Estelle Holds On to Number One Spot
British hip-hop star Estelle is riding at the top of the charts for another week, while Duffy’s album Rockferry also holds on to the top spot. American Boy, featuring Kanye West, is taken from Estelle’s second album, Shine, which features collaborations with artists including Wyclef Jean and Mark Ronson. Last week saw Duffy, whose soulful voice has drawn comparisons with Dusty Springfield, was knocked off the number one position in the singles chart after five weeks. (Continue Reading…)

Zimbabwe Announces First Results as Riot Police Deploy
Zimbabwe’s opposition on Monday claimed an overwhelming lead in the country’s elections, saying its own count showed party leader Morgan Tsvangairai had so far won twice as many votes as Robert Mugabe. (Continue Reading…)

Mos Def Picks Chuck Berry Role for Music Biopic
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Rapper-actor Mos Def will play legendary rock ‘n’ roller Chuck Berry in “Cadillac Records,” which is filming in New Jersey. Also joining the cast is Gabrielle Union, who will play Geneva Wade, a girlfriend of Muddy Waters. (Continue Reading…)

Our deepest condolences go out to the friends and family of Sean Levert.

On Saturday citizens of countries all over the globe turned off their lights to participate in Lights Out Day. This was the second year for the exciting day and organizers estimated that millions all over the would participate. Even Internet giant Google participated. It just goes to show that every little bit counts and we can all be part of the solution.

With that in mind I have begun to try to buy as many beauty products that not only fulfill my need to look good but my need to do good. Luckily for me there are a ton of products on the market that have started to give back. One of my favorite companies, Tarte has created a wonderful product that gives back. Tarte’s Full Blossom Natural Swirl Cheek Stain ($28, sephora.com) combines their best-selling natural cheek stain in two flattering shades with their new proprietary “T5 Super Fruit Complex.” The complex is a blend of five super fruits that deliver anti-aging and skin-restorative benefits. And with the purchase of every cheek stain, consumers will be helping to preserve the Amazon Rainforest throughout forest conservation, improved living conditions and education opportunities for communities in Brazil. Tarte is supporting Sambazon’s Sustainable Acai Project, a member of the Organic Trade Association and the Fair Trade Federation, which should make you feel great about the makeup and the brand you are buying.

Black schools hit by funds ax as Bush erases aid gain
Condoleezza Rice Would Consider VP Job
Chris Brown Denies Rihanna Relationship
Kidney failure takes deadly toll on blacks in Chicago
Obama Says Clinton Should Keep Running

Clinton rejects calls to quit Democratic race
Sen. Hillary Clinton on Saturday rejected calls by supporters of rival candidate Barack Obama to quit the Democratic presidential race, and Obama said Clinton should remain in race “as long as she wants.” “The more people get a chance to vote, the better it is for our democracy,” the New York senator and former first lady told supporters at a rally in Indiana, which holds a May 6 primary. (Continue Reading…)

Second Texas Democratic caucuses bring more chaos
Traffic jams, long lines, crowds, confusion and chaos marked Texas Democratic regional conventions Saturday as an unprecedented number of political activists turned out to help elect presidential nominating delegates for Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. There are 67 at-large delegates at stake, depending mostly on the results of the state senatorial district and county conventions. (Continue Reading…)

Democratic squabbles could give McCain a boost
If ever the stars were aligned against a Republican winning the White House, 2008 is it. There’s war. And not just any war, but a war that a majority of the public firmly and consistently believes is not worth fighting and that has dragged on longer than World War II and cost more than Vietnam. There’s a likely recession. And not just an ordinary recession, but a financial crisis that involves millions of home foreclosures among the middle-class. Then there’s President Bush, a deeply unpopular Republican in his second term. Plus a fractured party that harbors profound suspicions about its nominee, Sen. John McCain. Money shortfalls. Disasters both natural, as in Hurricane Katrina, and man-made, as in corruption and sex scandals. Party enthusiasm as lukewarm as it is ferocious in the opposing camp. A flock of GOP retirements in Congress that reflect deep gloom about the party’s prospects. (Continue Reading..)

The New Black Cinema? Direct-To-Video
From the early 1930’s to the late 70’s, generations of moviegoers enjoyed the cheap thrills and simple pleasures of what were known as ‘B” movies, low budget films with lesser known or no name stars made by either major film studios, small “poverty row” film studios such as Monogram, Republic, and PRC or independent producers with plotlines of always exploitive material such as westerns, suspense thrillers, horror, crime and sci-fi films. They usually played the second half of a double feature along with an “A” film, a bigger budgeted Hollywood studio film with big name famous movie stars of the period. And it wasn’t unusual for the “B” movies to be more entertaining and creative than the “A” studio. (Continue Reading…)

Obama Gets Boost; Clinton Urged to Quit
Barack Obama got a surprise boost in the last big state of the long Democratic campaign Friday with an endorsement from Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey Jr., while another Obama supporter sought to nudge Hillary Rodham Clinton out of the race. (Continue Reading…)

Rice Hails Obama Race Speech as ‘Important’ for US
Sometimes touted as a contender for the Republican vice-presidential slot, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has aired her thoughts on race in the United States, a prominent issue in the presidential election campaign. (Continue Reading…)

Paper: Campus Skit Had ‘Obama’ in Blackface
North Dakota State University is investigating complaints about a campus skit in which a white student in blackface portrayed Barack Obama receiving a lap dance. The same skit, part of a charity fundraiser held at a campus theater, also featured a depiction of cowboys having sex with each other, witnesses told The Forum newspaper, which first reported the backlash Friday. (Continue Reading…)

People in Zimbabwe are voting in an election that will decide whether President Robert Mugabe, in power since 1980, wins a sixth term in office.

His challengers are Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC opposition party and Simba Makoni, a defector from Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF now standing as a independent. On the eve of the election, the president said the being a puppet of the former colonial power, Britain. The MDC says the poll will be rigged - a charge denied by the government. Zimbabwe’s security forces have been put on full alert amid fears of violence after the election.

Mugabe’s warning
Polling stations across Zimbabwe opened at 0500 GMT and are due to close at 1700 GMT. Nearly six million voters are eligible to cast their ballots. On Friday, President Mugabe wrapped up his campaigning at a rally outside Harare with a fresh broadside against Britain and the MDC. “This is a vote against the British,” he told a crowd of 6,000 supporters, calling the MDC “a puppet, a mouthpiece of the British”.

The MDC says it is fighting to save Zimbabwe’s economy. The country has the world’s highest inflation rate, at more than 100,000%, and just one adult in five is believed to have a regular job. (Continue Reading…)

Blige Purchases $12.3M Mansion
Mary J. Blige has doled out $12.3 million dollars in cash for a Saddle River, N.J. dreamhouse. Blige got the mansion at a relative steal after the house, which originally went on the market at $17 mil, dropped in price, according to New York’s Daily News. (Continue Reading…)

If Wright Stayed, Obama Would Have Left
White House hopeful Barack Obama suggests he would have left his Chicago church had his longtime pastor, whose fiery anti-American comments about U.S. foreign policy and race relations threatened Obama’s campaign, not stepped down. (Continue Reading…)

Clinton rejects ‘ugly perception’ campaign used race as a tactic
Hillary Clinton describes her heated Democratic primary race with rival Barack Obama as one of the more “civil and positive” campaigns she has ever been involved in. And she’s not kidding. (Continue Reading…)

Laila Ali Pregnant with Her First Child
Laila Ali and her husband, former NFL star Curtis Conway, are expecting their first child together, she confirms exclusively to Essence magazine. “I don’t know yet if we are having a boy or a girl, but I’m excited that I have a life inside me that my husband and I created,” Ali says in the May issue, which hits newsstands April 11. (Continue Reading…)

Kimora Lee Simmons Files for Divorce
Kimora Lee Simmons has already moved on, but she took steps to make it official by filing for divorce from her husband of seven years, entertainment mogul Russell Simmons. (Continue Reading…)

Florida Passes Resolution, Apologizes for Slavery
Florida has become the sixth U.S. state to apologize for slavery. Both chambers of the Florida legislature adopted a resolution Wednesday expressing “profound regret for the shameful chapter in this state’s history.” The resolution notes that Florida sanctioned and enforced “African slavery in one of its most brutal and dehumanizing forms” from 1822 — a year after Florida became a U.S. territory — until the end of the American Civil War in 1865. (Continue Reading…)

Ex-Panthers Leave Solitary Confinement After Decades
Two former Black Panthers held in solitary confinement in a Louisiana prison since the 1970s have been transferred into quarters with other inmates, state corrections officials said Wednesday. Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox were moved into a “maximum security dormitory” on Monday, said Angie Norwood, assistant warden at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Wallace and Woodfox had been in solitary since 1972, after their convictions in the death of a guard. (Continue Reading…)

Laura Bush is writing a children’s book with her daughter. Publishers in New York want Michelle Obama to write a grown-up book, by herself. Although her husband Barack has not yet secured the Democratic Party presidential nomination, Ms. Obama has been approached by “over a dozen” publishers so far, according to Katie McCormick Lelyveld, a communications director for Ms. Obama.

Most of the calls have been going through Robert Barnett, the D.C. lawyer who represented Ms. Obama’s husband when he was shopping The Audacity of Hope to publishers in late 2004. Mr. Barnett, who also works as Hillary Clinton’s debate coach and has brokered massive multimillion-dollar book deals for her and her husband, got Mr. Obama a three-book deal from Random House. One of those is a children’s book that will be published by Knopf (no word yet on when) and the other is a proper follow-up to Audacity for Crown, the contents of which will depend on what happens in the next seven months. (Continue Reading…)

Gabrielle Union Joins ‘Cadillac Records’
If all goes well, ‘Cadillac Records’ is shaping up to be the next big musical that will bring folks back to the past as some of the best musicians you probably haven’t heard of, aside from a few, are being played on the big screen. With Jeffrey Wright set to play Muddy Waters, Gabrielle Union has been recently cast to play his girlfriend-then wife Geneva Wade. (Continue Reading…)

Obama girl pleads with Clinton to stop
Amber Lee Ettinger, the star of the last year’s wildly popular online video “Obama girl,” is out with a new video this week that decries Hillary Clinton’s insistence on remaining in the presidential race. The new video — titled “Hillary, stop the attacks!” — opens with a takeoff on Clinton’s now-famous “3 a.m.” ad, and quickly transitions to Ettinger addressing the New York Democrat head on. (Continue Reading…)

Affirmative Action Foes Push Ballot Initiatives
Sixteen months after voters in Michigan voted to kill affirmative action in the public sphere, opponents of preferences based on race and gender are pushing five more states to ban the practice. (Continue Reading…)

Detroit’s Kilpatrick Pleads Not Guilty to Perjury
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff, Christine Beatty, pleaded not guilty today to charges of lying under oath about an affair and using taxpayer money in an attempt to cover it up. The pair face charges of perjury, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and misconduct in office. They were released on $75,000 bail each, and preliminary examination has been set for June 9. (Continue Reading…)

McCain’s golden opportunity
While the Democratic presidential candidates are duking it out on the campaign trail, Sen. John McCain is trying to fill up his campaign coffers. But some supporters fear he’s not making the most of his time. Just back from his eighth trip to Iraq, McCain returned to the campaign trail Monday in Chula Vista,California, with last week’s words from Osama bin Laden in hand. (Continue Reading…)

Clinton: Wright would not have been my pastor
Sen. Hillary Clinton would have long ago distanced herself from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright if she had been a member of his church, the Democratic presidential candidate said Tuesday. It’s the first time she or her campaign has commented directly on a controversy that has swirled around rival Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign in recent weeks. (Continue Reading…)

Obama: How much experience is really required?
Much has been made about Barack Obama’s relative inexperience. Hillary Clinton has made experience the centerpiece of her campaign against Obama, and many Republicans see the issue as a big advantage for John McCain. Is Obama’s experience enough to qualify him to lead our country? It may be instructive to compare Obama’s experience to another relative lightweight who once became president. (Continue Reading…)

Obama took the risk to confront race relations in America
Last week, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made explicit the implicit promise of his campaign: that he is uniquely positioned to bridge the nation’s ideological divisions, in part because he is uniquely positioned to bridge the nation’s racial divisions. (Continue Reading…)

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