Nia Long, known from both her The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Soul Food roles…The 41-year-old actress is expecting a baby boy with boyfriend Ime Udoka, a former NBA player with the San Antonio Spurs who now plays for Nigeria’s national basketball team. Long already has an 11-year-old son, Massai, with her former long-time boyfriend and fellow actor Massai Z. Dorsey, so she knows what she’s getting into.
What she wasn’t able to anticipate was getting pregnant at an older age. Long opens up about her pregnancy inside the November issue.
“Society tells us ‘Get married before 30…’ I think if we just take our time as women, and do what comes natural to us and for us, we would make fewer mistakes,” Long tells Ebony.
“The medical profession tries to tell every woman, ‘Have your babies before 40…’ Society tells us ‘Get married before 30…’ I think if we just take our time as women, and do what comes natural to us and for us, we would make fewer mistakes,” Nia Long tells Ebony magazine, in the issue scheduled to hit stands later this month, coinciding with her due date — and her birthday on October 30!
The baby-to-be is reportedly a boy. Nia Long spoke to the press in late September sharing, “I am a little excited, for a long time I thought Massai would be one child. It’s like a surreal moment for me I can’t believe it’s happening, I am happy, I am excited.”
This Tuesday has come and gone with no sign of the stalemate between the league and basketball players coming to an end. With neither side able to reach a decision, the season’s pre-season games have been canceled. Along with that, the league will lose approximately $200 million dollars before the season officially starts. On top of that, the longer this impending decision drags on, the more likely the regular season will soon become affected.
From the outside looking in, it is hard to gauge when a resolution will be met. During Tuesday’s meeting, both sides were at loggerheads when a “concept” was put on the negotiating table around the idea of a 50-50 split of basketball revenue. However, several players (Kevin Garnett being one of the more uncompromising) made it known that they weren’t too keen on the idea, even if the league feels that the idea is “more than generous.” With the league’s owner’s bottom line being more financially driven, with them wanting more givebacks from the players, fans may be in for a long ride.
So what to do? So far there has been mixed reports from the NBA Commissioner David Stern, along with similar reports from Billy Hunter and Derek Fisher, with all of them spinning both positive and confrontational tales. Which appears to be lending nothing more than confusion to an already complex situation.
Yet, both sides remain cemented in their decisions, with either side willing to lose out on all the financial gain that a full NBA season would provide. At the same time, the owners’ determination to succeed where other owners have failed (notably the NFL), may have some questioning who is really the greedy ones here? The league, the agents or the players themselves?
Recently, a group of agents came together to address a letter to the players, regarding the lockout. With the main idea behind this mode of expression being to remind the players not to let the NBA take too much away. In other words, even though the owners have a certain figure in mind, the players don’t have to necessary cave into their demands.
“Remember, it is not about when or how fast a deal is reached, it is about taking the time to secure the deal,” the letter states.
Several agents have also pushed for the union to decertify – a similar tactic the NFL players’ union utilized last summer, which is slowly starting to become a consideration for the troubles surrounding the NBA.
“There are a lot of things that we have to consider before we go in that direction. But clearly that’s something we may have to give some thought to,” Hunter commented to the Washington Post.
One thing seems for certain; in that it is entirely possible for a negotiation that has canceled over $100 million or so in revenue could end up costing $100 million or so in legal fees.
The streets are buzzing with the news that Vybz Kartel protege, Popcaan, is now under new management.
Popcaan, who first gained popularity with the collaboration song, Clarks, has reportedly been trying to flee Kartel’s stranglehold since the summer, but persons have been reluctant to take him under their wings.
“Other people neva want the battle with Kartel even though them really want help Pappie,” a source told chatychaty.com.
Reports are that one of Papcan’s grouses was the fact that ever since his summer song looked like it was headed for major success, Kartel shelved him.
“The yute stop get show, cause dem overprice him. Right now him doan have nutten,” the source stated.
The feeling of many persons is that Kartel, now that he has been charged for murder, conspiracy to murder and illegal posession of a firearm, could be put away behind bars for a very long time.
“We nah rejoice bout Kartel and we woulda love fi see him get off if him innocent, but the way tings turn out it give the artiste him freedom. Cause if Kartel did deh a road Popcaan couldn’t leave just so,” the source explained to chatychaty.com.
Popcaan is now being managed by a veteran in the music business, who has confirmed that he is doing some work for the artiste.
At one end of the fire hose were officers deployed by Bull Connor, the notoriously racist police commissioner fond of telling his men to use sticks, dogs and whatever else was necessary to scatter peaceful black protesters.
At the business end was the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, the Birmingham, Ala., preacher who – as much or more than any of his contemporaries, the leaders of the civil rights movement – had a penchant for putting himself in harm’s way in the name of equality.
Shuttlesworth, who survived bombings, beatings and that 1963 encounter with the fire hose that left him with chest injuries, died Wednesday at 89 at Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham, relatives and hospital officials said, half a century after his repeated refusals to back down to Connor and the Ku Klux Klan helped even the fight for civil rights in the South and beyond.
“When God made Bull Connor, one of the real negative forces in this country, He was sure to make Fred Shuttlesworth,” said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a fellow pioneer in the movement.
Shuttlesworth, a truck driver turned Baptist minister, never gained the kind of fame outside his native Alabama bestowed on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other luminaries. But without him, King might not have sent his forces to Birmingham when he did.
“Fred didn’t invite us to come to Birmingham,” said Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador who served as an aide to King. “He told us we had to come.”
Shuttlesworth became pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1953 and soon began openly challenging segregation despite repeated arrests and attempts on his life.
On Christmas night 1956, 16 sticks of dynamite were detonated outside his bedroom as he slept at the Bethel Baptist parsonage, eleven months after a similar attack at King’s home in Montgomery, Ala. No one was injured in either bombing, although shards of glass and wood pierced Shuttleworth’s coat and hat left hanging on a hook.
The next day, Shuttlesworth led 250 people in a protest of segregation on buses. In 1957, he was beaten by a mob when he tried to enroll two of his children in an all-white school.
“My church was a beehive,” Shuttlesworth, who stayed active in Birmingham even after moving to a church in Cincinnati in 1961, once said.
“I made the movement. I made the challenge. Birmingham was the citadel of segregation, and the people wanted to march.”
Admirers from King to President Barack Obama hailed Shuttlesworth’s courage and determination over the years, qualities commonly attributed to the champions of the movement. But it was Shuttlesworth’s sheer fearlessness that persuaded King to take the struggle to Birmingham, Young said.
“He marched into the jaws of death every day in Birmingham before we got there,” Young said.
Alabama’s first black federal judge, U.W. Clemon, said Shuttlesworth flung himself at injustice well knowing he could be killed at any moment.
“He was the first black man I knew who was totally unafraid of white folks,” said Clemon, who is now in private practice.
In galvanizing his followers for another one-sided confrontation with the authorities, Shuttlesworth would say, “We’re telling ol’ Bull Connor right here tonight that we’re on the march and we’re not going to stop marching until we get our rights.”
Televised scenes of police dogs and fire hoses being turned on black marchers, including children, in the spring of 1963 helped the rest of the nation grasp the depth of racial animosity in the Deep South. That fact wasn’t lost on Connor, who died a decade later.
In a May 1963 New York Times story, Connor responded to the news that Shuttlesworth had been injured by the spray of fire hoses by saying: “I’m sorry I missed it. … I wish they’d carried him away in a hearse.”
In Cincinnati, Shuttlesworth left Revelation Baptist Church and became pastor of the Greater New Light Baptist Church in 1966.
For about three months in 2004, he was president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which he had helped found alongside King. The troubled organization’s board had suspended Shuttlesworth without giving a reason after he tried to fire a longtime official. He resigned, saying board members tried to micromanage the organization.
He was 84 when he retired as the pastor of Greater New Light in 2006. “The best thing we can do is be a servant of God,” he said in his final sermon. “It does good to stand up and serve others.”
Shuttlesworth moved back to Birmingham in February 2008 for rehabilitation after a mild stroke. That summer, the city once known as “Bombingham” honored him with a four-day tribute and named its airport after him. His statue also stands outside the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
That November, he watched from a hospital bed as Obama was elected the nation’s first African-American president. The year before, Obama had pushed Shuttlesworth’s wheelchair across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma during a commemoration of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march – a moment Obama recalled Wednesday in lauding Shuttlesworth as a “testament to the strength of the human spirit” and saying America owes him a “debt of gratitude.”
Birmingham Mayor William Bell ordered city flags lowered to half-staff until after Shuttleworth’s funeral, and Gov. Robert Bentley issued a similar decree statewide, honoring a man whose activism landed him behind bars dozens of times.
“I went to jail 30 or 40 times, not for fighting or stealing or drugs,” Shuttlesworth told grade school students in 1997. “I went to jail for a good thing, trying to make a difference.”
Occupy wall street protesters 13 year old girl brooklyn bridge 1st freedom of speech Occupy Wall Street Chicago federal reserve new your city ny nyc Protesters vs riot police brutality fail clash activists protesting uprising revolution revolt austerity military force strife conflict arrest.
Occupy Wall Street protesters shut down part of the Brooklyn Bridge when marchers spilled onto the roadway from Manhattan. Police arrested approximately 400 protesters while trying to clear the road and reopen the bridge to traffic Saturday evening.
It was estimated that more than a thousand protesters made their way to Brooklyn Bridge and several hundred walked in the eastbound car lanes stopping traffic.
“They were warned not to walk on the roadway…..the people that walked on the pedestrian walkway, there was no issue…..the ones on vehicular roadway, they chose to anyway, and they were arrested,” a police spokesperson said.
The NYPD brought in off-duty MTA buses to take those arrested away. Those arrested were expected to be charged with disorderly conduct, and others may be charged with additional offenses.
Bina Ahmad, a local attorney who works for Palestinian refugee rights, was at the march as a legal observer, donning the bright green caps signifying a guild observer. She said she saw police using unnecessary violence.
“There was one person who was being pulled and thrown to the ground by police. There was another man whose shirt had gotten pulled up and he was dragged on his bare skin. I don’t know if I saw blood, but it looked vicious,” Ahmad said.
The NYPD denies there was any violence.
The group has clashed with police on other occasions, most notably last weekend when pepper spray was used against some demonstrators in Union Square Park.
A march to police headquarters Friday night was peaceful and without incident.
Police had to shut down access to the bridge when the incident occurred and began turning back cars from the middle of the bridge.
Protesters who did not make it onto the bridge gathered across the street from the walkway entrance at Chambers Street. They chanted slogans, such as “We are the 99 percent” and “These are our streets” at the dozens of police officers who blocked the entrance to the bridge.
Earlier in the day, two other marches crossed over the bridge without any problems. One was by a group opposed to genetically modified food and the other was marching against poverty.
Occupy Wall Street has been rallying against several issues including corporate greed, global warming and social inequalities.
A high school cheerleader died early Saturday, hours after collapsing on the sideline during a football game between rival Los Angeles schools.
School officials did not release the student’s name when contacted by The Associated Press. Washington Prep Principal Todd Ullah identified the girl as 16-year-old sophomore Angela Gettis and told KABC-TV that she was a good student.
The student was briefly revived after passing out Friday night on the sideline at Fremont High School, according to Los Angeles Unified School District spokesman Tom Waldman. She was rushed to a hospital where she died about three hours later.
The girl, a student at Washington Prep High School, apparently suffered sudden cardiac arrest, Waldman said.
School officials did not release the student’s name when contacted by The Associated Press. Washington Prep Principal Todd Ullah identified the girl as 16-year-old sophomore Angela Gettis and told KABC-TV that she was a good student.
School district Superintendent John Deasy said Saturday the girl was “a wonderful young lady. It is a catastrophic loss for the school and for the community. My heart goes out to her family.”
A witness, Cameron Bonner, told City News Service the Washington Prep squad tied the game against Fremont in the fourth quarter when the cheerleader collapsed. Play was stopped and coaches and trainers ran to help the girl.
“They had just tied the game up, and the cheerleaders were pumped up,” Bonner said. She appeared “to just pass out,” he said.
Bystanders performed CPR while waiting for paramedics to arrive.
“All of her friends were in a circle crying,” Bonner said.
TJKS PRAYERS GOES OUT TO THE FAMILY!
Crisis counselors will be at Washington Prep on Monday to help students and faculty deal with the death, Deasy said.
Friends and supporters of Troy Davis, the convicted murderer who was executed in Georgia last week despite emotional pleas for his life, remembered him Friday night as a gentle man who faced his execution with grace and dignity.
More than 250 people, including NAACP president Benjamin Jealous and comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, jammed the New Life Apostolic Temple in Davis’ hometown of Savannah for a church memorial that served as a prelude to a much larger service planned for Davis’ funeral Saturday. Friends, pastors, anti-death penalty activists and Davis’ lawyer all took turns at a podium behind his closed casket, decorated with a spray of white and purple flowers.
The 42-year-old Davis was executed by lethal injection last week for the 1989 slaying of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail. In his last words, Davis insisted he was innocent and asked forgiveness for his accusers and executioners.
Longtime friend Earl Redman, who said he’d known Davis since age 8, told the crowd Friday that during prison visits Davis would often say that he expected to die in the death chamber.
“He looked me in the eye and he told me, ‘Don’t let me die in vain. Don’t let my name die in vain,'” Redman said as a church usher tore paper towels off a roll for teary attendees to dry their eyes.
The Rev. Randy Loney, a Macon pastor who often visited Davis in prison, said he was always struck by Davis’ gentle nature despite the death sentence looming over him. Referring to the catchphrase adopted by his supporters — “I am Troy Davis” — Loney said he came to realize that “in a lot of ways, we are not Troy Davis.”
“We did not wake up every morning and go to sleep every evening with the specter of the executioner in our eyes,” he said.
Jason Ewart, a Washington attorney who spent seven years handling Davis’ appeals, fought back tears as he recalled sitting in the second row of witnesses at the execution and watching the life drain from Davis’ eyes.
Ewart recalled many long phone conversations with Davis, never shorter than an hour, in which the men spent twice as much time talking about their families as they did legal strategy. Ewart said his own grandmother had just died, and he pictured her and Davis together at “heaven orientation.”
“She would say, ‘Jesus died on the cross not because he was guilty, but because we all were,'” Ewart said.
Davis’ family has opted to open the funeral Saturday to his supporters and the general public, holding the service at a church that organizers say can seat 2,000 people. The pastor who will deliver the eulogy said he hopes Davis’ funeral will serve as wake-up call on the death penalty much like the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till shocked Americans to the brutal realities of Jim Crow.
“Like Emmett Till’s mother insisted on an open casket funeral in a way that the world could see the injustice of Jim Crow, it’s much to the Davis family’s credit that they have been willing in the midst of their personal pain to see that we are talking about a larger, national moral crisis,” the Rev. Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.
Till was killed and his body was mutilated by white men after the boy was seen speaking to a white woman at a grocery store in the Mississippi Delta in August 1955. His death was an early flashpoint that helped spark the civil rights movement.
Warnock, head pastor at the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, said “it’s not a perfect analogy” to compare Davis’ case to the Till lynching. Davis was convicted in 1991 of killing MacPhail, who was shot twice while rushing to stop an attack on a homeless man.
After four years of appeals since Davis’ first scheduled execution was halted in 2007, every court that looked at Davis’ case ultimately upheld his death sentence. MacPhail’s family and prosecutors insist Davis was the killer. But Warnock said he’s among those who believe Davis was innocent.
A typical Nickelodeon event, Worldwide Day of Play featured plenty of gack as well as the requisite Nick star guest appearance, this time in the form of Victoria Justice. But there was a special surprise: LeBron James! The Miami Heat star joined the First Lady to teach the kiddies about the importance of fitness.
But by night FLOTUS ditched her yoga pants and zip-up and donned a black glittering ensemble for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Phoenix Awards dinner in Washington, D.C.
With her husband in black tie, Michelle wore a long sequin skirt and a black tee cinched with a Peter Soronen corset belt, accessorized with chunky black bracelets and a sparkling necklace.
Beautiful!!!! She looks gorgeous. Love my president and our First Lady.
Two of our favorite subjects — FLOTUS and Target — collided today, when Michelle Obama headed to the cheap-chic chain’s Alexandria, Va. outpost for some retail therapy.
The first lady wore a floral shirt and lemon-hued tank, putting a sporty spin on the casual-cool ensemble with a Nike baseball cap. Judging by the two shopping bags she’s toting, it looks as if she had a successful visit.
While Michelle’s known to support high-end designers like Jason Wu, she’s also given to stepping out in fast fashion.
Power 96 morning host and Miami bass legend DJ Laz finds himself connected to a bizarre murder-suicide that occurred in Miramar this past weekend.
Marcus Trotman, 25, shot his wife, 30-year-old Danielle Lorenzo, and his mother-in-law, Linda Scudera, before turning the gun on himself. All three died. According to Local 10’s sources, the gun belonged to DJ Laz, AKA Lazaro Mendez. Trotman had been staying with Laz before the incident.
Trotman had been working for Laz as an audio engineer and had been staying at his Plantation home while dealing with mental issues. Trotman was also facing domestic violence charges at for allegedly choking and beating his wife. Lorenzo was so badly injured during the August attack she needed 15 stitches in her head.
The gun used in the Sunday murder-suicide was Laz’s semiautomatic small-caliber pistol. According to Bob Norman, the DJ contacted police after hearing about the incident and discovering that one of his guns had gone missing.
Laz is said to be grieving, and no wrongdoing is suspected on his part.
UPDATE:
DJ Laz, a popular South Florida radio personality, has been linked to the fallout from a murder-suicide involving a close friend.
Marcus Nathaniel Trotman, who had been working with DJ Laz as an audio engineer, shot his wife, Danielle Lorenzo, 30 and her mother, Linda Scudera before turning the gun on himself, leaving two children — a girl and a boy — motherless, police said. The gun used in the shooting may have been owned by Lazaro Mendez, who goes by the name DJ Laz.
Media reports have portrayed a mentor friendship between Mendez, 39, and Trotman, 26, an aspiring rapper. The host of Power 96’s morning show, Mendez is one of the DJs who helped to engineer Miami’s hybrid Latin-bass-hip hop sound. He was not available for comment.
Sunrise police confirmed that the gun recovered from the shooting scene — a Walther PPK .380 caliber handgun — was the same make and model as one reported missing by Mendez. Sunrise Police Sgt. Rodney Hailey said Mendez reported the gun missing on Sunday night, the evening of the shooting.
Mendez’s publicist issued a statement to the media late Tuesday saying he was “deeply shocked and saddened” by the shooting.
“We ask that the media respect Lazaro Mendez and his family’s privacy during this time. He will take the next few days to grieve and will at all times be helpful to police investigators. His condolences go out to all of the victims of this tragedy and their families .”
Hailey said Mendez provided a receipt for the handgun, and technicians were verifying whether the serial numbers matched.
“Apparently, he was friends with Marcus, but it has not been confirmed it was the DJ’s gun,’’ Hailey told the Sun-Sentinel.
Hailey told the Herald that Trotman had been living with Mendez since Sunrise police arrested Trotman for battery on Aug. 21, and a judge ordered Trotman to stay away from Lorenzo and Scudera
On Tuesday, during a Department of Children & Families hearing, a Broward judge placed Lorenzo’s 5-year-old daughter and her older, school-aged brother in state custody.
The girl, who was in the home when the triple shooting occurred, had been staying with a long-term babysitter.
She will be placed in the home of Roy Anthony Maynard, Sr., father of Roy Anthony Maynard, Jr., who claimed paternity at Tuesday’s hearing but must submit to DNA testing to verify the relationship
Roy Anthony Maynard claims paternity of a 5-year-old girl whose mother was murdered. Maynard attends a custody hearing Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2011.
The boy, born in 1998, was already living with other relatives and will continue living with his relatives and stepfather Matthew Cancemi, who attended Tuesday’s hearing and petitioned for legal custody.
The Sun Sentinel reported that Trotman was estranged from Lorenzo, his wife of 18 months.
Ten days ago, Trotman was arraigned on two counts of misdemeanor battery/domestic violence against Scudera and Lorenzo, said Ron Ishoy, spokesman for the state attorney’s office.
Trotman pleaded no contest and was put on probation.
As a condition of his probation, Trotman was not to have contact with his wife or mother-in-law and was required to participate in a batterers’ intervention program, as well as Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and anger management classes, Ishoy said.
On Sunday, he showed up at the Sunrise townhouse, police said.
When the shooting started, the little girl ran next door to a neighbor’s house for help, Hailey said.
Lorenzo was taken to Broward General Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.
The others were pronounced dead at the townhouse the women co-owned on the 4000 block of Del Rio Way in Del Rio Village.
DJ Laz, an old-school scratching wizard and pioneer of Spanish and hip hop mixes, has been a popular disc jockey at the radio station for more than two decades, first as a mix master providing the soundtrack, now as the voice and namesake of the morning show.
As a music producer, Mendez has remixed cuts for artists ranging from Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell to Will Smith. His own discography includes several albums including DJ Laz and Category 6, which snagged a spot on the U.S. Billboard album charts.
Mendez, who was born with a muscular disorder, is a huge supporter of charities, helping to generate $50,000 or more annually for the Radio Lollipop fundraiser. Two years ago, Mendez used his broad fan base and the power of radio to raise $50,000 in just five hours to help bury three children killed in a traffic accident in South Miami-Dade.
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