Attorney General Eric Holder, left, and U.S. Attorney Zane David, right, look on as former federal inmates Robert Warner who completed the Supervision to Aid Re-entry (STAR) program, speaks during a news conference Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2013, at the U.S. Courthouse in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) by Kathy MathesonAssociated Press Writer PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The nation's top law enforcement officer got a glimpse of the challenges facing ex-offenders attempting to rebuild their lives on Tuesday as he attended an unusual court session and then met with several of them afterward. Attorney General Eric Holder watched as more than a dozen men on supervised release updated a federal judge on their jobs and personal situations, discussing problems from needing more hours at work to the cost of cataract surgery for the family dog.
CHRISTOPHER SPANN PITTSBURGH (AP) - A family therapist who works to keep young men out of the child welfare system has been jailed on charges he badly beat his adopted 11-year-old son for not doing his homework. Christopher Spann, 52, of Pittsburgh, remained jailed Friday, a day after his arraignment on charges of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and endangering the welfare of a child. Spann pleaded not guilty.
Chiwetel Ejiofor by Stacy M. BrownFor New Pittsburgh Courier(NNPA)—Famed film director John Singleton said when movies about African-Americans debut, he’s always the first to be called to lend insight.Singleton, who directed the 1991 critically-acclaimed drama “Boyz in the Hood,” said that recently his telephone hasn’t stopped ringing “I’d like to talk about other movies, too,” he said, but acknowledged that he doesn’t mind weighing in on the recent avalanche of Black films, including what many view as an Oscar front-runner, “12 Years a Slave.” “I’ve seen it and I can tell you it’s a work of art,” said Singleton, 45.
MARC MORIAL Ten years after his first visit as president of the National Urban League, Marc Morial returned to Pittsburgh as the keynote luncheon speaker for the 95th Anniversary celebration of the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh. In his remarks on the State of Black America, Morial called Pittsburgh the “back bone” of industrialization and a city that continues to transform itself, adding that the State of Black Pittsburgh is not unlike the state of America, intrinsically intertwined and linked one to the other.
RAYNARD JACKSON (NNPA)—Hardly a week goes by when there is not a tragic story of a teenager committing suicide. Tragic as these deaths are, there is absolutely no causation between bullying and suicide. The media’s simplistic and sensational coverage of these teenage deaths are very problematic in this regard. Suicide is never, let me repeat, suicide is never the result of one cause. Suicide is always the result of a culmination of events that triggers the deadly act; any one event could be the tips the scales.
This image released by Fox Searchlight shows Michael Fassbender, left, Lupita Nyong'o and Chiwetel Ejiofor, right, in a scene from "12 Years A Slave." (AP Photo/Fox Searchlight, Francois Duhamel) I’ll never know what it means to be a slave, producing forced, free labor, in the United States prior to the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. More definitively, I could not imagine what it would mean to be a legally free person and still be held captive for little over a decade.
In this Oct. 22, 2010 file photo, Jeff Hall, who was killed by his son, holds a Neo Nazi flag while standing at Sycamore Highlands Park near his home in Riverside, Calif. (AP Photo/Sandy Huffaker, File) by Amy TaxinAssociated Press Writer SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — The boy was 10 when he put a gun to the head of his sleeping neo-Nazi father and pulled the trigger. It was over in an instant for Jeff Hall, but sorting out the fate of his troubled son has been a 2 1/2-year journey that approaches its final stage Friday in a hearing to determine where he'll spend his teens and, possibly, his early adult years.
