George Zimmerman Will Not Face Federal Charges in Death of Trayvon Martin

While the public waits for a Justice Department announcement over two separate investigations spurred by the summer shooting of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, the department announced today it is closing its investigation into the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Justice Department officials met with Martin's family today, and were told that they will not be filing charges against George Zimmerman, who shot the 17-year-old after a confrontation in 2012. Thursday marks three years to the day since Martin was killed.

Federal prosecutors concluded there is not sufficient evidence to prove Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman in Sanford, Fla., intentionally violated Martin's civil rights.

Read more: Trayvon Martin: DOJ Announces No Charges Against George Zimmerman

The positive numbers about young black men

Boston Globe columnist, Derrick Z. Jackson wrote a great piece featuring positive statistics about young black men. Check out some of the interesting numbers below:

Lawsuit alleges Al Sharpton paid to keep quiet about lack of black TV programming

The Rev. Al Sharpton and his National Action Network had their silence bought — with a hefty $3.8 million in “donations’’ — to not complain about the lack of black TV programming, according to an explosive new lawsuit filed by a national black-media group.

The Association of African-American Owned Media charges that Comcast and Time Warner carry barely a handful of channels that are completely black-owned — and Sharpton and other key African-American advocacy groups aren’t screaming about it because they were essentially paid not to.

Comcast even sweetened the deal for Sharpton by allowing him “to maintain his hosting position [on the Comcast-co-owned MSNBC] for more than three years in exchange for Sharpton’s continued public support for Comcast on issues of diversity … despite the notoriously low ratings that Sharpton’s show generates,’’ the suit says.

Sharpton blasted the suit Monday as “frivolous at best.’’

He denied to The Post that he and NAN received nearly $4 million from Comcast, insisting,“Never, did not get it.’’

The activist said that while his group has gotten some donations from the media giant, “It’s nowhere near $1 million, much less $3 million.’’

Read more: Sharpton paid to keep quiet about lack of black TV programming: suit

Country's black-owned banks are in a fight for their survival

Black-run banks are in a fight for survival, even though many advocates argue that many African-Americans remain starved for banking services.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. counted 25 black-owned banks remaining in the country last year, down from 48 in 2001. That decrease came as the overall number of minority-owned banks increased slightly, going from 164 to 174. In addition, the majority of black-owned banks that remain open are on shaky ground and struggling to hold on in the face of the economic devastation that has ravaged many of their customers.

Black-run banks have been struggling for years, as mainstream institutions increasingly picked off their best-heeled customers. The increased competition came amid what some call a string of strategic blunders.

The banks, historically headquartered in the heart of traditional black communities such as Chicago’s South Side, New York’s Harlem and Washington’s Shaw, failed to modernize their services. Few offered the branch networks, computerized banking and other automated services that have come to dominate the business.

Taken together, black banks control $5 billion in assets, a tiny fraction of the size of the nation’s banking behemoths, such as Wells Fargo, which by itself has some $1.7 trillion in assets. Black banks tend to be small even by the standard of minority-owned banks, which as a group had some $181 billion in assets at the end of 2013, according a FDIC report.

Read more: Country's black-owned banks are in a fight for their survival

Why I will be rooting against Floyd Mayweather in his fight with Manny Pacquiao

It has finally been announced that Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao will finally be fighting on May 2, 2015. Many boxing fans are happy about this and can't wait for the fight. I can't wait to watch the fight either but I wont be rooting for Floyd Mayweather. I will be rooting hard for Manny Pacquiao. Why you ask?

I am not a guy that places athletes on pedestals or thinks that they are somehow supposed to be morally superior to the rest of us. I understand that there are human beings and as such have human frailties. They will make mistakes But making a mistake and beating women are two different things.

Floyd Mayweather is not a guy who can claim his beating of a woman is an isolated incident. Mayweather is a "man" that has committed seven physical assaults on five women that resulted in arrest or citation. One of those assaults was on the mother of his three children. Mayweather served two months in jail for domestic battery.

As a man that loves and respects every female in my family I can't find it in me to root for a convicted woman beater. This is a person who will only fight men in a ring but will hit a woman outside of it. There are many stories of Mayweather arguing with men, but none of him fighting or hitting another man when he is not protected by the rules of boxing. In short, Floyd Mayweather is a punk and is not a person to be idolized or respected in anyway.

It may not and probably wont happen but I would like to see Pacquiao slowly beats him down and have Mayweather guessing where the next punch will come from, just like Maywaether's victims had to endure. Again it probably wont happen but stranger things have happened in the sport of boxing.

George Cook AfricanAmericanReports.com