Cleveland Brown wide receiver Donte Stallworth was driving drunk when he struck a pedestrian with his car and killed him last weekend, according to a Miami television station and newspaper. Both WSVN-TV and the Miami Herald cited unnamed sources who say that Stallworth’s blood-alcohol level was .12 – .04 over the legal limit. Read the rest.

Obama names financial advisers. Flanked in Chicago by financial experts who will shape his economic recovery plan, President-elect Barack Obama showed he is ready to attack the financial crisis now rather than wait until he officially takes office on Jan. 20. “It is my hope that the new Congress will begin work on an aggressive economic recovery plan when they convene in early January, so that our administration can hit the ground running,” Obama said at a news conference in his hometown. Read the rest here.

A Delaware man admits to voter fraud. A 34-year-old Chester man arrested last month for alleged voter-registration fraud admitted his guilt yesterday in Delaware County Court. Jemar Barksdale, an ex-employee of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), was accused of turning in voter-registration cards for 18 already-registered voters, altering information, and forging signatures. He pleaded guilty to charges of forgery, identity theft, and tampering with public records, Deputy District Attorney Greg Hurchalla told PhillyNews.com. Under the terms of the plea agreement approved in Delaware County Court, Barksdale, who spent about a week in prison on the charges, must serve six to 23 months on house arrest, undergo a psychiatric evaluation, perform eight hours of community service, and pay $574 in restitution to ACORN, Hurchalla said.

Nigerian man who married 86 wives is arrested. A Nigerian man, who has 86 wives, was arrested for refusing to divorce all but four. Mohammadu Bello Abubakar, a Muslim preacher, was charged by the country’s Niger state (a government that operates under Muslim law) with “insulting religious creed” and “unlawful marriages.” But Abubakar, who has 170 children with his wives, insists that the Koran does not state any punishment for having over four wives.  According to Muslim scholars, up to four wives are allowed providing that they are all treated equally. He is being held without bail until a hearing on October 6. Local authorities previously told Abubakar he had to divorce 82 of his wives by the end of August, or he will face eviction from his home. But last week he won an injunction that stopped them for evicting him for that reason. They will hold a hearing Thursday to determine whether or not that order was a violation of his human rights.

Share your PEACE with the world. Ever wished for a chance to spread peace around the world? Well, the United Nations is giving anyone with a cell phone that opportunity. In honor of the International Day of Peace on September 21, cell phone users in the United States are being encouraged to create a 160-character message on peace beginning with the word “PEACE,” according to a press release. Peace wishers should text their messages to the number 69866. After receiving them, the United Nations Department of Public Information will collect the messages and post them on the Web site. They will also give the messages to leaders from around the world when they come to the General Assembly meeting on September 23. The International Day of Peace was established in 1981 and every year the U.N. looks forward to this “day of ceasefire and non-violence.” People all over the world, including in war torn areas like Sudan and Afghanistan, will participate in this year’s celebrations.

A member of the famed Alvin Ailey dance troupe, he has a Muslim name.

Abdur-Rahim Jackson, a performer with the famed Alvin Ailey dance troupe, says that security officers at the Israeli airport forced him to dance to prove who he was before allowing him into the country. Israel’s security forces, which are notoriously strict, reacted to his Muslim name, Jackson told The Associated Press. He described the situation as degrading and embarrassing. The officers even suggested he change his name, he said. “To be greeted like this because of my name, it took me back a little bit,” said Jackson, who is Black. The Harlem-based Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, which Congress designated a “vital American cultural ambassador to the world” earlier this year, made Israel its first stop on a six-nation tour. The tour is part of the troupe’s 50^th anniversary celebration. Jackson said that when his plane arrived at Israel’s international airport he was singled out and taken to a room where he was questioned about the origins of his name. When he told them he was a performer, they told him to dance. “I stood up. I asked what type of dance?” he told AP. “He said, “Just do anything.’ I just moved around.” Shortly afterward, a woman officer made him do a jig all over again. “The only time I’m really expected to dance is when I’m performing,” he said. Jackson got his name from his father, a convert to Islam, he told AP. He is not religious and, in fact, is engaged to a Jewish woman, who is in the troupe and has relatives in Israel. He said that Israeli officials and U.S. dignitaries have apologized profusely since the unfortunate episode, and he has gotten over it. “We’re only here to bring positive light to our lives and the people here,” he said, calling the group’s multicultural appeal “an amazing bind you can’t touch, you can only experience.”

A bloody man jumped from a speeding car and into his truck.
An Atlanta man was driving his truck down the freeway when a 25-year-old kidnapping victim, bound with extension cords, leapt from speeding vehicle in front of him and bumped along the road in front of him like a bloodied rag doll before jumping up and hopping in the back of his truck. “It was certainly a very harrowing experience,” Bruce Hembree, 37, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I was terrified. He was obviously in great duress because he came out of a car at highway speed, about 70 miles per hour.” Humbree said that the incident, along a stretch of I-285 near Martin Luther King Drive, brought traffic to a halt. “He was rolling through the middle of my lane, looking like he was a rag doll,” Hembree said. “He was leaving bits and pieces of clothing and skin as he rolled.” He said he slowed down to keep from hitting the victim, Deshon Blackmon, whose hands were tied with the cord. Blackmon then jumped up and into his truck and started banging on the window “like it was a Humvee and we were in a firefight or something,” he told the Journal-Constitution. “Go! Go! Go!” Blackmon screamed, saying that the kidnappers had his ID and were going to kill his mother. But Hembree remained still, afraid of what they might do. “And they were all looking at that car,” he said. But the car drove off, and Hembree said he drove to the next exit and pulled over so Blackmon, who was bleeding profusely, could call 911, the newspaper reported. Two of the victim’s friends told police that the kidnapping was drug-related.

More legal problems find Gary Coleman.  Police are investigating a weekend incident during which former “Diff’rent Strokes” TV star Gary Coleman allegedly struck a man with his truck after an argument. Find out more at BET.com/News.

Rappers make $100,000 Xbox wager. The Game is a better Madden football player than Bow Wow – and he’ll have $100,000 for charity to prove it. Bow Wow tells TMZ.com that he lost the Xbox video competition to Game. The pair had recently made a friendly wager, with the loser’s cash going to those in greater need.

Governor To Decide Kilpatrick’s Fate

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s poltical future now rests in the hands of the governor.  Gov. Jennifer Granholm said on Tuesday that she may use a provision in the state constitution to have him removed from office for misconduct, The Associated Press reports. Read more about the city counci’s appeal to the governor and the charges Kilpatrick faces at BET.com/News.

Skin head gets 25 years for murdering a Black man. The justice system is finally bringing some closure to the nearly 20-year-old murder of a Black man in Philly. Thomas Gibison, a White supremacist, was convicted of conspiracy in the 1989 shooting death of Aaron Wood and was sentenced to up to 25 years in prison, The Associated Press reports. A friend of Gibison testified during the trial that they went to North Philadelphia to find a Black man to kill so they could earn a White supremacist tattoo. Gibison already is serving time in prison for unrelated weapons offenses charges.

March on Washington anniversary remembered. Forty-five years ago, thousands descended on D.C., and changed America forever. See the photos 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.”

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College presidents: Let young people drink earlier

The presidents of many of America’s most prominent universities say it’s time to lower the drinking age a few years. The campus honchos, who hail from such institutions as Colgate, Duke, Dartmouth, Kenyon, Morehouse, Ohio State, Syracuse and Tufts, say that banning young people from drinking only encourages them to binge drink on campus, which the contend is much more dangerous. “This is a law that is routinely evaded,” said John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont. “It is a law that the people at whom it is directed believe is unjust and unfair and discriminatory.” But not everybody agrees. The activist anti-drinking group Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) says that it only stands to reason that dropping the drinking from 21 to 18, as the 100 college presidents are pushing for, would only mean more automobile deaths. “It’s very clear the 21-year-old drinking age will not be enforced at those campuses,” said Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of MADD. The Associated Press cites statistics showing that more than 40 percent of college students reported at least one symptom of alcohol abuse or dependence. “One study has estimated more than 500,000 full-time students at four-year colleges suffer injuries each year related in some way to drinking, and about 1,700 die in such accidents,” the news agency reports.

Georgia man is jailed for beating dog

DeKalb County Police in Georgia say that Lawrence Peterson is one mean sucker. He’s so mean, they say, that he grabbed a broken table leg and pummeled his roommate’s puppy to a pulp … because it wouldn’t stop barking. In fact, the 58-year-old Peterson beat the 6-week-old pit bull so badly that the dog had to be put to sleep. As of Monday afternoon, Peterson was in the DeKalb County Jail. He was charged with one count of animal cruelty, definitely the wrong crime to commit in Michael Vick country.