Search results for

The president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Laurent Kabila has been shot. Some credible sources indicate he is dead. Others say he is critically wounded. At least one suggests he has left the country for treatment of his wounds. Linda talks to Nicolas Long, a reporter for the South African newspaper The Star, who is in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

NPR Diplomatic Correspondent Michele Kelemen reports some analysts see the death of Laurent Kabila as an opportunity for peace in Congo. Many believe the slain president was obstructing diplomatic efforts to resolve a conflict that now involves seven African nations.

From member station WHYY, Martin Wells reports Philadelphia schools are making an effort to get rid of library books that are tattered, inappropriate, or just plain wrong. Some decades old books talk about how man may one day land on the moon, another wrongly says that South African leader Nelson Mandela was executed.

Host Bob Edwards talks with Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier about this weekend's State of the Black Union symposium in Washington. Participants will discuss, among other things, the African-American agenda during the coming Bush administration.

NPR's Cheryl Corley reports that decades after a federal judge ordered it, new houses are about to built for black residents who lost their homes in an ethnic enclave next to Detroit. The few African-Americans in Hamtramck, Mich., in the 1960s successfully claimed in court that urban renewal targeted their homes for destruction and withheld relocation help.

The Florida Supreme Court sat in solemn session today to hear the arguments of both presidential campaigns regarding the counting of disputed ballots. Lawyers for Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush took turns bearing the questions of the seven justices, who now must decide whether this presidential election contest comes to an end or goes on. NPR's Melissa Block reports from Tallahassee.

The Washington Post conducted a precinct-by-precinct study of invalidated Presidential ballots in Florida and found that ballots in predominantly African-American precincts were considerably more likely to be rejected than ballots cast in majority white precincts. Host Lisa Simeone speaks with Washington Post reporter Dan Keating about his discoveries.

Poet Gwendolyn Brooks -- the first African-American to win a Pulitzer Prize -- has died at the age of 83. All Things Considered remembers Brooks and her work.

The African American middle class has been growing rapidly with the rest of the economy, but analysts say this group often lacks the tools of sensible investment. Steve Tripoli from member station WBUR reports on a new effort by the National Urban League to teach African Americans the ins and outs of investing.

In his new book The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, he examines the checkered history of our countrys right to vote, and how this right was not for a time extended to certain groups of people, from propertyless whitemen, to women, immigrants, and African-Americans. Even now, he argues, that the wealthy and well-educated are for more likely to go to the polls than the poor and under educated. Keyssar is Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University.