The feds are hoping to quell tensions in Oakland, Calif., that have been boiling since the New Year’s Day shooting death of a handcuffed Black man by a White transit cop. U.S. Justice Department officials told members of the California Senate and the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus that they will meet with Black leaders, local law enforcement officials and members of the community in an attempt to cool the outrage and curtail future violence. The Justice Department’s Community Relations Service was provided for in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The officials will report on their findings and provide follow-up as needed.

Muslims are angry over headscarf ruling. Muslim rights activists are outraged at an Atlanta judge who ordered a 40-year-old Muslim woman to serve 10 days in jail for refusing to remove her headscarf before attending a hearing in his courtroom. Although she was released before serving a full day, critics want the Justice Department to look into what sparked the incident in the Atlanta suburb of Douglasville, Ga., a community of about 20,000 people.  We can deal with whether people knew about policies or whether they handled things correctly, but the bottom line is, can a Muslim woman walk into this courtroom wearing religious attire?” said Council on American-Islamic Relations spokesman Ibrahim. City court workers will now be required to undergo sensitivity training and post courtroom dress code signs.

N.Y. Pastor celebrates his 106^th birthday. The Rev. Charles Leonard, pastor of Mount Zion Church of Christ, celebrated his 106^th birthday on Christmas Day. He said that his friends, family and God has been the source of his longevity. “My generation coming up, young people, they were brought up in church,” said Leonard, who was born in Philadelphia in 1902. “This is the way it was with me. The secret is God. He keeps me alert. He keeps me active.” Leonard’s grandmother lived to be 108. He was reared in segregated North Carolina and Georgia. In 1933, he moved to New York, where he landed a job as a high-steam engineer for the Washington Heights Laundry Co. Leonard began preaching more than 50 years ago. “He travels by himself, he goes out on his own, he’s totally independent,” said his 48-year-old great-niece, Brenda Greene. “If he doesn’t hear from us, he calls and checks on us. Sometimes he’s more alert than we are.”

Rev. Jackson makes Christmas jail visit. On Christmas Day, the Rev. Jesse Jackson did what he has done for the past two decades – visited inmates in Chicago’s Cook County Jail. During his visit, he described U.S. corrections facilities as “Jail hotels” and said that people must stop thinking of prison as “free meals, medicine, heat and recreational activities.” It’s time to vote and get tested for HIV, he told the 500 inmates who gathered to hear him speak. Jackson, whose Rainbow PUSH Coalition turned 43 on Christmas, urged his audience to “make better choices.”

Bush asks Justice Dept. to investigate voter fraud claims. President Bush has asked the Department of Justice to look into a request by House Republican Leader John Boehner that would force Ohio’s secretary of State to provide local election officials with information on 200,000 newly registered voters with mismatched registration data, The Washington Post reports. The move would make it possible for Republicans to issue challenges to many of these voters, perhaps forcing them to cast provisional ballots. Acceptance of provisional ballots are at the discretion of voting officials. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Ohio Republicans’ attempts to force Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to provide the information on mismatches to local officials. But Boehner announced Monday that he had sent a letter earlier this week to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, asking him to take action, and had not gotten a response. He then turned to the White House for help – warning in a letter to President Bush that if no action was taken, “there is a significant risk, if not a certainty, that unlawful votes will be cast and counted.”  Jon Greenbaum of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told the Post: “This is taking the politicization of this to a new level.” However, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino characterized the move as “a routine step that would be taken for any such request from a congressional leader.”