National News - Page 119

Starbucks Ordered to Pay $2.7M More in Bias Lawsuit

A judge has ordered Starbucks to pay an additional $2.7 million in lost wages and tax damages to a former regional manager who was earlier awarded more than $25 million after alleging she and other white employees were unfairly punished following the high-profile arrests of two Black men at a store in 2018. In June, Shannon Phillips won $600,000 in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages after a jury in New Jersey found that race was a determinative factor in Phillips’ firing, in violation of federal and state anti-discrimination laws. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that U.S. district judge Wednesday ordered Starbucks to pay Phillips another $2.73 million

Tones of Melanin Scores Shark Tank Deal for HBCU Apparel

By Angela Johnson As a student at Norfolk State University in the early 2010s, Ashley Jones set out to create apparel and accessories that reflected her style and showed her school pride. But what started as a side hustle has turned into a lucrative business. And now, Jones is teaming up with one of the most recognizable investors in the game to take her dream even further. When the Virginia native noticed a glaring underrepresentation of HBCUs in the sportswear apparel market, she decided to take matters into her own hands and launched Tones of Melanin. “I decided to make my

Tuohys Confirm Conservatorship, Deny Oher’s Royalties Claim

By Noah A. McGee Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy continue to deny Michael Oher’s claims that he has not received any royalties from “The Blind Side. But they have confirmed that he was in fact under a conservatorship, and not adopted. On Wednesday the Tuohys attorney, Randall Fishman, told reporters in a press conference that his clients plan on entering into a consent order to end their conservatorship over Oher permanently. Oher was right, the whole “adoption process” that was portrayed in the movie was total BS. Fishman said his clients had Oher sign the conservatorship documents because it was the quickest way to temper

Braids and Bravery: Empowering Women’s Health in Africa

By Ruchi Kumar Prossy Muyingo is being honored as a “heroine of health” for helping women make more informed choices about family planning and reproductive health. She says she couldn’t have done it without hair braiding. Muyingo is one of twelve women honored with that title at the Women Deliver 2023 Conference, an annual international event that focuses on gender equality and the health, rights and well-being of girls and women. A 37-year-old mother of three who lives in Kampala, Uganda, she’s a community health worker who goes door-to-door to educate women about their sexual health and reproductive rights. But women in

Florida Teachers Struggle With Confusing New Education Laws

By Janelle Griffith As the start of the school year approaches in Florida, some teachers say chaos and confusion have marked the days leading up to reopening as they navigate how to teach under new state policies. Teachers say they are going into classrooms less confident about their lesson plans, confused about changes to state laws and on high alert that once-benign instructions could now get them fired or charged with felonies. “I don’t know how to approach the year,” said Richard Judd, a social studies teacher at Nova High School in Broward County. “There’s a lot of different ways you can get in

Fani Willis: The Woman Who Might Stop Donald Trump

By Keith Reed It might seem odd–difficult or even a tinge disrespectful–to put into words a consideration of how significant any one Black woman might be to the rest of the country right now. We are, after all, in a space where Black women at large are having a moment: income and wealth gaps persist, reproductive rights are under attack and misogyny is ever present and yet Black women are creating businesses at a faster rate than any other group, ascending in politics and remaining the arbiters of not just the culture but of culture writ large. But no disrespect is meant at

Montgomery Mayor Vows Justice After Riverfront Brawl

By Jessica Washington After a massive riverfront brawl in Montgomery, Ala., put his city in the spotlight, the city’s mayor is stepping into the fray. “Justice will be served,” said Montgomery Mayor Steven L. Reedin a statement on Sunday. The question is what, exactly, does justice look like in the context of what appears to at least partially a racially-motivated brawl in a deep southern city in 2023? For folks who missed the viral video over the weekend, the footage appears to show a group of white boaters attacking a Black riverboat worker. From local reporting, he apparently told the

Kamala Harris Rallies Gen Z on Gun Reform & Youth Issues

By Lynn Sweet When Vice President Kamala Harris is in Chicago on Friday to headline the Everytown for Gun Safety conference, she will hold, before she speaks, an off-the-books private meeting with a small group of young gun violence prevention activists. Unreported until now, Harris — who has youth voter turnout in her portfolio — has been conducting listening sessions across the country to better understand the issues youths care about, that is, the 18- to 25-year-old Gen Zers and the up-to 29-year-old millennials.These meetings — Friday marks her 14th — are not on the daily schedule the White House

DNA Links Enslaved at Catoctin Furnace to 41,799 Relatives

Not far from Camp David, the U.S. presidential retreat in Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland, lies the remnants of an iron forge called Catoctin Furnace founded in the late 18th century, an important site for understanding the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in early U.S. history. The site now also is providing unique insight into African American history thanks to research involving DNA obtained from the remains of 27 individuals buried in a cemetery for enslaved people at Catoctin Furnace. The study reveals the ancestry of some of the enslaved people who toiled there in the decades after the nation’s

Georgia Debates Health Certificate of Need Reforms

By Jill Nolin Georgia lawmakers from the House and Senate are putting the state’s system to restrict hospital and other health care services under a microscope this summer. Both chambers have set up study committees to examine Georgia’s certificate of need program during the legislative off-season after Lt. Gov. Burt Jones came up short in his push to ease restrictions during his first session presiding over the state Senate. A bill that would have exempted most rural hospitals from the certificate of need process cleared the Senate earlier this year with a 42-13 vote but stalled in the House. It

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