THE NATION

Rangel Steps Down as Ways and Means Chairman

WASHINGTON (AP) — New York Rep. Charles Rangel temporarily stepped aside as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee March 3 as he struggled with mounting ethics woes.

Rangel’s decision did little to satisfy Republicans who had been seeking a formal vote bringing about his temporary removal from the chairmanship.

Veteran Rep. Fortney Stark of California seemed likely to succeed the 20-term congressman.

First elected in 1970, Rangel is among the longest-serving African American members of Congress and was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Ethics investigators are looking into 79-year-old Rangel’s use of his official position to raise money for a New York college center to be named after him and his belated disclosure of at least hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets and his use of rent-controlled apartments in New York.

The panel said that he had violated standards of conduct by accepting 2007 and 2008 trips to Caribbean conferences that were financed by corporations. It said it could not prove whether Rangel knew of the corporate payments but concluded that members of his staff knew about them — and the congressman was responsible for their actions.

ASU Students Expelled for 1960 Sit-In Reinstated

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama State University has reinstated nine students who were expelled 50 years ago for participating at a sit-in at a segregated lunchroom in Montgomery.

The university held a reinstatement ceremony Feb. 25 on the 50th anniversary of the sit-in at the Montgomery County Courthouse lunchroom, which was for whites only. After the sit-in, the historically black university expelled the students under pressure from then-Gov. John Patterson and the Alabama Board of Education.

Three of the nine students attended the ceremony: James McFadden of Prichard; Joseph Peterson of New Castle; and St. John Dixon of National City, Calif.

Alabama State President William Harris told The Montgomery Advertiser that he will ask Alabama State’s board to award degrees to the nine at the May commencement.

“What they did was an important moment in civil rights history in our country,” he said.

Portland Anchor and Politician Richard Bogle Dies

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Richard Bogle, a pioneering African American journalist and Portland city commissioner, died Feb. 25 in a Vancouver, Wash., hospital. His wife, Nola Bogle, says he died of congestive heart failure. He was 79.

Bogle was a Portland police officer before he became the Northwest’s first African American television journalist when he joined Portland station KATU-TV in 1968. After 15 years at the station as a reporter and anchor, he was elected to Portland’s City Council, serving as a commissioner for eight years.

Bogle was a jazz historian, writing for Down Beat magazine, volunteering at Portland radio station KMHD, and, until recently, maintaining a blog on jazz.

Step Show Prize to be Shared After Internet Stir

ATLANTA (AP) — After days of controversy over a white group’s win in a step competition, sponsor Coca-Cola said Feb. 25 the second-place team will share top honors.

Coca-Cola said in a statement that a review of the scoring from the Feb. 27 national contest revealed a “scoring discrepancy” that it declined to explain. This is the first year of the Sprite Step Off, but step contests are typically dominated by black sororities and fraternities.

Step is a historically black art form of rhythmic stepping and clapping. A YouTube video of the winning performance by a group of Zeta Tau Alphas from the University of Arkansas generated hundreds of comments, some of them inflammatory.

Coca-Cola said Feb. 25 the Alpha Kappa Alpha team from Indiana University, whose members are black, would share first place and would also receive the same $100,000 in scholarships that the Zeta Tau Alphas won.

Markell Backs Push for Slavery Apology

DOVER, Del. (AP) — Gov. Jack Markell is supporting a push for the state’s General Assembly to apologize for Delaware’s role in slavery.

Markell spokesman Brian Selander said Feb. 23 that the governor would “be inclined to sign it” if a measure ever made it to his desk. On Feb. 22, Dover’s City Council passed a resolution that called on Delaware state lawmakers to apologize.

In addition to being a slave state until the Civil War, Delaware had racially segregated schools until 1954 and discriminatory Jim Crow laws for much of the 20th century.

Senate Majority Leader Patricia Blevins told the Wilmington News Journal that she would entertain debate on the Senate floor, but doesn’t know if lawmakers would want to spend time on that debate.

THE SOUTHLAND

Proposed Calif. Law Aims to Reduce Smog Test Fraud

(AP) — A proposed state law would make sure vehicle smog tests aren’t just smoke and mirrors.

Legislation introduced by Assemblyman Mike Eng, D-Monterey Park, would radically change the way the tests are conducted and potentially affect some 23 million California motorists.

The proposed bill would phase out the biannual tailpipe and treadmill inspections except for cars built before 1996. Newer cars have on-board diagnostic systems.

Under the proposal, the state would permit a limited number of the 7,000 stations now doing smog checks to keep performing tailpipe tests. They would be chosen for their thoroughness under a new ranking system.

Most inspection stations would use scanners that can access the car’s computerized data on pollution control systems and record the vehicle identification number. That method would make it harder to falsify test results.

The proposal would also raise the fines for Smog Check fraud.

Officials say it will reduce fraud and prevent 70 tons of smog a year from blasting out of tailpipes.

THE STATE

Calif. Lawmakers Weigh Forcing Witnesses to Report

SACRAMENTO (AP) — As many as 20 people stood by and watched for nearly two hours, Richmond police say, as others gang-raped a 16-year-old girl outside a high school homecoming dance in the tough San Francisco Bay-area community last fall.

Now, state legislators are seeking to change the law so witnesses in similar situations could be charged with a crime for failing to call police.

The move concerns both prosecutors and civil rights attorneys, however. They say the pending bills in the state Assembly and Senate might make it harder — not easier — to convict rapists.

The bystanders in the Richmond case could not be charged with a crime because current law only requires witnesses to report murder or rape when the victim is younger than 14. Failing to do so is a misdemeanor, punishable by six months in jail and a $1,500 fine.

A bill that was to be taken up by the Assembly Public Safety Committee on Feb. 26 would remove the age limitation, but give witnesses up to 96 hours — four days — to report a rape.

The bill by Assemblyman Isadore Hall, D-Compton, is competing with two similar measures this year.

The Assembly approved a bill by Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara, in January that also would remove the age limitation, without giving witnesses a reporting window. A bill by Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, would raise the reporting age from 14 to 18.

Calif. Governor Troubled by Racism on Campuses

SACRAMENTO (AP) — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Feb. 27 he is deeply troubled by recent acts of racism at three University of California campuses.

Schwarzenegger’s statement comes after a string of incidents this month on the campuses in Davis, Irvine and San Diego.

Students at the San Diego campus took over the chancellor’s office Feb. 26 to protest the hanging of a noose in the library. The noose was discovered less than two weeks after an off-campus party mocking Black History Month, where students urged people to dress as ghetto stereotypes and promised there would be chicken, watermelon and malt liquor.

A Jewish student recently found a swastika carved into her dorm room door at the Davis campus.

Also recently, 11 students were arrested for interrupting a talk by Israel’s ambassador Michael Oren at the Irvine campus. The New York-based Zionist Organization of America has accused UCI’s chancellor of failing to condemn anti-Semitic speech and has asked potential students and donors to boycott the campus.

“I am deeply troubled by the horrific incidents that recently took place on various campuses of the University of California system,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement. “There is no excuse for this kind of behavior in our system of higher education or anywhere else and it will not be tolerated.”

California Puts 11 Office Buildings Up For Sale

SACRAMENTO (AP) — California has put the “for sale” sign on 11 state office buildings, including the San Francisco Civic Center and the Ronald Reagan State Building in Los Angeles, as a way to raise cash to shrink the budget deficit.

Los Angeles-based real estate firm CB Richard Ellis released a sales brochure Feb. 26 titled the “Golden State Portfolio” as part of its marketing strategy to lure potential buyers. Combined, the buildings have more than 7 million square feet of office space.

State officials are hoping to draw offers worth more than $2 billion.

California and other state and local governments have been eyeing their high-rises, prisons and even capitol buildings to generate fast cash for fiscal relief.

Potential buyers have until April 14 to make offers.

THE DIASPORA

Al-Qaida Growing in Strength and Numbers in Africa

WASHINGTON (AP) — Al-Qaida’s terror network in North Africa is growing more active and attracting new recruits, threatening to further destabilize the continent’s already vulnerable Sahara region, according to U.S. defense and counterterrorism officials.

The North African faction, which calls itself al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), is still small and largely isolated, numbering a couple hundred militants based mostly in the vast desert of northern Mali. But signs of stepped-up activity and the group’s advancing potential for growth worry analysts familiar with the region.

The rapid recent rise of the al-Qaida group in Yemen — which spawned the Christmas airliner attack — is seen by U.S. officials and counterterrorism analysts as evidence that the North African militants could just as quickly take on a broader jihadi mission and become a serious threat to the United States and European allies.

The Mali-based militants have yet to show a capability to launch such foreign attacks, but are widening their involvement in kidnapping and the narcotics trade, reaping profits that could be used to expand terror operations, officials and analysts said.

Those advances have set off alarms within the counterterrorism community, which watched as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula quickly transformed over the past year from militants preoccupied with internal Yemeni strife to a potent group recruiting and training insurgents for terror missions inside the United States.