Florida Sentinel Bulletin

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is taking steps to ease the burden of student loans, the White House said on Tuesday, potentially helping millions of cash-strapped college graduates in a tough economy.

President Obama plans to accelerate a plan to cap student loan payments at 10 percent of income, bringing it forward to start in 2012 instead of 2014.

“Steps like these won’t take the place of the bold action we need from Congress to boost our economy and create jobs, but they will make a difference,” he said in a statement.

The loans initiative will be the third such move by President Obama in as many days, following action to aid homeowners and boost hiring of military veterans. The White House wants to show he is an activist president battling a “do-nothing” Congress. The loan changes do not require approval by Congress.

Republican lawmakers blocked a $447 billion jobs plan put forward by President Obama last month because it raises some taxes.

The White House estimates the loan changes could cut monthly payments for 1.6 million graduates. Student debt will also be forgiven after 20 years, compared with 25 years under current law.

More than 36 million Americans have federal student loan debt, but only 450,000 have so far taken advantage of the existing income-based repayment program.

WASHINGTON — Minority voters have long had problems simply exercising their right to vote in certain parts of the country – and minority lawmakers fear the situation will become worse in 2012.

Their worries are heightened by new laws in 13 states that they say will restrict access to the ballot box. Some of the changes would require voters to show government-approved identification, restrict voter registration drives by third-party groups, curtail early voting, do away with same-day registration, and reverse rules allowing convicted felons who’ve served their time the right to vote.

In addition to the states that have passed such laws, 24 other states are weighing similar measures, according to New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.

Proponents of the measures say they are needed to protect the integrity of the vote, prevent illegal immigrants from casting ballots, and clamp down on voter fraud, although several studies indicate that voter fraud is negligible.

Civil rights groups, voting experts and some lawmakers say the new laws have echoes of poll taxes and literacy tests – devices that for generations blocked black voters from easily going to the polls.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters last week that the new voting laws are “perverse policies” designed to “subvert Americans’ basic right to vote.”

Fearing that the new laws are thinly veiled efforts to intimidate voters from their core constituencies, Democratic lawmakers are ramping up efforts to combat them. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus expressed their concerns to Attorney General Eric Holder at a meeting Wednesday.

A study by the Brennan Center earlier this month said the new laws “may sharply tilt the political terrain for the 2012 election” by restricting voting access to 5 million people – most of them minority, elderly, young or low-income earners.

The study found that more than 21 million Americans don’t possess government-issued photo identification. More than 3.2 million people alone in South Carolina, Texas, Kansas, Tennessee and Wisconsin don’t have state-issued identification that’s now required to vote in those states.

Some 25 percent of African-Americans nationwide do not have the proper documentation to meet ID requirements, according to Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington Bureau.

States that have adopted new voting laws account for 171 electoral votes in 2012 – or 63 percent of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency, the Brennan Center report said.

Police in the Dallas area are hunting a suspected serial rapist who appears to be targeting alumnae members of one sorority, and each of the victims told investigators the assailant seemed to have personal knowledge about them. Four alumnae of the same sorority — black women in their mid-50s to early 60s — were raped in their Dallas-area homes over the last 11 months, apparently all by the same assailant, according to an alert sent out by the Plano, Texas, Police Department.

The most recent of the attacks occurred around 9:15 p.m. Friday in Corinth, police said. The police statement did not identify the sorority, but the Dallas Morning News reported that it was Delta Sigma Theta, and that the sorority had sent out email alerts to alumnae. Some alumnae of the sorority told ABC News that they themselves had not received the email alerts, but said they had heard about them from others. Besides the attack in Corinth, in Denton County, two of the rapes occurred in Plano and other in Coppell, both of which are in Dallas County.

The suspect, who is seen in a surveillance video released by the Plano police, is described as a black man, estimated to be in his late 30s to mid-40s, 5 feet seven inches to 6 feet tall and 250 to 300 pounds. He has a trimmed beard and short hair, and possibly a receding hairline, police said. Each of the four attacks happened between 9 p.m. and 4 a.m. According to the Morning News the alerts also advised that police have requested a full list of each chapter’s members.

“I am sure this is alarming and the area DFW Chapter presidents have received many phone calls in reference to these incidents,” the email said. “Our National President, National First Vice President and Regional Director are aggressively gathering information to distribute to the chapters.”

NEW YORK — Zurana Horton, a Brooklyn mother of 12, was killed in Brownsville last week while trying to shield children from bullets from a shootout.

The NYPD’s Crime Stoppers program, the Urban Community Council, and 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement have put up a $15,000 reward for the capture of the person that killed Horton.

Zurana Horton was walking in front of a Lucky Supermarket on Watkins St. at Pitkin Ave. near Public School 298 when a barrage of gunfire erupted. Cops said a man firing from a nearby rooftop at a second gunman fatally hit Horton as she threw her body in front of a group of kids.

An 11-year-old girl and a 31-year-old Brooklyn mother were wounded.

Zurana Horton’s son , Tyquran, 16, said he and his brothers and sisters, ranging from 1 to 18 years old, are devastated. “She was the only person in my heart,” he said.

WASHINGTON – The federal government says the gang problem in the United States is growing and that there are an estimated 1.4 million members in some 33,000 gangs.

A national gang threat assessment for 2011 concludes that gangs — driven by the profit motive — are collaborating with transnational drug trafficking organizations to make more money and are expanding the range of their illicit activities, which include mortgage fraud and counterfeiting as well as trafficking in guns and drugs.

The report based on federal, state and local law enforcement data says gang membership is increasing most significantly in the Northeast and Southeast regions of the country and that many communities are experiencing an increase in ethnic-based gangs such as African, Asian and Caribbean gangs.

A man convicted of raping a woman in 1981 was cleared by DNA testing last month and freed from a Louisiana prison last week after spending the last 30 years in prison.

DNA testing revealed that Henry James Jr. was not the man who broke into his neighbor’s home and sexually assaulted a woman at knifepoint in 1981.

“If you lose hope, you lose everything,” said the now 50-year-old James said. “I kept praying and telling myself, ‘It’s going to be alright. God is going to make a way for you.'”

After prosecutors dismissed James’ indictment Thursday afternoon, 24th Judicial District Judge Henry Sullivan signed an order vacating James’ conviction and authorizing his release from prison. James was set free last Friday.

“It was a feeling of a miracle,” said James. “I was shocked. I finally found justice after 30 years.”

The announcement by President Barack Obama that the U. S. will withdraw all of its troops from Iraq by December 31st brings the issue of the war full circle.

By abandoning that tack, after the Iraqi parliament apparently balked giving those troops immunity from the Iraqi legal system, Obama has committed to ending a more than eight year saga that has cost 4,479 American lives (out of 4,797 coalition deaths overall), along with scores of injured troops and strained families, and more than $800 billion.

That saga ends, fittingly, with a sovereign Iraq making the decision to rid itself the U. S. military presence. And it removes the possibility of a small, but potentially vulnerable American target staying behind in the Green Zone.

For Pres. Obama, the end of the war gives him another opportunity to declare a campaign promise — and in this case, a defining one — fulfilled.

Pres. Obama Signs 3 Trade Deals, Biggest Since NAFTA

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has signed trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia, completing years of negotiations and fulfilling U. S. action on the biggest trade deal since the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement.

Pres. Obama signed the agreements Friday and planned to join a White House reception with business and labor leaders and workers who could potentially benefit from the new pacts. Pres. Obama also signed legislation to provide assistance to U.S. workers displaced because of the agreements.

A Las Vegas man is looking to raise $1 million for a rare condition that has kept him homebound for most of his life.

Wesley Warren, 47, needs $1 million for surgery to correct his Scrotal Elephantitis, a condition that has made his genitals swell to more than 100 pounds. The surgery is not covered by health insurance, so Warren is looking to raise the money himself.

While the condition is typically seen in parts of Africa and caused by mosquito bites, he says that he has never been to any tropical area. Instead, he believes that his condition occurred after he accidentally squeezed his testicles with his legs while moving around in bed.  The next day, his scrotum was the size of a soccer ball.

In what was labeled as a cost-cutting move, since April, some Texas prisons have stopped providing inmates with lunch on the weekend.

By not feeding inmates three meals a day on Saturday and Sunday, the Texas prison system thinks it will save upward of $2.8 million. Other ways the Texas Department of Criminal Justice plans to cut cost include replacing carton milk with a powder substitute and using regular bread for hamburger and hot dog buns, according to a report.

Last month Texas officials also did away with the age-old practice of providing inmates that are about to be executed with a last meal.