Good Morning! The day got off to a rainy start, and the weatherman says more rain may be on the way. Today's forecast includes a possible stray afternoon thunderstorm with partly cloudy skies and highs around 84°. 

Did you know that almost 70 percent of high school students are not getting the recommended hours of sleep on school nights. According to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, insufficient sleep is associated with a variety of health-risk behaviors, including substance use, being sexually active, physical fighting and serious consideration of a suicide attempt. 

Here’s what’s brewing in the news:

Black consumers growing in buying power

By the year 2015, the buying power of African Americans is expected to reach $1.1 trillion, according to The State of the African-American Consumer Report. 

The National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), a federation of more than 200 Black community newspapers across the U.S., released the report this week in collaboration with Nielsen, a global provider of insights and analytics into what consumers watch and buy.

The report was released, in part, with the intent of presenting an opportunity for Fortune 500 companies to examine and further understand the importance of the flourishing African-American market segment and with the hopes that consumers will become more aware of their buying power, and thus make informed decisions about the companies they choose to support.

Key findings in the report include:

• The number of African-American households earning $75,000 or higher grew by almost 64%, a rate close to 12% greater than the change in the overall population’s earning between 2000 and 2009.
• African-Americans in higher income brackets, spend 300% more in higher-end retail grocers, more than any other high income household.
• African-Americans use more than double the amount of mobile phone voice minutes compared to Whites – 1,298 minutes a month vs. 606.
• African-Americans may spend less on each shopping trip, but they make the most trips – 167 – annually of any other group.
• African-Americans over-index on purchases of health and beauty products, household cleaning items, clothes, food and electronics to name a few.

QUESTION: With a buying power of nearly $1 trillion annually, if African-Americans were a country, they’d be the 16th largest country in the world. How do you think that power could best be used to benefit the community?
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AP accused of racist Obama coverage

Was the Associated Press’ coverage of President Barack Obama’s speech before the Congressional Black Caucus racist? That’s the subject of debate in the following clip from Sunday morning’s Up with Chris Hayes. The panel discussed the contrast between the way Politico reported President Obama’s speech and the Associated Press’ reporting.

African-American author Karen Hunter complained that it was “inherently racist” for the news service to transcribe Obama's speech without cleaning it up as other outlets did--specifically including the "dropped g's" as in “stop complainin’”

New Republic contributing editor and noted linguistics expert John McWhorter, who is also African American, countered that the g-less version "is actually the correct one," noting that the president's victory in the 2008 election was due, in part, to how effortlessly "he can switch into that [black] dialect." He says Black Americans love to hear him talk that way should take pride in the “coded” dialect.

Watch and Discuss:

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