Celebrities tell you more about the countries that produce them than any guide book.
Jade Goody’s Reality: A TV Star’s Very Public Dying
Tag Archives: america
Black actors still face Oscar challenges
On a winter evening in early 1940, Hattie McDaniel became the first black performer to win an Oscar, a best supporting actress honor for her performance as Mammy, the servant in "Gone With the Wind." She accepted her award at the Academy Awards ceremony at the Coconut Grove, a nightclub in Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel, where she was seated in the segregated section at the rear of the room. Though her win was played as a sign of progress for black actors in America — “Not only was she the first of her race to receive an Award, but she was also the first Negro ever to sit at an Academy banquet,” said Daily Variety, according to Mason Wiley and Damien Bona’s indispensable “Inside Oscar” — her role was poorly received by much of the black community.
Afghanistan, trade on table as Obama visits Canada
President Obama takes his first foreign trip as head of state Thursday when he travels to Canada. And though he enjoys an 81 percent approval rating north of the border, Obama is expected to tackle several explosive issues with America’s largest trading partner. • The war in Afghanistan: Canada has about 2,800 troops in Afghanistan, but Parliament has voted to pull them out by 2011.
Holder: U.S. a ‘nation of cowards’ on race discussions
In a blunt assessment of race relations in the United States, Attorney General Eric Holder Wednesday called the American people "essentially a nation of cowards" in failing to openly discuss the issue of race. In his first major speech since being confirmed, the nation’s first black attorney general told an overflow crowd celebrating Black History Month at the Justice Department the nation remains “voluntarily socially segregated.” “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,” Holder declared. Holder urged Americans of all races to use Black History Month as a time to have a forthright national conversation between blacks and whites to discuss aspects of race which are ignored because they are uncomfortable.
Clinton on stimulus: ‘It’s quite a good bill’
CNN’s Larry King talked with former President Bill Clinton on Tuesday night at the William Jefferson Clinton Center in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Obama’s remarks on signing the stimulus plan
President Obama signed the $787 economic stimulus bill Tuesday in Denver, Colorado.
Beheaded woman’s sister: I might have heard deadly confrontation
A woman who was beheaded near Buffalo, New York — allegedly by her husband — may have been on the phone with her sister when she was killed.
Obama approves Afghanistan troop increase
President Barack Obama has approved a significant troop increase for Afghanistan, Pentagon officials told CNN Tuesday. The new troop deployment is expected to include 8,000 Marines headquartered from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, as well as 4,000 additional Army troops from Fort Lewis, Washington. “This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires,” Obama said in a written statement
PR exec: Death threats forced firm to drop octuplet mom
Joann Killeen is president of the Killeen Furtney Group, the Los Angeles, California-based public relations firm that represented octuplet mom Nadya Suleman.
Building Green Houses for the Poor
When most people hear the term “green building,” they probably imagine something like Bank of America’s soon-to-be-completed Midtown Manhattan headquarters. The skyscraper will have floor-to-ceiling insulating glass walls, automatic light dimming, water recycling, air filtration and on-site power generation