NBA player is latest athlete to face housing market struggle

Denver Nuggets guard Allen Iverson is offering a $1 million break on his Villanova, Pa., home. The 14,000-square-footer has six bedrooms, his-and-hers marble bathrooms, a 12-seat movie theater, pool house and four-acres of land. But after at least a year on the market, Iverson and his wife, who bought the house together in 2003, have generated little interest. The price is down to $3.9 million. So get out those checkbooks.

Coach says Ed Johnson won’t play this week, following incident

Super Bowl-winning coach Tony Dungy (above) says the Colts’ Ed Johnson won’t suit-up this week following Johnson’s drug arrest early Wednesday. Cops say Johnson was pulled over for speeding in Indianapolis about 1 a.m. and was later charged with marijuana possession. The lineman was released on bond from the Hamilton County Jail. Team management says the incident will be further investigated to determine if any action is taken. The NFL says the matter will also be reviewed under the league’s substance abuse policy.

Puncher hit with claim of contract violation. At this rate, Floyd “Money” Mayweather could wind up known as Floyd “Need A Loan” Mayweather. First, he had $7 million in jewels stolen from his house and now he’s the target of a lawsuit. A Florida real estate dealer says the boxing standout wiggled away from an $8 million property purchase after signing a contract stating that his company put $1.7 million into escrow toward the buy. But the developer claims Mayweather never properly established the account before trying to move into the spot. Mayweather’s being sued for damages and costs associated with the seller’s having taken the property off the market.

He said he didn’t realize his comments about Barack’s “big lips” were offensive.
College Republican chief is forced to resign. The head of the Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans gave up his seat this week after getting slammed for a racist comment he posted online about Sen. Barack Obama. In late July, Adam LaDuca, 21, a senior at Kutztown University, wrote on his Facebook page that Obama has “a pair of lips so large he could float half of Cuba to the shores of Miami (and probably would.)” But it’s not the first time LaDuca has fired off barbs at prominent Black leaders. Among his other gems, he called Martin Luther King Jr. a “pariah” and a “fraud” and that “Man, if sayin’ someone has large lips is a racial slur, then we’re ALL in trouble.” But his slurs were even too much for his fellow College Republicans, who asked him to step down. The remarks blew up after they were publicized in the Pennsylvania Progressive, a blog written by a Democratic committeeman from Berks County. “The comments were completely uncalled for and very offensive,” said Anthony Pugliese, 22, a senior at West Chester University and chairman of the College Republicans, which has more than 50 chapters statewide. “The P-A College Republicans do not accept or tolerate racism in any way.” DaLuca said he wishes he hadn’t published the big-lips comment. “In hindsight, when you read it a second time, it’s like, ‘oops,’” he said. “It was just a dumb move on my part to make a statement like that public.”

The Pennsylvania youths allegedly hurled racial slurs at the Mexican immigrant.

Three teens accused of beating to death a Mexican immigrant in a tiny Pennsylvania coal-mining town last month must stand trial, a judge ruled Monday. The judge agreed with prosecutors that there is enough evidence to try 17-year-old Colin Walsh and 16-year-old Brandon Piekarsky on charges of third-degree murder and ethnic intimidation; Derrick Donchak, 18, will stand trial for ethnic intimidation, aggravated assault and other charges. All three young men are football players at Shenandoah Valley High School, which is about an hour and a half northwest of Philadelphia. According to witnesses, the defendants yelled, “Dirty Mexican!” and other racial epithets as they kicked and bludgeoned Luis Ramirez, even as he lay motionless in the street. Ramirez, who fathered a child with a local White teen, was frequently called racial slurs by Whites in the community, some youths testified at an earlier pretrial hearing. Seventeen-year-old Ben Lawson testified that “Ramirez was fighting with one of the suspects, Derrick M. Donchak, when another, Colin Walsh, sucker-punched the victim,” The Associated Press reported. “A third suspect, Brandon Piekarsky, then kicked Ramirez in the head while he lay motionless in the street.” Lawyers for Piekarsky and Walsh have said there is no evidence to support the homicide charges.

Authorities in the tiny coal community say race was not a factor, despite the racist slurs.
A retired police officer said that after a gang of Whites beat a Mexican immigrant to death last weekend in a Pennsylvania coal town she heard one of the assaulters yell for him to tell his friends to get out of town “or you’re going to be laying next to him.” Eileen Burke, the former Philly cop who now lives on the street in Shenandoah, Pa., where the 25-year-old Luis Ramirez was pummeled. Notwithstanding the barrage of racial slurs that witnesses say the assailants hurled at Ramirez, authorities in Shenandoah, a 5,000-resident town about 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia, say that the beating was not racially motivated, The Associated Press reports. Shenandoah, which has seen a growing number of Hispanic residents pour in to work the factories and farms, has also witnessed a rise in conflict between Whites and Latinos. Ramirez’s fiancée, 24-year-old Crystal Dillman, who is White and was raised in Shenandoah, said locals often called her boyfriend racist names, like “dirty Mexican,” and told him to go back to Mexico, AP reports. “People in this town are very racist toward Hispanic people. They think right away if you’re Mexican, you’re illegal, and you’re no good,” said Dillman. She has two young children by Ramirez and a 3-year-old who thought of him as her father, according to AP.