Lauryn Williams and Lolo Jones have been selected for the U.S. bobsled team that will compete in next month’s Sochi Olympics. They are now positioned to join a group of eight other Americans who have competed in both the Summer and Winter Games. Williams is a three-time summer Olympian who helped the U.S. win a gold medal in the 400-meter relay at the London Games. Jones is a two-time veteran of the summer games in the 100-meter hurdles, missing out on gold in Beijing after a late stumble.
Jones, Williams and Aja Evans were the three women chosen out of a six-woman pool for the push athlete spots, that word coming at a team meeting where half the candidates saw their Olympic dreams realized and the other half saw them come to a quiet end. “I was definitely very nervous entering the room,” Jones said. “I’m usually used to looking up at a screen after I cross the finish line to see the results. You’re just like anxious, armpits are sweating, don’t know what’s going to happen.”
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All 20 NBA teams playing today will wear special shooting shirts in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. The NBA announced their “Dream Big” campaign earlier this month to celebrate MLK Day and Black History Month.
A video featuring Chris Bosh aired during four nationally televised games today, as well as during games aired on NBA TV. Original content and interviews will run on air and digitally on NBA.com until the end of February.
The shooting shirt for MLK Day features the “Dream Big” logo on the front. The shooting shirt for Black History Month was created in collaboration with Miami Heat guard Ray Allen. The shirt will feature four prominent African-Americans, Dr. King, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman and Bill Russell, in the NBA logo on the front and the “Dream Big” logo on the back.
The NBA’s “Dream Big” campaign is also designed to reach children and educate them on the history of African-Americans. The league is teaming up with EverFi, an educational technology company, launch digital curriculum in 30 schools across the country during February. The curriculum is focused on the extensive contributions by blacks.
“The ‘Dream Big’ campaign honors African-Americans for their countless contributions that have opened doors for people around the world,” said Saskia Sorrosa, NBA Vice President of Multicultural/Targeted Marketing in a press release. “With the the NBA’s young and diverse fanbase, we felt it was important to creat a program that would engage kids by educating them about black history to positively impact the future.”
Keep an eye out for the new shooting shirts today and throughout the month of February.
article by Carrie Healey via thegrio.com
First Lady Michelle Obama spent Friday, January 17th – her actual birthday – out of sight, with no public appearances, except the tweet of a photo of herself holding up her AARP card. She tweeted, quote, “Excited to join Barack” in the 50-plus club today . “check out my @AARP card!”
But last night, January 18th, Beyoncé and Stevie Wonder rocked the White House at a star-studded, late-night dance party celebrating Obama’s 50th, two guests told the Chicago Tribune today. President Barack Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha joined family friends, elected officials, entertainers, athletes, business executives and big donors at the gala, which kicked off Saturday and lasted until the wee hours Sunday morning, the sources said.
The event was closed to the press, and the White House did not release a guest list or any other details. But two guests spoke to the Tribune on condition of anonymity, describing a bash at which a deejay kept people on the dance floor in the East Room until after 3 a.m. Washington time. VIP guests, according to sources, included political luminaries Bill and Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, national security adviser Susan Rice, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Democratic National Committee official Donna Brazile.
Other high-profile guests included Sir Paul McCartney, Magic Johnson, Chicago-born actress/singer Jennifer Hudson, singer Janelle Monae, actor Kal Penn, TV personality Al Roker, actress Ashley Judd, tennis great Billie Jean King, retired Olympic figure-skater Michelle Kwan and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, the sources said.
At the University of Texas, football is religion. At Penn State University, they need football for redemption. So when these storied programs hired black head coaches within days of each other to return them to past glory, it was a major moment for a sport that has been among the slowest to promote African-American leaders at the highest level.
There have been other black head coaches at top football schools — Notre Dame, Stanford, Miami, UCLA. But the recent hiring of Charlie Strong at Texas and James Franklin at Penn State sent a powerful message, because of the combined prestige, mystique and influence of those teams. “It’s a historical moment,” said Doug Williams, the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl and a former head coach at Grambling. “We’ve come a long way in a couple weeks,” Williams said. “Even though we don’t have as many as you would like, but when you get a Penn State and a Texas, them schools together almost make up for about 10 schools.”
There are 125 colleges playing in the top-level Football Bowl Subdivision. In 2013, 13 of them had black coaches. That was down from 15 in 2012 and an all-time high of 17 in 2011. Strong and Franklin have not been replaced by African-Americans, so the overall numbers remain low. For Franklin, the numbers are less important than the opportunities. “I don’t underestimate the significance of this moment. I take a lot of pride in that,” he said in an interview. “But the most important thing is we’re getting to a point where universities and organizations and corporations are hiring people based on merit and the most qualified guy.
The Kevin Hart/Ice Cube film Ride Along arrived in first place at the weekend box office. The buddy cop comedy debuted with $41.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. The strong opening for Ride Along marks the biggest debut for a film released during Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend and puts it on track to top the $40.1 million record set by the 2008 monster movie Cloverfield for the biggest opening of January.
Ride Along is the first starring role for Hart, whose box-office status has been on the rise since the success of his 2013 stand-up film Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain and memorable roles in such movies as Think Like a Man, This Is the End and Grudge Match. “He’s everywhere it seems,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for box-office tracker Rentrak. “I know he was co-starring with Ice Cube in Ride Along, but this really was marketed as a Kevin Hart movie. There’s no question he’s a movie star now who doesn’t require any qualifications before his name.”
Ride Along is the first starring role for Hart, whose box-office status has been on the rise since the success of his 2013 stand-up film Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain and memorable roles in such movies as Think Like a Man, This Is the End and Grudge Match. “He’s everywhere it seems,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for box-office tracker Rentrak. “I know he was co-starring with Ice Cube in Ride Along, but this really was marketed as a Kevin Hart movie. There’s no question he’s a movie star now who doesn’t require any qualifications before his name.”
This morning, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for its 86th annual Awards, and recent Golden Globes Best Picture winner 12 Years A Slave was honored nine times, including nods for Best Supporting Actress (Lupita Nyong’o), Best Supporting Actor (Michael Fassbender), Best Adapted Screenplay (John Ridley), Best Actor (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Best Director (Steve McQueen) and Best Picture (Brad Pitt is one of the producers).
Other notable nominations include Barkhad Abdi for Best Supporting Actor in Captain Phillips, Pharrell Williams for Original Song (“Happy” from Despicable Me 2) and U2 for Original Song (“Ordinary Love” from Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom).
American Hustle and Gravity tied for most nominations with ten nominations each, and will likely provide the stiffest competition for 12 Years during the March 2nd awards ceremony.
The full list of nominations follows below:
BEST PICTURE
“12 Years a Slave”
“American Hustle”
“Captain Phillips”
“Dallas Buyers Club”
“Gravity”
“Her”
“Nebraska”
“Philomena”
“The Wolf of Wall Street”
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) increased its efforts last spring to bolster its support of minority business owners with a grant competition, and it reported record job creation for those businesses for fiscal year 2012. The MBDA’s good work in that arena was highlighted once more after a record-setting fiscal year in 2013 that saw the agency help lead the creation and retention of 25,704 jobs.
On Tuesday, the MBDA released a press release reporting on the agency’s job creation, the capital it provided the businesses, and the contract support given to participants in the programs. More than $4.8 billion in capital and contract awards were doled out, leading to the agency’s highest job-creation goal in its 45-year history.
More from MBDA’s National Director, David A. Hinson:
“These FY13 figures illustrate the crucial role MBDA continues to play in helping minority-owned businesses create jobs and strengthen local communities nationwide. This outstanding performance is a hallmark of the Obama administration’s efforts to help strengthen small- and- medium-sized businesses, which are fueling our economic recovery.
In total under the Obama administration for the years between FY 2009 and FY 2013, the MDBA has helped business owners and participants gain $19.4 billion in contracts and capital, which led to the creation and/or retention of 58,752 jobs.
A full version of the MBDA’s Annual Performance Report will be released at a later time.
article by D.L. Chandler via newsone.com
NEW YORK (AP) — A new generation of starting pitchers and a self-proclaimed Mr. Clean of the Steroids Era will be ushered into baseball’s Hall of Fame this summer. Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas were elected on their first ballot appearances Wednesday, when Craig Biggio fell just two votes short. Maddux and Glavine will join their former Atlanta Braves manager, Bobby Cox, at the July 27 induction along with Joe Torre and Tony La Russa, also elected last month by the expansion-era committee.
But Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and other stars whose accomplishments were muddied by accusations of steroids use lost even more ground, dropping below 40 percent in an election where 75 percent is needed. And on his first day as a member of baseball’s elite, Thomas said the living members among the 306 Hall of Famers don’t want those with sullied reputations.
“Over the last year, doing a couple of charity events with Hall of Famers that are in, they’ve got a strong stance against anyone who’s taken steroids. They do not want them in. They don’t care when they started or when they did it, they do not want them in,” he said. “I’ve got to take the right stance, too. No, they shouldn’t get in. There shouldn’t be cheating allowed to get into the Hall of Fame.”
Making their second appearances on the ballot, Clemens dropped from 37.6 percent to 35.4 in voting by senior members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, Bonds from 36.2 to 34.7 and Sosa from 12.5 to 7.2. Bonds, baseball’s career home run leader, is the only seven-time MVP in major league history. Clemens is the lone seven-time Cy Young Award winner. “As for what they did, I don’t think any of us will ever really know,” Thomas said. “But I can just tell you, what I did was real and that’s why I’ve got this smile on my face right now because the writers, they definitely got it right.”
The White House has released a report discussing the most-recent unemployment numbers from theBureau Of Labor Statistics, and the African-American unemployment rate, is one of the groups to see a decrease. Even though long-term unemployment remains elevated, it has somewhat subsided for historically marginalized groups, with the African-American rate reportedly decreasing .5 percent from November (12.4 percent) to December (11.9 percent). Below is the unemployment decrease African Americans experienced for the year 2013:
Unemployment rates…declined over the course of 2013 for women (1.3 percentage points), teenagers (3.8 percentage points), African-Americans (2.1 percentage points), and Hispanics (1.2 percentage points). Similarly, since the overall unemployment rate peaked at 10.0 percent in October 2009, these rates have all shown marked declines.
The White House also reported that unemployment fell 5 percentage points between March 2010, when it was at a shocking 16.9 percent, to now. Included in the report are also five key points about the most-recent job market. The first one notes that America’s businesses have added jobs for 46 months in a row, with employment increasing by 8.2 million during that time frame. Private employment has also risen by an average of 177,000 jobs per month over the last three months. Still, the report notes:
Policymakers should be doing everything they can to speed job creation. The Council of Economic Advisers estimates that extending the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program through 2014 would lead to an additional 240,000 jobs over the course of the year, because the benefits sustain the purchasing power of recipients who support local businesses and their suppliers.
A judge has ruled that Marissa Alexander can remain free on bond after the Florida State Attorney filed a motion claiming that the defendant violated her release conditions numerous times, The Florida Times-Union reports. Circuit Court Judge James Daniel denied Assistant State Attorney Richard Mantei‘s request to revoke Alexander’s bail for “going out shopping for clothes, driving family members to the hair shop and airport, getting a new driver’s license, visiting the bank and seeing a sister-in-law.”
Mantei’s stated to the judge that Alexander, 33, was on home detention while performing her errands. The conditions of her detention prohibit her from leaving her residence except for court appearances, medical emergencies and to satisfy any requirements of her pretrial services program. She has been free on bond since Thanksgiving after getting a new trial in her aggravated assault case for firing a warning shot during an altercation with her husband, Rico Gray.
Alexander’s lawyer, Bruce Zimet, countered the state’s argument by saying that all of his client’s actions were approved by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, which angered Judge Daniel. Zimet said the court ordered Alexander to speak with Jacksonville authorities before making her trips, which they approved without checking with the judge. Since Alexander did not knowingly violate the bond, Judge Daniel saw fit to allow her to remain in home detention.
April Wilson, an 18-year veteran of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, was present for Friday’s hearing. Wilson approved all of Alexander’s trips, stating in her tearful testimony that her understanding of the court order would allow for these brief stops she made while under house arrest. After today’s hearing, however, it appears that both sides understand Judge Daniel’s orders and will move forward from there. “I think it was handled how it needed to be handled. The judge is now aware and everybody else is now aware of what was going on. Things got brought out in the open that’s always a good thing,” said Mantei, as reported by Florida Times-Union.