The alarming news earlier this week that as many as 90,000 people could die from the swine flu this year has even more ominous implications for Blacks and Hispanics, a new Chicago study shows. By looking at 1,500 confirmed cases of the H1N1 virus reported to the Chicago Department of Public Health from late April through late July, researchers found that Blacks and Hispanics were four times more likely than their White counterparts to wind up in the hospital. But the wide disparity likely has very little to do with genetics, experts say. The fact that Blacks and Hispanics suffer disproportionately from diabetes, asthma is more likely the reason for the gap, they say. “We don’t have anything definitive to say one group is more affected than another,” said Dr. Daniel Jernigan of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study relied on a relatively small sample group. Of the 1,500 lab-confirmed swine flu cases, Blacks were hospitalized at a rate of nine per 100,000, Hispanics at eight per 100,000. For Whites, the rate was two per 100,000, according to the study. The Chicago study isn’t the first time race has been mentioned in context with the swine fle. In early August, health officials in Boston found that three-fourths of residents hospitalized with the virus were Black or Hispanic. “It’s very disturbing,” Barbara Ferrer of the Boston Public Health Commission, told The Associated Press. “But intuitively it’s understandable, because we have tremendous inequities in most areas of health,” said Ferrer, the agency’s executive director.

He was delivered prematurely after his mother was pinned under a bus

A 3-pound infant who was delivered a month early after his mother was pinned under a bus that was struck by a drunk-driving senior nearly two weeks ago has died. Read more about the baby’s struggle at BET.com/News.

An Atlanta jury took less than two hours to determine that Chiman Rai was guilty.

A 69-year-old Asian-Indian businessman who hired a hitman to kill his son’s Black wife will spend the rest of his life in prison. Prosecutors had sought the death penalty for Chiman Rai, arguing that he was so irate about his son, Ricky, marrying an African American that he paid two contract killers $10,000 to waste her. Chiman allegedly believed the marriage was an embarrassment to the family. Ricky returned to their apartment in April 2000 to find his 22-year-old wife strangled with more than a dozen stab wounds. Their daughter was not harmed. It took jurors in an Atlanta courtroom less than two hours to return a verdict of guilty for felony murder, burglary. Chiman Rai moved his family from India to Mississippi in 1970 and taught mathematics at Alcorn State University for about 10 years before opening a supermarket and a hotel in Kentucky. “This particular murder was outrageous, wantonly vile,” prosecutor Sheila Ross told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.”

Former heavyweight champ wanted to take out hit after bodyguard’s death, witness says.

The former world heavyweight champ once offered $50,000 for the deaths of two men suspected of killing his bodyguard, a witness claims. Dwayne “Thor” Meyers, who formerly ran with the Cash Money Brothers street gang in Brooklyn, says Mike Tyson dangled the ransom for the deaths of two other gang members. Meyers made the allegation last week while testifying at the trial of a Cash Money member allegedly connected with two unrelated deaths. “We got word Mike Tyson and (another man) had both contributed $50,000 apiece for the murders of Cash Money Brothers,” Meyers testified. Meyers was indicted on drug and murder charges in 2005. Darryl “Homicide” Baum, Tyson’s bodyguard and friend was slain in 2000, just months after allegedly firing nine shots at rapper 50 Cent.