Good Morning! In case you didn’t get the memo, PETA wants you to know that fish aren’t swimming vegetables. During “Fish are Friends, not Food Week,” the animal advocacy group is raising awareness about the rights of fish. They say keeping fish off your plate is not only good for the animals, it can also be good for you. “Fish often live in water that is so gross, you wouldn’t dream of drinking it! But if you’re eating fish, you’re eating this toxic crap,” says the group on their website.

Today, expect a break from yesterday’s nasty storms. The weatherman is calling for partly cloudy skies with a high around 90°F.

Here’s what’s brewing in the news this morning:

Settlement reached in Oscar Grant case

A San Francisco Bay area transit agency Tuesday agreed to pay $1.3 million to the mother of an unarmed black man who was fatally shot by a white transit officer in 2009, reports The Grio.

Johannes Meheserle, 29, shot and killed 22-year-old Oscar Grant on New Year’s Day in 2009. Within hours of the shooting, videos recorded by bystanders showing the former transit officer firing a bullet into Grant’s back as he lay face down were posted online.

The videos were later used as evidence during Mehserle’s murder trail, in which he testified that he meant to use his stun gun instead of his .40-caliber pistol.

He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and released earlier this month after serving a year in Los Angeles jail.

"We have said that we thought that verdict was a miscarriage of justice and the involuntary manslaughter was not a true representation of Mr. Mehserle's conduct," said the Grant family’s attorney John Burris. "He got away with it."

This is second settlement that BART has reached with the Grant family. The agency agreed to pay $1.5 million to the mother of Grant's 6-year-old daughter last year. A civil right’s suit filed by Grant’s friends is still in litigation.
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Black Tar Heroin in the suburbs, serious as crack in the ghetto
A decade ago, doctors at CMC-Mercy rarely saw patients addicted to black tar heroin in its detoxification program. Now 40 percent of their patients are being treated for abuse of black tar heroin and related prescription drug abuse, reports the Charlotte Observer. The escalation of black tar heroin in Charlotte suburbs has police worried about growing addiction and dangers for young people. "It's as serious as the beginning of the crack cocaine epidemic," UNC Charlotte criminal justice professor Paul Friday told members of Charlotte City Council on Monday. (Read more here)
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Michigan father may lose daughter over medical marijuana
Livingston Thompson Jr. has suffered with epilepsy for the past 20 years and says that nothing has been successful in treating his illness, except medical marijuana. Now his choice of treatment could cost him custody of his 10-year-old daughter. A judge ruled that if Thompson tests positive for marijuana, his daughter would be taken away. Johnson said he’d be “crushed” if that happens and believes his stress-induced seizures would become more frequent. (Read more here)
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Mom sues fraternity over deadly hazing
The mother of a 19-year-old Cornell University student who died during an alcohol-related fraternity hazing ritual filed a multimillion-dollar wrongful-death lawsuit against the Sigma Alpha Epsilon national fraternity on Monday, reports NBC News. Marie Lourdes Andre's son George Desdunes was found unconscious on a couch at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house at the university and later pronounced dead. In a statement, Sigma Alpha Epsilon said it suspended the Cornell chapter's charter and currently has no active chapter at Cornell University. Photo: Marie Andre with her son George Desdunes. (Read more here)

*** This is your chance to speak out. Share what's brewing on your mind in the comments section below.

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