A Better Chance, a national nonprofit that recruits academically talented and motivated students of color and helps them reach a variety of educational opportunities, has announced that Cynthia Housel will join its team as major gifts officer for the Western United States. In this newly created position, Housel will serve as a  member of...

By Jesse Jackson When President Barack Obama is sworn in for his second term, his hand will rest not only on President Abraham Lincoln’s Bible, but on Dr. Martin Luther King’s, too. As the ceremony falls on the federal holiday celebrating Dr. King’s birth, the civil rights leader would no doubt be proud as...

By Maura Dolan, Los Angeles Times Even as Californians voted to maintain the death penalty, the nation’s support for capital punishment continued to wane in 2012, with relatively few states performing executions. Only nine states executed inmates in 2012, and three-fourths of the executions occurred in Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma and Mississippi, according to the...