Florida Sentinel Bulletin

DETROIT — A Nigerian man pleaded guilty Wednesday to attempting to bring down an international flight over Detroit with a bomb in his underwear, telling a surprised courtroom on the second day of his trial that the failed attack was retaliation for the killing of Muslims worldwide.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who had never denied the accusations against him, calmly answered questions from U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds before pleading guilty on the second day of his trial to all eight charges he faced, including conspiracy to commit terrorism and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

Police are searching for a man who they say stole $10,000 worth of merchandise from a K-Mart.

The man allegedly disabled the alarm and stole video game systems, laptops and televisions before fleeing.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Gov. Rick Scott again revised his stance Friday on the jobs promise he made during last year’s campaign in a written statement titled in part, “Setting the Record Straight.”

The Republican governor recently has been insisting he never said during the campaign that the 700,000 new jobs he promised over seven years would be on top of whatever increase in jobs was afforded by “normal growth.”

In the new statement, though, he acknowledged his intent was to create that many jobs “no matter what the economy might otherwise gain or lose.”

The jobs crisis isn’t getting worse. But it isn’t getting much better, either.

The economy added just enough jobs last month to ease fears of a new recession. But hiring is still too weak to bring down unemployment, which has been stuck at about 9 percent for more than two years.

The nation added 103,000 jobs in September, an improvement from the month before, the Labor Department said Friday. But the total includes 45,000 Verizon workers who were rehired after going on strike and were counted as job gains.

NEW YORK — A civil rights scholar who became the first tenured Black professor at Harvard Law School has died. Derrick Bell was 80.

Bell’s wife, Janet Dewart Bell, says he died Wednesday night of carcinoid cancer at a New York City hospital. He’d taught at New York University’s law school since 1990.

Bell was long dissatisfied with the progress of race relations in America. He urged that laws, including civil rights laws, be examined for racism embedded within them. In 1971, he became Harvard Law’s first tenured African-American professor. He later spent five years as dean of the law school at the University of Oregon.

After returning to Harvard, Bell took a leave of absence in 1990 to protest the absence of Black women on its law school faculty. He never returned.

Students at Michigan State University were recently greeted by a racist sign that read “No N*ggers Please” posted on their campus.

The sign is just one of many acts of racism that’s taken place this year at the State school and was addressed at a town hall meeting.

“The incident that really jump-started this movement was an incident at Akers Hall where someone wrote ‘No Ni**ers, please’ on a door of a young lady’s room,” said Mario Lemons, the president of the MSU Black Student Alliance (BSA).

“The residence life staff told us not to talk about. Of course, someone took a picture of it and sent it to one of us.”

Lemons and his fellow Black students are taking a stand against these actions and started a trending topic on Twitter to address their issues; #MSUBlackUnity.

“We put it on Facebook and Twitter and started a dialog about it,” Lemons told The Associated Press. “From that came more stories of other people going through things on campus.”

Other reported acts of racism have included physical acts of racial intimidation and a Black doll being hung from a beaded noose in a chemistry lab. Students have also reported being called the n-word, and being told that they were only accepted to the institution because of affirmative action.

SAN JOSE, CALIF. – A disgruntled worker killed by police after he allegedly opened fire on colleagues felt mistreated on the job and angry about a recent suspension, according to friends and acquaintances.

Authorities say Shareef Allman, 47, gunned down his co-workers during a routine safety meeting the Plant near Cupertino on Wednesday. Three people died and six were wounded. Officials believe Allman also shot a woman in an attempted carjacking a couple of hours after fleeing the quarry.

Allman was shot and killed by police Thursday after an intense manhunt in the Silicon Valley suburbs, authorities said.

Sheriff’s officials late Thursday said they had obtained a surveillance video of Allman that was taken from a security camera that showed Allman walking with a rifle after the shooting.

Authorities have not released any details about a possible motive, other than to say the suspect was disgruntled.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama demanded Monday that Congress vote on his jobs legislation package this month despite signs that the full measure faces stiff resistance. “I’m ready to sign it,” the president said.

A leading House Republican, however, says that while lawmakers will vote on elements of the president’s jobs bill, his broad $447 billion proposal will not be considered in its entirety.

“This all or nothing approach is unreasonable,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia.

The White House says it is not prepared to bargain away aspects of the bill at this point, and senior administration officials seemed intent on putting Republicans on the spot by insisting on a vote on the complete Pres. Obama bill. Since introducing the bill three weeks ago, the president has mounted a steady public campaign on behalf of his bill, trying to cast Congress and Republicans in particular as obstacles.

“What we don’t see the need to do is negotiate away aspects of the bill that are non-controversial, are broadly supported by the American public, broadly supported by Democrats and Republicans, before there is a chance to vote on the bill,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

Underscoring that point, Pres. Obama told reporters at the start of a Cabinet meeting Monday that Republicans must spell out what aspects of his plan they agree with and which they reject. “They should tell us what it is that they’re not willing to go for,” he said.

Republicans did detail what elements of Pres. Obama’s plan they would support in a Sept. 16 memorandum. And on Monday, Cantor identified legislation that the House would act on this month, including repealing a law requiring the government to withhold 3 percent of nearly all payments made to contractors, ratifying trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, eliminating burdensome regulations and boosting the ability of small businesses to obtain capital.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has turned away another challenge to President Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president.

The high court on Monday refused without comment to hear a challenge brought by conservative activist Alan Keyes and other members of the American Independent Party. They contend Pres. Obama wasn’t eligible to be president because he was not born in the U.S., and thus not a citizen. U.S. courts, and the Supreme Court, have previously thrown out similar suits.

Keyes wanted the certification of Pres. Obama’s victory halted in California until there was documented proof by a state official that he was eligible to be president. The Supreme Court of California threw out the lawsuit.

The case is Keyes v. Bowen, 10-1351.