Like so many around the country, Victoria Kent was horrified by the disappearance of 16-year-old Phylicia Barnes.  But, while many residents merely followed Barnes' story, Kent, 23, was inspired into action.
It was at a local vigil for the teen that Kent decided Barnes and the countless other Black women who had experienced similar tragedies deserved better.

Brand-name drug manufacturers have long used controversial tactics to keep their generic competitors off the market, but a new report by the Senate Finance Committee sheds light on how one firm leveraged hidden financial ties with reputable medical groups to undermine its generic rivals.
Facing what it called "an imminent threat" to its brand-name blood thinner Lovenox, pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis launched an advocacy campaign to influence the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to delay generic competitors, according to the report.

Sunday marks 30 years since the first AIDS cases were reported in the United States. And this anniversary brings fresh hope for something many had come to think was impossible: finding a cure.

A high-level international panel slammed the war on drugs as a failure Thursday and called on governments to undertake experiments to decriminalize the use of drugs, especially marijuana, to undermine the power of organized crime.
Compiled by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, the report concludes that criminalization and repressive measures have failed with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.

Many homeowners have received a mortgage modification only to find themselves once again at risk of foreclosure because of errors by their mortgage company. An informal survey of legal-aid organizations suggests this is a frequent problem.

ProPublica investigated six homeowner cases. The cases involved four different mortgage servicers and a range of problems. All are among the largest servicers: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank and PHH Mortgage.

Wednesday we noted that just days before Tuesday's fatal bus crash in Virginia, federal bus regulators made the decision to put off shutting down the troubled Sky Express bus company, giving it extra time to stay on the roads[1].
Now that four people have died this week in a Sky Express bus, the Department of Transportation has had some harsh words for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the agency that regulates commercial buses and trucks. FMCSA is a division within the Transportation Department.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Former Black Panther Party leader Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, whose murder conviction was overturned after he spent 27 years in prison for a crime he maintained he did not commit, has died. He was 63.

Jack Kevorkian, the audacious, fearless doctor who spurred on the national right-to-die debate with a homemade suicide machine that helped end the lives of dozens of ailing people, died Friday at a Detroit-area hospital after a brief illness. He was 83.

STRATHAM, N.H. (AP) -- Just as Mitt Romney declared he's in, it's suddenly looking like he might have more big-name competition for the Republican presidential nomination.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The government is moving forward with its crackdown on the country's for-profit schools, aiming to protect students from taking on too much debt to attend schools that do nothing for their job prospects.