Albert Freeman Jr., left, in a still from "Malcolm X."
LOS ANGELES — Albert Freeman Jr., the veteran actor who
played Elijah Muhammad in Spike Lee's epic film, "Malcolm X," has died.
He was 78.
Howard University in Washington, D.C., confirmed his death Friday
night but details weren't immediately available. Freeman taught acting
there for years and served as chairman and artistic director of its
theater arts department.
"He was a brilliant professor, a renowned actor and a master
director who made his mark in the classroom as well as on stage, screen
and television. ... He has mentored and taught scores of outstanding
actors. He was a resounding voice of Howard and will be missed,"
university spokeswoman Kerry-Ann Hamilton said in a statement.
Freeman earned an NAACP Image Award for playing Malcolm X's mentor in Lee's 1992 biography.
He also received an Emmy nomination for his role as Malcolm X in the
1979 miniseries "Roots: The Next Generations." He won a best-actor
Daytime Emmy that year for his work as Capt. Ed Hall on the soap opera
"One Life to Live." (See video below)
Once again, there is another great loss of a person whom millions enjoyed watching on Television, Stage, and Film. May Mr. Freeman's family and friends find spiritual peace during this difficult time.
Search operations have ceased, and hundreds of tents have been set up to house victims.
An Iranian couple stand amid the rubble of their home in the village of Baje-Baj, near the town of Varzaqan.
(Atta Kenare / AFP/GettyImages / August 12, 2012)
TEHRAN, Iran—
Twin earthquakes in
Iran
have killed at least 250 people and injured over 2,000, Iranian state
television said on Sunday, after thousands spent the night outdoors
after their villages were leveled and homes damaged in the country's
northwest.
Images broadcast on the main news channel showed
dozens of families sleeping on blankets laid out on the ground in parks.
Some were crying, others shivering from chilly weather in the
mountainous region hit by the quake, near neighboring
Azerbaijan.
BOSTON — More than 30 federal officers in an airport program intended to
spot telltale mannerisms of potential terrorists say the operation has
become a magnet for racial profiling, targeting not only Middle
Easterners but also blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press
Reagan National Airport in Washington is one of more
than 150 airports that are already using behavior detection officers.
In interviews and internal complaints, officers from the
Transportation Security Administration’s
“behavior detection” program at Logan International Airport in Boston
asserted that passengers who fit certain profiles — Hispanics traveling
to Miami, for instance, or blacks wearing baseball caps backward — are
much more likely to be stopped, searched and questioned for “suspicious”
behavior.
“They just pull aside anyone who they don’t like the way they look — if
they are black and have expensive clothes or jewelry, or if they are
Hispanic,” said one white officer, who along with four others spoke with
The New York Times on the condition of anonymity.
A small airplane crashed into a Taylorville, Ill., neighborhood late
Saturday morning moments after 12 skydivers safely jumped from the
craft. The pilot died in the crash.
AMMAN, Jordan
–
Two Syrian journalists were killed in the capital Damascus, state media
and an Arab satellite television station reported on Sunday.
Activists
reported more clashes in some Damascus suburbs, the battleground city
of Aleppo in the north, central Homs province, and the restive southern
town of Daraa. The U.K.-based activist group Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights said it had no immediate reports of casualties.
Syrian
state news agency SANA also reported that security forces ambushed an
armed group in Aleppo and killed and wounded some of them. It said that
al-Safira residents in Aleppo prevented gunmen riding in five cars
mounted with machine guns from entering their area.
FORT LEE, N.J. (AP) — An athlete competing in the
Ironman U.S. Championship in New York City and New Jersey died Saturday
after having a medical problem during the swimming portion of the
grueling triathlon, race officials said.
The competitor
"experienced distress" during a 2.4-mile swim in the Hudson River at the
start of the all-day competition, a publicist for the race organizers
said. The course ran along the New Jersey shoreline, just north of the
George Washington Bridge.
The swimmer was pulled out of the water
and taken to a hospital in nearby Englewood Cliffs, N.J., but did not
survive. The organizers said the cause of death is unknown. An autopsy
is planned.
New York City police said the contestant was a 43-year-old man. His name has not yet been released.
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Gabby Douglas is really big in her hometown. Really big and painted on a wall.
The gold-medal-winning gymnast has a giant mural painted in her honor in Virginia Beach. And she loves it.
“WOW!!! This is amazing!! (hashtag)so honored,” Douglas tweeted
Friday from the Olympics in London, where the 16-year-old won two gold
medals at the Summer Games.
The mural
shows Douglas holding a gold medal with an American flag backdrop. It says “Way to go Gabby.”
Jamar Simmons
(pictured), a Baltimore City fireman, has been accused of running a
prostitution ring from his renovated apartment in the southwest part of
the city,
The Baltimore Sun reports.
His alleged accomplice, 33-year-old
Franklin Coit, has also been accused of participating in the alleged ring.
Simmons has been charged with seven offenses, most of which are
related to running a prostitution business. Coit has been charged with
similar counts.
MILWAUKEE —
Is a gun like a virus, a car, tobacco or alcohol? Yes, say public health
experts, who in the wake of recent mass shootings are calling for a
fresh look at gun violence as a social disease.
What we need, they say, is a public health approach to the
problem, like the highway safety measures, product changes and driving
laws that slashed deaths from car crashes decades ago, even as the
number of vehicles on the road rose.
One example: Guardrails are now curved to the ground instead of
having sharp metal ends that stick out and pose a hazard in a crash.
“People used to spear themselves and we blamed the drivers for
that,” said Dr. Garen Wintemute, an emergency medicine professor who
directs the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of
California at Davis.
Marcus Silveira for New York Daily News
Police shot dead a knife-wielding suspect on 7th Avenue by W. 37th street.
A deranged knife-wielding man was gunned down by police near Times
Square Saturday after a bizarre backward chase in broad daylight that
sent terrified tourists scrambling for safety.
The dreadlocked madman was fatally shot at 3 p.m. on a Seventh Ave.
sidewalk after ignoring orders to drop his 11-inch butcher knife — and
then menacingly lunged at cops, police said.
The 51-year-old suspect, identified as Darrius Kennedy, was walking
backward for seven blocks with cops in pursuit, appeared impervious to
police pepper spray and refused to surrender his blade, witnesses said.
“He looked like he was crazy,” said Jalloh Osman, 26, who joined a
crowd of onlookers watching the strange showdown at the corner of W.
37th St. “They sprayed him, and he kept going backwards.
“They kept telling him, ‘Put it down! Put it down!’ But he refused.”
and a 
