YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AP) _ Pope Benedict XVI told Muslim leaders on Thursday that true religion rejects violence, and he held up peaceful coexistence between Christianity and Islam in Cameroon as "a beacon to other African nations.''
In Cameroon's capital, a clapping, swaying crowd of 40,000 faithful from Africa's expanding, vibrant Catholic flock later welcomed him to a football stadium where he celebrated Mass. There, he delivered a message of encouragement for Africa and expressed compassion for the children being forced by paramilitaries to fight in some countries ...

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) _ Gov. Bill Richardson, who has supported capital punishment, signed legislation to repeal New Mexico's death penalty. The new law replaces lethal injection with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
"Regardless of my personal opinion about the death penalty, I do not have confidence in the criminal justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes to who lives and who dies for their crime,'' Richardson said.
He is also concerned about the high number of minorities who are put to death across the country ...

ATLANTA (AP) _ The Southern Christian Leadership Conference hopes to mobilize 50,000 people in the Mississippi Delta this summer in a campaign to draw attention to the poverty of a region where some Americans still live in homes with dirt floors and brown water flows from their faucets.
The effort is much like the one envisioned by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who was planning a Poor People's Campaign and march on Washington before he was assasinated in 1968. ...

Angela Rye, daughter of Seattle's Eddie Rye Jr., has been named one of "The 14 Hottest Blacks Working on Capitol Hill" by BET.com. Here's what her bio says: "Worry less about our nation's safety with Angela Rye around. She's Senior Advisor and Counsel to the House Committee on Homeland Security, where Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), is chair. While the nations trying to rebound from the recession, she's working hard to ensure that African Americans and small business owners get a piece of the pie."

President Barack Obama regrouped Sunday at his Camp David retreat, preparing to unveil the administration's plans for a long-term overhaul of the stricken U.S. financial system. ... The Treasury Department plans to take as much as $1 trillion in so-called toxic assets off the books of endangered banks.
Christina Romer, a top Obama economic adviser, said the government would achieve that goal by using $100 billion from the $700 billion financial rescue package to entice private investors to buy the bad assets and hold them until the system recovers. . . .

Class-action lawsuits were filed against Wells Fargo and HSBC ... "These lawsuits allege systematic, institutionalized racism in sub-prime home mortgage lending ... Black homebuyers have been 3 1/2 times more likely to receive a subprime loan than white borrowers, and six times more likely to get a subprime rate when refinancing…Blacks still were disproportionately steered into subprime loans when their credit scores, income and down payment were equal to those of White homebuyers." . . .

Sudan's Islamic scholars have issued a religious edict calling on the president not to travel to an Arab summit because of the international warrant against him on war crimes charges, state media reported Sunday.
The scholar's fatwa, a nonbinding religious opinion, joins increasing calls in Africa's largest nation for President Omar al-Bashir to skip the summit in Qatar at the end of this month for fear of an attempt to implement the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court. . . .

ATLANTA (AP) _ Morris Brown has finally paid its $380,000 overdue water bill in full, a three-month effort against seemingly long odds as the historically black college struggled for survival.
But that battle is dwarfed by the school's $30 million overall debt _ its chief obstacle to the reaccreditation needed to assure much-needed federal funding and a level of education that again attract students to the 128-year-old campus. . . .

It's not too late to attend the Spring Break Leadership Conference for Young Women, hosted by Renee Mitchell. The conference kicks off its second day on Tuesday, March 24, and Mitchell says young women can still attend even if they've missed the first day. It is being held at Urban Bridges Studio,

Suite C and goes from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. ...Suite C and goes from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. ...

The Association for African American Historical Research and Preservation (AAAHRP) held its 2009 Black History Conference at Seattle University last weekend. It was the organization's final conference in Seattle, as future conferences will be held in other states. AAAHRP conferences have evolved from a local history conference to an international event. . . .