Early video of Obama surfaces from Harvard Law School era

A 20-year-old video clip of Barack Obama hit YouTube on Thursday. The future president appeared on a televised “Black History Minutes” segment in 1991, the same year he graduated from Harvard law school.

The early video, originally broadcast by TBS as a public service announcement, may have been Obama’s first-ever appearance on national television.

The president made this video some five years before running for a state Senate seat in Illinois. The script, which he either memorized or read from a teleprompter, concerned the accomplishments of Charles Hamilton Houston, the African-American lawyer who taught Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Obama’s voice in 1991, far lower-pitched and more measured than what Americans are accustomed to in 2011, is only marginally recognizable.

“The distinguished lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston was born in 1895, eight months before the Supreme Court’s ‘separate but equal’ ruling in Plessy vs. Ferguson. He spent his career fighting to overturn that decision,” Obama intoned. “As director of the NAACP legal campaign, Houston masterminded the strategy that eventually led to the historic decision of Brown vs. Board of Education.”

Presuming the TBS public service announcement ran during February, which is traditionally acknowledged as Black History Month, Obama was 29 years old at the time of the broadcast. He was identified on-screen as editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Watch:

As the 2012 election cycle heats up, the Obama campaign should expect more early videos to be unearthed as Americans take a closer look at the early beliefs of their president. The Daily Caller has already reported on another early video from Obama’s 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, in which he tested talking points that he would become more familiar during his 2008 White House run.

Obama’s approval numbers have fallen precipitously as the economy has deteriorated. Additional vintage videos of the president may yet emerge for the benefit of a public more eager than ever to vet their future leaders.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/11/17/early-video-of-obama-surfaces-from-harvard-law-school-era/#ixzz1e4zh2ND3

Lisa Ling Explores Why So Many Black Men are in Prison

http://www.eurweb.com

*In her documentary series “Our America,” Lisa Ling aims to peel the scab off of hard truths that are happening across this country, such as child sex trafficking and suicide among veterans – two stories that were explored in the show’s current second season on OWN.

This Sunday, the 38-year-old journalist will put a spotlight on the disproportionate number of African-American men in prison and their challenges in finding employment after they’ve paid their debt to society.

The episode, titled “Incarceration Generation,” explores the rate at which black men are jailed and ways to reduce it. She interviews inmates who are caught in a growing cycle of crime and punishment that crosses generations, creating poverty and destroying communities.

It was the opportunity to do these kinds of stories each week that drew Ling to the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) following her investigative work for the National Geographic Channel, which she took on following her three years at “The View.”

“It has certainly been the most gratifying work experience I’ve had ever had,” she says of “Our America.”  “I’ve never been prouder of any work that I’ve ever done. And I really feel like this has been the culmination of everything I’ve ever learned as a journalist. And it’s ironic that all of these stories are here in America, in our own backyards.

“Because I can’t tell you how many times throughout the course of shooting this series, that I felt like I was in a foreign place or a distant place. But the reality is that all of these stories, in their greatest complexity, are in our backyards. And we set out to try and understand or explore what it really means to be an American. And sometimes the answer to that is a very moving answer, but sometimes it’s very challenging.”

Below, Ling explains the single motto that drives her investigative work: “Everybody has a story.”

Lisa Ling says ‘everyone has a story’ by CherieNic

The Incarceration Generation episode of “Our America with Lisa Ling” airs Sunday, Nov. 20 (10-11 p.m. ET/PT) on OWN.

Below are statistics compiled by The New York Times in 2009.

Filed Under

S. African teacher hacked to death in front of class

A teacher was hacked to death with a machete in front of a shocked classroom of primary school students in South Africa, media reports said on Thursday.

Guilford Shapo, 53, was killed Tuesday at Masehlong Primary School in the northern town of Polokwane, where he was observing seventh-grade students taking an exam, SABC public radio reported.

His 40-year-old brother, who has not been named, has been charged in the case, it said.

"We were alerted by the pupils as they screamed and ran out of themobile classroom," principal Noko Moabelo told The Star newspaper.

"Mr Shapo was the only male teacher at the school. As women, none of us could take the risk of approaching the suspect," she said.

Neighbours heard the screams and dashed to the school, where they restrained the man as he was still hacking at his brother's body, the paper added.

Violence plagues many of South Africa's schools. A 46-year-old high school teacher was arrested Wednesday outside Johannesburg on charges of raping 11 students, police said.

A survey of South African school boards released in July found that 29 percent believed sexual harassment by teachers was a top problem in their classrooms.

The latest police statistics show that South Africa's murder rate is at the lowest level since the end of white-minority rule in 1994, but it remains among the highest in the world with nearly 43 killings a day.

White Kids More Likely to Abuse Drugs Than Blacks; Blacks Arrested More Often

By Ray Downs | Christian Post Reporter

Studies shows racial discrepancies between drug use and drug arrests

White children between the ages of 12 and 17 are nearly twice as likely to have a drug problem than African-Americans, despite African-American children being nearly twice as likely to be arrested for a drug charge, separate studies have revealed.

The study on drug abuse, published Monday by the Archives of General Psychiatry, used data from 72,561youth interviewed by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. From this data, researchers found that 37 percent of children between the ages of 12 and 17 have used alcohol or drugs in the past year, with nearly 8 percent using drugs or alcohol often enough to have a substance-abuse disorder.

Out of the 8 percent who had a drug problem, the racial breakdown was: 15 percent Native American; 9.2 percent mixed racial heritage; 9.0 percent white; 7.7 percent Hispanic; 5 percent African-American, and 3.5 percent Asian/Pacific Islander.

"Our goal is to alert people to the burden of drug problems and also to how some of our concern about who has these problems may not be true," says Dr. Dan Blazer, senior author of the study and a professor of psychiatry at Duke University, according to Time magazine. "There's a perception among many individuals that African-Americans as a group - regardless of socioeconomic status - tend to abuse or use drugs at higher rate and this [does not support] that."

Nevertheless, arrest rates show a much stronger focus on blacks than whites. In a 2008 study of juvenile arrest trends by the United States Department of Justice data showed that for every 1,000 African-American between the ages of 10 and 17 arrested for a drug abuse violation, less than 600 white children were arrested between 2004 and 2008.

The high rates of drug use among young people also reveals that marijuana and analgesic opioids, or painkillers, were used more often than alcohol, according to the study.

In 2009, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) released a study that found children between the ages of 12 and 17 were increasingly able to get marijuana and prescription drugs than alcohol. Although the study did not reveal why access to marijuana had increased, parents could be partially blamed for the increased access to prescription drugs could be partially due to parents, the Christian Science Monitor reported.

"A substantial number of American parents have become passive pushers," said CASA chairman Joseph Califano Jr. "A few decades ago, parents used to have a lock on the liquor cabinet. Maybe there should be a lock on the medicine cabinet."

Feds pressure African dictator's son to surrender Ferrari, Michael Jackson's glove

By Justin Hyde 

2011 Ferrari 599 GTO

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The U.S. government may soon own one of Michael Jackson's white gloves, a $530,000 Ferrari and a $30 million Malibu estate if it succeeds in seizing them from the son of a corrupt African dictator.

In a case kept hidden from public view until last week, theU.S. Department of Justice says it's pursuing more than $32 million in assets from Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, whose father Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has ruled over oil-rich Equatorial Guinea for 32 years -- and has been accused by authorities around the world of illicitly siphoning hundreds of millions of dollars for himself and his family.

A 2010 U.S. Senate report detailed how Obiang the younger, known as Teodorin, had moved $110 million into the United States through shell companies and anonymous transactions, propping up a hard-partying lifestyle that included spending $30 million on one of Malibu's largest mansions and a $38.5 million Gulfstream V jet. Obiang was also known to collect supercars like they were Hot Wheels, with at least 32 cars and motorcycles at one point, including eight Ferraris, two Bugatti Veyrons and a $2 million Maserati.

While the U.S. Department of Justice has said a probe into Obiang had been ongoing since 2004, the first signs of legal trouble for Obiang came from France, where authorities seized 11 of his cars last month, including the $2 million Maserati MC-12. While the Justice Department had sought seven cars from Obiang in California, its latest request mentions only one -- a 2011 Ferrari 599 GTO.

The documents unsealed last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles offer the first glimpse of the case built by the Justice against Obiang, accusing him of spending more than $100 million garnered from extortion and embezzlement in Equatorial Guinea. The feds also revealed how Obiang bought $3.2 million worth of memorabilia from Michael Jackson's estate earlier this year, including the white crystal-studded glove Jackson wore on the "Bad" tour, the MTV Music Video Award for "We Are The World" and several of the life-size figurines Jackson used to keep at his Neverland Ranch.

So far, no representatives of Obiang's has officially responded to the government's bid, and the Justice Department has not yet responded to a request for comment from Yahoo! Autos. Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group long critical of inaction against the Obiang family, has called on the United States and other countries to move against the clan despite their control over a key oil supply.

“The move to freeze Teodorín’s assets in the U.S. is overdue,” said Arvind Ganesan, business and human rights director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement. “But the real test will be if the U.S. government vigorously pursues the inquiry to its conclusion without letting diplomatic or business ties stand in the way.”

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The Medical Benefits of Circumcising Boys

By COURTNEY HUTCHISON, ABC News Medical Unit

Between San Francisco's attempted ban on infant circumcision and the move by 19 state governments to defund Medicaid coverage for the procedure, the millennia-old act of removing a newborn boy's foreskin has undoubtedly become a point of controversy in America.

Twenty years ago as much as 67 percent of all infants born in U.S. hospitals were circumcised. Today, that number hovers around 32 percent, in part because of decreased funding for the poor and a rise in controversy over the merits of the practice. Opponents of circumcision, who call themselves "inactivists" because they wish to leave the foreskin alone, lampoon the practice as a violation of human rights, a form of genital mutilation and as medically unnecessary.
This spring ABC News tracked the war waged on the procedure in San Francisco as circumcision opponents put forth a ban on it. Though they succeeded in getting the anti-circumcision bill on the ballot, it was later struck down by a judge over a legal technicality.
Campaigns to withdraw state Medicaid funding for infant circumcision were more successful with two new states, South Carolina and Colorado, adding such defunding measures this year. Though state officials cite economic reasons for the defunding, a 2009 UCLA study suggests that the withdrawal of coverage to the poor will have a large impact on circumcision rates: In the study, hospitals in states without Medicaid coverage for circumcision were half as likely to perform the procedure as a matter of routine.
Ironically, increased public doubt about the long-routine practice of circumcision comes at exactly the time when there is the most medical evidence to support its health benefits, says Dr. Aaron Tobian, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Along with his colleague Dr. Ronald Gray, a professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins, Tobian puts forth an argument for the medical benefits of infant circumcision in the October edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, released Tuesday.
"The anti-circumcision campaign is very similar to the anti-vaccination campaigns -- the more vocal you are, the more press coverage, and people believe what people are yelling, despite what the medical evidence shows."
"The foreskin is there for a reason," Lloyd Schofield, who spearheaded the San Francisco anti-circumcision bill, told ABC News in May. Shofield called circumcision an "unnecessary surgery" with no "sound medical evidence" behind it.
Recent studies, especially in the past five years, suggest otherwise, Gray and Tobian say. As recently as 2005, when his first child was about to be born, Tobian considered not circumcising him (his firstborn was a girl, so it didn't end up mattering). By the time his son was born in 2008, there was no question in his mind that they would circumcise for both the child's immediate urinary health and for his future sexual health that of his sexual partners.
Tobian was part of a Ugandan study published this year that tested the effect of circumcision on STD transfer in married Ugandan couples. When comparing those who were circumcised for the study with those who remained uncircumcised, researchers found that circumcision reduced the risk of HIV infection risk by 60 percent, genital herpes by 30 percent and cancer-causing human papillomavirus by 35 percent in men. Female sexual partners of the circumcised men benefited from a 40 percent or greater reduced risk of bacterial vaginosis or parasitic trichomonas spread during sex, as well as HPV infection, which can lead to cervical cancer. Sexual satisfaction for the men, the long-standing bugaboo among opponents to circumcision, was reported to be just as great or more so after circumcision.
Though this study was done in Africa, the results closely match the observational studies done in the U.S., Tobias says. What's more, there are U.S. studies that how the infant of circumcision can benefit, as it reduces the chance of penile infections.
"Boys who are circumcised have fewer urinary tract infections during infancy," Dr. Douglas Diekema, director of education for the Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics at Seattle Children's Hospital told ABC News during the San Francisco anti-circumcision bill controversy in May. "These are serious infections that require hospitalization," he said.
Circumcision is yet to get full support of major health organization,s however, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics remain neutral on the practice.
"No medical association promotes circumcision," said Schofield. "If there was sound and repeated scientific evidence, there'd be a medical association promoting it."
And that is the impasse that proponents like Tobian and Gray find themselves at – as long as major medical associations remain neutral, it will be hard to change health policy or change public opinion. In their editorial, Tobian and Gray call for these agencies to review the "overwhelming medical evidence" and reconsider their stance on male circumcision.

FIFA chief Blatter: There is no on-field racism in football

By Chris Murphy, CNN

Blatter: 'There is no racism' on pitch

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Sepp Blatter tells CNN World Sport's Pedro Pinto there is no on-field racism in football
• FIFA president says players who are abused during a match should say "it's a game"
• Two high-profile cases involving racism allegations being dealt with in English game
• Blatter underlines the work his organization has done to combat racism

(CNN) -- FIFA president Sepp Blatter has told CNN he believes there is no on-field racism in football and that players who think they have been abused should simply say "this is a game."

The head of world soccer insisted FIFA had been tireless in their efforts to combat the specter of racism in football but suggested any player who is abused during a game should shake hands with their opponent upon the final whistle and move on.

The football authorities in England are currently dealing with two high-profile allegations of player-on-player racism, involving Chelsea and England captain John Terry and Liverpool's Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez. Both players deny the claims.

When asked by CNN World Sport anchor Pedro Pinto if racism exists on the field of play Blatter said: "I would deny it.

Blatter comments spark Twitter fury

"There is no racism, there is maybe one of the players towards the other, he has a word or a gesture which is not the correct one, but also the one who is affected by that, he should say it's a game, we are in a game.

Racism in football

"At the end of the game, we shake hands, this can happen, because we have worked so hard against racism and discrimination."

This year has also seen allegations of high-profile racism by fans.

Former Brazil defender Robert Carlos walked off the pitch during a Russian league match after a banana was thrown at him from the stands, while the Malaysian Football Association was forced to apologize to Chelsea in July when their Israeli midfielder Yossi Benayoun was subject to racial slurs during a pre-season encounter.

CNN Blog: How should football tackle racism?

On Wednesday the English Football Association (FA) announced they had charged Liverpool player Suarez over a clash with Manchester United's Patrice Evra during an English Premier League match in October.

Evra alleged the Uruguayan had aimed racial taunts at him -- a claim Suarez denies.

On the field of play sometimes you say something that is not very correct but then .. the game is over and you have the next game where you can behave better
Sepp Blatter, FIFA president

In a statement on their official web site the FA said Suarez is alleged to have used abusive language towards his opponent, including "a reference to the ethnic origin and/or color and/or race" of Evra.

London's Metropolitan Police is investigating allegations that Terry racially abused Queens Park Rangers defender Anton Ferdinand during an English Premier League match last month. Terry denies the allegations.

In his interview with CNN, Blatter, who was re-elected unopposed as the head of world football despite allegations of corruption surrounding the voting process for the right to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, championed his organization's commitment to tackling racism.

"I think the whole world is aware of the efforts we are making against racism and discrimination," he added.

"And, on the field of play sometimes you say something that is not very correct, but then at the end of the game, the game is over and you have the next game where you can behave better."

Blatter's comments provoked an immediate response within soccer.

Manchester United's Rio Ferdinand, brother of Anton, took to Twitter to say: "Tell me I have just read Sepp Blatter's comments on racism in football wrong .... if not then I am astonished.

I feel stupid for thinking that football was taking a leading role against racism. It seems it was just on mute for a while
Rio Ferdinand, Manchester United

"I feel stupid for thinking that football was taking a leading role against racism ..... it seems it was just on mute for a while."

The 'Kick It Out' campaign, who work to eradicate racism from football in England and Europe, said Blatter's comments were "worryingly out of touch."

A statement from Blatter was later posted on FIFA's official web site, in which he sought to clarify his comments. It read: "I would like to make it very clear, I am committed to the fight against racism and any type of discrimination in football and in society.

"My comments have been misunderstood. What I wanted to express is that, as football players, during a match, you have "battles" with your opponents, and sometimes things are done which are wrong.

"But, normally, at the end of the match, you apologize to your opponent if you had a confrontation during the match, you shake hands, and when the game is over, it is over. Anyone who has played a football match, or a match in any sport, knows that this is the case.

"Having said that, I want to stress again that I do not want to diminish the dimension of the problem of racism in society and in sport. I am committed to fighting this plague and kicking it out of football."

First Lady Michelle Obama to Be NASCAR Grand Marshal

“Gentlemen, start your engines!”

Famous words soon to be uttered by … Michelle Obama?

Yep. The NASCAR season is coming to an end, and first lady Michelle Obama will help preside over its final race of 2011 at the Homestead-Miami Speedway on November 20. She and Dr. Jill Biden, as part of their efforts through Joining Forces — a group that helps military families — will serve as grand marshals at the championship Chase for the Sprint Cup finale, the Ford 400.

In a statement, the White House says: “As part of the season-ending NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship race, NASCAR will rally its millions of fans at the speedway and online to serve military families through the holiday season by asking them to visit www.NASCAR.com/Unites and JoiningForces.gov to find service opportunities and ideas to give back to those who serve our country.”

Generally, Michelle Obama’s name has not been connected to NASCAR, but the first lady’s work for military families ties in nicely with the event.

And of course, as a nice added bonus, Florida is kind of important in 2012 politics.