The Associated Press (AP) has a new woman in charge! According to the company, Daisy Veerasingham has been appointed to president and CEO. She will become the first woman to hold the title since AP was first established 175 years ago. A first-generation British national of Sri Lankan descent, Daisy Veerasingham is the first woman, first person of color and first international citizen to lead The Associated Press. https://t.co/ErMNYOeuox — Kat Stafford (@kat__stafford) August 3, 2021 Veerasingham, who is AP’s current executive vice president and chief opertaing officer, will succeed AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt who will remain in the role throughout the end of the year before he retires. “In Daisy Veerasingham we have chosen a proven leader with a deep understanding of how AP operates and a clear vision for the future. She appreciates the crucial role AP plays in providing journalism and services that are indispensable to the news industry,” said Steven R. Swartz, chairman of the...

It’s been over four years since former President Barack Obama was in office. During his term he earned the standard $400,000 salary that Business Insider reports every commander-in-chief receives. The business endeavors he made after leaving office, however, were a large contribution to his now $70 million net worth, according to International Business Times. Before Obama took office, he made about $165,000 a year as a senator of Illinois, according to NBC News. During that time he published several books and took off as an author, profiting over $500,000 from author fees in 2006 alone. Years before running for president, his combined income with his wife Michelle Obama, who at the time worked at the University of Chicago Medical Center, was $1.6 million. While in office, a president has a $50,000 annual expense account, $100,000 nontaxable travel account, and $19,000 for entertainment, in addition to their $400,000 salary, according to Business Insider . The former president now...

A decade ago, President Barack Obama first stepped into the Oval office and mandated the Open Government Initiative with a memorandum calling for transparency, participation, and collaboration of information from the Federal Government to the public. Now if it’s hard to wrap your mind around the concept of government and transparency altogether, let alone the other two principles, you’re not alone. This is where Open Data , a school of thought that some information ought to be available to the public without cost or copyright restrictions, comes into discussion in the United States. Although not the first push for public access to information in the U.S., (see: Freedom of Information Act of 1966 , Privacy Act Amendments of 1974 , Open Government Act of 2007 ), the scale of data collected and made available online over the past decade is unprecedented. So What Data Do They Have? The datasets represent information managed from various departments across Federal agencies and also pulls...

As Democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential election campaign to receive your vote, one topic is closing America’s wealth gap via monetary support for Black-owned businesses. Here is an analysis of each Democratic presidential candidate and whether or not they’ve proposed a plan to boost Black entrepreneurship: Sen. Cory Booker Getty Images The New Jersey senator wrote his plans to boost Black-owned businesses in an OpEd piece via BET . He proposed a $25 million funding investment in a nation-wide startup accelerator program for “geographically-underserved” communities. He wants to specifically target veterans, women, and people of color. Booker also wants to provide more capital for entrepreneurs in every community with a $1.5 billion investment in the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI). In addition, to close America’s racial wealth gap for young adults, he proposed a “baby bond” that would essentially be federally-funded savings accounts for every child born in...