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Philadelphia’s public school system was ordered to pay out $2.3 million in damages after a court found it deliberately discriminated against a white-owned business. Security and Data Technologies, Inc. (SDT) was initially chosen by Philadelphia School District (PSD) and then-Superintendent Arlene Ackerman back in 2010 to install surveillance cameras at 19 schools PSD classified as particularly dangerous. After the company began preliminary work, it was abruptly “deselected” and the $7.5 million no-bid contract was then awarded on an emergency basis to IBS Communications, a company not eligible for no-bid contracts. The abrupt turn of events, it turns out, had a...

Former D.C. Congressman Walter Fauntroy, 83, is back in the U.S. after several years absence and, according to his attorney, he is in jail in Loudoun County, Va. Attorney Johnny Barnes said Fauntroy was arrested at Dulles Airport in Loudoun County Monday morning on his return from Dubai on an "unexpected" warrant from Prince George's County, Md. It involved Fauntroy's failure to appear in a court case in 2011 on allegations of fraud involving a 2009 Obama inauguration party that never took place.

DENVER (AP) — The American Red Cross issued an apology Monday for a water safety poster that some suggested had a racist message. The cartoon poster showed children playing in a swimming pool. Nearly all of the white children's activities were labeled as "cool," while the children of color were depicted acting in unsafe ways and were labeled "not cool."

Remember that little story? On March 28th of this year, a scene between two students at San Francisco State University went viral overnight. Corey Goldstein, an student, was walking through the corridors on his way to the next class, when he was confronted by Bonita Tindle, a girl he had seen but didn't know. Bonita didn't like that Corey, a young man of jewish ancestry, had chosen to style his long brown hair into dreadlocks. Somehow, Bonits had it in her mind that dreadlocks were the exclusive province of black people to wear. Her thought was anyone not black or...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said economic isolation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) should be ended. Putin has signaled for concrete steps to be taken in this regard. Russian President hosting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as an "honorary guest" in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi noted, the "meaningless" embargo imposed on TRNC must be lifted and his country will have direct contacts with both the Turkish and Greek Cypriot societies on the island. The two leaders emphasized their opinions overlapped on many issues. "The first thing we must do is to solve the problem...

Turkey says Pope Francis' description of the WW1 mass killing of Armenians as genocide shows "the mentality of the Crusades". The pontiff's remarks have "no relation to reality", Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli said. Armenia and many historians say up to 1.5 million Armenian Christians were killed by Ottoman Turkish forces in 1915. But Turkey disputes the figure and denies the deaths constituted genocide. It says the deaths were part of a civil conflict triggered by WW1. The row continues to sour Turkish-Armenian relations, drawing in other countries such as Germany, whose parliament recently declared the killings to be...

Vladimir Putin downplayed past comments about Donald Trump and spoke about the presidential election on Friday, adding that he accepted the US is probably the world’s sole superpower. “America is a great power. Today, probably, the only superpower. We accept that,” the Russian president said at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. “We want to and are ready to work with the United States.” Alluding to US-EU sanctions on Russia in response to its military actions in Ukraine, he continued: “The world needs such strong nations, like the US. And we need them. But we don’t need them constantly getting...

Russia is not the country you think it is. Its economy is smaller than South Korea’s. Its people are poorer than Kazakhstan’s. It trails Finland in technology. And it has a smaller military budget than Saudi Arabia... ...Russia hosted the Olympics, punched Georgia in the nose, took back the Crimea, invaded Ukraine, flew bombers through NATO airspace, built military bases in the Arctic, and generally flexed and posed like an oiled, aged, but still buff, body builder. And we’ve been paying increasingly rapt attention, not noticing the geriatric walker hidden just off stage. A closer look is almost shocking. According...

Syria strike: Russia unleashes lethal aerial arsenal on Aleppo Hannah Lucinda Smith, Catherine Philp The Times 12:00AM June 23, 2016 Russia is breaching international conventions by dropping incen­diaries similar to white phosphorus on to residential neighbourhoods in the Syrian city of Aleppo in what is thought to be the prelude to a ground assault to retake the city from rebel forces. Photographs have shown what experts believe to be a thermo­baric bomb, the most powerful explosive apart from a nuclear weapon, being detonated next to urban areas, with potentially devastating effects for civilians.

Late Thursday evening, the Wall Street Journal reported, 51 State Department officials signed a statement condemning U.S. policy in Syria in which they repeatedly call for “targeted military strikes against the Damascus government and urging regime change as the only way to defeat Islamic State.” “In other words,” as Zero Hedge summarized, “over 50 top ‘diplomats’ are urging to eliminate [Syrian Pres. Bashar al] Assad in order to ‘defeat ISIS’, the same ISIS which top US ‘diplomats’ had unleashed previously in order to … eliminate Assad.” This gordian knot created by United States foreign policy — and intensified by that...

The next United Nations chief may be an unapologetic communist who served a savage dictatorship that murdered hundreds of thousands of people and tortured even more. Her name is Irina Bokova (shown). And thanks to a slick public-relations operation and a team of “former” communist spies running her campaign, there is reportedly a good chance that the Bulgarian Communist Party operative could end up as UN boss in 2017 when current Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s term expires. Bokova currently serves as the chief of the UN “Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization” (UNESCO). But her long career in the service of both...

In March, a white award-winning broadcast news anchor in Pittsburgh posted on her professional Facebook page what she claimed was a heartfelt call to action on the perceived black-on-black crime epidemic in the United States, particularly in the city she’d covered for almost 20 years. The post came two weeks after she covered a mass shooting at a backyard barbecue that left four people injured and six dead, including a pregnant woman, in Wilkinsburg, a majority black borough. The district attorney called the heinous crime calculated, planned and one of the “most brutal” he had seen in his 18-year tenure.

The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards overseas operation arm has warned there could be armed resistance in Bahrain after the Sunni-ruled kingdom stripped a top Shia cleric of his citizenship. Bahrain accused the cleric of using his position to "serve foreign interests", promoting "sectarianism and violence". .."The al-Khalifa [rulers of Bahrain] surely know their aggression against Sheikh Isa Qassim is a red line and that crossing it would set Bahrain and the whole region on fire, and it would leave no choice for people but to resort to armed resistance," Gen Soleimani said in a statement released by the semi-official...

It is Russia’s patience - and not the United States’ - that is waning over the situation in Syria, the chief of Russia’s General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, has told the media. Earlier, US Secretary of State, John Kerry said that while the Syrian President, Bashar Assad and Russia were demanding strict compliance with ceasefire in the whole territory of Syria, the Syrian government troops were pushing ahead with their operation to recapture Aleppo. He remarked that Russia should be aware that patience on Assad’s Syria was wearing thin. "If anyone’s patience on Syria is waning, it is our patience, not...

While conservatives identify the Orlando massacre as an Islamic terrorist attack and the left blames a variety of factors including conservatives and guns, the Black Lives Matter movement has published its own unique perspective on the cause of this atrocity. "Despite the media's framing of this as a terrorist attack, we are very clear that this terror is completely homegrown, born from the anti-Black white supremacy, patriarchy and homophobia of [sic] the conservative right and of those who would use religious extremism as a weapon to gain power for the few and take power from the rest." Although the Orlando...

American and Russian fighter jets had a tense showdown in the skies above Syria as the Russians dropped bombs on U.S.-backed rebels. U.S. and Russian fighter jets bloodlessly tangled in the air over Syria on June 16 as the American pilots tried and failed to stop the Russians from bombing U.S.-backed rebels in southern Syria near the border with Jordan. The aerial close encounter underscores just how chaotic Syria’s skies have become as Russia and the U.S.-led coalition work at cross-purposes, each dropping bombs in support of separate factions in the five-year-old civil war. The near-clash also highlights the escalating...

Quoting unnamed administration officials, CNN host Jake Tapper revealed that the White House is “concerned” that Russia could invade South and East Ukraine “possibly as soon as this weekend.” He said that, in spite of Russia’s assurances that the large numbers of troops and military equipment amassed along the Ukrainian border are there merely for training exercises, the White House believes that Moscow could be planning a broader incursion into Ukraine. “There is now real apprehension that Vladimir Putin could push even further into Ukraine, perhaps as soon as this weekend,” Tapper said. He quoted anonymous administration officials who are...

British officials have made an unseemly leap to speculate on a terrorist plot in the Russian airliner crash over Sinai last weekend. And Russia has understandably reacted furiously to the speculation, saying that it is too early to make such an assessment when crash investigators have not even compiled, let alone evaluated, evidence. American officials, including President Barack Obama, are also now echoing the British claims of a bomb on the plane. The question is: why the haste? ........................... Cameron and Obama are evidently being fed intelligence assessments of a bomb being stowed in the airplane's hold by terrorists. But...

Sensational reports of Russian government spies hacking into the Democrat party’s computers weren’t the usual anti-Moscow smear job. Republican presidential contender Donald Trump also took a hit in the double whammy. The abrasive business tycoon may have a popular following among grass roots voters, but he has managed to garner powerful enemies within the American establishment. Not least large sections of the corporate news media, the military and foreign policy arms of US government.