Blacks are suffering like no other in housing messing.
Feds take over mortgage giants. With nearly one in 10 U.S. homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages, the Bush administration Sunday took over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in an attempt to avoid a complete housing meltdown. Together, the two government-sponsored firms hold or back half of America’s mortgage debt. By putting Fannie and Freddie into a conservatorship - removing CEOs Daniel Mudd and Richard Syron, respectively - it is the “best means of protecting our markets and the taxpayers from the systemic risk posed by the current financial condition” of the two enterprises, says Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. “…[T]hey will no longer be managed with a strategy to maximize common shareholder returns, a strategy which historically encouraged risk-taking,” Paulson said in a statement. Under the government plan, the Treasury and Federal Housing Finance Agency would purchase a new class of preferred stock in the two entities that “will ensure that each company maintains a positive net worth,” Paulson said.  This is “more efficient than a one-time equity injection, because it will be used only as needed and on terms that Treasury has set,” he said. “With this agreement, Treasury receives senior preferred equity shares and warrants that protect taxpayers. Additionally, under the terms of the agreement, common and preferred shareholders bear losses ahead of the new government senior preferred shares.” While Americans across the racial spectrum are suffering in the current mortgage crisis, nobody has been more affected than Blacks and Hispanics, who, according to the NAACP, have been unscrupulously targeted with high-interest loans. The civil rights group has filed a class-action lawsuit against a dozen and a half of the largest mortgage companies, saying that they took advantage of Black borrowers.

NAACP names voting outreach director. The nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization, which has made voter registration a key component of its outreach during its century-long history, is taking its voter-empowerment efforts to a new level. “In addition to protecting the right to vote, we will reach out to displaced and recently purged voters who need our assistance in getting their voting rights restored,” said NAACP Interim President & CEO Dennis Courtland Hayes. The NAACP has appointed Kirk Clay to head its Civic Engagement Department, which is designed to remove roadblocks and disincentives to voting. This includes ensuring voter empowerment, protecting voters’ constitutional rights, monitoring redistricting and census statistics and promoting ballot initiatives to address social justice issues. “I am proud to represent the NAACP during this historic moment in time,” said Clay. “One of my priorities will be to ensure that every eligible American who wants to vote can, and that every vote is counted.” Clay worked as the Director of Outreach for major gifts at Common Cause where he also developed a diverse national coalition of strategic partners to promote election reform, ethics in government and government accountability. He worked at the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation as deputy director and is the former co-chair of that organization’s Black Youth Vote program.

Bolt, Powell, Gay to compete in 100. World record-holding Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt faces off with sprinters Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay tonight at the Van Damme Memorial in Brussels, Belgium. Powell recently matched the second-fastest 100 sprint time ever, while Gay is a world champion in the event. The race, which will be Bolt’s last of the season, airs at 11 p.m. on the ESPN Classic network and again Sunday on ESPN2 at 3:30 p.m. “I’m definitely going out there to compete at my best,” Bolt says. The three runners are regarded as the fastest men of all time, with the 10 fastest times in the 100 on their collective resume. “This has never happened before,” meet organizer Wilfried Meert says of the race. Gay, however, says it’s possible that he’ll skip the race, depending on the state of his lingering hamstring injury.

Browns’ Braylon Edwards offers help to homeless youths. Cleveland Browns star wide receiver Braylon Edwards plans to score big, both on and off the field, for 4,000 homeless students in the community. Beginning at Sunday’s first Browns’ game of the season, the player says he’ll give $1,000 per each touchdown reception he scores to the Cleveland Metropolitan School District Project’s ACT (Action for Children and Youth in Transition) program. “All children deserve to receive a quality education,” says Edwards. “It’s vitally important that we, as adults and community leaders, recognize the need to support those who are hindered by circumstances of basic survival when they leave class each day.” A Pro Bowl receiver, Edwards caught 80 passes last season alone.

Actress denies pregnancy rumors. NBA All-star Tony Parker may be Eva Longoria Parker’s husband, but he’s not her babydaddy. The actress denies that her recent change in appearance has anything to do with a little Tony or Toni. “I’m not pregnant. I’m just fat,” she says. “I gained five pounds over the summer, so instead of a size zero, I’m a size one.” Hopefully, Longoria Parker will come clean whenever it’s time to start calling her favorite point guard “papa.”

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Racial tensions have reached a boiling point in the Pennsylvania coal town. Tw

Two youths were charged with homicide Friday following the beating death of a Hispanic man in a Pennsylvania coal town where racial tension has reached a boiling point in recent months. Colin J. Walsh, 17, and Brandon J. Piekarsky, 16, both of Shenandoah Heights, were charged Friday in connection with the death of a 25-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico. Eduardo Ramirez Zavala died at Geisinger Medical Center in Shenandoah, two days after being beaten and called a “dirty Mexican” and other racial slurs. The two defendants, both players on the Shenandoah Valley High School football team, were charged with criminal homicide, aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person, simple assault and ethnic intimidation. While senior Derrick M. Donchak, the teams starting quarterback last year, was not charged with the most serious offense, criminal homicide, he was arraigned on charges of aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, hindering apprehension or prosecution, ethnic intimidation, corruption of minors, purchase or consumption of alcohol and selling or furnishing alcohol to minors. Another teen is expected to be charged, authorities said.

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.

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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.

Cops in ritzy N.Y. neighborhood chase Black kids away. A New York lawyer is screaming “racism” after police in the upscale Brooklyn community of Manhattan Beach told a group of Black teenagers to get out of the neighborhood. Gene Berardelli, a Brooklyn-based attorney, says that the group of teens was blocked by police on Friday. “Black kids were told get out of the neighborhood,” Berardelli said. “It was definitely a Black and White issue. Black teens were not welcome in Manhattan Beach and police, on behalf of the neighborhood, let them know that.” Police said that Friday was “cut day,” when students traditionally skip school, and the officers had good reason to turn the students away. “[They would] either be brought back to the track site for truancy, or brought back to the school where they belong. We can’t allow kids to cut out of school,” NYPD Lt. Fernando Villafan said. But, Berardelli countered, “There’s no way they couldn’t know they were cutting class because they didn’t ask to see their program cards. They didn’t bother to check anybody’s identification,” he said.

Atlanta’s ex-mayor convict duped prison officials to enter rehab. Former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, who is serving a 30-month prison sentence for tax evasion, finagled his way into a drug program to lop 500 hours off his term. Somehow, according to recently unsealed court documents, Campbell was able to dupe officials at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to bend their policy and allow him to enroll in the residential rehabilitation program. He earned a “certificate of completion” last December for his “effort toward his personal growth.” He was rewarded for completing the program by being transferred to a halfway house earlier this year and was all set for an early release. But federal prosecutors in Atlanta heard about it and immediately demanded that Campbell be re-evaluated. It didn’t take long after the prison administrator’s one-on-one with Campbell to revoke his certificate and put the former mayor back to the rear of the line for release. So, instead of collecting his property and strolling out of prison on June 23, Campbell will kick it at the low-security facility near Miami until Oct. 25. Campbell ’s lawyer, Patricia Jean Kyle of Miami , told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that it initially seemed as if the Bureau of Prisons overstepped its authority in rescinding Campbell ’s early release. “Ultimately, Mr. Campbell agreed that the [bureau] had not acted beyond its authority” and then dismissed his complaint, she said.

Dr. Ben Carson to add Presidential Medal of Freedom to achievements. The man who made medical history by successfully separating Siamese twins in 1987 will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Dr. Ben Carson’s selection for the nation’s highest official civilian honor was announced by the White House this week. Carson, author of the book Gifted Hands, overcame a disadvantaged upbringing in Detroit to earn the title of Pediatric Neurosurgery director at Johns Hopkins Hospital by age 33. Carson recently delivered the commencement address at George Washington University.