N.Y. Giants receiver Plaxico Burress got a rare legal win Wednesday when a Pennsylvania jury sided with the troubled baller in a civil dispute over an impounded vehicle. Fred Laurenzo, who owns a car dealership in Lebanon, Pa., loaned Burress a 2004 Avalanche truck, worth $36,000, in exchange for autograph signings and other publicity events. But New York City Police impounded the truck, telling Laurenzo that it had been involved in a crime. He said that Burress never contacted police to resolve the matter, and it remained in custody for about a year. Laurenzo sued for $19,000. But a jury awarded him only $1,700, the amount that Burress had contended he was responsible for. Burress still faces gun charges after shooting himself in the leg in a New York restaurant.

Three 6 Mafia event ends in violence. A fight at a West Hollywood show by Oscar-winning group Three 6 Mafia has left a woman with a broken leg. The clash took place as the rappers ended their gig at the House of Blues and resulted in the female spectator getting trampled. Two people were arrested in the incident this week after L.A.County Sheriff’s deputies responded with both force and swiftness.

Oprah’s mom allegedly owes store $150,000. The Valentina, Inc. boutique has named the mother of talk show diva Oprah Winfrey in a lawsuit claiming that an open charge account has gone unpaid. Vernita Lee allegedly has $155,547.31 in unpaid clothing and services, such as delivery. Her $2,000 minimum monthly payments on the account reportedly stopped without explanation or any further arrangements of pay. Fortunately for Ms. Lee, her daughter was recently listed as Forbes magazine’s top-earning TV celeb – again – checking in with a nine-figure net from 2007 to 2008.

Sisters snatch gold medal for tennis doubles.

Venus and Serena Williams have proved they’re twice as nice after being eliminated from Olympics singles competition last week. The sisters captured a gold medal in the doubles tournament on Sunday after beating Spain’s Anabel Medina Garrigues and Virginia Ruano Pascual 6-2, 6-0. “I’m so excited, I can’t even speak,” Venus says. “To share this kind of moment with your sister, it never grows old.”

Fighter’s dream of medal cut short by dehydration. A bantamweight Olympics boxer won’t compete after he collapsed from apparent dehydration while still training. Gary Russell Jr. is said to have struggled to make the 119-pound weight limit to compete for a gold medal, but was found unconscious this past weekend in China after taking a long run. The two-time national champ was found in his room at the Olympics athlete’s village, but he was revived without hospitalization. “We became alarmed a couple of days ago when we saw he wasn’t sweating like he should,” says boxing coach Dan Campbell. “When these kids try to make weight, sometimes they cut corners. What we believe is he did not increase his fluid intake after we told him to.” Russell was a favorite to win the U.S. boxing team a top Olympics prize

NBA stars drop China 101-70 in Olympics. All-star NBA players Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant and Yao Ming met on Asian turf with Ming representing his homeland of China in an Olympics game that saw the U.S. win 101-70. Still, Ming enjoyed a hero’s welcome Sunday among the natives, an estimated 300 million of whom play basketball. Wade scored 19 points, LeBron James hit 18 and Bryant matched Ming’s total with 13. The game in Beijing was the first time that any of the NBA stars played against Yao since March when he underwent season-ending foot surgery. Read more at Playa Hater.

Tyson Gay “pretty confident” about Olympics. Sprinter Tyson Gay says he’s “injury-free” after working out in Beijing Sunday, having previously hurt his hamstring. The 100-meter and 200-meter world champ had injured the muscle during last month’s American Olympics trials. Gay had already qualified to compete in the 100 at Beijing, but suffered the hamstring mishap during the 200 trials. The runner says he’s “pretty confident” about his performance expectations for the 100-meter race for a gold medal.

Latinos, Blacks squeezed hard in tight job market.

As the nation’s job market grows tighter, Latinos and Black workers are suffering disproportionately, according to employment specialists and figures from the Department of Labor. While employment shrank by 51,000 jobs in July and nationwide joblessness rose to a four-year high of 5.7 percent, Latino unemployment was 7.4 percent last month, according to the Labor Department. Black joblessness was 9.7 percent in July. It was 9.2 percent in June. The overall teen jobless rate was 20.3 percent in July. It was 27.3 percent for Latino teens and 32 percent for Black teens. Analysts attribute much of the Latino job loss to ongoing contraction in the construction industry. A Labor Department report said the construction industry “has shed 557,000 jobs since its September 2006 employment peak, with nearly three-quarters of the decline occurring since October 2007.” A Pew report and other studies have found that for Black workers and their families, the picture is especially bleak. An Aug. 1 report by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress said that one in four Blacks lived in poverty in 2006. Black lost 55,000 jobs since December and wage growth continued its stall. “During the 2000s’ economic recovery, African American workers’ inflation-adjusted wages grew at an annual rate of only 0.2 percent, after having grown four times as much (0.8 percent) per year during the 1990s recovery,” the congressional committee reported. Between 2000 and 2006, median Black family income fell by 2.9 percent to $39,367, according to federal statistics.

Widow of slain Atlanta judge gets $5 million settlement. The widow of the Atlanta judge who was allegedly shot to death by a defendant during a daring escape from a courtroom three years ago will be paid more than $5.2 million by Fulton County. Under a settlement made public Thursday, Claudia Barnes, the wife of slain judge Rowland Barnes, the county will $5 million to settle lawsuits against itself and Sheriff Myron Freeman. The county will also pay a one-time annuity of $246,000 in a separate benefits case filed by Barnes, a former Fulton County employee. “I miss my husband every day, and this won’t take that away,” Barnes said Thursday. “I’ve had so many irons in the fire. This just closes another chapter of things I have to do.” Rowland Barnes was shot in March 2005 as he presided over a hearing involving convicted rapist Brian Nichols. The defendant allegedly wrested a sidearm from a deputy and shot to death the judge, a court reporter, a sheriff’s sergeant and, later, a federal agent. Nichols’ capital trial for the three deaths has been delayed several times. “Now I can focus all my attention on the criminal trial,” Barnes said.

Even the Klan ads didn’t help the Black challenger win. A nasty Democratic primary came to a close in Tennessee Thursday as the White incumbent congressman had a runaway win against his African-American challenger in a majority-Black district. Rep. Steve Cohen took an astounding 79 percent of the vote, compared with 19 percent for Nikki Turner, a Black lawyer, who throughout the campaign tried to convince voters that they should stick with their own race. In a particularly controversial campaign moment, Tinker ran an ad linking Cohen, a Jew, to the Ku Klux Klan. Sen. Barack Obama even entered the mix on that one, condemning the ad, which juxtaposed Cohen’s picture with that of a hooded Klansman. Cohen has long civil rights record. Just last month, he introduced a resolution to get Congress to issue an apology to African Americans for this nation’s imposition of slavery and Jim Crow.