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From ESSENCE

After living in Zurich, Switzerland for nearly 20 years, Tina Turner is officially ready to make the northern European country her home.

According to Fox News, the 73-year-old will surrender her U.S. passport and adopt a Swiss one. “I’m very happy in Switzerland, and I feel at home here,” Turner told the German paper, Blick. “I cannot imagine a better place to live.”

Turner’s rep told the Zuerichsee-Zeitung, a local Zurich paper, she will “give back her U.S. citizenship.”

The Zurich council where she lives voted to grant the legendary singer and dancer citizenship; however, it will need to be approved at the state and federal level.

You can read the rest over at ESSENCE.

Are we the only ones more surprised that she actually hadn’t done this a long time ago?

Although the racial gaps in many areas of life are closing slightly in the U.S., research says that there is still a significant gap in black life expectancy compared to that of our white counterparts. In a newly released Health Services Research study conducted by UCLA, blacks continue to live shorter lives than whites in every state in the U.S. on average, as white females live five years longer than black females and white men live seven years longer than black males.

As a part of the university’s study, the disparities are broken down by state and the average life expectancy years in between the two races. New Mexico, with the smallest disparity, has a gap of 3.76 years for men and 2.45 years for women as the average life span difference. The nation’s capital, Washington D.C., has the largest life expectancy gap, with white females living 8.55 years longer than black females and a shocking 13.77 years between the lives of the average black and white males living in the District.

The discouraging study concludes that eliminating disparities in states with the largest African-American population would impact these numbers drastically, a positive solution for the following 10 U.S. states where over 58 percent of the country’s blacks reside: New York, California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, Maryland, Missouri and Louisiana. In contrast, states like Kentucky, West Virginia, Nevada, Oklahoma and Washington reported smaller year gaps in life expectancy, but coincidentally, these smaller numbers were not the result of blacks with longer life span, but due to whites with shorter life spans than the national average.

With the national average life expectancy being 74.79 years for white men and 67.66 years for black men and 79.84 years for white women in comparison to 74.64 years for black women, it is clear that the statistical odds of living longer than whites in many states seems bleak.

Various factors have led to these figures that work against our community as a whole, as well as the quality of life. Experts note that key factors impact the life span of the average American, which include accessibility to health care, HIV/AIDS, homicide, obesity, diabetes and other health and life risks that are statistically proven to be disproportionately more present in the black community.

According to the study, the accessibility to health care plays a major role, stating:

“Federal and state health policies that simply concentrate on the black–white difference in a geographic region may miss important opportunities to improve overall population health or significantly reduce disparity at the national level… Blacks make up a disproportionate percentage of the low-income, Medicaid-eligible population, and we found that Massachusetts and New York, two states where black populations have longer-than-expected life expectancy, are also the states that have expanded Medicaid coverage.”

Knowing that these factors play a key role in our life span more so than they do for others in America, we must be conscious of our health and well-being in order to live more healthy and longer. That includes everything from evaluating our eating habits and our lifestyle choices, being aware of our bodies inside and out, having access to healthcare, helping slow violent crimes in our communities and a lot more.

Are we doing enough as a community to live longer? How can we combat this issue with our lifestyles to close the gap?

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Joseph Kony - Source: newsi7.com

If you’ve been seeing anything on your social media that says “Kony 2012″ or #stopkony, you might be wondering just what the heck or who the heck a “Kony” is. If you were indeed wondering, you should know that Kony refers to Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony. He is the head of the guerrilla group Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which has kidnapped thousands of Ugandan children and forced them to become child soldiers. He has also caused the displacement of thousands of people, and his team has been responsible for a number of killings, rapes and more in Central Africa. While he has been a threat for years, and President Obama has tried to send troops to find him in the past, Kony has somehow been able to evade capture.

Though the LRA has allegedly been around since ’87, people are making Joseph Kony’s name an internationally known one this week after a video by film maker Jason Russell for the group Invisible Children was recently released about Kony. They were hoping that the video would increase U.S. involvement in the issue. But whether or not the government gets involved, it seems as though the people are ready. The more notoriety he gets from his bad deeds, the more likely Invisible Children believes he will be taken down.

The goal for right now, however, is to get the word out so that on April 20, supporters can put posters around where they live (wherever that is) that call for Kony to be brought to justice. The posters they have in mind say, “Kony 2012: ‘Stop at Nothing.’” No word yet on what the next step would be after the big poster posting event…According to ABC News, Invisible Children says people can support by going to their website, buying T-shirts, bracelets and posters, donating, or you can simply go to the site and sign their pledge.

If you want to know more about Joseph Kony, you can actually check out the 30-minute film by Jason Russell below and spread the word. Check it out if you haven’t already:

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Last month social media was a-twitter about Amber Cole, 14, who was seen on camera performing oral sex on a boy said to be her ex-boyfriend. According to lore, she did it in an effort to win back his affection. And by all signs, it looks like she was desperate for it.

YouTube went ablaze with with people opining on the incident, one of which was done by a wanna-be comedian. Baldy said, “If you 14, and you know how to do that, you ain’t a girl, you’s a woman!”

Wait. The ability to put a penis in your mouth and move it automatically makes you a woman? Not true. How about if the girl is 12? Or 11? How about nine? What if the perpetrator is an adult, and not some mean-spirited, hormone-fueled, pimply little boy?

Lisa Ling recently reported on sex trafficking in the United States for the OWN Network and found that young American girls were being recruited as young as 11 years old by pimps aiming to “turn them out” for profit, some of the girls servicing 20 men a night, with all–not some–of the profits going to the pimps. “If that’s not slavery, I don’t know what is,” said Ling in an interview on the Dr. Oz show, which aired Nov. 15.

Most of the young girls were black. Most of the young girls were fatherless. Sadly, many of the pimps were black. According to Ling, part of the pimp’s seduction was telling these children how beautiful and special they were, and the men insisted they call them “daddy.” This is a guess, but I’ll bet those girls were willing to call the pimps “daddy” because they didn’t have one worth a damn at home. “How important is it to a young girl to hear someone say I love you and you’re beautiful?” Ling asked. (Quick! Somebody do a study on the correlation between the 73 percent out-of-wedlock epidemic in the African American community and the sex trade. Oh, wait…)

But how is it that often in the black community, the pimp–the perpetrator of these horrific crimes against children (yes; they are children)–are glorified, and the girls are hoes? Don’t think that true? Then BET must not be in your cable network.

Here’s a newsflash: You don’t get to call an 11, 12, 13, 14, 17 year-old-girl a Slore while men out here make pimping a viable lifestyle choice. A girl’s ability to give a man oral sex, or lay down with a man does not make her a woman. Oftentimes, it makes her a victim of RAPE. “Guess the average age a girl starts prostitution in the U.S.A. Give up? The average age a GIRL enters prostitution is 12 YEARS OLD. Most of the girls sexually enslaved are poor, prior victims of sexual abuse and black or Latino,” wrote Jenee Darden on her blog, Cocoafly.com in a post titled, Saving Our Girls From Oakland’s Streets.

What is more, a young child does not have the brain capacity to fully grasp consequences of their actions and impulse control–that part of the brain doesn’t mature until a person reaches their early twenties. Would you hold a crippled person responsible for not getting out of the way before being hit by a runaway bus? Would you belittle a blind man for improperly reading a “Keep Out” sign? Yet, many are starting to hold children responsible for actions that they can not fully process or are powerless to prevent.

Girls are made to have sex with these guys even during their menstrual cycles…the pimps are stuffing cotton, baby wipes whatever to stop the flow, which leads to infection that causes infertility. But…she’s a hoe…right? Pimping ain’t easy…right? “Many of these kids are made to advertise themselves on Craigslist and other places. Traffickers don’t see them as kids, they see them as disposable commodities,” said my friend, Stag Brumfield, a youth advocate.

Next time I hear someone call a young girl a hoe, I might just have to pimp slap them.

Christelyn D. Karazin is the co-author of Swirling: How to Date, Mate and Relate Mixing Race Culture and Creed (to be released April 2012), and runs a blog, www.beyondblackwhite.com, dedicated to women of color who are interested and or involved in interracial and intercultural relationships. She is also the founder and organizer of “No Wedding, No Womb,” an initiative to find solutions to the 72 percent out-of-wedlock rate in the black community.

Looking to go on vacation, but don’t want to be… disappointed when you get there? Well thanks to the folks over at the Good Men’s Project, you can know which countries have the largest (and smallest) average penis sizes.

At the top of the list is Congo is 7.1 inches and coming in at the bottom is South Korea at 3.9. The United States was in the lower middle at 5.1 inches.

Check out more of the results at Black Voices.

Do you think this is sick, or just more information?

(CNN Money) – Two years after the credit squeeze began, Americans are still pulling back. A government report released Thursday showed that consumer credit fell at an annual rate of 4.5% in May, making it the fourth consecutive month of declining credit. Total consumer credit fell a seasonally adjusted $9.1 billion to $2.4 trillion, the Federal Reserve reported.

Read More…

(CNN Money) – It’s tough out there — no jobs, home values plummeting — and Americans are reacting by heading to bankruptcy court. Bankruptcy filings surged 14% during the first half of 2010, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. Filings totaled 770,117 through June, compared to 675,351 during the same period last year

Read More…

(Wall Street Journal) — The U.S. government revised down for the second time its estimate of economic growth in the first three months of 2010 on the back of lower consumer spending, underscoring caution about the recovery’s strength. Gross domestic product rose at a 2.7% annual rate January through March, the Commerce Department reported Friday in its third GDP estimate for the first quarter. That was down from an original estimate of 3.2% in April.

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(Wall Street Journal) — The U.S. government revised down for the second time its estimate of economic growth in the first three months of 2010 on the back of lower consumer spending, underscoring caution about the recovery’s strength. Gross domestic product rose at a 2.7% annual rate January through March, the Commerce Department reported Friday in its third GDP estimate for the first quarter. That was down from an original estimate of 3.2% in April.

Read More…

(Smart Money) – GOOD MORNING. Asian shares finished higher, and European markets are rising. US futures are pointing to a positive opening. How are homebuilders feeling? At 10 a.m. today, the National Association of Home Builders will release its Housing Market Index, which tracks builders’ confidence about current single-family home sales, as well as the prospects for sales in the next six months. In May, the index saw its second consecutive monthly increase, rising 3 points to 22, its highest level since August of 2007. That’s an improvement, but still low by historical standards.

Read More…