NEW YORK ( NNPA) - For a little more than a half hour at the Military Academy at West Point Dec. 1, President Barack Obama put his stamp on the war in Afghanistan.

Shortly after issuing the 24th annual "Trouble in Toyland" report, the authors got a call from the lawyers representing Fast Forward New York, a manufacturer.
The Elmo Lunch Bag, which contains an excess of the plastic-softening chemical diisodecyl phthalate, is not a toy, said the lawyers. Therefore, it is not subject to the phthalate regulations of children's toys...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is sending 30,000 extra U.S. troops to Afghanistan on an accelerated timetable that will have the first Marines there as early as Christmas and all forces in place by summer. But he also declared Tuesday night that troops will begin leaving in less than three years.

WASHINGTON (NNPA) - After he was blistered with criticism for not marrying an interracial couple, Justice Keith Bardwell of Tangipahoa Parish, La. made a statement that he is not a racist, but that he knows biracial children suffer through hardships in life. Bardwell's theory that being mixed with Black and White races can cause a child to suffer emotionally and mentally has brought national speculation over whether such a statement is true.

WASHINGTON – The White House is open for Christmas.
A day after celebrating Thanksgiving, first lady Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha received the official White House Christmas tree: an 18 1/2-foot Douglas fir delivered from a farm in Shepherdstown, W.Va., by traditional horse-drawn carriage.

(NNPA) - Champion golfer Tiger Woods was injured in a car crash near his Windermere, Fla. home in the wee hours of Nov. 27, according to police reports, but he's not talking about it.

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – African-American joblessness – nearly twice the national rate -- is quickly becoming the first showdown between Black leaders and the nation's first Black president as national Black and civil right leaders raise their voices telling the Obama Administration it's time to end the jobs crisis in the Black community.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) -- In the decade since mass protests over the punishment of six Black students in Decatur, the state's racial gap in discipline has split wide open. It's such a gaping hole that now more than half of all Illinois children suspended from public schools are Black, even though they represent less than one-fifth of the enrollment, according to an Associated Press analysis.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Democrats, without a vote to spare, have pushed forward a bill to overhaul the U.S. health care system, but a divisive debate still lies ahead and there is no assurance the measure -- as written -- will win approval in the upper chamber of the Congress.

NEW YORK (NNPA) - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Nov. 13 that the trial of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-conspirators would be held in federal court in Manhattan. And, as would be expected, the announcement opened a floodgate of opinion for and against the decision.