NAACP interim President and CEO Lorraine Miller has accepted the resignation of the Los Angeles chapter president after questions surfaced as to why his branch honored beleaguered L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver banned Sterling for life Tuesday after revelations surfaced regarding Sterling making numerous statements denigrating black Americans.
In a letter of resignation, L.A. chapter President Leon Jenkins wrote, “Please be advised that the legacy, history and reputation of the NAACP is more important to me than the presidency. In order to separate the Los Angeles NAACP and the NAACP from the negative exposure I have caused the NAACP, I respectfully resign my position as president of the Los Angeles NAACP.”
Jenkins has come under fire from the public in recent days after it was made public that the chapter honored Sterling with a lifetime achievement award in 2009 and planned to do so again this month. Published reports indicated that Sterling had donated $45,000 to the chapter since 2007.
Earlier in the week, Jenkins told a press conference that the donations came to “an insignificant amount” and the chapter planned to return the money.
The NAACP said in its statement Thursday that its national office in Baltimore is developing guidelines to assist branches in their award selection process.
Cellphone video taken by student on board sinking South Korean ferry records last words and pictures of teenage passengers. Father requested faces be blurred to protect grieving families. (May 1) Video provided by AP AP
A 17-minute recording made by a student who died when a ferry sank off the coast of South Korea provides the most heartbreaking glimpse yet of how a fun trip turned into horror for young passengers on the doomed Sewol.
The video, translated by USA TODAY and the Associated Press, was found on the phone of 17-year-old student Park Su Hyeon when rescuers recovered his body. His father, Park Jong Dae, said he released it to give his mourning nation a glimpse of the April 16 tragedy from inside the vessel.
The video was released to select South Korea media Monday, the same day authorities released a video taken by a coast guard member showing the Sewol’s captain fleeing the sinking ship while hundreds of passengers, most of them Danwon High School students on a class trip, remained below deck. The videos outraged the nation already devastated by the catastrophe. More than 300 of the 476 people who were on board are dead or missing.
The student video begins at 8:52 a.m. Korea time on April 16. The ship had just begun to list, and the chatter among students is a mix of humor and fear.
Early on, an announcement can be heard: “Don’t move away from your places and brace for any possible accidents.”
A student lightly asks, “Am I going to die?” But another quickly chastises with “It is not time to laugh. We are in a real situation.”
Moments later, one student says “Dad, I don’t want to die.” Another says, “It will be fun if waters flow in.”
Students are heard discussing problems with life jackets, which increases in importance after an announcement is made to don life jackets. By the time the clip ends at 9:09, everyone in view is wearing one.
Some of the students in the video struggle as they try to buckle their life jackets. As the ferry lists, they joke about “final commemorative pictures” and “defying gravity” by trying to walk on the walls.
“It’s like we’re becoming the Titanic,” one student says.
Passengers were repeatedly told to say in place. The announcement, at 9:08: “We’re again announcing: For passengers who can wear life vests, please wear them now. Never move away from your places.”
Capt. Lee Joon Seok said he delayed having passengers evacuate the ship because of worries about sending them into cold waters and fast currents before rescuers arrived. He said he ultimately ordered an evacuation, but it was not clear if that order was ever announced to passengers.
The captain and 14 crewmembers have been detained on suspicion of negligence and abandoning people in need. Prosecutors are investigating whether stability issues related to too much cargo or a redesign that added more cabins to the ship contributed to the sinking.
Some of the teens in the video use it to offer their last words. Some warn their siblings not to take school trips unless they want to end up like them.
“I’m really scared,” a student says.
“Is it really sinking?” another asks. “Wow, they’re giving us life vests.”
“I’m getting out of here,” one says. “Me too, me too,” says another.
A student says: “We have to survive now.”
“We’re all finished. I have to leave some farewell words before I die,” says another.
As if having another Bush running for president is not a bad enough idea, George Bush – the guy who wrecked the economy with two unpaid, off-the-budget wars, and who blew a budget surplus in the first couple of years of his presidency – is making himself available to help his brother Jeb run for president in 2016.
In an interview scheduled to air Thursday on CNN, George Bush tells Jake Tapper that he is more than willing and available to help his brother run in 2016.
“Hey Jeb,” Bush says, “if you need some advice, give me a call.”
Bush continued sharing information no one cares about saying, “I really have not talked to Jeb about the presidency. It’s hard for people to believe.”
He then adds, “I hope Jeb runs. I think he would be a great president. I have no clue what’s on his mind. And we’ll talk when he’s ready.”
How much torture are we supposed to take from this family? Haven’t we had enough? Are we supposed to succumb to the Bush every time another member of that family figures out another way to bankrupt the country?
These bushes are like poison ivy. They’re the itch that never goes away!
ThinkProgress is reporting that Seattle will raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour over the coming years under a deal brokered by Mayor Ed Murray and blessed by labor and business groups alike, city leaders announced Thursday afternoon.
The new pay floor will phase in at different speeds for businesses of different sizes, but all employers will have to meet the $15 minimum wage by the end of the decade. Businesses with more than 500 employees nationwide will have a three-year phase-in period, while smaller employers get five years to ratchet up their payscales.
After reaching $15 an hour, the city’s minimum wage will automatically climb by 2.4 percent each year regardless of the rate of inflation. Even among states with relatively strong minimum wage laws, automatic increases are uncommon.
This one happened in China. In what appears to be an argument or a fight between a few adults, the two year old is seen standing, watching the entire incident unfold. A few minutes later, the man comes running outside, grabs the infant and tosses the child as he makes his escape.
After tossing the child and running off, another individual chases after the man, but according to reports, the man is still at large.
The baby lived, but sustained serious injuries and is now under observation at a hospital.
He’s a self-employed, self-sufficient logger who has cleared his own path for most of his 57 years, never expecting help from anyone. And even though he’d been uninsured since 2009, he especially wanted nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act.
“I don’t read what the Democrats have to say about it because I think they’re full of it,” he told his friend Bob Leinhauser, who suggested he sign up.
That refrain changed this year when a faulty aortic valve almost felled Angstadt. Suddenly, he was facing a choice: Buy a health plan, through a law he despised, that would pay the lion’s share of the cost of the life-saving surgery – or die. He chose the former.
“A lot of people I talk to are so misinformed about the ACA,” Angstadt said. “I was, before Bob went through all this for me. I would recommend it to anybody and, in fact, have encouraged friends, including the one guy who hauls my logs.
The embattled crack pipe mayor of Toronto was found indulging with another crack pipe and this time, like all the other times, there’s a video tape.
Ford, realizing that he is once again caught with his hands in the cookie jar, admitted himself to rehab.
He released a statement. Here it is:
For Immediate Release
April 30th, 2014
Tonight I want to take some time to speak from my heart to the people of Toronto. It’s not easy to be vulnerable and this is one of the most difficult times in my life. I have a problem with alcohol, and the choices I have made while under the influence. I have struggled with this for some time.
Today, after taking some time to think about my own well-being, how to best serve the people of Toronto and what is in the best interests of my family, I have decided to take a leave from campaigning and from my duties as Mayor to seek immediate help.
I have tried to deal with these issues by myself over the past year. I know that I need professional help and I am now 100% committed to getting myself right.
I love the people of Toronto, I love being your mayor and I hope you will continue to stand by me.
With the support of my family, friends, professionals and the people of Toronto, I will conquer this.
Please keep me and my family in your prayers during these difficult days ahead.
I just want to say to the people of Toronto that I thank you for your ongoing support and encouragement. I cannot tell you enough how much I appreciate it.
The admitted crack smoker and heavy drinker has long dodged calls for him to resign or go to drug rehab. He relented Wednesday after a video, shot early Saturday morning, shows him reportedly smoking crack cocaine. An audio clip, recorded secretly Monday night, reportedly catches Ford during a drunken evening out at a bar.
THE GLOBE AND MAILToronto Mayor Rob Ford is seen in this screen grab from a recently surfaced video holding a pipe. The clip was reportedly taken Saturday morning at his sister’s house.
Rob Ford is going to rehab.
A lawyer for the crack-smoking, booze-loving Toronto mayor say he’ll take a leave of absence from the job to seek help for substance abuse.
The announcement came Wednesday as new video of Ford smoking crack as recently as Saturday has emerged via The Globe and Mail newspaper. And an audio clip, reportedly secretly recorded Monday at a suburban Toronto bar, caught the mayor cursing and ranting during a late-night drinking bout,according to the Toronto Sun.
The oft-maligned mayor of Canada’s largest city will suspend his reelection campaign as he gets help to “deal with his issues,” Ford told The Sun on Wednesday evening.
He said he is “ready to take a break.”
FRANK GUNN/APToronto Mayor Rob Ford was caught on video smoking crack cocaine but has not bent to calls for his resignation.
Ford has been urged to get help after videos of him smoking crack came out last year. He said he had smoked the drug once in a “drunken stupor” and publicly said he had cut back on his drinking.
But The Sun claims they have an audiotape from Monday of an “unruly” Ford ranting and cursing while ordering booze at a bar in Etobicoke, a Toronto suburb.
“I’d like to f—— jam her, but she doesn’t want … I can’t talk like this … I’m so sorry,” Ford reportedly says on the recording. “I forgot there’s a woman in the house.”
First it was marriage equality. Now it’s the minimum wage. And prison reform. And some lefty laboratories in cities across the country. It’s not a sharp turn to the left as many had anticipated with Obama’s election in 2008. It’s a wide turn, and the country’s already done the first hand-over-hand on the cultural-political wheel.
If you haven’t seen the Frontline series on American prisons, please go their post-haste and watch what you can. The growth of the prison population in this country is staggering, and is a direct result of the conservative policies that created minimum sentences and the mandated arrests of millions of low-level and non-violent offenders, most of whom were males of color. Pair that with the creation of laws that, in some states, treated 12 year-olds as adults, and the results are explosive. We built prisons, then made sure we filled them up.
That’s changing. Many states, such as Kentucky, are trying to reform and rewrite their legal codes to provide the kind of care that young, at-risk juveniles and older, clearly sick men and women need in order to avoid jail time. One of the stories on the program shows a clearly distressed young women who needs counseling, medication, emotional support and a mentor if she is to thrive as a citizen. Otherwise, she’s going to wind up as a ward of the state and she might commit a violent act against someone. Another story shows a 67 year old addict who’s been released from jail to a halfway house with nothing. No money, no prospects, no clothes other than the sweats on his body. And he’s supposed to get a job? Go on welfare or food stamps (that the GOP wants to cut more)?
And while we were spending all of this money on being punitive, the right wing also told us that we needed to spend less on schools and lower taxes that paid for needed government services. Spending more on prisons and less on schools has had a direct impact on our culture. But as I said, that’s changing.
There are other signs of a wide left turn. Minimum wages are going up in some states. In New Jersey, the people voted to raise the wage over the objections of Governor Christie. Today’s vote to try and raise the national wage ended in a Republican-led filibuster, which will show up in Democratic ads come the fall. The national reactions to comments from Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy shows that, although there are still racists in the United States, they will not be tolerated as they were before. Courts are striking down voter ID laws, most recently in Wisconsin, which is a welcome sign for democracy.
We still have work to do, and there will be setbacks, but slowly and surely, ideas that for years were ridiculed as soft and unworkable are seeing the light of day.
Pharrell surprised us all when he broke down in tears while speaking to Oprah Winfrey about the global success of ‘Happy’ earlier this month. However, that very well could have been CeeLo Green getting all teary-eyed since the movie soundtrack cut-turned-pop culture phenomenon was originally given to him to record.
The Neptunes producer revealed this gem of news during an interview with Howard Stern on Tuesday (April 29). CeeLo passed on ‘Happy’ before Pharrell made it his. The rest is history.
“The powers that be at the time did not see it fit for him,” he says. “There was a much bigger agenda for him, he had an album to put out. He wanted to do it but some folks on his team just felt the priority should have been on his album at the time.”
Though CeeLo didn’t record that track, he had a similar chart-topping reign with his smash hit ‘F— You,’ often censored as ‘Forget You.’ The track was inescapable in 2010, peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. ‘Happy’ currently reigns at No. 1.
Another interesting tidbit is the story behind the Pharrell-produced songs on Justin Timberlake’s ‘Justified’ LP. He originally offered those songs to the late Michael Jackson before the King of Pop’s team turned them down. Jackson was still a fan of his work, however.
“Later he sang me all those songs and told me they should have been his and I told him they were for him,” Pharrell says.
The Pit bull that mauled a four year old boy back in January, biting and holding on to the boy’s face for several minutes has been sentenced to life behind bars, a Phoenix judge has ruled.
Mickey, a brown-spotted white pit bull who belonged to the boy’s babysitter at the time of the attack, will instead live out his days neutered and defanged in a no-kill animal shelter.
According to the Dodo, the attack occurred when the boy ventured into the sitter’s backyard where Mickey was chained. The dog locked onto the boy’s face for several minutes; the boy required extensive surgeries, but is recovering.
Both the boy’s family and Mickey’s owners were willing to have the dog euthanized, but doctors convinced the judge that “there are a lot of adults responsible” for Mickey’s behavior: Being chained, outside, unneutered, in Phoenix was a recipe for aggression, she concluded, handing down a life sentence instead of destruction.
The assistant Maricopa County manager agreed, telling the Arizona Republic:
If we all, as pet owners, take the time to think about our lifestyle and the type of breed we’re attempting to acquire, then euthanasia will not be a problem for (dogs with) aggression. It’s simply uneducated or uninformed selections of dogs that cause these animals to find themselves in a situation where they … hurt someone.
In an ironic twist, Mickey will serve out his term in a shelter run by controversial Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who will presumably treat the dog better than he treats his human inmates.
We use cookies to improve your experience on our site. By agreeing to this, we can analyze browsing behavior and unique IDs on this site. Declining or revoking consent may affect certain features.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
