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DNA Testing in Rape Case Exonerates Louisiana Man Nathan Brown After 17 Years in Prison

By goodblacknews on June 26, 2014

Nathan Brown and family
Nathan Brown, who had been incarcerated for nearly seventeen years, talks with his daughter Celene Brady, and his grandson Kenard Southern, 1, after being released from seventeen years in prison in New Orleans, Wednesday. / AP

Nathan Brown, 40, who was convicted of the attempted aggravated rape of a 40-year-old woman in 1997 solely based on her identification, was released from a state prison yesterday after serving 17 years of a 25-year sentence.  DNA testing has proved what Brown has claimed all along: He was not the man who attacked the woman as she returned to the Metairie apartment complex where they both lived, his attorneys say.
“I sincerely ask for you to have mercy upon me when the time for sentencing comes,” Brown wrote in December 1997 to then-Judge Walter Rothschild, the month after a Jefferson Parish jury convicted him. “I understand what I’ve been accused of, but I’m not the man who did this (horrendous) crime. I live a clean and honest life, providing for my daughter and helping my family out.”
Attorney Vanessa Potkin of the Innocence Project in New York, filed papers in the 24th judicial District Court in Gretna on Tuesday, saying DNA testing clears Brown. She asked Judge Ray Steib to vacate the sentence and order his release. Brown was at least the 15th person exonerated by DNA evidence in Louisiana since 1999.
The Jefferson Parish district attorney’s office declined to comment, too. But according to court records, District Attorney Paul Connick Jr. did not oppose the Innocence Project’s request to test evidence for DNA.
Brown’s attorneys asked for the DNA testing last year. Prosecutors did not oppose the testing, and Steib ordered it to be done on Dec. 16, court records show.  The company that performed the testing, Orchid Cellmark, excluded Brown “as the source of the male biological material that was testing,” Potkin wrote.
“Additional testing has identified the source of the biological material as a specific known individual other than Nathan Brown,” she wrote. “Because Nathan Brown is not the source of the male biological material that was tested, he was established by clear and convincing evidence that he is factually innocent of the attempted aggravated rape for which he was convicted.”

L.A. Barbers To Use $8.5 Million Grant To Screen Black Men For Hypertension

By goodblacknews on June 24, 2014

Black Barber Shop Health Outreach Program Launches Tour (thumbnail)Barbershops are central to the narrative of Black manhood in the United States.
It is where jokes are cracked, friends are made, issues debated, and, soon, where blood pressure will be tested.
According to the Daily Breeze, Dr. Ronald G. Victor, the head of Cedars-Sinai’s hypertension center, will use a $8.5 million grant to help train Black barbers to check men for high blood pressure.
“Uncontrolled hypertension is one of the biggest health problems facing the African-American community today,” said Victor, the Burns and Allen Chair in Cardiology Research. “Hypertension is called the silent killer because there are no symptoms. We need to find a way to reach out to the community and prevent the serious complications caused by high blood pressure because all too often, by the time a patient finds out they have the condition, the heart and kidneys already have been damaged.”
Read Cedars-Sinai’s statement on the groundbreaking project below:

A Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute physician has been awarded an $8.5 million grant aimed at enlisting African-American barbers in the fight against hypertension, a deadly condition that can cause strokes, heart attacks and organ failure, and which is particularly devastating to African-American men.
Ronald G. Victor, MD, director of the Hypertension Center in the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, was the first to subject increasingly popular barbershop-based health programs to scientific scrutiny with randomized, controlled testing. His study, published in 2011 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, showed that if barbers offered blood pressure checks during men’s haircuts and encouraged patrons with hypertension to follow up with physicians, hundreds of lives could be saved annually.
Now, with the grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Victor is about to start a new, randomized, controlled clinical trial that will include 500 African-American male patrons of 20 Los Angeles-area barbershops. All participants will have uncontrolled hypertension and be longtime customers of the participating barbershops. The goal of the new trial is to test the effectiveness of barbershop hypertension programs and whether expanding such programs is feasible and cost-effective.
The Cedars-Sinai-led research study will be conducted in partnership with several California medical centers.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 67 million American adults have hypertension. Of that number, 53 million are aware of their condition, 47 million are treated, and 31 million have it under control. Among African-Americans, 43 percent of men and 45.7 percent of women have hypertension, compared to 33.9 percent of White men and 31.3 percent of White women.
Victor’s 2011 study concludes that if hypertension intervention programs were put in place in the estimated 18,000 African-American barbershops in the U.S., it would result in the first year in about 800 fewer heart attacks, 550 fewer strokes and 900 fewer deaths.
“We hope that the new trial’s outcomes will show an even greater benefit while lowering the cost of providing high-quality healthcare for hypertension in a high-risk population,” Victor said.
article via newsone.com

Conviction Review Unit Spearheaded by D.A. Kenneth Thompson Makes Brooklyn Lead N.Y. State in Inmate Exonerations for 2014

By goodblacknews on June 24, 2014

New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, left, and Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson speak to reporters during a news conference at police headquarters in New York, Wednesday, April 30, 2014. Authorities in New York City say they've arrested six people and charged them with selling 155 guns transported from Georgia to an undercover officer in Brooklyn. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, left, and Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson speak to reporters during a news conference at police headquarters in New York, Wednesday, April 30, 2014. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Brooklyn County is leading New York State in inmate exonerations for 2014 thus far, the New York Daily News reports.  Of the 11 inmates cleared of criminal wrongdoing this year, Kings County has eight of them, all spearheaded by new boro D.A. Kenneth Thompson’s 13-person team. Thompson has made exonerations one of his offce’s key focuses.
“I am determined to get to the bottom of these cases,” Thompson, who defeated longtime D.A. Charles Hynes in last year’s city elections, told the Daily News. Each of the men cleared had spent two decades behind bars.
To that end, he has made great use of his Conviction Review Unit, which is currently looking at 57 questionable homicide prosecutions. The unit has cleared four defendants so far, Thompson added.  D.A.’s in the other boroughs say they don’t plan on launching widescale exoneration units. Though his predecessor started the unit, Thompson has expanded it. He allocated $1.1 million for the unit and plans to broaden its focus once its caseload decreases. Legal authorities say they are impressed by his work.
“It’s absolutely unprecedented,” said Rob Warren, director at the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University. “I hope it lives up to the expectations and becomes a model to the nation.”
“We hope that by the end of this review, we can learn some lessons and shed some light on how these cases come about,” Thompson added.
According to experts, the state’s high number of wrongful convictions stems from the mass homicides from the crack epidemic of the 1980s.
article by Hannington Dia via newsone.com

Physician Darrell Gray Works to Use Telecommunications to Extend Care to Underserved Neighborhoods

By goodblacknews on June 18, 2014

Darrell M. Gray, II MD
Darrell M. Gray, II MD

The man came into the emergency room of St. Louis’ Barnes-Jewish Hospital complaining of abdominal pain. Having no insurance, he had avoided medical care as long as he could, but the pain had finally become too intense.
The gastroenterologist called in to consult that day was Darrell Gray, a young physician from Baltimore doing a fellowship at the hospital, which is affiliated with Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.  The patient, in his late 40s or early 50s, had blood in his stool and a mass in his stomach.
“It didn’t take much more diagnostic work to understand that, feeling the mass and seeing that his history of passing blood, this was likely a cancer,” Gray recalls. “Here’s a young guy who comes in with what was later found to be metastatic cancer. At that point I really couldn’t do much for him.”
That experience, and others like it, prompted Gray to continue his already extensive training, which included the fellowship, a residency at Duke, and medical school at Howard University. To top that off, he spent the last year at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).
Gray got a taste of public health work during his fellowship. While in St. Louis, he designed a bridge program to connect disadvantaged populations with the health care system. His target population was African-American men, who have a higher incidence of colorectal cancers than the general population, a reality that, in poorer neighborhoods, is compounded by other barriers to health care, such as a lack of insurance, a lack of knowledge about preventive measures, and chronic unemployment.
To reach these men, Gray contacted area churches, gave short educational presentations during the community announcement portion of Sunday services, and followed up with those who contacted him, connecting them with screening services and primary-care physicians. The experience was satisfying, but also made him realize how much he didn’t know.
“I realized from that program that there were some areas I needed strengthening in: health policy, public health, population health,” Gray said. “While I enjoy seeing a patient in the office, I want to be able to impact populations.”
Gray, who graduates this spring with a master’s in public health, said he has benefited greatly from his year at HSPH. In addition to his academic work, he shook hands with the prime minister of Namibia, met with the former health minister of Kenya, met senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, and met with Jonathan Woodson, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs.
“I had high expectations coming in, but it has exceeded my expectations,” said Gray, who is at HSPH on a Mongan Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Minority Health Policy.

New List Celebrates the Beauty and Brains of Black Female Scientists

By goodblacknews on June 17, 2014

(Photo Credit: KylaMcMullen.com)

With her list of 73 sexy Black female scientists, Kyla McMullen is dismantling multiple destructive stereotypes about Black women. Not only are we beautiful and intelligent, but Black women are pursuing the highest levels of education in the much discussed STEM fields.
Kyla explains, “The face of Science needs an extreme makeover. If the current generation is going to be engaged in scientific careers, we need to dispel the stereotypical image of a scientist as being a white, glasses wearing, socially-inept nerd.”
Representation matters, and it’s important to show the world, not to mention the little girls who might want to enter these fields, that Black women are in these fields and their education does not strip them of their desirability. The list features a wide array of women who’ve pursued a host of different fields.
View the full list here.
article via theculture.forharriet.com

Festus Ohan, 22, Overcomes Troubled Teen Foster Care Years to Finish College and Earn Acceptance to 7 Top Medical Schools

By goodblacknews on June 16, 2014

festusohanHe led a tough life. The odds were stacked against him and, at one time, it did seem that he wouldn’t be able to make it through high school. He, and almost everyone around him, just couldn’t imagine seeing him succeed.
But that is exactly what Festus Ohan, 22, did: he succeeded.  Festus spent his teen years in foster care. He remembers the day his father left him.
“I went to bed in tears, crying, praying, [and] asking God ‘Why did this happen to me?’” Festus says. Over the years, he was passed on from one family to another, so many of them in fact, that even he isn’t sure about the exact number – seven or eight is his best estimate.
All he knows is that the time he spent in the foster care system “was the worst time” in his life. It didn’t help with his education either.
“Early on in high school, I got in trouble for fighting a lot,” Festus says, “and I was in a pre-expulsion contract.”
His ultimate dream was to become a doctor. But the life he was living almost made it impossible for him to keep that dream alive.
Those that were actually supposed to encourage him were the ones that were discouraging him. “Constantly hearing my foster parents throw statistics at me, about there’s only a 1 percent chance that a foster kid will even graduate college, let alone attend professional school, kind of impacted me in a way,” Festus says.
That’s all changed now. Festus is about to graduate from University of California, Riverside with a degree in neuroscience. He’s so good at his studies that, so far, he has been accepted to 7 medical schools all over the country: Northwestern University, Columbia University, Cornell University, University of California, San Francisco, University of Houston, University of California, Los Angeles, and University of Southern California.
But Festus has made up his mind; he’s headed to UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine where he has been offered a fellowship that covers all expenses.
“I actually start Aug. 4, so I’ll have like a 6-week break,” Festus says, “but I’m excited for the next step in my journey.”
article by Liku Zelleke via themedicalblog.net

Mixed Remixed Festival to Host Largest West Coast Loving Day Celebration Tomorrow (June 14) in Los Angeles

By goodblacknews on June 13, 2014

Mixed Remixed Staff
Mixed Remixed Festival Founder Heidi Durrow (center); Festival staffers (l-r): Lesa Lakin, Jennifer Frappier and Jamie Moore

The Mixed Remixed Festival, a family festival, hosts the largest Loving Day celebration on the West Coast at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles (100 N. Central Ave.) tomorrow, Saturday, June 14, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Loving Day is officially held every year on June 12, the anniversary of the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia, which struck down all anti-miscegenation laws remaining in sixteen states.
The festival celebrates stories of the mixed experience and multiracial Americans, the fastest-growing demographic in the U.S., bringing together film and book lovers, innovative and emerging artists, and multiracial and multicultural families and individuals for workshops, readings, performances, and film screenings.
A fiscally-sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization, the festival is produced by New York Times best-selling writer Heidi Durrow and a talented staff of volunteers.
The event is free and open to the public. The complete festival schedule can be found at www.mixedremixed.org. Highlights include:
• The largest West Coast Loving Day celebration at 6:30 p.m. with the annual Storyteller’s Prize presentation and live show. The prize will go to Comedy Central’s hit comedic duo Key & Peele, award-winning writer Susan Straight, and Cheerios’ marketing team as part of a dynamic live show featuring comedians, musicians and spoken-word poets. This program is currently reserved at capacity, but any open seats near showtime will be offered to individuals on the wait list. Call (213) 293-7077 or email heidi@mixedremixed.org.
• Families can enjoy interactive craft activities all day as part of the Target Free Family Day; storytelling time with Sebastian Jones, co-author with actress Garcelle Beauvais of the children’s book “I Am Mixed”; and a writing workshop for kids with Lora Nakamura, author of “Bonsai Babes.”
• KPCC, Southern California’s largest public radio station, will produce a special panel called “#Multicultivate,” moderated by KPCC’s Josie Huang.
• Two award-winning feature films: “Sleeping with the Fishes” (directed by Nicole Gomez Fisher), winner of the Best New Director Award at the Brooklyn Film Festival, and “Closure” (directed by Bryan Tucker), a feature documentary about a transracial adoptee’s search for her biological parents. The latter screening will be followed by a panel discussion with the filmmaker and transracial adoptees and activists. The festival will also present a program of several ground-breaking short films.
• Readings by Krista Bremer, author of the hit memoir about her bicultural marriage, “My Accidental Jihad” (Algonquin Books); Crystal Chan, author of “Bird”; Chris Terry, author of “Zero Fade”; and many others. Skylight Books is the Festival’s official bookseller.
• Acting and writing workshops will be led by published authors and professional actors. Award-winning poet Aaron Samuels, author of the prize-winning “Yarmulkes & Fitted Caps,” will present a poetry-writing workshop; celebrated voice-over artist and acting professor Rayme Cornell will lead a voice-over class; and Khanisha Foster will offer a Performer’s Bootcamp. A complete list of workshops appears on the festival website.
• More than a dozen esteemed panelists will speak on diverse topics related to the mixed experience. Panelists include scholar Marcia Dawkins, activist/filmmaker Thomas Lopez, and YouTube’s Channing Sargent.
Festival sponsors include: Cheerios (Silver Sponsor), Japanese American National Museum (www.janm.org), Zerflin.com, Pitfire Artisan Pizza, Miss Jessie’s, and Poets & Writers through a grant from the James Irvine Foundation.
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

Keke Palmer Becomes Youngest TV Talk Show Host with BET's "#JUSTKeke" Starting June 30

By goodblacknews on June 10, 2014
The daytime talk show space continues to get crowded (Tyra Banks most recently announced that she’ll be jumping back into that space via ABC), as Keke Palmer and BET are hoping to strike gold with a new talk show targeting so-called millenials – essentially those in her age group – which Palmer will of course host.
Tentatively-titled “#JUSTKeke,” the network has ordered an initial 4-week run, starting on June 30, airing daily, Monday to Friday.  Judge Greg Mathis, apparently looking to expand his empire, will executive produce, while Telepictures is producing. 
The 20-year-old Palmer will become the youngest talk show host in TV history, with “#JUSTKeke,” besting the likes of Ricki Lake, who was 25 when she begun hosting her 1990’s daytime talk show, also aimed at her generation at the time.  Per the press announcement, “#JUSTKeke” will cover a variety of topics important to her target audience, as you’d expect, and will also include celebrity guests, and more. “I like to read quotes that touch on how I am feeling,” Palmer said. “If I am dealing with confusion, I will read quotes about clarity and peace of mind. I started posting these quotes on my Twitter page, and the fans responded so positively! I realized that many of them were dealing with similar issues, and the quotes helped to open up a genuine dialogue between us.”
Palmer boasts around 1.4 million Twitter followers, and I suspect a good number of them will follow her to BET when her talk-show premieres at the end of this month.
She will join “The Wendy Williams Show,” “The Queen Latifah Show,” and new series, “The Real” (hosted by Tamera Mowry-Housley, Tamar Braxton, Loni Love, Adrienne Bailon, and Jeannie Mai,) all in syndication on BET (“Latifah” and “The Real” head to the network this fall). Clearly BET is reinforcing its hold on the black female audience (it’s also rebranding Centric to become a network for black women as well).
You’ll recall that ASPiRE, the new television network from Magic Johnson Enterprises, greenlit its first talk show – “Exhale” – last year, with Angela Burt-Murray, Erin Jackson, Issa Rae, Malinda Williams and Rene Syler all hosting. That talkie is still well and alive.  BET has released a first promo for “#JUSTKeke,” calling it “a new kind of Talk Show”:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3sHzV7dB3M&w=560&h=315]
article by Tambay A. Obenson via ShadowAndAct

Pharrell Williams Receives the Key to The City from Virginia Beach

By goodblacknews on June 8, 2014

Pharrell-Key-To-City
In another addition to his lengthy list of accomplishments, Pharrell Williams was honored with the key to the city from his native Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Receiving the award at his alma mater, Princess Anne High School, Pharrell thanked his former teachers for their contributions to his success. Mayor Will Sessoms shared a quote from his acceptance speech on Twitter:

Life is like a mosaic, with a bunch of pieces and @Pharrell says he is just one piece. He thx former teachers for being part of his success.

The super-producer also took to Twitter to thank Sessoms in his signature humbled fashion, saying he was “unbelievably honored” by the bestowment.
Watch a video of Pharrell receiving the key to Virginia Beach here.
article by Iyana Robertson via vibe.com

Couple Loses $50 Million Lottery Ticket, Returned Months Later By Church Member

By goodblacknews on June 5, 2014
nasiru
Imagine having a lottery ticket worth $50 million in your hands then having it disappear without a trace.  Well Hakeem Nosiru (pictured left) and his wife, Abiola (pictured), lived the nightmare of having a winning ticket worth more than they could possibly ever spend in their lifetimes then losing it before they could cash it in to lottery officials.  The bleak story does have a phenomenally happy ending, though, as the ticket was eventually found months later by a church member, reports the Toronto Sun.
Hakeem checked the winning ticket in January at a convenience store, and after discovering he had a winning ticket, his joy could not be restrained. The Father of four and grandfather of five was ecstatic about his win and actually ran through the aisles of the store shouting and crying over his win.
Just one day after Hakeem and Abiola were flying high over their Lotto Max win, however, they quickly spiraled back down, as they could not put their hands on the winning ticket.
According to Hakeem, he gave his wife of 29 years the winning ticket to secure in her purse, but when they went to church the day after their huge win, she somehow lost it. Abiola was beyond any form of consolation, the woman tells the Toronto Sun, “I couldn’t sleep for days, I couldn’t eat. I was devastated.”
Ironically, Nosiru had so much angst about possibly losing the ticket that he placed it in an envelope and duct taped it to his stomach.  After giving what he thought was a fool-proof move some further thought, he decided his wife’s purse would be a safer and more sensible route to go.  He was wrong.
But when Nasiru found out Abiola had misplaced the ticket, he did not explode; instead, he says he remained calm and placed the situation in God’s hands, telling the Toronto Sun, “God gave us the money,” he said. “We lose the ticket and eventually we found it. Thank God for that.”
The Nigerian couple went to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) and filled out all of the necessary paperwork just in case their ticket turned up and just kept hope alive.  The OLG could not give the couple the monies unless they could produce a ticket.  The pair also contacted the police as well to report the missing ticket.
Fate certainly has a sense of humor because on April Fool’s Day, a congregation member contacted the couple to let them know she had found their lottery ticket.  Abiola told the Toronto Sun, “When I found it, I was so happy.”
When the ticket was found, the police established that there was no foul play involved in the case and closed it.
The Nosirus learned a valuable lesson after their ordeal: always sign a lottery ticket after purchasing it.  OLG spokesperson Tony Bitonti also adds, “Keep it in a safe place and check it often as well,” he told the Toronto Sun.
Meanwhile, the Nosirus have not made any big money plans as of yet and are so glad their nightmare is finally over.  According to Abiola, losing the money would have been disheartening but they don’t place an emphasis on money but rather on love of family.  “We believed that before the money there was a life,” Abiola told the Toronto Sun. “After the money there would be a life.”
For now, the Nasirus want to just kick back and revel in the fortune that they’ve been blessed with and the love they have from their children and grandchildren.
article by Ruth Manuel-Logan via newsone.com