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August 30, 2012

  • Black Men More Likely to Die Following Prostate Surgery

    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.

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  • 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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  • 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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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. Meanwhile, many of the houses that the city moved to accommodate the hospitals are in disrepair and waiting to be rehabbed.

“Somewhere between 30 and 50 eminent domain cases have been filed against the state by lower Mid-City property owners who had to vacate,” said Randall Smith, an attorney with Smith & Fawer, LLC. “I’ve got 15 lawsuits pending, mostly from businesses along with some homeowners, against the state.”

His cases are in Orleans Parish Civil District Court, where four of them—three businesses and one homeowner—go to trial this September to November. The rest will be tried next spring.

“We think that the state has generally underpaid the owners, and hopefully juries will recognize that,” Smith said. “Some people have called the situation a land grab by LSU. It’s up to the jury to decide.”

Smith said “but even if the juries favor the property owners in a lawsuit, you don’t get your money for several years. And the problem is people are trying to relocate their businesses and buy homes now.”

“We tried the Pallas Hotel case against the state this spring, and won a jury verdict in Civil District Court,” he said. “It’s on appeal now” in the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The state seized the property in 2010 and valued it at $4.5 million, but the jury said it was worth almost $10 million.

Depending on the outcome of the appeal, the state will owe the hotel owner more than $5 million, along with interest, and will have to pay the owner’s attorney fees, expert witness fees and some trial expenses.

“Our position is that the Pallas building was structurally sound, though it needed renovation,” Smith said. “Now that it’s gone, the state has no plans for that empty space, but says it could be used for future hospital development.”

Attorney Greg Guth filed a suit in Civil District Court for the seizure of his Outer Banks Bar on Palmyra St. in early 2011. He said that business owners in lower Mid-City were probably treated even worse than homeowners. Renters, many of whom received large checks, may have gotten the best shake. Before his bar in the V.A. hospital footprint was closed, “they tried to shut off our utilities and the police threatened our customers,” he said.

Civil-rights Attorney Mary Howell said many homeowners would have liked to sue, but didn’t. In lower Mid-City, Howell said “very few ordinary people can afford the challenge of their home being taken. They can’t afford the attorney’s fees and the appraisal costs and can’t deal with the long delays in litigation.”

Howell said residents never had any say in the project.

“People were rebuilding lower Mid-City after Katrina, but in November 2007 Mayor Nagin gave away thirty acres to the V.A.” she said.

According to Howell, the City Council and the City Planning Commission were bypassed and the housing committee of the City Council promised to convene a hearing of the full council, which never took place.

“One day we opened the newspaper and learned that a new V.A. hospital would cross North Galvez to the northeast,” Howell said. “No one had expected the new medical complex to cross Galvez.”

She said the following month, in December 2007, the city placed a moratorium on building permits in the area. “People who were trying to rebuild after Katrina got caught in a bad situation,” she said.

Ryan Berni, spokesman for Mayor Landrieu, said last week,  “The city provided approximately $75 million to the state for land acquisition in the V. A. hospital footprint. That same funding was used to move homes.”

He said he had no answer yet as to whether the city would end up paying for any jury awards to property owners.

Meanwhile, moving homes has created a new set of complications. Sandra Stokes, board member at the Foundation for Historical Louisiana, said “the city’s original goal was to move 100 houses and about 80 were eventually moved. To do that, they were amputated to 60-foot-long widths and had the roofs cut off, losing much of their historical appeal. Rear and side additions were demolished.”

Homes were moved to lots in Mid-City, Hoffman Triangle, Tremé, Esplanade Ridge and New Marigny.

Stokes said she admires the city’s attempt to save the houses but follow-through is needed. “Some of them still sit in disrepair, unsecured, with no roofs,” she said.

Stokes said houses donated to Providence Community Housing were stripped, with nearly all of their historic elements removed. “The city spent $20,000 to $40,000 to move historic houses, only to end up stripping them down to studs,” she said. “That wasn’t the intent for these houses.” But she said “at least a small part of what was once historic is being reused, rather than going to landfill.”

And Stokes said “eight homes moved from the UMC site are sitting on the Lafitte Greenway now, with no walls and roofs. I can tell from driving by frequently that people are scavenging the historic elements.” She noticed that beautiful, historic brackets were suddenly missing from one house. “I was upset to see this, but again I thought at least someone is using them,” she said.

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