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#NotTheOne: Beyoncé Sues Company For “Feyonce” Products

Beyonce brings her I Am; .Sasha Fierce tour to the Honda Center in Anaheim July 11, 09.

Source: Barbara Davidson / Getty

Beyoncé don’t play when it comes to her name. The Grammy-winning pop star is suing a Texas company Feyonce Inc. for knocking off her name to sell products.

According to Reuters, the complaint was filed in a Manhattan federal court where the singer and her lawyers accused the San Antonio company of “brazenly” selling infringing “Feyonce” merchandise at their website. Some of their items include mugs with the “Single Ladies” similar phrase, “He put a ring on it” and hoodies with “Feyonce” across the front, Billboard noted.

Beyoncé & Co. believe that the sale of these items “confuses consumers and causes her irreparable harm, and that the defendants have ignored her requests to stop,” Reuters pointed out. Their filing further illuminates this notion saying, “Defendants adopted the Feyonce mark to call to mind Beyoncé and her famous song,” the lawsuit said. “Defendants’ conduct described herein is intentional, fraudulent, malicious, willful and wanton.”

It’s unknown how much she is suing them for. Perhaps, these Feyonce folks better get in formation with the Queen or be eliminated.

#RapeCulture: Former Vanderbuilt Football Player Found Guilty of Sexual Assault

A former Vanderbilt football player has been found guilty of raping an unconscious woman in a dorm.

According to the Associate Press, the Nashville, Tenn.,  jury took only three hours to hand down a guilty verdict to Cory Batey.  The 22-year-old was one of four men charged with this crime that took place in 2013.

The survivor, a 21-year-old incoming senior said that she had no recollection of the rape because she was inebriated.  According to the prosecutor’s closing arguments, “the woman was raped in the dorm room and then taken out in a hallway and left out there like trash.” The four men involved also videotaped and photographed the assault. Meanwhile, Batey’s lawyer said that Batey was the “second” drunk person there and that his friends, including the woman’s boyfriend at the time, “were using him for entertainment.”

Last year, a judge threw out a guilty verdict against the four men and declared a mistrial when he learned that one of the jury members had been “a victim of statutory rape,” The AP noted.

Trial Delayed As Death Penalty Considered For Charleston Church Shooter

Nine Dead After Church Shooting In Charleston

Source: Credit: Pool / Pool / Getty

A judge granted prosecution lawyers a delay in Dylann Roof’s murder trial as they need more time to consider whether the death penalty should be considered and whether Roof, who is white, committed a hate crime when he shot and killed nine Black people in a South Carolina church last year, Reuters reported.

U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel “urged federal government to make a decision soon,” especially since the 22-year old Roof has said he would plead guilty if death was not on the table, Reuters noted. Yet, ultimately, the decision will fall on U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Richardson told the press that they are carefully weighing everything before they make a decision on how to move forward.

This is obviously a very important decision and one that’s being taken quite deliberately,” he said. 

Roof currently faces 33 federal hate crime and firearms charges for allegedly opening fire on a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church last summer. Through investigating, Roof has been linked to following white supremacist ideologies as well.

#CancerSticks: Smoking Rates Stall Among Young Blacks

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Source: DanBrandenburg / Getty

Despite aggressive awareness anti-smoking campaigns geared toward young African-Americans, smoking rates haven’t really gone down, a new study confirms.

Researchers from the University at Buffalo in New York found that smoking rates among Black high school seniors dropped in 1982 to a 8.7 percent and is still roughly 9 percent in 2014, says Health Day News. 

“That the decline has stalled in the last 22 years is, to me, very sad news. I think it’s about the industry working really hard to keep this market,” supplement co-editor Gary Giovino in a university press release.

According to Health Day News, the study also found:

  • Black adult smokers are less likely than whites to quit as they age.
  • Blacks who start smoking in their 20s are less likely to quit than those who start as teens.
  • Blacks overall are less likely to quit than whites, according to the study.
  • Blacks are less likely than whites to start smoking as teens due to parental disapproval and cost, the study found, but more likely to begin using tobacco as young adults.

In addition, while African-Americans are more likely to start smoking later in life, we are more likely to die of smoking-related illnesses compared to whites. For Phillip Gardiner, the study’s co-author, more has to be done to lessen these health disparities, which includes calling out Big Tobacco heightened efforts to advertise to African-American communities.

“The predatory marketing of menthol and other candy flavored tobacco products to African-Americans over the past 50 years is a tragedy.More than 80 percent of black smokers use these products. A major step in fighting smoking health disparities would be for the FDA to ban the use of menthol in tobacco products,” he stressed.

For 2024’s iteration of MadameNoire and HelloBeautiful’s annual series Women to Know, we knew we wanted to celebrate the people who help make the joys of film and television possible. To create art is to create magic. This year, we spotlight Hollywood Executive’s changing the face of cinema.