by Cristian Salazar

NEW YORK (AP)—President Barack Obama found out years ago he had an Irish ancestor who fled the potato famine in 1850. He can now claim 28 living relatives who also descended from that Irishman, including a Vietnam veteran, a school nurse and a displeased Arizona Republican.

OBAMA’S COUSIN—Dorma Lee Reese poses for a picture at her home in Tucson, Ariz., March 16. Reese, 83, a retired EEG technologist, learned about a year ago that she is a third cousin to President Barack Obama. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

The president’s newly identified relatives are revealed in a study released to The Associated Press by Ancestry.com, whose genealogists also traced descendants of 23 other Irish passengers on the ship that brought Falmouth Kearney to the United States when he was 19.

The survey allowed genealogists to further trace branches in Obama’s family tree and others who arrived on the ship, known as the Marmion, on March 20, 1850.

by Ayana Jones
The Philadelphia Tribune

(NNPA)—The NAACP has been criticized for not including Black newspapers in a recent advertising campaign.

The NAACP inserted its 42nd NAACP Image Awards Magazine in the Philadelphia Daily News, however the advertisement was not included in The Philadelphia Tribune and other markets (Los Angeles, Atlanta, Texas, New York, New Jersey and Chicago).

OUTSTANDING PICTURE—Tyler Perry accepts the award for outstanding motion picture for the movie "For Colored Girls," from Angela Bassett at the 42nd NAACP Image Awards on March 4, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP)—Three cleanup workers who were hailed as heroes after finding a live bomb along the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane said they later lost their jobs after supervisors questioned their handling of the situation.

The men were employed by Labor Ready and working under contract for the Spokane Public Facilities District when they found a backpack containing the bomb about an hour before the scheduled start of the Jan. 17 parade.

They alerted police, who were able to defuse the bomb.

BOMBING SUSPECT ARRESTED—Kevin William Harpham, who has ties to a White supremacist organization, was arrested March 9, on charges that he left a bomb along a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade route in Spokane, Wash. (AP Photo/KXLY 4 News)

by Laurie Kellman
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP)—The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee is pressing forward with his public examination of Muslim extremism in America, pointing to his first, tense hearing on the subject as a step toward desensitizing a taboo topic and rooting out terrorists on U.S. soil.

"There's an elephant in the room and nobody wants to talk about it. We talked about it today," Peter King said after the four-hour, emotion-filled session March 10.

CONTROVERSIAL HEARING—Zuleyha Ozonder, Hashi Shafi and Zuhmer Ahmed watch a hearing on the "radicalization" of U.S. Muslims, chaired by Rep. Peter King of the House Homeland Security Committee in Washington, from Minneapolis, March 10.