Rev. Addie Wyatt

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The trailblazing Wyatt, who died of undisclosed illness two days after being admitted to Advocate Trinity Hospital, spent her life fighting against gender and racial discrimination in the workplace.

She was an integral participant and leader in the major Civil Rights marches and her adept ability to organize was employed by six presidents, according to an ABC 7 Chicago news report.

For example, Eleanor Roosevelt even selected her to serve on President John F. Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women.

Born in March 28, 1924, in Brookhaven, Miss., Wyatt moved to Chicago in 1930 and married Claude S. Wyatt Jr. in 1940. By 1955, she became an ordained pastor and cofounded Vernon Park Church of God on Chicago’s South Side with her husband who died last April after 69 years of marriage.

But Wyatt’s commitment to social justice will perhaps be her most lasting legacy as she parlayed a meatpacking plant job into rising through the union ranks to become the first female vice president of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America.

She was also a founder of the National Organization for Women. And Wyatt and her husband often marched with Dr. Mart Luther King Jr. who later commissioned her to help start Operation Breadbasket, a program operating in 12 cities that helped distribute food. The organization later grew into the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, according to a UPI report.

In 1975, TIME named her one of the magazine’s “Women of the Year.”

Maude McKay, 74, the Rev. Wyatt’s sole surviving sibling, told the Chicago Sun-Times:

“She always believed in being fair and honest, and she stood for what was right. She just couldn’t take injustice.”

Watch this ABC 7 Chicago news video about her life and legacy:

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Brett Johnson is a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based writer and the founder of the music and culture blog VeryArtistical.com.

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Marie Joseph’s body was found on June 26, two days after a boy reported that he saw her fall into the pool.  Regional Director Brian Shanahan and District Manager Jeff Carter will be charged with reckless child endangerment charges after allowing the pool to remain open.

Joseph, a mother of five and Haitian immigrant, hit her head after coming down a waterslide and bumping into a 9-year-old boy, passed out and drowned. It was reported that the boy went to tell a lifeguard she had fallen into the pool, but was ignored.

Her body remained, undetected, in the cloudy, 12-foot deep water until it was found by two teens that were trespassing in after hours. Bristol County District Attorney Sam Sutter announced the charges yesterday following an investigation into the Joseph’s death.

Read more at theGrio.com

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According to the lawsuit, Darryl Thompson stopped breathing and died shortly after prison workers failed to respond to his pleas for help.

The agreement, approved last week by a U.S. District Judge, awards 2.28 million to Anntwanisha Thompson after legal fees for the death of her son.

“There’s no amount of money that is going to compensate for this boy’s life,” the family’s attorney, E. Robert Keach III, told theGrio.

Read more at the Grio.

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The group will hold a rally Monday evening at Gaither Gymnasium. Students will be asked to sign an anti-hazing agreement. Student leaders hope this is the first step to eradicating longstanding violent initiations at FAMU. In recent years, members of the school’s band have been seriously injured.

Last month, a drum major of the school’s famed band, called the Marching 100, died in Orlando. His death was only hours after performing at the annual Florida Classic football game between the Rattlers and rival Bethune-Cookman.

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A former first round pick of the then-Los Angeles Raiders, McGlockton played 12 seasons with the Raiders, Kansas City Chiefs, Denver Broncos and New York Jets.

McGlockton registered 555 tackles, 51 sacks, 14 forced fumbles and four interceptions in his career. He made four straight Pro Bowl trips starting in 1994, when he had a career-high 9½ sacks with three forced fumbles and 48 tackles for the Raiders.

Read more at ESPN.

See also: FAMU Hazing Persisted Despite Suspensions, Probes

Hundreds of friends and family crowded the pews at a church near Atlanta, and Champion’s drum major uniform was on display next to his open casket. Members of the marching band from Southwest DeKalb High School, where Champion attended, performed in full regalia at the beginning and end of the service.

Beulah Missionary Baptist Church pastor John Tatum urged the crowd to stop the “foolish” hazing in college fraternities and marching bands.

“If there’s anything about this man’s legacy we need to put a stop to, it’s hazing,” he said to a chorus of amens. “I call upon every parent, every mother, every father … do what is necessary now to stop this tragedy from ever happening again.”

The 26-year-old junior was found dead Nov. 19 on a bus parked outside an Orlando, Fla., hotel after the school’s football team lost to a rival. Police said Champion, a clarinet player, had been vomiting and complained he couldn’t breathe shortly before he collapsed, but they have not released any other details.

Since Champion’s death, Julian White, the band director at the historically black university in Tallahassee has been fired. The school has announced an independent probe, and the university president said he will work to end the long practice of hazing in the marching band.

Speaking at the service, White said Champion was like a son to him. He said he saw Champion shortly after he was found unconscious and he “looked in peace.”

“This is a difficult time for me. You may see me smile, and you probably won’t see me cry,” he said. “I’m happy that I knew Robert.”

The group that oversees Florida’s public universities announced Tuesday it wanted to investigate whether the school did enough to respond to hazing.

Champion fell in love with music when he was about age 6. He started in bands in middle school and his mother said he was so enthusiastic about performances she called him “Mr. Band.”

The Florida A&M band, known as the “Marching 100,” was one of the most prominent in the nation. The band has performed at Super Bowls, the Grammys and presidential inaugurations.

University president James Ammons pledged to “stamp out hazing at FAMU.”

“I vow that Robert’s death will not be in vain,” he said.

The study found that 51 percent of Hispanic males and 45 percent of African American males ages 15-24 will end up unemployed, incarcerated or dead.

ABC News Channel 3 in North Carolina Reports:

The College Board report on educational experience observed, “…Men, especially minority men, lag behind their female counterparts in college access, educational attainment and employment. Minority men outpace their female counterparts only in negative post-secondary outcomes: unemployment, incarceration and death.”

In order to accomplish President Obama’s goal of the United States retaking its position as the world’s best educated nation, improvements must be made in the rate men of color enroll in and graduate from college, the report stated.

Read More At WwayTV3.com

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Joe Perry, former 49ers fullback and one of the first African-American stars of the National Football League, passed away on Monday from complications of dementia.

New York Times reports:

Perry, who lived in Chandler, Ariz., had been receiving financial assistance under a National Football League benefits plan aiding former players with dementia, his wife said, and his brain will be donated to a Boston University facility researching that issue.

Perry was the first N.F.L. player to rush for more than 1,000 yards in two consecutive seasons in 1953 and ’54, and he was voted to the all-N.F.L. team in both seasons. He was also a three-time Pro Bowl player.

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Dr. David M. French was a former Howard University professor of pediatric surgery who treated the injuries of civil rights protesters in the 1960s and fought to stop the segregation of health-care facilities. He passed away on March 31 at the age of 86.

Dr. French was also a founding member of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, a civil rights organization that aimed to provide adequate medical care for patients of all races.

READ MORE AT WASHINGTONPOST.COM

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An overnight fire traps a teenager and two children inside a Chicago home. Jamaya Herron, 18, died at the scene. Firefighters rescued the other kids.

It seems a candle started a fire at 2206 Clover Avenue in Rockford just before 4:00 a.m. Monday. The two parents, Joe and Delores Herron, escaped. But when firefighters arrived, their daughter and foster kids were still inside a bedroom. Rescuers got the 2 boys out. It was too late for the teenage girl. Fannie Barbee, a relative of the family says, “She was very faithful in the church. Whenever I go over there, she was a really nice person.”

The Rockford Fire Department responded to the one story house. Jamaya Herron and her two younger foster brothers, ages 10 and 11, were trapped. Rescuers got to the boys through the window. They were flown to a hospital in Madison for severe smoke inhalation.

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Firefighters could not lift Jamaya through the window. Investigators say she weighed more than 500 pounds. Winnebago County Coroner Sue Fiduccia says, “That did hamper the fire department and fire rescuers from taking her out a window. They did have to bring her out the door and in doing that, two firefighters we’re actually injured.

Read entire article at WREX.com

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The 17-year-old daughter of the U.S. Ambassador to Thailand plunged to her death from a Midtown luxury high-rise early Friday morning, the Daily News has learned.

Nicole John fell out of a 25th story window of the Herald Square Towers on W. 34th St., landing on the building’s third-floor overhang, according to police sources.

She was killed instantly.

John’s father, Eric John, was appointed U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Thailand in 2007, according to the State Department website.

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Investigators believe Nicole John was part of a group of young revelers who were partying in the 25th-floor apartment near the Empire State Building in the moments before the 4:15 a.m. tragedy, according to sources.

“They’d been drinking,” said Robert Pena, the building engineer at the Herald Square Towers, who saw the pack of partygoers walking through the building’s lobby just before 4 a.m.

“They’d invited some other people back from a club,” Pena said.

Though the circumstances of John’s death remain under investigation, witnesses told cops they thought she was leaning out of the window for some fresh air when she tipped forward and fell, the sources said.

Read entire article at NYdailynews.com

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A Black Gay Pride organizer was shot and killed early Wednesday, according to a report by WSB-TV.

Durand Robinson, 50, of Decatur, an owner of the popular Traxx Atlanta club and promotion team, was shot after he got into an altercation with another person, the station reported.

Philip Boone, who was Robinson’s business partner told WSB, “This was devastating for our community and the Traxx family. He was an angel … we will miss him.”

According to a preliminary police report, Robinson was found in southwest Atlanta lying in the middle of Hadlock Street with a gunshot wound to the chest. He was found shortly after 1 a.m.

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The preliminary report states, according to Officer Kim Jones:

“Residence at Hadlock Street SW called 911 at 0123 hours to report a person injured. Grady EMS and Fire Rescue units were already on the scene. The victim was deceased on scene by an apparent gunshot wound. Residence at Hadlock Street SW heard a commotion in the street followed by a single gunshot and the sound of a vehicle speeding off. The residence advised that when they looked out they saw the victim lying in the street and called 911

Police continue to seek a motive and have not named a suspect in the case.

Read entire article at TheGAvoice.com

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Charles W. Bowser, 79, a tenacious advocate of racial fairness and an influential civic leader whose two campaigns for Philadelphia mayor inspired a generation of African American political leaders, died Monday from complications of Alzheimer’s disease at HCR Manor Care in King of Prussia.

For almost 40 years from the mid-1960s on, Mr. Bowser was a force in the city’s civic life while mentoring and encouraging virtually every major black elected official who has emerged in the last 25 years.

From fighting to end the wearing of blackface by Mummers to serving on the commission that investigated the MOVE bombing, Mr. Bowser proved a determined and intellectually gifted lawyer and public servant.

But his most enduring legacy can be found in the office he never was able to achieve for himself.

While Mr. Bowser was not the first African American to run for mayor in Philadelphia, his campaigns in 1975 and 1979 were the first to galvanize black voters. In doing so, they challenged the notion that a black candidate could not win.

“Charlie Bowser convinced the African American community we could do this,” said John F. Street, the city’s second black mayor.

Click here to read more at the Philadelphia Inquirer

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DILLINGHAM, Alaska — Former Sen. Ted Stevens lay dead in the mangled fuselage of the plane. A 13-year-old boy escaped death but his father died a few feet away. Medical workers spent the miserable night tending to survivors’ broken bones amid a huge slick of fuel that coated a muddy mountainside.

The gruesome details of the plane crash that killed Stevens and four others emerged as investigators tried to figure out how the float plane crashed into a mountain during a fishing trip. Three teenagers and their parents were on the plane, including the former head of NASA.

Authorities were studying weather patterns to understand if overcast skies, rain and gusty winds played a role in a crash that claimed the life of the most revered politician in Alaska history.

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The Republican was remembered as a towering political figure who brought billions of dollars to the state during his 40 years in the Senate – a career that ended amid a corruption trial in 2008. The case was later tossed out.

A pilot who was one of the first to arrive at the scene described a horrific scene of airplane wreckage, fuel, rainy weather, dead bodies and frightened survivors.

As he helped shuttle a doctor and two EMTs to the scene about three hours after the crash, Tom Tucker described seeing a survivor still strapped in the front seat with the nose of the plane disintegrated. His head was cut, and his legs appeared to be broken.

“The front of the aircraft was gone,” Tucker said. “He was just sitting in the chair.”

He and other responders made a tarp tent over the missing cockpit to keep him dry. It was rainy and cold, and he believes the passengers’ heavy duty waders protected them when they went into shock. Temperatures ranged from about 48 degrees to 50 degrees overnight at Dillingham.

“These individuals were cold. We covered them up with blankets and made them as comfortable as we could.”

Master Sgt. Jonathan Davis, one of the first National Guardsmen to reach the crash site, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the waders helped the injured by acting “as sort of a survival-type blanket,” keeping body heat in and water out.

The flights at Dillingham are often perilous through the mountains, even in good weather. NTSB chairwoman Deborah Hersman said weather conditions at the time of the accident included light rain, clouds and gusty winds.

The federal investigation is still in its early stages, and it’s too early to say what caused the crash, Hersman said.

“We’re certainly looking at weather, but everything’s on the table right now and we haven’t ruled anything out,” Hersman told CNN on Wednesday morning. She said investigators had not yet been able to talk to the crash survivors.

Hersman said the group had eaten lunch at a lodge and boarded a 1957 red-and-white float plane between 3 p.m. and 3:15 p.m. local time for a trip to a salmon fishing camp.

Lodge operators called the fish camp at 6 p.m. to inquire when the party would be returning for dinner, but were told that they never showed up. Civilian aircraft were dispatched, and pilots quickly spotted the wreckage a few miles from the lodge, Hersman said.

The doctor and EMTs were flown to the area and hiked to the wreckage as fog and rain blanketed the area and nightfall set in, making it impossible for rescue officials to reach the scene until daybreak.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the DeHavilland DHC-3T was registered to Anchorage-based General Communications Inc., a phone and Internet company.

The victims were identified as Stevens; pilot Theron “Terry” Smith, 62, of Eagle River; William “Bill” Phillips Sr.; Dana Tindall, 48, an executive with GCI; and her 16-year-old daughter Corey Tindall.

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The four survivors were former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe and his teenage son; William “Willy” Phillips Jr., 13; and Jim Morhard, of Alexandria, Va. They were taken to Providence Hospital in Anchorage with “varying degrees of injuries,” Alaska State Troopers said on Tuesday.

Former NASA spokesman Glenn Mahone said O’Keefe, 54, and his son had broken bones and other injuries.

Sean O’Keefe was listed in critical condition Wednesday. His son, Kevin O’Keefe, and Morhard were listed in serious condition. The hospital said the younger Phillips was not listed in its directory, and it wasn’t immediately clear where he was.

Stevens and O’Keefe were fishing companions and longtime Washington colleagues who worked together on the Senate Appropriations Committee that the Republican lawmaker led for several years. Stevens became a mentor to the younger O’Keefe and they remained close friends.

Morhard and the elder Phillips also worked with Stevens in Washington. Morhard went on to found a Washington lobbying firm. Phillips was also a lobbyist.

Plane crashes in Alaska are somewhat common because of the treacherous weather and mountainous terrain. Many parts of the state are not accessible by roads, forcing people to travel by air to reach their destinations.

“It’s just a reality of Alaska life and unfortunately it caught up with him,” Stevens family spokesman Mitch Rose said on NBC’s “Today.”

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Stevens was one of two survivors in a 1978 plane crash at Anchorage International Airport that killed his wife, Ann, and several others.

Stevens was a legend in his home state, where he was known as “Uncle Ted.” The wiry octogenarian was appointed in December 1968 and became the longest-serving Republican in Senate history.

Nina Corbett, co-owner of the Windmill Grille in Dillingham, was saddened by the loss of Stevens.

“We’re such a youthful state,” she said Tuesday night while taking a break from serving pizza, hot sandwiches, tap beer and wine from a box to visiting fishermen in the restaurant along the road to the town’s airport.

“He’s the only senator we’ve ever known.”

Originally published June 25, 2009

A NewsOne Editorial

In the wake of Michael Jackson’s death, many tributes will be written about his talent, his musical canon, and even his humanitarian aspirations.

But most of these homages will miss the most important and least appreciated achievement of Michael Jackson.

The rock ‘n’ roll revolution of the 1950s and 1960s brought young white Americans into contact with Black culture as never before. But the 1970s brought a disastrous re-segregation of pop music. Radio stations across the country dropped records by Black artists under the guise of “target marketing.” Record companies quarantined Black acts in “Black departments,” refusing to promote these artists to mainstream radio outlets until they had “proven” themselves on Black radio.

By the early 1980s, a new cable channel called Music Television became the nation’s number one promotional vehicle for pop artists.

But MTV didn’t play videos by Black artists.

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Hundreds of talented Black musicians were denied the opportunity for sales and cultural impact because of MTV’s baldfaced racism.

Check out our gallery of photos from Michael’s life:

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But Michael Jackson changed all that in 1983. Not only was he the first Black R&B artist to become a star on MTV (after much infighting among the programmers at the channel and pressure from Jackson’s record company, CBS); Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” juggernaut singlehandedly began the re-integration of American music.

He paved the way for Prince, and Run-DMC, and Yo! MTV Raps, and everything that followed: The Cosby Show. The Arsenio Hall Show. In Living Color. The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air. He made possible the careers of men like WIll Smith and Jay-Z and women like Beyonce and Mary J. Blige.

Michael Jackson was the launch point for the incredible cultural phenomenon of the late 1980s and 1990s: The “Browning” of America. Michael Jackson may have yearned for a colorblind society, but his true legacy is a colorful nation.

Even as he made a tragic retreat from his own racial identity, Michael Jackson re-introduced mainstream America to Black expression and Black people. By extension, he made the events of 2008 possible.

Michael Jackson, in short, started the movement that created the cultural conditions for the election of our first Black president.

For that, America — and the world — can be eternally grateful.

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Gospel legend Marie Knight has died in New York City at age 84. She came to prominence while touring with Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the 1940s and singing hits such as “Beams of Heaven.”

Her manager, Mark Carpentieri, says she died Sunday at a Harlem nursing home of complications from pneumonia.

Knight was raised in Newark, N.J. She began touring the national gospel circuit with evangelist Frances Robinson.

In 1946, she partnered with Tharpe. The two became the most popular gospel artists of the 1940s with hits including “Didn’t it Rain” and “Up Above My Head.” They toured throughout the 1950s.

Knight began a comeback in 2002, working on a tribute to Tharpe. In 2007, her manager’s M.C. Records company released “Let Us Get Together,” her first full-length album in more than 25 years.

UPDATE:7/30/09

LOS ANGELES – A coroner’s official says heart disease, complicated by high blood pressure and a hardening of the arteries, is what killed author E. Lynn Harris last week.

County coroner Craig Harvey said Wednesday that the 54-year-old died of natural causes. Harris died July 23 while visiting Los Angeles to promote his latest book.

Harris lived in Atlanta and was considered a pioneer of gay black fiction, enjoying unprecedented success in the genre. He wrote 11 novels, and ten of them became New York Times best-sellers.

More than four million of his books are in print.

From ArkansasSports360.com:

Author E. Lynn Harris, cheerleading sponsor/coach for Arkansas and a passionate Razorbacks fan, has passed away at 53. He was on a book tour of the West Coast.

Harris, a best-seller whose work dealt with black, gay culture and delved into athletics, was a passionate Razorbacks fan. For the past eight semesters, Harris served as a “visiting” professor for the English department. Harris detailed his life, inspiration and passion for the Razorbacks in a September 2008 Q&A with ArkansasSports360.com

Most recently, Harris’ wrote his 11th novel, “Basketball Jones”, which involved an NBA player and the player’s gay lover. Before “Basketball Jones,” Harris penned “Just Too Good To Be True,” a novel detailing the life of Heisman Trophy candidate Brady Manning. Harris’ novel focused on the pressures surrounding Manning and the support system the star athlete leaned on to help him through dark and troubling times.

Click here to read more.

]]> http://newsone.com/253627/author-e-lynn-harris-dead/feed/ 14 UPDATE: Author E. Lynn Harris Died From Heart Disease (thumbnail) ionesfontaine e-lynn http://newsone.com/261397/mjs-chef-speaks-on-his-last-days/ http://newsone.com/261397/mjs-chef-speaks-on-his-last-days/#comments Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:53:38 +0000 NewsOne Staff http://newsone.com/?p=261397 ]]>

On the day Michael Jackson died, his personal chef says her first hint of something amiss was when his doctor didn’t come downstairs to get the juices and granola he routinely brought the King of Pop for breakfast each morning.

Kai Chase, a professionally trained chef hired by Jackson to maintain a healthy food regimen, recalled the singer’s final days in an interview with The Associated Press. She also spoke about the role of his personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, who is now the focus of a manslaughter investigation.

Chase said Tuesday that she had gotten used to seeing Murray coming and going from the mansion. The doctor usually arrived about 9 or 9:30 p.m. and would go upstairs to Jackson’s room, and she said she would not see him again before she left — sometimes late in the evening — but understood he was staying the night.

In the morning, when she arrived for work, Chase said she would see the doctor coming down the steps carrying oxygen tanks. When Murray didn’t come downstairs the morning of June 25, “I thought maybe Mr. Jackson is sleeping late,” Chase said.

“I started preparing the lunch and then I looked at my cell phone and it was noon. About 12:05 or 12:10 Dr. Murray runs down the steps and screams, ‘Go get Prince!’ He’s screaming very loud. I run into the den where the kids are playing. Prince (Jackson’s oldest son) runs to meet Dr. Murray and from that point on you could feel the energy in the house change.

“I walked into the hall and I saw the children there. The daughter was crying. I saw paramedics running up the stairs.”

At that point, Chase said, the small group that was gathered — the children, their nanny, a housekeeper and Chase — held hands and began to pray. As paramedics raced up to the room, Chase recalls, “We were all praying, ‘Help Mr. Jackson be O.K.’

“Then everyone was very quiet.”

At about 1:30 p.m. she said security guards told her and other staff to leave the property because “Mr. Jackson was being taken to the hospital.”

When she came outside, she said, ambulances were in the courtyard and a crowd had gathered.

Chase, 37, who has cooked for other celebrities and comes from a show-business family, was hired by Jackson in March, let go in May, then returned on June 2. She said the pop star’s focus was on fresh, healthy food for him and the children.

She said she prepared meals for the family and occasionally for Murray. She said Jackson was in training for his upcoming shows in London and told her: “You have to take care of me.”

On most days, she said, Murray would bring Jackson the special fruit juice drinks Chase prepared for him, followed by granola with almond milk. For lunch, Jackson would eat with the children from a menu that included such things as spinach salad and chicken.

Murray sometimes joined them for dinner, which might be a seared ahi tuna. She said the doctor conferred with her about the 50-year-old pop singer’s food and made sure that he ate.

The only oddity was the oxygen tanks. Chase said she never asked about the purpose of the oxygen and she saw no sign that Jackson was on drugs or was in failing health.

“Normally in the morning, he would bring oxygen tanks from upstairs downstairs, one in each hand,” she said.

Authorities searched Murray’s Las Vegas home and medical office Tuesday as part of an investigation that included raids last week of his clinic and storage in Houston.

With toxicology reports pending, investigators are working under the theory that the powerful anesthetic propofol caused Jackson’s heart to stop, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. Murray told investigators he regularly administered the drug to help Jackson sleep, and had done so sometime in the early morning of June 25, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Propofol is supposed to be administered only in monitored medical settings by trained personnel; the official told AP that Murray left the bedroom and returned to find the star unresponsive. Police have said Murray is cooperating and have not labeled him a suspect, and his lawyer, Edward Chernoff, has said the doctor “didn’t prescribe or administer anything that should have killed Michael Jackson.”

Like Murray, Chase said she was hired to accompany Jackson to London for his comeback concerts and the request was personally made to her by his 12-year-old son, Prince Michael II.

“Prince said, ‘Daddy wants me to tell you he wants you to go to London with us,’” she recalled. “I said, ‘Tell your daddy that I’m pleased and honored.”

She said she had already filled out paperwork and submitted a copy of her passport to the Jackson staff and expected to leave for London on July 3.

On June 23, she said Jackson told her: “I’m packed and I’m ready to go.” Two days later, he was dead.

It was the end of her dream job and an idyllic time in Chase’s life, a time that had begun in March with a call from Jackson’s assistant, Michael Williams. She was told that “a client” wanted her services as personal chef but she was not told the client was Jackson until she was hired.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I asked him if I was on ‘Candid Camera.’ I said, ‘Am I being punked?’”

She said Jackson had seen her resume which included jobs cooking for Macy Gray and Jamie Foxx as well as catering a fund raiser for President Barack Obama. She said he also knew she was from a multiracial background and her godfather was Redd Foxx.

But before she started she had to pass muster with three other people: the Jackson children.

“I came to the house and the first people I met were the kids. They started interviewing me,” she said. “They told me: ‘We’re into healthy eating.’”

When they approved her, she went to work and “we developed a really great bond.”

Most days, she said, Jackson made a point of having both lunch and dinner with the children, Prince, 11-year-old Paris and 7-year-old Prince Michael II, known as Blanket, and each meal was preceded by Paris saying grace. After weeks of healthy food, she said she wrote Jackson a note with a suggestion:

“I said, ‘What about doing comfort-food Saturdays? We could do barbecued chicken and corn on the cob, maybe Mexican food or soul food.’” She said he loved the idea, but as the concerts approached, healthy eating returned full time.

“He said, ‘I’m a dancer,’ and he wanted food that would not make him cramp up while he was dancing.”

She now treasures little notes she received from the children and from Jackson and a present he gave her.

“One day he handed me a little gift bag and said, ‘This is for you from me and the children.’ He had given me an iPod Touch because the children told him I still had a Walkman. It had the 25th anniversary ‘Thriller’ album loaded on it.”

She said she has visited with the children since Jackson’s death and they are doing well. “They have so many cousins to play with.”

As for Chase’s future, she said Jackson encouraged her to write a cookbook and she has written one tentatively titled, “Fit for a King.” It includes recipes she cooked for Jackson and the story of the time she worked for him.

“He was an inspiration to me,” she said.

The personal physician who tried to revive a dying Michael Jackson has been named as the target of a manslaughter probe into the singer’s death.

A search warrant filed Thursday allowed authorities to seek “property or items constituting evidence of the offense of manslaughter that tend to show that Dr. Conrad Murray committed the said criminal offense.”

The warrant was filed a day after agents seized items from the physician’s Houston clinic and a rented storage unit.

Murray, 51, was with Jackson as he died and has been a key figure in the monthlong investigation since the beginning. The search of his clinic indicated authorities were focusing on him, but the warrant language made it clear he’s the target.

The court documents detailed items seized by federal drug agents and Los Angeles police. Among them were 27 tablets of the weight loss drug phentermine, a tablet of the muscle relaxant clonazepam, two computer hard drives, e-mails and a controlled substance registration.

Murray’s lawyer, Edward Chernoff, confirmed a search warrant had been executed and that none of the items seized had previously been requested by authorities, but did not comment further.

Murray was hired as Jackson’s personal physician just weeks before he died. He was in Jackson’s rented Los Angeles mansion when the pop star was found unconscious the morning of June 25 and tried unsuccessfully to revive him.

Murray, a cardiologist, is licensed to practice in California, Texas and Nevada. Records show he has had no disciplinary actions taken against him, though one item seized by investigators is a suspension notice from a Houston hospital. No details are provided.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office was not expected to make an official determination of what killed Jackson until at least next week, and investigators this week were reviewing medical records taken from the offices of other doctors in the probe.

Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter said Thursday he had sought information from “seven or eight” doctors and Murray is the only one he has yet to talk to.

Winter said Chernoff had offered to speak with the coroner Friday but without Murray present.

“We don’t want to talk to the attorney, we want to talk to” Murray, Winter said.

Chernoff issued a brief statement in response, saying Winter had not made any requests to interview his client.

The powerful anesthetic propofol has emerged an important part of the investigation. Doses of it were found in Jackson’s mansion, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation who is not authorized to speak publicly. The drug was not among the items seized under the search warrant.

All around the country fans have been celebrating, crying and remembering Michael Jackson’s life and contribution to entertainment. Take a look photos of fans in New York City, Los Angeles and Jackson’s hometown of Gary, Indiana and see how they’re dealing with Jackson’s death:

REPORTS: MICHAEL JACKSON’S DEATH LINKED TO PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

Harlem Mourns, Celebrates Michael Jackson

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Fans React To Michael Jackson’s Death

I was hoping they would cancel Father’s Day this year, mostly because my son Ezra Malik died.

He was my baby boy, and he died the day before he was born, in a hospital in August of last year.  He was a beautiful baby with a full head of hair and flat little feet, and I only got to hold him once.  I cannot describe the intense feeling of joy over meeting and holding and kissing my son, and the excruciating pain over seeing him lifeless.  His mother and I read him a bedtime story before we put him in the ground, to be with his ancestors.  And now I am left lamenting over the birthdays, the graduations and other life events that will never happen, over the laughs and memories of bicycle rides, amusement parks, and ice cream-experiences of seeing him grow up which I will never see because it wasn’t meant to be.

Losing my child was the most traumatic experience of my life.  Nothing else comes close.  It was like crashing into a brick wall, or having my heart yanked out of my chest.  To those who have not had the experience, I pray you will never know the feeling.  What makes it particularly difficult is that parents are supposed to protect their children and keep them away from harm, and now we feel as if we’ve failed.

This membership organization is a secret society of sorts, whose members often suffer in silence because society doesn’t care to listen.  To be sure, there are many parents in this secret society, many fathers such as myself, those who have that strong fatherhood feeling, who love their child without question. But we are not viewed as fathers in the regular sense because our child died.  Maybe there should be a special Father’s Day just for us.

Think of the countless children in this world that die every year from one of any number of causes, whether disease or famine, or homicide or suicide or war, or causes unknown.  For example, every year in the U.S., 5,000 children die from gun violence, and African Americans and Latinos are disproportionately affected.  Homicide is the leading cause of death for African-American males between ages 15-34, the second leading cause of death for Blacks ages 10-14, and the third leading cause of death for the 5-9 age range, with guns accounting for 90%, 70% and 34% of these deaths, respectively.  That’s a lot of children.  That’s a lot of mourning parents, and an army of grieving fathers, often at war with their emotions, and shunned by a society that doesn’t support them through their painful journey.

This is a society where value is placed on looking good rather than feeling good.  People ask “how are you feeling?” without really caring about your response.  In a society that does not deal well with death, particularly the death of children- and wants people to just “get over it” and feel better, mistakenly believing that simply forgetting the loss will make the pain go away- parents of lost children have a rough time of it.

Mothers who grieve over a lost child tend to have a more supportive network than fathers to help them through their pain, not that they always receive the support that they need.  Men are told to buck up, walk it off and “be a man”.  After all, we are told, it is hardest on the mothers.

As a result, fathers of lost children are lost in the wilderness.  We must grapple with the fact that our child has died, yet often we are ill-equipped to do so.  Many men have been conditioned to hide and deny their emotions, their pain and their sorrow, with unhealthy consequences.  Think of all of the people-especially men- who are behind bars because they could not deal with what was on their mind.  Unable to manage their emotions, they cracked up, and perhaps even hurt those around them.  Maybe they were unaware of the counseling and support services available to them (two online support groups for babylost parents are MISS Foundation and Glow In The Woods).  Or they were reluctant to seek those services because of the social stigma of being labeled weak, unstable or crazy.

As for those of us who are coping with the loss of a child, the pain will never go away.  It might get easier to live with, but that is not the point.  The stages of grief don’t always progress in a straight line.  Years after our child’s death, the bad days may still sneak up on us and assault us out of the blue.  Hopefully, healing will come, and we can find ways to incorporate the loss into our daily lives.  But the bar has been lowered on the highest level of joy that we are able to experience.

So, finally, to those fathers who can physically hold your child on Father’s Day, I tell you to hold them tight and don’t let go.  Do not take your child for granted.  To those fathers whose children remain with you in spirit, I say hold them tight in your heart, in your memories, and in your daily life, and don’t let go.

But if you are someone who knows a daddy of a lost child, don’t hesitate to go up to him and feel free to acknowledge his loss.  Bringing up the tragedy won’t make him feel worse, because he is already living the hell that is the most traumatic experience of his life.  But when others pretend that he is not a suffering father, that will almost certainly make him feel worse.  We grieving fathers need to know we are not alone this Father’s Day.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member David A. Love, JD is a journalist and human rights advocate based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Progressive Media Project and McClatchy-Tribune News Service, among others. He contributed to the book, States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International UK spokesperson. His blog is davidalove.com.

Jackson, MS mayor Frank Melton

The mayor of Mississippi’s largest city died early Thursday, less than two days after losing a re-election bid in a contentious Democratic primary that came a week before his second federal trial. He was 60.

Mayor Frank Melton died peacefully at 12:10 a.m. at a Jackson hospital with his wife by his side, city spokeswoman Goldia Revies told The Associated Press.

Melton, who had a history of serious heart problems, was taken to the hospital from his home by ambulance on Tuesday night, shortly after polls closed.

At an emergency meeting Wednesday, the City Council tapped its president, Leslie Burl McLemore, to be acting mayor.

Unofficial results show Melton came in fourth of nine candidates. The top two finishers — Harvey Johnson, the former mayor Melton unseated in 2005, and city Councilman Marshand Crisler — advanced to a May 19 runoff.

Next week, a second trial was set to start for Melton and a former bodyguard, who each faced two federal civil rights charges related to a sledgehammer attack on a duplex on Aug. 26, 2006, that Melton considered a crackhouse.

A judge declared a mistrial in the first case in February after a jury failed to reach a verdict.

Melton had a serious heart condition that sent him to the hospital several times in recent years, including for bypass surgery.

Melton’s first federal trial was postponed while he was treated for his heart condition and he looked gaunt and tired through much of that trial. His doctor testified at the time that he was in “end stage cardiomyopathy.” She said she recommended a heart transplant, but Melton refused to get on a donor list.

He and the bodyguard, Jackson police officer Michael Recio, were both acquitted in April 2007 on state charges related to the raid.

Melton came to Mississippi from Tyler, Texas, in the 1980s to run NBC affiliate WLBT-TV. He soon made a name for himself with an opinion piece called “The Bottom Line” in which he called out criminals and verbally attacked city officials he considered ineffective.

“And that, my friends, is the bottom line,” became his catchphrase.

His wife, a pediatrician, and his two children stayed behind in Texas, prompting vicious rumors about his personal life. Melton brushed aside criticism, and did things his own, sometimes unusual way.

He became a fixture in poor neighborhoods, where he would talk to youngsters about personal accountability and hard work. He tried to broker a cease fire among gangs and volunteered as a swim instructor at an area YMCA.

He was elected by a landslide in 2005 after campaigning on a tough-on-crime platform. Since then, however, he was hounded by legal problems related to his unorthodox tactics.

Prosecutors say he was drunk on scotch and power when he ordered a group of young men — some with criminal records — to destroy the duplex in a poor neighborhood. Melton said he was only trying rid the city of a drug den.

Striking new research shows dying blacks and Hispanics have much steeper treatment costs than whites, sobering evidence that racial health-care differences continue right up until death.

It’s not that minorities are being charged more than whites. It’s that they tend to get more costly, intensive treatments including feeding tubes and other invasive medical procedures near death. That’s in sharp contrast with what often happens throughout their lives, when minorities are less likely than whites to get aggressive medical care.

The results raise a troubling question about whether medical resources for nonwhite patients are “misallocated over a lifetime,” with minorities receiving more treatment at the end, when there is little chance of improving or extending life, the study authors said.

The study appears in Monday’s Archives of Internal Medicine. It involved nearly 160,000 Medicare patients and records on their treatment in the last six months of life. It is the most comprehensive on the topic and confirms results suggested in smaller studies on disparities in end-of-life care, said co-author Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a researcher in the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health.

Medicare costs in those final months averaged $20,166 for whites. Among blacks, they were $26,704, about 30 percent higher; and among Hispanics, $31,702 or almost 60 percent higher. Those individual cost differences can add up to billions of dollars on a national scale, Emanuel said.

Reasons why minorities receive more costly end-of-life care are unclear; the study had no data to explain that. But Emanuel and other doctors offered several theories.

“Some of it may be preference. Some of it may be fear-based,” Emanuel said.

Distrust of doctors and suspicions about getting less attentive treatment than whites likely is another factor, the study authors said.

Also, because of cultural or spiritual beliefs, some minorities are more likely to hold out hope for a miraculous recovery, or to oppose letting doctors play God and hasten death by abandoning treatment, said Dr. Elbert Huang, a Chinese-American physician with the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Letting doctors withdraw aggressive end-of-life treatment is mostly a western European approach, Huang said.

In a smaller, earlier study of healthy elderly patients in Rochester, N.Y., Dr. William Bayer said he found blacks were more likely than whites to say they would favor aggressive treatment even after brain death.

Blacks in that study tended to believe that “if God wants to take our lives, he will decide when and where that will happen,” said Bayer, of the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Dr. Otis Brawley, a black physician in Atlanta and chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, said the new findings “make sense.”

“They play into all of my prejudices and they play into all of my personal experiences,” Brawley said.

He said other reasons contribute to the phenomenon.

Because low-income minority patients often get less preventive medical care, they’re less likely than whites to have long-term relationships with doctors, Brawley said. So physicians who treat them late in life may be strangers unwilling to “pull the plug” without knowing their wishes.

Also, Brawley said, black patients often have splintered families, and estranged relatives are in charge of making end-of-life decisions.

“They feel guilt about saying, ‘let this patient die,’” he said.

“The breakdown of the family in certain cultures contributes somewhat to this phenomenon,” he said. “I’ve seen it so many times.”

UPDATE: Conclusive Evidence Boy Committed Suicide

Illinois police have concluded that a 10-year-old boy who died after he was found hanging from a hook in an elementary school bathroom stall committed suicide.

Evanston Police Cmdr. Tom Guenther says investigators determined that fifth-grader Aquan Lewis was “unhappy” on Feb. 3 when he hanged himself at Oakton Elementary School.

At a news conference Tuesday, Guenther also said physical evidence – including the child’s footprint on a toilet seat – indicates the boy hanged himself on the hook in the bathroom stall where he was found.

Earlier this month, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office ruled the boy’s death was a suicide. But the boy’s mother has said she didn’t believe her son would kill himself.

Click here for the story.

Death Of Boy, 10, Is Ruled A Suicide, Feb 5, 2009

A 10-year-old boy reportedly found hanging from a coat hook at his suburban Chicago school took his own life, according to a preliminary coroner’s office ruling on Wednesday. A daily ledger released by the Cook County medical examiner noted “hanging” and “suicide” as the cause of death for fifth-grader Aquan Lewis, who was found unresponsive in a bathroom at the Evanston school Tuesday afternoon and was pronounced dead at a hospital Wednesday morning.

The boy’s distraught mother, Angel Lewis, left a school district building hours earlier, not speaking directly to reporters but saying over and over, “He should have been accounted for. He should have been accounted for.”

A janitor at Oakton Elementary School, Elliott Lieteau, said he found Aquan on the floor of the restroom and that others told him the boy had been pulled off a hook. Lieteau said he performed CPR.

Speaking before the coroner’s finding, a community activist who accompanied Lewis and acted as her spokeswoman said Lewis did not believe her boy committed suicide.

“She sent her son to school yesterday morning in good spirits,” Dawn Valenti said. “The next thing she knows she’s getting a call that her son died. … He did not commit suicide. There was nothing wrong with her son.”

Evanston police Cmdr. Tom Guenther said the coroner’s finding of suicide would not affect how police conduct the investigation. Asked if the finding ruled out any possibility of foul play or an accident, Guenther said, “I don’t think we’re going to jump to any conclusions at this point.”

The medical examiner’s office did not return a message from The Associated Press seeking details about the suicide finding.

Before leaving the school district building, Aquan’s mother stood at the back of the room during a news conference with police and school officials, crying and sometimes shaking her head as officials fielded questions.

At the news conference, Guenther repeatedly declined to provide any details on the investigation and would only call Aquan’s death “an isolated incident.”

“It’s devastating,” said school board member Jerome Summers. “Nobody anticipates the death of their child when they send their kid to school.”

School officials still are trying to determine when the boy left his class to go to the bathroom, said Superintendent Hardy Murphy. There are no security cameras inside the school.

Counselors met with students and parents Wednesday. Several parents who attended a school meeting would not give their names, but said school officials provided little information about the death; others said school officials instructed them to avoid talking to the media.

Two police cars were parked outside the sprawling, three-story red brick school, which has about 420 students in kindergarten through 5th grade.

Suicides among children as young as Aquan are extremely rare. There were on average just 10 U.S. suicides among 10-year-olds a year between 1999 and 2005, according to statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention‘s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. By comparison, there were an average of about 75 suicides a year among 13-year-olds, and about 250 a year among 16-year-olds.

Maria Patino of Evanston said her fourth-grade daughter, a student at the school, was frightened and confused about what had happened.

Her daughter asked, “Mommy, is the person going to come for me, too?” because she thought somebody had intentionally hurt the boy.

“I didn’t know what to say,” Patino said in Spanish. “It’s too hard for a child to understand.”

Third-grader Michael Barrera, 9, talked to reporters as he left the school with his mother. He said he was uncomfortable at school Wednesday, so he was leaving early.

“My mom doesn’t think I should stay at school and should come home and rest at the house so that I’m not so sad about what happened,” the boy said, a backpack over his shoulder.

Many students were frightened Tuesday as news spread that a classmate was seriously hurt and rumors spread that he might have been killed, Barrera said.

“I was scared that nothing would happen to me or my friends,” he said.

There have been other cases of students hanged at school.

Last February, a 7-year-old boy in Austin, Texas died after being hanged by his shirt from a coat hook in a school dressing room; authorities said he might have been playing a game in which students jumped from bench to bench while trying to touch the room’s ceiling.

And in 2005, a Philadelphia third-grader was found unconscious and hanging by his shirt collar on a hook in a school coatroom, but lived. Both cases were ruled accidents.

UPDATE: Obama Responds To Continental Flight Tragedy

President Barack Obama on Friday offered condolences to the families and friends of those killed in a commuter plane crash in upstate New York. He called one of the victims, a Sept. 11 widow whom he saw just last week, “an inspiration to me and to so many others.”

“Tragic events such as these remind us of the fragility of life and the value of every single day,” Obama said at the start of an economic event at the White House.

A Continental Connection commuter plane crashed into a house in suburban Buffalo, killing all 49 people aboard and a person in the home. Obama offered thanks to the emergency crews who arrived immediately and those still on the scene.

One of the victims was Beverly Eckert, a Sept. 11 widow who was one of the most visible faces in the aftermath of the terror attacks. She was just at the White House last week with Obama as part of a meeting he had with relatives of those killed in the 2001 attacks and the bombing of the USS Cole.

Eckert was flying to Buffalo to celebrate what would have been her husband Sean Rooney’s 58th birthday. He worked at Aon Corp., a risk management firm, at the 98th floor of the World Trade Center’s south tower in New York City.

Said Obama of Beverly Eckert: “She was an inspiration to me and to so many others, and I pray that her family finds peace and comfort in the hard days ahead. “

Earlier, the White House issued a statement from Obama, in which he said that he and his wife, Michelle, were deeply saddened by the tragedy.

9/11 Widow Dies In Tragic Plane Crash, Met With Obama Last Week, Feb 13, 2009

The plane, heading to Buffalo Niagara International Airport, carried 44 passengers, a crew of 4 and an off-duty crew member, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and Continental Airlines. All the people aboard the plane and one person in a house destroyed by the plane were killed, said Chris Collins, the Erie County executive.

Among those on board was Beverly Eckert, the widow of Sean Rooney, a Buffalo native who died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, according to The Buffalo News.

She was heading to Buffalo for a weekend celebration of what would have been her husband’s 58th birthday, and had planned to take part in the presentation of a scholarship award at Canisius High School that she had established in his honor, the newspaper reported.

Click here for more.

VIDEO: News Report of Plane Crash in Buffalo, NY

Fiery Plane Crash Kills 49 In Upstate New York, Feb 13, 2009

A commuter plane “basically dove” into a house while coming in for a landing outside Buffalo, sparking a fiery explosion and killing all 48 people on board and one person on the ground.

It was the first fatal crash of a commercial airliner in the U.S. in 2 1/2 years.

Witnesses heard the twin turboprop aircraft sputtering before it went down in light snow and fog around 10:20 p.m. Thursday. Flames silhouetted the shattered home after Continental Connection Flight 3407 plummeted into it around about five miles from Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

“The whole sky was lit up orange,” said Bob Dworak, who lives less than a mile from the crash site. “All the sudden, there was a big bang, and the house shook.”

The 74-seat Q400 Bombardier aircraft, operated by Colgan Air, was flying from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and preparing to land at Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, said there was no indication terrorism was involved.

“All indications are that this was an air-safety event,” said spokeswoman Amy Kudwa.

The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team of crash investigators to Buffalo early Friday.

Hours after the crash, the task of retrieving remains had not yet begun. Clarence emergency control director Dave Bissonette called it “still a hot scene.”

“It basically dove right into the top of the house from my perspective,” Bissonette said. “I’m no expert on re-creation, but it landed on the house, clearly a direct hit.”

Prior to the crash, the voice of a female pilot on Continental Flight 3407 could be heard communicating with air traffic controllers, according to a recording of the Buffalo air traffic control‘s radio messages shortly before the crash captured by the Web site LiveATC.net. Neither the controller nor the pilot showed any concerns that anything was out of the ordinary as the airplane was asked to fly at 2,300 feet.

A minute later, the controller tried to contact the plane but heard no response. After a pause, he tried to contact the plane again.

Eventually he told an unidentified listener to contact authorities on the ground in the Clarence area.

“You need to find if anything is on the ground,” the controller said. “All I can tell you is the aircraft is over the marker (landing beacon), and we’re not talking to them now.”

After the crash, at least two pilots were heard saying they had been picking up ice on their wings.

“We’ve been getting ice since 20 miles south of the airport,” one says.

While residents of the neighborhood where the plane went down were used to planes rumbling overhead, witnesses said this one sounded louder than usual, sputtered and made some odd noises.

Neighbor David Luce said he and his wife were working on their computers when they heard the plane come in low.

“It didn’t sound normal,” he said. “We heard it for a few seconds, then it stopped, then a couple of seconds later was this tremendous explosion.”

The house was totally demolished, with no sign of the plane through the thick, acrid smoke, Luce said.

After hearing the crash, Dworak drove over to take a look, and “all we were seeing was 50 to 100 foot flames and a pile of rubble on the ground. It looked like the house just got destroyed the instant it got hit.”

One person in the home was killed, and two others inside, Karen Wielinski, 57, and her daughter, Jill, 22, were able to escape with minor injuries. Twelve homes were evacuated near the crash site.

Erie County Executive Chris Collins said the plane was carrying 5,000 pounds of fuel and apparently exploded on impact.

Firefighters got as close to the plane as they could, he said. “They were shouting out to see if there were any survivors on the plane. Truly a very heroic effort, but there were no survivors.”

It was the first fatal crash of a commercial airliner in the United States since Aug. 27, 2006, when 49 people were killed after a Comair jetliner took off from a Lexington, Ky., runway that was too short.

Houston-based Continental Airlines issued a statement saying that preliminary information showed the plane carried 44 passengers and a crew of four.

About 30 relatives and others who arrived at the airport in the overnight hours were escorted into a private area and then taken by bus to a senior citizens center in the neighboring town of Cheektowaga, where counselors and representatives from Continental waited to help.

“At this time, the full resources of Colgan Air’s accident response team are being mobilized and will be devoted to cooperating with all authorities responding to the accident and to contacting family members and providing assistance to them,” the statement said.

“Continental extends its deepest sympathy to the family members and loved ones of those involved in this accident,” said Larry Kellner, chairman and CEO of Continental Airlines, in a later statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with all of the family members and loved ones of those involved in the flight 3407 tragedy.”

Manassas, Va.-based Colgan Air said in a statement that airline personnel and local authorities were working to confirm the number of people on board and their identities.

As family members of the victims trickled in to the airport in the overnight hours, they were escorted by airport personnel to a private area.

Chris Kausner, believing his sister was on the plane, rushed to a hastily established command center after calling his vacationing mother in Florida to break the news.

“To tell you the truth, I heard my mother make a noise on the phone that I’ve never heard before. So not good, not good,” he told reporters.

Clarence is a growing eastern suburb of Buffalo, largely residential but with rural stretches. The crash site is a street of older, single-family homes which apparently back up to wooded area.

While the fire was contained, smoke still billowed over the scene about four hours later. Houses in the neighborhood are only about 20 to 25 feet apart.

“The fact that the damage is limited to the one residence is really amazing,” said state police spokeswoman Rebecca Gibbons.

The crash came less than a month after a US Airways pilot guided his crippled plane to a landing in the Hudson River off Manhattan, saving the lives of all 155 people aboard. Birds had apparently disabled both its engines.

On Dec. 20, a Continental Airlines plane veered off a runway and slid into a snowy field at the Denver airport, injuring 38 people.

Continental’s release said relatives and friends of those on Flight 3407 who wanted to give or receive information about those on board could telephone a special family assistance number, 1-800-621-3263.

KABUL, Afghanistan – A single-file line of school children walked past a military checkpoint Sunday as a bomb-loaded truck veered toward them and exploded, ending the lives of 14 young Afghans in a heartbreaking flash captured by a U.S. military security camera.
The video shows an SUV slowly weaving through sandbag barriers at a military checkpoint just as a line of school children, most wearing white caps, comes into view. They walk along a pathway between the street and a wall, several of them pausing for a few seconds in a group before moving forward again. The vehicle moves toward the security camera while the children walk in the opposite direction, nearly passing the SUV when the footage ends in a fiery blast.
Photos of the bombing’s aftermath showed bloodied text books lying on the ground beside small pairs of shoes. Afghan officials said the kids were attending a final day of class for the year to find out whether they would move up to the next grade.
Dr. Abdul Rahman, a doctor at a hospital near the blast, said the children were aged 8 to 10.
The U.S. military said the attack in the eastern province of Khost killed 16 people, including 14 children, an Afghan soldier and another person — likely a private security guard that Afghan officials reported killed. The U.S. said 58 people were wounded.
In an angry condemnation of the attack, President Hamid Karzai said those that carried it out “cannot escape the revenge of Afghans and God’s punishment.”
The U.N. mission in Afghanistan and the NATO-led force also strongly condemned the attack.
The blast went off near the entrance to a police and army post, said Yacoub Khan, the deputy police chief of Khost. U.S. troops are also stationed inside the outpost, but no troops were wounded or killed in the attack.
U.S. Gen. David McKiernan, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, said he believes the militant network run by warlord Siraj Haqqani was responsible for the attack.
“The brutality and disregard for human life by terrorists is sickening, as I continue to witness innocent men, women and children being killed and maimed in the pursuit of this pointless insurgency,” McKiernan said in a statement.
Afghan officials offered a slightly lower death toll. Abdullah Fahim, spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Kabul, said eight people in total died and 51 were wounded. Khan said he believed that only five school children had died.
It wasn’t possible to reconcile the differing death tolls, though the U.S. military video seemed to support the likelihood of the higher toll.
Khan said the attack came at a time when Pashtun tribal elders from Mandozai district were meeting inside the compound to discuss security issues. It was not immediately clear how many — if any — of those tribal leaders were wounded or killed. Khan said it was possible they were the target but that there was no way for him to know for sure.
The attack came on the last day of school for the year. Students had gathered in the classrooms to receive end-of-year certificates and learn if they had passed on to the next grade, Asif Nang, spokesman for the Ministry of Education, said.
A U.N. spokesman said the U.N. mission in Afghanistan was “appalled” at the suicide attack.
“The deaths of young children who were receiving their end-of-year education certificates are particularly galling,” said Dan McNorton.
The blast in Khost province came only hours after a late-night rocket attack in Kabul on Saturday killed three teenage sisters. McNorton said that attack “also reminds us of the true impact this conflict has on those who play no part in it.”
Violence has spiked across Afghanistan the last two years, and the U.S. plans to send between 20,000 and 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan over the next six months to reinforce the 32,000 U.S. forces already in the country.
More than 6,100 people have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press count of figures from Western and Afghan officials.
The year has also been the deadliest for NATO soldiers since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban.
In the south, a roadside bomb killed two Canadian soldiers and two Afghans working alongside them in a dangerous region of southern Afghanistan, Canada’s military said Sunday.
In addition to those killed in Saturday’s roadside bomb attack, four Canadian soldiers and one Afghan interpreter were wounded, the military said.
The two Afghans killed in the blast in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province included an interpreter and a police officer.
NATO officials have said that Canadian troops have suffered more deaths per capita than any other foreign military in the country. More than 100 Canadians have been killed.
Elsewhere, coalition forces killed five militants and detained six during operations in Kabul and Paktika provinces on Saturday, the U.S.-led coalition said Sunday.

From Blackvoices/Fanhouse: 

The authorities are not sure if the shooting was an accident or suicide but Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is looking at the cause of death. According to the Associated Press, Johnson rushed for more than 4,000 yards in his high school career. Plus he had scholarship offers from universities including Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Mississippi, Mississippi State and Oregon.

From Associated Press on Friday: 

LUCEDALE, Miss. – The family of George County High football star Billey Joe Johnson Jr. is scheduled to meet Monday with District Attorney Tony Lawrence.

Lawrence said Friday that he will discuss the investigation into Johnson’s death with the family before making an information public.

The 17-year-old Johnson was stopped by a George County sheriff’s deputy shortly after 6 a.m. Monday after he reportedly ran a red light and a stop sign.

According to the sheriff’s department, when the deputy went to his patrol vehicle to do a driver’s license check, he heard a gunshot and looked up to see Johnson lying beside the pickup truck. A shotgun was on the body.

Johnson was a star runningback for the George County High School team.

Colon and rectal cancer death rates are now nearly 50 percent higher in blacks than in whites, according to American Cancer Society research being released Monday.

The gap has been growing since the mid-1970s, when colon cancer death rates for the two racial groups were nearly equal.

“We have seen this enormous progress in whites. We could be seeing the same progress in blacks, if we could overcome disparities in access to health care,” said Elizabeth Ward, who oversees surveillance and health policy at the cancer society.

Colorectal cancer is the third leading cancer killer in the United States. About 50,000 Americans will die of the disease this year, the cancer society estimates.

Last month, researchers reported the rate of new cancers in general is inching down and death rates continue to decline in the United States — important good news in the fight against the dreaded disease.

But when it comes to colon cancer, progress has been greater for whites than for blacks, the new report says.

The rate of diagnoses in blacks was about 19 percent higher than it was for whites in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

The death rate difference was even more pronounced. Among blacks, there were about 25 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to 17 per 100,000 in whites — a 48 percent difference.

The two groups’ death rates were similar until the 1980s when colon cancer began to kill blacks at a higher rate than whites.

Researchers say it’s not clear why black mortality jumped in the 1980s, but it started a gap that continued to widen even after the black rate began to fall again.

Colon cancer deaths can be prevented by early diagnosis through screening and quality care. The screening rate for whites is 50 percent compared to just 40 percent for blacks.

The screening rate for Hispanics is an even-lower 32 percent, but the death rate for Hispanics — fewer than 13 per 100,000 — is lower than it is for whites.

That paradox is not unique to colon cancer: Poorly insured Hispanics have fared better than whites and blacks in several measures of cancer and heart disease.

“It’s a mystery,” said Dr. Daniel Blumenthal, chair of the Morehouse School of Medicine’s Department of Community Health and Preventive Medicine.

NEW YORK (AP) Odetta, the folk singer with the powerful voice who moved audiences and influenced fellow musicians for a half-century, has died. She was 77.

Odetta died Tuesday of heart disease at Lenox Hill Hospital, said her manager of 12 years, Doug Yeager. She was admitted to the hospital with kidney failure about three weeks ago, he said.

In spite of failing health that caused her to use a wheelchair, Odetta performed 60 concerts in the last two years, singing for 90 minutes at a time. Her singing ability never diminished, Yeager said.

“The power would just come out of her like people wouldn’t believe,” he said.

With her booming, classically trained voice and spare guitar, Odetta gave life to the songs by workingmen and slaves, farmers and miners, housewives and washerwomen, blacks and whites.

First coming to prominence in the 1950s, she influenced Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and other singers who had roots in the folk music boom.

An Odetta record on the turntable, listeners could close their eyes and imagine themselves hearing the sounds of spirituals and blues as they rang out from a weathered back porch or around a long-vanished campfire a century before.

“What distinguished her from the start was the meticulous care with which she tried to re-create the feeling of her folk songs; to understand the emotions of a convict in a convict ditty, she once tried breaking up rocks with a sledge hammer,” Time magazine wrote in 1960.

“She is a keening Irishwoman in ‘Foggy Dew,’ a chain-gang convict in ‘Take This Hammer,’ a deserted lover in ‘Lass from the Low Country,’” Time wrote.

Odetta called on her fellow blacks to “take pride in the history of the American Negro” and was active in the civil rights movement. When she sang at the March on Washington in August 1963, “Odetta’s great, full-throated voice carried almost to Capitol Hill,” The New York Times wrote.

She was nominated for a 1963 Grammy awards for best folk recording for “Odetta Sings Folk Songs.” Two more Grammy nominations came in recent years, for her 1999 “Blues Everywhere I Go” and her 2005 album “Gonna Let It Shine.”

In 1999, she was honored with a National Medal of the Arts. Then-President Bill Clinton said her career showed “us all that songs have the power to change the heart and change the world.”

“I’m not a real folksinger,” she told The Washington Post in 1983. “I don’t mind people calling me that, but I’m a musical historian. I’m a city kid who has admired an area and who got into it. I’ve been fortunate. With folk music, I can do my teaching and preaching, my propagandizing.”

Among her notable early works were her 1956 album “Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues,” which included such songs as “Muleskinner Blues” and “Jack O’ Diamonds”; and her 1957 “At the Gate of Horn,” which featured the popular spiritual “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”

Her 1965 album “Odetta Sings Dylan” included such standards as “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” ”Masters of War” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”

In a 1978 Playboy interview, Dylan said, “the first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta.” He said he found “just something vital and personal” when he heard an early album of hers in a record store as a teenager. “Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar,” he said.

Belafonte also cited her as a key influence on his hugely successful recording career, and she was a guest singer on his 1960 album, “Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall.”

She continued to record in recent years; her 2001 album “Looking for a Home (Thanks to Leadbelly)” paid tribute to the great blues singer to whom she was sometimes compared.

Odetta’s last big concert was on Oct. 4 at San Francisco’s Golden State Park, where she performed in front of tens of thousands at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, Yeager said. She also performed Oct. 25-26 in Toronto.

Odetta hoped to sing at the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, though she had not been officially invited, Yeager said.

Born Odetta Holmes in Birmingham, Ala., in 1930, she moved with her family to Los Angeles at age 6. Her father had died when she was young and she took her stepfather’s last name, Felious. Hearing her in glee club, a junior high teacher made sure she got music lessons, but Odetta became interested in folk music in her late teens and turned away from classical studies.

She got much of her early experience at the Turnabout Theatre in Los Angeles, where she sang and played occasional stage roles in the early 1950s.

“What power of characterization and projection of mood are hers, even though plainly clad and sitting or standing in half light!” a Los Angeles Times critic wrote in 1955.

Over the years, she picked up occasional acting roles in TV and film. None other than famed Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper reported in 1961 that she “comes through beautifully” in the film “Sanctuary.”

In the Washington Post interview, Odetta theorized that humans developed music and dance because of fear, “fear of God, fear that the sun would not come back, many things. I think it developed as a way of worship or to appease something. … The world hasn’t improved, and so there’s always something to sing about.”

Odetta is survived by a daughter, Michelle Esrick of New York City, and a son, Boots Jaffre, of Fort Collins, Colo. She was divorced about 40 years ago and never remarried, her manager said.

A memorial service was planned for next month, Yeager said.