Year in Review: Our 10 Most Inspiring and Uplifting Stories From 2013

Jomiloju Tunde-Oladipo9-Year-Old Nigerian Becomes World’s Youngest Microsoft Certified Professional

Nigeria has come on the global scene in the information communication technology sector, as 9-year-old Jomiloju Tunde-Oladipo, joined the community of achievers when he became one of the world’s youngest 2013 certified Microsoft Office specialists for Office Word 2010. Jomiloju, a primary 6 pupil of Role Model School, owned by DayStar Christian Centre, Oregun, Ikeja Lagos, broke the record created in 2012 by 10-year-old JSS1 student, Seyi-Ojo Anjolaoluwa, who was adjudged the youngest Nigerian and one of the youngest people in the world to have become a Microsoft certified professional.

Kash Delano Register

Kash Delano Register: Wrongly Convicted, Released After 34 Years in Prison

In 1979, Brenda Anderson testified that a young man with whom she had gone to high school with, shot her elderly neighbor to death. Thirty-four years later, Anderson’s sister Sharon took the stand and said the account, which helped send the young man to prison, was a lie.

On November 7, 2013, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge sided with Sharon Anderson and threw out the conviction of Kash Delano Register, who maintained his innocence during more than three decades as inmate No. C11693, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Register took his first steps of freedom just after 4:30 p.m. on November 8, 2013. The 53-year-old exonerated inmate was transported from a Northern California jail to the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles, where he left a free man, CBS Los Angeles reports.

Democracy needs journalism it can trust.

This election season, the stakes are higher than usual — and so is the pressure on newsrooms to soften their coverage, stay quiet, or just disappear. Independent reporting, the kind that answers to readers instead of advertisers or political pressure, matters more in a moment like this, not less.

For over 14 years, Atlanta Black Star has stayed independent and reader-funded. We have no corporate owner and no shareholders telling us what to cover or how to cover it. That independence is also our biggest vulnerability: nothing protects it except readers choosing to fund it directly.

Newspaper ad revenue has fallen more than 80% since 2005, and local newsrooms are closing at a rate of roughly two a week nationwide. When outlets go under in a moment like this, it's rarely the independent, reader-funded ones that get to stick around.

We know a request for support isn't why you came here. But without readers choosing to fund this work directly, the depth of reporting we can do at home and abroad shrinks along with everyone else's. If you're not in a position to give, that doesn't change how much we value you as a reader.

If you are able to, a recurring contribution does more for us than a single one-time gift, because it lets us plan the next investigation instead of just the next invoice. It takes about 30 seconds, no long form, no account. Thank you for continuing to support independent journalism and freedom of the press.

Back to top