Sweden’s population grew from 9 million to 9.5 million in the years 2004-2012, mainly due to immigration from countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia

In Sweden, 16% of all newborns have mothers born in non-Western countries. Employment rate among immigrants: 54%. Sweden now has the second highest number of rapes in the world, after South Africa, which at 53.2 per 100,000 is six times higher than the United States. Statistics now suggest that 1 out of every 4 Swedish women will be raped. In 2003, Sweden’s rape statistics were higher than average at 9.24, but in 2005 they shot up to 36.8 and by 2008 were up to 53.2. Now they are almost certainly even higher as Muslim immigrants continue forming a larger percentage of the population. With Muslims represented in as many as 77% of the rape cases and a major increase in rape cases paralleling a major increase in Muslim immigration, the wages of Muslim immigration are proving to be a sexual assault epidemic by a misogynistic ideology. The statistics are skewed by urban centers where the Islamic colonists cluster. In Stockholm, in the summer of 2012, there was an average of 5 rapes a day. Stockholm has gone from a Swedish city to a city that is one-third immigrant and is between a fifth and a quarter Muslim. Sweden, like the rest of the West, will have to come to terms with the fact that it can either have female equality or Muslim immigration. It cannot have both.

Somalia: A human rights group says that a woman who reported being raped by security forces was herself charged by the government

Her crime? Simulating a criminal offense and making a false accusation, among other charges; those two carry a sentence of up to nine years. Human Rights Watch reports that four others, including the woman's husband and a journalist, were also charged with crimes such as "assisting her to secure a profit for the rape allegation." As HRW explains, the woman gave an interview to the journalist about the rape on January 8, 2013; it wasn't published, but the journalist reported the crime two days later to police — only to find himself detained and his home searched. The group has called the charges politically motivated, and reports that Somali police have accused the journalist of helping to produce an al-Jazeera report on rape in Mogadishu; al-Jazeera says that he was not involved. Based on the charges filed, the government seems to be accusing the five of conspiring to discredit it and profit off their claim. Rape is far from a rare occurrence in Somalia.

Immigrants are experiencing higher rates of HIV infection in New York City

The percentage of New Yorkers diagnosed with HIV who are foreign-born jumped from 27% in 2007 to 31% in 2010, according to the Health Department, which called it a “public health failure” in a report. In 2001, that percentage was 17%. Ingrid Floyd, director at Iris House, which helps people with HIV/AIDS, said that about 40% of their clients are Latinos, and half of those are immigrants, many from the Dominican Republic and Central America. Across the United States, Latinos make up 16.7% of the population but 20% of all new HIV/AIDS cases.

Atlanta black gunman Nkosi Thandiwe says that he shot 3 white girls because of anti-white lessons that he learned in college

During his testimony, Thandiwe suggested that his reason for even purchasing the gun that he used in the shootings was to enforce beliefs he’d developed about white people during his later years as an anthropology major at the University of West Georgia. “I was trying to prove a point that Europeans had colonized the world, and as a result of that, we see a lot of evil today,” he said. “In terms of slavery, it was something that needed to be answered for. I was trying to spread the message of making white people mend.” He said that the night before the shooting, he attended a so-called “Peace Party” intended to address his concerns about helping the black community find equal footing, but two white people were there. “I was upset,” Thandiwe said. “I was still upset Friday. I took the gun to work because I was still upset from Thursday night.” He even admitted to earlier that day getting angry enough on the job to shoot his supervisor. “What my boss said to me …,” he told the jury, “that rage almost made me pull out my gun on him.”

Rabbi equates child molestation with having diarrhea

Chabad Rabbi Manis Friedman doesn't seem to think that child sexual abuse is a serious matter.

Canada: Ex-psychiatrist's rabbi calls prison term a "death sentence"

Sentencing arguments have concluded for Aubrey Levin, the Jewish psychiatrist found guilty of sexually assaulting three of his male patients. Levin, 74, who had served in the past as a court-appointed psychiatrist, was originally charged with nine counts of sexual assault. The jury returned guilty verdicts on three counts, not guilty verdicts on two counts and was unable to reach a decision on the other four counts, which led Justice Donna Shelley to declare a mistrial on those four. The court saw video taken by a patient with a hidden camera that showed Levin undoing the man's belt and fondling him. Crown prosecutor Dallas Sopko told the judge that she is requesting a term between six and eight years. Sopko told the judge that the aggravating factors are Levin's position of trust, the vulnerability of victims, and the length and repetitive nature of assaults. Levin's rabbi said that to send him to prison would be a "death sentence." Two weeks before the verdict, a juror was dismissed after she came forward to say that a woman she believed to be Levin's wife had offered the juror a bribe to find Levin not guilty. A charge of obstruction of justice is pending against Erica Levin.

Britain: A senior rabbi has been filmed telling a victim of child sexual abuse not to go to the police

Rabbi Ephraim Padwa, who is leader of the Strictly Orthodox Jewish community in Britain, told the victim that it was “mesira”, or forbidden, to report a suspected Jewish sex offender to a non-Jewish authority. Strictly Orthodox Jewish people, known as Charedi, number 40,000 people, around a sixth of the Jewish population in Britain. Rabbi Padwa, who is head of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations in Stamford Hill, north London, was recorded by a former member of the tight-knit community using a hidden camera. The footage shows the victim telling Rabbi Padwa about someone “who sexually abused me when I was younger, when I was a child and I’m looking for your advice, to be honest, what to do…Would do you think maybe, is it a good idea to speak to the police about it?” "Oh no," Padwa answers, explaining that doing so would breach Rabbinic Law. The victim says that child sex abuse is a “very serious issue”, but is told not to tell the police. Rabbi Padwa adds: “Men Tur Nisht,” which is Yiddish for “people must not tell tales.” He continues: “The police is not the solution.” Another Charedi Rabbi claims that Rabbi Ephraim Padwa recently forbade a father who had told the police that his son had been sexually abused from pursuing the case. The man taped speaking to Rabbi Padwa agreed to help investigate possible sex abuse cover-ups after claiming that he was abused as a child by a fellow Charedi.

Black crime: A Delaware school custodian carried on a long-term relationship with a 16-year-old student that was uncovered after another student accused him of sexual assault

Delaware State Police arrested Sussex Tech High School janitor Timothy Morris, 29, of Seaford on charges including 25 counts of fourth-degree rape, unlawful sexual contact and sexual harassment. Morris and a 19-year-old, who was 16 when they began their sexual relationship, had sex both in and out of the Sussex Tech building from March 2010 to August 2011. A current 16-year-old student said that she became uncomfortable after Morris would give her unsolicited hugs and even once tried to kiss the girl. The black male also began texting her after obtaining her cell phone number through social media. After receiving the sexual harassment complaint involving the current student, police contacted the 19-year-old again - they had earlier reached out to her after a family member reported the relationship but the victim didn’t cooperate with the investigation - who then said she and Morris had a sexual relationship when she was 16. The African-American male is being held in custody in lieu of $208,500 cash bail.

Hispanic crime: A former Brooklyn middle-school janitor has been convicted of repeatedly raping and sexually abusing an eighth-grade girl

The Latino, Ambiorix Rodriguez, 34, had sexually attacked the girl over the course of five months in 2010 and 2011 in the basement of the Middle School for Marketing and Legal Studies in East Flatbush, where he was the head custodian until his arrest in April 2011. In the first episode, Rodriguez inappropriately touched the girl, who was then 12. The next day, he repeated the offense, and over the coming months he continued to grope , according to prosecutors. Rodriguez, who remains in custody, was convicted of four counts of predatory sexual assault against a child, two counts of second-degree rape and six counts of second-degree sexual abuse. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Chicago: A black teenage girl who had just performed at Obama’s inaugural has been gunned down just blocks from the high school that she attended

The victim, 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, was taking shelter from the rain with a group of 10 to 12 teenagers under a canopy in Vivian Gordon Harsh Park when someone jumped a fence, ran up to them, and opened fire. Just days before, Hadiya performed with her high school band at Obama’s inauguration.

British and Chinese scientists have found a genetic variant which explains why Chinese populations may be more vulnerable to the H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu

The discovery of the genetic variant could help doctors find those people at high risk of severe flu and prioritize them for treatment, researchers said. It may also help explain why new strains of flu virus often emerge first in Asia, where the variant known as rs12252-C is more common in the population than elsewhere, they said. "Understanding why some people may be worse affected than others is crucial in improving our ability to manage flu epidemics and to prevent people dying from the virus," said Tao Dong at Britain's Oxford University, who led the study. The research found that having the rs12252-C variant could increase the chances of severe infection by six times. H1N1 swine flu swept around the world in 2009 and 2010. A study published recently estimated that at least one in five people worldwide were infected and around 200,000 killed in the first year of the outbreak, which was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation in June 2009. Previous research has found that rs12252-C is linked to more severe flu infections. For this study, researchers focused on the variant because it is 100 times more common in Han Chinese, the predominant ethnic group in China, than in white populations indigenous to West Asia and Europe. The variant is present in the genetic make-up of about 1 in 3,000 people in white populations. The results showed that it was present in 69% of Chinese patients with severe pandemic H1N1 in 2009 compared with 25% who only had a mild version of the infection.

NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous has said that black Americans are doing far worse than when Obama first took office

The black unemployment rate was 12.7% when Obama took office. While the unemployment rate in the United States as a whole is below 8%, the Labor Department reported that the black jobless rate was up from 12.9% to 14% for December 2012. The worst during Obama’s first term was in September 2011, with 16.7% unemployment for blacks — the highest since 1983, the Department of Labor reports. The black teen jobless rate hit a staggering 39.3% in July 2012.

Police arrest Hispanic suspect in Harlem hate crime

NJ State police report that they, in collaboration with the NYPD, have apprehended a suspect. Melissa Mark-Viverito said that the person in custody is Jason Commisso, previously identified as a suspect in the assaults targeting Asian-Americans in East Harlem. According to New Jersey State Police, they were working with New York authorities to track a suspect in the string of assaults targeting Asian-Americans in East Harlem. NJ state troopers located the suspect on a Greyhound bus on the New Jersey Turnpike heading southbound in Gloucester. They stopped the bus and took the suspect into custody without incident. He was recently moved from Morristown station to Gloucenster County Jail, where he was charged by the NJ police with being a fugitive from justice and is "sitting in jail for a bit until the extradition process [to take him to the NYPD] works its way out," NJ state police said. Previously the NYPD identified Jason Commisso, 34, as a suspect in those assaults. They have not confirmed that he is the individual currently in custody. However, Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, who has been active in responding to these assaults, released a statement "in response to the arrest of Jason Commisso." "Today we are all breathing a sigh of relief as the suspect behind eight vicious muggings of Asian American East Harlem residents has finally been apprehended by police," Mark-Viverito said. Commisso is described as a Hispanic male, 6-foot-1 and 200 lbs, with brown hair and hazel eyes.

Rupert Murdoch apologizes to his Jewish masters

Rupert Murdoch has apologized for a "grotesque, offensive cartoon" printed in the Sunday Times that has led to complaints of anti-Semitism. The cartoon, by Gerald Scarfe, appears to depict Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu building a brick wall containing the blood and limbs of Palestinians. It has the text: "Israeli elections. Will cementing peace continue?"

Two black men have been arrested for stealing thousands of dollars of chicken wings

Dewayne Patterson, 35, and Renaldo Jackson, 26, stole $65,000 in frozen chickens from Nordic Cold Storage in Doraville where the two were employed. The theft happened just before noon on January 12, 2013. Police reports state that the black men had rented a truck and backed it to the bay doors. Video obtained by investigators show the men using a forklift to load 10 pallets of Tyson frozen chicken wings. The wings have yet to be found, but the men were put on ice after being arrested for felony theft by taking. According to Gwinnett County Jail records, they have since been released on $2,950 bond.

A series of ritual killings of young women in the West African nation of Cameroon has caused panic in the capital city Yaounde

Families are now refusing to let their daughters go out after a spate of gruesome killings of young girls who were abducted by the drivers of motorcycle taxis before being murdered and dismembered. Police have found 18 mutilated bodies on the streets of the capital in the past few weeks, five of them outside a nursery school, and all are believed to be linked to occult rituals. In some parts of the country traditional healers believe that body parts including eyes, genitals, breasts and tongues have mystical powers, with many believing they bring riches and other good fortune. Others believe that performing a human sacrifice will bring good luck. Ritual killings were common in Cameroon until the 1970s but as education spread, the number of murders decreased. Now families fear the practice is coming back, with the latest wave of killings causing near-hysteria in the capital city.

Red coloration -- historically seen as costly in vertebrates -- might represent some physiological benefit after all

Pheomelanin, which is responsible for red hair and freckles in humans and orange and chestnut coloration in other animals, is known to increase the damage to skin cells and melanoma risk when present in large amounts. Furthermore, its creation involves the consumption of glutathione, a beneficial antioxidant. In an attempt to unearth the factors favoring the evolution of pheomelanin in spite of its costs, Ismael Galván and Anders P. Møller of the University of Paris-Sud examined the survival from one breeding season to the next of a wild European population of barn swallows, as well as the annual survival rates of 58 species of American birds. A recent hypothesis claims that the consumption of cysteine (a component of glutathione) that occurs when pheomelanin is produced can be beneficial under conditions of low stress. Cysteine, which is mainly acquired through diet, can be toxic at high levels, so the production of pheomelanin may help to sequester excess quantities of this amino acid. Galván and Møller measured birds' blood levels of uric acid and analyzed the coloration of their chestnut throat feathers (an indication of pheomelanin content). When they compared birds that had similar uric acid levels (and therefore similar capacities to excrete excess amino acids), they found that both the European barn swallows and the American birds with larger amounts of pheomelanin in their feathers survived better. This study is the first to propose that the costs/benefits of pheomelanin may depend on prevailing environmental conditions, and its results suggest that the production of this pigment may even be beneficial in some circumstances. Given that all higher vertebrates, including humans, present pheomelanin in skin, pelage, and plumage, Galván and Møller's findings increase the scant current knowledge on the physiological consequences of pheomelanin and open new avenues for research that will help us understand the evolution of pigmentation.

An Israeli government official has for the first time acknowledged the practice of injecting women of Ethiopian origin with the long-acting contraceptive Depo-Provera

Israeli Health Ministry Director General Prof. Ron Gamzu has instructed the four health maintenance organizations to stop the practice as a matter of course. The ministry and other state agencies had previously denied knowledge or responsibility for the practice, which was first reported in 2008. Gamzu’s letter instructs all gynecologists in the HMOs “not to renew prescriptions for Depo-Provera for women of Ethiopian origin if for any reason there is concern that they might not understand the ramifications of the treatment.” He also instructed physicians to avail themselves of translators if need be. Gamzu’s letter came in response to a letter from Sharona Eliahu-Chai of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, representing several women’s rights and Ethiopian immigrants’ groups. The letter demanded that the injections cease immediately and that an investigation be launched into the practice. Recently, on an Educational Television program, journalist Gal Gabbay revealed the results of interviews with 35 Ethiopian immigrants. The women’s testimony could help explain the almost 50% decline over the past 10 years in the birth rate of Israel’s Ethiopian community. According to the program, while the women were still in transit camps in Ethiopia they were sometimes intimidated or threatened into taking the injection. “They told us they are inoculations,” said one of the women interviewed. “They told us people who frequently give birth suffer. We took it every three months. We said we didn’t want to.”

Obama's America: Getting a college degree still helps your chances of getting a job, but not necessarily a good one

Some Americans are becoming over-educated for the jobs that are available to them, as data shows that more college educated workers are taking low-skill jobs that are clearly below their qualifications. Take taxi drivers for example. About 15%, or more than than 1 in 7, had at least a bachelor's degree in 2010, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Compare that to 1970 when less than 1% of taxi drivers had college degrees. And the job description hasn't changed much, if at all, since then. "A lot of people, particularly people with bachelor's degrees, are getting jobs, but not good jobs," said Richard Vedder, an economist at Ohio University. In a recent study, Vedder shows that about 37% of employed U.S. college graduates are working in jobs that require no more than a high school diploma. Those include jobs like taxi drivers, sales clerks, firefighters and telemarketers. He calls this phenomenon "credential inflation," as the supply of college grads is growing faster than the jobs requiring that level of education. Vedder argues that an underemployment problem is likely to persist even after the U.S. economy recovers fully from the jobs crisis. He predicts that the number of college grads will grow by 19 million between 2010 and 2020, while the number of jobs requiring that education is expected to grow by less than 7 million.

The reasons why U.S. politicians are pro-immigration is that the Democrats want a bunch of new citizen-voters, while the Republicans want a new, legal pool of cheap labor

As Mangan points out, anyone still laboring under the delusion that Republicans are the patriotic party or that Democrats want to protect the rights of lower-income American workers really is laboring under a delusion.

A recent study has found that, between 2001 to 2010, pediatric ADHD diagnoses jumped 67% in blacks, 60% in Hispanics, and 30% in whites, yet they remained unchanged and low in Asians and Pacific Islanders

Throughout the entire study, white children had the highest rates of ADHD diagnosis. However, the largest increases in diagnosis rates were seen in black and Hispanic children. From 2001 to 2010, the ADHD diagnosis rate in whites rose from 4.7% to 5.6%; in blacks it rose from 2.6% to 4.1%; and in Hispanics, the rate rose from 1.7% to 2.5%. Although, overall, boys were more likely to be diagnosed than girls, researchers attributed the increase in diagnosis in blacks to an increasing likelihood of diagnosis in black girls specifically.

Roughly half of all black and Hispanic patients who enter publicly funded alcohol treatment programs do not complete treatment, compared to 62% of white patients who did complete treatment, according to a new study from a team of researchers including the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

According to researchers, the statistical differences roughly translate to 13,000 fewer completed episodes of drug treatment for black patients and 8,000 fewer for Hispanic patients, compared to white patients. Other minority groups, including Native Americans, also showed lower completion rates than white patients. Only Asian American patients fared better than white patients for both drug and alcohol treatment completion.

After publicly hanging two muggers, Iran has released photos of an apparent finger-chopping machine used for punishing criminals

The four images show a convicted robber and adulterer losing a finger before he is sentenced to 99 lashes and three years in prison. But he shows no sign of pain during the terrifying ordeal — perhaps because he has been drugged. Mahmoud Amiry-Moghaddam, a spokesperson for Iran Human Rights in Norway, says that the machine is a new attempt to quell political protest. "Every time we get closer to an election, the number of these incidents increases," says Amiry-Moghaddam. "And we’re getting quite close to the presidential election [slated for June 2013]. I believe this is a strategy to instill fear in the population so as to avoid any protests."

Haiti has an average IQ of 68

Jason Malloy examines some interesting intelligence studies concerning Haiti.

Britain is self-segregating as white families flee urban areas for the countryside and outer suburbs

The trend is causing an ethnic cliff, in which the proportion of households from minority backgrounds is vastly different in areas just a few miles apart. Some outer London boroughs - including Enfield, Waltham Forest and Redbridge - have seen their white British population drop by as much as a quarter over the past decade. The same applies to urban areas around the capital such as Luton, Reading and Bedfordshire. Meanwhile, the white British population in many suburban and rural districts just next door has soared, according to research produced by Birkbeck College, University of London, in conjunction with think tank Demos. Between 2001 and 2011, the proportion of white British in London's population fell from 58% to 45%. The share of ethnic minorities reached 40% of the total, a 39% increase. Affluent white families from diverse wards in London are shifting to less diverse wards in the outer suburbs. In the extreme example of Barking and Dagenham, the research shows, a third of the white British population departed between 2001 and 2011. Since many lack the resources to move or are council tenants, this suggests that a majority of local white British who could leave may have done so. The share of minorities in London has increased by a percentage point a year since 1991. Minorities are moving out of their areas of concentration to better neighborhoods, resulting in ever larger heavily-minority zones. The situation has been likened to that in the United States - where white Americans leave or avoid majority minority neighborhoods and seek out areas that are over 70% white.

South Asian father chews off his 5-month-old daughter's nose and upper lip because she wouldn't stop crying

Little Radha can't be fed normally and may not be able to speak properly unless she undergoes extensive plastic surgery - because her nose and upper lip have been bitten off. The man who did this to the five-month-old was her own father, Bhadar Singh, a farm laborer in Siyana village of the Bikaner district in Rajasthan. The father chewed off his daughter's lips and nose because he was angered by her crying. He has been arrested and booked under various sections of the Indian penal code (IPC) for causing grievous hurt with dangerous means, which provide for a sentence ranging from 10 years in jail up to life imprisonment. According to the police, Bhadar, 36, came home drunk when his wife Santosh and his sister Saroj were applying mehendi (henna) to their hands. He asked his wife to do some work. Showing him her hands, she said that she wasn't able to, at which Bhadar started abusing and beating her. When Saroj protested, he warned her against intervening. But seeing her mother being assaulted, their elder daughter, three-year old Bhanwar Kanwar, started crying. This angered the drunken Bhadar, who duly turned his fury on Bhanwar. He is accused of biting the toddler on her back, hands and other body parts before throwing her on the ground. Baby Radha was asleep in another room, but was woken up by her sister's screams and began crying. Her father then started biting his younger child. Horrified, his wife and sister ran out to raise the alarm. The neighbors then rushed in and grabbed Bhadar, who was handed over to the police. Radha and Bhanwar were taken to the government-run Prince Bijay Singh Memorial (PBSM) Hospital in Bikaner. Dr Girish Prabhakar, head of the pediatric surgery department of the hospital, said that although Radha was out of danger, she would have to undergo extensive, drastic plastic surgery.

A deranged and abusive Hispanic said that he blow-torched his estranged wife to give her a little pain so that she would would learn a lesson

Carlos Diaz, 35, of Inwood, New York, torched Cathy Zapata, his 38-year-old wife and the mother of their 5-year-old son in mid-January 2013. "Now she can worry about our kid and get serious instead of focusing on going out and other men," Diaz said from his Rikers Island visitors room. Diaz turned himself after setting Zapata aflame in an Inwood lot and then dousing his old auto shop with gasoline. He said that he went berserk after he discovered a nude photo that Zapata had sent of herself to another man on her cell phone. Zapata had been living apart from her husband in nearby Harlem after leaving her husband. The two were married in 2007 and separated in 2010. They have a 5-year-old son together.

An American pastor from Idaho has been sentenced to eight years in one of Iran's harshest prisons for preaching Christianity in Iranian homes

Saeed Abedini, a U.S. citizen who was born in Iran, has been held since September 2012 and charged with threatening the national security of Iran. The 32-year-old father of two says that he was in the Islamic country only to establish an orphanage and was not preaching Christianity.

A starving man in North Korea has been executed after murdering his two children for food

A hidden famine in the farming provinces of North and South Hwanghae is believed to have killed up to 10,000 people and there are fears that incidents of cannibalism have risen. The grim story is just one to emerge as residents battle starvation after a drought hit farms and shortages were compounded by party officials confiscating food. Undercover reporters say that one man dug up his grandchild's corpse and ate it. Another, boiled his own child for food. It has not the first time that reports of cannibalism have come out of the country. In May 2012, the South Korean state-run Korean Institute for National Unification said that one man was executed after eating part of a colleague and then trying to sell the remains as mutton. One man killed and ate a girl and a third report of cannibalism was recorded from 2011. Another man was executed after murdering 11 people and selling the bodies as pork. There were also reports of cannibalism in the country's network of prison camps. North Korea was hit by a terrible famine in the 1990s - known as the Arduous March - which killed between 240,000 and 3.5 million people.

Obama's Illinois now has the worst credit rating of any state in the nation

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service has downgraded Illinois from an “A” rating to “A-minus”, making it the worst in the country. The New York ratings firm’s ranking means taxpayers may have to pay tens of millions of dollars more in interest when the state borrows money for roads and other projects. The downgrade is the latest fallout over the $96.8 billion debt to five state pension systems. The ratings came out because Illinois plans to issue $500 million in bonds soon.

In general, the unemployment rate in the United States gets lower the further away you are from Mexico

For example, North Dakota has an unemployment rate of 3.2% compared to California which has a rate of 9.8% and Nevada which has a rate of 10.2%.

Comprehensive immigration "reform" could make millions of people suddenly eligible for assistance under Obama's healthcare law, assuming a final deal paves the way for illegal immigrants to receive papers

Illegal aliens are now prohibited from purchasing coverage through the Affordable Care Act's insurance exchanges, which will launch in 2014. They are also ineligible for Medicaid under most circumstances, making the law's expansion of the program fruitless for people without documents. Even young illegal immigrants with "deferred action" status, known as "DREAMers," cannot access the law's benefits. But the picture could change completely if Hispanic lawmakers get their wish — an overhaul of U.S. immigration policy that includes a path to legalization. Immigration is expected to be a major issue for Obama's second term. If nothing changes, illegal immigrants will be a major share of the uninsured, second only to those who are eligible but do not apply for coverage under the healthcare law in 2014, according to the Urban Institute.

25% of African-Americans who purchased or refinanced homes from 2004 to 2008 have lost or are losing them, compared to 11.9% of white Americans

The median black family holds only $4,955 in assets. Government jobs have historically been an important source of security for the black middle class and many of those jobs are disappearing.

Scientists say that our genes contain the hints of an evolutionary tug of war that took place in the wombs of our ancestors, balancing the drive to bigger brains with the need for a strong immune system

The push and pull of these genetic variants apparently became more pronounced after pre-humans branched off from the ancestors of chimpanzees, according to biologists Peter Parham of Stanford University and Ashley Moffett of the University of Cambridge. The two biologists focus on how particular types of white blood cells, known as natural killer cells, work in the human immune system. In addition to fighting infections and tumors, natural killer cells help regulate the growth of the placenta during pregnancy. Humans are unique among primates in having two variants of the genes that control the receptors for natural killer cells. "B haplotypes are favored during reproduction. A haplotypes are more specialized toward defending against infections," Parham explained. "These are subtle effects. On average, if you're an individual that has two A haplotypes and no B haplotype, you're going to have a slightly more robust immune system in terms of dealing with disease." Having two B haplotypes, in contrast, would allow for a more robust placenta. That would provide the fetus in the womb with more of the nutrients needed to grow a bigger brain. "In the course of human evolution, you had the evolution of these B haplotypes, which really did enable the brain to get bigger. ... There are correlations between the size of the brain of the baby and these genetic factors," Parham said. A detailed analysis of human genetic diversity suggests that the genes for the B haplotype emerged in the time frame lasting from about 7 million years ago to 1.7 million years ago. That would cover a period starting with the divergence of human and chimp ancestors, and ending with the human migration out of Africa. The A-vs.-B breakdown is found in all present-day human populations, suggesting that both variants were important to have for different situations. Parham and Moffett speculate that the A variant was important when a population was facing a disease epidemic, while the B variant became important for brain-building once the epidemic passed.

An Algerian terror suspect has been allowed to stay in Britain because a judge believes that he may commit suicide if he is forced to go back home

The terrorist does not dispute that he is a risk to Britain's national security and is believed to support one of the terrorist groups which carried out the deadly attack on an Algerian gas plant earlier in January 2013 which claimed the lives of 39 hostages including six Britons. He is also suspected of providing fake passports and travel arrangements to terrorists. But in another blow for the Home Office, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) has allowed the married man to remain on British soil because deporting him would breach his human rights. The same judge also recently allowed Islamic hate preacher Abu Qatada to stay in Britain.

Britain: An African immigrant who lured a vulnerable schoolgirl to a house for sex cannot be deported – because he is a member of a "persecuted tribe"

Jumaa Kater Saleh, 24, was convicted as part of a predatory sex gang for the deliberate, targeted abuse of a young and vulnerable girl, who was aged 13 at the time. But he was allowed to remain in Britain under human rights law because he faced mistreatment if sent back to Sudan. He claimed that he was a member of the Zaghawa tribe, which has been persecuted by government forces and Arab tribe militia. And it has been ruled that he can stay indefinitely, unless a court decides that the "threat" diminishes and it is safe for him to return to Africa.

Britain: A crooked registrar faces a lengthy jail sentence after being found guilty of issuing false birth certificates to a gang of African fraudsters who stole at least £4 million from taxpayers over 20 years

Azu Akpom provided fake certificates to the ringleader of the gang who went on to create false identities for up to 100 children to milk the benefits system. Croydon Crown Court heard how the Nigerian-born father of three was ultimately trapped by a text message which, despite his denial, showed that he knew the gang’s chief conspirator, Ugandan-born Ruth Nabuguzi, 49. In 2012, the same court heard how she was at the center of the scam which also saw her claim to be suffering from HIV and needing costly drugs – yet in reality she sent them back to Uganda to be sold for huge profits. Supplying the drugs for so many years cost the taxpayer more than £2 million. The gang exploited false identities in the fraud relating to accommodation and sub-letting of flats at a cost of £650,000, and various benefits totaling £900,000.

Britain: A violent black mugger walked free from court after the judge heard that he had turned to crime after his family were forced to move from their affluent home to a council estate because of the recession

Diallo Allen, 18, from Chorlton, Greater Manchester, mugged two teenage girls and a boy stealing an iPhone, a Blackberry and a £800 designer handbag. Unemployed Allen, who has a number of petty previous convictions, pounced as they left a restaurant but was later caught by police riding away on his bicycle. One of his victims was pulled to the ground and was left with cuts and bruises and a sprained hand, while another said that she feared for her life.

Britain: A Muslim who raped a 13-year-old girl that he groomed on Facebook has been spared a prison sentence after a judge heard that he went to an Islamic faith school where he was taught that women are worthless

Adil Rashid, 18, claimed that he was not aware that it was illegal for him to have sex with the girl because his education left him ignorant of British law. Rashid claimed that he had been taught in his Islamic school that women are no more worthy than a lollipop that has been dropped on the ground.

A mother has been arrested in India after selling her 11-year-old daughter to pay off a fine

The woman is thought to have sold her daughter for 650,000 rupees - or £7,611 - to settle the fine imposed on her by the council in her home village in the northwestern state of Rajasthan. Police also arrested a couple accused of buying the young girl. The mother told police that she sold her child to pay a fine of 450,000 rupees - or £5,317 - imposed by the council as a penalty for violating a local tradition. The sale came to light when the woman's daughter tried to run away from the couple that bought her from her mother, police in Rajasthan said. The man and woman chased the girl, who managed to get to a restaurant where customers alerted the police. The young girl told officers that she had been beaten by the couple, and claimed that they had planned to sell her on to somebody in Mumbai. Police said that the girl's mother was fined by her village council for backing out of a marriage agreement involving her daughter. She had married off her daughter to a man under a local custom that sees the groom pay the mother for the bride. It is thought that the woman later broke the agreement and took her daughter home. Thousands of children in India fall into the hands of slave traders every year - many sold by their parents.

Hispanics under arrest for a series of race-based attacks attempting to drive an African-American family out of their home in Compton, California

Sheriff's officials said that a group of Latino males who claimed to be part of a street gang intimidated the family using metal pipes and shouting racial epithets. Suspect Efren Marquez, 21, aimed a gun at a victim and threatened to shoot him as a second suspect, Jeffrey Aguilar, 19, beat him with the pipe.

Human skin began to lighten some 30,000 years ago in a population that was ancestral to both Europeans and East Asians

A second phase of skin lightening, which affected only Europeans, occurred between 19,000 and 13,000 years ago.

FBI investigating Hispanic politician for sleeping with underage prostitutes

Documents published online indicate that the FBI has opened an inquiry into New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez on August 1, 2012, focusing on repeated trips he took to the Dominican Republic with longtime campaign contributor and Miami eye doctor Salomon Melgen. Menendez had purchased the services of prostitutes in that Caribbean nation at a series of alcohol-fueled sex parties. The documents also indicate that Carrie Levine, research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), was alerted on April 9, 2012 to Menendez's habit of paying for sex while outside the United States.

A proposed Hebrew-English charter school in Van Nuys has won the approval of the LAUSD board

Why do we need Hebrew-English charter schools?

The average state homicide rate is 17.3 per 100k for the black population and 2.5 per 100k for the non-black population

Vox has an interesting post concerning gun ownership and race.

An unlicensed counselor in Brooklyn's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison after repeatedly sexually abusing a young girl in his care

Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice John Ingram handed Nechemya Weberman a 103-year-sentence without the prospect of parole. Weberman, 54, was found guilty in December 2012 on 59 counts, including sexual conduct against a girl he was advising over the course of three years. "The abuse of a child cannot be swept under the rug or dealt with by insular groups believing only they know what is best for their community," District Attorney Charles Hynes said in a statement. The abuse began in 2007, when the girl's parents hired Weberman to help their then-12-year-old daughter. It continued - mostly in his office - until 2010, the district attorney's office said. "I suffered great psychological damage and fell into severe depression," said the victim, who is a minor. The case brought scrutiny on the Satmar Hasidic community, many of whom live in the insular Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of South Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The case came to light when four men were arrested and accused of trying to bribe the victim and her boyfriend to get them to drop the case against Weberman, a spokesman for the district attorney said.

Research indicates that Ashkenazi Jews are of Judeo-Khazarian ancestry forged over many centuries in the Caucasus

Is this more evidence that the Jews do not have a legitimate claim to the land that they call Israel?

Philadelphia: The incidence of type 1 diabetes is 18 times higher than type 2 diabetes in white children, but only 1.6 times higher in black children, indicating a high incidence of type 2 diabetes in black children

Research shows that the incidence of type 2 diabetes is higher in females than males, highest in black youth, and lowest in non-Hispanic white youth. Type 1 diabetes continues to be the greatest risk for children in Philadelphia, three times greater than type 2 diabetes.

White countries tend to be happier than non-white ones

In 2012, the happiest countries were Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Finland, Netherlands, Switzerland and Ireland. The unhappiest were Ethiopia, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Togo, Burundi, Haiti, Chad, Afghanistan, Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.

A Latino gang who tried to burgle a convenience store was forced to abandon its raid when their getaway donkey made too much noise and gave the game away

The trio of Colombian criminals were forced to ditch their ill-gotten gains, after the animal started to bray and alerted police. The Hispanic group had managed to steal rum, oil, rice, cans of tuna and sardines from a small shop in the tiny north Caribbean town of Juan de Acosta. They planned to load the goods onto 10-year-old Xavi, who they had stolen some 12 hours before, and make their escape. But the animal let out a series of hee-haws and unfortunately for the trio alerted nearby police. They had to ditch the donkey, which was still carrying the stolen items, and ran to safety away from the officers. The donkey was detained in the town police station for 12 hours until owner Orlando Olivares was notified and came to collect him. All the items that had been stolen were returned to the store.

According to a post-Sandy Hook Gallup poll, the NRA has a 54% favorable rating and is actually more popular than Obama

By contrast, Obama's most recent approval rating from Gallup was 48%.

A black man stands charged with robbing and raping three women in Detroit, two of the events happening while he was a parole absconder

Gabrial Cooper has been a criminal his entire adult life. He's done prison time for stolen property, motor vehicle, fleeing police. Now he stands charged with robbing and raping three women in Detroit, two of the events happening while he was a parole absconder. On September 26, 2012, he ran up behind a woman, put a knife to her throat, took her behind an abandoned building and then robbed and raped her. On December 29, 2012, he kidnapped a woman while she shoveled snow and then robbed and raped her at gunpoint. Cooper was listed as a parole absconder on October 1st, 2012. Cooper was charged with rape and kidnapping back in June 2011, accused of raping an acquaintance at knife point in an abandoned house.

Obese African-American children had less severe liver damage than whites and Hispanics, and genetic polymorphisms were found to influence injury severity in a recent study

Researchers evaluated 229 obese children (mean age, 12.8 years; mean BMI, 31.4 ± 7.4), including 87 whites, 61 African-Americans and 81 Hispanics. All patients received MRI, underwent oral glucose tolerance testing and were assessed for levels of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) biomarker cytokeratin-18 (CK-18). Genotyping also was performed to determine any impact gene variants rs738409 in the PNPLA3 and rs2645424 in the FDFT1 had on damage severity. Patients with NASH (n=12) had higher hepatic fat content (HFF; P=.008) and CK-18 levels (P<.0001) and lower whole body insulin sensitivity index (WBISI) (P=.02) than the remaining cohort. African-American patients had significantly lower CK-18 levels compared with white (P=.004) and Hispanic children (P<.001). Investigators observed associations between CK-18 levels and HFF and WBISI among white (P=.0018 for HFF; P<.0001 for WBISI) and Hispanic patients (P<.0001 for HFF; P=.02 for WBISI), but not among African-American participants (P=.5 for both). HFF (P=.011) and WBISI (P=.018) were independently associated with ethnicity after adjusting for age, sex and total body fat. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) at rs738409 in the PNPLA3 were independently associated with CK-18 among whites (P=.02) and Hispanics (P=.05). SNPs at rs2645424 in the FDFT1 were similarly associated with CK-18 among whites (P=.05) and Hispanics (P=.02), with a trend toward significance observed among African-Americans (P=.07). “This study provides the evidence that African-American obese children and adolescents show a lower degree of liver damage than Caucasians and Hispanics, independent of the degree of hepatic fat accumulation and insulin resistance,” the researchers concluded. “These data suggest that African-Americans are protected from hepatic damage even in [the] presence of a high degree of hepatic fat accumulation and insulin resistance. Our observation of a different interethnic propensity to development of liver injury is clinically relevant. This suggests that Hispanic and Caucasian obese children and adolescents require closer follow-up of their liver metabolic status.”

Nearly one in five African-American workers hold government jobs

African-Americans make up about 20% of U.S. Postal Service workers - and are the majority in some urban centers, representing 75% to 80% of the 5,000 letter carriers in the Chicago area, according to Mack Julion, president of the Chicago branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers. But the public sector has cut nearly 600,000 jobs since 2009, due to shrinking government budgets and a range of other issues, according to the Bureau of Labor Relations. The slower recovery for African-Americans in the labor market has, in part, been the result of government layoffs after the end of the recession was declared, according to the DOL report. In December 2012, the black unemployment rate was 14%, roughly double that of whites.

Judge delays sending Jewish swindler to prison so he can attend his granddaughter's bat mitzvah

The prison-bound brother of Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff has attended his granddaughter's bat mitzvah in New York. Peter Madoff was sentenced in December 2012 to 10 years in prison for his role in the massive Ponzi scheme. The judge delayed his lockup date so he could attend the Jewish ceremony. The 67-year-old pleaded guilty in June 2012 to charges that he created false documents while he was chief compliance officer at his brother's firm. Thousands of investors lost about $20 billion. Peter Madoff said a brief prayer in Hebrew and touched his lips to the Torah during the ceremony.

In the first few weeks of January 2013 in Chicago, 25 people have already been murdered - most were young black and Hispanic men, murdered by other young black and Hispanic men

Why does the media ignore murders when they are committed by racial minorities?In 2011, 74.6% of murder victims were African-American, 19.5% were Latino, and 4.3% were white. Citywide, the population is 42.6% white, 38% African-American and 26% Latino. That means a black Chicagoan is 20 times more likely to be a murder victim than a white Chicagoan.

As Washington prepares for a political battle over the Obama White House's proposals to curb gun violence after the Newtown shootings, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that the National Rifle Association is more popular than the entertainment industry

The poll shows that 41% of adults see the NRA - the nation's top gun lobby - in a positive light, while 34% view it in a negative light. By comparison, just 24% have positive feelings about the entertainment industry, and 39% have negative ones.

A white woman was brutally stabbed in the chest more than a dozen times by a black man while shopping with her infant child at a Bed, Bath & Beyond store

Tyrik Haynes, 19, has been charged with attempted murder in the attack in Middletown, New Jersey and held on $1 million bail. He had previously been charged with torturing a cat. Haynes rushed upon Kerri Dalton, 29, with no warning as she pushed her son's stroller through the store. The teenager then stabbed Dalton repeatedly in the chest, puncturing both her lungs. Incredibly, she still managed to dial 911 for help. Dalton experienced significant blood loss and was airlifted from the Middletown store to Jersey Shore Medical Center where she was stabilized. Haynes was charged with attempted murder, child endangerment, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and unlawful possession of a weapon. This isn't his first brush with the law. In December 2012, Haynes was charged with animal cruelty for setting a cat on fire on Christmas Eve. The Monmouth County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said that Haynes was charged with using a lighter and aerosol spray to ignite the box while the animal was inside. The cat escaped but was later found dead from its injuries. Haynes is due in municipal court for that crime on February 11, 2013.

California's Hispanic population is expected to become the state's majority ethnicity by the end of 2013 according to a new report by the governor's office

New ethnicity trends outlined in Gov Jerry Brown's 2013-14 budget proposal revealed the state's expected new majority while identifying the state’s declining birth rates and increasing migration as causes. As early as July 2013, Hispanics are expected to be equal in size to non-Hispanic whites before outpacing them, according to the report, with both demographics in that month reaching 39% of the population. It's a swap that comes earlier than experts had expected. Brown, responding to the outlined future of his state, has since proposed shifting more school funding to those schools with more students in poverty and/or don't speak English. Currently 40% of the state's students are living in poverty and 20% are non-native English speakers he said. The report also found that the state's Hispanics are predominantly younger than whites - with 19% of Hispanics over the age of 50 compared to 43% of whites. Nationally, Hispanics are already the fastest growing demographic, with their population increasing by 3.1% since 2010.

During Barack Obama’s first term, the number of Americans collecting federal disability insurance increased by 1,385,418 to a record 8,827,795

As a result, there is now one person collecting disability in this county for every 13 people working full-time. Forty-two years ago, in December 1968, there were 51 people working full-time in this country for each person collecting disability. In January 2009, the month Obama was inaugurated, there were 7,442,377 Americans collecting federal disability insurance, according to the Social Security Administration. By December 2012, the latest month reported, there were 8,827,795 collecting disability, an increase of 1,385,418. With 115,868,000 people working full-time in December 2012, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there was 1 person collecting disability for every 13 people working full-time.

An African couple living in Sweden have been charged with child abuse for trying to exorcise their daughter at age 10 because they thought she was a witch

The black couple, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, "think their daughter is a witch and reject the accusation" of abuse, Daniel Larson, a prosecutor in the western Swedish town of Boraas, has said. The indictment is based on three acts of abuse committed between February 2007 and February 2008. The girl, who claims that she is not the couple's biological daughter though the parents say otherwise, was beaten unconscious and forced to drink a concoction made up of a cleaning product and her own urine, according to the charge sheet. Social services removed the girl, born in 1997, from her parents' custody in 2008 and she has since been living with a foster family. The girl only recently opened up about the abuse "once she felt safe," the prosecutor said. She had been placed with the foster family because of various reports that she was not being treated well at home. Her school had among other things reported to social services that her parents treated her very differently from her brothers and sisters, for example sending her to school in dirty clothes everyday. The parents had in 2008 applied for a social welfare check to be able to afford a trip to DR Congo to exorcise the girl. The aid was refused and she was shortly thereafter placed in foster care, though the abuse was never investigated at the time.

A judge ordered a black man held without bail after he confessed to killing a 4-year-old boy in his care by punching him twice in the stomach when the child wouldn't take a nap

Jonathan Thompson, 31, was charged with second-degree murder in the death of the youngster, Adonis Reed, who was found unconscious on a couch in an Amityville apartment. At Thompson's arraignment in Central Islip, prosecutors said that he struck the boy hard enough to lacerate his liver. They said that the black male had been babysitting the child for his primary caregiver, a godmother, and told investigators that he became angry when the boy wouldn't go to sleep. Dozens of relatives of the slain boy attended the court session. Some screamed and swore in the hallways after the proceeding, calling Thompson a "baby killer." An aunt of the boy, Lashon Reed, called the child "a God-given gift. He was wonderful. He was the love of our lives and he never hurt anybody. I just don't know what to say," she said.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of girls are trafficked from rural India to work as domestic servants in middle-class homes in India’s fast-growing urban areas

They are expected to work at least 15 hours a day for food, lodging and salaries well below the legal minimum monthly wage of about $125. Many end up cut off from their families, abused and treated like slaves. Some are sexually assaulted. India erupted in outrage at the gang rape recently of a young woman on a moving bus in New Delhi. But in the same city, experts say, a vast network of child trafficking and abuse operates with society’s implicit sanction and official apathy. As India strives to become a modern and developed nation, the problem serves as a reminder of the exclusion of a vast swath of the population from the benefits of a rising economy and the broad indifference of many middle-class Indians to the rights of the poor. “The trafficking of young children, especially girls, under the garb of placement agencies is the biggest organized crime in India today. And the worst part is, it is right there in the open, in our homes, and yet invisible,” said Bhuwan Ribhu of the child rights group Bachpan Bachao Andolan. One of the six suspects in the gang-rape case, a purported 17-year-old, was himself trafficked at age 11 from a poor village in northern India to a life of child labor in the capital, where he worked in a roadside restaurant and as a bus driver’s assistant, police have said. He soon lost touch with his parents. Many middle-class Indians believe that they are helping poor families by giving their children work. But according to municipal law in New Delhi, which has enacted some of India’s strictest child labor laws, they should be jailed. Employing people younger than 18 in a hazardous job, as domestic service is defined, has been a non-bailable offense since 2009. But the law is widely flouted, said Ribhu, who added that on rare occasions police carry out “rescue operations” of underage servants after complaints from parents or activists. “Almost all of the domestic maids are either minors, or started work as maids before they were 18,” Ribhu said. There has never been a systematic attempt to determine the scale of the problem. The government says that 5 million children are employed in India, but activists say that the real number could be 10 times that. A senior official at India’s Home Affairs Ministry, which oversees the police, estimated that as many as 4 million children work in domestic service nationwide and that up to 4,000 placement agencies operate in New Delhi and its suburbs alone. But the official said that it was often hard to get his fellow bureaucrats to take the issue seriously because so many of them employ children at home. Sometimes, placement agencies demand a one-time fee for supplying servants, a sum often docked from the girls’ wages by their employers. Other times, the employer pays the wages directly to the placement agency, which might give a portion of that money, or none at all, to the girl. One 18-year-old said that she received no money for four years of work as a maid for doctors and business people. Another, whose statement forms part of a court case filed by activists in an attempt to force New Delhi authorities to regulate the industry, said in her testimony that she was paid $45 a month but was essentially imprisoned for years and never allowed to telephone her family. When she complained to the placement agent, she said, he raped her. Ribhu said that traffickers often use rape — which can ruin a young woman’s marriage prospects by robbing her of her “honor” — as a tool of control. “I could not bear the pain and fell unconscious,” she said. “When I awoke, I found myself in a pool of blood. When I came out crying, he told me he would sell me off and never send me home if I didn’t keep quiet.” Activists have made progress only by taking such cases to Indian courts. New Delhi’s high court has led the way by ordering authorities to raise the minimum age for domestic service and requiring placement agencies to be registered. But the fine for failing to register ranges from just 50 cents to $5, and monitoring of registered agencies is nonexistent, activists say. After two years of unpaid work, and after being raped on two occasions by her placement agent, the 17-year-old girl from eastern India was rescued by a Bachpan Bachao Andolan activist who was working undercover at New Delhi’s railway station. The girl was at the station because the trafficker had promised to take her home to her village but had secretly bought tickets to the teeming commercial capital, Mumbai, where he apparently intended to sell her off into a life of further slavery or prostitution. A year later, the girl is still in New Delhi, hiding from the trafficker.

Britain: The Metropolitan police has started investigating videos uploaded on the Internet in which Muslim vigilantes are shown imposing Shariat rules in London, including burning advertisement posters of women and forcing people to stop drinking alcohol

The group, which calls itself Muslim Patrol, was shown harassing people on these videos, which were initially uploaded on YouTube. The videos have been removed, but they have been uploaded on various blogs to highlight the actions of the vigilantes in parts of London, which they describe as Muslim areas. “Alcohol is evil, no alcohol. This is a Muslim area,” the hooded figures are shown telling a man in the 4 minute video. “We don’t care if you believe it or not,” a man is heard shouting at a woman, who also was asked to stop drinking. A couple is shown being threatened by the Muslim patrol as they walk along the footpath near a mosque. “The video was removed from YouTube because they said it violated their policy ‘prohibiting content designed to harass, bully or threaten,’” according to the Christian Broadcasting Network blog, which has the uploaded video. “It then resurfaced on Media Research Center’s website. The video only vaguely ‘threatens’ the casual viewer on YouTube. But it is a major embarrassment to radical Islamists with their stealth jihad, who would have had an interest in seeing it taken down as soon as possible. The ‘Muslim Patrol’ YouTube channel has been terminated as well,” the blog said. The London vigilantes were highlighted just as Leicester saw a group of Sikh vigilantes attack a restaurant over a false rumour about a Sikh girl’s rape. The Leicester police has charged six men with conspiracy to commit violent disorder after a large group of people smashed the windows to a restaurant. The attack on the restaurant called Moghul Durbar came because of rumors about the abduction and rape of a Sikh girl. Six people were injured in the attack.

Reading, writing and evolution

Peter Frost looks at the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA), a brain region that specializes in recognizing written words and letters.

A Saudi Air Force sergeant in the United States for training has been arrested on child sexual assault charges for raping a 13-year-old boy in a Las Vegas hotel, and bail has been set at just over $1.2 million

Mazen Alotaibi raped the boy on New Year's Eve 2012 at the Circus Circus hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, where both Alotaibi and the boy were guests, according to a criminal complaint. Police said that Alotaibi, 23, had been visiting Las Vegas while temporarily stationed at Lackland Air Force base in Texas. A court clerk said that bail was set for Alotaibi at more than $1.2 million on charges including child sexual assault and coercion. The judge ordered that Alotaibi surrender his passport and remain in the United States if he posts bail. He could face life in prison if convicted of the most serious charges, his lawyer said.

Immigration is regarded by the public as the biggest issue facing British society, a major new survey taking stock of the state of the country reveals

One in three people believes that tension between immigrants and people born in Britain is the major cause of division, while well over half regard it as one of the top three causes. Over the past two decades, both immigration and emigration have increased to historically high levels, with those entering the country exceeding those leaving by more than 100,000 in every year since 1998. The survey, by Ipsos MORI, also discovered a high proportion of people who were pessimistic about the British economy (50%). Nearly half (46%) said that Britain was heading in the wrong direction. Three in four also believe that Britain is in a housing crisis.

Muslim crime in Britain: A 12-year-old girl was branded with the initial of a sex gang member and forced to have an abortion with a large crochet hook

Mohammed Karrar, 38, pushed a metal hair clip he had shaped into an ‘M’ and heated with a cigarette lighter onto her buttock. The child, a carer for her deaf parents, was abused by Karrar and his brother Bassam, 33, between the ages of 11 and 15. A jury heard the girl, who is the youngest of six victims, describe the brothers as the sick sex monsters. The court heard that she had been attacked with knives and a metal baseball bat before being raped. Mohammed Karrar was accused of branding the girl to show he owned her. Prosecutor Noel Lucas QC said: “He told her he wanted people to know she belonged to him.” The Karrar brothers are among nine men who stand accused of charges including raping, torturing and pimping out the vulnerable underage girls who were plied with booze and drugs. They are said to have subjected the 11 to 15-year-olds to a living hell over eight years of abuse from 2004. A jury has heard that the girl was aged just 11 when she was sold in 2004 by an unidentified man to Mohammed Karrar. After a “nicey-nicey honeymoon period” of being lavished with gifts, she was plied with hard drugs. He then pimped her out in her own living room where she was regularly bound and gagged before being gang-raped. Mohammed Karrar got the girl, now 19, pregnant just after her 12th birthday and took her for an illegal abortion in a room at the back of a house in Reading. Lucas said: “She saw instruments laid out. She was given a couple of pills and saw what looked like a large crochet hook, which was used to undertake the procedure.” This type of illegal abortion can cause death. On one occasion she tried to fight him off so he knocked her out with a metal baseball bat before raping her with it. The jury was told that he thought he could get away with anything because her parents were deaf and had learning difficulties. Bassam Karrar also gang-raped her and, along with his brother, went on to charge punters £500 for regular sex and £600 for bondage sessions, the court heard. The abuse continued until 2009 when she was 15. The nine men of Egyptian and Pakistani descent face 51 charges relating to the abuse between May 2004 and January 2012.

Hispanic crime: Authorities in the United States have arrested 12 people in connection with a people-trafficking prostitution ring

Another 44 people have been detained. Eleven women from Central America and Mexico, most in their 20s, were freed. The women were forced to have sex with up to 30 men a day, charging $30 for each act. The gang is thought to have been smuggling women since 2008, moving them to different cities every week in the south-eastern United States. The US authorities have indicted eight men and four women. Most of the other detainees are said to be clients. The sex-trafficking ring served mostly ethnic Latino immigrants in larger cities and rural communities of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, the authorities said. One of the indicted, a Mexican citizen, is accused of having threatened to send one woman back to Mexico if she did not have sex with at least 25 men a day. Most of the 44 detainees were non-Americans and would face court action. Those who were illegal in the country would be deported, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton.

Black crime: Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has been indicted on 21 federal corruption charges, including bribery, money laundering, fraud and filing false tax returns

Nagin defrauded the city through a bribery and kickback scheme in which he received checks, cash, wire transfers, personal services and free travel from businessmen seeking favorable treatment, the 25-page federal indictment says. Among the conspiracy charges is an accusation that Nagin awarded no bid work to a city contractor who provided concealed and direct campaign monies to Nagin, the indictment says. Nagin received bribes from city contractors in the amounts of $60,000, $2,250, $50,000, $10,000, the indictment says. He also received a bribe in the form of granite inventory from a city construction contractor. Nagin faces nine counts of honest service wire fraud, that he received nine wire transfers amounting to $12,500 each that were bribes or kickback payoffs from the same city construction contractor in 2010 and 2011, the indictment says. In his 2005 tax return - the same year that Katrina hit the Gulf coast - Nagin filed a false tax return claiming his income was $156,278, the indictment says. He is also accused of filing false returns for 2006 listing his income at $170,364, for 2007 with an income of $31,163, and for 2008 with a $143,852 income, the indictment said. In 2005, as Katrina became the single most catastrophic natural disaster in U.S. history, Nagin took center stage when he excoriated the slow pace of federal and state relief efforts, even using profanities. Nagin, who is black, urged the reconstruction of a "chocolate New Orleans," adding, "You can't have New Orleans no other way."

Despite constant hammering by the national news media, the National Rifle Association has a favorability rating of 54% in the latest Gallup survey, slightly higher than Obama's rating of 53%

While those figures are within the poll's margin of error, they show that the NRA's popularity is in the same range as that of Obama who issued 23 executive orders to accomplish goals that the gun-rights group has promised to combat in “the fight of the century.” According to an article by Frank Newport, the Gallup poll - which was conducted December 19-22, 2012 - showed that only 38% of those surveyed have an unfavorable opinion of the NRA, while Obama's disapproval rating is three points higher at 41%.

A Pakistani businessman has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for providing material support to overseas terrorists, including the Pakistani group that launched an attack in Mumbai that left at least 160 dead

U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber sentenced Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 52, to the prison term, to be followed by five years of supervised release. Rana, born in Pakistan and a citizen of Canada, faced a maximum of 30 years in prison after being convicted June 9, 2011. After a three-week trial, jurors convicted Rana of providing support for the Pakistani group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and for supporting a plot to attack a Danish newspaper that in 2005 printed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, drawing protests from Muslims across the world. The plot, which was never carried out, included plans to behead employees of Morgenavisen Jayllands-Posten newspaper, and to throw their heads into the street in Copenhagen, according to prosecutors.

A Latino leader of the Azusa 13 street gang and his son have been sentenced in federal court to lengthy prison terms after pleading guilty to conspiring to attack blacks and force them to leave the city

Santiago “Chico” Rios was sentenced to 19 years and seven months in prison by U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess. His son, Louie “Lil Chico” Rios, who is hearing-impaired and required a sign-language interpreter, received a 10-year sentence. Both Rioses have “Azusa” tattooed above their upper lips. Louie Rios has “Azusa gang member” tattooed on the back of his head. At sentencing, Feess said that Santiago Rios was a “proponent of the racial cleansing of the city of Azusa” and an admitted participant in “every significant aspect of the gang’s activities.” The Rioses and 49 other Azusa gang members were arrested in June 2011 and charged with, among other things, a conspiracy to “cleanse” Azusa of its black residents, according to prosecutors. All 51 have been convicted. Eight remain to be sentenced, said Reema El-Amamy, the federal prosecutor in the case. Santiago Rios was a reputed Azusa 13 “keyholder” — a shot-caller anointed by the Mexican Mafia prison gang to tax drug dealers, sell drugs and funnel the proceeds to Mafia members, according to a federal plea agreement. In that position, he implemented an Azusa 13 policy dating from 1992 of targeting and harassing black people in Azusa, according to the agreement. The push to attack blacks was instigated by Ruben Rodriguez, a Mexican Mafia member from Azusa who has since died. The gang would assault blacks that they spotted in public places and spray racist graffiti. Some gang recruits were asked to attack blacks as a way of proving their worth to Azusa 13, according to the plea agreement. The Azusa 13 case highlighted how incarcerated Mexican Mafia leaders can create havoc among street gang members that they have never met but who obey their orders. Similar cases of the Mexican Mafia influencing Latino gang attacks on blacks have occurred in Hawaiian Gardens, San Bernardino, the Florence-Firestone District, Pacoima, Harbor Gateway, Glassell Park and Highland Park. When several gang members were released on parole in 1999 and 2000, normally quiet Azusa saw its hate-crimes rate skyrocket over the next three years, as gang members attacked black residents. In one case, a 49-year-old woman was shot and wounded outside her apartment as she was saying goodnight to a friend. A gang member later testified that a group of Azusa 13 members had shot her after going “hunting” for blacks and finding no men to shoot.

In 2008 and 2009 gun homicide was the leading cause of death among black teens, and the rates of gun-related deaths are highest for black male teens

For black families, the chance of a male child dying from a gunshot wound is 62% higher than the chance of him dying in a motor-vehicle crash. In 2010 American Indian male teens had the second-highest rate of gun-related deaths, with 19.3 gun-related deaths per 100,000 teens. Of the 34,347 children and teens who suffered gun injuries in the United States in 2008 and 2009, almost half were black, and more than one-fifth were Latino. Black teens alone are 25 times more likely to be injured by a gun than white teens.

Black children and teens in the United States are almost twice as likely as their white peers to consume more than 500 calories a day of sugary beverages

Black children, the study also found, are more than twice as likely as whites on any given day to consume fruit drinks containing little actual fruit. Fruit juices, for example, range from 100% actual fruit juice to those with as little as 10% fruit juice and plenty of added sugars.

The Jewish war against Chuck Hagel continues

Tanstaafl asks some important questions:

Is it really controversial that a US senator or secretary of defense should have the best interests of the US rather than Israel foremost in their mind? Isn't this only controversial because the political discourse is so chock full of jews willing and able to argue more or less dishonestly in favor of whatever they think is best for jews? Isn't this a reflection of the jewish domination of the corporate, mainstream media? Is there anybody left in mainstream politics or media who will dare make the simple point that none of this is good for the rest of us? When?

American whites murder at about the same rate as whites in countries with strict gun control

American Hispanics murder at about the same rate as they do in their native countries, which generally have strict gun control, and that American blacks murder at about the same rate as blacks do world wide, mostly in countries with strict gun control. It seems that race/ethnicity is a very good predictor of homicide rate. It is very hard to make an honest case that gun ownership is much of a factor at all in causing homicides. The evidence suggests that people kill people, not guns. In heavily armed Switzerland, white USA, Serbia etc., the homicide rate is low. In mostly disarmed Netherlands, Poland and Italy, the homicide rate is also low. The common factor here is the European background. In sub-Saharan African areas with more guns (Equatorial Guinea, Angola), homicide rates are high. In sub-Saharan African areas that have very few guns (Ghana, Ethiopia, Eritrea, in fact most of sub-Saharan Africa) homicide rates are also high. The common factor here is the sub-Saharan racial background. The most effective way of reducing gun homicide in America would be to prohibit black males from having guns.

Ireland: Black Africans are four times more likely to be out of work than white Irish-born citizens

Researchers found that the black African immigrant group had the lowest rate of employment. The labor force participation was just 60% for black Africans and 65% for Europeans who were not white in 2010, while it ranged from 72% to 80% for white Europeans and Asians, many who arrived on student visas and could legally work part-time. The findings, based on 2004 and 2010 surveys from the Central Statistics Office, were published by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and Equality Authority. Researchers said that the number of non-Irish nationals in work more than doubled from 164,400 in 2004 to 341,500 at the end of 2007, at the peak of the boom, but as unemployment soared and the recession deepened, the gap between Irish and foreign nationals in work grew. Black Africans had the highest unemployment rate (36%), while white people from the old EU-13 member states had the lowest rate (9%), followed by Asians (12%). Irish nationals also held the majority of professional and managerial occupations. Renee Dempsey, chief executive of the Equality Authority, said that the report showed immigrants did not fare as well as Irish nationals in the Irish labor market.

The death toll by murder in Chicago over the past decade is greater than the number of American forces who have died in Afghanistan since the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom

In addition, police reports in Chicago – where Obama once worked as a community organizer and where his former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, now serves as mayor – show most of the city’s massive murder mayhem is black-on-black crime. Of the victims of murder in Chicago from 2003 to 2011, an average of 77% had a prior arrest history, with a high of 79% of the 436 murdered in Chicago in 2010 having arrest histories. For the same 2003-2011 period, blacks were the victims of 75% of 4,265 murders. Blacks also were the offenders in 75% of the murders. According to 2010 U.S. Census information, Chicago has a population of 2,695,598 people. The city is 33% black, 32% white (not Hispanic), and 30% Hispanic or Latino in origin. For the 2003-2011 period, whites were nearly 6% of the victims and accused of carrying out 4% of the murders. For the 2003-2011 period, Hispanics or Latinos were 19% of the victims and 20% of the offenders. Between 2003 and 2011, 4,265 people were murdered in the city of Chicago. In 2012 alone, 512 people were murdered in the city. Operation Enduring Freedom, the name for the war in Afghanistan, which started October 7, 2001, has seen a total of 2,166 killed. The war has been ongoing for 11 years, 3 months and one week. Operation Iraqi Freedom, the name for the war in Iraq, which started March 20, 2003, and ended December 15, 2011, saw a total of 4,422 killed. In a city with some of the toughest gun control laws in America, where a handgun cannot be purchased, Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy “acknowledged aiming at assault weapons misses the mark when dealing with Chicago’s gang violence. The weapon used is generally a handgun, and rarely is it purchased through legal channels.”

Obama country: A staggering one out of three Illinoisans lives in or near poverty — the peak of a continued climb over three decades

It means that one in five Illinois children are living in poverty, according to the study released by the Social IMPACT Research Center of Chicago's Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights. The forces behind this rising poverty in a post-recession economy go beyond unemployment, according to the study, which traces it also to an inadequate living wage and lack of access to education, housing, health care and assets. "Illinois' 33%: Report on Illinois Poverty," is based on 2011 U.S. Census Bureau data. It declares a crisis sparing no community in Illinois, and only worsening under budget cuts to government programs and policies that alleviate poverty. The 33% figure is up from 25% of Illinoisans who lived in or near poverty in 2000. In 1990, it was 27%; in 1980, 26%. The study found that almost half of Chicago's population is living in or near poverty. In suburban Cook and Kane counties, it's nearly a third; in DuPage, McHenry and Will counties, one out of five people, and in Lake County, one out of four. Statewide, 31% of the African-American population lives in poverty, along with 22.6% of Latinos; 12% of Asians, and 11% of whites.

Black crime: The Chicago Police Department has issued an alert in the 2nd District of Wentworth for several armed robberies that have occurred during January 2013

The offenders, described as six to seven African American females with a light completion between the ages of 16 and 20, enter cabs in the Loop. Upon arriving at their destinations on the South Side, one of the girls chokes the driver with a rope or cord, while another threatens the cab driver with a knife, demanding cash. Authorities say that the group then jumps out of the cab.

The 15-year prison sentence given to a woman and her seven children by an Egyptian court for converting to Christianity is a sign of things to come, according to alarmed human rights advocates who say that the nation's Islamist government is bad news for Christians in the North African country

A criminal court in the central Egyptian city of Beni Suef meted out the shocking sentence. Nadia Mohamed Ali, who was raised a Christian, converted to Islam when she married Mohamed Abdel-Wahhab Mustafa, a Muslim, 23 years ago. He later died, and his widow planned to convert her family back to Christianity in order to obtain an inheritance from her family. She sought the help of others in the registration office to process new identity cards between 2004 and 2006. When the conversion came to light under the new regime, Nadia, her children and even the clerks who processed the identity cards were all sentenced to prison. Samuel Tadros, a research fellow at Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, said that conversions like Nadia's have been common in the past, but said that Egypt's new Sharia-based constitution "is a real disaster in terms of religion freedom. The cases will increase in the future. It will be much harder for people to return to Christianity." President Mohamed Morsi, who was elected in June 2012 and succeeded the secular reign of Hosni Mubarak, who is now in prison, pushed the new constitution through last year. Tadros said that the constitution limits the practice of Christianity because “religious freedom has to be understood within the boundaries of Sharia.” He added that the constitution prescribes that the highest Sunni authority should be referred to as an interpreter of the religion clause contained in the constitution. Opponents of the constitution, including Coptic Christians and secular and liberal groups, protested at the time against passage of the document because of the mix of Islamic-based Sharia law and politics. Roughly 10% of Egyptians are Coptic Christians. The case is the latest example of the increasingly dire plight of the nation's roughly 7 million Christians, say human rights advocates. "Now that Sharia law has become an integral part of Egypt's new constitution, Christians in that country are at greater risk than ever," said Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice. "This is another tragic case that underscores the growing problem of religious intolerance in the Muslim world. To impose a prison sentence for a family because of their Christian faith sadly reveals the true agenda of this new government: Egypt has no respect for international law or religious liberty.” Morsi has been under fire for failing to take action against rising violence inflicted on Egypt’s Christians. In August 2012, the roughly 100-family Christian community in Dahshour was forced to flee after Muslim neighbors launched attacks against the Christians’ homes and property. Morsi said that the expulsion and violence was “ blown out of proportion.” Radical Salafi preachers - who have formed alliances with Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood - called for Muslims to shun Christians during Christmas.

A Latino illegally in the United States faces sexual assault charges

Samuel Castillo, 36, was arrested on January 9, 2013 and charged with first-degree sexual assault and risk of injury to a child. Detective Lt. Mark Walerysiak, the police spokesman, said that the victim of the assault was an 8-year-old girl known to Castillo. Walerysiak said that the incident was reported in early December 2012 when the girl, after hearing a commercial about breast cancer, told her parents about being assaulted. She was interviewed by child professionals and police secured a warrant for Castillo’s arrest, Walerysiak said. During the investigation, police also learned that Castillo was in the country illegally from Mexico, Walerysiak said. Castillo is being held in lieu of $200,000 bail and is scheduled to appear in New Haven Superior Court on January 22, 2013.

Diversity crime: Three people have been arrested in California for collecting fraudulent unemployment and disability benefits - to date, a total of 21 people have been charged in the $5 million scheme

According to federal prosecutors, the conspiracy centered around a family claiming to operate several farm labor companies in Northern California. They sold fake pay stubs to other people in the community and used their companies to report false wages to the government. Then the fake employees claimed that they were laid off and used the phony pay stubs to collect unemployment benefits, disability insurance, or both. It's what's known as a fictitious employer scheme. The family of ringleaders, including Mohammad Nawaz Khan, 56, Mohammad Adnan Khan, 31, Iqila Begum Khan, 31, and Mohammad Shahbaz Khan 56, was arrested in May 2012. Since then, 17 more people have been charged in relation to the scheme, including the three who were arrested recently. Over the course of the conspiracy, the defendants reported wages for more than 400 separate individuals that resulted in more than 2,000 fraudulent claims for unemployment and disability benefits. When investigators interviewed some of the individuals, many would not know the names or locations of the farms where they had supposedly worked. In some cases, their earnings would greatly exceed normal pay for agricultural workers. The rate for picking peaches for example, was sometimes stated as high as $15 per hour. Another red flag included a 76-year-old man who allegedly performed physically demanding work like grading and packing prunes, and said that he was paid at a rate of $110 per bin. Balkar Singh, 50, Harvinder Kaur, 37, and Harjinder Kaur Thandi, 34 of Yuba City have all been arrested and arraigned, and six other defendants will appear in court at a later date. This is the third indictment in an ongoing investigation by the FBI, the United States Department of Labor and California's Employment Development Department. "Fraud against the employer-funded Unemployment Insurance program or the employee-funded Disability Insurance program costs all of us and will not be tolerated," Pam Harris, director of the EDD, said in a statement. The federal government and states overpaid an estimated $14 billion in unemployment benefits in fiscal 2011, or roughly 11% of all the jobless benefits paid out, according to reports from the U.S. Labor Department.

Nations that consume a lot of milk and milk products also tend to have a lot of Nobel laureates among their populations

Researchers looked at the 2007 data from the Food and Agriculture Organization on per capita milk consumption in 22 countries and found a significant association. Sweden has the most Nobel laureates per 10 million of its population (33). Although, it hosts the Nobel committee, which some might argue could introduce an element of bias; it also consumes the most milk per head of the population, getting through 340kg every year. And Switzerland, which knocks back 300kg of the white stuff every year, has a Nobel haul of similar proportions (32). At the other end of the scale, China has the lowest number of Nobel laureates in its population. But it also has the lowest milk consumption of the countries studied - at around 25kg a year. There does seem to be a ceiling effect, however, note the authors, with no discernible impact beyond an annual per capita consumption of 350kg, as Finland's Nobel haul seems to attest. But there is a plausible biological explanation for the link: milk is rich in vitamin D, and this may boost brain power, the evidence suggests.

Doctors are pushing biracial Brooklyn women to undergo genetic counseling to learn if their racial mix makes them more prone to disease

As interracial families have become more common, Dr. Millicent Comrie, Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Downstate Long Island College Hospital, has urged her staff of about 40 physicians to quiz patients about their ethnic backgrounds. Those from multicultural backgrounds are are sent to talk with a DNA expert who maps out how their heritage could make them sick. “Ethnicity plays a big part in your healthcare,” said Comrie naming a slew of hereditary diseases such as sickle cell anemia which plagues the black community and Tay-Sachs disease found in many Jewish families. “We can’t worry about sensitivity when it comes to race. What you see isn’t always what you get,” Comrie said. “If we don’t ask the right questions. We will come up short.” Census stats show that 2% of Kings County identified as being “two or more races” in 2010 with the largest concentrations in upper-middle class enclaves like Park Slope and Prospect Heights. Popular combinations include having at least one parent who is either Jewish, black, or Chinese - meaning the person could inherit a long list of illnesses. Comrie and her staff map out patients’ family health histories as well as study their blood trolling for more risk factors. Louise Dogan, 41, - born to an Ashkenazi Jewish mom and an African dad - worked with doctors tracing her Jewish relatives’ aliments after her mother, aunt, and cousin were diagnosed with breast and ovarian cancers. Physicians found that their sicknesses were tied to the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, often linked to breast and ovarian cancer in Jewish women. But Dogan’s test for BRCA was negative. “I am a hybrid. I am different from the rest of my family,” said Dogan who is eight-months pregnant. Dogan’s mother-in-law is a Polish gentile who also had breast cancer. Her father-in-law is an Ashkenazi Jew. “We have to find out if she had that [BRCA] gene and the implications on the child,” Dogan said. “You need to know your background. You can’t have biases based on what you look like.” Interracial couples and their ethnically ambiguous offspring are common sights throughout the borough. Ashkenzi Jews are prone to about two dozen afflictions including cystic fibrosis - which can lead to fatal lung and intestinal diseases and is also common in white gentiles. Sickle cell, Thalassemia, and other blood disorders impact those with African and Asian roots. “In the future, we are going to have so many people with so many different ethnicities,” said LICH’s genetic guru Regine Lim who is half Chinese and white. “When you are more than one race, you have more of a diverse genetic composition...we are talking to people before they have a baby...the more time we have the better.”

A gene has been uncovered that may help to create born leaders

The leadership gene, known as rs4950, is an inherited DNA sequence associated with people taking charge. Scientists accept that leadership skills are also learned. But the gene may provide the vital push needed to make someone into a manager rather than a minion. Researchers found the gene after analysing DNA samples from around 4,000 individuals and matching them to information about jobs and relationships. Workplace supervisory roles were used as a measurement of leadership behavior. The study showed that a quarter of the observed variation in leadership traits between individuals could be explained by genetics. Lead scientist Dr Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, from University College London, said: “We have identified a genotype, called rs4950, which appears to be associated with the passing of leadership ability down through generations. The conventional wisdom — that leadership is a skill — remains largely true, but we show it is also, in part, a genetic trait.”

Deaf white man killed by three black thugs

Three black teenagers are under arrest after they stabbed a deaf white man during a robbery and left him lying in the front yard of a Charlotte home festooned with Christmas decorations. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police say that Michael Victor Shull was killed while walking through a northwest Charlotte neighborhood to pick up his girlfriend. The couple had planned to go look at Christmas lights. Family members said that the 21-year-old Shull was a recent graduate of the North Carolina School for the Deaf in Morganton who worked at a tire shop. Homicide detectives have arrested Aveance Bryant, Davonta Turner and Ashely Owens, charging the trio with murder, robbery with a dangerous weapon and conspiracy to commit robbery.

Daming Sanusi, a candidate for the Indonesian Supreme Court, has fueled outrage in the predominantly Muslim country by suggesting that rape victims enjoy being violated

He made the comments in front of a parliamentary commission hearing to determine if he was a fit for the top court. In response to a question about whether the death penalty should be applied in rape cases, Daming said, "Consideration needs to be taken thoroughly for the imposition of death penalty for a rapist because in a rape case both the rapist and the victim enjoy it." Daming is not the first Indonesian official to make controversial comments about rape, highlighting the case of Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo, who said that women should avoid wearing miniskirts on public transport to avoid "any unwanted consequences."

In a typical U.S. murder, both the perpetrator and the victim are young black men

Blacks are six times as likely as whites to be the victim of a homicide. Blacks are seven times as likely to commit a homicide. For example, the Baton Rouge Advocate published a lengthy analysis of the 2012 murder stats in the city. Last year, 83 people died by homicide in Baton Rouge. Of that number, 87% were black, and 87% were male. Two-thirds had been in trouble with the law before, and one-third had been in trouble with the law for drugs. The median age of victims: 26. Of the perpetrators, the median age was 22, 96% of them were black, and 90% were male. Almost two-thirds had previous arrests. One out of four had a drug record. Most of the murders took place in the poorest parts of the city. Murder in Baton Rouge is almost entirely about young black men from the poor part of town killing other young black men from the poor part of town. It's mostly a matter of thugs killing thugs.

Obama's America: More people went back to work in the United States in 2011, but many of them took lower-paying jobs, leading to an increase in the number of working poor families that year

In 2011, there were 200,000 more working poor families — those struggling with poverty even though the parents are employed — than in 2010, according to the Working Poor Project's report. All in all, almost one-third of working families struggle near the poverty rate and may not be able to meet basic needs. That's an increase from 28% in 2007 and 31% in 2010. Parents in these families most likely took service industry jobs — maids, restaurant servers, cashiers, janitors, cooks — that offer fewer hours, lower pay, fewer benefits, and less job security. A co-author of the report said that the results were somewhat surprising, considering Census officials said in 2012 that the poverty rate in the United States had stabilized. But what economic improvement we are seeing affects people in the United States disproportionately, he explains. The top 20% of Americans got 48% of all income, while the bottom 20% got less than 5%. About 10.4 million US families, or 47.5 million people, now live near the poverty rate.

Girls as young as 11 were groomed and raped by a child sex ring run by South Asian Muslims before being sold to abusers across Britain

Nine men befriended vulnerable girls with gifts of perfume, alcohol and drugs before subjecting them to a living hell for eight years. The six girls were subjected to extreme physical and sexual violence while they were repeatedly raped by numerous abusers. Kamar Jamil, 27, Akhtar Dogar, 32, Anjum Dogar, 30, Assad Hussain, 32, Mohammed Karrar, 38, Bassam Karrar, 26, Mohammed Hussain, 24, Zeeshan Ahmed, 27, and Bilal Ahmed, 26, face a total of 79 charges against them. These include allegations of child rape, trafficking for sexual exploitation, arranging or facilitating child prostitution and using an instrument with intent to procure a miscarriage.

The average white household has a net worth of $97,000

The average Hispanic household has a net worth of $1,300 and the average black household has a net worth of $4,900.

Federal welfare spending will skyrocket 80% over the next decade, according to new analysis by the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee

"This chart displays projected federal spending on federal welfare programs over the next ten years, based on data from the Congressional Research Service and Congressional Budget Office," the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee explains. "These figures do not count state contributions to federal welfare programs (primarily on low-income health assistance) which brought total welfare spending in FY2011 to more than $1 trillion – dwarfing any other budget item including Medicare and Social Security, and totaling enough to mail every household in poverty a check for 60k each year." Currently, 95% of spending on means-tested poverty assistance falls into four categories: cash assistance, health assistance, housing assistance, and social and family services. Welfare spending has increased on a year-over-year basis regardless of whether the economy has improved or unemployment has declined, and is projected to continue this dramatic rise indefinitely. Spending on these poverty programs will rise approximately 80% from FY2013-FY2022, representing a total cost of $11 trillion – roughly one quarter of cumulative federal spending. Slowing the growth rate from 80% to a still massive 60% would thus result, according to standard congressional budget accounting, in a $1 trillion savings over ten years.

Prosecutors say that a black police officer involved in a paternity dispute with his mistress shot the woman dead and left their infant child to die in a hot car

Prince George's County, Md., State's Attorney Angela Alsobrooks said during opening statements that Richmond Phillips killed the two because he didn't want to pay child support. Phillips is being tried on two counts of first-degree murder along with child abuse and firearms charges. Phillips was arrested in June 2011 after the body of 20-year-old Wynetta Wright was found in a park where the two had met. Their child, Jaylin, who was days shy of her first birthday, was found dead in her car seat with the doors closed and windows rolled up.

Leaders of several Chicago-area African American churches have urged state lawmakers to vote against pending legislation that would allow same-sex marriage in Illinois

The group said the same legislators who frequent black churches for votes are turning a deaf ear to their opposition to the bill. "We are concerned because our government is trying to legalize this conduct, especially those who seek to speak to our congregations when they are running for office," said the Rev. Kenneth Giles of Mount Olive Missionary.

Obama's America: Registered nurses fresh out of school are coming across thousands of job postings with an impossible requirement: "no new grads"

It's a problem well documented by the nursing industry. About 43% of newly licensed RNs still do not have jobs within 18 months after graduation, according to a survey conducted by the American Society of Registered Nurses. "The process has become more and more discouraging, especially since hospitals want RNs with experience, yet nobody is willing to give us this experience," said Ronak Soliemannjad, 26, who has been searching for a nursing job since she graduated in June 2012. New grads have taken to posting their frustrations on allnurses.com, a social network for nurses. "It is a tough market for a new grad RN. A 'year experience required' or 'not considering new grads at this time' is pretty much the norm," wrote one. "It's like new grads have a disease or something," said another. How can this be, at a time when health care jobs are booming and a supposed shortage of RNs sent many career seekers running to nursing school? The recession is to blame, says Peter Buerhaus, a registered nurse and economist who teaches at the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing. In a paper he co-authored in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2012, he shows an interesting phenomenon happens in the demographics of the nursing workforce when the economy is weak. About 90% of nurses are women, 60% are married, and roughly a quarter are over 50 years old. It's typical for many nurses to take time off to raise children in their 30s, and given the long days spent working on their feet, many often retire in their late 50s. Prior to the recession, about 73,000 nurses left the profession each year due to childbearing, retirement, burning out or death. But when the recession hit, spouses lost jobs, 401(k)s lost money, and facing financial uncertainty, fewer nurses chose to leave work, Buerhaus said. "Many of those nurses are still in the workforce, and they're not leaving because we don't see a convincing jobs recovery yet," Buerhaus said. "They're clogging the market and making it harder for these new RNs to get a job." At the same time, enrollment in nursing colleges has exploded in recent years. In the 2010-2011 school year, 169,000 people were enrolled in entry-level baccalaureate nursing programs. That's more than double the 78,000 students from a decade earlier, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. There just aren't enough jobs to go around for all these new grads. Annah Karam heads recruiting for six hospitals in the Daughters of Charity Health System in Los Angeles. Each hospital has a program in place aimed at hiring at least 10 new grads a year, but the competition is fierce. Karam often receives more than 1,000 applications for each post. For other positions, the hospitals prefer experienced nurses. "We're new grad friendly but with the challenges we face in the hospital world, we often need seasoned nurses," Karam said. "We hire thousands of nurses across the whole system, yet a very small percentage are new grads."