Usher's Stepson Listed As Brain Dead Following Accident on a Georgia Lake

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Singer Usher's stepson, Kyle Glover, was left brain dead following an accident that occurred on Lake Lanier in Atlanta.

A jet ski on Friday collided with 11 year-old Kyle, who was riding in an inner tube when the ski hit him in the head.  A helicopter airlifted Kyle and an unnamed 15-year-old girl to an Atlanta hospital. Since the accident, Glover has not registered any brain

James H. Ammons, FAMU President, Resigns in the Wake of Robert Champion Jr.'s Hazing Death

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James H. Ammons, president of Florida A&M University, which has been rocked by a scandal resulting from the hazing death last year of drum major Robert Champion, Jr., resigned on Wednesday.

In a letter to Dr. Solomon Badger III, chairman of FAMU's board of trustees, Ammons said he will retire on Oct. 11, 2012, but he will remain at the

Florida A&M Names Interim Music Chair as the School Continues its Search for New Director of Bands

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Florida A&M University has named Kawachi Clemons, assistant professor of music, interim chair of the music department, replacing longtime chair Dr. Julian White, who retired in May following the 2011 hazing death of drum major Robert Champion, Jr.

Blacks Dealt Bad Cards In Las Vegas Metro Area

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In 2007, the black unemployment rate was 6.2 percent, but in 2011, it soared to 22.6 percent

by Frederick H. Lowe
Las Vegas is known as the city of fame and fortune, but for blacks living there and looking for work since 2011, it has been the land of misfortune.

In 2011, the Las Vegas metro area had the highest black unemployment rate of 22.6 percent among 19 metropolitan areas studied, according to new report by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., non-partisan public policy organization.

The institute's study paints a grim picture of black unemployment nationwide for African Americans 16 years old and older.  While Las Vegas can claim the dubious title as holder of the metro area with the highest black unemployment rate, the Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, Va.-N.C. region reported the lowest at 9.7 percent.

Virginia Beach and Richmond, Va., were the only two regions where the black unemployment rate in 2011 was below 10 percent.  In the other regions, the black jobless rates were in double digits.

This is a stunning reversal from  pre-recession days when the black unemployment rate in Las Vegas and Paradise, Nevada areas, were among the nation's lowest at 6.2 percent in 2007,  according to the report titled "Black  Metropolitan Unemployment in 2011: Las Vegas' rate rises significantly."

"The Las Vegas metro area experienced the largest increase in black unemployment from 2010 to 2011; its rate increased 2.8 percentage points," wrote Algernon Austin, the report's author and director EPI's Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy.   "African Americans flocked to the Las Vegas Metropolitan area, attracted by the housing boom, which supported other industries that needed workers. The boom later turned into a bust," Austin said.

Los Angeles, the land of Hollywood glamour, had in 2011 the nation's second-highest black unemployment rate of 21.1 percent, an increase from 19.3 percent in 2010. In 2007, the black unemployment rate for the Los Angeles metropolitan area of Long Beach and Santa Ana, Calif., was 8.3 percent, Austin said.

In contrast, metro areas of Detroit, Minneapolis, and Charlotte, N.C. , reported significant declines in black unemployment. The Detroit metro area reported the sharpest drop of 7.3 percentage points, followed by Minneapolis, which reported a drop of 3.2 percentage points. Charlotte dropped 2.9 percentage points.

Still, Detroit's black unemployment rate in 2011 was 18.1 percent, the third highest in the nation behind  Chicago at 19.1 percent, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.  Detroit's unemployment rate in 2010 was 25.4 percent.

Minneapolis –St. Paul-Bloomington reported the nation's sixth highest black unemployment rate in 2011 of at 17.7 percent and Charlotte reported the seventh highest black unemployment rate of  at 17.2 percent. 

Detroit's population has shrunk.  The city, which had a population of more than 2 million in the 1950s, now has a population of 713,777, according to U.S. Census Bureau.  Nearly 83 percent of Detroit's population is African American.
Austin agrees with that assessment, but he adds that the recovery of the automobile industry has helped reduce Motor City unemployment.

In his study, Austin argues for a federal economic stimulus.

"While the country as a whole needs the federal government to provide more economic stimulus, African Americans, who currently experience the highest unemployment rates among America's major  racial and ethnic groups, are especially in need of such assistance," Austin wrote. "There is broad agreement among economists that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act worked; the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the act created more than 3 million jobs. "

Black Unemployment Rate Rises as State and Local Goverments Continue Job Cuts

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The seasonally adjusted jobless rate for African-American men and women 20 years old and older rose in June partly  because of  the ongoing job cuts by state and local governments an industry blacks once thought was safe from

Black Employment-Population Ratio Remains Flat

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The employment-population ratio, which represents the percentage of the population who are  employed, was higher in June for black men 20 years old and older and flat for black women in the same age group, according to "Black Employment and Unemployment in June 2012."

For black women the employment-population ratio was 55 percent

Newly Discovered Caribbean Crustacean Named in Honor of Reggae Star Bob Marley

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Dr. Paul Sikkel, an assistant professor of biology and a field marine biologist at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Ark., has named a newly discovered crustacean in honor of Bob

Stephen L. Carter's Latest Novel

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Stephen L. Carter is the author of New York Times bestsellers The Emperor of Ocean Park and New England White. His latest novel, The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln, was released on Tuesday.

We all have know about Lincoln's assassination on April 15, 1865 in Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., but in Carter's novel, Lincoln survives the shooting, only to be charged with overstepping his Constitutional authority during the Civil War.

Abigail Canner, a young black woman who recently graduated from Oberlin College, is hired to assist in the president's defense. When Lincoln's lead lawyer is found brutally murdered, Abigail finds herself plunged into a web of intrigue, politics and conspiracy.

The novels explores the bounds of presidential authority.

Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University, where he has taught almost 30 years. He is the author of seven acclaimed books of nonfiction and three bestselling novels.

Beasts of the Southern Wild Opens Nationwide on Friday

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Beasts of the Southern Wild, a controversial independent film of magical realism, depicting an epochal hurricane and flood in post-Katrina Louisiana delta country, opens nationwide  in selected theaters on Friday

Nation's Bicentennial Celebration of the War of 1812 Recalls the USS Constitution's Free Black Sailors

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by Frederick H. Lowe
When the USS Constitution set sail to fight in the War of 1812, a conflict that forged the United States as a nation, the ship's sails were all white, but not its crew.

The war between the United States and British Empire lasted from June 18, 1812, to Feb. 18, 1815, and  82 to 176 or 7 percent to 15 percent