Celebrity Life

(MINNEAPOLIS) — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison will join the review of the fatal shooting of a Black man by Minneapolis police, authorities said Friday, shortly after police released body camera footage that showed SWAT team officers entering an apartment and shooting the 22-year-old man, who was wrapped in a blanket and had a gun…

The woman from the Social Security office had a lot of questions. I dutifully answered them, using my shoulder to clamp the big hospital phone to my ear so I could use both hands to adjust my one-day-old son’s latch. She asked me my name, birthdate, place of birth, marital status, Social Security number. Then…

The death of Cheslie Kryst has put a spotlight on a dangerous gap between reality and what many believe about suicide in the United States

During a Thursday meeting with New York City Mayor Eric Adams, President Joe Biden announced actions for investing in policing and community intervention programs in response to the surge in gun violence in recent years that has impacted many cities across the country, including New York City. “Enough is enough,” Biden said. Gun violence deaths…

(CHICAGO) — Former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke left prison on Thursday after serving less than half of his nearly seven-year sentence for killing Black teenager Laquan McDonald—an early release that was widely viewed as a setback in the city’s efforts to improve relations between its police department and Black community. Jordan Abudayyeh, a…

I first wrote to my children before they were born: my daughter, at 36 weeks gestation, and my son, the night before his birth. Time was a doorknob turning in the darkness, a pulse of movement soon to change everything, and it felt urgent to capture where we were right then. It became a tradition.…

(WOODSTOCK, Ga.) — A caller who threatened to blow up a historically Black university in Florida—one of numerous threats made against schools across the nation—described an elaborate plot involving seven bombs hidden in duffel bags and backpacks around the school’s perimeter, a Florida police chief said. In a 20-minute phone call, the caller said the…

The loss of American life is now measured in the hundreds of thousands. What was held in those minds is less easily tallied

In Florida’s Polk County, Nobel Literature Prize-winner Toni Morrison’s novels The Bluest Eye and Morrison’s Beloved were among 16 books “quarantined”—taken off shelves in public school libraries “so a thorough, thoughtful review of their content can take place,” a spokesperson explained to The Ledger—on Jan. 25 after a complaint. Less than a week earlier, a…

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who three years ago placed a moratorium on executions, now is moving to dismantle the United States’ largest death row by moving all condemned inmates to other prisons within two years. The goal is to turn the section at San Quentin State Prison into a “positive, healing environment.”…

As yet another Lunar New Year approaches amid a pandemic and rising anti-Asian hate crime, a family-run ballroom-dance studio steps up

Eric Adams, the new mayor of New York City, announced on Jan. 24 a detailed plan aiming to end gun violence in his city. Adams, a former police officer and Brooklyn borough president, made public safety one of the tentpoles of his campaign, amid much attention to a national rise in gun violence during the…