Mshale

Dozens of Brooklyn Park residents last evening crammed into city council chambers to witness history being made in Minnesota’s sixth largest city, the swearing in of the city's first black council member, Wynfred Russell, who was born and raised in Liberia. Russell, a former instructor at the University of Minnesota, defeated former council member Bob Mata by garnering a convincing...

New enrollments of international students fell by 6.6 percent at American universities in academic year 2017-18 compared to the year before, marking the second straight year in declines in new enrollments, according to new data from the annual Open Doors survey. New enrollments fell 6.3 percent at the undergraduate level, 5.5 percent at the graduate level and 9.7 percent at the nondegree level from...

African immigrants should push their elected officials to ensure that they are not left out of the distribution of mental health resources, according to two lawmakers from the community. Rep. Esther Agbaje and Rep. Huldah Momanyi-Hiltsley were speaking on Friday in Brooklyn Center at the 11th annual African Mental Health Summit. The lawmakers encouraged individuals to communicate with their representatives...

Let’s wake up, take one breath and listen for the sound… Thus begins the refrain of Sinkane’s anchoring song of the same name as their latest album, We Belong, released last year. The six-piece band with Sudanese founder and lead singer, Ahmed Gallab, opens the Cedar Cultural Center’s Summer at the Cedar on July 9th, the first of seven weeks of...

A report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute shows that Black Americans continue to face serious challenges in saving for retirement, even as their incomes grow. The 2025 Retirement Confidence Survey, which included a special oversample of Black workers and retirees, found that the wealth gap remains wide at every income level. Among households earning $75,000 or more, only 33%...

The Trump Administration and Republican lawmakers’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” that passed last week and signed into law “is the most harmful, immoral budget we have seen in modern American history,” U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, flanked by local elected officials and nonprofits heads, declared in a July 10 press conference in Minneapolis. Omar spoke from a community food shelf in...

By Mark Mengonfia, Monika Pronczuk and Wilson Mcmackin MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s praise of the “beautiful” English of Liberia’s President Joseph Boakai drew confusion Thursday in the English-speaking African country and umbrage over what many considered condescending remarks. “Such good English,” Trump said to Boakai during an event at the White House, with visible surprise. “Such beautiful...

A federally funded study exploring why Black babies in Detroit are disproportionately born prematurely has been abruptly terminated by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as part of a wider effort by the federal government to eliminate research tied to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The study, which focused on how stress associated with racism and poverty might alter gene function...

Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were shot and killed June 14 at their Brooklyn Park home. Family, friends and dignitaries from across the country are attending their funeral today at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis.

By Jack Denton and Moses Ndungu KIBERA, Kenya (AP) — Dotting the roadside in what is widely considered Africa’s largest urban slum are typical stands selling vegetables. What isn’t typical is their acceptance of bitcoin as a form of payment. Around 200 people use bitcoin in Soweto West, a neighborhood of the Kibera slum in Kenya ‘s capital. It’s part of...

At the annual convention of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), held under the theme “The Black Press: Engaging Black America—Empowerment, Justice and Prosperity,” Rev. Dr. Jamal Harrison Bryant will receive the NNPA’s prestigious 2025 Newsmaker of the Year Award. Bryant will be honored during a ceremony on June 27 where the organization will recognize Bryant’s bold leadership in...

Citing Trump’s “attacking our democracy,” the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) will not invite President Donald Trump to its national convention this year. The decision marks the first time that America’s oldest civil rights organization will exclude a sitting president at its convention. In a statement on the evening of June 16, the reasons were made...

From Bethesda, Maryland, to Atlanta, Georgia, across New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver, and more than 2,000 other cities and towns nationwide, tens of thousands of Americans turned out Saturday in unified protest Donald Trump’s military parade, his 79th birthday, and what they described as his authoritarian leadership. In many cities, demonstrators carried signs and photos of former President Barack...