Six officers known as the ‘Goon Squad’ plead guilty to torturing two Black men, using a sex toy on By Brian Howey, Nate Rosenfield and Jerry Mitchell Six law enforcement officers who called themselves the “Goon Squad” pleaded guilty Thursday to federal charges they tortured two Black men, hurled racial slurs and used a sex...

By Ashton Pittman – Mississippi Free Press Mississippi’s lifetime voting ban for people convicted of certain crimes, a relic of the State’s 1890 Jim Crow laws, violates the U.S. Constitution, a federal appeals court ruled Friday morning. U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James L. Dennis, writing for a 2-1 majority of a three-judge...

By Julie Appleby – Black Headline Newswire Many Americans really want to lose weight — and a new poll shows nearly half of adults would be interested in taking a prescription drug to help them do so. At the same time, enthusiasm dims sharply if the treatment comes as an injection, if it is not...

In Mississippi, serious mental illness or substance abuse can land you in jail, even if you aren’t charged with a crime. The state is a stark outlier in jailing so many people for so long, but many officials say they don’t have another option By Isabelle Taft, Mollie Simon, ProPublica and Agnel Philip, ProPublica This...

By Pam Dankins Mississippi continues to rank first in the nation in fetal deaths, according to 2021 data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month. The report examined deaths of fetuses in utero that occurred after 20 weeks’ gestation, also known as stillbirths, in the United States. Mississippi led the nation...

By Aneri Pattani – Black Headline Newswire As more than $50 billion makes its way to state and local governments to compensate for the opioid epidemic, people with high hopes for the money are already fighting over a little-known bureaucratic arm of the process: state councils that wield immense power over how the cash is...

By Noam N. Levey – Black Headline Newswire SUFFOLK, Va. — When Kristie Fields was undergoing treatment for breast cancer nine years ago, she got some unsolicited advice at the hospital: Share your story on the local news, a nurse told her. Viewers would surely send money. Fields, a Navy veteran and former shipyard worker,...

By Lauren Sausser – Black Headline Newswire CHARLESTON, S.C. — Maude Callen, a Black nurse-midwife, delivered more than 800 infants across the South Carolina Lowcountry starting in the 1920s, when segregation made it difficult for Black people to get medical care. Although Callen isn’t commonly considered a household name, visitors passing through the new $120...

Subsidizing fertilizer is costly for African governments By (Special to Black Headline News) Global fertilizer suppliers have made incredibly high profits in 2022/23 on the back of price spikes attributed to the Russia-Ukraine war. The profits of the world’s top nine producers trebled in 2022 from two years previously. The margins and impacts have been...