On Thursday, the Senate adopted a resolution that apologizes for the evils of slavery on behalf of the people of the United States, and “acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery, and Jim Crow laws.” The resolution does not, however, offer any form of reparation for the descendants of slaves.
Sean Penn has pulled out of two upcoming film roles and may be taking a year off from acting. No word yet on his politicking schedule. The star had been set to appear in “Cartel” and “The Three Stooges.” Yes, those Three Stooges.
Kobe Bryant and the Lakers brought the NBA championship trophy back to Los Angeles and with it cause for celebration, but how can a city struggling to make ends meet justify the traditional $2 million victory parade? By making the team and private donors pay for it.
Iranian officials have cut off key communication conduits within the country and barred access to foreign news broadcasts as election protests rage on. But protesters have found ways to get information by other means: They have turned to social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook.
It seems that immigrant bashing isn’t the ratings fertilizer it used to be. Just ask CNN blowhard Lou Dobbs, who hitched his wagon to a xenophobia boomlet only to discover that angry white men are a fickle bunch.
After a year of haggling (and not much to show for it), the Screen Actors Guild has agreed to a two-year contract with the major studios. SAG President Alan Rosenberg dismissed the deal as “devastatingly unsatisfactory.” So dramatic.
Shepherd Johnson’s Flickr account, along with an estimated 1,200 photos, vanished shortly after he started hassling the president via the White House’s official photostream. Yahoo, which owns the popular photo sharing site, won’t comment, but Johnson says he lost access after posting 20 or so negative comments, complete with links to images of torture.
Apple unveiled a faster, more powerful version of its popular iPhone Monday, but the bigger news is that the company slashed the price of the current model to $99. That makes a robust portable computing experience available to a much bigger crowd, assuming they can handle AT&T’s horrendously overpriced service.
Dress the White House in purple and gold, the president is backing Los Angeles in the NBA finals. It’s probably because of his uncommonly good taste and high basketball IQ, but it could also have something to do with the 39 percentage points by which he won Los Angeles in the presidential election.
Two days before the 20th anniversary of the brutal military crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government has blocked popular Web sites aimed at the young, including Twitter, Flickr and Hotmail. It also has blocked message boards on some 6,000 sites associated with colleges and universities.
In the same month that the California Supreme Court voted to uphold a ban on gay marriage, seniors at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles voted Sergio Garcia as their prom queen, proving once again that if you wish to find more open-minded folk, you can always turn to the youth.
Fresh off a fundraising stop in Las Vegas, where he made an appearance at Caesars Palace, President Barack Obama swung through Hollywood Wednesday evening to pitch woo to a star-studded crowd for the first time since taking office—but, as The Wrap’s Dominic Patten points out, it was a bit of a tough crowd this time around.
With news that American health remains in general decline and more than one-third of adults are obese, consider this a public service announcement: Soup is the secret weapon against fat. Scientists have confirmed that soup keeps you fuller longer than other food.
Turns out that Red Bull Cola gives you more than just “wings,” according to scientists at The Health Institute in Germany’s North Rhine Westphalia who recently discovered that the fizzy drink contains small amounts of cocaine—very, very small amounts, in fact, but enough to cause a handful of German states to ban the beverage.
A royal chauffeur was suspended by Buckingham Palace on Monday after he allegedly allowed access to the queen’s fleet of official cars to tabloid reporters of the News World Press. It was the latest in a series of royal security breaches that famously include the intrusion of a man dressed as Osama bin Laden at Prince William’s birthday party and, creepier, in 1982 when a man broke into the queen’s room to watch her sleep.
Since President Obama took office a little over four months ago, we’ve heard little from our old pal Dubya. (Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the persistent and pugnacious Dick Cheney.) This week, however, the former president spoke to a high school class in New Mexico about when he first realized he was no longer running the United States.
It’s the first time that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s estate has officially approved a movie project about the late civil rights leader, and the MLK biopic will be helmed by none other than mega-director Steven Spielberg, who has acquired the “life rights” to Dr. King’s story, according to Variety.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was visited by the GOP Muse and out plopped this elephant patty of a poem. The chef-d’oeuvre comes at a time when Republicans and Leon Panetta are calling for an apology from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the CIA for accusing the agency of “misleading” her on their interrogation methods.
Woody Allen walked away with $5 million American Apparel dollars on Monday in a settlement of his lawsuit against the hipster-magnet clothing company. The actor-director had sued American Apparel for $10 million after the company put up billboards with an ad showing Allen dressed as a rabbi—an image taken from a scene from “Annie Hall”—without his permission.
Across Europe and even in the U.S., a new wave of direct action to “rebuild the economy from the ground up” is rising. Some workers are responding to layoffs and workplace shutdowns by ousting their bosses and seeking to run things their own way. Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis report on the state of worker-control movements today in light of the current economic crisis.
Friends and admirers of the late San Francisco supervisor and gay rights activist have been rallying to establish an annual commemorative day in his honor, and on Thursday, the California Senate approved a bill that would officially make Milk’s birthday, May 22, Harvey Milk Day in the Golden State.
Looks like Carrie Prejean’s opinions about gay marriage, as well as various and sundry racy snapshots in a state of undress, aren’t going to end up costing her the Miss California title. On Tuesday, Donald Trump announced that Prejean was going to continue her reign—and, shockingly, that he thought some of the photos were rather fetching.
A debate over freedom of speech on Facebook has shaken up the Web this past week. The controversy centers on use of the social media site by such entities as Holocaust denial groups. In an interview, Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt expressed the site’s desire “to be a place where people can discuss all kinds of ideas, including controversial ones,” but drew the line at groups that incite violent behavior.
After nearly two weeks of subsisting only on liquids, actress Mia Farrow has ended her hunger strike for Darfur, passing the proverbial torch to another member of the Celebrity Darfur Fasting Network, British mega-mogul Richard Branson.
It wasn’t exactly “two thumbs up” material, but despite the Vatican’s vested interest in pooh-poohing certain conspiratorial notions presented in “Da Vinci Code” author Dan Brown’s oeuvre, the official paper of the Holy See didn’t quite pan director Ron Howard’s cinematic treatment of Brown’s prequel, “Angels & Demons,” either.
Fighting Extremism With Civility
