UPDATE: Alleged shooter is alive in stable condition

A major in the U.S Army is dead after he allegedly killed at least 11 soldiers, one contractor and wounded 31 others.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, an army psychiatrist was shot dead by military police at the Ft. Hood Army Base in Texas. Ft. Hood is the largest base in the country.

Two other suspects are in federal custody. Their roles in the murder plot have not been released.

President Obama comments on shootings:

 Texas, which leads the nation in freeing inmates wrongly convicted for crimes, has instituted a new law to turn their misfortune into fortunes. Under the plan, emancipated prisoners will get $80,000 for each year they were incarcerated. In addition, they will receive lifetime annuity payment worth between $40,000 and $50,000 per year. By far, it is the most lucrative compensation package for inmates, according to The Associated Press. Thomas McGowan – who described the 23 years he spent behind bars on a bogus rape-robbery conviction a combination of “a nightmare,” “hell” and “slavery – said he is both nervous and excited. “It’s something I never had, this amount of money,” he told AP. “I didn’t have any money — period.” McGowan and others will also receive a variety of social services, such as job training, tuition credits and access to medical and dental treatment, AP reports.

DNA Frees Black Alleged Rapist After 23 Years A Black Texas man sent to prison 23 years ago for rape, is now a free man, cleared by DNA evidence proving that he never sexually assaulted anybody. Jerry Evans is the 20^th Dallas man to be freed, thanks to science not available at the time of his conviction. “I knew it would come one day. I just didn’t know it was gonna be 23 years,” Evans said. Judge Thompson told Evans, who began his sentenced in March 1986, “On behalf of the citizens of the State of Texas, the court would like to apologize for the wrong that’s been done to you in this case.” Public Defender Michelle Moore attributes her client’s conviction to overzealous, perhaps even corrupt, police work. “The more that we know about the case, the more convinced I am that what was in the police report, the timeframe, is not what really happened,” she said. Dallas Co. District Attorney Craig Watkins, who has seen his share of overturned sentences, said this is a chance for the state to reexamine the process for sending people to prison. “This is an opportunity, with the 20th exoneration, for us to really, really, take a close look at what we’ve been doing for years and correct the mistakes of the past,” he said. Meanwhile, DNA evidence also confirmed that Vincent Draper, another man convicted and sentenced in Dallas County, did indeed sexually assault an 8-year-old child 24 years ago. Judge Carter Thompson ruled that he must remain in prison.

Obama Proposes Money for Black Farmers

President Obama wants the federal government to provide $1.25 billion to cover claims by Black farmers who say they were systematically denied loans and other aid that was traditionally afforded White farmers. Read more.

African-European Named ‘Playmate of the Year’
For the first time in the half-century history of Playboy, the iconic gentlemen’s magazine has named an African-European as its “Playmate of the Year.” At a high-profile bash in Las Vegas, Playboy introduced Swedish-African beauty Ida Ljungqvist as the 50th Playmate of the Year. The 27-year-old former Miss March 2008 is the daughter of a Tanzanian mother and Swedish father. “She traveled the globe while her father worked for UNICEF. She is fluent in three languages – English, Swedish and Swahili,” said Hugh Hefner, the magazine’s founder. Ljungqvist said she came close to turning down the offer to pose for the magazine. “This was never a dream for me; I didn’t even know what Playboy was and I was scared at first,” she said. “I have a lot of over-achiever in me, so I am self-critical. But after I met Hef and saw how beautifully they portray women, I was really excited. This experience has inspired me to broaden my horizons, to take chances in life.” Ljungqvist, 5-foot-4, was working at a Bebe clothing store on Rodeo Drive, when she was discovered by Playboy. Ljungqvist quit her job at Bebe a month later and appeared on the cover of Playboy in March of last year. She said her parents were hardly proud when she told them she was going to bare all for Playboy. “My mother didn’t speak to me for a month,” she said.

Hatemongers Deface Texas Church Van

The pastor of a Dallas-area church discovered the new van he had received as a gift had been turned into a collage of racist, sexually graphic messages. Cedric Malone, 37, pastor of a Grand Prairie church said that his son saw the hateful language while walking to school Tuesday morning. Read the rest.

A Dallas officer stopped NFL player Ryan Moats and his wife as they were rushing to the hospital to be at the bedside of Moats’ dying mother-in-law, reports The Dallas Morning News. While the couple sped to the Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano, they ran a red light, prompting Officer Robert Powell to pull them over (See the footage). When Powell caught up with the family’s SUV outside of the hospital emergency room, they pleaded with the officer to let them go see Jonetta Collinsworth before she passed away from breast cancer. Full story.

Washington passes stimulus bill. The long-debated economic stimulus bill has passed. Legislators in Washington agreed Friday on a plan of well over $700 billion dollars that is designed to turn around the American financial crisis. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill into law next week. The passage of the plan marks Obama’s biggest successful initiative since he took office last month. The president went round after round with Republicans who argued that earlier versions of the proposal involved unnecessary spending that would only make things worse. Obama consistently argued that action was necessary sooner than later.Bill would reform police procedures. A man whose rape conviction was reversed years after he died in prison is having an impact from beyond the grave. Tim Cole was recently exonerated of sexual assault by a Texas judge for the first time in the state’s history that a conviction was reversed post mortem. Now Texas Sen. Rodney Ellis has introduced reform bills that will keep cops from wrongly influencing witnesses in identifying suspects. Cole rejected plea deals he was offered to serve a lighter sentence in the 1985 rape of a college student. He said he wouldn’t plead guilty to a crime he didn’t commit. The woman identified him as her attacker, but a different man later confessed to the crime and was proven guilty through DNA tests. But Cole died of an asthma attack while picking cotton on a prison farm before the evidence surfaced.

A death row inmate convicted of killing and pulling out the hearts of his ex-wife and small children in 2004 has pulled out and eaten his own eye. Authorities, who say Andre Thomas had already gouged out his other eye before his 2004 trial, was treated after the recent incident at East Texas Medical Center in Tyler, Texas. The 25-year-old has been moved to a psych unit. “He will finally be able to receive the mental health care that we had wanted and begged for from day one,” his trial lawyer Bobbie Peterson-Cate tells the Sherman Herald Democrat. “He is insane and mentally ill. It is exactly the same reason he pulled out the last one.” Thomas had been convicted of stabbing his 13-month-old daughter to death in a triple murder that also left his wife and 4-year-old son slain. He later turned himself in, telling authorities he had stabbed himself, too, put the victims’ hearts in his pocket and later thrown them into the trash. Thomas was found bleeding from the face in his cell last month when prison staff discovered his second eye missing.

Attorneys for a 23-year-old east Texas man, whom police shot in his own driveway after mistaking his SUV for a stolen car, say he was a victim of racial profiling. Robert Tolan, and his cousin, Anthony Cooper, were returning from a fast-food shop when police officers pulled up to Tolan’s home and ordered both men to the ground. Witnesses say that the two young men complied immediately and were lying on the sidewalk near his parents’ front door when Tolan looked up and protested the way the officers were treating his mother. She had come outside to see what all the commotion was about, United Press International reports. That’s when Bellaire Police Sgt. Jeff Cotton shot him, UPI reports. Police also fired at least two other shots, but they missed, witnesses said. Tolan, a former Bellaire High School baseball star and the son of former major league player Bobby Tolan, was taken to Ben Taub General Hospital. Officials said he is expected to recover fully, UPI reports. “We want the district attorney to charge this officer,” said Geoffrey Berg. “There can’t be an explanation that can justify what the police did to this kid.” David Berg, another family attorney, said race prompted the shooting. Tolan is Black, and Cotton is White. “There’s no doubt in my mind that if these had been two White kids, they never would have been shot,” Berg said. Cotton, who has been on the force for 10 years, is on administrative leave pending an investigation by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, Bellaire Assistant City Manager Diane K. White told UPI. Bobby Tolan said his son was pursuing a professional baseball career and has never had any trouble with Bellaire Police.

Hate crimes charges could be next for Texas suspects. Two 27-year-old Texans could have hate-crime charges added to first-degree murder in the truck-dragging death of a Black man. A grand jury this week indicted Shannon Finley and Charles Ryan Crostley in the September killing of Brandon McClelland, 24, after they allegedly ran McClelland over and drug him beneath a pickup following a night of drinking shared between the three. Cops say McClelland’s body was partially dismembered and that Finley tried to wash blood from the truck’s under-carriage. He faces evidence-tampering charges, while a prosecutor decides whether to prosecute both men for hate crimes. Crostley is also charged with retaliating against a witness. Both men are jailed pending court dates and have reportedly been unable to post bond. A similar Texas crime occurred during the 1990s when White men used a pick-up to drag James Byrd’s body behind it, killing him.

Hundreds protest “lynching” in Texas.  Protesters upset about the dragging death of another Black in east Texas rallied outside the Lamar County courthouse Monday to take a stand on a ruling they considered unjust. In September, a 24-year-old Black man in racially tense Paris, Texas, was hit by a pickup truck driven by two White men and dragged until his body tore to pieces. The gruesome death of Brandon McClelland triggered grim flashbacks of the notorious James Byrd case a couple years ago. Read the rest here.