Remembering Malcolm X

Remembering Malcolm X

NEW YORK

Activists, actors and politicians gathered Saturday in New York City to honor civil-rights leader Malcolm X with a ceremony at the Harlem site where he was assassinated 50 years ago.

About 300 people converged to hear remarks from one of Malcolm X’s six daughters, Ilyasah Shabazz, as well as elected officials. The ceremony took place at the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, formerly known as the Audubon Ballroom.

Malcolm X, whose full name was El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was 39 when he was shot in the theater Feb. 21, 1965, as he was preparing to address several hundred of his followers.

Tobacco giants resist public admissions

WASHINGTON

Never underestimate the staying power of big tobacco.

In 2006, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the nation’s largest cigarette makers to publicly admit that they’d lied for decades about the dangers of smoking.

The basis for the punishment: Testimony from 162 witnesses, a nine-month bench trial and thousands of findings by the judge that defendants engaged in what the largest public-health organizations in the country have called a massive campaign of fraud.

Bloodied but unbeaten, the tobacco companies have plunged into another courtroom battle to stave off the humiliation of having to underwrite an ad campaign in which they brand themselves as liars. Oral arguments are scheduled for Monday. The ads would appear in newspapers, on TV, websites and cigarette-pack inserts. The ads, called “corrective statements,” stem from a civil case the government brought in 1999 under RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

Circumcision issue

new york

With a swift swipe of his scalpel, Rabbi A. Romi Cohn circumcises the baby boy, then leans down and sucks the blood from the wound as prayers in Hebrew fill the Brooklyn synagogue.

The Orthodox Jewish tradition known as oral-suction circumcision reaches back to biblical times but it has created a modern-day dilemma for New York City health officials, who have linked it to 17 cases of infant herpes since 2000. Two died and two others suffered brain damage.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, which came into power a year ago with a promise to reconsider an existing regulation on the ritual, is negotiating with a group of rabbis over how to protect children’s health while still preserving religious freedom.

War-prisoner exchange

ZHOLOBOK, Ukraine

Ukrainian military and separatist representatives exchanged dozens of prisoners under cover of darkness at a remote frontline location Saturday evening, kicking off a process intended to usher in peace to the conflict-ridden east. 139 Ukrainian troops and 52 rebels were exchanged, according to a separatist official overseeing the prisoner swap at a no man’s land location near the village of Zholobok, 12 miles west of the rebel-held city Luhansk.

Associated Press