Florida Sentinel Bulletin

A former gay employee of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition has filed a shocking complaint against Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., and the PUSH organization claiming that he was made to do sexually demoralizing acts and was fired based on his sexual orientation.

Tommy Bennett filed the lengthy complaint with the City of Chicago Commission on Human Relations.

In the complaint, Bennett who was employed by the Rainbow Coalition from 2007 – 2009, alleges that he was discriminated against shortly after taking the position by workers who refused to work with him based on his sexual orientation.

The most scandalous charges center around Rev. Jackson, who Bennett claims made him complete “humiliating” tasks while working as Jackson’s travel assistant, such as escorting women to and from the minister’s hotel and cleaning up bodily fluids by “cleaning up his room after sexual intercourse.”

EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. — A teenager was sentenced Friday to 30 years in prison for his role in the 2008 torture killing of a pregnant, developmentally impaired mother who police say died after weeks of systematic scaldings, beatings, burns from a glue gun and being used as target practice with a BB gun.

Benny Wilson, 19, twice declined to address the judge as the last of six defendants sentenced in Dorothy Dixon’s death, which police say Wilson admitted contributing to by routinely shooting her with BBs “playing around.” At least once when he ran out of BBs, an investigator testified Friday, Wilson used a knife to dig the ammunition out of Dixon’s flesh and fired them off at Dixon again.

Investigators have said Dixon was a 29-year-old mother with a childlike mind and another baby on the way when she was found dead in January 2008 at Riley’s Alton house, where she had been banished to the basement and given little more than a thin rug and a mattress to call her own on the chilly concrete floor.

WASHINGTON — A close look at the government shutdown-dodging agreement to cut federal spending by $38 billion reveals that lawmakers significantly eased the fiscal pain by pruning money left over from previous years, using accounting sleight of hand and going after programs President Barack Obama had targeted anyway.

Such moves permitted Pres. Obama to save favorite programs — Pell grants for poor college students, health research and “Race to the Top” aid for public schools, among others — from Republican knives.

And big holes in foreign aid and Environmental Protection Agency accounts were patched in large part. Republicans also gave up politically treacherous cuts to the Agriculture Department’s food inspection program.

The parents of Taylor Dill-Reese, a 15-month-old boy in Michigan, ordered him an apple juice with his kids’ meal at an Applebee’s restaurant, but he was instead served alcoholic margarita mix.

The boy’s mother, became suspicious that something was wrong when her son dozed off and woke up unusually happy before the meal arrived. When his food came, he wouldn’t eat.
Dill-Reese decided to smell the cup and realized it was booze.

The manager apologized, but police were called to the restaurant.The restaurant is located in the Detroit suburb of Madison Heights. Police said the margarita mix was mislabeled as apple juice.

The boy was taken to the hospital, where doctors said he would be alright, but warned he could have died if he finished the drink.

A recent poll conducted by Public Policy Polling determined that 46 percent of Republican voters in Mississippi think interracial marriage should be illegal.

The North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling firm, which conducts polls to gauge voter preferences, also reported 40 percent of Mississippi Republicans think interracial marriage should remain legal, while the other 14 percent were unsure.

HADDONFIELD, New Jersey — A transsexual New Jersey man has sued the drug-treatment center where he worked, claiming it discriminated against him when it fired him from a job that only a man can do: watching men urinate.

Experts believe El’Jai Devoureau’s case is the first in the U.S. where a transgender employee has claimed an employer discriminated based on birth gender.

The question at the heart of a case is whether someone who is living as a man and recognized by the government as a man is one when it comes to employment.

Devoureau, 39, was born with female genitalia, but says in his legal complaint that he always considered himself male.

Bonnie Briscoe could barely hold back the tears when talking about her niece, Phylicia Barnes.

The Monroe, North Carolina teen disappeared late last December, while visiting relatives in Baltimore during the Christmas holidays.

Briscoe and other members of Barnes’ family in Baltimore were among hundreds of volunteers and law enforcement officials who took part in a massive daylong search on Saturday, which also spanned two Maryland counties. It ended with no concrete clues about Barnes’ whereabouts, who has been missing now some four months; her 17th birthday was in January.

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Mikeisha Simpson covers her body in greasy white cream and bundles up in a track suit to avoid the fierce sun of her native Jamaica, but she’s not worried about skin cancer.

The 23-year-old resident of a Kingston ghetto hopes to transform her dark complexion to a cafe-au-lait-color common among Jamaica’s elite and favored by many men in her neighborhood. She believes a fairer skin could be her ticket to a better life. So she spends her meager savings on cheap black-market concoctions that promise to lighten her pigment.

Simpson and her friends ultimately shrug off public health campaigns and reggae hits blasting the reckless practice.

Most Jamaican bleachers use over-the-counter creams, many of them knockoffs imported from West Africa.

In Japan, the European Union, and Australia, hydroquinone has been removed from over-the-counter skin products and substituted with other chemicals due to concerns about health risks.

Pictured: In this photo taken Feb. 15, 2011, a woman applies skin lightening cream to her legs as she sits on a curb in downtown Kingston, Jamaica.

Arizona’s state Senate approved a bill  Wednesday that will require presidential candidates to prove they are U.S. citizens before they can be included on a state ballot.

Prompted by challenges to President Barack Obama’s citizenship and, therefore, eligibility for the job, the bill passed 20-9 in the Senate, and now moves to the state House for a final vote before heading to Republican Gov. Jan Brewer’s desk.

The legislation, a revised version of an earlier bill that would have required each candidate to provide a “long-form” birth certificate, also gives candidates the option of instead providing two of the following documents: an early baptismal or circumcision certificate, a hospital birth record, a postpartum hospital record for the mother or an early census record.

Democrats have said the bill exceeds the state’s authority, while Republicans insist it falls within the state legislature’s power under the U.S. Constitution.