Celebrities often like to open their big hearts and big wallets to poor countries to share the good fortune that fame has allowed them. Marquee names like Bono, Sean Penn and Angelina Jolie spend lots of time donating and raising money to give to impoverished countries full of emaciated black people. They raise millions, the money gets there and somehow the people stay poor and destitute.

In the case of Madonna, her attempts at building a school in Malawi to improve the educational future of girls at a cost of $15 million have apparently failed badly. The New York Times reports that the board of directors of her organization, Raising Malawi, has been put out and replaced by a caretaker board and plans to build the school are officially abandoned.

At his 1974 inauguration, newly elected Detroit Mayor Coleman Young shouted a warning to criminals: "Hit Eight Mile," he said, promising his new constituents that he would free them from the grips of crime that had persisted under the two previous stewards of the city.

Two things resulted: 1) White suburbanites shrieked in terror, ignorantly interpreting Young's words to mean that he was sending black thugs after them; and 2) the only ones who "hit Eight Mile" were the city's core population.

Demographers say they didn't expect the census count to go as low as 713,000, but it's an exodus from the Motor City that has been taking place since at least the 1950s.

Two months ago, we told you about the attempt of a would-be bomber to plant an improvised explosive device on the route of an annual Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Wash.

Dozens, possibly hundreds, of people owe their lives to the quick thinking of three city workers who alerted authorities about the backpack containing a time bomb that was sophisticated enough to cause massive damage, according to the FBI.

You may be happy to know that the police have apprehended a suspect in that mass murder attempt and charged him with trying to use a weapon of mass destruction and possession of an IED.

But the arrest opens up a new avenue of questions.

A day after the resignation of NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, the media biz armchair quarterbacking has kicked into high gear.

It came as not that much of a surprise, particularly in the light of the Juan Williams fiasco of last fall, that Schiller stepped down on Wednesday. James O'Keefe, who also orchestrated ACORN's demise, set up NPR senior fund-raising officer Ron Schiller (no relation) by videotaping him saying he thinks the Tea Party is "racist."

Two things come to mind when you watch the video.

First, we have entered a "gotcha" age, where any opinion you might have can be recorded and then cost you your job, as in this case of Schiller and Schiller. Second, media has lost its post as societal watchdog, leaving room for pricks like O'Keefe.

On April 29, Prince William and Kate Middleton (pictured) will join the long line of centuries-old British tradition, displaying patrician majesty, pomp and circumstance and lavish courting that the world is familiar with when it comes to royal weddings. They will enjoy the eyes of their subjects the world over, British Commonwealth and beyond, as people tune in to watch them as they did William's parents a generation ago.

William and Kate are two very blessed young people, rich or poor, because they have fallen in love and decided to wed, and I can only hope William continues to be his mother's son, opening his heart to the world.

But let's be real, the entire planet will stop, once again, to worship wealthy white people.

First Sudan. Then Tunisia. Then Egypt. After that it was Algeria, followed by Yemen and lately Libya. The calls for change in government have waved across the northern African map like the flags of rebellion carried by the protesters in these countries. Much of it was driven by social media. But the real engine was young people doing what they do best: finding whatever means they have at their disposal to communicate, gather, organize and act.

It is new, but not new at all.

The global focus is on nations that are rejecting authoritarian rule reaching as far back as the late 1960s, but is there a lesson to be learned for the rest of Africa?

Last week, millions of Egyptians erupted in joy when they found out their 30-year tormentor Hosni Mubarak would be stepping down, signifying that their social media–driven rebellion worked.

It's hard to draw lots of comparisons between that cultural movement and our own of 55 years ago, when thousands of Montgomery, Ala., residents bought their own dictator down in the form of a private bus company that wouldn't let African Americans sit where they wanted to.

With that said, it is possible that the latter influenced the former and resulted in a historic change that may well be spreading throughout the Middle East - and it may have been done by a comic book (pictured).

Normally, it's easy to see why people would want to keep Walmart out of their communities.

The big-box behemoth has in many senses come to represent everything from the dumbing down of America to the dismantling of the small business economic system that once held together neighborhoods. Complaints about the company stomping the old mom-and-pop stores to its handling of workers are valid and widespread. However, while doing all this, Walmart has become the largest corporation in the world.

But an ongoing controversy over the placement of a Walmart store in Brooklyn, N.Y., may well serve as a test of the anti-Walmart logic.

The flags of civil disobedience are waving across North Africa. In Tunisia, mass demonstrations went on for weeks and included acts as extreme as self-immolation. Nearly a dozen protesters were injured in Algeria after they clashed with authorities. And in Egypt, one of the cradles of civilization, they have taken to the streets to shout their disapproval of President Hosni Mubarak.

It's making international news and drumming up support for people who would dare question their government's overbearing role in their lives. Meanwhile in places like Angola, police crack skulls on a daily basis and the spread of long-eradicated diseases cause epidemics. In Uganda, the newspaper outs a man as gay and he's later found bludgeoned to death. In Ivory Coast, the people democratically voted out the president who allowed the election and now he won't relinquish power.

Things like this happen in Sub-Saharan (read: black) Africa all the time. There is a constant struggle for democracy and freedom in these countries and you hardly hear about it unless you listen to the BBC World Service. But let things jump off in Northern Africa, and everybody's acting brand new.

In the 1970s and '80s, Michele Montas and her husband, Jean Dominique, ran a small radio station called Radio Haiti-Inter, which was vocal about the injustices taking place under the regime of dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier (pictured with blue tie).

The couple lived under constant threat, and their station was attacked on several occasions by Duvalier's brutal Tonton Macoute militia, twice forcing them into exile. The couple persisted in their resolve, though, even after Duvalier was himself forced into exile in 1986 and Dominique was assassinated in 2000.

A quarter of a century after Baby Doc left Haiti, just as destitute as he found it when his despotic father, Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, died, Montas has returned to Haiti to seek justice against the man who terrified her and hundreds of thousands of other Haitians.

Why?

Because Jean-Claude had the arrogant gall to show his despised face on the western end of Hispaniola this past week.