Tempe, AZ - Arizona is already taking a lot of heat for its reputation regarding illegal immigration, and for Gov. Jan Brewer's finger-wagging at President Barack Obama during a recent visit, and a state lawmaker isn't exactly helping the state's image.

Rep. Cecil Ash, a Republican from Mesa, is suggesting Arizona needs a holiday for white people.

"I wanted to speak to you all about Latino Americans here in Arizona," said state Rep. Richard Miranda on the House floor Monday, starting the conversation that sparked the controversy.

Miranda said Arizona should have a Latino American day in Arizona.

After some heated debate, Rep. Cecil Ash stepped up to the mic.

"I'm supportive of this proposition. I just want them to assure me that when we do become in the minority you'll have a day for us," Ash said.

Read more >>> http://www.kpho.com/story/16656530/state-representative-suggests-holiday-for-white-people

New York, NY - Fans of Soul Train boogied down Broadway wearing afro wigs and bell bottoms on Saturday while others recounted their favorite episodes at a Harlem meeting hall in tribute to the show's late creator, Don Cornelius.

About 100 dancers descended on Times Square in a "flash mob" organized through the Internet. As startled tourists looked on, they recreated one of the show's "Soul Train lines" in which people would take turns dancing toward a TV camera while showing off their most outrageous moves.

"Don Cornelius was a big influence in my life, and I just wanted to pay tribute," said disc jockey Jon Quick, as he held up a speaker blasting disco grooves. "He was playing the music that nobody else wanted to play. He was an amazing man."

Cornelius, 75, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Wednesday. He had suffered from health problems, a difficult divorce, and had pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor spousal battery charge in 2009.

But on Saturday fans praised Cornelius' vision in creating, hosting and selling "Soul Train" to television stations that were originally skeptical about programming aimed at blacks. The show aired from 1971 to 2006.

"Don Cornelius brought soul to the whole world," said Ramona Hamm, 37, who came to Times Square with her 9-year-old daughter, Kayla Charles. The dancers bounced down Broadway for about 45 minutes until police told the party to disperse.

In Harlem, activist Al Sharpton led a tribute to Cornelius as part of the weekly community meeting at the headquarters of his National Action Network. In 1974, a 19-year-old Sharpton appeared on "Soul Train" to present an award to musician James Brown.

Singer Roberta Flack said Cornelius was an inspiration to other black performers and entrepreneurs.

"He didn't have a great big light telling him, 'Go over here, don't go over there, watch where you step, there's a hole right there,'" Flack said. "He stepped."

Former "Soul Train" dancer Tyrone Proctor recalled how he hid in the trunk of a friend's car to get through the gates of the studio where "Soul Train" was filmed in 1972. Cornelius liked his dance moves and let him stay, dubbing Proctor "The Bone" because he was so skinny.

"He turned us into stars," Proctor said. Moves that Soul Train dancers developed spread nationwide and are now staples of music videos and pop concerts.

"Blocking, popping, ticking, waacking, punking — when Madonna does what she does at the Super Bowl, you'll see some of these things done there," Proctor said. "Don Cornelius created all of this. It came out of his mind."

Fans recalled tuning in to see "Soul Train's" cartoon train chugging across their television screens. When Flack recalled Cornelius' stiff-necked delivery, the Harlem crowd of about 300 people laughed knowingly.

William "A.J. Dynamite" Aponte, a keyboard player, said he was ecstatic as a kid when his idol, Elton John, appeared on the show. He says the appearance showed that people of all races could find common ground in music.

"He sang 'Benny and the Jets,' and I thought it was so great because Elton John is not black, he's white and he's British," Aponte said. "It influenced me to want to do music."

Proctor said Cornelius was also generous. When Proctor won a car on "American Bandstand," "Soul Train's" competition, Cornelius paid the $334.25 in taxes so the struggling dancer could receive his award.

"He wrote the check out and that was it, no questions asked. He just said, 'Go get the car,'" Proctor said.

Proctor and other speakers said they were shocked when they heard that Cornelius had committed suicide. Author Terrie Williams named other black performers who had killed themselves and said Cornelius' death should be a warning for victims of depression to seek help.

"One of the things that Don's death brought us to is that we've got to look in the mirror before we end up in this kind of situation," Sharpton told the crowd.

Hollywood, CA - As it turns out, not everyone got the boot from The X Factor.

Music industry vet L.A. Reid survived the reality show's shake-up, signing on for season two of the Fox show, E! News has confirmed. 

The Epic Records chairman reportedly signed the contract Friday, according to the Hollywood Reporter , just days after host Steve Jones and judges Paula Abdul and Nicole Scherzinger got the boot.

There's still no word on who will join Reid at the judges' table, or who will replace Jones just yet, however (albeit a couple of unconfirmed rumors about Beyoncé and Mariah Carey joining the X Factor ranks).

Nationwide, USA - More than 243,000 jobs were added to the U.S. Economy in January, more than in December even as the impact of temporary holiday hiring came out of the measure, and the best reading in several years. Unemployment was down again, to 8.3%.

Friday morning’s figure from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics was well ahead of estimates calling for job gains to slow to somewhere around 140,000.

Private sector payrolls jumped 257,000, more than expected and well above the 170,000 the figure from the monthly employment survey from Automatic Data Processing released Wednesday.

On a sector basis, Friday’s reading showed the biggest gains in professional and business services, which added 70,000 jobs in January.

The average workweek for all employees was unchanged, but for manufacturing workers the average week increased 0.3 hours to 40.9 hours and factory overtime increased by a hair. Average hourly earnings rose 4 cents, or 0.2% to $23.29

January’s solid jobs gain comes after revisions to November and December payrolls added a total of 50,000 jobs to those two months. Unemployment’s dip to 8.3% was from 8.5% a month ago and the reduction in the U.S. workforce in January — 1.2 million people, which brought the civilian labor force to a new 30-year low of 63.7% — was a factor in the decrease. (See “U.S. Adds 200K Jobs In December, Unemployment 8.5%.”)

The major U.S. stock averages showed modest gains ahead of Friday morning’s report, then erupted for big gains after the solid figure. Futures signaled a triple-digit gain for the Dow Jones industrial average with about 50 minutes to the opening bell, along with strong starting gains for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq.

The gains sparked by Friday’s employment reading, the latest signal of an improving U.S. economy, were broad-based. Economically-sensitive stocks were among the leaders though; Bank of America jumped 3.1% in the pre-market session while fellow Dow component General Electric, a conglomerate with businesses that operate throughout the U.S. economy and around the world, gained 1.3%.

Nationwide, USA - We always knew Facebook was big, but until the social network filed papers to become a publicly traded company, we didn't know exactly how big. Facebook is very close to hitting the one billion user mark, and as predicted, that will probably happen in 2012. The company also turned a tidy profit to the tune of $1 billion in 2011. More than half of Facebook's monthly active users visit the social network from mobile devices, and about 80 percent of Facebook's fans are outside the U.S. and Canada. 

Facebook employees thanked users.The company hopes to raise about $5 billion during its initial public offering, which has yet to be scheduled. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will serve as the company's chairman and chief executive and will be the company's largest and controlling stockholder.Here's a look at a few more tidbits included in the company's recent S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission:

Facebook said it had 845 million active users as of Dec. 31, with slightly more than half of those people, 425 million, use mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to visit Facebook. An average day on Facebook sees about 483 million people logging into the world's largest social network, an increase of 48 percent compared to the previous year.

Thanks to the presence of the Facebook "like" button on almost every website known to humanity, the social network adds another 2.7 billion likes and comments every single day. Users also upload 250 million photos to Facebook every 24 hours, and the social network has helped its users create 100 billion online friendships.

Facebook has been busy making money in recent years and growing fast. In 2009, the company said it brought in $777 million in revenue. That figure grew to $1.974 billion in 2010, and then almost doubled in 2011 when the company had $3.71 billion in revenue and $1 billion in profit.

The S-1 filing also shows that digital cows, crops, and mafia hit jobs are a big source of revenue for the company; social game maker Zynga was responsible for about 12 percent of Facebook's revenue in 2011.

Facebook isn't sure it can move into China and is concerned about any restrictions the Chinese government might put on the company. This is a lesson Facebook likely learned from Google's problems with Chinese authorities in early 2010 that resulted in the search giant shutting down its ".cn" Chinese-language search engine. "We continue to evaluate entering China. However, this market has substantial legal and regulatory complexities that have prevented our entry into China to date," Facebook said in its SEC filing.

Later in the document the company added, "We do not know if we will be able to find an approach to managing content and information that will be acceptable to us and to the Chinese government."

Not only will Zuckerberg serve as chairman and CEO, he will also be granted the power to name his successor if he still controls the company when he dies. "In the event that Mr. Zuckerberg controls our company at the time of his death," Facebook's S-1 filing says. "Control may be transferred to a person or entity that he designates as his successor." This clause has struck some analysts as unusual, according to several reports including The New York Post and Bloomberg Businessweek, but makes it clear that Zuckerberg is Facebook's ruling power.