CNN, quoting the Chicago Sun-Times, which syndicated Roger Ebert’s column, is reporting that the legendary film critic, who this week said that he was facing a recurrence of cancer, has died at 70. Writing at his blog on Tuesday, Ebert said that he was planning to slow down and reduce the number of movie reviews…

The Huffington Post is reporting that in a school board meeting on Wednesday, Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett defended the district’s plan to close 54 neighborhood elementary schools, saying that she is insulted by claims her actions are “racist.” “That is an affront to me as a woman of color and it is an…

New York City’s fast-food workers planned to walk off the job on Thursday in what organizers promised would be the largest-ever strike against the fast-growing, virtually union-free industry, Salon reports. Will employers give in to their demands? The workers are demanding that chains like McDonald’s and Wendy’s raise their wages to $15 an hour and…

A racially charged brawl broke out at a downtown Los Angeles jail on Wednesday, forcing guards to fire rubber pellets and pepper spray to squash the incident, which involved more than 60 inmates and resulted in several being escorted to the hospital, Reuters reports. The altercation between Hispanic and African-American inmates erupted shortly after noon…

A missing New Orleans teacher was seen driving alone in surveillance footage: Terrilyn Monette, who disappeared March 2 after a night out celebrating her Teacher of the Year nomination, was seen driving alone away from a bar on surveillance footage that New Orleans police found, the Huffington Post reports. The Times-Picayune reported that New Orleans…

“People don’t know that a black man [Capt. David B. Kenyon] invented the sliding pole,” Morris Davis, founder of the Chicago African-American Firefighter Museum, told DNAinfo.  Davis, 81, who retired from the Chicago Fire Department in 1992 after 37 years of service, told the site that people don’t seem to know that black firefighters, like…

A scheduled Ku Klux Klan rally in Memphis, Tenn., has prompted the City Council to change an ordinance on parades and public assemblies that bans masks for the purpose of civil rights intimidation, the Daily News reports. The KKK’s Loyal White Knights are calling on other branches to join its March 30 protest against the…

CNN is reporting that a man alleges in a federal suit that Kevin Clash, the puppeteer behind Sesame Street’s Elmo character, threw a crystal meth sex party for him in 2004, when he was a teen. Clash’s attorney calls the suit meritless and says it is barred by the statute of limitations. Clash resigned from…

Joe Rickey Hundley, the 60-year-old man accused of slapping a toddler on a Feb. 8 Minneapolis-to-Atlanta flight and hurling a racial slur, has pleaded not guilty to assault in federal court, the Associated Press reports. The Hayden, Idaho, resident appeared in court on Wednesday. His lawyer, Marcia Shein, says that her client admitted to using…

Friday, March 15, 2:11 p.m. EDT: George Zimmerman’s defense team has released new evidence to the public, including photos of Trayvon Martin’s cellphone, HLN reports. The device may be an important piece of evidence at trial, because the teenager was on the phone with his girlfriend when Zimmerman approached him the night he died. Zimmerman’s…