WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House called for a "simple up-or-down" vote on health care legislation Sunday as Speaker Nancy Pelosi appealed to House Democrats to get behind President Barack Obama's chief domestic priority even it if threatens their political careers. In voicing support for a simple majority vote, White House health reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle signaled Obama's intention to push the Democratic-crafted bill under Senate rules that would overcome GOP stalling tactics.

KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) -- Former career home run king Hank Aaron says Mark McGwire should have a clear conscience after his recent admission he used performance-enhancing drugs as a player.
Aaron said other players still harboring similar secrets also should come clean...

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) -- A 35-year-old state law is being used as a new weapon by Pierce County authorities in their battle against Tacoma's Hilltop Crips gang.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The NAACP elected a health care executive as its youngest board chairman Saturday, continuing a youth movement for the nation's oldest civil rights organization.

NEW YORK (NNPA) - The federal government has decided that it will not prosecute the police officers involved in the 2006 shooting death of Sean Bell. The news comes from the Department of Justice, which said that there is insufficient evidence to suggest that the officers acted willfully during the shooting.
At a Feb. 16 press conference at the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network headquarters in Harlem, Bell's fiancée, Nicole Paultre-Bell, Joe Guzman and Trent Benefield expressed their outrage over the decision.

ATLANTA (AP) -- The message on dozens of billboards across Atlanta is provocative: Black children are an "endangered species."
The eyebrow-raising ads featuring a young Black child are an effort by the anti-abortion movement to use race to rally support within the Black community. The reaction from Black leaders has been mixed, but the "Too Many Aborted" campaign, which so far is unique to only Georgia, is drawing support from other anti-abortion groups across the country.

(AP) Many jobless people have reached a conclusion that captures the depth of the unemployment crisis: Looking for a job is a waste of time.
The economy is growing. Yet it's creating few jobs. That's why in the past eight months, 1.8 million people without jobs left the labor market. Many had grown so frustrated by their failure to find a job that they threw up their hands and quit looking for one...

NEW YORK (NNPA) - New York City's Department of Education (DOE) had better be prepared for a fight.
In the aftermath of the department approving the eventual closing of 19 schools around the city, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), along with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Alliance for Quality Education and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer filed a joint lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court. The lawsuit asks the court to overturn the Panel for Education Policy's (PEP) decision to close the schools.

(NNPA) - Over three months after the controversial shooting death of Detroit-area religious leader Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, the official autopsy results were released by the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office on Feb. 1.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Frustrated by term-limited Mayor Ray Nagin's leadership of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, voters elected Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu to succeed him Saturday, turning to a political scion to speed up the city's recovery. The vote preceded the Saints' victory in the Superbowl Sunday...