5-Year-Old Black Girl Disappears and No One Cares

I know it's a hard and ugly truth to swallow, representative of a reality we don't want to believe exists anymore. But sadly, nothing else explains why the country is currently obsessed with finding Lisa Irwin and largely unaware that Jhessye Shockley is even lost.

CPSC: Target Corp To Recall 3,400 Children's Frog Masks

Target Corp. (TGT) agreed to a voluntary recall of about 3,400 children's frog masks due to a suffocation hazard, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said.

The commission advised consumers to stop using the masks immediately, as the plush masks lack proper ventilation, it said. No suffocation incidents were reported related to the masks. Full refunds are available at Target, which sold the items exclusively from August through September for $1 each.

The commission is charged with protecting the U.S. public from unreasonable risks of injury or death associated with the use of thousands of consumer products. In the prior two months, Target agreed to recall about 447,000 Embark resistance cords and cord kits on an injury hazard, 304,000 Chefmate blenders due to a laceration hazard and about 547,000 step stools with storage due to a fall hazard.

Defunct German Satellite Hits Earth in Fiery Death Dive

An old German satellite fell to Earth today (Oct. 22), after languishing in a dead orbit since it was decommissioned more than a decade ago, but officials do not yet know where it landed.

"There is currently no confirmation if pieces of debris have reached Earth's surface," German aerospace officials said in a statement.

After Alabama law, Hispanic kids being bullied

It was just another schoolyard basketball game until a group of Hispanic seventh-graders defeated a group of boys from Alabama.

"They told them, `You shouldn't be winning. You should go back to Mexico,"' said the woman, who spoke through a translator last week and didn't want her name used. She and her son are in the country illegally.

Spanish-speaking parents say their children are facing more bullying and taunts at school since Alabama's tough crackdown on illegal immigration took effect last month. Many blame the name-calling on fallout from the law, which has been widely covered in the news, discussed in some classrooms and debated around dinner tables.

Is the US Declaration of Independence illegal?

Some background: during the hot and sweltering summer of 1776, members of the second Continental Congress travelled to Philadelphia to discuss their frustration with royal rule.

By 4 July, America's founding fathers approved a simple document penned by Jefferson that enumerated their grievances and announced themselves a sovereign nation.

Called the Declaration of Independence, it was a blow for freedom, a call to war, and the founding of a new empire. 

It was also totally illegitimate and illegal.

At least, that was what lawyers from the UK argued during a debate at Philadelphia's Ben Franklin Hall.

NBA lockout: Negotiations could be hijacked by racial perceptions

The owners “lied to you,” Derek Fisher said, moments after the players’ union president walked out of fruitless labor talks in Manhattan on Thursday night. And with that the mutual distrust and name-calling began anew.

Soon, the Rev. Jesse Jackson worries, it will be personal and irreconcilable and no longer about the color green.

“I hope it doesn’t degenerate into names and language that’s hard to take back once it’s started,” Jackson said from his Chicago office late Thursday afternoon. “If it goes down this road, that could amount to irreparable damage. If it goes away from labor negotiations, things could become irretrievable.”

Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King’s other half

Coretta King was his other half. She did more than anyone else to advance his legacy. And, dare I say, if it were not for this woman by his side, his legacy would never have risen to such heroic proportions.

Somewhere on that vast four acres there should be a statue, a bust, a plaque or something showing that she was a co-partner in this great freedom movement. (She died on Jan. 30, 2006.) Why not a mention of her on the monuments wall of great quotes? He once said, “In every campaign if Coretta was not with me, she was only a heartbeat away.”

Is This the Future of Punctuation!?

On the misuse of apostrophe's (did your eye just twitch?) and our increasingly rhetorical language

Punctuation arouses strong feelings. You have probably come across the pen-wielding vigilantes who skulk around defacing movie posters and amending handwritten signs that advertise "Rest Room's" or "Puppy's For Sale."

The apostrophe is mainly a device for the eye, not the ear. And while I plan to keep handling apostrophes in accordance with the principles I was shown as a child, I am confident that they will either disappear or be reduced to little baubles of orthographic bling.