President George W Bush has asked the US Congress to set aside $30bn (£15bn) over five years for the global fight against HIV/Aids. He said the sum would double the current US commitment and provide treatment for 2.5 million people. Mr Bush said the funding would also be aimed at preventing more than 12 million new infections. The president said his wife Laura would visit Africa next month as part of the US campaign against Aids. “When I took office, an HIV diagnosis in Africa’s poorest communities was usually a death sentence,” Mr Bush said.

“Once again, the generosity of the American people is one of the great untold stories of our time.” In 2003, the US Government approved a $15bn package over five years to fight the spread of Aids. The US Congress stipulated that a proportion of those funds must be spent on encouraging abstinence-until-marriage programmes. United Nations agencies say about 40 million people worldwide are infected with Aids or HIV. Almost three-quarters of deaths from Aids last year occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, and two-thirds of those living with HIV are found there.

The number living with the virus has increased everywhere, with the most striking increases in East Asia and Central Asia/Eastern Europe. On Wednesday the World Health Organization urged affected countries to carry out HIV tests on everyone attending health centres unless they “opt out”.

It said 200 million people could benefit from the policy.

Currently 80% of people infected with HIV in areas such as sub-Saharan Africa do not know they have it.

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Overseas Blog Describes a “Date Rape Journalist” CNN Africa correspondent Jeff Koinange is no longer employed by the network, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday without elaboration. His departure comes after a blog in Kenya accused him of being “the Kenyan date rape journalist.”

The Kenyan-born Koinange “is no longer employed at CNN, and we are not commenting beyond that,” spokeswoman Christa Robinson told Journal-isms. “There are several different people who will fill in for the time being.” Koinange, who was based in Johannesburg, South Africa, could not immediately be reached for comment.

One Web site posted a purported March 3 e-mail from a woman to Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide. It says the woman sent Koinange a press release last August about her book on the killing of a minister in Kenya’s government. “Jeff replied immediately and proposed to have an interview with CNN in Atlanta and to present the book in Inside-Africa.

“Soon after he started to call me and things changed to very private and personal matters,” it said. A second Web site, apparently created by the woman in question, purports to show intimate and graphic correspondence between the woman and Koinange.

“PLEASE don’t be SORRY —- we’re in this together, YOU and ME ….. so let’s not start regretting anything ….” read one line attributed to Koinange.

In other postings, Koinange describes being in Darfur, Sudan, and other locations on assignment for CNN.

Koinange last appeared on CNN on May 17 on “Anderson Cooper 360°,” when he was in Darfur.
“We’re joined in the hour ahead with CNN’s Africa Correspondent Jeff Koinange, who has risked his life on many occasions to bring the countries of Africa, the reality of Africa, into our living rooms,” Cooper said.

The correspondent joined CNN in 2001. He quit his job as a flight attendant for Kenyan Airways and arrived at New York’s Kingsborough Community College in 1987, at 21, according to a bio on the college’s site. He moved on to New York University, ABC News, Medical News Network, NBC and Reuters Television.

“He has reported on major events from all across the African continent,” his CNN bio, now removed from the CNN Web site, says. Brian Stelter of the TV Newser Web site first reported Koinange’s missing bio shortly after noon Tuesday.

“Although Koinange is CNN’s Africa correspondent,” the CNN bio continued, “his journalistic talents mean he frequently reports from outside the continent. In 2005 he was part of CNN’s Peabody award winning team who covered the devastation wreaked on News Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. He has also reported from Baghdad on the post-war insurgency, reconstruction and the historic 2005 elections in Iraq.”

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Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) on Tuesday offered a plan to provide health care to millions of Americans and more affordable medical insurance, financed by tax increases on the wealthy.

Bemoaning a health care “cost crisis,” Obama said it was unacceptable that 47 million are uninsured while others are struggling to pay their medical bills. He said the time is ripe for reforming the health care system despite an inability to do so in the past, most notably when rival Hillary Rodham Clinton pursued major changes during her husband’s presidency.

“We can do this,” Obama said in a speech in Iowa City at the University of Iowa’s medical school. “The climate is far different than it was the last time we tried this in the early nineties.”

Obama’s plan retains the private insurance system but injects additional money to pay for expanding coverage. Those who can’t afford coverage would get a subsidy on a sliding scale depending on their income, and virtually all businesses would have to share in the cost of coverage for their workers.

Obama didn’t mention how much his plan would cost and the campaign refused to provide a total figure. A memo written by three outside experts and distributed by the campaign after his speech said the plan would cost an estimated $50 billion to $65 billion a year once fully implemented. That amount, however, is after deducting what the campaign says Obama’s plan would generate through improved efficiency and other federal savings.

The experts also said Obama could pay for his plan mostly through steps that the candidate has already said he would take — allowing President Bush’s tax cuts on dividends and capital gains and on those making more than about $250,000 a year to expire in 2010 instead of acting to make them permanent.

The rest of the $65 billion funding could come by raising taxes on inheritances worth more than $7 million. Many Democrats want to repeal Bush’s elimination of taxes on estates worth more than $1 million. Obama wants the exemption to be higher but has not yet said exactly where it should be set.

Obama’s proposal would spend more money boosting technology in the health industry such as electronic record-keeping. His package would prohibit insurance companies from refusing coverage because of pre-existing conditions. It would also create a National Health Insurance Exchange to monitor insurance companies and limit their profits. Obama said the typical consumer would save $2,500 a year on premiums.

Obama’s first promise as a presidential candidate was that he would sign a universal health care plan into law by the end of his firm term in the White House. But there is some dispute over whether his plan would provide universal care — it’s aimed at lowering costs so all Americans can afford insurance, but does not guarantee everyone would buy it.

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The United States will slap fresh sanctions on Sudan over the Darfur conflict on Tuesday and seek a tough new UN Security Council resolution punishing Khartoum, top US officials said late Monday. US President George W. Bush will announce the move at 8:00 am (1200 GMT) in remarks that single out Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir, the officials said in a briefing arranged by the White House on condition they not be named.

Washington will toughen enforcement of existing sanctions; bar another 31 companies, including oil exporters, from US trade and financial dealings; and take aim at two top Sudan government officials, they said. “President Beshir’s actions over the past few weeks follow a long pattern of promising cooperation while finding new methods of obstruction,” Bush said in remarks prepared for delivery from the White House diplomatic reception room.

The two officials expressed guarded optimism that the new punitive measures would compel Sudan to accept the deployment of a hybrid UN-African Union force, end support for the Janjaweed, and let humanitarian aid reach Darfur.

China said Tuesday the US decision to slap fresh sanctions on Sudan will not help solve the problem.The Darfur conflict has cost at least 200,000 lives and forced more than two million people from their homes, according to the United Nations, though Sudan contests those estimates, saying 9,000 people have died.

Washington’s sanctions will be “effective tomorrow” — even as US diplomats launch an all-out effort to win support for a new UN resolution, including efforts to overcome possible Chinese resistance, one top US official said.

From a US perspective, a new UN resolution would apply new multilateral financial sanctions against Sudan and the three newly targeted individuals and expand an existing arms embargo from individuals operating in Darfur to any sales to Sudan’s government, the official told reporters.

It would also impose UN measures to prevent the government in Khartoum “from conducting any military flights over Darfur,” the official said in a conference call. “I don’t want to say that we have a specific resolution right this minute,” the official said. “We have some draft pieces. We’ll see how those pieces will fit together.” The violence erupted in the western Sudanese region — an area roughly the size of France — in 2003 when Khartoum enlisted the help of Arab militia known as the janjaweed to put down an ethnic minority rebellion.

The Sudanese government has repeatedly rejected plans to deploy UN troops alongside the African peacekeepers in a joint force numbering some 23,00O soldiers. Khartoum’s hand has been strengthened by China, which has opposed US-led plans within the UN Security Council to use sanctions to force Beshir to accept a UN deployment. “We don’t have a specific commitment from the Chinese” to support a new UN resolution, the US official said. “We’ll work with them on the specifics of a resolution.” China openly supplies arms to Sudan and buys more than half of the African state’s oil output.

The two officials expressed guarded optimism that the new punitive measures would force Sudan’s hand, five weeks after Bush warned Beshir that he had one “last chance” to comply with international demands. “The overarching message from the president is, the president believes we cannot wait any longer for the violence to stop and for the people of Sudan to get what they need,” said one of the officials.

But that official was careful not to predict success or describe the sanctions as “strong.” Instead, he told reporters: “If you’re the Sudanese government, and you have severe difficulties in spending money, then I think they (the Sudanese) will think they (the sanctions) are strong.” “Let’s see what kind of United Nations Security Council resolution we get. And let’s see how Beshir quantifies it,” the official said.

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On Wednesday, a coalition of women’s groups will take their campaign to remove indecent lyrics and images from the airways to the leaders of one of the nation’s largest media companies — Viacom, the parent company of BET and MTV.

Janice Mathis, southern regional director of Rainbow PUSH, and E. Faye Williams, executive director of the National Congress of Black Women, both Viacom stockholders, will join with about 40 other women making a stand at the meeting at 10:30 a.m. in New York at the Millennium Broadway Hotel.

“There ought to be new standards of decency for our airways,” Williams told BlackAmericaWeb.com. She heads the organization formerly led by the late C. Delores Tucker, who began challenging the explicit content in videos and lyrics more than 20 years ago.

“We are for free speech, but we want decent speech. That line has long been crossed, and it’s time to do something about it,” Williams said.Williams had been raising the issue long before the Don Imus incident in April, when the former radio shock jock stirred a national tempest after referring to members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy headed hos.”

Melanie Campbell of the National Coalition for Black Civic Participation said the problems with images and speech on the airways goes beyond Imus. “Imus was a wake up call for all of us,” Campbell told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “We have to call on Congress and media executives to look at the definition of decency on our airways.” Since the Imus incident, Campbell has been spearheading an effort among female leaders from coast to coast who meet in a conference call every Tuesday to plan the strategy for attacking the problem. ” We have to call on all the people of good will to come together,” she said.

The coalition includes sororities, the YWCA, National Organization for Women, Rainbow PUSH, the National Congress of Black Women, the National Coalition for Black Civic Participation and many more.

“We have to look at who’s making money off of these sexually explicit lyrics and videos,” Campbell said. Popular hip-hop singers and rappers would be replaced quickly if for some reason they dropped off the scene. “So that’s why we have to go to the corporate leaders,” she said. Viacom spokeswoman Kelly Andrew referred BlackAmericaWeb.com to the networks because they decide on programming. Attempts to reach officials with BET and MTV were not successful.

Both MTV and BET continue to be huge moneymakers for Viacom.

According to the company’s April letter to shareholders, MTV is the world’s largest television network and 2006 marked the 15th consecutive year for MTV as the number-one rated, 24-hour ad-supported cable network for young people ages 12-24 in the U.S. For BET, 2006 was a history-making year with strong ratings, the emergence of BET J, the re-launch of BET International and further expansion into broadband and mobile distribution. BET held its rank as the number one rated cable network in total day and in weeknight primetime among black households, according the shareholders letter.

Topping the list of hits was “American Gangster,” the critically-acclaimed series that profiles an infamous crime figure each week through the use of archival footage, photographs and interviews with people familiar with their various cases. It quickly grew to become cable’s number-one weekday original series among black households and blacks ages 18-34. Mathis of Rainbow PUSH, said she is encouraged by some of the recent signs of change.

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We are going into our third issue since our relaunch as an online magazine and we need your help! Will you help us spread the word about Clutch by sporting our cute little button on your sites?! Post it to your MySpace, Face Book, blog….anywhere! Thanks everyone for your continued support and love! We really appreciate it :) Thanks again for helping us spread the word….. :)

Some Highlights from Our June Issue…

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A collection of poems from the happenings surrounding my life, my world, and my growth. Photograph of Tremaine L. Loadholt by: Aulelei Love

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WASHINGTON - America‘s lowest-paid workers won a $2.10 raise Thursday, with Congress approving the first increase in the federal minimum wage in almost a decade. President Bush was expected to sign the bill quickly, and workers who now make $5.15 an hour will see their paychecks go up by 70 cents per hour before the end of the summer. Another 70 cents will be added next year, and by summer 2009, all minimum-wage jobs will pay no less than $7.25 an hour.

That almost became the fate of this year‘s proposal. Democratic leaders attached the provision to the $120 billion Iraq war spending bill, which was vetoed by the GOP-controlled White House on May 1 because Democrats insisted on a pullout date for American troops. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., called the increase one of “the proudest achievements of this new Congress.” Bush announced earlier this year that he supported an increase in the minimum wage.

This would be the first change since the minimum wage went from $4.75 to $5.15 on Sept. 1, 1997, under former President Clinton and a Republican-controlled Congress. “This is a gre, , ), D-Calif., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. “America‘s workers have been waiting for a raise for a long time.”

The full increase, according to Miller, is enough to pay for 15 months of groceries for a family of three.

Raising the minimum wage was a key part of Democrats‘ midterm election platform. To help make it palatable for Republicans, they added $4.84 billion in tax relief for small businesses to help them hire new workers and offset any cost associated with an increase in the minimum wage. “From a small-business standpoint, the House bill w, , ), R-Iowa.

According to the National Restaurant Association, the last minimum wage increase cost the restaurant industry more than 146,000 jobs and restaurant owners put off plans to hire an additional 106,000 employees. “A minimum-wage increase will cost our industry jobs, and the vital discussion of how to minimize this job loss is getting lost in the debate,” said Peter Kilgore, the group‘s acting interim president and chief executive officer.

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First, Evan Ross rocks male leggings, now this. Mr. Fonzworth Bentley will never rock a pair of high waisted pants as a man. Granted I am not the biggest fan of the high waisted pants for women but when men start rocking them, that’s when I am out the building. He knows he is dead wrong for rocking those pants that are so far up his tight a$$! Then they have the nerve to be flooding a little bit with a cuff on them? If he pulled those muthas down a bit they would at least brush those ankles!

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Amel Larrieux conquered soul, hip-hop, folk and R&B, so it was just a matter of time until she got around to American standards. And Larrieux – who scored the hit, “Tell Me,” with Groove Theory in the mid-1990s and has enjoyed Grammy-nominated success as a solo artist — does precisely that on her new album, “Lovely Standards,” which arrived in stores earlier this week.

“I was a kid who grew up listening to the songs from musicals of the 1940s and 1950s, because my parents and different people in my family loved jazz and loved a lot of the vocal performances,” says Larrieux. “It was as much a part of the fabric of my musical life as listening to the popular music of the time, which was Michael Jackson or Culture Club or people like that.

“So I have always wanted to do an album like this, and I’ve always wanted to do a jazz album as well. So I figured why not do an album of jazz standards and put my own twists on the songs. And I tried to give them a modern feel and put my own sense of individuality on them, too.”

The new album includes Larrieux’s takes on such songs as “Shadow of Your Smile,” “Something Wonderful,” “I Like the Sunrise” and “If I Were a Bell,” among others. Larrieux, speaking by telephone from her apartment in New York City, explains that reinventing the songs was both exciting and easy. Making the process even smoother, Larrieux’s husband, Laru Larrieux, produced “Lovely Standards.”

“People often butt heads and have differences of opinion and different work ethics, but because I know him well, because we love and respect each other and want the best for each other, it was actually a lot easier working together,” Larrieux says. “We could talk about things at home and we could work out schedules to get into the studio or discuss the directions of the songs. It’s been one of the biggest blessings of my career to work with the person I’m married to.”

The album now out, Larrieux is on the road performing the songs for her fans. Next stop: B.B. King’s on Saturday. The show, she notes, will combine familiar songs and the new material. “It’s got to be a mix,” she says. “I have too many people who like listening to stuff from my previous albums, so we’ll definitely find a union. And I usually like to do so many different approaches to songs that I’ve already done that it becomes about improv and playing off the musicians and the reacting to the audience. So I think these songs will fit well with what I’ve already been doing.” Once the current mini-tour ends, Larrieux plans to record her next album.

“The ‘Lovely’ series is going to be continued with ‘Lovely Lullabies,’ that I’m going to do with my oldest daughter, who is 12,” Larrieux says. “I’m excited about that. And then, after ‘Lovely Lullabies,’ I’m going to do another, just Amel Larrieux album, with no themes. It’ll be my own personal stuff, my own songwriting. I’m going to keep that one away from the ‘Lovely’ series.”

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