NEW YORK (NNPA) - The federal government has decided that it will not prosecute the police officers involved in the 2006 shooting death of Sean Bell. The news comes from the Department of Justice, which said that there is insufficient evidence to suggest that the officers acted willfully during the shooting.
At a Feb. 16 press conference at the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network headquarters in Harlem, Bell's fiancée, Nicole Paultre-Bell, Joe Guzman and Trent Benefield expressed their outrage over the decision.

ATLANTA (AP) -- The message on dozens of billboards across Atlanta is provocative: Black children are an "endangered species."
The eyebrow-raising ads featuring a young Black child are an effort by the anti-abortion movement to use race to rally support within the Black community. The reaction from Black leaders has been mixed, but the "Too Many Aborted" campaign, which so far is unique to only Georgia, is drawing support from other anti-abortion groups across the country.

(AP) Many jobless people have reached a conclusion that captures the depth of the unemployment crisis: Looking for a job is a waste of time.
The economy is growing. Yet it's creating few jobs. That's why in the past eight months, 1.8 million people without jobs left the labor market. Many had grown so frustrated by their failure to find a job that they threw up their hands and quit looking for one...

NEW YORK (NNPA) - New York City's Department of Education (DOE) had better be prepared for a fight.
In the aftermath of the department approving the eventual closing of 19 schools around the city, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), along with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Alliance for Quality Education and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer filed a joint lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court. The lawsuit asks the court to overturn the Panel for Education Policy's (PEP) decision to close the schools.

(NNPA) - Over three months after the controversial shooting death of Detroit-area religious leader Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, the official autopsy results were released by the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office on Feb. 1.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Frustrated by term-limited Mayor Ray Nagin's leadership of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, voters elected Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu to succeed him Saturday, turning to a political scion to speed up the city's recovery. The vote preceded the Saints' victory in the Superbowl Sunday...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- When a gang member was released from jail soon after his arrest for selling methamphetamine, friends and associates assumed he had cut a deal with authorities and become a police informant. They sent a warning on Twitter that went like this: We have a snitch in our midst...

Flanked by dozens of Black newspaper publishers from across the country, National Newspaper Publishers Association Chairman Danny Bakewell is demanding that the U.S. Census Bureau allocates more funding in advertising for Black newspapers throughout America in order to conduct an accurate count in the 2010 U.S. Census.

(NNPA) - A year after his historic election as the nation's first African-American president, Barack Obama is at a crossroads. In his State of the Union Jan. 27, President Obama aimed to deliver a game changing message, one capable of convincing Americans that his policies will create jobs, curb spending, restore prosperity and encourage national unity...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, a unique window into a vital chapter of American history that the late Buck O'Neil helped open 20 years ago, could be in trouble...