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2 black men were unjustly handcuffed at Starbucks. Now, they're meeting with the CEO.

They were just waiting to start a business meeting. Now their story is fueling a movement that could permanently change corporate culture.

Two unnamed black men were filmed being led out of a Starbucks location by six Philadelphia police officers on April 12. At the time of this post, the video had already been viewed more than 10 million times.

The city's police commissioner initially defended the arrest, which reportedly came after a local Starbucks manager called in a complaint. Meanwhile, outrage over the incident grew — and so did pressure on Starbucks to address what increasingly is being labeled a case of racial bias.


Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney chimed in, saying, "I am heartbroken to see Philadelphia in the headlines for an incident that — at least based on what we know at this point — appears to exemplify what racial discrimination looks like in 2018."

After issuing three poorly received press releases, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson gave his first public interview about the incident to "Good Morning America" on Monday, April 16.

He apologized and offered to meet with the men directly to find a solution.

It turns out, Johnson's most recent apology was every bit as direct and specific as it should have been — and other public figures should take note.

"The circumstances surrounding the incident and the outcome in our store on Thursday were reprehensible. They were wrong," Johnson said. "And for that I personally apologize to the two gentlemen that were visiting our store."

"It's my responsibility to understand what happened and what led to that and to ensure that we fix it," he said.

Johnson added that Starbucks would update its training practices at its more than 28,000 locations, including what he described as "unconscious bias" in terms of how employees and managers treat people of different races and backgrounds. He reiterated that the company has an explicit policy against racial profiling.

"What happened to those two gentlemen was wrong," Johnson said. "We will hold ourselves accountable."

A "good apology" alone doesn't fix the problem, but it helps. Even news anchors who interviewed Johnson agreed, with George Stephanopoulos commenting, "This guy did not hedge. He took full responsibility."

"We rarely see that from a CEO," co-anchor Robin Roberts added. "He wasn't mincing words at all."

An injustice was committed, and that can't be forgotten. But Johnson's offer to meet with the two men is a step forward.

He said he'd like to meet face-to-face with the two men so that he can apologize directly.

"I'd like to invite them to join me in finding a constructive way to resolve this issue," he said.

It still remains to be seen exactly how this situation resolves (and a subsequent incident in Los Angeles that apparently took place on the same day as Johnson's interview doesn't bode well). After all, the two men in question still haven't used their opportunity to have their voices heard.

Still, it's clear that there is power in people speaking out and applying pressure on business and political leaders to provide accountability and solutions when an injustice needs to be corrected.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

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An English doctor named Edward Jenner took incredible risks to try to rid his world of smallpox. Because of his efforts and the efforts of scientists like him, the only thing between deadly diseases like the ones below and extinction are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Don't be that parent.

Unfortunately, because of the misinformation from the anti-vaccination movement, some of these diseases have trended up in a really bad way over the past several years.

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A beautiful cruise ship crossing the seas.

Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

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Joy

Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

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Joy

Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

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