The Rev. Jesse Jackson – no stranger to negotiating the releases of hostages from hostile lands – is proposing to go to Iran to try and win the freedom of a jailed American journalist. Roxana Saberi, a 31-year-old South Dakotan who has been living in Iran since 2003, was accused of spying and sentenced to eight years in prison. “I would be anxious to travel with a delegation to Iran, if we are permitted, and make an appeal for her freedom,” the longtime civil rights activist said at a peace conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “Whenever we’ve brought people out of captivity, whether in Syria, Cuba, Iraq, or Yugoslavia, or Liberia, it’s always opened a diplomatic door to reduce tensions.” President Obama has denounced the Iranian courts for the one-day, closed-door trial that led to the sentence. Saberi’s attorney has promised to appeal the verdict. Jackson has a history of success in winning the release of American hostages. In 1984, he secured the release of a Navy pilot held in Syria; in 1991, he helped get 500 “international guests” freed from custody in Iraq; and in 1999, he convinced Yugoslavia to release three U.S. soldiers held there during the Kosovo conflict. Saberi has freelanced for several news organizations, including National Public Radio; she was also writing a book about Iranian culture.

Government doctors fight staph infection.

Just as NBA Star Grant Hill rallies others who have experience with the flesh-eating staph infection known as MRSA, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched a campaign to make parents more aware of the dangerous and potentially deadly effects of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The government campaign hopes to get parents to identify, prevent and combat the infection. Often mistaken for a spider bite as the symptoms, MRSA also causes painful, red, swollen areas on skin that sometimes ooz puss, experts say. MRSA infection begins as a bump or infected area on the skin, is warm to touch and maybe accompanied by fever. It is contracted when someone touches an infected area or shares a personal item with someone who is already infected. Athletes are more prone to this infection, but it is also common at hospitals. To prevent the disease, the CDC advises frequent hand-washing, no sharing of personal items such as towels and to keep any wound or cut clean and bandaged. Early detection is always advisable as the infection at a later stage becomes difficult to treat. As part of the awareness campaign, the CDC hopes to develop Web sites, brochures, fact sheets, posters, radio and print public services, Web banners and mom-blogging sites. To find out more about Hill’s personal experience with the deadly staff infection and the Stop MRSA Now campaign go to BET.com/Body & Soul.  

Study: Fast-Food Ads Target Blacks.   A higher exposure to fast-food ads and marketing of other fatty foods is in part to blame for why overweight and obesity rates are such a bigger problem for African Americans (68.9 percent) than for Whites (59.5 percent), says the numbers crunched by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Read more at BET.com’s Body & Soul.
 

Blacks with lung disease have twice the cancer risk. Blacks with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – including chronic bronchitis and some types of serious chronic asthma – have twice the risk of developing lung cancer than Whites with the condition, according to a study published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, Reuters reports. For the study, lead researcher Carol Etzel of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and colleagues developed a risk assessment model to help predict Blacks’ risk for lung cancer. Researchers analyzed data on 491 Blacks with lung cancer and 497 Blacks without the disease and compared those numbers against models that measured the disease in Whites. Researchers said the model will help doctors better predict lung cancer risk. The new model found that Black men with a history of chronic lung disease, often called COPD, had a more than a six-fold increased risk of developing lung cancer, which is about the same risk for those who smoke. According to Reuters, both Black and White smokers have a risk of lung cancer six times higher than that of non-smokers. Smoking is the leading cause of COPD, but pollution, and other environmental factors also play a role, Reuters reports. “What we hope is that a doctor can use these models to encourage their patients to take steps to prevent lung cancer,” Dr. Ezel says. “Even if they are never smokers, they can be at risk.”

Nearly one in three African Americans have yet to get registered
While Sen. Barack Obama’s historic campaign has injected a powerful dose of enthusiasm into America – particularly Black America – there are still 8 million African Americans that have not yet been moved to register. Rick Wade, who handles African-American voter outreach for the Obama campaign says that some 32 percent of the Black voting-age population is currently out of the loop. “Our principle focus has been a 50-state voter registration initiative,” Wade told NNPA. “I think we all appreciate that if we increase the number of African American registered voters and then increase turnout and get people to the polls on Nov. 4, then Sen. Obama will be the next president of the United States.” Four years ago, more than one in 10 voters was Black, he said. “If the percentage of African Americans was a mere two-and-a-half percent higher, 13.5 percent, Democrats would currently be running for re-election at this time,” he said. “For example in the state of Ohio in 2004, we lost by two percent or 100,000 votes. There were 270,000 unregistered African Americans. I use that as an illustration to show how the African American vote can make the difference in a state and across this country. So the African American vote can absolutely make the difference in this election.” Here’s how to get registered: Go to to BET.com’s Decision ‘08 and click the “registration” link.

Ruben Studdard owes government $200,000

“American Idol” winner Ruben Studdard must pay back nearly $200,000 in federal and local taxes. The singer’s properties have been hit with liens, according to court records after Studdard reportedly failed to make payments dating to 2003. It was in ‘03 when Studdard won $1 million on the hit reality talent competition. He later sued a former manager for allegedly mishandling funds. Studdard was awarded a settlement.

Filmmaker finds funds in Dubai

Filmmaker Spike Lee says the Middle Eastern territory of Dubai is good for more than providing Michael Jackson refuge outside the region in November to scout financial resources. “There is a ton of money in Dubai, so I’ve gotta get on a plane. I gotta start making connections,” Lee tells Emirates Business. “I don’t want to be in a position where if I want to do a film and the Hollywood studios don’t want to make it, then it doesn’t get made. I gotta know that ‘no’ can’t be a final ‘no.’ I gotta go to other sources of finance.” Lee says credit for bankrolling movies in America is drying up. The director has been a pioneer among contemporary independent Black filmmakers since the late 1980s.

Barack Obama made history in more ways than one.   Besides being the first Black American to win the nomination of a major political party, the Illinois senator accepted the Democratic Party nomination in front of a cheering crowd of about 80, 0000 people. Get the details at BET.com/News.

Obama officially becomes the nation’s first African-American major-party nominee

For a countless number of Americans – particularly older African Americans and others tired of a social and political system grounded in racial inequality – Sen. Barack Obama’s historic ascension as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee Wednesday night ignited an emotional explosion. Read more here.

The neighbors say they were shocked by the discovery.
Historic D.C.-area church is defaced. Members of the First Baptist Church of Chesterbrook got the word last Sunday – the “N”-word, spray-painted in bold, block letters right next to the front door. “It was a very upsetting time,” Andre Johnson, a longtime member of the historic African-American church, told The Washington Post, adding that many of the congregants are concerned. “It was very disturbing to the membership” and “to me,” said James R. King, chairman of the board of deacons at the church, which traces its history to the Civil War era, when the neighborhood was known as Lincolnville. “That you would deface a house of worship . . . shocked us more than anything,” King said. It was the first racist incident he could recall in about 30 years – when somebody burned a cross on the front lawn of the edifice. The community has been very supportive, he said. “It’s a sick person who did that, [and] not an indication of what the community around us is like.”

White man files $6 million discrimination suit. Kevin Stevens, a 46-year-old air-conditioning maintenance worker, is suing the school board in Annapolis for $6 million, saying he’s been getting passed over for manager posts because he’s White. Stevens, who has been with the county school system for the past 28 years, says that he has been trying to move up for the past year and a half. “The hiring authority won’t allow me to advance,” Stevens told The Capital newspaper. “You work so hard, and you attain all these licenses and advanced education, and when no one will allow you to move, it’s very frustrating.” Stevens fixes heating and air-conditioning systems in county schools, but a year ago, he sought a post as night quality-control manager, according to his lawsuit. In that capacity, he would have been in charge of supervising night housekeeping crews in the schools. The Black man promoted instead worked under him for the past several years, says Stevens, noting that he has received high ratings on his evaluations and “has more letters of recommendation and more experience than the man who got the job,” the Capital reports. The supervisor of the operations division is also African American, which Stevens says is the reason he was not promoted.

Black weekly ceases printing amid money woes. After 16 years, The Bay View has bottled up the ink. From now on, according to founder Mary Ratcliff, the Oakland-based African-American weekly will be available online only. “This is not a goodbye to you, our beloved readers, though,” she promised her readers. “As the headline suggests, the Bay View’s not dead; we’ll see you on the Web! We’re pouring all our energy into improving our Web site, www.sfbayview.com, which has already recovered from a bad hacking enough to draw over a million hits a month.” She said that the printed version of the newspaper has been “a labor of love and the love,” but she and husband Willie Ratcliff were never able to make it profitable – or even sustainable. “Now we’ve had to face the reality that we’re flat out of funds or any source to tap.”

Exercise thwarts high blood pressure.

For people with high blood pressure, exercise can be the most important lifestyle change they can make, researchers say. Yet two-thirds of doctors don’t take the time to tell their patients with high blood pressure about the importance of exercise and physical activity, a new study finds. “Patients do follow physician recommendations to exercise when instructed to, and patients who follow exercise recommendations tend to have lower systolic blood pressures than those who do not,” lead researcher Dr. Josiah Halm, a hypertension specialist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, told HealthDay. The findings are published in the summer issue of Ethnicity & Disease. For the study, Halm’s team collected data on 17,474 people who participated in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Among these people, 4,686 reported having high blood pressure. The researchers found that only slightly more than one-third of the people with high blood pressure said their doctor had told them to increase physical activity as a way of bringing down their blood pressure. Yet, 71 percent of patients with high blood pressure saw a drop in their blood pressure when they increased their physical activity, which means that they listened when doctors told them to exercise more, according to the report. “Non-pharmacological methods, such as exercising, are important in improving blood pressure control on a population level as this study looked at the cross-section of the U.S. population,” Halm said.

Black Americans need more sun.

There is a growing body of scientific and medical research suggesting that concerns about skin cancer may have been exaggerated and that most Americans, especially African Americans, actually need greater exposure to sunshine and the valuable vitamin D it helps to produce, reports EURWeb. The most recent in a series of studies was released on Tuesday by the prestigious Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The researchers used data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to conclude that not getting enough of the so-called “sunshine vitamin” appears to increase the risk of an early death by as much as 26 percent. Johns Hopkins cardiologist Dr. Erin Michos said low levels of vitamin D appear to “confer an increased risk of dying from any cause.” For African Americans, Jean Mayer of the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston concluded in an earlier report: “Vitamin D insufficiency is more prevalent,” especially for Blacks living in the North. “Most young, healthy Blacks to not achieve optimal” levels of vitamin D from sunshine,” he says. That’s mostly because the natural pigment protection African Americans have against harmful ultra-violet rays reduces vitamin D absorption in North American environments, researchers say.  Studies show the sunshine vitamin offers a broad range of health benefits including boosting bone and muscle strength to offering protection against both cancer and diabetes. But Michos said more clinical studies were needed before that conclusion could be definitively made. Meanwhile, in 2007 a team from Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., found that the lower the levels of vitamin D in a woman’s body the greater is the risk of her developing breast cancer.

Is Sen. Barack Obama too skinny to be president?
Vital Signs: Is Sen. Barack Obama too skinny to be president? Find out who thinks so at Vital Signs.

Obama’s first stop stateside will be in Chicago to address journalists of color
 

Pamela On Poltics: Initially, both Obama and rival, Sen. John McCain, said they would not be attending the Unity journalism conference for Black, Asian, Hispanic and Native American professionals. What changed his mind? Read more at Pamela On Politics.

The toxic mix of loneliness, violence and death has drained many vets’ will to live

U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan – after a steady diet of loneliness and up-close violence – are committing suicide at an alarming rate. In 2007, according to Defense Department officials, 108 troops took their own lives. One in four of those deaths took place in Iraq, The Associated Press reported, citing the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The suicide figures could be the highest in history. “The overall toll was the highest in many years, and it was unclear when, if ever, it was previously that high,” AP reports. “Immediately available Army records go back only to 1990 and the figure then was lower — at 102 — for that year as well as 1991.” Still, the 108 deaths among active-duty soldiers and National Guard and Reserve troops were lower than previously feared, the wire service reports. In earlier reports, some 121 U.S. troops were believed to have committed suicide; many of those deaths, it was later learned, were not the result of suicide, the officials said. Violence escalated in Afghanistan during 2007, as did overall deaths in Iraq. The biggest disappoint for military officials is that the suicides climbed despite an increase in mental health initiatives designed to help troops deal with the stresses of war. They included suicide-prevention and other education programs, the hiring of more than 300 additional psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals and have so far hired 180 of them. They also have added more screening to measure the mental health of troops. “Since the beginning of the global war on terror, the Army has lost over 580 soldiers to suicide, an equivalent of an entire infantry battalion task force,” the Army said in a suicide-prevention guide to installations and units that was posted in mid-March on the site. “This ranks as the fourth leading manner of death for soldiers, exceeded only by hostile fire, accidents and illnesses,” it said. “Even more startling is that during this same period, 10 to 20 times as many soldiers have thought to harm themselves or attempted suicide.”