I am an Officer, be prepared to get killed

1) North Charleston 

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A white South Carolina police officer has been charged with murder after a black man who appeared to be fleeing from him was shot dead. State investigators arrested North Charleston police officer Michael Slager on Tuesday after viewing a video of the shooting. Authorities say the victim, Walter Lamer Scott, was shot after the officer already targeted him with a stun gun.

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A video of the incident published by the New York Times shows a brief scuffle before Scott begins running away. The video then shows the officer firing several shots at Scott, who falls to the ground.

The Post and Courier newspaper of Charleston reported that Scott had been arrested about 10 times, mostly for failing to pay child support or show up for court hearing. Scott's brother, Anthony, told the Post and Courier that he believed his brother fled from Mr Slager because he owed child support. Victim's brother Anthony Scott: "If there wasn't a video would we know the truth? We do know the truth now." 

Affirmative action

1) Admitted while black

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Kaling's brother, Vijay Chokal-Ingam, who is an American-Indian man, pretended to be a black man to facilitate getting accepted into med school 15 years ago. ... On his blog, Chokal-Ingam, 38, says that his modest 3.1 GPA didn't seem like it would cut it to get him accepted into a top tier medical school, so he adopted his middle name — Jojo — and gave himself a mini-makeover. "So, I shaved my head, trimmed my long Indian eyelashes, and applied to medical school as a black man," he writes. "My change in appearance was so startling that my own fraternity brothers didn't recognize me at first." 

Chokal-Ingam was accepted into some top medical schools, and he even enrolled in St. Louis University, before ultimately dropping out after two years. "Lucky for you, I never became a doctor," he wrote on his website. He did, however, earn his MBA at UCLA. Perhaps his conscience caught up to him, as he was accepted as an Indian man there. 

On his Facebook page, Vijay has been posting about how his scam awoke him to the realities of affirmative action and racism, calling it a "stomach churning eye opener." But he seems set on letting people know that he did not do anything bad. "For the record, I never lied about anything in my application to medical school except my race," he writes. 

John Racist

1) Hidden racism

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America may be growing less hateful. That's according to an annual Southern Poverty Law Center report that says the number of hate groups in the United States remains on the decline for the second year in a row. In the "Intelligence Report" released Tuesday, the SPLC says the number of hate groups operating in the U.S. declined 17% between 2013 and 2014. They are now at their lowest levels since 2005, the watchdog organization said.

One of the oldest and most infamous hate groups in the United States, the KKK took its foothold after the Civil War, terrorizing the African-American population with intimidation and violent actions, including lynching. The Klan's growth slowed after the establishment of Jim Crow laws in the American South, according to the SPLC. The KKK's last resurgence came during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The group was again responsible for large-scale terror against the South's African-American population. In 1990, the SPLC started to keep track of the number of KKK chapters, which reached a high of 221 in 2010, in response to President Barack Obama's election, according to the report. Since then, the numbers have been on the decline. The SPLC now reports 72 chapters, down from 163 a year ago.

The reason for the decline of the Ku Klux Klan is not totally clear, though the report even suggests the groups may be going deeper underground. "It appears that most of the groups simply faded as their leaders and members got older, but it is also very possible that many simply stopped announcing where their chapters were," the report said. The center estimates that between 5,000 and 8,000 people are Klan members in the United States. The SPLC report also notes that more people may be operating as so-called lone wolves. Lone wolves are a concern, the report said, because 90% of all domestic terror attacks since 2009 were carried out by individuals or pairs.

The overall number of hate groups peaked in 2011 and has been on the decline since. However, the number of registered users to Stormfront -- a website claiming to be "the voice of the new, embattled White minority!" -- has doubled since 2008. It now has nearly 300,000 users. 

The SPLC refers to this and other indicators to say that many individuals may be moving from organized groups to the Internet, to become more anonymous. Looking towards next year, SPLC is "expecting a real wave of Islamophobia" because of the proliferation of ISIS and the heavy media coverage of the extremist group, Potok told reporters. 

2)  Burn the Quran pastor 

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With pressure building on potential nominees for the 2016 U.S. presidential election to declare their candidacy, a surprise entrant who added colour to the race this week was controversial Florida pastor Terry Jones.

Jones who is avowedly “anti-Obama,” and described as a “fringe front-runner” in the race, made headlines in 2010 when he declared his intention to burn the Koran on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, causing deep consternation in the U.S. administration, which feared a violent backlash.

When Jones announced his plans to hold an “International Burn a Koran Day,” he faced major pressure from world leaders and U.S. President Barack Obama to call off the event.