened to arrest him when he could not produce identification.

"We do not believe that this arrest would have happened if professor Gates was white," Counter said. "It really has been very unsettling for African-Americans throughout Harvard and throughout Cambridge that this happened."

The Rev. Al Sharpton said he will attend Gates' arraignment.

"This arrest is indicative of at best police abuse of power or at worst the highest example of racial profiling I have seen," Sharpton said. "I have heard of driving while black and even shopping while black but now even going to your own home while black is a new low in police community affairs."

Ogletree said Gates had returned from a trip to China on Thursday with a driver, when he found his front door jammed. He went through the back door into the home — which he leases from Harvard — shut off an alarm and worked with the driver to get the door open. The driver left, and Gates was on the phone with the property's management company when police first arrived. Ogletree also disputed the claim that Gates, who was wearing slacks and a polo shirt and carrying a cane, was yelling at the officer. "He has an infection that has impacted his breathing since he came back from China, so he's been in a very delicate physical state," Ogletree said. Lawrence D. Bobo, the W.E.B Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard, said he met with Gates at the police station and described his colleague as feeling humiliated and "emotionally devastated." "It's just deeply disappointing but also a pointed reminder that there are serious problems that we have to wrestle with," he said. Bobo said he hoped Cambridge police would drop the charges and called on the department to use the incident to review training and screening procedures it has in place. The Middlesex district attorney's office said it could not do so until after Gates' arraignment. The woman who reported the apparent break-in did not return a message Monday.

Gates joined the Harvard faculty in 1991 and holds one of 20 prestigious "university professors" positions at the school. He also was host of "African American Lives," a PBS show about the family histories of prominent U.S. blacks, and was named by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential Americans in 1997.

"I was obviously very concerned when I learned on Thursday about the incident," Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust said in a statement. "He and I spoke directly and I have asked him to keep me apprised."

Liberia’s Taylor says US arranged escape - The Boston Globe

Liberia’s Taylor says US arranged escape

Fled Mass. facility before extradition

Charles Taylor is now on trial in The Hague for war crimes.

By Bryan Bender

Globe Staff / July 17, 2009

The mystery has lingered for more than two decades, spawning conspiracy theories about the US government’s connection to one of Africa’s most brutal leaders: How did Charles G. Taylor escape from a Massachusetts county jail in 1985, setting him on the road to a bloody reign as Liberia’s president?

Taylor, on trial in The Hague for war crimes, broke his silence on the question this week, saying he was sprung from jail as part of a US intelligence operation.

On the night of Sept. 15, 1985, he recounted Wednesday, a guard unlocked his cell at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility - where he was awaiting extradition to Liberia on embezzlement charges - and escorted him to a less-secure unit of the jail. Taylor then tied sheets together, climbed out an open window, and clambered over a fence before meeting two men he assumed were US agents, who whisked him to New York by car.

“I am calling it my release be cause I didn’t break out,’’ Taylor, 61, told his special war crimes court. “I did not pay any money. I did not know the guys who picked me up. I was not hiding’’ afterward.

The jail guard, he added, “had to be working with someone else.’’

Taylor’s story has not been verified, and it may only add to questions surrounding his disappearance. Some have theorized that the United States, through either the Central Intelligence Agency or the Defense Intelligence Agency, wanted to use Taylor to gather information in Africa, especially in Libya. Asked yesterday whether the CIA played any role in the jail break, agency spokeswoman Marie Harf said, “That’s absurd.’’

The agency later declined to say whether it had any relationship with Taylor, either before or after the escape. “We do not, as a rule, comment on these types of allegations,’’ the statement said. A Defense Intelligence Agency spokesman did not have any immediate comment yesterday.

Prosecutors in his trial at The Hague had anticipated that Taylor would assert there was a US role in his escape in a bid to change the subject from his alleged crimes by implicating the United States in his path to power. Taylor, 61, has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

He is accused of supporting rebels during neighboring Sierra Leone’s 1991-2002 civil war in which an estimated 500,000 people were killed, mutilated, or fell victim to other atrocities. He has insisted that the charges are lies and that he was trying to bring peace to the region.

But in an unusual defense, Taylor told judges yesterday that he saw nothing wrong with displaying the skulls of slain enemy soldiers at roadblocks.

Taylor arrived in the Boston area as a college student in 1972, where he studied economics at Chamberlayne Junior College and later at Bentley College (now University).

He returned to Liberia in the early 1980s, where he briefly worked in the government of President Samuel K. Doe before being accused of embezzling $900,000. He fled to Massachusetts in 1983. He was arrested in Somerville in 1984 and jailed in Plymouth pending extradition to Liberia.

His escape occurred days before a Taylor ally, Thomas Quiwonkpa, launched an unsuccessful military coup against Doe, a former US ally whose ethnic repression and corruption led Washington to cut off aid. Taylor told the war crimes court he was “100 percent positive’’ that the CIA was arming Quiwonkpa.

After the jail break, Taylor testified, he traveled freely in the United States and Mexico before returning to Africa from Mexico City. “My name was on my passport,’’ he said. “No one asked me any questions.’’

After returning to Africa, Taylor testified, he recruited 168 men and women for the National Patriotic Front for Liberia and trained them at a former US military base in Libya. His rebel force attacked Liberia in 1989, ultimately leading to the overthrow of Doe.

Four inmates who escaped with Taylor were recaptured within days.

To this day, the Plymouth County jail can’t say what really happened.

“We’re not in a position to say it’s not true,’’ John Birtwell, spokesman for the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, said yesterday. He said an investigation determined at the time there was no evidence that Taylor’s move was part of an escape plot.

“Through the haze of time it’s hard to know if it was deep black ops or [Taylor] saw an opportunity so he took it,’’ Birtwell said.

FBI’s Boston field office, for its part, said yesterday that the only possible evidence it has of the incident is a computerized record of a fugitive case opened on Taylor in October 1985. But Special Agent Gail Marcinkiewicz, an FBI spokeswoman, said the record indicated that no action was taken on it by the field office.

Asked whether there is a file on the case, she said, “I don’t know if the file exists.’’

A former senior war crimes investigator who dug into Taylor’s case said there may be some truth to the story.

“One person said the CIA had ultimately brought him down through Mexico City,’’ said Alan White, the former chief investigator for the special court who said he “had heard [the claims of a US role in the jail break] from some major informants I had.’’

White added: “How true it is I don’t know. I know the US government never wanted to talk about this whenever we brought it up.’’

White thinks it is plausible that the US government was most interested in Taylor at the time to gather intelligence on Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy, then accused of sponsoring terrorism against the United States.

Nevertheless, White and others said any cooperation back then has little bearing on the alleged crimes Taylor committed as president of Liberia more than a decade after he left the Boston area.

“This is not the first time we supported someone like this and found out later this was somebody that we should not have supported,’’ White said.

Material from the Associated Press was included in this report. Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.


http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2009/07/17/liberias_taylor_says_us_arranged_escape/

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The Associated Press Blacks are most obese group, study finds

Blacks are most obese group, study finds

By MIKE STOBBE (AP) – 16 hours ago

ATLANTA — Nearly 36 percent of black Americans are obese — much more than other major racial or ethnic groups — and that gap exists in most states, a new federal study finds.

About 29 percent of Hispanics and 24 percent of whites are obese, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday. Overall, about 26 percent of U.S. adults are obese.

Racial differences in obesity rates have been reported before, and health officials were not surprised to see larger proportions of blacks tipping the scales.

But the new CDC report is the first to look at the gap state-by-state, finding blacks had significantly higher obesity rates in 21 states and somewhat higher rates in many others.

Experts believe there are several reasons for the differences. People with lower incomes often have less access to medical care, exercise facilities and more expensive, healthier food. In many places, minorities are disproportionately poor.

"Poverty is a very strong driver of obesity," said Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

Attitudes about weight also are believed to be a factor, said Dr. Liping Pan, a CDC epidemiologist. Researchers cited a 2008 study that found black and Hispanic women had significantly lower odds of being dissatisfied with their body size than white women.

"Black and Hispanics are more accepting of high weight," Pan said, adding that heavy people who are satisfied with their size are not likely to diet or exercise.

However, it could be that over time as people struggle with poverty and environment "they come to accept the higher weights," Brownell said.

Obesity is based on the body mass index, a calculation using height and weight. A 5-foot-7-inch adult who weighs 190 pounds would have a BMI of 30, which is considered the threshold for obesity.

The data comes from a national telephone survey of more than 1 million Americans over the years 2006 through 2008.

For blacks, the highest obesity rate was in Maine, where 45 percent were obese. Tennessee was the state where Hispanic obesity was most common. And West Virginia was the fattest state for whites.

But generally, obesity was most common for both blacks and whites in the South and Midwest.

The study also broke down the groups by gender, and found black women were the heaviest, with 39 percent counted as obese. Black men were next, at 32 percent, then Hispanic women, 29 percent, Hispanic men, 28 percent, white men, 25 percent and white women, 22 percent.

The study is being published this week in a CDC publication, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

On the Net:

• CDC report: http://tiny.cc/PZBTZ

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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"What Is A True Friend?"

Staff writer of the Final Call Newspaper gives his view of what a true friend is.

Let me introduce you to Brother Jesse Muhammad

AFP Ex-astronaut Bolden confirmed as new NASA head

Ex-astronaut Bolden confirmed as new NASA head

5 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The US Senate has confirmed former astronaut and Marines general Charles Bolden as the new administrator of NASA, making him the US space agency's first African-American chief.

The unanimous late Wednesday vote came shortly after the space shuttle Endeavour successfully blasted off toward the International Space Station (ISS) after five scuttled launch attempts in a month.

It also coincided with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969.

The 12th NASA administrator since the agency was created in 1958, Bolden succeeds engineer and scientist Michael Griffin.

Lori Garver, 48, who was the lead civil space policy advisor to President Barack Obama's presidential campaign, was confirmed to take up the agency's number two job as deputy administrator. It will be her second stint at NASA, where she served as associate administrator from 1998 to 2001.

Bolden, 62, has flown on four space missions -- including two he commanded -- and previously served for 14 years as a member of the NASA's Astronaut Office.

"Today, we have to choose. Either we can invest in building on our hard-earned world technological leadership or we can abandon this commitment, ceding it to other nations who are working diligently to push the frontiers of space," he said in a statement.

"If we choose to lead, we must build on our investment in the International Space Station, accelerate development of our next generation launch systems to enable expansion of human exploration, enhance NASA's capability to study Earth's environment."

Bolden also called for NASA to "lead space science to new achievements, continue cutting-edge aeronautics research, support the innovation of American entrepreneurs, and inspire a rising generation of boys and girls to seek careers in science, technology, engineering and math."

As a Marine Corps fighter pilot, Bolden flew combat missions over North and South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War.

He graduated from the US Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland in 1979 and the following year was selected as an astronaut by NASA, where he held several technical and administrative posts, including assistant deputy administrator at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

His first space flight was as a pilot on board the space shuttle Columbia.

Bolden piloted the Discovery shuttle that deployed the Hubble space telescope in 1990, and commanded two further shuttle missions, including a historic first joint US-Russian mission on Discovery in 1994.

That same year, he left NASA to return to active duty in the Marines, rising to the rank of major general and deputy commander of US forces in Japan before his retirement in 2003.

Bolden's confirmation came as a White House panel is reviewing the controversial Constellation space program launched by former president George W. Bush in 2004 after he decided to phase out shuttle flights by 2010.

Constellation aims to take Americans back to the moon by 2020 and to serve as a launch pad for manned voyages to Mars and beyond.

But NASA's budget is not big enough to cover the cost of Constellation's Orion capsule, a more advanced and spacious version of the Apollo lunar module, and the Ares I and Ares V launchers needed to put it in orbit.

Obama's commission of experts, led by former Lockheed Martin chief executive Norman Augustine, is scheduled to make its recommendations by the end of August.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

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Does Racism still exist

See what President Obama encounters while visiting Russia

GOP, Holder battle over New Black Panthers

GOP, Holder battle over New Black Panthers

By Molly K. Hooper

Posted: 07/12/09 10:01 PM [ET]

Key House Republicans are charging Attorney General Eric Holder of playing politics at the Justice Department. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) said Holder has ignored at least three letters sent over the past month from Republicans demanding to know why Justice dismissed charges of voter intimidation filed against two members of the “New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense” (NBPP). NBPP National Chairman Milik Zulu Shabazz and party member Jerry Jackson both faces charges for violating the Voting Rights Act for engaging in coercion, threats and intimidation and attempted coercion, threats, and intimidation of voters and those aiding voters at a Philadelphia polling station on November 4th, 2008. Charges against the Black Panthers were originally filed when President George W. Bush was in power. A spokeswoman for Justice said facts did not back up the charges, and that career officials at Justice, not political appointees, decided to drop the charges. “Following a thorough review, a career attorney in the Civil Rights Division determined that the facts and the law did not support pursuing the claims against three of the defendants,” spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said. “As a result, the Department dismissed those claims.” Committee sources said they expected Justice to send a letter on Monday to Wolf and other members, and to brief Republicans on why the charges were dropped. Holder let stand one of the four original charges though. The leader of the black nationalist group’s Philadelphia chapter, Minister King Samir Shabazz, is charged with brandishing a “deadly weapon,” a nightstick, outside of the polls. As a result, he was punished with not being able to brandish a weapon within 100 ft. of a polling station in Philadelphia until after the 2012 elections. Wolf, ranking member of the House Judiciary subcommittee that funds Justice, has called on Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) to hold a hearing into the matter. He said one of the Black Panther members was allegedly carrying a local Democratic committee card. In a letter to Conyers, Wolf wrote that Justice’s inaction ‘merits congressional attention, if only to force the department to explain its decision to dismiss this case.” Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the ranking Republican on Judiciary, also said the dismissal raises questions about politicization at Justice. “The American people need to know that the Justice Department takes seriously cases of voter intimidation, regardless of the political party of the defendants,” Smith said. He noted that Conyers held 70-hearings on the political firings of several U.S. Attorneys under former Bush. Conyers has not ruled out holding an investigative hearing but wants to take the situation “one-step at a time,” Democratic committee sources said. These sources said Conyers told Holder to respond to the GOP request for answers after speaking with Wolf about the matter on Thursday. Shabazz and Jackson were captured on widely circulated video of the incident standing 10-15 feet from the polling station. The two men are seen standing shoulder to shoulder, dressed in black military-style uniforms, black berets and combat boots; Shabazz tapped and pointed the nightstick in his hands at individuals. Wolf and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) asked Justice Inspector General Glenn Fine to investigate the dismissal of charges, which the two said raises significant concerns about possible politicization of the law enforcement agency. According to an affidavit filed by veteran voting rights activist Bartle Bull, who monitored elections in Mississippi at the height of the civil rights movement, the New Black Panther¹s directed racist comments towards white poll workers such as “you are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker.” Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) says those charges are “bull.” The congressman, who also chairs the Philadelphia Democratic Party, said he went to the polling station on election day last year after hearing about reports of threatening behavior, but found no evidence. “They weren¹t intimidating anybody, they didn¹t try to suppress any votes,” said Brady. That’s not enough for Wolf, a native Philadelphian, who has repeatedly asked to hear from Holder why the charges were dropped by Justice. “This guy (Attorney General Eric) Holder is a jerk,” Wolf told the Hill on Thursday out of frustration that the AG had rebuffed each request for answers.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/gop-holder-battle-over-new-black-panthers-2009-07-12.html


Information Researched By: Sister Anonymous

Black-White Gap in Jobless Rate Widens in New York City

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/nyregion/13unemployment.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Job Losses Show Wider Racial Gap in New York

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Roger Richardson, 47, left his sales job at Home Depot in June to look for work after his hours were cut by more than half.

By PATRICK McGEEHAN and MATHEW R. WARREN

Published: July 12, 2009

Unemployment among blacks in New York City has increased much faster than for whites, and the gap appears to be widening at an accelerating pace, new studies of jobless data have found.

While unemployment rose steadily for white New Yorkers from the first quarter of 2008 through the first three months of this year, the number of unemployed blacks in the city rose four times as fast, according to a report to be released on Monday by the city comptroller’s office. By the end of March, there were about 80,000 more unemployed blacks than whites, according to the report, even though there are roughly 1.5 million more whites than blacks here.

Across the nation, the surge in unemployment has cut across all demographic lines, and the gap between blacks and whites has risen, but at a much slower rate than in New York.

Economists said they were not certain why so many more blacks were losing their jobs in New York, especially when a large share of the layoffs in the city have been in fields where they are not well represented, like finance and professional services. But in those sectors, the economists suggested that blacks may have had less seniority when layoffs occurred. And black workers hold an outsize share of the jobs in retailing and other service industries that have been shrinking as consumers curtail their spending.

“African-Americans have been hit disproportionately hard,” said Frank Braconi, the chief economist in the comptroller’s office. “The usual pattern is that the unemployment rate among African-Americans tends to be about twice as high as for non-Hispanic whites, but the gap has widened substantially in the city during the past year.”

Historically, the unemployment rate for blacks has always been higher than for whites. But since the start of the recession, in December 2007, the overall rate has risen by 4.6 percentage points — driving the black unemployment rate as high as 15 percent in April. The jobless figures among blacks became enough of a national issue that at a White House news conference last month, President Obama was asked what he could do to “stop the bloodletting in the black unemployment rate.”

The president said that to help any community, whether it be blacks, Latinos or Asians, he needed to “get the economy as a whole moving.”

“If I don’t do that, then I’m not going to be able to help anybody,” the president added.

In the first quarter of 2008, the rate of joblessness among blacks nationwide was 8.9 percent, compared with 4.8 percent for whites; in the first quarter of 2009, the rate for blacks had risen to 13.6 percent, while the rate for whites had gone to 8.2 percent.

But policy experts and public officials expressed concern over the much sharper trend in New York, where the city’s overall unemployment rate hit a 12-year high of 9 percent in May. The jobless rate for all blacks in the city rose to 14.7 percent in the first quarter, up from 5.7 percent in the first quarter of 2008. During the same period, the unemployment rate for white New Yorkers rose only moderately, to 3.7 percent from 3 percent, suggesting that black residents of the city were four times as likely as whites to be out of work, he said.

At a work force center in the Bronx on Friday, Ahmadi Scruggs, 32, said he was dismissed in April from his job in customer service at a New York bank that cut its payroll after many of the mortgages it made went sour. Mr. Scruggs, who is black and lives in Soundview, in the Bronx, said he did not think that the layoff, which followed a hiring freeze, was racially motivated, but said that it appeared to have a disparate effect on whites and minority workers.

“My department was mostly black and Hispanic,” Mr. Scruggs said. “Management was mostly white and they didn’t get let go. You would think they would trim the fat from the top, not the bottom, because it’s the lower-wage workers that do the bulk of the work.”

Mr. Scruggs, who is married and has three children, said his three-month severance package had run out. Mr. Scruggs said he was trying to have his unemployment benefits extended so that he could begin studying to become a surgical technician.

“I might as well invest in myself for the next year and then get back in the work force,” he said.

Last month, Roger Richardson, who lives in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx, left his sales job at a Home Depot store after his hours were cut by more than half. “I had to find something else because my bills surpassed my salary,” said Mr. Richardson, who is black.

The recession has also worsened the unemployment rate in New York among other ethnic groups, although none as sharply as blacks. Among Hispanics, the rate rose to 9.3 percent in the first quarter of 2009 from 6.4 percent in the first quarter of 2008; among Asians and other ethnic classifications, the rate rose to 7.1 percent from 5.5 percent.

David R. Jones, president and chief executive of the Community Service Society, which lobbies on behalf of low-income workers, said he did not “think this recession has gone out equally.”

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“Low-wage workers and workers who lack skills are really getting hit hard,” he said. “These are the workers who are sort of fungible. They lose their jobs very quickly, particularly in retail, the people who move boxes and do unskilled work. There are large numbers of African-Americans in that sector.”

Manufacturing, which has shed more jobs than any other sector of the city’s economy, had become a mainstay for black workers, Mr. Jones said. Government jobs had also become a prime source of solid, stable work for many blacks in the city, he added. But lately there have been cutbacks there, too, as falling tax revenue has forced the paring back of budgets.

James Parrott, the chief economist for the Fiscal Policy Institute, a liberal research group, pointed out that employment with the Postal Service in the city has declined by about 2,000 jobs, many of which were held by blacks. City officials have been wringing their hands about the mass firings that have occurred in high-paying industries like financial and legal services, consulting and publishing, but those cutbacks account for less than half of the 108,000-job decline since employment in the city peaked in August.

In comparing jobs data for the 12 months through April 30 with the previous one-year period, Mr. Parrott found that white New Yorkers had gained jobs while blacks and other minority residents had lost them. He was seeking to compare the recession with the end of the hiring boom that preceded it, though employment did not begin to fall in the city until after the Lehman Brothers investment bank collapsed in September, a full nine months after the recession began to take its toll in other parts of the country.

Still, Mr. Parrott’s analysis painted a stark picture of how uneven the effects have been for whites, blacks and members of other minorities. His figures show that whites gained about 130,000 jobs in the year that ended April 30 over the previous 12 months, but blacks, Hispanics and Asians all lost jobs during that period. Employment fell by about 17,000 jobs for blacks, 26,000 jobs for Hispanics and 18,000 for Asians and other ethnic groups, the data show.

“That’s a black-and-white employment picture,” Mr. Parrott said. “It’s like night and day over the 12 months. “There’s a real racial shift taking place in the city’s labor market in the past year.”

Aldumen Gomez said he had firsthand experience with the trend. Mr. Gomez, 25, was a nursing assistant in a Bronx nursing home for more than a year until it closed in January, he said.

“These were the jobs you used to rely on, but now because of all the cuts, it’s not like that,” said Mr. Gomez, who is part Haitian and part Dominican. “At the company I worked for, the ones who did get to keep their jobs were people at management levels who were mostly white. They were transferred to other nursing homes.”

Mr. Gomez has been studying political science at night at Baruch College, hoping to go on to law school. But he said he feared that he might not be able to keep paying for school — and living in student housing in Manhattan — unless he finds another job soon.

Inside NYTimes.com

Information Researched By: Sister Anonymous