Category: News

America’s ethnic wealth gap is a multi-faceted problem that would take dramatic action, on multiple fronts, to overcome. One of the ways to help communities improve their economic well-being is through financial literacy.

Investopedia says there are five primary sources of financial education—families, high school, college, employers, and the military — and that education and household income are two of the biggest factors in predicting whether someone has a high level of financial literacy.

New Orleans Saints safety, two-time Super Bowl Champion, and social justice activist Malcolm Jenkins and The Malcolm Jenkins Foundation hope to help bridge the wealth gap by teaching students about investing at a young age.

“It’s projected that by 2053 that African Americans will have on average a negative net worth, with Hispanics being right behind,” Jenkins said according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “How do we begin to chip away at that? The earlier you can get kids focused on saving money and investing and understanding how to make money, the better off you are.”

So Jenkins and his foundation are giving $40 investment account deposits to 1,000 students in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, and Louisiana. The Ogontz Revitalization Corporation will donate an additional $10 per student, bringing the total to $50.

The accounts are run by Goalsetter, a Black-owned family banking, and financial literacy app.

The students will not be able to withdraw the funds until they are 18 but can add to them all they like. In addition to the ability to save and invest, the Goalsetter App offers an engaging way for kids to learn about money.

The app provides five years of financial literacy tools, kid-friendly educational games, and fun quizzes.

via Goalsetter

There’s no better way to learn about a subject than by doing. Which, when it comes to finances, can be nearly impossible if you’re underprivileged. These accounts give kids the ability to watch their financial seeds grow over the years and create a habit of saving that will hopefully last throughout their lifetimes.

“Malcolm is saying, ‘I want you to know that this is for the long term. You’re going to be saving for your future because you do have a future and it’s a future that we’re going to help to prepare you for,’ ” Tanya Van Court, founder, and chief executive of Goalsetter, said.

Jenkins believes that financial literacy shouldn’t aim for stability but go the extra mile and focus on building wealth.

“I was always taught that if you work hard and that if you save your money that that creates financial freedom and financial stability, and that’s not how it works,” Jenkins told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

“That’s not how you gain freedom. It comes through investing. It comes in making good decisions. It comes from estate planning. Life insurance,” he continued. “All of these different financial tools that are out there to create wealth for people. It’s really about creating that education as early as possible so you create the next generation of financially stable people.”

Most of what we hear about climate change are the challenges and potential disasters it will lead to if not mitigated. What we hear less about are the odd ways in which it’s already altering our world—sometimes in big, visible ways.

Since satellites began recording Arctic sea ice levels in 1979, scientists have expressed concern about the melting ice. Not only does the planet rely on Arctic ice for regulating weather patterns, but wildlife who call the Arctic their home rely on it for survival. Polar bears are considered vulnerable to the impact of climate change, and though their numbers are holding fairly steady overall, their movement patterns are changing as their icy habitat melts.

At the same time, the movement patterns of their southern cousins, grizzly bears, are also changing. Grizzlies can be found as far south as Wyoming and up north in Alaska. But as global temperatures rise, grizzlies have moved farther north, even going as far as the high Arctic.

With polar bears moving south to find land and grizzly bears moving north to find colder temps, the two are crossing paths. The birds and the bees habit applies to bears, and since polar bears and grizzly bears share similar DNA, they are able to breed.

And they have. Hence the hybrid species known as the “pizzly bear.” Also known as “grolar bear”. Also known as “polizzly.” (If we have to deal with a climate emergency, we can at least take a moment to appreciate getting the word polizzly out of it.)

In all seriousness, though, the emergence of the pizzly bear hybrid is a sign of climate change’s impact. The first pizzly bear was officially identified in the wild in 2006, though people who live in the Arctic had reported sightings of the strange-looking bear prior to that.

As the Associated Press reported at the time:

“Northern hunters, scientists and people with vivid imaginations have discussed the possibility for years.

But Roger Kuptana, an Inuvialuit guide from Sachs Harbour, North West Territories, was the first to suspect it had actually happened when he proposed that a strange-looking bear shot last month by an American sports hunter might be half polar bear, half grizzly.

Territorial officials seized the creature after noticing its white fur was scattered with brown patches and that it had the long claws and humped back of a grizzly. Now a DNA test has confirmed that it is indeed a hybrid — possibly the first documented in the wild.”

Since then, eight more pizzly bears have been identified in the wild, and as of 2017 researchers had determined that all of them sprung from one female polar bear who had mated with two different grizzly bears. However, it’s unknown how many of the hybrid bears may actually exist.

Prior to their discovery in the wild, researchers knew that polar bears and grizzly bears could mate because they had already done so at Osnabrück Zoo in Germany. That zoo had kept their polar bears and grizzly bears in the same enclosure, and in 2004, two pizzly bear cubs were born. (Unfortunately, one of them was shot and killed in 2017 after she escaped from her enclosure.)

Rare Hybrid Bear of Polar Bear and Grizzly Bear

www.youtube.com

Larissa DeSantis, a paleontologist and associate professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, told The Independent that climate change “was definitely playing a role” bears cross-breeding. DeSantis studies the dietary habits of bears and how the climate crisis is impacting them.

“We need to study the effects of hybridization on these bears,” De Santis said. “Most of the time hybrids are not more vigorous than either of the two species, as grizzlies and brown bears have unique adaptations for their particular environments. However, there are a few examples where hybrids can be more vigorous and better able to adapt to a particular environment, particularly if the environment is deviating from what it once was. This requires further study and careful monitoring. Time will tell if these hybrids are better able to withstand a warming Arctic. These hybrids might be better suited for a broader range of food sources, like the grizzly bear, and in contrast to polar bears which are hyper-specialized.”

DeSantis says there is evidence that the pizzly bear hybrids are fertile, and there have been matings between a hybrid and a grizzly.

“This new type of bear is more resistant to climate change and better suited to warmer temperatures,” said DeSantis. So we may see more of these hybridizations, which would be kind of cool from a biological standpoint and a bad sign from an ecological standpoint. Hard to celebrate a new species when it’s a result of a crisis.

They sure are cute, though.

For years, Kobe Bryant’s signature sneaker line was among Nike’s most popular, both during his playing career and after his retirement. Over the past year-plus since his tragic death, Nike has continued to release Kobe retro releases to great fanfare, but it appears 2021 might be the last year for Nike’s Kobe line.

According to Brandon Dunne of Complex, Nike’s deal with Bryant expired on April 13 and a renewal deal has not been reached with Bryant’s estate, which could signal the end of Nike’s Kobe line of signature sneakers. It’s still possible the Bryant estate will work out a new contract with Nike, but that the deal ran up without a new contract being worked out would seem to indicate there is a very real difference in what the estate wants and what Nike is offering. Nick DePaula of ESPN confirmed that report and said that, for now, Nike’s Kobe line is done.

What comes next is a matter of waiting to learn whether Nike will come forward with a new deal, if the Kobe estate will look elsewhere (like Adidas, which was the first sneaker company he had a signature with), or if they will simply move altogether to no longer allow for Kobe sneakers to use his name anywhere on the marketplace.

That last option is always a possibility and would be a more than respectable one.Immediately after his death, Nike removed Kobe merchandise from its website to avoid looking as if they were profiting off of his passing and to prevent others from doing the same by reselling Kobe sneakers and clothing. However, the chase for Kobe retros has still been tremenous and the way they’ve been moved on the secondary market at massive markups has, even more than the normal sneaker marketplace, felt wrong as Kobe fans are often priced out by resellers and others who use bots to gobble up available pairs before many can get them at retail.

Remember when some people used to spread baseless voter fraud lies on the regular? It’s been a while since we’ve heard much of that, in part because most of those making those claims were either threatened with lawsuits or are in the midst of being sued. About the only one still going strong is Mike Lindell, aka the MyPillow Guy, who has bet his company and fortune on byzantine 2020 election conspiracy theories, which have even gotten him sued by one of the voter machine companies he’s accused of malfeasance. But now he’s escalating this beef even further.

According to Bloomberg, Lindell is countersuing Dominion Voting Systems Inc., which has been among the parties involved in his nonsensical voter fraud claims. Previously, after months of telling him to shut up or lose everything, the company finally sued him for $1.3 billion. But Lindell is going a few notches further, suing them for $1.6 billion.

“Dominion’s purpose is to silence debate; to eliminate any challenge to the 2020 presidential election; and to cancel and destroy anyone who speaks out against Dominion’s work on behalf of the government in administering the election,” read the legal complaint, doubling (tripling? quadrupling?) down on unfounded accusations that they flipped votes intended for Trump, handing them to current president Joe Biden.

But Dominion isn’t blinking. “This is a meritless retaliatory lawsuit, filed by MyPillow to try to distract from the harm it caused to Dominion,” a company lawyer said in a statement.

Lindell isn’t the only Trump loyalist who’s been sued over election fraud lies. Lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sandy Powell have been served papers as well, as have commentators on Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN. But none of them have tried to engage them in a game of Chicken.

How does Lindell find time to do all this? Last week he oversaw a disastrous debut of his new “free speech” social media site, while a 48-hour telethon saw him getting owned again and again by prank callers, one pretending to be former president Trump.

(Via Bloomberg)

Rumors linking Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens to the Indiana Hoosiers probably could have ended when the university tabbed former Hawks and Knicks head coach Mike Woodson to lead the program. However, another log was thrown on the fire over the weekend when Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reported that Indiana lobbed a seven-year, $70 million offer in Stevens’ direction, only to see him turn it down to stay in Boston. On Monday, though, Stevens denied that any such offer took place.

“First of all I was never offered a package,” Stevens told reporters on Monday. “That’s all news to me.”

Later, Stevens again said “I was never offered that” and “I don’t know where that came from,” while continuing to insist he’s enjoying coaching the Celtics — early in the Indiana coaching search when rumors swirled, he explained how he’s become a full-on Masshole and wasn’t leaving Boston. On one hand, this is the only move for Stevens, especially as his Boston team is rounding into form after impressive recent play. The quickest way to make the story go away, potentially once and for all, is to attempt to pour even more cold water on it, and a full-on denial like this does the job.

On the other side, it is an oddly specific report from one of the leading reporters in the basketball world, and Wojnarowski doesn’t just throw things around lightly. Beyond that, a $70 million offers at any level, much less for a college program, would create shockwaves for anyone. Needless to say, it won’t surprise anyone if Stevens is the top name on the call sheet at Indiana should Woodson not pan out, especially if it coincides with anything resembling a downturn with the Celtics.

The Houston Rockets arrived in Miami on Sunday ahead of their Monday game against the Heat, and their first night in Miami proved to be a scary one for guard Sterling Brown.

The team announced in a brief statement that Brown was assaulted by unknown assailants on Sunday night and suffered “facial lacerations.”

“Last night, Sterling Brown was the victim of an assault. He had no prior knowledge of or interaction with the assailants. He suffered facial lacerations but will make a full recovery. Sterling is not playing tonight because of his prior knee injury.”

As noted, Brown was already ruled out due to a knee injury and further details of the assault are unknown at the time, but the good news is Brown is expected to be OK. It is not the first time Brown has been injured in an off court incident outside his control, as he was tased by Milwaukee police outside of a Walgreens over a parking violation and then had his ankle stepped on and injured by an officer while playing for the Bucks. Brown settled a civil rights lawsuit with the city for $750,000 last November.

If any further details on Brown’s assault are reported we will update here, but for now the hope is Brown will make a quick and speedy recovery.

The Indiana Pacers started the 2020-21 season tremendously, thanks in part to the tremendous play of Myles Turner who emerged as an early DPOY frontrunner and was raining threes at a career-high clip. However, the Pacers cooled off considerably, particularly during a portion of the season with their top wing scorers out due to injury, and now Indiana sits at 26-30, ninth in the East with a three game cushion on 10th and two games back of eighth.

They will likely reach the play-in tournament, but being the 8-seed rather than the 9-seed offers a much easier road of only needing one, not two wins to make the playoffs. The road to getting to that spot got much tougher on Monday when an MRI revealed that Turner has suffered a plantar plate tear in his right foot that will put him on the shelf indefinitely.

Turner has averaged 12.6 points, 6.5 rebounds, and a league-leading 3.4 blocks per game this season, cooling off from three after a hot start. Losing Turner puts a serious damper on hopes of a late push from Indiana to jump into the top 8 in the East, as it leaves a big frontcourt hole to fill on the roster. In a season that has been filled with unfortunate injuries to key players around the league, Turner is the latest to join the list and the Pacers will continue searching for answers in a frustrating season.

Kevin Durant’s return to the court for the Nets had seen him almost seamlessly transition back to playing at an elite level, as he didn’t miss a shot in his first game back and looked great for the four games he played after his hamstring strain kept him off the court for two months. Unfortunately, Durant’s fifth game back saw him leave four minutes into a loss to the Heat, as he came out grabbing at his left thigh and was quickly ruled out with a thigh contusion.

While the hope is that Durant’s thigh injury won’t require him to miss too much time, it will at least keep him out for one more game as the Nets remain understandably cautious with their star’s health. Durant will join James Harden on the Nets injury report as officially out for Tuesday’s game in New Orleans, along with Nic Claxton and Reggie Perry, who are out due to health and safety protocols.

As such, it will be Kyrie Irving and company once again taking the floor as Brooklyn is nearing the stretch run of the season still without a ton of reps for their Big 3 all together on the court — although the brief time they were saw spectacular results. They, like a number of contenders, are trying to balance the need to be healthy with trying to establish a rhythm entering the playoffs, but where others have had more time together, this Nets group is still quite new to each other. Durant hopefully will return fairly soon — although it wouldn’t be a shock if he missed the third and final game of the road trip in Tampa — while Harden’s status remains fluid as tends to be the case with hamstring injuries.

The term “Florida Man” was first coined in 2013, and since then, it’s gotten a lot of mileage. We’re always hearing about some eccentric, sometimes with a creative relationship with the law, like the shirtless guy done up like the Joker prematurely declaring the pandemic over, or a certain Republican representative under investigation for ties to an alleged sex trafficking ring. Now the term is going next level, becoming the title for a new Netflix series.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the streaming giant just greenlit Florida Man, produced by Jason Bateman’s production company and starring Edgar Ramirez, hot off the Netflix hit Yes Day. The actor, who also played the title role in The Assassination of Gianni Versace, will play a struggling ex-cop who, as per THR’s plot synopsis, is “forced to return to his home state to find a Philly mobster’s runaway girlfriend. What should be a quick gig becomes a spiraling journey into buried family secrets, and an increasingly futile attempt to do the right thing in a place where so much is wrong.”

It sounds like Ramirez’s character won’t be your typical Florida Man misfit but simply a native Floridian? Who will perhaps run into an assortment of Florida Men and Florida Women? THR claims it’s aiming for a sunny noir vibe, channeling Body Heat and the first half of Out of Sight. But hopefully, it won’t be short on Florida weirdos.

(Via THR)

After years of trailers, announcements, and unfortunate delays, we are finally entering phase four in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and man is it kicking off with a bang. In addition to a fantastic line-up of Disney+ exclusive series, not just one but two highly-anticipated Marvel films are coming to theaters this year, both featuring diverse characters with zero powers but enough drive and sheer talent to compete with the best of them: Black Widow, and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. However, only one of these two is making their big MCU debut, leading to the age-old question in the time of comic book movies: who is Shang-Chi? Turns out, a pretty big deal, with a story years in the making.

Shang-Chi was created in the early ’70s, as the popularity of martial arts films began to rise in the U.S. Following this surge, Marvel went on the hunt for pre-existing independent properties to purchase and adapt for their comics. The publisher ultimately acquired the rights to Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu, a pulp villain created in the early 1900s who was infamous for his arcane murders and racial insensitivity. However, Marvel quickly proved they were more interested the Fu Manchu universe’s potential rather than the mad scientist himself, and in 1973 they debuted Shang-Chi, the secret son and successor of Fu Manchu.

Shang-Chi made his first appearance in December 1of 973 in Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin’s Special Marvel Edition #15, a series that, up until Shang-Chi’s appearance, followed Thor and Nick Fury. By the time issue 17 was released, Shang-Chi had proven popular enough to merit Marvel renaming the series to The Hands of Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu, a name that would stick until the series end nearly a decade later. Over the course of that decade, the saga explored Shang-Chi’s escape from his father’s indoctrination and subsequent vow to dismantle the insidious global empire created by his family.

Much like Black Widow, Hawkeye, and even Iron Man himself, Shang-Chi is another Marvel hero born without powers who gains nearly superhuman ability through his studies. In the case of Shang-Chi, his destiny for greatness was born even before he was, when his father intentionally sought out his American mother in order to create the perfect heir. From infancy, he was trained in martial arts by both his father as well as the various tutors. During this training, Shang-Chi was raised to believe his father was a force for good in the world, a humanitarian ensuring both domestic and global peace. He was quick to obey his father and carry out his will, not realizing until it was too late that his father had deceived him.

Beyond his own stories, Shang-Chi has been a part of a number of superhero collaborations, working alongside Spider-Man, The Protectors (a supergroup of all Asian Marvel heroes), Daredevil, and even joining the Avengers after being recruited by Captain American and Iron Man. Due to his nearly unparalleled martial arts skills and mastery of Qi, Shang-Chi is often sought after as a teacher of hand-to-hand combat and has trained heroes such as Spider-Man, Captain American, and Wolverine. In addition, in the Enter the Phoenix storyline, Shang-Chi was set to become the next wielder of the Phoenix Force before refusing to take Captain America’s life, thus relinquishing his shot at the title. Honestly, with such an incredible resume, it’s a wonder we haven’t seen Shang-Chi in the MCU already — but it’s not for lack of trying.

Back in the ’80s, Stan Lee discussed creating a Shang-Chi movie or television series starring Brandon Lee and his mother, Linda Lee. Considering Shang-Chi artist Paul Gulacy used Brandon’s father, the legendary martial artist Bruce Lee, as inspiration for Shang-Chi’s design, this casting choice seemed nearly perfect. However, the project never came to fruition. In 2003, a Shang-Chi film entered development at DreamWorks Pictures, with Bruce C. McKenna and Ang Lee attached to the project, though, once again, the project never got off the ground.

In the early 2010s, Marvel reached out to the Chinese-based film production company DMG Entertainment offering to create a teaser featuring either Shang-Chi or the Mandarin that would be featured at the end of The Avengers, in hopes of launching the story of Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings they had been subtly teasing since Iron Man (2008). DMG quickly declined the offer, stating that the Mandarin’s problematic portrayal of Chinese men would put their company at risk of being shut down. However, DMG did accept Marvel casting Ben Kingsley as Trevor Slattery, an impostor posing as the Mandarin, in Iron Man 3, and agreed to co-produce the film.

Following the success of Black Panther in 2018 — and after repeated calls for more diversity and less Chris’ in Marvel movies — Marvel finally made the call to fast-track Shang-Chi, and we’re now less than four months away from seeing the Master of Kung Fu grace the silver screen. From the looks of the trailer, which was premiered earlier today in celebration of lead-actor Simu Liu’s birthday, the film will cover the origin of Shang-Chi with some minor changes. The largest of all of these changes is the omission of the problematic Fu Manchu in favor of using The Mandarin, real name Wenwu, as Shang-Chi’s father instead. Furthermore, director Destin Daniel Cretton said they are making changes to this character in order to not “contribute any more to the Asian stereotypes that we have seen both in cinema and pop culture.” (Also notably, this version of The Mandarin appears to be a very different incarnation than we saw in Iron Man 3.)

Want to learn even more about Shang-Chi? The Hands of Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu omnibus’ are available to purchase at most comic book retailers, albeit at a hefty price. For those willing to hold out a bit longer, the long-awaited Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will arrive in theaters on September 3.