Florida Sentinel Bulletin

LOS ANGELES — When students returned for school Monday morning at Washington Prep, they were greeted by crisis counselors and missing one of their beloved classmates, a cheerleader who died after collapsing during a football game.

Angela Gettis, a 16-year-old sophomore at the school, was rallying the crowd Friday night in the fourth quarter of a tie game at Fremont High School when she suffered an apparent cardiac arrest, Los Angeles Unified School District spokesman Tom Waldman said.

The game stopped as coaches and trainers ran to help. Bystanders performed CPR while waiting for paramedics to arrive. Gettis died about three hours later at a hospital, becoming the second teenage girl from Los Angeles district schools to die over the weekend after a dramatic campus incident.

School officials planned to discuss Gettis at a Monday morning news conference.

School district Superintendent John Deasy said the girl was “a wonderful young lady. It is a catastrophic loss for the school and for the community. My heart goes out to her family.”

Gettis was a good student, said officials at the inner-city school in a rough area of Los Angeles. She planned to attend college and wanted to major in forensic science, school principal Todd Ullah told KABC-TV.

At least two tribute pages memorializing the teen popped up on Facebook as news of her death spread.

Grief counselors and a makeshift memorial also awaited students at South East High School in South Gate, where a 17-year-old student was stabbed during a lunch break in front of many student witnesses.

The student, Cindi Santana, died at a hospital late Friday night, Deasy said. Another student and an administrator who tried to help Santana had minor injuries.

Santana’s former boyfriend, 18-year-old Abraham Lopez, was being held on suspicion of murder, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement. Deputies reached by phone did not know whether he had retained an attorney.

Police arrested a Washington couple this week on homicide by abuse and assault charges months after their 13-year-old adopted daughter was found dead at their residence.

Larry P. Williams and Carri D. Williams’ adopted daughter Hana, who was adopted from Ethiopia in 2008 and came to America in search for a better life, was found in the family’s backyard in Sedro Woolley, Wash. naked and face down in mud in May.

According to court documents, the teen was systematically beaten, starved, forced to shower outside, sleep in a barn and use an outdoor toilet as punishment for being “rebellious”.

It’s no secret that Rick Perry’s just a stereotypical racist Texas ‘good old boy,’ and the fact that his family hunting camp is called “Niggerhead” is further proof of it.

What makes it even worse is that Perry only decided to care about the name given to the camp when it became politically inconvenient to do otherwise.

Rick Perry took over the lease on his family’s hunting camp in rural Paint Creek, Texas, and at that time a rock which served as a greeting of sorts to the entrance of the camp included the name “Niggerhead.” Writing placenames on rock outcroppings isn’t unusual in that area.

The problem is that neither Perry nor his family ever saw a need to change the name of the camp. Now that it’s come up Perry claims that the rock was whitewashed over in the early 1980s, but according to scores of sources that simply isn’t true. Family friends claim the “Niggerhead” sign remained well into Perry’s term as Governor of Texas.

The truth is Perry couldn’t care less that his beloved family hunting ground is associated with vile racist language. Perry claims that the area where he grew up influenced his conservatism, and now we see exactly what he meant. Ricky Perry’s nothing but a racist good ol’ boy from Texas. Luckily for the country he’s having a hard time keeping his story straight when it comes to “Niggerhead.” The sooner this joke of a racist hillbilly candidate trips over himself the better.

WASHINGTON — Citing “huge challenges” ahead, President Barack Obama says he still intends to withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by next year and says the administration’s strategy for winding down the war remains unchanged.

Pres. Obama made his declaration in a letter to congressional leaders Friday. The letter accompanied a semiannual report assessing the administration’s policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The letter reports improvement in the fight against al-Qaida, as well as a reversal in the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan and headway in the training of Afghan security forces.

“Huge challenges remain, and this is the beginning — but not the end — of our effort to wind down this war,” Pres. Obama wrote.

The 33,000 troops represent the force surge Pres. Obama announced in December 2009. Last June, he announced the withdrawal of 10,000 U. S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year and that the 33,000 surge troops would leave Afghanistan by the summer of 2012.

In his letter, Pres. Obama said that plan was still on track.

Already the highest-ranking African-American female in the U. S. Army, Gen. Marcia Anderson’s recent promotion to the rank of major general makes her the first black woman to hold the title in the history of the military branch.

Anderson formerly served as a deputy-commanding general of the human resources command in Fort Knox, Kentucky. Now in the third highest-ranking position in the army, Gen. Anderson will now be stationed at the office of the chief of the U. S. Army Reserve in Washington, D.C.

SAVANNAH, GA — Sent to death row 20 years ago as a convicted cop killer, Troy Davis was celebrated as “martyr and foot soldier” Saturday by more than 1,000 people who packed the pews at his funeral and pledged to keep fighting the death penalty.

Family, activists and supporters who spent years trying to persuade judges and Georgia prison officials that Davis was innocent were unable to prevent his execution Sept. 21. But the crowd that filled Savannah’s Jonesville Baptist Church on Saturday seemed less interested in pausing in remorse than showing a resolve to capitalize on the worldwide attention Davis’ case brought to capital punishment in the U.S.

Benjamin Todd Jealous, national president of the NAACP, brought the crowd to its feet in a chant of “I am Troy Davis” — the slogan supporters used to paint Davis as an everyman forced to face the executioner by a faulty justice system. Jealous noted that Davis professed his innocence even in his final words.

“Troy’s last words that night were he told us to keep fighting until his name is cleared in Georgia,” Jealous said. “But most important, keep fighting until the death penalty is abolished and this can never be done to anyone else.”

Pictured: Pallbearers carry the casket of Troy Davis followed by family and supporters after his funeral in Savannah, Ga., Saturday, Oct. 1, 2011. Davis died by injection for the 1989 slaying of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail.

China obviously doesn’t think much of President Barack Obama. Beijing, China opened an Obama Fried Chicken restaurant. Yes, a OFC. Obama Fried Chicken.

The age old stereotype that black people love chicken isn’t just of running joke in America, and being the president of the United States doesn’t get you exempted from such social stereotypes does it?

On one end, America does owe China tons of money but this might be taking things too far.

ALABAMA — Ola Mae Robinson, 81, has a long history of drug dealing and has yet to learn her lesson.

Robinson has an arrest history dating back to 1988 that is mainly drug charges.

This past June she was charged with manufacturing and selling crack cocaine and prescription drugs, Morphine and Lortabs, from her home on Leeds Avenue. Now, she is jailed on similar charges.

In response to a new federal law limiting the hidden fees that banks can charge for using debit cards, Bank of America has announced that next year it will charge $5 a month to consumers who use its debit card to make purchases. SunTrust is expected to follow suit, as are other banks.

By some, this will no doubt be seen as another example of well-intended federal regulation with bad consequences. It’s quite the opposite. In fact, conservatives ought to love the change because it enlists market forces, not the government, in protecting small business and consumers.