Philip Freelon, professor of the practice and champion of diversity in architecture, dies at 66

Philip G. Freelon MArch ’77, professor of the practice in the MIT Department of Architecture, lead architect for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and a dedicated force for inclusivity within the field of architecture, died on July 9 in Durham, North Carolina, of the neuro-degenerative disease amyotrphic lateral sclerosis (ALS), with which he had been diagnosed in 2016. He was 66.

For nine years beginning in 2007, Freelon taught 4.222 (Professional Practice), a required subject in the master’s in architecture program that uses current examples to illustrate the legal, ethical, and management concepts underlying the practice of architecture.

“Phil was a remarkable architect, a motivating teacher, a spirited public intellectual and above all, an exceptional human being whose modesty and respect of others and their ideas put the best face on the architect and on the profession,” says Hashim Sarkis, dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P). 

A native of Philadelphia, Freelon attended Hampton University in Virginia before transferring to North Carolina State University, from which he graduated in 1975 with a bachelor of environmental design degree in architecture. He earned his master’s degree in architecture from MIT and at age 25 was the youngest person to pass the Architecture Registration Exam in North Carolina.

The Freelon Group, which he founded in 1990, became one of the largest African American-owned architectural firms in the country.

“Phil Freelon was a creative and productive alumnus of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning,” says Adèle Naudé Santos, SA+P dean when Freelon joined the faculty. “His buildings are beautifully crafted and spatially inventive, and we were proud to have him on our faculty. We are greatly saddened by his passing.”

Freelon headed multifaceted design teams for museum projects and cultural institutions such as the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture in Baltimore, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts and Culture in Charlotte, Emancipation Park in Houston, and the Anacostia and Tenleytown branches of the District of Columbia Public Library System.

The practice joined with three other design firms as Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup to create the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. As lead architect and architect of record for the project, on which David Adjaye was lead designer, Freelon directed the programming and planning effort that set the stage for the museum’s design. 

In 2014, The Freelon Group joined global design firm Perkins and Will. Recent and current projects led by Freelon include North Carolina Freedom Park in Raleigh, the Durham County Human Services Complex, the Durham Transportation Center, and the Motown Museum Expansion in Detroit. He was appointed to the board of directors and the executive committee of Perkins and Will while serving dual roles as managing director and design director of the firm’s North Carolina practice.

In addition to his role at MIT, he was an adjunct faculty member at North Carolina State University’s College of Design and lectured at Harvard University (where he was a Loeb Fellow), the University of Maryland, Syracuse University, Auburn University, the University of Utah, the University of California at Berkeley, Kent State University, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, among others. A Peer Professional for the GSA’s Design Excellence Program, he also served on numerous design award juries including the National AIA Institute Honor Awards jury and the National Endowment for the Arts Design Stewardship Panel. 

“Phil was one of the hardest working people I ever knew,” said Lawrence Sass, associate professor in the Department of Architecture at MIT and director of the computation group. “I could not believe that someone so humble could have done so much. He was a dedicated professor in addition to being a trusted design professional, and a leader who lived in the spirit of a design giant. He taught from real-world experience. He was emotionally and professionally accessible. I will forever miss and remember his larger-than-life presence walking down the Infinite Corridor.”

Freelon was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and the recipient of the AIA North Carolina’s Gold Medal, its highest individual honor. A LEED Accredited Professional, he was the 2009 recipient of the AIA Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture, and in 2011 was appointed by President Obama to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. The Freelon Group received 26 AIA design awards (regional, state, and local) and received AIA North Carolina’s Outstanding Firm Award (2001). Freelon’s furniture design received first prize in the PPG Furniture Design Competition, and he did design contract work with Herman Miller.

His work has appeared in national professional publications including Architecture, Progressive Architecture, Architectural Record, and Contract magazine (Designer of the Year, 2008), and his and the firm’s work has been featured in Metropolis and Metropolitan Home magazines and the The New York Times. 

Freelon is survived by his wife of 40 years, Nnenna Freelon; his children Deen, Maya, and Pierce; three siblings; and six grandchildren. A celebration of his life will be held on Sept. 28 at the Durham County Human Services Complex in Durham. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to NorthStar Church of the Arts, a nonprofit art and culture center founded by Nnenna and Phil Freelon.

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Professor Emeritus Fernando Corbató, MIT computing pioneer, dies at 93

Fernando “Corby” Corbató, an MIT professor emeritus whose work in the 1960s on time-sharing systems broke important ground in democratizing the use of computers, died on Friday, July 12, at his home in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He was 93.

Decades before the existence of concepts like cybersecurity and the cloud, Corbató led the development of one of the world’s first operating systems. His “Compatible Time-Sharing System” (CTSS) allowed multiple people to use a computer at the same time, greatly increasing the speed at which programmers could work. It’s also widely credited as the first computer system to use passwords. 

After CTSS Corbató led a time-sharing effort called Multics, which directly inspired operating systems like Linux and laid the foundation for many aspects of modern computing. Multics doubled as a fertile training ground for an emerging generation of programmers that included C programming language creator Dennis Ritchie, Unix developer Ken Thompson, and spreadsheet inventors Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston.

Before time-sharing, using a computer was tedious and required detailed knowledge. Users would create programs on cards and submit them in batches to an operator, who would enter them to be run one at a time over a series of hours. Minor errors would require repeating this sequence, often more than once.

But with CTSS, which was first demonstrated in 1961, answers came back in mere seconds, forever changing the model of program development. Decades before the PC revolution, Corbató and his colleagues also opened up communication between users with early versions of email, instant messaging, and word processing. 

“Corby was one of the most important researchers for making computing available to many people for many purposes,” says long-time colleague Tom Van Vleck. “He saw that these concepts don’t just make things more efficient; they fundamentally change the way people use information.”

Besides making computing more efficient, CTSS also inadvertently helped establish the very concept of digital privacy itself. With different users wanting to keep their own files private, CTSS introduced the idea of having people create individual accounts with personal passwords. Corbató’s vision of making high-performance computers available to more people also foreshadowed trends in cloud computing, in which tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft rent out shared servers to companies around the world. 

“Other people had proposed the idea of time-sharing before,” says Jerry Saltzer, who worked on CTSS with Corbató after starting out as his teaching assistant. “But what he brought to the table was the vision and the persistence to get it done.”

CTSS was also the spark that convinced MIT to launch “Project MAC,” the precursor to the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS). LCS later merged with the Artificial Intelligence Lab to become MIT’s largest research lab, the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), which is now home to more than 600 researchers. 

“It’s no overstatement to say that Corby’s work on time-sharing fundamentally transformed computers as we know them today,” says CSAIL Director Daniela Rus. “From PCs to smartphones, the digital revolution can directly trace its roots back to the work that he led at MIT nearly 60 years ago.” 

In 1990 Corbató was honored for his work with the Association of Computing Machinery’s Turing Award, often described as “the Nobel Prize for computing.”

From sonar to CTSS

Corbató was born on July 1, 1926 in Oakland, California. At 17 he enlisted as a technician in the U.S. Navy, where he first got the engineering bug working on a range of radar and sonar systems. After World War II he earned his bachelor's degree at Caltech before heading to MIT to complete a PhD in physics. 

As a PhD student, Corbató met Professor Philip Morse, who recruited him to work with his team on Project Whirlwind, the first computer capable of real-time computation. After graduating, Corbató joined MIT's Computation Center as a research assistant, soon moving up to become deputy director of the entire center. 

It was there that he started thinking about ways to make computing more efficient. For all its innovation, Whirlwind was still a rather clunky machine. Researchers often had trouble getting much work done on it, since they had to take turns using it for half-hour chunks of time. (Corbató said that it had a habit of crashing every 20 minutes or so.) 

Since computer input and output devices were much slower than the computer itself, in the late 1950s a scheme called multiprogramming was developed to allow a second program to run whenever the first program was waiting for some device to finish. Time-sharing built on this idea, allowing other programs to run while the first program was waiting for a human user to type a request, thus allowing the user to interact directly with the first program.

Saltzer says that Corbató pioneered a programming approach that would be described today as agile design. 

“It’s a buzzword now, but back then it was just this iterative approach to coding that Corby encouraged and that seemed to work especially well,” he says.  

In 1962 Corbató published a paper about CTSS that quickly became the talk of the slowly-growing computer science community. The following year MIT invited several hundred programmers to campus to try out the system, spurring a flurry of further research on time-sharing.

Foreshadowing future technological innovation, Corbató was amazed — and amused — by how quickly people got habituated to CTSS’ efficiency.

“Once a user gets accustomed to [immediate] computer response, delays of even a fraction of a minute are exasperatingly long,” he presciently wrote in his 1962 paper. “First indications are that programmers would readily use such a system if it were generally available.”

Multics, meanwhile, expanded on CTSS’ more ad hoc design with a hierarchical file system, better interfaces to email and instant messaging, and more precise privacy controls. Peter Neumann, who worked at Bell Labs when they were collaborating with MIT on Multics, says that its design prevented the possibility of many vulnerabilities that impact modern systems, like “buffer overflow” (which happens when a program tries to write data outside the computer’s short-term memory). 

“Multics was so far ahead of the rest of the industry,” says Neumann. “It was intensely software-engineered, years before software engineering was even viewed as a discipline.” 

In spearheading these time-sharing efforts, Corbató served as a soft-spoken but driven commander in chief — a logical thinker who led by example and had a distinctly systems-oriented view of the world.

“One thing I liked about working for Corby was that I knew he could do my job if he wanted to,” says Van Vleck. “His understanding of all the gory details of our work inspired intense devotion to Multics, all while still being a true gentleman to everyone on the team.” 

Another legacy of the professor’s is “Corbató’s Law,” which states that the number of lines of code someone can write in a day is the same regardless of the language used. This maxim is often cited by programmers when arguing in favor of using higher-level languages.

Corbató was an active member of the MIT community, serving as associate department head for computer science and engineering from 1974 to 1978 and 1983 to 1993. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

Corbató is survived by his wife, Emily Corbató, from Brooklyn, New York; his stepsons, David and Jason Gish; his brother, Charles; and his daughters, Carolyn and Nancy, from his marriage to his late wife Isabel; and five grandchildren. 

In lieu of flowers, gifts may be made to MIT’s Fernando Corbató Fellowship Fund via Bonny Kellermann in the Memorial Gifts Office. 

CSAIL will host an event to honor and celebrate Corbató in the coming months. 

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Star Wars News: 'Rise of Skywalker' Reshoots Are Happening, Apparently

Don't worry, though. This is unlikely to be some kind of 'Rogue One' situation.

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Rihanna criticized for ‘cultural appropriation’ for wearing Asian-inspired garb for Harper’s Bizarre cover

Rihanna is a style maven in her own right but some folks are calling out her latest cover look as completely wrong.

A photoshoot with Harper’s Bazaar China has people accusing the singer and beauty boss of cultural appropriation for wearing traditional Asian-inspired garb for a unique photoshoot, The NY Daily News reports.

—VIDEO: Megan Markle receives sweet greeting from Beyonce and Jay-Z at ‘The Lion King’ movie premiere in London—

“I am asian and I find it offensive,” one Instagram user wrote on the Harper’s Bazaar China’s page.

“If you wanted to create an Asian look why didn’t you invite asian artists?” the commenter asked.

Another person wrote: “THIS IS A TOTAL SMACK IN THE FACE TO THE ASIAN CULTURE.”

Earlier this year Rihanna made history as first woman of color to helm own fashion line with LVMH, becoming the first woman to create an original brand at the famed fashion house. Others defended Rih Rih’s fashion sense saying she was giving props to Asian cultural with “cultural appreciation.”

“They’re using Rihanna’s celebrity to pay homage to Chinese culture people,” one person said. “There’s no shortage of Chinese women modeling on this Instagram site. Calm down people!”

Harper’s Bazaar China wrote on Instagram that the cover photoshoot was to show “when western style icon meets eastern aesthetic.”

While Rihanna has yet to comment to the criticism, she surely is enjoying the success 2019 has brought for her and her fans.

This year, the singer broke new ground with Fenty after securing a deal with LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

—Oprah Winfrey visits Maui Humane Society following wildfire—

“Everybody knows Rihanna as a wonderful singer, but through our partnership at Fenty Beauty, I discovered a true entrepreneur, a real C.E.O. and a terrific leader,” Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH, previously said in the statement.

In recent months, Rih Rih has has also launched collaborations with Puma, snatching fans coins for her Savage x Fenty lingerie collections and Fenty Beauty.

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VIDEO: Megan Markle receives sweet greeting from Beyonce and Jay-Z at ‘The Lion King’ movie premiere in London

Oprah Winfrey visits Maui Humane Society following wildfire

Oprah Winfrey surprised the Maui Humane Society with a visit to thank the organization for evacuating animals during a wildfire, a report said.

Winfrey is a part-time Maui resident who visited the society briefly Saturday, thanking a volunteer and taking a photo outside with the organization’s sign, The Maui News reported Saturday.

Winfrey is a society supporter, said Nancy Willis, the society’s director of development and community outreach.

“We are appreciative and grateful that she recognized the hard work of the community,” Willis said.

More than 200 animals were evacuated Thursday after a brush fire started in Maui’s southern area, coming close to the Human Society’s building in Puunene before moving farther south, officials said.

Winfrey posted the photo of herself at the shelter on social media and included a hashtag for the society, as well as the Maui police and fire departments.

“Everyone’s safe including all the animals,” Winfrey wrote. “Thank you for your service.”
Winfrey also gave permission Thursday for emergency officials to use a private road on her property if it was needed to evacuate residents and visitors.

Maui resident Jack Moussally sent a message on Twitter to Winfrey asking her to “consider opening the ranch road so we can get upcountry.”

“Hi there Jack. Access to the road was given to county officials immediately,” Winfrey responded. “This was many hours ago. Hoping for the safety of all.”

Winfrey’s road ultimately was not used, Maui County spokesman Chris Sugidono said.

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Texas sheriff apologizes to NFL player, defends deputy who called him ‘big Black male’ during traffic stop at his home

A Texas sheriff said Friday he has apologized to New England Patriots player Elandon Roberts for the actions of a deputy who referred to the linebacker’s race and size during a March traffic stop but also defended the deputy’s comment and the stop.

Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls said during a news conference that he spoke with Roberts and his attorney and said the deputy should not have taken so long with the March 10 traffic stop.

Roberts was stopped as he pulled into the driveway of his Houston-area home and Nehls also said Deputy Adam Watkins was wrong to order Roberts’ wife back inside the home when she saw flashing lights and stepped outside.

“The way he interacted with his wife, I didn’t appreciate the tone,” Nehls said of his deputy.
Watkins, who is white, ultimately was issued a verbal reprimand for how he conducted the stop, according to sheriff’s Capt. Steve Holtz.

But the stop, which was captured on dash-cam video , was warranted because Roberts was traveling 59 mph in a 35 mph zone as he traveled home, Nehls said. Holtz explained the ticket later was changed to a warning at the deputy’s request.

Watkins, in speaking to a colleague, referred to Roberts as a “big, black male” but Nehls defended the reference to race, saying the deputy was simply offering a description of the driver. The sheriff didn’t comment on why it was necessary for the deputy to invoke Roberts’ race.

Roberts, 25, in a statement to USA Today was critical of his treatment, saying, “Unfortunately, these types of things are happening all too often to African Americans.”
Watkins also told a colleague that Roberts “wouldn’t comply” when told to get back into his car after getting out once he pulled into his driveway. “I had to yell at him pretty hard,” Watkins is heard saying on the video.

Holtz said Watkins, a rookie only on the job a few months when the stop occurred, became nervous when he saw Roberts initially get out of his car. He said the mistakes Watkins committed were understandable in light of his inexperience.

Nehls criticized USA Today for publishing an edited version of the stop that he believes was misleading. The sheriff also criticized those who turn the encounter “into a racial issue.”
“I think there have been traffic stops and interactions between white and black that have caused some of the most horrible, civil unrest in this country,” Nehls said, adding that, “We haven’t experienced that in Fort Bend County.”

The fast-growing county is just southwest of Houston. Roberts, who lives in Richmond, starred at the University of Houston before being drafted by the Patriots in the sixth round of the 2016 NFL draft.

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Amazon Prime Day 2019: The 23 Best Home and Outdoors Deals

We scrolled until our eyes burned to bring you the best Prime Day deals on fitness watches, Instant Pots, and more.

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Robots Alone Can't Solve Amazon's Labor Woes

This Prime Day, some Amazon workers are striking. But the company can't just automate its labor problems away.

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Esperance and Wydad lodge Champions League appeals

Tunisia's Esperance and Morocco's Wydad Casablanca both lodge appeals at the Court of Arbitration for Sport over the decision to replay the second leg of the African Champions League final.

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South Africa's Jacob Zuma says corruption allegations are 'a conspiracy'

South Africa's ex-president denies he oversaw a web of corruption during his term in office.

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19 Best Prime Day Deals on Amazon Devices: Kindle, Echo, Fire

Get your Alexa on with these Amazon Device deals on Fire Tablets, Kindles, Ring Doorbells, and more.

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Amazon Prime Day 2019: The Absolute Best Tech Deals Online

We scoured Amazon's labyrinth of discounts to bring you the best Prime Day deals.

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South Africa's Impey wins Tour de France stage

South Africa's Daryl Impey wins the ninth stage of the Tour de France as Julian Alaphilippe retains the overall lead.

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Ebola in DR Congo: Case confirmed in Goma

It is the first time Ebola has been diagnosed in Goma, a city of more than a million people.

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Reports state that median Black wealth may reach zero by 2053

The median wealth of Black Americans will plummet to zero by 2053, if things remain as they currently are.

You read that correctly.

Black Enterprise magazine reports that according to the Prosperity Now and the Institute for Policy Studies’ The Road to Zero Wealth report, it doesn’t matter how fat your six-figure salary may be (or how many degrees you have) the financial future looks dim. It doesn’t even matter whether or not you have a C-level suite with matching title from a major corporation, Black people are often still negatively impacted by a lower net worth than other communities.

Read More: How racist housing contracts stole $4 billion dollars in wealth from Black families

Even education doesn’t appear to be the leveling agent that it has been touted to be in generations past. The latest Federal Reserve Board Survey of Consumer Finances reports that a Black person with a Bachelor’s degree still earns only two-thirds of the median net worth of a white person with no bachelor’s degree, Black Enterprise reports.

This is largely impacted by the rate that Black students take out student loans – 77.7 percent versus 57.5 percent of white students, and this results in a higher likelihood of debt early on.

Read More: How much more money (than you) does Kamala Harris have?

“If the economy is growing at 3%, you have to earn 6% to build wealth. Your income has to grow faster than the economy,” Jeff Wilson II, author of The Lies our Parents Were Sold and Told Us and principal at The W2 Group accounting firm, told Black Enterprise. “Unfortunately, if you have massive amounts of student loan debt, your earnings will not grow faster than the debt burden that just kicked in.”

The dismal statistics hit Black women even harder. While Black women are the most educated demographic now in the United States, their net worth doesn’t reflect this fact.

According to Black Enterprise, single black women ages 20-39 who hold a Bachelor’s degree, have a median net worth of -11,000 to $0 compared to white woman in the same bracket whose net worth ranges from $3,400 – $7,500. Married Black women ages 20-39 with Bachelor’s degrees have a median net worth of -20,500 to $7,700 while married white women have a net worth range of $18,700 to $97,000.

Read More: Pras, formally of Fugees fame, charged in Obama campaign finance scheme

And this isn’t merely impacting young to mid-life women. Reports say a single sister over 60 years of age with a Bachelor’s degree has a median net worth of $11,000 while white women in the same bracket have a net worth of $384,400. Married Black women with Bachelor’s degrees who are over 60, have a median net worth of $424,000 compared to $778,000 for the average over 60, married white woman.

J.D. Smith, a wealth coach at Wealthy Women Daily, told the magazine that the solution lies in how Blacks think of accumulating wealth. He said it’s typical for African-Americans to talk about working hard instead of working smart.

“The harder you work for someone else, the more taxes you are subject to pay. I’m not just talking about income taxes. There are lifestyle taxes that communities of color disproportionately pay that no one really talks about,” Smith told the magazine. “We have to be equipped with the knowledge to transform the income we make into wealth we can keep. Your money has to start working for you if you want to build wealth.”

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Donald Trump writes racist tweet about congresswomen of color

Today, President Donald Trump took to twitter and did what we have become accustomed to him doing – writing offensive posts that are as unpresidential as they are divisive.

Read More: Republicans run racist Colin Kaepernick ad with darkened skin for Trump 2020 campaign

Weighing in on the situation between four congresswomen of color and Nancy Pelosi, for whom they have been critical, Trump took to twitter to tell the non-white congresswomen, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts, to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

….and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2019

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,” Trump tweeted. “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done.”

Read More: Booker blasts Trump for zero Black nominees to circuit court judicial positions

“These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough,” Trump added. “I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”

This prompted a sharp defense of the congresswomen from Pelosi and other Democrats, who viewed it as “xenophobic” and just the latest racist rant from the commander in chief, according to The New York Times.

“When @realDonaldTrump tells four American Congresswomen to go back to their countries, he reaffirms his plan to “Make America Great Again” has always been about making America white again,” Pelosi tweeted. “Our diversity is our strength and our unity is our power.”

When @realDonaldTrump tells four American Congresswomen to go back to their countries, he reaffirms his plan to “Make America Great Again” has always been about making America white again.

Our diversity is our strength and our unity is our power. https://t.co/ODqqHneyES

— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) July 14, 2019

Pelosi added “I reject @realDonaldTrump’s xenophobic comments meant to divide our nation. Rather than attack Members of Congress, he should work with us for humane immigration policy that reflects American values. Stop the raids. – #FamiliesBelongTogether!”

Read More: Sen. Kamala Harris and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduce Fair Chance at Housing Act

Trump’s tweets are undeniably playing to his base. Out of the four liberal congresswomen, Omar is the only one who was actually born outside of the United States, in Somalia. Pressley is Black and was born in Cincinnati and raised in Chicago, according to The New York Times. Ocasio-Cortez, who is Puerto Rican, was born in the Bronx, and although Tlaib’s parents immigrated to the United States from Palestine, the congresswoman was born in Detroit.

Three of these brave women have taken to twitter, the same medium, that the president did to reply to his ignorance.

Mr. President, the country I “come from,” & the country we all swear to, is the United States.

But given how you’ve destroyed our border with inhumane camps, all at a benefit to you & the corps who profit off them, you are absolutely right about the corruption laid at your feet. https://t.co/HLKQCotR8T

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 14, 2019

THIS is what racism looks like. WE are what democracy looks like. And we’re not going anywhere. Except back to DC to fight for the families you marginalize and vilify everyday. pic.twitter.com/vYzoxCgN0X

— Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) July 14, 2019

Yo @realDonaldTrump, I am fighting corruption in OUR country. I do it every day when I hold your admin accountable as a U.S. Congresswoman. Detroit taught me how to fight for the communities you continue to degrade & attack. Keep talking, you’ll be out of the WH soon. #TickTock

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) July 14, 2019

The four newcomers have become increasingly vocal in their disagreements with Pelosi and other Democrats, as well as Republicans.

Apparently in the Trump administration, non-white, liberal women can’t disagree with the establishment.

Hollywood has responded to Trump’s attack. Celebrities have come out in full force to voice disgust with the POTUS.

Saluting these women. Stay pushing. Stay shining. Stay working. Stay a pain in the ass of the #RacistInChief and all his co-horts. Stay true to who you are. Stay safe. Stay together. Stay making us proud. #FourQueens pic.twitter.com/jkcXe6Z96F

— Ava DuVernay (@ava) July 14, 2019

Our #RacistInChief just told four American Congresswomen “go back to their countries…” Immigrants & their children are the heart of our country. I am proud to be #MadeByImmigrants @realDonaldTrump racist rhetoric only makes me fight harder for all. #FirstGenerationAmerican pic.twitter.com/Oh4lEDUf65

— Karamo Brown (@Karamo) July 14, 2019

Trump is a racist.
Trump is a racist.
Trump is a racist.
Trump is a racist.
Trump is a racist.
Trump is a racist.
Trump is a racist.
Trump is a racist.
Trump is a racist.
Trump is a racist. #RacistInChief

— Morgan J. Freeman (@mjfree) July 14, 2019

Dear @realDonaldTrump, Those young Congresswomen must go back to their countries of NY, MN, OH and continue working on the most corrupt, inept, total catastrophe of a government (a.k.a. present day U.S.A). BTW, do you have an app that tracks your lucid moments? xoBette #BeBette pic.twitter.com/efWU86Mds2

— Bette Midler (@BetteMidler) July 14, 2019

 

 

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Africa Cup of Nations: Algeria beat Nigeria to reach final

Riyad Mahrez scores a stunning free-kick in injury time as Algeria beat Nigeria to reach the Africa Cup of Nations final.

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Cardi B says Kulture’s first birthday party was “lit” despite NYC blackout

17 Career Books for Black Women to Help Them Level Up Professionally

We are halfway through the calendar year…and if you’re anything like us, you are already planning for 2020. As you aspire to level up financially and professionally—we’ve put together a list of career propelling books for black women written by black women. Whether you’re trying to find more balance in your life, explore your purpose, combat bias in the workplace, or work your way to the C-suite—this list is for you. After all, the best way to prepare for your future is to plan for it.

Each of these authors has the experience of navigating the world and the workplace as black women who have had to get to the core of who they are in order to experience success as defined by themselves.

If you are ready to begin a new chapter in your career and life, take a look at these reads!

17 Career Books for Black Women

1. What I Know For Sure by Oprah Winfrey

Organized by theme—joy, resilience, connection, gratitude, possibility, awe, clarity, and power—these essays offer a rare and powerful glimpse into the mind one of the world’s most extraordinary women. Candid, moving, exhilarating, uplifting, and dynamic, the words Oprah shares in What I Know for Sure shimmer with the sort of wisdom and truth that listeners will turn to again and again.

 

2. Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person by Shonda Rhimes

In Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes chronicles the powerful impact saying yes had on every aspect of her life—and how we can all change our lives with one little word. Yes.

 

3. The Little Black Book of Success: Laws of Leadership for Black Women by Elaine Meryl Brown, Marsha Haygood, Rhonda Joy McLean

Each chapter in the WORKBOOK correlates to a chapter in THE LITTLE BLACK BOOK OF SUCCESS and contains a number of questions and quizzes to help you tailor each lesson to your individual needs.

 

4. Strategize to WIN: The New Way to Start out, Step up, or Start Over in Your Career by Carla Harris

In Strategize to Win, Carla Harris gives listeners the tools they need to get started; get “unstuck” from bad situations, redirect momentum, and position themselves to manage their careers no matter the environment.

 

5. Expect to Win: 10 Proven Strategies for Thriving in the Workplace by Carla Harris

While climbing the corporate ladder, Harris had her own personal missteps and celebrated numerous victories. She vowed that when she reached senior management, and people came to her for advice, she would provide them with the tools and strategies honed by her experience.

 

6. Finding My Voice: My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward by Valarie Jarrett

Jarrett shares her forthright, optimistic perspective on the importance of leadership and the responsibilities of citizenship in the 21st century, inspiring listeners to lift their own voices.

 

7. Double Down: Bet on Yourself and Success on Your Terms by Antoinette M. Clarke and Tricia Clarke-Stone

If you’re tired of getting second-class rewards for first-class work and you’re ready to be respected for who you are, Double Down will give you the tools and tactics to go all-in on your dreams.

 

8. The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life’s Direction and Purpose by Oprah Winfrey

Oprah shares what she sees as a guide for activating your deepest vision of yourself, offering the framework for creating not just a life of success, but one of significance.

 

9. More Than Pretty: Doing The Soul Work That Uncovers Your True Beauty by Erica Campbell

This book explores issues of self-esteem, identity, and God’s design for love and intimacy. She is candid about her own struggles, sharing honestly about her battle to feel “good enough” in an industry that fixates on outward appearances.

 

10. Believe Bigger by Marshawn Evans Daniels

Believe Bigger is about resilience, reclaiming your life, and how God uses rejection, hardship, and unexpected circumstances to awaken something greater within…if you’re willing to embrace disruption. You’ll see her go from heartbroken and hitting rock bottom financially to building a multimillion-dollar faith-centered enterprise and finding something super sweet along the way.

 

11. More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say) by Elaine Welteroth

Welteroth moves beyond the headlines and highlight reels to share the profound lessons and struggles of being a barrier-breaker across so many intersections.

 

12. Swimming with Sharks in Dark Waters by Athene Brinson

This book is designed to help you identify, and cope, and achieve success in those corporate environments that are not well.

 

13. FutureProofed: How to Navigate Disruptive Change, Find Calm in Chaos, and Succeed in Work & Life by Natalia Peart

Drawing from her own research and consulting practice and the latest in business, neuroscience, psychology, and design thinking, Dr. Natalia Peart presents a new paradigm and step-by-step pathway for thriving in fast-moving times.

 

14. It’s About Time: The Art of Choosing by Valorie Burton

It’s About Time helps you re-imagine a life that is meaningful—at a pace that is natural—with a load that is doable and equips you with the tools to make it happen.

 

15. Own Your Phenomenal Self by Rita P. Mitchell

No matter your background, experience, education, or credentials, you can have what you want out of life, and you can have it on your terms.

 

16. Werk 101 by Koereyelle DuBose

WERK 101: Get-Your-Life-Together Guide” is the ultimate handbook sharing health, wealth, and lifestyle lessons for the modern-day woman.

 

17. Boss Bride by Charreah K. Jackson

This book is a bridge to create a love life and career that fulfills you: it’s time to go hard or go home.

 

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Parents of one of R. Kelly’s girlfriends believe she wants to commit suicide

With all of the criminal sex abuse charges swirling around R. Kelly since early this year, parents of one of the two women who had been living with the R&B singer now fear their daughter is planning to kill herself.

Parents of Joycelyn Savage worry that she and a second woman, Azriel Clary, have made a suicide pact and will go through with plans to kill themselves if Kelly is ultimately sent away for a long time, reported TMZ.

Read More: R. Kelly reportedly paid thousands for the return of sex tapes missing from his collection

Both Savage and Clary were reportedly living with Kelly inside of Trump Tower Chicago, but have relocated to another unit. Gerald Griggs, lawyer for the Savage family, told TMZ that the family believes both women are hiding out with people close to Kelly at an undisclosed location in Chicago.

Griggs says after Kelly’s most recent arrest last week, the Savages are now scared that the women are planning to kill themselves if it appears he won’t be coming home. Griggs also stated that the parents can’t seem to locate where the women even are.

Read More: REPORTS: R. Kelly arrested on federal charges of sex trafficking

According to TMZ, the parents may notify police and fill out a missing person’s report if they can’t find Joycelyn soon.

But as the Savages are worried about an alleged suicide plot, Azriel’s parents don’t believe this to be the case. Azriel’s parents tell TMZ that they don’t suspect the women have a suicide pact. They also tell the outlet that they know where their daughter, Azriel, is – in another apartment unit in the same Trump Tower building.

They say the singer actually had two apartment units in the building, and the second one was in their daughter Azriel’s name.

Read More: Chicago woman claims she was gang raped at R. Kelly’s music studio

Kelly’s latest criminal charges came Thursday night in Chicago.

As he walked his dog, federal agents raided his apartment and sealed it off. He is now facing many federal charges in New York and Illinois, including racketeering, sex trafficking and obstruction of justice.

The feds reportedly didn’t raid the second apartment in Azriel’s name.

 

 

The post Parents of one of R. Kelly’s girlfriends believe she wants to commit suicide appeared first on theGrio.

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Amazon Prime Day 2019: 17 Best Early Deals and Shopping Tips

Amazon's big Prime Day sale is almost here. Here are the best early deals, and tips to get more out of the deal madness.

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Africa Cup of Nations: Senegal reach final with victory over Tunisia

Senegal reach their second Africa Cup of Nations final with an extra-time victory over Tunisia.

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Survey Shows Gen Z Expects Higher Salaries After Graduation

If you are an employer and you want to catch the attention of Gen Z, you have to show them the money says a new report.

The latest demographic cohort to enter the workforce are graduating from college with a mindset that sets them apart from other generations. Specifically, they want more financial incentives.

According to a survey released by Clever, the average Gen Zer expects to make $57,964 one year out of college. This is $10,000 above the national median salary for recent grads with bachelor degrees.

That’s right—the new generation entering the workforce isn’t playing it small on the financial scale. They aren’t expecting to sit around and wait for a promotion to get the salary they seek. They are expecting the numbers to work in their favor now so they can exceed the nation’s median salary of $47,000 for recent grads with less than five years of relevant work experience.

Is Gen Z acquiring degrees and skills that will increase their income potential significantly above the average? Or is the next generation of workers creating a new reality where they believe their degree grants them immediate access to a higher salary?

Clever, a real estate data company that connects homeowners with top real estate agents in their area, performed a survey of 1,000 undergraduates to understand salary expectations and career aspirations for the next generation of workers.

Clever also used PayScale’s College Salary Report to analyze undergraduate pay expectations with median early-career salaries across the 11 most popular majors. Those majors include Engineering, Physical or Life Sciences, Nursing, Business, Computer Science, Political Science/Economics, Finance/Accounting, Psychology, Communications/Journalism, Education, and Humanities/ Liberal Arts, English/ History.

Key Findings

• Early- career salary expectations were higher than the national median across most majors. Business majors had the highest expectations, expecting 31% above the national median.
• Generation Z prefers financial rewards over workplace engagement and flex time. This is completely different than the purpose-driven goals that millennials sought to achieve in the workplace.
• Less than 40% of current undergraduates strongly believe their college education is worth the cost. The No. 1 reason Gen Zers pursue higher education is to increase their earning potential.

The study reveals that Gen Z is more financially focused than their millennial colleagues. While millennials were on a mission to find purpose and work-life balance, the new generation is prioritizing more money for their time and skills. Gen Zers are also focused on paying off debt before they make any huge life commitments such as having children or buying a home.

What do these results mean for employers who want to attract top talent? It means that firms will have to create packages that appeal to the needs of the new generation in order to remain relevant in the workplace. If companies don’t find a way to appeal to Gen Z, they may lose out on capturing the next wave of talent that will reshape the workplace.

Or maybe Gen Z will have to be more realistic when it comes to their salary expectations.

The proprietary data featured in this report is derived from a survey commissioned by Clever Real Estate and conducted by Pollfish.

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Black Enterprise Contributors Network 

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Africa Cup of Nations player rater: Senegal v Tunisia

Rate the players in the Africa Cup of Nations semi-final between Senegal and Tunisia.

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Sudan crisis: Protester 'shot dead' in Sinnar as talks stall

A spokesman says more than a dozen people were arrested, among them army and security officers.

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Zimbabwe win thriller against Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland go through to the second round of the World Cup after a 51-49 loss to Zimbabwe sees them finish third in the group.

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The UN Operation to Disarm Mosul's IEDs and Unexploded Bombs

Photojournalist Cengiz Yar covered the Battle of Mosul, where ISIS made its final stand in Iraq, then returned to document the clean-up operations.

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Uganda beat Scotland to advance

Scotland progress to the second stage of the Netball World Cup, despite losing 52-43 to Uganda in their final preliminary round encounter.

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Cheaper Lidar, a Self-Driving Deal, and Other Car News This Week

Sikorsky has a nimble new helicopter and a Colorado startup has designed an airplane middle seat you might actually want to sit in.

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Alex Acosta's Resignation Tops This Week's Internet News Roundup

The US Labor Secretary resigned last week following outcry over his plea deal with Jeffrey Epstein a decade ago.

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UN calls for Libyan migrant detention centres to be shut

The call comes after more than 50 people were killed in an attack at a migrant detention centre.

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The Simple Idea Behind Einstein’s Greatest Discoveries

Einstein’s theory of gravity and modern particle physics both rely on the idea of symmetry. But physicists are now wondering if symmetry has much more to offer.

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Outcry as militia leader named Burundi TV head

Burundi's pro-government Imbonerakure has been accused of killings, rapes, arrests, and extortion.

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How To Clear Out Your Zombie Apps and Online Accounts

All those services you signed up for but forgot about? They're a security risk. Here's how to get rid of them.

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Nintendo Switch Lite vs Switch: Which Is Best for You?

Brush up on what games the Switch Lite can and can't play, what accessories you'll need for it, and what its real price is.

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Sparks fly (literally!) at premiere of ‘Hobbs & Shaw’ and Dwayne Johnson proves he’s a real-life hero

Malawi win, Zimbabwe lose - Netball World Cup round-up

Australia record a huge win over Zimbabwe to go top of Group A and qualify for the second stage of preliminaries on day two of the World Cup in Liverpool.

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Cricket is being played in a Kenyan safari park

Kenya’s annual Last Man Standing Rhino Cup takes place in a wildlife park.

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Hodan Nalayeh: Somalia's 'inspirational' journalist, killed in Kismayo

Hodan Nalayeh launched a TV station in Canada and had recently moved to live and work in Somalia.

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Egypt's Bent Pyramid opens to visitors

The angular shape of the construction contrasts with the straight sides of Egypt's "true" pyramids.

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Africa Cup of Nations semi-finals: What to look out for

The Africa Cup of Nations has reached the semi-final stage, with both last-four ties being played on Sunday.

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The Audacity of Entrepreneurship: 7 Ways To Boss Up In The Face of Adversity

It sounds super cool and trendy to be “a boss” but one thing is for certain, entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. Instead, being an entrepreneur takes daring, risk-taking, confidence, and yes, sometimes audacity.

Dee Williams is the CEO of Individual Audacity, a company that teaches driven, audacious individuals and leaders how to decide on a course of action in their career, business, or life and how to execute on those decisions. She’s the new co-founder of the tech startup MyStartup Assist.  

Williams is also founder and CEO of Identifize Consulting, a recruitment and staffing consulting firm launched in 2011 after she left corporate America working as a recruiter and staffing professional in the IT space.

According to Williams, it takes a lot of inner work of choosing where you want to direct your energy, thoughts, and emotions to overcome adversity. It’s systematic by focusing on the end goal and not the present circumstance or what’s happening now. Despite the adversity, know where you’re going and where you’re going to focus. This is what she calls Individual Audacity—a conscious choice and unapologetic resolve of “this is who I am; these are my goals, and I live by that freely.”

Williams shares seven reasons why entrepreneurs must have audacity:

1. Unpredictable Challenges:

It’s inevitable in business, there will be good days, bad days, ups and downs and in order to maneuver through, you must be audacious. Sometimes, you’ll feel like you’re on top of the world and winning, and other times, it’ll seem like you’re the biggest loser. However, be bold in your decision-making in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

2. Idea Ownership

The idea that you’re bringing to the table is unique to you. So, if you don’t own, embrace, or uphold it, then who will. It was given to you, so you possess the tenacity and willpower to execute. You must be audacious to bring your ideas into the world. Most people die with world-changing ideas still in their mind.

3. Marketplace Competition:

Competition is fierce and employers today are fighting over talent. They’re fighting over people who can bring their business initiatives, goals and objectives to light. Don’t just start something that already exists with the same business model and put your personality on it. No! Take that business model, do your research, get your market fired up and create something that your market absolutely wants and enjoys. Showcase your ingenuity by introducing something of high value to the marketplace.

4. Doors of Opportunity:

Being audacious is about seizing the opportunity to meet new people; about hearing and seeing what’s happening around you so that you can identify the opportunities made available to you. But you can’t do that if you’re stuck in a box or expecting things to be one specific way. You must be audacious enough to recognize connections and how they are a part of your plan. You could be seated at a dinner table and a conversation leads to a new partnership or business deal. Recognize when opportunities show up because they’re all around you. However, if you don’t have that audacious spirit within, you will never be able to recognize the opportunities and the people that can help you realize them.

5. Profitability and Growth:

Generating revenue is not always as easy as we think it should be. So, you start the business, price and package your product or service. You market and get out there, and it’s not selling. Now what? This can really shake a person’s confidence after so much time has been invested. You must be audacious enough to create different ways to present your business and generate income. For example, understanding your market better and know what your market needs.

6. Authenticity and Transparency:

In a world where everyone is supposed to think, look, and act the same, what really draws people to a business or brand is pure authenticity. Being true to who you are regardless of your dialect, height, weight, background, race or religion. Being audacious with your message is also key. People aren’t looking for perfection these days; they are looking for identification and connection. When you can bring all that you are, even your flaws to the surface, people resonate with that.

7. Believe What’s Possible:

There is a fundamental difference between “knowing” and “believing.” Many believe they can start a business and they do. But they don’t know that the business can be successful especially after hitting some major bumps in the road. They have enough audacity to start a business but not enough to sustain an entrepreneur’s mindset. You must believe it can be done and know that it’s going to happen. You can’t just have one half of the equation. Check your self-talk. Examine what you are feeding into your mind on a consistent basis that’s shaping your belief system.

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Black Enterprise Contributors Network 

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Oprah Winfrey opens private road at her home to help evacuations during Maui brush fire

Oprah Winfrey is being praised across social media for opening the private road on her property to help with the Maui fire evacuations in Hawaii.

A large brush fire on the island erupted Thursday, prompting evacuations and diverting flights on the island, officials said, USA Today reports.

Residents in the town of Maalaea and in parts of Kihei received an evacuation notice on the cell phones after a fire started along Kuihelani Highway, forcing thousands to leave their homes. Shelters in Wailuku and Kihei have been made available for the displaced, Maui County officials said.

—Oprah considering a reboot of ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’—

“We are asking everyone to conserve energy, conserve water, and do what you can to be prepared,” Maui Mayor Mike Victorino said. “If you need to evacuate, please be aware of what’s going on around you.”

Meanwhile, folks have been showing their appreciation to Winfrey online after the media mogul opened the gate to the private road on her property in Maui so residents of Maalaea and parts of Kihei could flee the area quicker and more safely, CNN reports.

Several locals tweeted Winfrey asking her to share the code to the gate to allow residents to evacuate the area.

“@Oprah there’s a huge brush fire on Maui right now! People are trying to evacuate Kihei-my husband and son included!” one person tweeted. “If you would kindly share the code to your gate/road, folks can evacuate through Kula.”

Another said, “@Oprah Maui is on fire consider opening the ranch road so we can get upcountry.”

—Oprah Winfrey gets emotional at Hollywood empowerment event—

Winfrey was quick to respond, noting that “Access to the road was given to county officials immediately. This was many hours ago. Hoping for the safety of all.”

 

Hi there Jack, Access to the road was given to county officials immediately. This was many hours ago. Hoping for the safety of all. 🙏🏾 https://t.co/BxsPNUkkJC

— Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) July 12, 2019

“Of course it is,” one person replied to Winfrey after she made clear that the road on her property is open, “because you’re awesome and always prepared to do for others,” the fan added.

Another said: “Of course Oprah comes thru with the clutch.”

Hawaii’s Governor David Ige also tweeted his appreciation to Winfrey, “A big mahalo to @Oprah for giving @mauicounty access to your private road for use to assist in the #Mauifire,” he wrote.

 

A big mahalo to @Oprah for giving @mauicounty access to your private road for use to assist in the #Mauifire https://t.co/DPC6qkAGrq

— Governor David Ige (@GovHawaii) July 12, 2019

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R. Kelly reportedly paid thousands for the return of sex tapes missing from his collection

Following R. Kelly’s arrest on federal charges of sex trafficking comes word that he paid thousands of dollars to recover videotapes of himself having sex with teenage girls.

Kelly was arrested in Chicago Thursday night and is expected to remain in custody until Tuesday.

—BREAKING: R. Kelly charged with 11 brand NEW counts of sexual abuse—

As previously reported by TheGrio, the embattled singer is facing two separate federal grand jury indictments in Illinois and New York. The U.S. attorney spokesman Joseph Fitzpatrick has told the Associated Press that the 13-count indictment includes charges of child pornography, enticement of a minor and obstruction of justice.

Kelly is accused of recruiting young women for sex and allegedly convinced folks on his team to conceal his sexual encounters with teens. He reportedly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying back several missing explicit videotapes of his alleged victims.

Prosecutors say Kelly videotaped himself having sex with at least four girls under the age of 18 beginning in 1998. Years later, when the R&B hitmaker discovered some of the tapes were missing from his “collection,” he began paying “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to several people to recover them, the indictment says.

Kelly then directed those same people to take polygraph tests to confirm that they had returned all copies of the tapes.

—Ice Cube explains why Lamar Odom was booted from BIG3: ‘we want players who actually play’—

The Illinois indictment has charged Kelly with “one count of conspiracy to receive child pornography, two counts of receiving child pornography, four counts of producing child pornography, five counts of enticement of a minor to engage in criminal sexual activity, and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice,” reports CNN.

The  New York indictment accuses him of sexual exploitation of a child, kidnapping, forced labor and trafficking women and girls from 1999 to the present.

NBC4 New York reported that R. Kelly was picked up by Homeland Security NYPD Investigation agents and NYPD Public Safety Task Force, and is expected to be taken to New York. However, during his brief appearance in a Chicago federal court on Friday, the judge delayed a decision on whether Kelly should be taken to New York to face charges until he is arraigned in Chicago, according to the CNN report.

“R. Kelly’s Enterprise was not only engaged in music; as alleged, for two decades the enterprise at the direction of R. Kelly preyed upon young women and teenagers whose dreams of meeting a superstar, soon turned into a nightmare of rape, child pornography, and forced labor. The musician turned predator allegedly used his stardom to coax some victims into nefarious sex acts while certain members of his enterprise calculatingly facilitated the aberrant conduct,” Homeland Security Special Agent-in-Charge Angel Melendez said in a statement.

R. Kelly has been accused of multiple crimes against women over the past 20 years. He has vehemently denied all present and past allegations of sexual misconduct which has been leveled against him.

 

 

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OPINION: Why I support Sen. Kamala Harris for president?

Ice Cube explains why Lamar Odom was booted from BIG3: ‘we want players who actually play’

Jaden Smith on why he’s ‘becoming a full-time inventor’

Jaden Smith created a water filtration system for the people of Flint, Michigan, and launched the “I Love You” food truck on his birthday this month to feed vegan meals to the homeless in Los Angeles. Now the rapper and young entrepreneur says he’s ready to become a full-time inventor.

“I want the world to know that I am switching professions and that I am becoming a full-time inventor,” Smith tells Complex. “I’m going to spend all of my time inventing new technologies because I think I’m better at that than making music.”

—Jaden Smith celebrates his birthday by launching free vegan food truck for the homeless-—

Smith recently released a new album ERYS, along with its first single “Again,” and has been prepping to hit the road with Tyler the Creator for the IGOR tour. But the son of Hollywood royalty says “I’m not a musician. I’m an inventor. Elon Musk is my idol and I’m not gonna stop until I’m like Elon Musk.”

As previously reported by TheGrio, Smith’s celebrated his 21st birthday (on July 8) by launching his I Love You mobile restaurant; a food truck servicing L.A.’s Skid Row district. Back in March Smith’s foundation made headlines for helping bring clean water to Flint, Michigan by deploying a mobile water filtration system known as “The Water Box” that reduces lead and other potential contaminants.

In his interview with Complex, Smith further explains why he dropped his last name on music streaming services.

“You want to know why? Because Willow’s name is “just Willow.” And everything is a character. I feel like I had to separate the things that I do as different characters,” he explains.

“Jaden Smith is the guy that does the vegan food truck in L.A., and gets that out to the homeless people, and does the Water Box in Flint, and starts Just Water, and sits down with Al Gore. Jaden is just a musical artist.”

—Drugs and alcohol not involved in Kendrick Norton accident that cost him his arm—

Smith says he and his sister “are like a band,” comparing their dynamic to that of hip-hop duo OutKast and their famed Speakerboxxx/The Love Below album.

“Me and Willow are like OutKast except we only ever release individual albums.” You remember how OutKast did that one album where it was like two albums? That’s me and Willow. It’s like we’re not really a band, but we kind of are. It’s Jaden and Willow, we have to have the uniform names.”

 

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Former Cameroon Football Federation boss given life ban

The Cameroon Football Federation bans its former president Tombi A Roko Sidiki for life for financial misappropriation.

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Space Photos of the Week: A Tribute to Voyager’s Twin Trippers

These two missions fundamentally changed our understanding of the solar system. See how in this entrancing photo gallery.

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Drugs and alcohol not involved in Kendrick Norton accident that cost him his arm

Police say Miami Dolphins lineman Kendrick Norton made an improper lane change that led to the horrific 4th of July car crash which caused him to have his left arm amputated.

The accident occurred early Thursday morning on a Miami-area highway when Norton made an improper lane change that resulted in his Ford F250 pickup truck sideswiping a Maserati before colliding with a concrete barrier and landing upside-down, Yahoo Sports reports.

—-Miami Dolphins player Kendrick Norton loses arm in crash—-

The police report that Norton was exiting the highway on the Northbound ramp when he decided at the last minute to switch to the Southbound exit ramp. That’s when he crashed into the Maserati — sending Norton’s vehicle careening into a barrier then flipping over.

Norton and his female passenger, 34-year-old Shakir Williams, suffered major injuries and both were transported to a nearby hospital, TMZ reports. Police said neither were wearing seatbelts.

Norton’s left arm reportedly had to be amputated by paramedics on the scene in order to remove him from the wreckage. There were reportedly no drugs or alcohol found in his system, but Norton has been issued a citation for the improper lane change.

—Congressman, celebs push for A$AP Rocky’s release from jail—

“I am as comfortable as I can be with the situation. I am doing fine and the best I can,” Norton shared with CBS4 in Miami on Thursday. “I am staying strong because of all of the support from all of the fans, all of the teams, my family and everyone. That is what is pushing me, my faith and the support from my family, my grandparents, my sports agent. Everyone is going above and beyond with nothing in return. Just to see people who have been supporting me is just great.”

Sadly, he now recognizes that his football career is over.

“I realize that I will not be able to play for anyone,” Norton told CBS4. “We are working past that you know. That reality is sinking in. I am alive and I am grateful.”

 

The post Drugs and alcohol not involved in Kendrick Norton accident that cost him his arm appeared first on theGrio.

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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Tabletop RPGs

Shannon Appelcline's 'Designers and Dragons' books offer a detailed look at the history of tabletop roleplaying games.

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Palantir Manual Shows How Law Enforcement Tracks Families

An Apple Watch bug, a hackable hair straightener, and more security news this week.

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The Toxic Potential of YouTube’s Feedback Loop

Opinion: I worked on AI for YouTube’s "recommended for you" feature. We underestimated how the algorithms could go terribly wrong.

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Best Amazon Echo and Alexa Speakers: Which Models Are Best?

Should you get the Echo Dot or the Echo Show Five? Here are our favorite Alexa speakers from Amazon and its partners.

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Prime Day 2019: What You Should Know About Amazon

Ahead of Amazon’s official shopping holiday, we pulled together the best of our shopping tips and stories. Learn how star ratings work and how to avoid shady products.

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'Black vest' protesters storm Panthéon in Paris

Hundreds of migrants occupy the city's Panthéon and demand the right to stay in France.

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Gadget Lab Podcast: Facebook's Libra and the Future of Money

On this episode of Gadget Lab, WIRED writer Greg Barber explains the intricacies of Facebook’s ambitious plan to and how Libra is poised to rattle the future of crypto.

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Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta resigning amid Jeffrey Epstein scandal

WASHINGTON (AP) — Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta said Friday he is resigning following renewed scrutiny of his handling of a 2008 secret plea deal with wealthy financier Jeffrey Esptein, who is accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls.

President Donald Trump, with Acosta at his side, made the announcement as he left the White House for a trip to Wisconsin and Ohio. The president said Acosta had been a “great” labor secretary.

“I hate to see this happen,” Trump said. He said he did not ask Acosta to leave the Cabinet.

Acosta said his resignation would be effective in seven days. Acosta said he didn’t think it was right for his handling of Epstein’s case to distract from his work as secretary of labor.

“My point here today is we have an amazing economy and the focus needs to be on the economy job creation,” Acosta said.

Acosta was the U.S. attorney in Miami when he oversaw a 2008 non-prosecution agreement Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein avoided federal charges, plead guilty to state charges and served 13 months in jail. Similar charges recently filed against Epstein by federal prosecutors in New York had put Acosta’s role in the 2008 deal under renewed scrutiny.

Top Democratic lawmakers and presidential candidates had demanded that Acosta resign over his handling of the agreement, which a federal judge has said violated federal law because Acosta did not notify Epstein’s victims of the arrangement. The Justice Department has been investigating.

Trump had initially defended Acosta but said he’d look “very closely” his handling of the 2008 agreement.

The deal came under scrutiny earlier this year following reporting by the Miami Herald.

Epstein, 66, reached the deal to secretly end a federal sex abuse investigation involving at least 40 teenage girls that could have landed him behind bars for life. He instead pleaded guilty to state charges, spent 13 months in jail, paid settlements to victims and is a registered sex offender.

Acosta had attempted to clear his name, and held a news conference — encouraged by Trump — to defend his actions. In a 50-plus-minute lawyerly rebuttal, Acosta argued his office had secured the best deal it could at the time and was working in the victims’ best interests.

“We did what we did because we wanted to see Epstein go to jail,” he said, refusing to apologize for his actions. “We believe that we proceeded appropriately.”

Pressed on whether he had any regrets, Acosta repeatedly suggested that circumstances had changed since then.

“We now have 12 years of knowledge and hindsight and we live in a very different world,” he said. “Today’s world treats victims very, very differently,” he said.

After federal attorneys in New York announced the new charges against Epstein this week, Acosta tweeted that he was “pleased” by their decision.

“The crimes committed by Epstein are horrific,” Acosta tweeted. “With the evidence available more than a decade ago, federal prosecutors insisted that Epstein go to jail, register as a sex offender and put the world on notice that he was a sexual predator.”

“Now that new evidence and additional testimony is available, the NY prosecution offers an important opportunity to more fully bring him to justice,” he said.

Acosta, the nation’s 27th labor secretary, took on the role officially in early 2017, leading a sprawling agency that enforces more than 180 federal laws covering about 10 million employers and 125 million workers. He was confirmed in the Senate 60-38.

But Acosta had frustrated some conservatives who had been pushing for his ouster long before the Epstein uproar. Among their frustrations were Acosta’s decisions to proceed with several employment discrimination lawsuits and to allow certain Obama holdovers to remain on the job.

Acosta is a former federal prosecutor and civil rights chief. Before joining the administration he was dean of the Florida International University law school.

The post Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta resigning amid Jeffrey Epstein scandal appeared first on theGrio.

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Visiting lecturer to spearhead project exploring the geopolitics of artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is expected to have tremendous societal impact across the globe in the near future. Now Luis Videgaray PhD ’98, former foreign minister and finance minister of Mexico, is coming to MIT to spearhead an effort that aims to help shape global AI policies, focusing on how such rising technologies will affect people living in all corners of the world.

Starting this month, Videgaray, an expert in geopolitics and AI policy, will serve as director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Policy for the World Project (MIT AIPW), a collaboration between the MIT Sloan School of Management and the new MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. Videgaray will also serve as a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan and as a distinguished fellow at the MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative.

The MIT AIPW will bring together researchers from across the Institute to explore and analyze best AI policies for countries around the world based on various geopolitical considerations. The end result of the year-long effort, Videgaray says, will be a report with actionable policy recommendations for national and local governments, businesses, international organizations, and universities — including MIT.

“The core idea is to analyze, raise awareness, and come up with useful policy recommendations for how the geopolitical context affects both the development and use of AI,” says Videgaray, who earned his PhD at MIT in economics. “It’s called AI Policy for the World, because it’s not only about understanding the geopolitics, but also includes thinking about people in poor nations, where AI is not really being developed but will be adopted and have significant impact in all aspects of life.”

“When we launched the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, we expressed the desire for the college to examine the societal implications of advanced computational capabilities,” says MIT Provost Martin Schmidt. “One element of that is developing frameworks which help governments and policymakers contemplate these issues. I am delighted to see us jump-start this effort with the leadership of our distinguished alumnus, Dr. Videgaray.”

Democracy, diversity, and de-escalation

As Mexico’s finance minister from 2012 to 2016, Videgaray led Mexico’s energy liberalization process, a telecommunications reform to foster competition in the sector, a tax reform that reduced the country’s dependence on oil revenues, and the drafting of the country’s laws on financial technology. In 2012, he was campaign manager for President Peña Nieto and head of the presidential transition team.

As foreign minister from 2017 to 2018, Videgaray led Mexico’s relationship with the Trump White House, including the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He is one of the founders of the Lima Group, created to promote regional diplomatic efforts toward restoring democracy in Venezuela. He also directed Mexico’s leading role in the UN toward an inclusive debate on artificial intelligence and other new technologies. In that time, Videgaray says AI went from being a “science-fiction” concept in the first year to a major global political issue the following year.

In the past few years, academic institutions, governments, and other organizations have launched initiatives that address those issues, and more than 20 countries have strategies in place that guide AI development. But they miss a very important point, Videgaray says: AI’s interaction with geopolitics.

MIT AIWP will have three guiding principles to help shape policy around geopolitics: democratic values, diversity and inclusion, and de-escalation.

One of the most challenging and important issues MIT AIWP faces is if AI “can be a threat to democracy,” Videgaray says. In that way, the project will explore policies that help advance AI technologies, while upholding the values of liberal democracy.

“We see some countries starting to adopt AI technologies not for the improvement for the quality of life, but for social control,” he says. “This technology can be extremely powerful, but we are already seeing how it can also be used to … influence people and have an effect on democracy. In countries where institutions are not as strong, there can be an erosion of democracy.”

A policy challenge in that regard is how to deal with private data restrictions in different countries. If some countries don’t put any meaningful restrictions on data usage, it could potentially give them a competitive edge. “If people start thinking about geopolitical competition as more important than privacy, biases, or algorithmic transparency, and the concern is to win at all costs, then the societal impact of AI around the world could be quite worrisome,” Videgaray says.

In the same vein, MIT AIPW will focus on de-escalation of potential conflict, by promoting an analytical, practical, and realistic collaborative approach to developing and using AI technologies. While media has dubbed the rise of AI worldwide as a type of “arms race,” Videgaray says that type of thinking is potentially hazardous to society. “That reflects a sentiment that we’re moving again into an adversarial world, and technology will be a huge part of it,” he says. “That will have negative effects of how technology is developed and used.”

For inclusion and diversity, the project will make AI’s ethical impact “a truly global discussion,” Videgaray says. That means promoting awareness and participation from countries around the world, including those that may be less developed and more vulnerable. Another challenge is deciding not only what policies should be implemented, but also where those policies might be best implemented. That could mean at the state level or national level in the United States, in different European countries, or with the UN.

“We want to approach this in a truly inclusive way, which is not just about countries leading development of technology,” Videgaray says. “Every country will benefit and be negatively affected by AI, but many countries are not part of the discussion.”

Building connections

While MIT AIPW won’t be drafting international agreements, Videgaray says another aim of the project is to explore different options and elements of potential international agreements. He also hopes to reach out to decision makers in governments and businesses around the world to gather feedback on the project’s research.         

Part of Videgaray’s role includes building connections across MIT departments, labs, and centers to pull in researchers to focus on the issue. “For this to be successful, we need to integrate the thinking of people from different backgrounds and expertise,” he says.

At MIT Sloan, Videgaray will teach classes alongside Simon Johnson, the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship Professor and a professor of global economics and management. His lectures will focus primarily on the issues explored by the MIT AIPW project.

Next spring, MIT AIPW plans to host a conference at MIT to convene researchers from the Institute and around the world to discuss the project’s initial findings and other topics in AI.

from MIT News https://ift.tt/32l3O4i
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