Florida Sentinel Bulletin

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is mourning the deaths of 31 U.S. special operations troops in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. He says it’s a reminder of the “extraordinary sacrifices” being made by America’s military and its families.

An American official says the helicopter appears to have been shot down Saturday in eastern Afghanistan in the deadliest single combat incident of the decade-long war.

Pres. Obama learned of the deaths while at Camp David. In a written statement, he says Americans’ thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those who perished. He also mourned the loss of seven Afghan soldiers killed in the crash.

Fox News, who has a history of taunting President Barack Obama, were back to their old tricks when FoxNews.com affiliate site The Fox Nation published an article on Friday, calling Pres. Obama’s 50th birthday celebration a “Hip-Hop BBQ” and stating that the event “Didn’t Create Jobs.”

“Obama’s Hip-Hop BBQ Didn’t Create Jobs,” read the headline on an article on The Fox Nation, a conservative arm of FoxNews.com, which is owned by the News Corporation.

Below the headline were photos of Pres. Obama and, separately, three black celebrities who attended the party, the basketball player Charles Barkley, the comedian Chris Rock and the rapper Jay-Z.

Not pictured were any attendees of other racial backgrounds, like the actor Tom Hanks or Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago.

The article, published Friday morning, generated more than 2,000 comments and substantial objections from people who found it to be inaccurate at best and racist at worst. Media Matters for America, a progressive group that campaigns against Fox, asserted that the article was part of a pattern of “race-baiting headlines and content” on the Web site. It’s obvious the editor’s motives in this article were racially charged.

Was using photos of Chris Rock, Charles Barkley and Jay-Z, and singling them out as guests supposed to be funny?

Although anything that’s familiar with Fox News shouldn’t be surprised.

Pictured: Charles Barkley, Pres. Obama, Chris Rock And Jay-Z

MISSISSIPPI — Cory Maye, a Mississippi man imprisoned for the shooting death of a cop who he believed was a home invader, has been released after 10 years in prison.

Maye, now 30, was welcomed home by friends, family and the lawyers who represented him.

Maye was arrested in 2001 and pled not guilty in the shooting, at the time claiming self defense. Maye claims he thought the men breaking into his home were robbers. Instead, they were police serving a warrant obtained on false information. In 2004, Maye was convicted of capital murder.

Initially given the death penalty, Maye’s case took a turn for the better when a new judge threw out the capitol murder charge and let Maye plead guilty to manslaughter. Maye was released on time served earlier this week.

SOUTH CAROLINA — A breast cancer patient in Charleston, SC who did not have insurance was denied treatment through a state Medicaid program because he was a man.
Only 26-years-old, Raymond Johnson of Charleston, South Carolina decided to have a exam after feeling a lump, thinking that it was probably just a cyst.

To his surprise, he was diagnosed with breast cancer, a rare condition that only one in 100 men will get per year. As a tile layer, he didn’t make enough money to afford an insurance plan.

A patient advocate, Susan Appelbaum, had him apply for the state Medicaid program, believing that he’d qualify. But he’d received a rejection notice instead, citing that the program was for women only.

With each treatment totaling around $10,000, the bills are quickly piling up.

“Right now I’m stuck with these bills and I’m trying to find a way,” said Raymond, who just underwent his second round of chemotherapy at Roper Saint Francis Hospital. Appelbaum has contacted lawmakers in hopes of getting the Medicaid rule changed.

NEW ORLEANS — A federal jury on Friday convicted five current or former police officers in the deadly shootings on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina.
All five officers were convicted of charges stemming from the cover-up of the shootings. The four who had been charged with civil rights violations in the shootings were convicted on all counts.

Prosecutors contended during the five-week federal trial that officers shot unarmed people without justification and without warning, killing two and wounding four others on Sept. 4, 2005, then embarked on a cover-up involving made-up witnesses, falsified reports and a planted gun.

Defense attorneys countered that the officers were returning fire and reasonably believed their lives were in danger as they rushed to respond to another officer’s distress call less than a week after Katrina struck.

Convicted were former officer Robert Faulcon, Sgts. Robert Gisevius and Kenneth Bowen, Officer Anthony Villavaso and retired Sgt. Arthur Kaufman. Faulcon, Gisevius, Bowen and Villavaso were convicted in the shootings and with taking part in the alleged cover-up. Kaufman, who investigated the shootings, was charged only in the alleged cover-up.

The trial was a high-profile test of the Justice Department’s effort to clean up a police department marred by a reputation for corruption and brutality.

There is no doubt that the decline of the housing market and the great recession that followed took its toll on the pocketbooks of most Americans, but a study released today by the Pew Research Center found that it had a far more negative impact on the wealth of minorities than whites.

The study, which was conducted using newly available data from 2009, revealed that median wealth of white households is 20 times greater than that of black households and 18 times more than Hispanic households, the largest gap in the quarter century since the government first published such information.

Household wealth, or net worth, is the accumulated sum of assets minus the sum of debt, and is different from household income, which is the inflow of wages and other sources of earning. From 2005 to 2009, median wealth fell by 53 percent among black households, to about $5,677, compared to a 16 percent decline among white households, who have an average net worth of $113,149.

With unemployment at record levels in the African-American community, and the economy at a virtual standstill, this staggering divide has the potential to become an abysmal chasm. What can black households do to turn these disheartening statistics into opportunities to advance their financial strategies and increase their family’s net worth?

It’s important to examine some of the factors that led to this wealth gap to gain a better understanding of what can be done to address this issue. Historically, minority families have bought into the notion that the best way to accumulate wealth is by purchasing a home, according to Haidee Cabusora, the director of services at The Financial Clinic, a nonprofit financial development organization dedicated to helping the working poor in New York City. In the early 2000s, many Black and Hispanic families attempted to build their assets by buying homes, which went down in value once the bubble burst. These families went into the recession that followed the housing market crash with fewer assets, which led them to seek out other sources of income, including credit cards with high interest rates, and this increased their debt to asset ratios.

“Unfortunately, the new study findings don’t surprise me at all,” adds Cabusora. “Another cause of the wealth gap is that lower income families, which are disproportionally Black and Hispanic, tend to move jobs more often, and don’t have the opportunity to participate in important work savings plans like 401(k) and other matching programs offered by employers, which allow individuals to build assets more quickly.”

In February, a survey conducted by Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University Poll found that that just 46 percent of blacks and 32 percent of Hispanics have IRAs, 401Ks or similar accounts, compared to the nearly 65 percent of white Americans who have them.

Only one in four African-Americans and just one in six Hispanics own stocks, bonds or mutual funds compared to about half of white workers, and if the patterns hold, a large number of the nation’s minority retirees could be faced with tough choices during their twilight years. Cabusora says that signing up for retirement savings plans is not only a wise idea, but it is essential to building household wealth over an extended period of time, and that minority families should consider this as a option for increasing their net worth.

A recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 46 percent of Americans who said their household couldn’t come up with $2,000 in 30 days without possessions, which means that many families are having trouble paying for day-to-day expenses, and the last thing on their minds could be saving for retirement. If contributing to a 401(k) is not a viable option, there are other simple steps that families can take to build their assets and ensure that they have a savings reserve for emergencies and special purchases like college tuition and retirement in the future.

A high school southeast of Little Rock would not let a black student be valedictorian though she had the highest grade-point average, and wouldn’t let her mom speak to the school board about it until graduation had passed, the graduate claims in Federal Court.

Kymberly Wimberly, 18, got only a single B in her 4 years at McGehee Secondary School, and loaded up on Honors and Advanced Placement classes. She had the highest G.P.A. and says the school’s refusal to let her be sole valedictorian was part of a pattern of discrimination against black students.

Wimberly says that despite earning the highest G.P.A. of the Class of 2011, and being informed of it by a school counselor, “school administrators and personnel treated two other white students as heir[s] apparent to the valedictorian and salutatorian spots.”

Wimberly’s mother is the school’s “certified media specialist.”

She says in the federal discrimination complaint that after her daughter had been told she would be valedictorian, the mother heard “in the copy room that same day, other school personnel expressed concern that Wimberly’s status as valedictorian might cause a ‘big mess.'”

Wimberly is suing the school for deciding to name a white student, who had a lower GPA, as co-valedictorian, and seeks punitive damages and requests that school records be changed to show Wimberly as sole valedictorian.

She also plans to attend Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, in the fall.

An Ohio funeral home is in hot water after accidentally cremating the body of a 14-month-old child.

The state has suspended the license of a North Linden funeral home that failed to catch a mistake by the coroner’s office and had the wrong body cremated. Marlan J. Gary, owner of the Marlan J. Gary Funeral Home on Cleveland Avenue, will lose his funeral director’s license for six months under a ruling by the Ohio Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors.

The state board also suspended the funeral home’s license for six months.

“Cremation is irreversible, so it is vitally important that every precaution and safeguard be taken to ensure accuracy,” hearing officer Marc Myers said in a report to the board. “The funeral director cannot simply rely on another, be it a driver or the coroner’s office, to ‘get it right.'”

Gary’s funeral home had 14-month-old Jaylen Talley cremated in May 2010 after a coroner’s office employee mistakenly released the child’s body to a driver whom Gary employed.
Gary’s funeral home was supposed to handle the body of a 22-day-old boy.

Both bodies were identified correctly, but the coroner’s employee, the driver and the business hired by Gary for the cremation did not check to ensure they had the right boy.

Jeffrey Smith, 46, has been sentenced to fifteen months in federal prison after sending letters threatening to burn black churches and NAACP offices in three states.

“I do not like African-American or minorities in charge as supervisors of my security department at Novartis, nor I like them as President of the United States”, said Smith in one letter obtained by the Medford Patch. “For that I am going to burn down your offices just let you know how I feel. What right does some black person [have] to be in charge of me.”

He claims he was distressed from his work as a late night janitor and feared job loss, so he wrote the letters in the name of his supervisor. A total of 31 letters were sent in fall 2009.

Smith has plead guilty on all eleven counts of making a threat to destroy a building by use of fire, and two counts of mailing threatening communication. He threatened to burn down seven predominantly black churches in Cambridge, Roxbury and Medford, Massachusetts; Providence, R.I. and Charlotte, N.C. He also threatened to burn down NAACP offices in those cities.

Smith was sentenced yesterday and was later released by the prison where he has been held since April 15th, 2010. He is now in the custody of Massachusetts Department of Mental Health and will be on probation until 2014 according to the FBI.