A white rural Pittsburgh area family with a black adopted son are
victims of a hate crime as someone set ablaze a large wooden cross in their backyard.

Joe Walbeck said he woke up early Sunday morning to discover the burnt 6-foot-tall cross hours after his son, Shaquille, high school football team lost a game in the state playoffs.

The Walbecks live in Indiana County, a farming and coal-mining community  approximately an hour east of Pittsburgh.  It is unknown if the football game was  inspiration for the racially-charged incident.

Pennsylvania State Police officials said they have not investigated a cross burning in the area for years. The vandals face charges ranging from trespass to ethnic intimidation.

Kwame Kilpatrick, the former mayor of Detroit who was removed from office and convicted of perjury, gave his first media interview in more than a year to reporters from The Final Call, the weekly news magazine of the Nation of Islam.

The interview covered various subjects ranging from the future of Detroit to national politics. However, Kilpatrick’s comments about his former chief of staff and lover Christine Beatty are creating the most buzz.

Kilpatrick and Beatty had a highly publicized affair. Beatty was also convicted of perjury for not admitting to the affair during a whistleblower lawsuit in 2008.

Below is an excerpt of the interview.  Click here to view video of the interview.

FCN: I’m glad you mentioned your family. Clearly, they have stood by you and your wife has demonstrated tremendous strength as well as your children with you being in such a public spot. As it relates to Ms. Christine Beatty, the sister who was in the news related to her relationship with you, do you have contact with her, do you all talk?

KK: I’ll simply say, I have talked to her since all of this stuff has happened. I try to make sure that she understands that I still care about her very deeply and I simply back up and say first that, a lot of times when women get caught in a situation like that, they are perceived as a wh— and sorry and I just think that is so unfair. It takes two to tango they say but I think even other than that she is a very good person. She is incredibly brilliant, a 4.0 student, masters (degree) and we made some bad decisions and we are living with the consequences of those decisions. I respect her tremendously and love her and wish her the best. That has been an incredible situation, somebody has been in your life since ninth grade, this is my friend, this wasn’t a person that just showed up. Ninth grade and now out of your life and having her own and you have to really figure out how to move forward with your wife and children. So I wish her the best. I have tried to keep tabs and make sure that she is doing all right. But as far as the kind of interaction we had, we will never really have again.

Randolph Forde, a teacher at Mundy’s Mill High School in suburban Atlanta was arrested and charged with making terrorist threats against one of his students.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports the attorney of the student who allegedly was threatened said Forde repeadedly  asked his client  if he was gay and after an altercation in class asked another student to kill him.

Here is an embedded clip of TV coverage of the story.

It has been more than a week since family, friends and co-workers have heard from 28-year-old Shanita Brown. She was last seen with a girlfriend and two other men at a Detroit club.

If you didn’t have an opportunity to see Jay-Z perform live this year, you may have to wait to 2010.

XXLmag.com reports that Jay-Z has canceled the remainder of his 2009 tour to focus on 2010.

“Although many fans are disappointed with the unforeseen cancellation of Jigga’s remaining shows, he happily announced a 2010 tour for The Blueprint 3, set to kick off in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in February. Jay is scheduled to perform in 17 cities across the country and conclude his tour in Detroit on March 14.”

Well, at least Jay-Z fans can use the money they saved for concert tickets to pay bills or buy Christmas presents.

Oprah Winfrey said she was wrong for not challenging a comment made by Mike Tyson about wanting to “sock” Robin Givens during an interview on her syndicated television program.

From WENN.com

“Givens fought back angry tears as she revealed she sat in disbelief as Winfrey’s studio audience chuckled while Tyson admitted he wanted to “sock her” after an infamous TV interview with newswoman Barbara Walters.

A relieved Givens said, “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

As unemployment among African-Americans has doubled since the start of the recession, the NAACP along with several other organizations are pushing for the President to more about job creation.

From New York Times:

“The organizations — including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group— will make clear that they believe the president’s $787 billion stimulus program has not gone far enough to fight unemployment.

They will call for increased spending for schools and roads, billions of dollars in fiscal relief to state and local governments to forestall more layoffs and a direct government jobs program, “especially in distressed communities facing severe unemployment.”

In speaking out on jobs, N.A.A.C.P. leaders say they are not trying to pick a fight with the first African-American president. Rather, they say, they are pressing Mr. Obama in an area where they believe he wants to be pressured.

“It’s time for us to really stoke this issue up,” said Hilary O. Shelton, the N.A.A.C.P.’s senior vice president for advocacy and policy. “We’re not so much trying to convince him to do something he doesn’t want to do, but urging him to move forward on an issue we have agreement on.”

African-American leaders say it makes sense to pressure the president on jobs because the unemployment rate for blacks has jumped to 15.7 percent, from 8.9 percent when the recession started 23 months ago. That compares with 13.1 percent for Hispanics and 9.5 percent for whites.”

A 21-year-old soldier refuses to go to Afghanistan because she has no one to take care of her infant child.

Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, is confined at Hunter Army Field in Savannah, GA while commanders investigate the situation.

The father of Hutchinson’s 10-month-old son is not in their lives.

From Yahoo.com

“Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, 21, claims she had no choice but to refuse deployment orders because the only family she had to care for her 10-month-old son — her mother — was overwhelmed by the task, already caring for three other relatives with health problems.

Her civilian attorney, Rai Sue Sussman, said Monday that one of Hutchinson’s superiors told her she would have to deploy anyway and place the child in foster care.

“For her it was like, ‘I couldn’t abandon my child,’” Sussman said. “She was really afraid of what would happen, that if she showed up they would send her to Afghanistan anyway and put her son with child protective services.”

Hutchinson, who is from Oakland, Calif., remained confined Monday to the boundaries of Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, 10 days after military police arrested her for skipping her unit’s flight. No charges have been filed, but a spokesman for the Army post said commanders were investigating.

Kevin Larson, a spokesman for Hunter Army Airfield, said he didn’t know what Hutchinson was told by her commanders, but he said the Army would not deploy a single parent who had nobody to care for his or her child.

“I don’t know what transpired and the investigation will get to the bottom of it,” Larson said. “If she would have come to the deployment terminal with her child, there’s no question she would not have been deployed.”

Kevin White, a former security guard for Jay-Z, Diddy and Mariah Carey was killed by New York City Police during a brawl at a club.

From NY Post

“Then, hearing a shot from inside the club, cops rushed in to find a second bouncer, Kevin White, 43, holding a gun. “[They] screamed at him several times to drop the weapon, and he did not,” Stokes said.

White, whose rap sheet included five arrests for weapon possession, was fatally shot in the neck.

A police source said surveillance video showed he was shooting at the cops.

But relatives, who said he’d worked with rap and pop royalty, insisted he had just wrested the gun away from a patron.

His brother, Louis, a nurse, said, “My brother would never carry a gun”

The mothers of Lil Wayne, T-Pain and Ne-Yo are teaming up to start their own talk show to help uplift women and single mothers.

From Bossip.com

“The women are in the process of producing a pilot to present to major television networks. The three women are set to talk about an array of topics from disorderly conduct in the hip hop world, to domestic issues and hot topics.

Since the women know first hand how to raise children in a difficult environment they will be relatable to many women and single mothers in the world. While their images could use some work, this show may be a pretty good concept.”