• Entertainment

by Christian Spencer

May 20, 2021

50 Cent Plans to Seize Teairra Mari’s Assets For a $37,000 Debt Owed

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Singer/reality star Teairra Mari, who still owes 50 Cent’s legal fees, is about to get her assets seized by the rapper.

Following a failed attempt to sue Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson for reposting explicit photos and videos of her that were originally shared on social media by her boyfriend Akbar Abdul-Ahad — a storyline she used on Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood — she owes 50 Cent more than $30,000 in legal fees. The rapper spent thousands defending himself against Mari’s revenge porn accusations.

She has yet to pay 50 Cent his money, so 50 Cent said he is going to take control of her assets. Because of this, she had “accrued interest in the amount of $2,597.80.”

Related stories: 50 CENT IS DONATING $300,000 TO UNDERPERFORMING HOUSTON SCHOOLS, REBRANDING HIMSELF IN THE SOUTHWEST

The rapper’s legal defense is that he did not show the singer’s  privates nor the video — he shared a screenshot of the conclusion of the sextape.

The judge ruled in the rapper’s favor and dismissed Mari’s claims, Hip Hop Wired reported.

For putting 50 Cent through the trouble, Mari was ordered to pay the hip-hop mogul $30,618 in legal fees to add insult to injury.

“Lawyers representing 50 informed the court the reality star still owes him $37,733. They filed a writ of execution against Mari.” Explaining how the total amount owed to 50 Cent grew, they detailed that “in the newly filed documents, it shows an additional $4,492 was added to the judgment after Mari was sanctioned in the case,” according to a legal document obtained by Radar Online.

In 2019, Mari responded to 50 Cent’s demands with a diss song, “I Aint Got It.”

/No, I ain’t got it, oh boy, I’m poppin’/
/I’m takin’ off like a rocket, for 30 thousand, that’s what y’all on/
/Y’all some lame ass niggas, I’m a Detroit bitch/
/Fuck these hatin’ ass hoes, tell ’em all get off my dick/
/Time to go and do it, I’ma do it and that’s all/
/Can’t wait ’til I’m 50 just to go and ball/
/So what you wanna do? Come and bully who?/
/Fuck them other niggas, ho savage, I’ma ride/

• News

by Jeroslyn JoVonn

May 20, 2021

Fork Lift Operator That Introduced President Biden Calls It A ‘Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity’

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A mother of three and Detroit resident was “honored” to have been selected to introduce President Joe Biden during his tour of Ford’s Rouge plant on Tuesday.

Angela Powell has been working at the plant for seven years and never expected she would be given an opportunity to share a speech that the nation would hear.

“It’s a moment I’ve never experienced before,” she told the Detroit Free Press. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and man, I just feel honored to be here at the right place at the right time. I couldn’t do nothing but thank God for the opportunity because I know it wasn’t anybody but Him who placed this blessing on my life.”

The UAW Local 600 trustee learned of the opportunity after receiving a call last week from the union’s leadership asking her to make the introduction. After sharing her speech, she hurried offstage to go talk about the experience with her children.

Biden visited the city for the first time as president ahead of Ford’s reveal of the F-150 Lightning pickup truck, the company’s latest all-electric vehicle, USA Today reports.

During her speech, Powell touched on Biden’s accomplishments during his first few months in office and how he aided in the response to the coronavirus pandemic with stimulus checks and support for workers. She credited him for being a “president who understands that in order for the future to work for us all, American workers can’t be forgotten or left behind in this transition for the future.”

She continued. “Future jobs need to be well-paying union jobs with benefits and Joe Biden gets that,” Powell said, noting that the president “came here to see us unveil the F-150 Lightning, which we are so very proud of.”

Biden followed up Powell’s introduction by speaking about the importance of the automobile industry going electric.

“The future of the auto industry is electric. There’s no turning back,” Biden said. “The question is whether we will lead or we will fall behind in the race to the future.”

• News

by Christian Spencer

May 20, 2021

Rehired Officer Goes Back To His Old Ways; Tried To Brutalize Another Black Man

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A recently rehired police officer in Iowa is back to brutalizing Black people. Now there is a petition to get him removed again.

On April 29, Sioux City police officer Thad Boyer was a subject of controversy again. Boyer, who got fired for brutally beating a man more than 16 years ago, was seen pushing a Black man against a table and threatening to tase him, The Atlanta Black Star reported.

This happened in @locatesiouxcity early morning Thursday.@SiouxCityPolice were called about a drunk woman and instead did this to another patron and arrested him.

More videos and link to the full accounting from an eyewitness in the second tweet pic.twitter.com/N0Q6IE81Nl

— Ty Rushing (@Rushthewriter) May 1, 2021

The Black customer, John Wright, was about to leave a Perkins restaurant after officers initially arrived to break up a fight involving a woman who was “belligerent.” The woman who called the police is heard on body camera footage saying that the woman started the fight.

Wright can also be heard in the background stating that he will leave the restaurant if he is the problem; someone answers that Wright is not the issue.

Boyer politely escorted the woman out of the restaurant, however, he confronted Wright, 29, with hostility, even though other patrons said the man had done nothing wrong.

“Be nice to the staff,” Boyer told Wright.

Wright replied, “I am nice.”

“No you’re not,” Boyer said.

“Hey, listen, buddy, do you wanna leave right now?” Boyer asked. Not too long after, Boyer got aggressive: “All right, you’re gonna go to jail if you don’t stand up and leave,” he said.

A struggle ensued as Boyer pushed Wright against a table and pointed a Taser at him.

“He didn’t do nothing wrong!” a bystander said. “That man ain’t do nothing to you, put your Taser down!”

Wright got charged with trespassing, interference with official acts, and failure to comply with orders of a peace officer. But the incident is being investigated. “The officer’s actions are still under review by the department,” Sgt. Jeremy McClure, the department’s spokesman, said.

There is a petition that has more than 5,000 signatures calling for Boyer’s resignation again.

In 2004, Boyer got removed from the force after he brutally beat Nic Korleski who ran away from him after being pulled over for driving without a license.

“This same officer that did this, he’s now been rehired back and we feel that it’s unjust,” Jackson Greer, a friend of Korleski said. “There was an incident with my friend. My friend ended up in a coma. He had stitches in his eyes, stitches in his lips, his mouth. His face was just completely huge — I mean unrecognizable.

Related stories: CALIFORNIA FAMILY FILES FEDERAL LAWSUIT AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS WHO BEAT BLACK TEENAGER AT TRAFFIC STOP

• Travel and Leisure

by Derek Major

May 20, 2021

U.S. Airlines Are Having Trouble Finding Employees As Air Travel Begins To Pick Up

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Reuters – U.S. airlines are scrambling to add staff and upgrade technology as they face anger over prolonged call center wait times while tackling a surge in air travel following COVID-19 vaccinations.

“#Delta 9 hours wait on hold is this a way to run an airline,” read one Twitter post from a Delta Air Lines customer.

After a year of being cooped up, travelers are balancing the prospect of sunshine in Florida or fresh mountain air in Montana and Wyoming – among the fastest growing U.S. travel markets – with frustrations during the booking process.

By July, U.S. domestic air fares and capacity could approach pre-pandemic levels, according to experts, but overall staffing at the three legacy carriers shrunk by roughly 20% last year.

While travelers can easily book new vacations online for flight changes or travel credits — transactions that have soared during the pandemic — they often need to go through call centers, which are also managing a flurry of questions about COVID-19 travel restrictions and requirements. To support the increase in call volumes, Delta is adding staffing and overtime, hiring temporary summer contract workers and fast-tracking technology upgrades to self-service options, a spokesman said.

RELATED CONTENT: Black Doctor Discriminated Against on Delta Flight Speaks Out With Tamika Mallory on Red Table Talk

“Our wait times are not currently where we’d like to them to be,” he said. American Airlines said it is hiring hundreds of reservations agents to help with the rise in calls, while United Airlines said it is working to shorten hold times through increased staffing and technology upgrades, without providing details. U.S. airlines received billions of dollars in government aid to pay salaries and protect jobs during the pandemic but also encouraged workers to take voluntary leave packages to slim staffing because they didn’t know how long the crisis, or the government aid, would last.

Willie Walsh, the head of the International Air Transport Association, said on Wednesday that the decisions by carriers across the globe to retire aircraft and make staff redundant could hamper the aviation industry’s recovery.

An explosion in U.S. domestic leisure travel demand as more Americans become vaccinated has taken many in the industry by surprise, leaving services from airports to rental car companies and hotels short-staffed.

The strength of the rebound has possible implications beyond the airline industry since economists say air traffic is closely tied to overall economic output and is frequently seen as a guide to consumer confidence.

However, analyst John Grant of flight data specialist OAG warned on Wednesday that U.S. domestic airline traffic may be “overheating,” suggesting that legacy carriers are likely to reshape their networks toward more international markets once they reopen.

Still, Grant said plans by U.S. ultra low-cost carriers and start-ups to build domestic capacity “has to be good news for all airports of all sizes across the United States in the next few years.”

(Reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

• Business

by Derek Major

May 20, 2021

Three Large Banking Groups Are Fighting President Biden’s $4 Billion Debt Relief For Black Farmers

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In March, President Joe Biden provided $5 billion for Black farmers, now large three banking organizations are fighting the relief package saying the government initiative helping Black farmers, who’ve been ignored for decades, is cutting into their profits and hurting investors.

The funds, $4 billion of which went to debt relief, was part of Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus that he signed in March and was intended to make up for the decades of discrimination Black and minority farmers faced from lenders and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

However, none of the money has reached minority or Black farmers. In April, white farmers sued the USDA, ironically claiming reverse discrimination. Now, three of the country’s largest banking groups, the American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America, and the National Rural Lenders Association are waging their own fight.

According to The New York Times, banks are complaining that by giving the money to Black farmers and allowing them to pay down their debts early, the banks are losing out on interest income they were expecting to receive. So instead, the banks want the government to pay beyond the loan amounts so they won’t lose the interest payments they expected to receive or money they would have made reselling the loan to a debt collector.

RELATED CONTENT: John Deere Helps Black Farmers Fight Land Grabbers Through LEAP Coalition

In a letter the groups sent to the USDA Secretary, the groups said they may be more reluctant to expand credit in the future if the loan is repaid sooner due to Biden’s plan.

“If paying off entire categories of guarantee borrowers is not implemented properly, USDA’s actions could
severely damage the secondary market by making the market unreliable and pricing unpredictable, the group wrote in April to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “This would cause a significant loss of available capital for lending under the USDA programs harming all guaranteed borrowers as well as the overall integrity of USDA’s guaranteed programs.”

The USDA has shown no indication of reversing course. According to Eminetra, government officials said they hope to start the debt relief process in the coming weeks.

In February, Black farmers told the Associated Press that in addition to the many challenges white farmers face, they have to deal with less access to credit and technical support, which makes it harder for them to update equipment, purchase seed, operate their farms and buy more land. Black farmers also said they have to deal with racial bias at almost every level of government that has pushed them off their land including heirs property.

• News

by Derek Major

May 20, 2021

Columbia’s Anti-Kidnapping Unit Is Helping Haiti, Which Has Seen an Explosion Of Kidnappings

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Reuters – Colombia, once the kidnap capital of the world, reduced kidnappings by 95% over the past two decades. Now the anti-kidnapping unit of its national police hopes to help Haiti tackle its own epidemic of abductions for ransom.

Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Eduardo Tellez Betancourt told Reuters his team of four specialists had delivered its report on Haiti’s kidnapping crisis on Tuesday after three months of on- the-ground research.

Among the report’s conclusions are the need for Haiti‘s anti-kidnapping unit to receive more specialized training – for example at Colombia’s anti-kidnapping school – and better equipment for investigating crime.

That includes the tools to intercept, analyze and block communications, he said, which in turn could help root out or disincentive alleged connivance between politicians and the gangs responsible for kidnappings.

Haiti‘s kidnapping crisis is terrifying residents of the country, stunting economic activity in what is already the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere and last month prompted a change in government.

“Kidnappings have increased because gangs have strengthened,” Tellez said by telephone, adding that before 2016, Haitian police had often been able to rescue those taken hostage. Since then, however, “the gangs have strengthened in weapons and criminal structure… preventing police from being able to carry out these rescue operations.”

NO-GO ZONES

Tellez said insufficient border controls had allowed Haitian gangs to get their hands on more weapons, turning certain areas into no-go zones for Haiti’s understaffed, underequipped police force – and perfect locations to hold victims hostage until a lucrative ransom was paid.

Four policemen died in March in a gun battle with alleged criminals after attempting to enter a slum in the capital where kidnapping victims are often held.

The nonprofit Center for Human Rights Analysis and Research in Port-au-Prince recorded at least 91 kidnappings in Haiti in April, with requested ransoms ranging from $100,000 to $1 million. Only five victims were freed without paying a ransom.

Tellez also blamed politics for the growing power of gangs in a country plagued by instability, without going into details.

Haitian human rights experts say politicians from across the political spectrum use armed groups to achieve their own ends, supplying them with weapons. They accuse President Jovenel Moise in particular of fomenting gang crime.

One notorious gang leader, who last year formed a federation of nine gangs, the “G9”, even staged a march in January in favor of Moise’s government.

Moise, who took office in 2017, denies the charges of complicity with gangs and has said tackling gang crime including kidnappings is a priority for his government.

One of the obstacles to resolving the crisis is distrust in police among many Haitians. Some kidnapping victims have reported people wearing police uniforms or driving police vehicles carrying out kidnappings.

Tellez said Haiti needed to weed out possible corruption in the police with better control mechanisms and strengthen its capacity to investigate kidnappings. For that, it needed to hire more officers to its anti-kidnapping unit and train them up.

While Colombia’s population is five times that of Haiti’s 11 million, its anti-kidnapping unit, at 1300 officers, is 60 times bigger, according to numbers supplied by Tellez.

Haiti should also invest in technological tools for investigating such as a “room for intercepting communication”.

Tellez said his team was scheduled now to return to Colombia, handing off the case to a new team of specialists that would travel to Haiti to continue advising on the kidnapping crisis in an initiative agreed by the Colombian, Haitian and U.S. governments.

(Reporting by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Gareth Jones)

• Technology

by Black Enterprise Shop

May 20, 2021

Create Engaging Marketing Assets With This $15 Creative Bootcamp

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Not everyone has innate artistic skills, but even if you’re not creatively inclined, you may have ideas. Now, the only thing holding you back is turning your ideas into a reality. Considering how visual content is important in business, it pays to at least learn the basics of creative execution. This develops all sorts of stunning marketing materials that can attract audiences.

The Digital Art & Animation Designer Learning Bundle was designed to help you on that front. The course content  shows how to use Adobe XD, Vyond, After Effects, and Morev. For a limited time, you can get it on sale for 98 percent off from its total value.

What You Will Learn

Internet users these days prefer consuming animation videos rather than image content. Many buyers and potential customers are influenced by the messages in these dynamic videos as opposed to their still counterparts. The bundle is focused on teaching you how to turn still images to moving clips.

You’ll get familiarized with popular animation software, like Adobe XD, After Effects, and Vyond. Aside from learning how to use the tools on each platform, you’ll get to grips with making the most out of them. You’ll master how to animate icons, buttons, text, and charts with Adobe XD. In addition, you’ll learn to play with 2D animation techniques and explore animation effects with Vyond.

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One example of a course in this bundle — the 2D Character Animation Course with Vyond is taught by Aleksandar Cucukovic, who has spent 10 years designing websites, products, and apps for different companies, big and small. He’s received 4.5/5 instructor rating from students, and is just one example of the many acclaimed teachers featured throughout this bundle.

On top of all these, there are also courses on how to animate presentations, create comic characters and make vector graphics with Photoshop, and craft remixed, original backgrounds, and animations using Mac’s Keynote.

Unleash your animation skills with the help of this training bundle. It usually retails for $1,200, but for a limited time, you can get it on sale for $15 or less than $3 per course.

Prices subject to change.

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