The African Union, an organization that represents the entire continent of Africa, blasted Donald Trump on Friday for his recent remarks calling African nations “shithole countries.”

“The African Union Mission wishes to express its infuriation, disappointment and outrage over the unfortunate comment made by Mr. Donald Trump, the President of the United States of America, which remarks dishonor the celebrated American creed and respect for diversity and human dignity,” the union said in a statement.

UKIP has suspended its leader's girlfriend over a series of racist text messages she apparently sent about Prince Harry's fiancee Meghan Markle.

Jo Marney, who is currently in a relationship with UKIP leader Henry Bolton, said Markle would "taint" the Royal Family and had a "tiny brain," in messages published by The Mail On Sunday.

She also described Markel as a "negro" and said that black people were ugly.

Marney has apologised for the remarks but insisted they had been taken out of context. Bolton has so far refused to comment.

Marney sent the messages around three weeks before she entered a relationship with the current UKIP leader, the Mail On Sunday adds.

Throughout his 2015 gubernatorial campaign, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin repeatedly promised that if elected, he'd get rid of both the state's award-winning, beloved Kynect (sorry..."kynect&quot ACA exchange as well as fully repealing ACA Medicaid expansion in the state.

For various reasons, including his Democratic opponent running a poor campaign and healthy doses of racism and stupidity, 85,000 more voters still chose Bevin anyway, and he did indeed pull the plug on kynect last year. However, he had quite a bit more trouble tackling Medicaid repeal than he apparently counted on, and walked back that promise significantly after taking office, instead pushing a bizarre plan to set up some sort of "rewards point system" for Medicaid expansion enrollees instead.

Until today, that is. Just 24 hours after CMS Administrator Seema Verma announced that it's open season on adding work requirements to Medicaid enrollment eligibility, Kentucky officially implemented just such a measure:

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There’s a “literacy” provision. If you don’t work enough hours and lose coverage, you can get to see a doctor again if you can pass a state literacy course about health or money.
To remain eligible for coverage, non-exempt beneficiaries must complete 80 hours per month of community engagement activities, such as employment, education, job skills training, and community service. Beneficiaries will have their eligibility suspended for failure to demonstrate compliance with the community engagement requirement and will be able to reactivate their eligibility on the first day of the month after they complete 80 hours of community engagement in a 30-day period or a state-approved health literacy or financial literacy course. Beneficiaries who are in an eligibility suspension for failure to meet the requirement on their redetermination date will have their enrollment terminated and will be required to submit a new application. Kentucky will provide good cause exemptions in certain circumstances for beneficiaries who cannot meet requirements.

Trump Flees White House MLK Ceremony After Reporter Repeatedly Shouts “Are You A Racist? [VIDEO]

Dictionaries have been updated overnight to reflect the current interest in the definition of the word shithole.

With Donald Trump using the word to describe locations where people have a skin colour he’s not particularly fond of, millions of people have sought clarification for the term.

A spokesperson for Oxford English Dictionaries told us, “Previously we had assumed it would be obvious when we explained it was a ‘deeply unpleasant location’, even going so far as to add i.e. Coventry for a little extra colour – but this was clearly not enough.

“With so many international users of our dictionaries – many of whom have never even heard of Coventry, the lucky sods – we felt compelled to update the definition to something people can see the world over. Like the Trump hotel.

“Think of a shithole as a hugely disappointing location, somewhere that promised much but delivers very little, and where paying money to be there makes you feel like you need to take a shower. But not in the shithole itself, at home.

Conservatism is a behaviour, a set of opinions, not a fixed identity. Biology is not destiny, and it is certainly not ethics. Nobody tumbles out of the womb with decent politics. No, not even in Sweden. Nobody is born believing that people who die young of preventable diseases because they are unable to afford private healthcare have only themselves to blame for not working harder. That’s a learned, developed standpoint, and one that says a great deal about who a person is, and the choices they’ve made about the world they want to live in.

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I discriminate against people who are rightwing and conservative. I’m entirely happy to say so. I don’t view it as hypocrisy to judge people by their personal qualities, rather than their background and appearance. If people are bigots and bullies, I will judge them for that. And for those who think it’s hypocrisy to refuse to tolerate intolerance, perhaps they should read the philosopher Karl Popper, who got there decades before me when he wrote of the paradox of tolerance: “If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”

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It used to be conservatives who were more concerned with “character”. It is odd that the idea of decency and personal responsibility has now become the domain of progressives. But I believe in fairness, and if the right are going to co-opt the language of tolerance for their own ends, it’s only fair that we should get to pinch something of theirs in good faith. Character matters. How you treat other people matters. Actions have consequences, and sometimes those consequences include other people telling you you’re being a dick. And, yes, that’s hard.

One of perpetrators of a particularly infamous hate crime during the civil rights movement died in prison Thursday. Edgar Ray Killen, who was convicted for involvement in the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, died at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, the Associated Press reported.

Killen, 92, was serving three consecutive 20-year terms at the facility, the Los Angeles Times reported. Foul play was not suspected in the former Ku Klux Klan leader’s death.

He was a farmer, preacher and sawmill operator in Mississippi during the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. In 2005, he was convicted of manslaughter for the 1964 deaths of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman outside Philadelphia, Mississippi.