The head of the Michigan’s Macomb County Republican Party, which is in a key swing county in the upcoming presidential election, denied charges late Thursday that he had hatched a plot to block residents with foreclosed homes from voting in November. Read more about the alleged plot at BET.com/News.

The already shallow pool of Black teachers in Philadelphia schools is evaporating at an alarming rate. District officials, who understand that increasing the number of African Americans in the classroom is one – perhaps the only – surefire method of closing the achievement gap between Black and White students, are scrambling for solutions. When school began this year, The Philadelphia Daily News reports, the percentage of Black teachers in the city was the lowest it has been in decades. And some argue that the dearth of African American teachers has put the district in violation of an agreement it made with the federal Office of Civil Rights three decades ago to achieve a racially balanced teaching force, the News reports. In 1978, more than a third (36 percent) of the teachers were Black. Fast-forward to now, and the number has dropped to 29 percent. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the Black student body has remained 60 percent. While other school districts nationwide also have a paucity of Black teachers, Philly’s Black-teacher pool has shrunk by 739 over the past half-decade; the percentage of White teachers has grown from 62.5 percent to 65.4 percent over the same period. “Clearly, more must be done to recruit and retain African-American teachers,” said Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT), told the News. Reg Weaver, who heads the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teacher union, with about 3 million members, said that, “While race doesn’t determine anyone’s ability to master and teach a subject, research does show that teachers of color have higher performance expectations for minority kids, which in turn can impact student achievement.”

Racists terrorize a girl in Idaho. Federal investigators want to know what would motivate two grown men would go through lengths to terrorize a Black girl in the Idaho town of Post Falls. On Monday, 15-year-old Rai Franklin said she woke up to dogs barking outside her family home. They had been aroused by two White men who allegedly threw eggs at her parents’ car and left fliers in the neighborhood telling Black people that they didn’t belong in the neighborhood. Rai said that one of the men grabbed her, punched her in the face and fled while yelling racial slurs. Post Falls is apparently a short distance from Hayden Lake, the home of a compound where members of the Aryan Nations, a violent militant White supremacist organization, used to meet. FBI officials say that if the me are caught, they could face federal hate-crime charges.

Texas university isn’t cheering this student on. It doesn’t matter that Jamie Burns has let the campus off the hook, that her doctors have cleared her medically, and that her mom has said to let her daughter do what she was recruited for, officials at Southern Methodist University say that she won’t be cheerleading. Find out why at BET.com/News.

Smoking causes more cancers than once thought 

Infamous Klansman will rally troops in civil rights capital

Renowned ex-Klansman David Duke is uniting his troops in Memphis, the home of the National Civil Rights Museum. Duke, the Louisiana White supremacist politician who came a stone’s throw from landing in the U.S. Senate, has announced his Euro-International Conference to be held in the historic city on Nov. 8. But it is unclear exactly where the event will be held, according to Kevin Kane, an official with the convention and visitors bureau. At the convention, Duke will address the presidential election. “We will assemble to say clearly that neither Black radical, Barrack Obama, nor Mr. Amnesty, John McCain, truly represent the will of the American people,” says Duke, who left the Democratic Party several years ago to join the Republican ranks. Before his run for the Senate in 1990, Duke left the KKK – officially – and he formed the National Association for the Advancement of White People, NAAWP. He says he didn’t pick Memphis because it is the infamous site of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or the home of the National Civil Rights Museum, but because it is the most centrally located cities in the United States.

Police seek noose planter at Texas University. Police want to know who put a noose on the chair of the student body president at Abilene Christian University last week. When Daniel Paul Watkins, and African-American senior political science major, returned to his office on Wednesday, somebody had put the racially insensitive symbol there. University President Royce Money said the action is nothing short of a hate crime and campus cops are working to solve the case. Only about 13 percent of the student body at Abilene Christian, a campus of 4,700 students, is Black.

UCLA seems to have found away around a voter initiative that made it illegal to consider race and gender when deciding college admissions – but some believe the university’s policies are being manipulated in a way that cheats the voters of California . Twelve years ago, voters passed Proposition 209, which bars the state’s public universities from using race as a criterion in admissions. In the decade following the passage of the anti-affirmative action initiative, Black enrollment in the University of California system plummeted, and by 2006, only 103 of UCLA’s entering freshmen and 108 of its transfer students were African American – the shallowest level in 30 years. So UCLA got creative, adopting a “holistic” approach to admissions it says is much fairer. Under this plan, university officials began evaluating academic achievement, extracurricular activities and other criteria in context with applicants’ personal experiences. UCLA says it has struck pay dirt, as Black enrollment has crawled upward. For this school year, 230 of the 4,889 freshmen are African American – plus 100 transfer students. But critics, including political science Professor Tim Groseclose, say that UCLA isn’t as slick as it thinks. Last week, Groseclose quit the university’s Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Relations after accusing the campus’ top brass and his colleagues on the committee of a coverup. He had been denied the opportunity to officially study the rise in Black enrollment. “A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that UCLA is cheating on admissions,” he wrote in an 89-page report posted on a UCLA Web site. The university calls his claims bogus, saying he is drawing a false conclusion based on the increased diversity. What he fails to notice, officials say, is the university’s aggressive outreach, which was employed to counter an anti-minority law. “He’s taking an outcome and from that deducing a cause,” said Tom Lifka, associate vice chancellor for student academic services.

Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority members are arrested

Eight members of the now-defunct Southeast Louisiana University chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority were arrested this month for charges related to an alleged hazing incident in January, campus officials announced Friday. In June, the university ordered the 15-member sorority chapter in Hammond into inactive status for three years, after which they may reapply for reinstatement. While officials with the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Department said the eight AKA sisters were booked on counts of hazing, false imprisonment or other violations, it declined to specify the incident that triggered the arrests, which occurred between Aug. 11 and 19. Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Dawn Panepinto said that it describing the incident would be inappropriate since an investigation is ongoing. Three students have been suspended for a year; two were suspended for a semester; and three were given disciplinary probation, which allows them to go to classes under certain conditions.

One in four Americans struggles with health care costs. Roughly one in four Americans (24 percent) continues to struggle with health care costs, according to the latest Kaiser election 2008 tracking poll. Health care ranks as a “serious problem,” above paying for food (18 percent), problems with debt (16 percent) and paying the rent or mortgage (15 percent), and below paying for gas (37 percent) or getting a good-paying job or raise in pay (26 percent). Half of the people who were uninsured say that paying for health care is a serious concern. Members of two minority groups, Hispanics (39 percent) and African Americans (35 percent), say problems paying for care are particularly a concern.

Mercer University gets $3.1 million to fight diabetes. The National Institutes of Health awarded Dr. John Boltri, a physician at the Mercer University School of Medicine, $3.1 million for church-based diabetes-prevention and education programs. Mercer medical professors will be working with The Medical Center of Central Georgia in a five-year study that will launch next spring, said Boltri, who conducted earlier research showing that the rate of diabetes was 50 percent higher in Blacks than in Whites. “We’re going into African-American churches and doing screenings for diabetes,” said Boltri, a physician at the Family Health Center in Macon. “We’re looking to see who has pre-diabetes.” Boltri said his research started a few years ago when he was looking at ways to prevent diabetes. His studies showed a higher risk in Blacks. Working with researchers from the University of Connecticut-Hartford, Boltri and his team developed a detailed program, which will use a combination of education and religion to try to reduce the risk of the disease. The educational component involves improving diets, reducing fat, increasing physical activity and making the participants more aware of the complications diabetics face. “We’re going to ask people to keep a diary of the foods they eat and switch to lower-fat foods,” he said. Monique Davis-Smith, another researcher from Mercer’s Department of Family Medicine, said religion will also play a part in the program. “We’re going to encourage prayer as part of the program and bringing knowledge of one’s own faith [to the program],” she said. “We’re encouraging people to lean on their faith.”

One in four Americans struggles with health care costs. Roughly one in four Americans (24 percent) continues to struggle with health care costs, according to the latest Kaiser election 2008 tracking poll. Health care ranks as a “serious problem,” above paying for food (18 percent), problems with debt (16 percent) and paying the rent or mortgage (15 percent), and below paying for gas (37 percent) or getting a good-paying job or raise in pay (26 percent). Half of the people who were uninsured say that paying for health care is a serious concern. Members of two minority groups, Hispanics (39 percent) and African Americans (35 percent), say problems paying for care are particularly a concern.

Mercer University gets $3.1 million to fight diabetes. The National Institutes of Health awarded Dr. John Boltri, a physician at the Mercer University School of Medicine, $3.1 million for church-based diabetes-prevention and education programs. Mercer medical professors will be working with The Medical Center of Central Georgia in a five-year study that will launch next spring, said Boltri, who conducted earlier research showing that the rate of diabetes was 50 percent higher in Blacks than in Whites. “We’re going into African-American churches and doing screenings for diabetes,” said Boltri, a physician at the Family Health Center in Macon. “We’re looking to see who has pre-diabetes.” Boltri said his research started a few years ago when he was looking at ways to prevent diabetes. His studies showed a higher risk in Blacks. Working with researchers from the University of Connecticut-Hartford, Boltri and his team developed a detailed program, which will use a combination of education and religion to try to reduce the risk of the disease. The educational component involves improving diets, reducing fat, increasing physical activity and making the participants more aware of the complications diabetics face. “We’re going to ask people to keep a diary of the foods they eat and switch to lower-fat foods,” he said. Monique Davis-Smith, another researcher from Mercer’s Department of Family Medicine, said religion will also play a part in the program. “We’re going to encourage prayer as part of the program and bringing knowledge of one’s own faith [to the program],” she said. “We’re encouraging people to lean on their faith.”

Fisk climbs major money hurdle Fisk University climbed a major money hurdle this week, raising $4 million and qualifying for grant that will keep the doors of the financially troubled Tennessee-based Black college open, Shauntel Lowe of Black College Wire reports. Late last month, Fisk announced that it had raised $4 million in unrestricted funds just days before a June 30 deadline. By meeting the challenge, the campus will receive a $2 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Earlier in the year, Mellon also gave the university a $1 million contribution. “Thirty-four percent of contributions in support of the Mellon Foundation Challenge came from Middle Tennessee, and it is clear that with the help of our alumni, the community of faith, government leaders, as well as our corporate and foundation partners we can claim great victory this year,” said university President Hazel R. O’Leary. The institution is expected to raise more than $8.3 million this year, Lowe reports. Matthew Kennedy, the former director and concert pianist of the legendary Fisk Jubilee Singers, told Black College Wire that he thought Fisk would reach its goal. “I’m a very positive thinking person and I just didn’t think that Fisk would be faced with serious consequences such as having to close and I don’t think the public will let that happen because of the long legacy in the field of education that Fisk has,” said Kennedy, 87.

The son of North Carolina State basketball coach Sidney Lowe will do 15 months on a low-security prison farm after pleading guilty to numerous charges stemming from an ’07 armed robbery. Sidney Lowe II faced up to 11 years as his father asked the court for leniency. A judge suspended much of the sentence, also ordering five years of probation. Lowe pleaded to six counts each of robbery with a dangerous weapon and kidnapping, possession of a weapon on educational property, possession with intent to sell and deliver marijuana and possession of ecstasy.