Page 6 - Florida Sentinel 11-5-21

Political
Biden Announces New Military And Veteran Suicide Prevention Strategy
Arguments Set To Begin Over Who Owns Images Of Woman’s Enslaved Ancestors
MASSACHUSETTS SUPREME COURT
President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced a new mil- itary and veteran suicide pre- vention strategy that includes promoting safe firearms stor- age and outlining best prac- tices for firearm dealers.
The plan includes a new fed- eral focus on improving lethal means safety, which is a volun- tary practice to reduce one's suicide risk by limiting access to objects that can be used to cause self-harm, including medications, firearms or sharp instruments.
The Department of Justice will soon finalize a rule clarify- ing the obligations firearm
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN
dealers have to make secure gun storage or safety devices available for purchase, the White House says.
The Bureau of Alcohol, To-
bacco, Firearms and Explo- sives will also issue a best prac- tices guide to all federal firearm dealers to remind them about steps they are legally required to take to keep customers and communities safe, as well as additional steps they are encouraged to take.
"In an average day, 17 veter- ans die by suicide -- not in a far-off place, but right here at home. Two service members die by suicide every day of the year. They're our daughters. Our sons. Parents. Spouses. Siblings. Beloved friends and battle buddies," Biden writes in the report.
App Helps Homebuyers In Communities Of Color Avoid Discrimination
A Connecticut woman who sued Harvard University over ownership of pictures of her enslaved ancestors will have her day in court after a judge previously dismissed her case.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Nov. 1 in Tamara Lanier’s appeal of the lower court’s rul- ing on her 2019 lawsuit against the Ivy League university, Hy- perallergic.com reports.
Lanier’s lawsuit centers on photos taken in 1850 that show a South Carolina slave named Renty, who was Lanier’s great-great-great-grandfather, and his daughter Delia — be- lieved to be among the earliest images of enslaved Black Americans.
Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz commissioned the photos as part of his academic work to support his white su- premacist theories about
Blacks.
In her lawsuit, Lanier ar-
gued that her ancestors' im- ages, which show them topless and from various angles, were taken against their will. What’s more, she accused Harvard of exploiting the pictures for profit after an image of Renty appeared on a book cover.
Her lawsuit accused Harvard of "wrongful seizure, posses- sion and expropriation" of the images. But the university has argued that it has a property in- terest in the photos.
In March, a Middlesex County Superior Court judge sided with Harvard.
Civil rights attorney Ben- jamin Crump, who is on Lanier's legal team, has pointed out the injustice of the ruling. “When will Harvard University finally free Renty?” Crump asked while appearing on the Democracy Now! news hour.
Black and Latino Americans hoping to buy a home in 2021 still face systemic discrimina- tion in everything from loan approval to higher interest rates. The same is true for LGBTQ borrowers and women, who pay higher inter- est rates than men in 49 out of 50 states, according to Hous- ingWire, which drew on data from the Home Mortgage Dis- closure Act.
Now an artificial intelli- gence-powered software appli- cation, developed by a Black and Latino-owned company, is showing promise for changing this reality to make the home buying process more equitable for all.
Home Lending Pal (HLP), an app that was built using IBM’s
Cloud Hyper Protect Services, Watson and IBM Blockchain, digitizes the mortgage research and application process so that banks and mortgage lenders don’t see a prospective buyer’s personal identifiable informa- tion, such as their name, race, gender, sexual orientation or age. Instead, they only see their financial data, which in-
cludes their income, debt and credit payment history.
The AI app collects these data points and makes recom- mendations to home buyers on how to improve their rate and the steps they need to take to score the best mortgage loan available. The app is free for potential borrowers.
“We tell you the likelihood of being approved for a loan,” Frank Pollock, chief market- ing officer for Home Lending Pal, explained to BET.com. Pollock said the platform pre- pares buyers for the under- writing process. But first, they are educated about their credit, the rates they qualify for, and are even shown how to pay down outstanding debt to im- prove their financial picture.
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