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August 30, 2012

  • Photo-ID Laws Pose Hurdle for College Voters

    Photo-ID Laws Pose Hurdle for College Voters New America Media College students returning to campuses in states with new voter photo-ID laws may find registering to vote far more challenging than registering for classes.

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  • will.i.am’s New Song Is a Hit on Mars

    will.i.am’s New Song Is a Hit on Mars will.i.am, the frontman for the Black Eyed Peas, has sold 56 million records on Earth. So what’s the next challenge? Mars, of course. NASA held an educational event on Tuesday to share its findings with students about Mars.

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  • State and Local Jobs Shrink

    State and Local Jobs Shrink by Frederick H. Lowe Jobs in state and local governments declined last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 Annual Survey of Public Employment & Payroll. In 2011, there were 16.

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  • Group Asks for IRS Inquiry on Baptist Nod to Akin

    Group Asks for IRS Inquiry on Baptist Nod to Akin The Missouri Baptist Convention violated its tax-exempt, non-profit status by endorsing controversial U.S. Rep. Todd Akin for the U.S.

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  • Morris Brown College Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

    Morris Brown College Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy by Frederick H. Lowe Morris Brown College, a Historically Black College, founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, citing debts of $10 million to $50 million and assets equal to that amount, according to court documents obtained by The NorthStar News & Analysis. In a U.S.

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  • Thousands In Togo Defy Ban on Rallies

    Thousands In Togo Defy Ban on Rallies (TriceEdneyWire.com) – Police wielding tear-gas cannons attempted to disperse more than a thousand Togolese citizens rallying in the capital, Lome, for fair elections scheduled for October.

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  • Art Africa Fair Calls For Entries

    Art Africa Fair Calls For Entries The Art Africa Miami Arts Fair has issued a call for entries for the event that will take place Dec. 5-9, 2012, in the city’s Overtown neighborhood.

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  • FAMU Lifts Restrictions on Organizations

    Florida A&M University’s clubs and organizations will resume recruitment in September under new rules intended to prevent hazing, promote better academic performance and emphasize  community service.   Greek-letter organizations will be able to start their membership-recruitment process beginning September 11 through on-campus interest meetings for the fall 2012 semester, William E.

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  • New Orleans Property Owners Sue Over Displacement for Hospitals

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) - Businesses and homeowners in New Orleans say they were underpaid when they were forced from lower Mid-City to make room for the University Medical Center and Veterans Health Administration hospital—both of which are under construction now. Property owners are suing the state, and the concern is that the city may end up paying for jury awards.

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  • Zimmerman Can Leave County to See Lawyers

    Zimmerman Can Leave County to See Lawyers A judge in the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case agreed Friday to let the defendant travel out of Seminole County but only to go to his lawyers' offices in Orange County, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

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  • Majority Polled Predict Obama Will Win

    Majority Polled Predict Obama Will Win Despite Mitt Romney-affiliated political action committees’ abilities to out fund raise President Barack Obama, most voters believe the president will be re-elected. A USA Today/Gallup Poll, which surveyed voters Aug.

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  • The NorthStar’s Week in Black History

    The NorthStar’s Week in Black History August 30 through September 5 August 30 1932 ----- The United States Public Health Service, in conjunction with the Tuskegee Institute, conducted an infamous clinical study of syphilis from this date until 1972.  Black men were used exclusively as the research subjects.  A whistleblower’s report brought the specious 40-year study to a halt. Study researchers recruited poor, uneducated African-American men, most of whom were sharecroppers from rural Macon County, Ala., to study the progression of syphilis in the body.

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  • Jobs Are Priority No. 1 in South African Poll

    South Africans want the country’s government to create jobs as a way of ending double-digit unemployment. A Gallup Poll survey reported that 51 percent of South Africans wanted the government to create new jobs, compared with 18 percent who wanted the government to reduce corruption.

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  • Healthier Meals Await Oakland Students Returning to School

    Healthier Meals Await Oakland Students Returning to School New America Media BERKELEY, Calif. – Jennifer Le Barre, Oakland Unified School District’s nutrition services director, vows that students in Oakland’s public schools will know what a fresh peach is when they pick it up. Le Barre was speaking at a news briefing here August 16 on what some are calling a food revolution in Oakland’s public schools.

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  • Oprah Is Still the Top Paid Celebrity

    Oprah Is Still the Top Paid Celebrity Oprah continues her reign as Forbes magazine’s highest paid celebrity. Between May 2011 and May 2012, Oprah earned $165 million, besting filmmaker Michael Bay, who finished in the No.

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  • A Race About Race: Get Whose Country Back?

    A Race About Race: Get Whose Country Back? by A. Peter Bailey (TriceEdneyWire.com) - It was the 1992 Bill Clinton-George H.W. Bush presidential campaign that introduced the memorable political slogan: “It’s the economy, Stupid.

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  • Romney’s Creed: Blessed Are the One Percent

    Romney’s Creed: Blessed Are the One Percent by Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. (TriceEdneyWire.com) - Raise taxes on the rich? “Class warfare," the Republicans rail.

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  • Same Old Song

    Same Old Song by Julianne Malveaux (TriceEdneyWire.com) - When I was all of 16 years old, I went to get a passport.  Why?  Richard Nixon had been elected president, and I was sure that he would impose such oppression that I might need to get out of the country.

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  • Obama’s Race Still Has Bearing on Media Coverage

    Obama’s Race Still Has Bearing on Media Coverage by Nadra Kareem Nittle (TriceEdneyWire.com) - Long before a little-known Illinois politician ran for president, the mainstream media focused on his race.

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  • Group Pushes for Weekend Early Voting in Ohio

    Group Pushes for Weekend Early Voting in Ohio ColorOfChange.org, a black online political organization, has launched an online petition drive demanding that Jon Husted, Ohio’s Secretary of State, extend early voting to weekends.

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  • Camerawoman Insulted Racially at Republican Convention

    Camerawoman Insulted Racially at Republican Convention Two Republican convention attendees threw peanuts at a black CNN camerawoman before screaming, “This is how we feed animals,” CNN said. “CNN can confirm there was an incident directed at an employee inside the Tampa Bay Times Forum earlier this afternoon.

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  • Right Attacks President Obama in New Film

    Right Attacks President Obama in New Film by Barry Cooper Conservative Indian-American writer and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza is back bashing Barack Obama again – just in time for the November elections.

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surgery

Black Men More Likely to Die Following Prostate Surgery

by Frederick H. Lowe

Black men suffering from prostate cancer receive lower-quality surgical care than white men, according to a study by Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center that was published in the Aug. 17th edition of the Journal of Urology.

The purpose of the study, “Racial Variation in the Quality of Surgical Care for Prostate Cancer,” was to determine whether the difference in the quality of care may contribute to less optimal prostate cancer outcomes among black men, compared with white men.

The conclusion was grim.

“We found evidence that black patients with prostate cancer received lower quality surgical care than white patients based on racial differences in the use of high volume surgeons and high volume hospitals,” the study reported.

“Black men were 27 percent less likely to have their surgery at a hospital that routinely removes prostates and 33 less likely to be seen by a surgeon who is experienced in prostatectomy.” The seven-page study also reported that black men had higher rates of blood transfusions, longer hospital stays and a higher risk of dying following prostate surgery.

surgery
Prostate Check Diagram
To reach their conclusions, investigators analyzed records of 105,972 prostate cancer patients who received radical prostatectomies--the surgical removal of all or part of the prostate gland---in non-federally funded hospitals in Florida, Maryland and New York from 1996 to 2007.

Previous studies reported that men who were treated at high-volume hospitals by surgeons who do a high volume of prostatectomies have better outcomes and lower mortality. A high-volume hospital had two prostatectomies per month or more and a surgeon was considered experienced if he performed one  prostatectomy per month.

“Our findings of racial variation in the quality of surgical care for prostate cancer adds to previous studies that have shown racial differences in screening behavior, stage at presentation and use of aggressive treatment, and may contribute to our understanding of why black men have much higher higher prostate cancer mortality than white men,” said Dr. Daniel Barocas, the study’s first author. Dr. Barocas is an assistant professor of Urologic Surgery and an oncologist at  the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville.

Prostate cancer is the leading cause of cancer among black men and the second leading cause of cancer deaths behind lung cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.

In addition to Vanderbilt University, which is based in Nashville, Tenn, investigators from the Tennessee Valley Veterans Administration Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center  in Nashville and the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in Rockville, Md., were involved in the study.

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