Florida Sentinel Bulletin

The Democratic-led Senate blocked a House bill Friday that would provide disaster aid and keep government agencies open, escalating the parties’ latest showdown over spending and highlighting the raw partisan rift that has festered all year.

In a tit-for-tat battle, the Senate used a near party-line vote of 59-36 to derail the measure passed earlier by the Republican-run House. That bill would fund federal agencies and provide $3.7 billion in disaster assistance, partly paying for that aid with cuts in two Energy Department loan programs that finance technological development.

With the support of 10 GOP senators, the Senate had voted last week to provide $6.9 billion in disaster aid and no cuts to help pay for it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., offered a compromise Friday that would accept the House’s lower level of disaster spending but lacked the loan program cuts. Republicans refused to let the chamber approve it, but the Senate will consider it Monday, when Republicans seem likely to prevent Democrats from getting the 60 votes they would need to prevail.

JACKSON, Miss. — The estate of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has filed a federal lawsuit against a television news anchor in Mississippi claiming that he has documents taken from the slain civil rights leader by a former employee, the anchor’s mother.

The lawsuit, which seeks possession of the papers, was filed Wednesday against Howard Nelson Ballou in U.S. District Court in Jackson. It says Ballou’s mother worked for King as a secretary from 1955 to 1960 and kept documents during the time King led the Montgomery Improvement Association and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

King’s estate is a Georgia corporation and is operated as a private company by his children. They’ve fought others for control of the King brand, including suing media companies that used his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Attorneys for the estate say in court papers that the letters, photographs and other items are worth more than $75,000, though the exact value is not clear.

The documents described in court records include a sermon; a statement King made the day after a landmark Supreme Court ruling on segregation; and a handwritten letter to Ballou’s mother, Maude Ballou, from civil rights icon Rosa Parks. The material also is thought to contain photographs.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Monday the U.S. Postal Service should be allowed to reduce mail delivery to five-days-a-week to help cut its massive losses.

The Postal Service lost $8.5 billion last year and is facing even more red ink this year as the Internet siphons off large amounts of first-class mail and the weak economy reduces advertising mail.

While the post office has cut more than 100,000 workers in the last few years it needs to cut more, close offices and find other ways to reduce costs to keep operating.

In his economic growth and debt reduction plan unveiled Monday, Pres. Obama endorsed the idea of dropping one day of mail delivery — it is expected to be Saturday — and urged other changes in postal operations.

An online community known as the New Progressive Alliance (NPA) is looking for a primary challenger to President Obama.

“President Obama has to be accountable to his base. The progressive party got him elected,” said a Brooklyn native who once supported Pres. Obama and volunteered as a deputy field organizer during Pres. Obama’s presidential campaign in North Carolina and South Carolina.

The NPA expects a nominee to fully support the organization’s comprehensive progressive platform ratified in August. Platform tenets include full employment at a living wage, environmental sustainability, social welfare and fair trade.

And while the NPA is trying to make headway, one of its members is also rallying for a similar cause.

Dr. Cornel West has teamed with consumer advocate Ralph Nader to bring progressive ideals to the forefront with a challenger to face Pres. Obama. West and Nader are leading a group of liberals and academics, seeking candidates to debate Pres. Obama on key issues.

Though Dr. West is on the steering committee of the NPA, the alliance’s facilitator Anthony Noel does not view his collaboration with Nader as any sort of threat.

The White House isn’t letting Marcus Garvey off the hook even after his demise. Donovan Parker, a Jamaican attorney in Florida, who has been writing to the U.S. President every week requesting a posthumous presidential pardon for Garvey was denied.

“It is the general policy of the Department of Justice that requests for posthumous pardons for federal offenses not be processed for adjudication,” Ronald Rogers, White House pardon attorney told Parker in a letter.

Garvey was convicted in the 1920s of mail fraud and was incarcerated for almost three years before he was released and deported to Jamaica.

One doesn’t have to look far for evidence that wearing natural hair is still unacceptable to many in the mainstream.

Only four short years ago, a Glamour magazine editor presented a slide show on proper corporate fashion during which she declared the afro “a real no-no” and dreadlocks “truly dreadful.”

Despite such negative feedback, more and more African-Americans are falling in love with their natural hair and seeking salons that cater to this interest.

Leaders of natural hair care salons nationwide have shared some of their insights into this growing market with us — and their favorite products — highlighting the exciting expansion of this beauty revolution.

As more black women (and men) explore their natural hair options in droves, this new aesthetic will become more common in the workplace.  Corporate America might have to adjust to our new standard of beauty, as the growth described by these natural hair care salon owners is certain to continue.

An alleged trading scheme at UBS AG went undetected for three years before it was finally discovered, triggering a $2 billion loss, U.K. authorities indicated Friday as they charged a 31-year-old trader at the Swiss bank with fraud.

Flanked by a newly hired lawyer from a top London firm, Kweku Adoboli briefly gaped at reporters at his court hearing and said little beyond providing his birth date and address.

Mr. Adoboli, who didn’t enter a plea, dabbed his eyes with a tissue during a roughly 30-minute hearing at the City of London Magistrates’ Court in London’s financial district.

The charges came as an early picture began to emerge of lapses inside one of the world’s largest banks that allegedly allowed a young trader on a small stock desk to cause huge losses over three years, a much longer period than initially suspected.

The $3 trillion in deficit reduction that President Obama unveiled in the Rose Garden Monday represents another populist turn for the White House.

The $3 trillion over 10 years includes $1.5 trillion in increased revenue ($800 billion in letting the Bush tax cuts expire for top income earners, $700 billion in closing loopholes and other tax breaks), $1.1 trillion in ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the rest in savings from Medicare and Medicaid (that primarily come from providers, not beneficiaries). Not surprisingly, Democrats and liberals love it, Republicans and conservatives hate it, and it’s unlikely to be adopted by the “Super Committee.”

The plan raises two questions: One, should Republicans have taken the deficit-reduction deal Obama offered back in July — which contained more substantial entitlement changes and less tax revenue? And two, how will Obama’s proposal (and the GOP denunciation of it) impact the Super Committee?

ALEXANDRIA, VA — President Barack Obama signed into law Friday a major overhaul of the nation’s patent system to ease the way for inventors to bring their products to market. “We can’t afford to drag our feet any longer,” he said.

Passed in a rare display of congressional bipartisanship, the America Invents Act is the first significant change in patent law since 1952. It has been hailed as a milestone that will spur innovation and create jobs.

The bill is meant to ensure that the patent office, now facing a backlog of 1.2 million pending patents, has the money to expedite the application process. It now takes an average of three years to get a patent approved. More than 700,000 applications have yet to be reviewed.

Pictured: Pres. Barack Obama signs the American Invents Act, Friday, Sept. 16, 2011, at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va.