Battery Records has urban focus. A new Sony music company will revive the practice of artist development, AllHipHop.com reports. Battery Records is to oversee early development among performers on the rosters of RCA and Zomba. “We started operation back in mid-June, so it’s a brand new division,” head man Neil Levine tells All Hip Hop. “It’s really an incubator imprint label. Our main focus is really taking developing artists that are signed to our frontline labels.” Artist development has been used throughout the recording industry to groom new label recruits in career longevity and preparation.

Married folks are the healthiest. People who’ve exchanged wedding vows tend to be healthier than their single, divorced or widowed peers, but new research shows that health gap may be narrowing, reports HealthDay News. Interviews with today’s never-married men suggest they are healthier than never-married guys were three decades ago, researchers say. And that’s helping single males gain some ground, in terms of their health, compared to married people. “One of the most-often documented facts is that married people are healthier than non-married people, but the difference between married and unmarried people has changed over the past few decades,” said the study’s lead author, Hui Liu, an assistant professor and sociologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing. Liu said there are two theories as to why married people report better health. One is that being married gives you more access to social support and economic resources. The other is that being divorced or widowed hurts health. “In general, marriage tends to make people healthier, happier and richer, and that’s especially true for men,” Scott Wetzler, vice chairman of psychiatry and behavioral science, and head of the “Supporting Healthy Marriage” program at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City told HealthDay.

Some overweight people can be healthy.

Some obese individuals do not appear to have an increased risk of heart disease, while some normal-weight individuals experience a variety of heart risks, according to two reports in the August 11 Issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA/Archives journal. “The prevalence of obesity is increasing worldwide, and this epidemic is accompanied by a high incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease,” the authors write as background information in one of the articles. But research shows that in addition to overall obesity, the way body fat is distributed may decide whether a person is at risk of heart disease and diabetes. For instance, individuals with fat around the tummy — estimated by measuring waist size —appear to be at higher risk for insulin resistance (a pre-diabetic condition that occurs when the body fails to respond to the hormone insulin) and for having an unhealthy cardiovascular risk profile. In one study, individuals in the obese–insulin sensitive group did not differ from the normal-weight group in insulin sensitivity or artery wall thickness, the authors note. “In conclusion, we provide evidence that a metabolically benign obesity can be identified and that it may protect from insulin resistance and atherosclerosis,” Norbert Stefan, M.D., and colleagues at the University of Tübingen, Germany, wrote about their study of 314 individuals age 18 to 69 (average age 45). The second study found that among U.S. adults 20 years and older, 23.5 percent (about 12 million adults) of normal weight had abnormal metabolisms, while 51 percent (about 36 million adults) who were overweight and 31.7 percent who were considered obese had healthy metabolisms. The average weight of individuals with slow metabolisms tended to be older, less physically active and had large weights. Bottom line, waist size had more to do with whether a person had an increased risk for heart disease or diabetes than their actual weight, the studies show.

The Army honors wrongly convicted Black soldiers
The U.S. Army will apologize to Black soldiers who were framed in 1944 for rioting and lynching an Italian POW in Seattle. Almost 65 years ago, 28 African-American soldiers were court-martialed after being falsely accused, but an Army appeals court found last year that the process was patently unfair. This week, the grandchildren and other relatives of the wrongly accused are descending upon Seattle to participate in tributes to the men. “We’re a little nervous to see where it all began, and we’re all wondering what kind of emotions will be elicited by coming to see where it all happened,” Lashell Drake told The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The Milwaukee woman’s deceased grandfather, Booker Townsell, was among those wrongly convicted, according to the newspaper. A book by author Jack Hamann uncovered the fact that the accused men weren’t even present at the time the Italian prisoner was lynched. Sadly, Hamann learned, Army investigators discovered this truth during the largest and longest court-martial of World War II but kept that crucial information on the down-low. According to the author, White soldiers resented Italian POWs because high school girls adored them. Among the prosecutors in the infamous case was Leon Jaworski, who later became a Watergate special prosecutor, according to the Post-Intelligencer.

Urban League praises lawmakers for housing-crisis bill
Urban League President Marc Morial gave Congress props on Thursday for working to give struggling homeowners a leg up during the current severe housing crisis, which disproportionately affects Black Americans. The landmark “American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008,” is now under consideration by the House of Representatives. In particular, Morial praised the following lawmakers for their involvement on the legislation: Chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Rep. Barney Frank; chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, Rep. Maxine Waters; chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick; chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charles Rangel; and the entire Congressional Black Caucus. “These congressional leaders have ensured that the American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention of Act 2008 not only addresses the larger problems of industry giants like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but also specifically targets urban, low-income and minority communities and homeowners who have been affected by unscrupulous sub-prime and predatory loans.” In its 2008 State of Black America Report, the National Urban League noted that Blacks hold nearly five times more installment debt than Whites, and the median net worth for African Americans is $11,800, versus $118,300 for Whites. The National Urban League has been in the housing counseling business for more than 40 years and currently serves over 40,000 homeowners per year.

About twice as many African-American as White young people are jobless

The Congressional Black Caucus wants President George W. Bush to ensure the survival of the National Urban League’s Urban Youth Empowerment Program, which could be nixed from the Department of Labor’s budget as early as next week. “It is our understanding that the funding, which enables the program to provide much-needed services to young people to reduce recidivism, to complete their high school education and to find jobs is to be terminated on June 30, 2008,” 37 African-American members of Congress wrote to Bush, NNPA reports. “Now is not the time for the Department of Labor to turn its back on young people who are trying to turn their lives around. These young people will be kicked out of the program unless you intervene.” Reminding that programs such as the empowerment project keeps youths constructively occupied and off the streets, the members say that if the Bush administration would put about $4 million in the pot, some 800 young people would be able to finish their training. “At a time when incarceration rates are at an all-time high in the nation, and unemployment among young people is steadily increasing, the program serves as a valuable resource to underserved communities around the country,” the letter states. “The program has a demonstrated record of effectiveness in assisting at-risk youth in educational opportunities, job training and placement, and the support needed to make a successful transition into the workplace.” Roughly one in three Black teens between 16 and 19 years old are out of work, double the rate of unemployed White teens.