Nation

BASTROP, Texas  — Dennis Silman was in line at the store when his wife’s urgent call came through: They needed to get out. Smoke was drifting up through the woods and the wildfire that just 30 minutes earlier wasn’t near enough to pose a problem was visible over the treetops by the time he got […]

NEW YORK — More than 800 detailed New York Police Department reports on incidents of officers firing at civilians could be disclosed within months. City lawyers initially fought a judge’s February ruling ordering them to turn over the internal documents to the New York Civil Liberties Union. They withdrew their appeal last week. The civil […]

LOS ANGELES – The doctor charged in Michael Jackson’s death is returning to court to meet the first batch of potential jurors who may eventually decide whether to convict him of involuntary manslaughter. It will be the second time this year that a judge, prosecutors and attorneys for Dr. Conrad Murray try to pick a […]

WASHINGTON — The Republican presidential debate made two things clear: The 2012 contest is focused more than ever on jobs, and the GOP field is led by two men who can make plausible, though certainly imperfect, claims of experience in job creation. President Barack Obama, already under pressure to present a compelling new job-expansion strategy […]

ATLANTA — With bipartisan buy-in and no big price tag, a Georgia program pairing job seekers with potential employers for on-the-job training is gaining momentum as President Barack Obama crafts a plan to tackle the nation’s bedeviling unemployment problem. The fans of Georgia Works run the range of the political spectrum, from civil rights activist […]

NEW YORK — New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday compared the New York Police Department’s surveillance of the city’s ethnic neighborhoods to screening kids for measles, and said the department had not unfairly targeted any group in an effort to root out possible terror connections. An Associated Press investigation found that NYPD dispatched undercover […]

New York — Josephine Harris, a 69-year-old grandmother from Brooklyn whose story of survival during the September 11 terrorist attacks received nationwide attention, has passed away. On 9/11, following the plane attacks on the World Trade Center, Harris descended 50 floors of stairs in an attempt to escape the building. That’s when she encountered a […]

SPOKANE, Washington  — A man with extensive ties to white supremacists pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges he planted a bomb along a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade route in Washington state early this year. Kevin Harpham reached a deal with federal prosecutors for a recommended sentencing range of 27 to 32 years in prison just […]

ATLANTA  — Georgia corrections officials have set an execution date for a high-profile death row inmate who claims he’s innocent of killing a Savannah police officer. The Department of Corrections said Wednesday that Troy Anthony Davis will be executed at 7:00 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) on Sept. 21 for the 1989 slaying of Mark MacPhail. It marks the […]

TRENTON, N.J. — Nine-time Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis can’t be listed on the November ballot for a state Senate seat in New Jersey, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. The judge affirmed that the Democrat failed to meet the state’s four-year residency requirement. Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, a Republican, had previously said Lewis was […]

A group of Ohio teens is facing scrutiny by their peers and the local chapter of the NAACP after they hung a racially insensitive banner at a high school football game against a rival school. The sign, which read “You Mad Bro,”  played on the popular Internet meme “You mad?” Still, it sparked a controversy when Black attendees […]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its most recent unemployment data. We knew that Black folks (especially men) would be at the bottom, we just didn’t know how bad. Well, it turns out that the numbers exceed even the most pessimistic predictions. Black unemployment shot up like a rocket during the month of August, […]