Fatu Kekula didn’t have a hazmat suit or physician’s expertise. She did, however, have trash bags, some nursing training and the determination to save lives amid the Ebola outbreak. And she succeeded. Now, with the support of one American university and a growing pool of inspired supporters, the 22-year-old Liberian woman is set to finish her nursing education in the U.S., possibly free-of-charge with the help of donors. Over a two-week period in August, Kekula personally cared for all of her immediate family members — her 52-year-old father, 57-year-old mother and 28-year-old sister — when they contracted Ebola. She used rubber boots, gloves and a mask (along with the trash bags) for protection, as CNN …

Fatu Kekula didn’t have a hazmat suit or physician’s expertise. She did, however, have trash bags, some nursing training and the determination to save lives amid the Ebola outbreak.

And she succeeded.

Now, with the support of one American university and a growing pool of inspired supporters, the 22-year-old Liberian woman is set to finish her nursing education in the U.S., possibly free-of-charge with the help of donors.

Over a two-week period in August, Kekula personally cared for all of her immediate family members — her 52-year-old father, 57-year-old mother and 28-year-old sister — when they contracted Ebola. She used rubber boots, gloves and a mask (along with the trash bags) for protection, as CNN reported. They all survived.

Although Kekula’s 14-year-old cousin died of the disease in her care, Kekula’s efforts produced a 25 percent mortality rate — significantly lower than the 70 percent overall average founded by the World Health Organization.

UNICEF Spokeswoman Sarah Crowe told CNN that Kekula’s tireless work saving her family was remarkable.

“Doctors called and told me to leave them right alone and not go anywhere near them,” Kekula told the Los Angeles Times. “I couldn’t. They’re my only family.”

An IAmProjects fundraising page has been set-up to help Kekula, who has over three years of nursing training from Liberia’ Cuttington University, finish her education in the field. As of Friday afternoon, more than $19,500 has been raised of the $40,000 goal for tuition at Emory University in Atlanta — where she plans on starting classes in January — as well as living and travel expenses.

The epidemic resulted in Liberia having to close schools, which prevented Kekula’s from finishing her education there.

“I’m very, very proud,” Kekula’s father, who was the first in the family to become infected in July, told CNN. Having gone to the hospital for a blood pressure-related issue, his assigned hospital bed had been used previously by a late Ebola patient. “She saved my life through the almighty God.”

Although Liberia is one the hardest-hit nations by Ebola with 3,290 deaths resulting from the virus, progress has been made. United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon visited the West African nation on Friday and voiced praises for Liberia’s efforts halting the virus, as Voice of America reported.

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Woman Who Saved Family From Ebola Will Attend Nursing School In U.S. (How To Help)

So-called Toxic Twitter is made up of marginalized women of color for whom social media started out as yelling into the void and became a grassroots movement. We are Toxic Twitter. The unnamed women frothing at the mouth in our underground internet lair who emerge only during the full moon of each news cycle to drink the blood of your favorite white feminists. Whenever you hear the refrain “Twitter is going to get you!” from the mouths of everyone from Oprah to CNN pundits, we are who they are referring to. We are bad for your career. We are bad for brands. We say good things, but watch out or

So-called Toxic Twitter is made up of marginalized women of color for whom social media started out as yelling into the void and became a grassroots movement.

We are Toxic Twitter. The unnamed women frothing at the mouth in our underground internet lair who emerge only during the full moon of each news cycle to drink the blood of your favorite white feminists. Whenever you hear the refrain “Twitter is going to get you!” from the mouths of everyone from Oprah to CNN pundits, we are who they are referring to. We are bad for your career. We are bad for brands. We say good things, but watch out or we’ll swallow you whole.

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Why These Tweets Are Called My Back

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio (AP) — A volunteer football coach whose Ohio house was the scene of a party that preceded the rape of a girl by two high school football players faces nearly six months in jail after pleading guilty to violating his probation. Matt Belardine admitted leaving the state without permission and going to a bar, consuming alcohol, and being arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct in Arizona, said Dan Tierney, a spokesman for Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine. Belardine was arrested last month in Arizona at a protest over the grand jury decision in the Ferguson, Missouri, police …

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio (AP) — A volunteer football coach whose Ohio house was the scene of a party that preceded the rape of a girl by two high school football players faces nearly six months in jail after pleading guilty to violating his probation.

Matt Belardine admitted leaving the state without permission and going to a bar, consuming alcohol, and being arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct in Arizona, said Dan Tierney, a spokesman for Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine.

Belardine was arrested last month in Arizona at a protest over the grand jury decision in the Ferguson, Missouri, police shooting, according to media reports. Scottsdale authorities said Belardine was fighting with protesters.

Belardine “did not conduct himself as a ‘responsible law abiding citizen’ while in Scottsdale, Arizona,” contrary to conditions of his probation, according to a filing in Jefferson County court this month by the attorney general’s office.

Belardine was one of six people charged last year by a grand jury investigating whether other laws were broken in the case of the 16-year-old West Virginia girl who was raped after an alcohol-fueled house party in August 2012.

In that case, Belardine pleaded no contest in April to one count of making a false statement and one count of enabling underage drinking.

Special Judge Patricia Ann Cosgrove suspended a six-month sentence, ordering Belardine to serve 10 days in jail, one year of supervision and 40 hours of community service. She also fined him $1,000.

For violating probation, prosecutors want Belardine to serve the remainder of the six months, minus time already served, Tierney said.

A message was left for Belardine’s attorney.

The judge will continue hearing evidence Monday before sentencing Belardine. He was being held without bond.

Two football players were found delinquent in the rape case; one was sentenced to two years; the other was released after a one-year sentence and rejoined the football team this fall.

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Steubenville-Connected Football Coach To Be Sentenced In Protest Probation Violation

In times of struggle many seasoned leaders remind the parties involved of the Chinese symbol for the word “crisis.” This symbol combines two words: danger and opportunity. The aftermath of the Ferguson situation presents both a dangerous reescalation of racial tension in America and an opportunity. This opportunity consists of changing the conversation about community in America, an issue larger in scope than black youth, police tactics, and race relations. It’s an opportunity to define how we choose to live our lives in community. *** The author Peter Block, in his masterful book Community: The Structure Of Belonging, writes about two different types communities. The first one is the stuck community. The overriding characteristic of…

In times of struggle many seasoned leaders remind the parties involved of the Chinese symbol for the word “crisis.” This symbol combines two words: danger and opportunity. The aftermath of the Ferguson situation presents both a dangerous reescalation of racial tension in America and an opportunity.

This opportunity consists of changing the conversation about community in America, an issue larger in scope than black youth, police tactics, and race relations. It’s an opportunity to define how we choose to live our lives in community.

The author Peter Block, in his masterful book Community: The Structure Of Belonging, writes about two different types communities. The first one is the stuck community.

The overriding characteristic of the stuck community is the decision to broadcast all the reasons we have to be afraid. This is a kind of advertising that exploits the fear we have of violence, of the urban core, of terrorism, of African-Americans and other ethnic groups, of immigrants, of those who are poor or undereducated, of other religions, and of other countries.

Block goes on to say, “When there is a human tragedy, most of the energy goes into finding who was to blame. There is a retributive search for responsibility and a corresponding defense from the players claiming their innocence.”

It sounds as though this piece was written about Ferguson, though the book came out in 2009. We live in a stuck community, and I’m concerned that flash points, such as Ferguson, have the potential impact of deepening our stuckness.

Most of the news stories I’ve see about Ferguson market and sell fear, and many of the community reactions to the events focus on blame and retribution. This deeply concerns me because blame doesn’t heal and revenge doesn’t satisfy.

This isn’t at all to discount accountability. When death occurs all parties involved must open themselves to review and scrutiny. And then we must move forward, and how we move forward makes all the difference.

The other kind of community that Block describes is the restorative community. This is the community that focuses on what it can accomplish.

Block writes:

Restoration is created by the kinds of conversations we initiate with each other. These conversations are the leverage point for an alternative future. The core question that underlies each conversation is “What can we create together?” Shifting the context from retribution to restoration will occur through language that moves in the following directions: from problems to possibility; from fear and fault to gifts, generosity, and abundance; from law and oversight to social fabric and chosen accountability; from corporation and systems to associational life; and from leaders to citizens.

The Ferguson situation contains an abundance of mystery and ambiguity as to what literally happened. People can assign blame in a dozen different directions, to individuals, groups, organizations, systems, and entire nations. And what do we have after all that blame and finger-pointing? Festering wounds that, if we’re lucky, scab over until the next problem arises.

We citizens have the power to change the conversation. We have the choice to focus on possibility. We have the ability to unstick ourselves.

It won’t be easy. We’ve been conditioned by the government, media, and even our own base instincts to point fingers when we’re upset. “If it bleeds, it leads,” is a media axiom that stands squarely in the way of what’s possible.

Yet nothing that’s worth having is easy to get.

In order to do this we must step into a more comprehensive view of our society. We must accept that we all have faults and we all have gifts. We must believe that everyone can strive to be better and everyone is a human being deserving respect. We must see that the systems we live in are broken and flawed and these same systems work in most cases. We must acknowledge that being a police office is an incredibly difficult job that combines danger, sensitivity, and split-second decision making and being a police officer is about engaging a community as much as it is enforcing its laws. And finally, we must embrace the reality that different racial groups in this country have unique challenges and responsibilities; we’re not all the exact same.
We get better by facing the totality of our community, not just the parts that fit neatly into our own individual narrative. We improve when we decide to heal our individual wounds, which may come from our individual circumstances or from broad social forces. We make a positive difference when we choose to open ourselves to disconfirming data and challenge ourselves to question our deeply held assumptions.

We can choose to win an argument or make a better world.

What could Ferguson, Missouri look like in two years? What’s its possibility? We often flock to cities devastated by natural disasters in order to clean up, rebuild, and restore. Sometimes we even make these cities better than they were before the disaster. Why don’t we do the same in Ferguson? We can.

If not in Ferguson, then do it in your community.

I challenge you to do one of four things in the next seven days:

1. Go to Ferguson, Missouri, not to protest but to restore. Engage with the citizenry, meet the politicians, or just be a positive presence.
2. Talk to your local politicians about what a restorative community would look like where you live. Call your city council members or other civic leaders. Challenge them to consider what’s possible.
3. Talk to someone whom you believe has an opposing opinion to yours about what happened in Ferguson. Suspend your assumptions. Ask questions. Show curiosity.
4. Use social media to share your hopes about what good can from from these difficult events. Use the hashtag #FergusonForward.

As flawed as America may be, it has a better track record of engaging its population than most other spots on Earth. America was initially conceived as a nation defined by civic engagement on a scale never before seen, and since it has slowly (sometimes painfully) expanded the groups that get to participate.

We must keep the movement going. We are a good country that can be better. It will be hard.

We’ve all seen in the last week how events in Ferguson can create danger in our society. I challenge you to identify, and assert, how events in Ferguson also create opportunity.

This post was originally featured on the Good Men Project.

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Fallout From Ferguson: The Biggest Opportunity For Our Society

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie disagrees with President Obama’s decision to normalize relations with Cuba and wants the president to demand the immediate return of a convicted cop killer from the country “before any further consideration of restoration of diplomatic relations with the Cuban government.” In a letter sent to the White House Friday and made public by his office Sunday, Christie pressed for the return of Joanne Chesimard, who was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973 during a gunbattle after being stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike. Chesimard was found guilty but escaped from prison and eventually fled …

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie disagrees with President Obama’s decision to normalize relations with Cuba and wants the president to demand the immediate return of a convicted cop killer from the country “before any further consideration of restoration of diplomatic relations with the Cuban government.”

In a letter sent to the White House Friday and made public by his office Sunday, Christie pressed for the return of Joanne Chesimard, who was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973 during a gunbattle after being stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike. Chesimard was found guilty but escaped from prison and eventually fled to Cuba, where she was granted asylum by Fidel Castro. She is now living as Assata Shakur and is the first woman placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist List.

Christie said Cuba’s decision to grant Chesimard asylum “is an affront to every resident of our state, our country, and in particular, the men and women of the New Jersey State Police, who have tirelessly tried to bring this killer back to justice.”

Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the White House’s National Security Council, said it will “continue to press in our engagement with the Cuban government for the return of U.S. fugitives in Cuba to pursue justice for the victims of their crimes.”

Christie expressed “profound disagreement” with the president’s decision, but he said the moment marked an opportunity for Cuba to prove it’s serious about change.

“I do not share your view that restoring diplomatic relations without a clear commitment from the Cuban government of the steps they will take to reverse decades of human rights violations will result in a better and more just Cuba for its people,” Christie wrote. “However, despite my profound disagreement with this decision, I believe there is an opportunity for Cuba and its government to show the American people it is serious about change.”

Christie has generally been reluctant to weigh in on contentious foreign policy issues as he mulls a run for president in 2016.

Other potential Republican candidates, most notably Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, have been publicly disputing one another’s opposing stances.

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Chris Christie Wants Obama To Demand That Cuba Return Cop Killer To U.S.

Ryan Murphy’s real-crime anthology series “American Crime Story” has finally found its lawyer. David Schwimmer is the latest actor to join “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” the first season of the upcoming series that will follow Simpson’s 1995 murder trial. The “Friends” alum will portray Robert Kardashian, Simpson’s friend and lawyer during the case. The 10-episode first season will star Cuba Gooding Jr. as the former football player and Sarah Paulson as head prosecutor Marcia Clark. The season will tell the story from the perspective of the lawyers and recount the police department’s history with the African-American community in Los Angeles at the time. The …

Ryan Murphy’s real-crime anthology series “American Crime Story” has finally found its lawyer.

David Schwimmer is the latest actor to join “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” the first season of the upcoming series that will follow Simpson’s 1995 murder trial. The “Friends” alum will portray Robert Kardashian, Simpson’s friend and lawyer during the case. The 10-episode first season will star Cuba Gooding Jr. as the former football player and Sarah Paulson as head prosecutor Marcia Clark.

The season will tell the story from the perspective of the lawyers and recount the police department’s history with the African-American community in Los Angeles at the time. The first episode will be directed by Murphy, who will also co-executive produce with Brad Falchuk.

For more, head to The Hollywood Reporter.

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David Schwimmer Will Play Robert Kardashian In O.J. Simpson Miniseries

Sunday marks National Homeless Person’s Memorial Day, commemorated on the longest night of the year. The event and awareness day honors the thousands of homeless people who have died and serves as a reminder of the innumerable hardships and risks people living without shelter face. Advocates hope that the designated memorial day will encourage health care providers, community organizations, and social service agencies to combine forces in order to more effectively address the needs of this population. At the same time though, supporters see declaring the names of the dead of equal importance, to remind society of their dignity and worth. While homelessness is…

Sunday marks National Homeless Person’s Memorial Day, commemorated on the longest night of the year.

The event and awareness day honors the thousands of homeless people who have died and serves as a reminder of the innumerable hardships and risks people living without shelter face.

Advocates hope that the designated memorial day will encourage health care providers, community organizations, and social service agencies to combine forces in order to more effectively address the needs of this population.

At the same time though, supporters see declaring the names of the dead of equal importance, to remind society of their dignity and worth.

While homelessness is on the decline in the U.S., the more than 578,000 homeless people living without permanent shelter face critical challenges. Homeless individuals face violent attacks and, compared to the general population, are at greater risk for chronic illness, poor mental health, and substance abuse, according to the CDC.

Last year, homeless people experienced a 23 percent surge in targeted attacks compared to the number of assaults in 2012, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH).

One of the drivers of these assaults, experts say, is the criminalization of homelessness.

“Cities continue to crack down on the homeless population by enforcing laws and creating a hostile attitude toward the homeless population,” Michael Stoops, NCH director of community organizing, told The Huffington Post in March when the preliminary figures were released.

Now that winter has set in, homeless people are also at a heightened risk of developing hypothermia and freezing to death.

Though hypothermia can set in anywhere between 32 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, many emergency shelters don’t open their doors until well after the thermometer drops to that point, a NCH survey released in February found.

Winter shelters in Des Moines, Iowa, for example, don’t open until the thermometer plummets to 20 degrees.

But people aren’t freezing to death just in characteristically frigid places.

In one week last winter, seven homeless people died on the streets in California from possible hypothermia, according to ABC7.

One of those casualties was Joe White, 50, who didn’t want to burden his mother and couldn’t get a spot at a shelter, ABC7 reported.

After waiting for months, the Hayward, California man finally climbed to the second spot on a list for permanent housing.

But he was found dead, likely from hypothermia, before he could get his chance to move indoors.

Several hundred people commemorated their own local version of Homeless Persons Memorial Day on Thursday night in Philadelphia to remember 149 people who were homeless or formerly homeless and died in the last year, Philly.com reported.

“[When movie stars die, their passing is] ‘mourned by millions,’ The Rev. Domenic Rossi said, according to Philly.com. “[As for the homeless], ‘God remembers them, and in God’s name, so do we.’”

Find out more about Homeless Person’s Memorial Day and what you can do here.

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Homeless Persons Memorial Day Honors Dignity, Worth Of People Without Shelter Whom We’ve Lost

Nicki Minaj’s new breakup film has arrived. In “The Pinkprint Movie,” the artist combines tracks off her new album “Pinkprint” to tell the story of a relationship holding on by its last threads. The video — which is divided into parts “The Crying Game,” “I Lied,” and “Grand Piano”– captures the accompanying feelings of heartbreak with aplomb. It lasts sixteen minutes, so make sure to have a box of tissues ready before hitting play. On the not so sad side, Minaj’s vocals have never sounded better. Some speculate that the short film is inspired by Minaj’s real-life breakup with her longtime boyfriend Safaree …

Nicki Minaj’s new breakup film has arrived. In “The Pinkprint Movie,” the artist combines tracks off her new album “Pinkprint” to tell the story of a relationship holding on by its last threads. The video — which is divided into parts “The Crying Game,” “I Lied,” and “Grand Piano”– captures the accompanying feelings of heartbreak with aplomb. It lasts sixteen minutes, so make sure to have a box of tissues ready before hitting play. On the not so sad side, Minaj’s vocals have never sounded better.

Some speculate that the short film is inspired by Minaj’s real-life breakup with her longtime boyfriend Safaree Samuels. Though Minaj has not said that the video is based on their relationship, Minaj got emotional with Power 105.1’s Angie Martinez when discussing the split in a radio interview last week:

“I’ve never been single for the past 15 years of my life,” she said.

“I don’t even know how I’m gonna function without that person in my life. I’ve never lived my life as a famous person without him. So I don’t even know how to really function. I tell my girlfriends, my best friends, but sometimes I still want to tell him stuff and get his opinion, cause…”

The “Anaconda” singer then took a break in the interview after getting visibly upset. Watch Minaj’s the full interview with Power 105.1 here.

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Nicki Minaj’s ‘The Pinkprint Movie’ Will Make Your Heart Ache

Every season has its definitive, nostalgia-inducing scent. In summer, it’s the balmy combination of warm air, sunscreen and barbecue; come spring you’re likely to get a whiff of fresh air and fresh laundry. It’s harder, though, to pinpoint winter’s signature scent. There is that distinct smell of firewood permeating people’s homes or the baked good wafting from someone’s oven or another. But you could also say the fragrance of winter is the ever-present scent of freshly-cut pine. We aren’t ones to pass up a challenge here at HuffPost Home, so we rounded up 20 home fragrances that claim to embody all the things about winter that we love, and put them to…

Every season has its definitive, nostalgia-inducing scent. In summer, it’s the balmy combination of warm air, sunscreen and barbecue; come spring you’re likely to get a whiff of fresh air and fresh laundry. It’s harder, though, to pinpoint winter’s signature scent. There is that distinct smell of firewood permeating people’s homes or the baked good wafting from someone’s oven or another. But you could also say the fragrance of winter is the ever-present scent of freshly-cut pine.

We aren’t ones to pass up a challenge here at HuffPost Home, so we rounded up 20 home fragrances that claim to embody all the things about winter that we love, and put them to the test: What is the most authentic holiday home fragrance out there?

To determine the most Christmas-y scented candle money can buy, we had our editors rate each one on the following:

How likely is this fragrance to…

… Evoke holiday cheer
… Take me back to childhood holidays
… Make me want to cozy up next to it on a chilly winter night
… Smell like the holiday ingredient it promises

Naturally, we couldn’t test every candle, diffuser or air freshener on the market, but here’s how the ones we did test ranked:

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Are you an architect, designer or blogger and would like to get your work seen on HuffPost Home? Reach out to us at homesubmissions@huffingtonpost.com with the subject line “Project submission.” (All PR pitches sent to this address will be ignored.)

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A Definitive List Of Holiday Candles, Ranked

A new video showing the aftermath of Ray Rice’s assault on his then-fiancee Janay at an Atlantic City, N.J. casino emerged this week. In the security camera footage, obtained by ABC News and released on Friday, Janay Rice (then Palmer) refuses to talk to Ray when he approaches her after the attack. They later reconcile, kissing before taken away by police. Both were arrested on assault charges. According to ABC, Rice tried to prevent the network from obtaining the footage. ABC has only released about 2 minutes of the apparently 45-minute video. Rice knocked out his now-wife Janay in an elevator at the Revel casino …

A new video showing the aftermath of Ray Rice’s assault on his then-fiancee Janay at an Atlantic City, N.J. casino emerged this week.

In the security camera footage, obtained by ABC News and released on Friday, Janay Rice (then Palmer) refuses to talk to Ray when he approaches her after the attack. They later reconcile, kissing before taken away by police. Both were arrested on assault charges.

According to ABC, Rice tried to prevent the network from obtaining the footage. ABC has only released about 2 minutes of the apparently 45-minute video.

Rice knocked out his now-wife Janay in an elevator at the Revel casino in February before dragging her unconscious body across the floor. Video of the night first emerged in February, but it wasn’t until September, when a more graphic video leaked, that widespread outrage against the NFL player grew.

The couple were married in March.

The treatment of Janay Rice after the incident, who is seen handcuffed in the new video, drew criticism:

“The police were not following protocol as the law and policies indicate in New Jersey,” executive director of the New Jersey Coalition for Battered Women Jane Shivas told the Baltimore Sun after the video was made public. “The fact that she was knocked out completely and he’s much bigger than her and a football player – for them to put her in handcuffs after an injury like that seems unconscionable. It also does not follow procedure.”

Ray Rice eventually pleaded not guilty to a third-degree charge of aggravated assault in May. He avoided standing trial and was accepted into a pre-trial intervention program. Ray Rice’s contract with the Baltimore Ravens was terminated in September after TMZ released graphic video of him striking Janay inside the elevator.

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New Ray Rice Video Shows Aftermath Of Domestic Assault