There is a laundry list of celebrities in the spotlight who have been accused of bleaching — Beyonce, Dawn Richards and India.Arie to name a recent few — but they rarely offer an explanation for it beyond aggressive lighting. Tamar Braxton, the latest to find herself the subject of bleaching rumors, attributes changes in her complexion to the skin disease, vitiligo.

The star of “Braxton Family Values,” explained to Ebony Magazine that she’s suffered from the condition since she was a child and it worsened since she became pregnant. She also elucidates the effect it’s had on her self esteem:

Anybody with skin issues knows that that’s a very sensitive subject. And that’s why I’ve never shared that I have Vitiligo, because I do. I’ve always had it, since I was a young girl. It’s not as bad as others because everybody has it differently, but I’ve certainly had mine diagnosed. That’s why I tan. People say, “You bleach your skin!” But I tan just so I can have a better tone on my skin, boo!

It’s gotten worse since I’ve gotten pregnant. If you shake my hand now, to me it’s more noticeable. But when you get diagnosed with a skin disorder, it’s hard. It does weigh on your self-esteem. It really does. But I’m done defending that. I’m not bleaching my skin and if I was bleaching my skin and I felt like saying so, I would, but for the record, I am not.

Though Tamar shouldn’t have to defend or explain herself, we applaud her for shedding light on her skin disorder and the emotional impact it has on her. Speaking out may free and comfort others who are struggling with vitiligo.

Mo’Nique’s answer left room for speculation.

“Do we have sex outside of the marriage? Let me say this. I have not had sex outside of my marriage with Sidney,” she said. “Could I have sex outside of my marriage with Sidney? Yes. Could Sid have sex outside of his marriage with me? Yes. That’s not a deal breaker. That’s not something that we would say, ‘Oh my God because you were attracted to another person and because you happened to have sex let’s end the marriage.”

When Walters pressed her, the comedian explained her understanding of an open marriage.

“No secrets. Open means, you know what, let me tell you my every secret, my fantasies, my thoughts so that way there are no surprises.”

The backlash against the couple’s decision was swift and blunt. Some assumed Mo’Nique agreed to an open union to prevent Hicks from cheating while others claimed she had low self-esteem because of her weight.

Mo’Nique, now 82 pounds lighter, clarifies all of the misconceptions in an interview with Hot 97. She alleges she set the perimeters of the open marriage so she could enjoy side partners while touring. The “Precious” actress told the interviewers the open marriage had nothing to do with her husband.

“Listen baby, I was an entertainer,” she said. “The road is what it is. It goes for men and women. So I felt like this is what it is and this is who I am.”

She also addresses the critics assuming she was insecure because of her husband’s looks.

“People automatically went to my husband. Like, ‘He’s so fine. Mo’Nique is going to let him do anything.

“It had nothing to do with that and it actually backfired on me,” she continued. “My ego got in the way. I thought I was saying to women, ‘You can have your cake and eat it too girl cause I can do this.’ And it backfired. It backfired in a way that they thought well, ‘Oh since he’s so good looking and Mo’Nique’s fat, she’s just going to let this man do anything and run all over on top of her.”

Now the entertainer appreciates her husband, calling him a king.

“When I did that interview, I didn’t realize what I had. I didn’t realize the king I had. I was just being old Mo’Nique and having my old ways.”

In regards to her weight loss, the comedian’s secret is simple.

“My family is the secret. I’m 45 years old and I have babies,” she said. “I want to have the opportunity to know their babies. Going at the rate I was going, I was going to lose that opportunity. I would be neglectful to my family because of my self neglect.”

Mo’Nique is currently on a comedy tour. Her next stop is May 17 at the Brea Improv in Brea, Calif.

Talk show host Wendy Williams is talking to the media about her healthy lifestyle change that has produced a 20-pound weight loss and a new outlook on life.

On a last week’s appearance on Dr. Oz, Williams, 49, shared her weight and height, espousing how her new healthy regimen allowed her accept herself, flaws and all:

“I weigh 175 pounds.  I’m very accepting of my height and weight and where I am probably for the first time, steadily, in my life. I feel good,” said the former New York-based shock-jock. “It’s not a big deal. It might not be right for everybody, but I am perfect the way I am right now.”

Wendy has had a life long struggle with food.  Developing a unhealthy relationship with food when she was younger, Wendy was a closet eater.

“I often wonder, if my parents hadn’t monitored my weight, would I have let it spin out of control or would I be okay?” Williams asked. “I would always sneak in the refrigerator and eat seconds. And underneath my bed, it was littered with Twinkie wrappers and Jolly Rancher wrappers.

“I would sneak-eat, because I was denied food, not because I was hungry, but because my mom and dad did the best they could in 1970 and ’71 and ’72. They didn’t know any better.”

Not shy in front of the camera or an audience, Wendy is shy about eating in front of people — she prefers to eat alone.

“My favorite food is the food I eat by myself,” says Williams. “Now I’ll tell you what I eat so it’s not really sneaking, but I’d rather eat it myself. Whether it’s drive-thru at Taco Bell, pick up one taco on my way to the grocery store.

“I love the grocery store. I would never have my groceries delivered. I would never have anybody grocery shop. Grocery shopping for me is an hour and a half and I’m the girl who takes the free cheese and I luxuriate over the chips and I open them up and I eat them.”

Climate scientists are warning the public that Earth has reached a grim milestone. According to The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has topped 400 parts per million, a level not seen in over two million years.

The 400 ppm threshold has been an important marker in U.N. climate change negotiations, widely recognized as a dangerous level that could drastically worsen human-caused global warming.

At the same time, a truly remarkably set of paleoclimate data shows the climate is much more sensitive to CO2 than we thought. And that means returning as quickly as possible back to 350 ppm is a vastly more rational course of action for a non-suicidal civilization, than, say continuing our unrestrained march toward 600 ppm, then 800, and then 1000.

Since humans started pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in large quantities with the beginning of the industrial revolution in the mid-1700s, CO2 concentrations have increased about 50 percent. To put it another way, today’s CO2 concentrations are about 50 percent higher than at their interglacial peaks, going back at least 800,000 years, as estimated from the longest Antarctic ice core. And they are climbing at the highest rates in measured time. Two-thirds of the increase in industrial times has taken place in just the last half century, since Charles Keeling set up instruments on Mauna Loa to measure CO2 in the late 1950s.

“The last time in the Earth’s history when we saw similar levels of CO2 in the atmosphere was probably about 4.5 million years ago when the world was warmer on average by three or four degrees Celsius than it is today,” Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, told the Financial Times. “There was no permanent ice sheet on Greenland, sea levels were much higher, and the world was a very different place.”

“If you’re looking to stave off climate perturbations that I don’t believe our culture is ready to adapt to, then significant reductions in CO2 emissions have to occur right away,” Mark Pagani, a Yale geochemist and paleoclimatologist, told the New York Times. “I feel like the time to do something was yesterday.”

It is worth noting that a 2009 analysis in Science found that when CO2 levels were this high 15 to 20 million years ago, it was 5° to 10°F warmer globally and seas were also 75 to 120 feet higher.

A new report out today shows that over 30 million people were displaced by climate-related extreme weather events … [Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre Publications]

The Global Estimates report reveals that 32.4 million people were forced to flee their homes in 2012 by disasters such as floods, storms and earthquakes. While Asia and west and central Africa bore the brunt, 1.3 million were displaced in rich countries, with the USA particularly affected.

98% of all displacement in 2012 was related to climate- and weather-related events, with flood disasters in India and Nigeria accounting for 41% of global displacement in 2012. In India, monsoon floods displaced 6.9 million, and in Nigeria 6.1 million people were newly displaced. While over the past five years 81% of global displacement has occurred in Asia, in 2012 Africa had a record high for the region of 8.2 million people newly displaced, over four times more than in any of the previous four years.

But don’t expect America’s corporatist government to interfere with any of the fossil fuel companies desires to exploit the climate change issue for their own gain. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry released a bellicose op-ed in Huffington Post, stating America’s intention to dominate the melting Arctic’s fossil fuel potential:

All of the changes in the Arctic must change the way we approach the region. The Obama Administration’s new National Strategy for the Arctic Region prioritizes domestic infrastructure development as Arctic conditions change, responsible stewardship, and enhanced cooperation with our international partners. We’re focused on ensuring a secure, peaceful, and prosperous Arctic.

PROSPEROUS ARCTIC??? And they say black folks don’t care about climate change? President Obama surely wants to continue the our species slow march towards destruction all in the name of corporate profits. I’m no psychic, but taking into account the aforementioned statement from Secretary Kerry, I’m predicting that the expansion of that nasty Keystone XL pipeline will be approved in the future by the Obama Administration … just all part of business as usual. Forward, right?

I’m sure most folks of color who are unfortunately on the wrong side of the suicidal climate policies of the American and European governments and multinational fossil fuel companies will join the activists around the globe to halt and destroy our dependence on fossil fuels.

For more on this story take a look at this Democracy Now! report:

In an op-ed piece for the New York Times entitled “My Medical Choice,” Angelina Jolie revealed that she underwent a double mastectomy as a preventative medical procedure to protect her from what she felt could be her inevitable fate — developing breast cancer.

Anxious after learning that she had the “breast cancer gene,” BRCA1, the Oscar-winning actress and her beau Brad Pitt felt it would be in the best interest of their six children to take an aggressive approach to Angelina’s health and wellness.

According to doctors, by undergoing a double mastectomy, Angelina reduced her chances of developing breast cancer to an auspicious five percent from a daunting 87 percent.

“My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56,” Jolie writes. “She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.”

Although Angelina and Brad kept the process a secret from the public while going thru the medical procedure, the former PEOPLE most beautiful people felt it was necessary to share Angelina’s step-by-step double mastectomy story in order to help other ladies who may feel apprehensive about undergoing such a radical procedure, including addressing the effects losing one’s breasts may have on one’s sense of femininity.

“I do not feel any less of a woman,” Jolie writes. “I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity.”

After recovering from the double mastectomy, Angelina went thru a cosmetic procedure to reconstruct her breasts and receive implants.

Many women have chosen preventive mastectomy since genetic screening for breast cancer was developed, but the move and public announcement is unprecedented from a star so young and widely known as Jolie.

According to reports, Brad Pitt, Angelina’s partner for the last eight years, was by her side thru the whole procedure.

August 2011 SHAPE cover model Rosario Dawson stopped by Live with Kelly & Michael yesterday to promote her new project Trance, a British drama that had SXSW captivated in anticipation after the premier of its extended trailer.

After engaging in all the Hollywood banalities, Dawson, 34, responded to Kelly Ripa’s complement about her figure in the Jill Stuart dress she wore by stating that she doesn’t workout in order to keep her slender and toned figure.

As the growing trend of celebrities gainfully using the positive press from pictures showing them exercising and eating healthy, believing in eschewing cabs and other forms of public transit, Rosario says that her exercise comes from walking the streets of New York City.

The actress stated in SHAPE that her mother was health conscious and made sure that Rosario and her siblings were exposed to many alternative ways of eating and living:

“My mom was practicing vegan and raw diets years ago, so I understood eating healthy at a young age. We even belonged to the local co-op. I mean, we had Spam too, because we were poor and had to take whatever we could get, but we stopped eating white bread when I was 6.”

Rosario’s film Trance opens in America this Friday, 4/5.

As downtown Los Angeles private speculators continue to use municipal authorities to push the city’s transient population further into the margins, some crafty physicians and the hospitals that employ them are finding ways to use the homeless for profit.

According to multiple reports, Pacific Health Corp. officials said they will close the doors of their three remaining hospitals this week, in part because of legal costs associated with federal prosecutors’ allegations that the hospitals recruited homeless people to wrongly charge Medicare and Medi-Cal for care.

The hospitals involved in the cunning scheme were Bellflower Medical Center, Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center and the Hawthorne campus, and Newport Specialty Hospital.

Federal prosecutors allege that these hospitals’ physicians would recruit homeless people off Los Angles’ notorious Skid Row and pay them stipends to agree to allow the hospital employees to perform medical procedures that the homeless men and women did not need.

After the physicians were done with the homeless individuals, they’d dump them back onto the streets.

If you were wondering if this is an isolated incident of medical malfeasance, it is not; likewise, in 2010, two Brentwood physicians were sentenced to prison and heavily fined for engaging in similar practices at City of Angels Medical Center.

Department of Justice officials announced in August that Pacific Health agreed to pay a $16.5 million for engaging in the scheme.

Lil’ Wayne is an epileptic. According to the Grammy-award winning rapper, who granted L.A.-based Power 106 DJ Felli-Fel’s radio-show the first interview since his much publicized hospital stint a few weeks back, he’s struggled with this condition for some years now but kept it concealed from the public.

“The bad news is I’m an epileptic, I’m prone to seizures,” Wayne said.

“Like, this isn’t my first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh seizure. I’ve had a bunch of seizures, y’all just never hear about them. But this time it got real bad ’cause I had three of them in a row and on the third one, my heart rate went down to like 30 percent. Basically, I could’ve died, so that is why it was so serious. But the reason being for the seizures is just plain stress, no rest, overworking myself.” 

Many industry bloggers and insiders are wondering aloud whether Lil’ Wayne’s consistent use of sizzurp (Promethazine/Codeine) led to his multiple seizures a few weeks back.

He released his 10th album, I Am Not a Human Being II, this week. He’ll embark on a 40-city tour in July with rappers T.I. and Future.

Epilepsy is the name given to a set of neurological inconsistencies that at times results in a person experiencing seizures. It’s very hard to pinpoint why Wayne is experiencing such severe seizures, since a combination of factors can cause an interruption in normal brain activity.

According to WebMD, there is only a small amount cases where a known cause can be attributed to a patient’s epilepsy, usually when a traumatic head injury is involved. But there are some factors that can trigger an episode, such as abusing of alcohol, ecstasy, or prescription drugs, which can interfere with other medications used to help control seizures.

If you thought that you lived in representative democracy, this piece of news should shatter that myth. In a treacherous move on Tuesday, President Obama signed the “Farmers Assurance Provision” of HR 933, known to critics as the “Monsanto Protection Act.” This legislation essentially blocks future litigation targeted at the potential negative health risks and effects of genetically modified crops (GMO) and genetically engineered (GE) crops on human beings.

Although there is no known long-term study to prove definitively that GMO or GE crops cause adverse health effects in human beings, it’s admissible for Americans to worry about their health when multinational corporations are helping write, pass, and conceal legislation concerning their products.

But what is known about GMO crops corroborates everyone’s fears. As multinational corporations continue expand their power over local farming communities across the globe, they stultify a farmer’s autonomy over her or his seed, the foundation of any farmer’s crop. In turn, we are witnessing the destruction of farming economies, which always affects the health of folks.

Food Democracy Now! unsuccesfully petitioned the president to veto the bill, and is now asking for an executive order to call for mandatory labeling of GMO products.

Check out this video from Democracy Now! about the substantials risks GMO and GE crops pose to the environment and overall health of human beings.

Salt Sugar Fat author Michael Moss was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night and, boy, did he drop some serious knowledge about how Wall Street and science can distort what we consider food. Check out the video below: