Shakeup: Susan Rice To Be Obama's National Security Adviser
Category: RTM News Reel Written by Michigan Chronicle Staff

United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, a lightning rod for Republican critics of the Obama administration's handling of the September 2012 attack on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, is moving into the post of national security adviser at the White House.
For more on this story click here
Last Updated on Wednesday, 05 June 2013 12:03
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Congratulations! Chokwe Lumumba Elected New Mayor Of Jackson, Miss.
Category: RTM News Reel Written by News One



Former Ward 2 Councilman and Chokwe Lumumba, 65, is the new mayor of Jackson, Miss., winning the general election with 87 percent of the vote, reports Fight Back! News.[1]
“I’m just delighted. I feel wonderfully well about the people and their vote. Our slogan has been the people must decide and the people gave us an outstanding mandate today for positive change in the city of Jackson,” Lumumba said. “We intend to work diligently and put all our hearts and efforts into that and we’re going to be calling upon the people to work with us. We’re not working by ourselves.”
RELATED: Former Lawyer For Tupac, Assata Shakur Wins Miss. Mayoral Primary Race[2]
As previously reported by NewsOne[3], Lumumba served four years on the Jackson City Council before running for mayor. He spent part of the ’70s and ’80s as vice-president of the Republic of New Afrika, an organization which advocated for “an independent predominantly black government” in the southeastern United States and reparations for sla
...Last Updated on Wednesday, 05 June 2013 09:02
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More Brutality From Jasper, Texas: Cops Fired After Video Captures Them Beating Black Woman
Category: RTM News Reel Written by News One

Two officers from the Jasper Police Department in Texas have been fired after video captured them brutally handling a woman brought in to pay a $100 fine, Yahoo! News reports.
The incident took place May 5, when Keyarika "Shea" Diggles, 25, was brought to jail to pay the fine. Diggles, according to her lawyer, Cade Bernsen, was on the phone speaking with her mother to arrange the payment when Officer Ricky Grissom ended the call.

The video recording has no audio, but it appears that Grissom and Diggles began arguing after he discontinued the call.
Officer Ryan Cunningham walked in behind Diggles and attemped to handcuff her. She showed no sign of resistance but Cunningham violently grabbed Diggles by the hair and slammed her head into a counter. The officers then slammed Diggles to the ground. One of the officers tried to drag her to the jail cell but ended up pulling off her shoe. Both officers eventually pull her into the cell. Diggles was charged with resisting arrest; the charge was dropped Monday.
Bersen says his client suffered a broken tooth, damaged braces and a loss of hair as a result of the incident.
Here is more from Yahoo! News:
The officers' firing comes 15 years to the week after an infamous hate crime in Jasper, a town of about 8,000 people two hours northeast of Houston. James Byrd Jr., a black man, was tied to the back of a pickup by three white men and dragged for several miles until he was decapitated. The high-profile case triggered marches by the New Black Panthers and Ku Klux Klan.
Last year, a majority-white Jasper City Council fired the town's first black chief after 16 months on the job. Rodney Pearson is now suing, claiming his civil rights were violated.
"It's a different part of the world, man, it's crazy," said Bernsen, who's also representing the fired police chief.
Jasper's interim city manager confirmed the terminations, but referred questions about the Diggles case to the interim police chief, who was unreachable Monday afternoon.
"The more things change, the more they remain the same," Jasper City Council Member Alton Scott said of the city's racial troubles.
Scott obtained the video in the Diggles' incident and turned it over to a local TV station after he heard that her written complaint against the officers was apparently being ignored.
"There's nothing she said that could have justified what they did," Scott said. "They are supposed to be trained professionals. They are supposed to be above that. It was inexcusable."
The Jasper City Council requested that Officers Cunningham and Grissom be investigated for possible criminal charges. Bernsen would prefer that the FBI or state police conduct the investigation.
"I don't trust the Police Department as far as you can throw them," he told Yahoo! News.
Read more http://newsone.com/2530014/keyarika-shea-diggles-jasper-texas/
Last Updated on Tuesday, 04 June 2013 17:11
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Michelle Obama Checks Protestor: ‘Listen To Me Or You Can Take The Mic’
Category: RTM News Reel Written by News One

UPDATE 8:36 A.M. EST — 06/05/13:
Ellen Sturtz claims in an interview with The Huffington Post[1], that she didn’t plan on interrupting First Lady Michelle Obama, but her fundraiser speech triggered her emotions and she couldn’t hold it in:
“I want to talk about the children,” Sturtz said. “I want to talk about the LGBT young people who are … being told, directly and indirectly, that they’re second-class citizens. I’m tired of it. They’re suffering. … We’ve been asking president to sign that ENDA executive order for five years. How much longer do we need to wait?”
Sturtz, a member of pro-LGBT rights group GetEQUAL, donated to President Barack Obama’s campaign because she believed that he would follow through on ensuring that the LGBTQ community no longer faced work-place discrimination. She claims to be surprised by the First Lady’s response:
...“Basically, I was asked by the first lady to be quiet, and I can’t be quiet any longer. … I was surprised by how negative the crowd seemed to be. It
Last Updated on Wednesday, 05 June 2013 09:44
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Why are more women drinking
Category: RTM News Reel Written by CNN, Peggy Drexler

(CNN) -- All day long, Lucia looked forward to her favorite weekday ritual: putting the kids to bed, changing her clothes, and pouring herself a generous glass of Pinot Noir. "My friends and I joke that motherhood 'drives us to drink,' but sometimes it really does for me," she said.
"I feel like I need it to unwind," she said. Most nights she had three or four glasses, though never, she insisted, more than that. "And on nights that I don't have it," she said, "I really wish that I did."
For a long time, Lucia saw nothing wrong with her drinking. It didn't interfere with her parenting, or her relationships. She got done what she needed to get done. But lately, Lucia had been starting to wonder about her daily habit -- looking as forward to it as she did, and the anxiety that consumed her when she could not have it left her feeling unsettled.
Part of her concern related to a history of alcoholism in her family. "My father was an alcoholic, and I always have in the back of my head this idea that I could become one, too; it's in my genes," she said.
Although men have historically been heavier drinkers than women, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the gender gap is shrinking, and fast.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more American women are drinking more heavily than ever before: one in eight women binge drink -- defined as six drinks or more in one sitting -- about three times a month.
A forthcoming study in the October 2013 issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research found that college-aged women are drinking more often than their male counterparts, confirming a January 2013 study of college students in Spain found female students were more likely to binge drink than male students.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that arrests for women driving while drunk are on the rise, by about 30% from 1998 to 2007. And according to the CDC, white, college-educated woman ages 18 to 24 with $75,000 or more annual household income were more likely to binge drink than women of other races, ages, and socioeconomic categories.
Part of this rise in alcohol consumption may have something to do with young people staying single longer; presumably women are out socializing more often than women their age were likely to do 20 years ago.
They're also working more, and drinking is often part of the job in male-dominated industries, like banking and tech. A study that appeared in the December 2011 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, which tracked alcohol consumption in those born after World War II, suggested that the move toward gender equality may correlate with higher drinking rates. This suggests that more women have the opportunity, and the pressure, to socialize for work and "drink like men."
After all, although the three-martini lunch is a "Mad Men"-era relic, alcohol undoubtedly still plays a key role in many work functions. Entertaining clients is one way colleagues compete, while after-work socializing is an ever-important part of the professional culture. Many who don't participate in the interoffice networking often feel left out of the group, or even suffer professionally.
And yet women with careers aren't the only ones getting a bigger buzz than ever before. A University of Cincinnati study found that, surprisingly, married women actually drink slightly more than their single counterparts.
Sarah, a stay-at-home mother, began to drink more frequently after having her third child. She was often drinking alone, because her husband traveled a lot for work. "My social life is just so restricted; I'm home every night," she said. "I used to have an active social life. Now, most of my evenings are about feeding kids, cleaning kids, putting them to bed -- and then collapsing in front of the TV." Sometimes, she said, having a drink was a way to remember some of the excitement of her old life. Other times, it was just something to do.
Sarah certainly isn't unique and, in fact, there's been a movement toward a certain acceptance -- in some cases even glorification -- of mothers who drink. Popular Facebook groups like "Moms Who Need Wine" and "OMG I So Need a Glass of Wine or I'm Going to Sell My Kids" have tens of thousands of fans, inspiring one winemaker to create a label of wine especially for stressed-out moms. "Put your kids to bed," the label for MommyJuice Wines reads, "and have a glass of Mommy Juice."
Though meant, as a concept, to relieve mothers of the pressure to be perfect, the promotion, even half-seriously, of alcohol as an escape, something deserved as a reward for a long day of parenting, has helped make evident the biggest issue of all: That many women don't realize what problem drinking looks, or feels, like.
Like Lucia, many problem drinkers will never find themselves hitting "rock bottom" or facing any sort of trouble. Instead, they may experience far more prosaic effects, which prevent them, and their family and friends, from recognizing their over-consumption. A recent UK study of more than 22,000 people published in the European Journal of Public Health found that the average woman underreports her weekly drinking by 60%, and that up to 80% of women exceed the recommended daily intake.
Are they alcoholics? It's hard to say. But if you believe that alcoholism is defined by a preoccupation with drinking, a steady increase in the amount you need to drink in order to get the same effect, and an inability to give it up -- and most in the medical profession do -- then more and more women fit the profile quite nicely, though often come to the realization on their own.
"My husband only ever commented on the number of bottles in the recycling," said Lucia, who eventually quit drinking altogether. "He'd be like, 'You drank all that? But you weren't drunk at all!' Except, looking back, I sort of was."
Editor's note: Peggy Drexler is the author of "Our Fathers, Ourselves: Daughters, Fathers, and the Changing American Family" and "Raising Boys Without Men." She is an assistant professor of psychology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and a former gender scholar at Stanford University. Join her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter @drpeggydrexler.
The opinions in this commentary are solely those of Peggy Drexler.
Last Updated on Tuesday, 04 June 2013 16:49
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