South Africa has one of the world’s highest rates of sexual assault

According to a 2009 government survey, one in four men admit to having sex with a woman who did not consent to intercourse, and nearly half of these men admitted to raping more than once. An earlier government study found that a majority of rapes were committed by friends and acquaintances of the victim. Just as disturbing is a practice called “corrective rape” — the rape of gay men and lesbians to cure them of their sexual orientation. In one of the few cases to attract press attention, in 2008, Eudy Simelane, a lesbian, was gang-raped and stabbed to death. Her naked body was dumped in a stream in the Kwa Thema township outside Johannesburg. A soccer player training to be a referee for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, she was targeted because of her sexual orientation. In 2011, Noxolo Nogwaza, 24, was raped, and stabbed multiple times with glass shards. Her skull was shattered. Her eyes were gouged from their sockets. Nogwaza had been seen earlier that evening in a bar with a female friend. One woman, Simphiwe Thandeka, was “correctively” raped three times. A tomboy, she was raped at age 13 by an uncle who didn’t approve of her “boyish” ways. “I didn’t know at the time it was rape, because I was only 13,” she said. The next morning, she awoke bleeding and in severe pain. She spoke to her mother and grandmother, who insisted it was a family matter and was not to be spoken of again. Some years later, Simphiwe’s uncle decided that marriage would cure his niece of her sexuality. So he arranged a marriage for her. “He took me to his friend’s house and told me I must have sex with this man, because I was going to marry him next month,” she recounted. “I had no idea what was going on.” The friend raped Simphiwe multiple times, and beat her with a clothes hanger. “He told me I was going to be his wife and not a lesbian,” she said. The following morning, the friend returned her to her uncle’s house. “He told my uncle he couldn’t marry me because I was still a lesbian, and returned the money my uncle had given him,” she said. During a hospital visit, Simphiwe learned that she had contracted HIV from her uncle and had become pregnant by his friend. “My mum had known my uncle was positive, but she never told me,” she said.

A man living in the United States illegally has been arrested for raping a teenager

Detectives were working to track down what they said could be more victims as the entire community was outraged. Anselmo Soria, 50, was arraigned in Portsmouth after he raped a 16 year-old girl. The sheriff’s department received a tip that the girl had been assaulted for several years and they believe she might not be the only victim. People living in the area said that they were frustrated with the immigration system, but more so with the fact that they believe children in their region were in danger. "I don't know what to say about the illegal alien part. Whatever,” DeHart said. “I’m more concerned he was molesting our girls." As Soria waits to have his day in court, one father had a message to anyone who would commit such a disturbing crime. "It’s not smart to come here and mess with our children,” Dehart said. “There’s some good ol' boys who will take care of business." Deputies said that more charges could be pending. Soria is currently in the Scioto County Jail.

Obama's America: Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream

Survey data points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor and loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend. The findings come as Barack Obama tries to renew his administration's emphasis on the economy, saying in recent speeches that his highest priority is to "rebuild ladders of opportunity" and reverse income inequality. Hardship is particularly on the rise among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63% of whites called the economy "poor." While racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poverty, race disparities in the poverty rate have narrowed substantially since the 1970s, census data show. Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in government data, engulfing more than 76% of white adults by the time they turn 60, according to a new economic gauge being published by the Oxford University Press. The gauge defines "economic insecurity" as experiencing unemployment at some point in their working lives, or a year or more of reliance on government aid such as food stamps or income below 150%t of the poverty line. Measured across all races, the risk of economic insecurity rises to 79%. "It's time that America comes to understand that many of the nation's biggest disparities, from education and life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to economic class position," said William Julius Wilson, a Harvard professor who specializes in race and poverty. He noted that despite continuing economic difficulties, minorities have more optimism about the future after Obama's election, while struggling whites do not. "There is the real possibility that white alienation will increase if steps are not taken to highlight and address inequality on a broad front," Wilson said. Sometimes termed "the invisible poor" by demographers, lower-income whites are generally dispersed in suburbs as well as small rural towns, where more than 60% of the poor are white. Concentrated in Appalachia in the East, they are also numerous in the industrial Midwest and spread across America's heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains. More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41% of the nation's destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks. Still, while census figures provide an official measure of poverty, they're only a temporary snapshot. The numbers don't capture the makeup of those who cycle in and out of poverty at different points in their lives. They may be suburbanites, for example, or the working poor or the laid off. In 2011 that snapshot showed 12.6% of adults in their prime working-age years of 25 to 60 lived in poverty. But measured in terms of a person's lifetime risk, a much higher number — 4 in 10 adults — falls into poverty for at least a year of their lives. The risks of poverty also have been increasing in recent decades, particularly among people ages 35 to 55, coinciding with widening income inequality. For instance, people ages 35 to 45 had a 17% risk of encountering poverty during the 1969-1989 time period; that risk increased to 23% during the 1989-2009 period. For those ages 45 to 55, the risk of poverty jumped from 11.8% to 17.7%. By race, non-whites still have a higher risk of being economically insecure, at 90%. But compared with the official poverty rate, some of the biggest jumps under the newer measure are among whites, with more than 76% enduring periods of joblessness, life on welfare or near-poverty. By 2030, based on the current trend of widening income inequality, close to 85% of all working-age adults in the U.S. will experience bouts of economic insecurity. For the first time since 1975, the number of white single-mother households who were living in poverty with children surpassed or equaled black ones in the past decade, spurred by job losses and faster rates of out-of-wedlock births among whites. White single-mother families in poverty stood at nearly 1.5 million in 2011, comparable to the number for blacks. Hispanic single-mother families in poverty trailed at 1.2 million. The share of children living in high-poverty neighborhoods — those with poverty rates of 30% or more — has increased to 1 in 10, putting them at higher risk of teen pregnancy or dropping out of school. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 17% of the child population in such neighborhoods, up from 13% in 2000, even though the overall proportion of white children in the United States has been declining. The share of black children in high-poverty neighborhoods dropped sharply, from 43% to 37%, while the share of Latino children ticked higher, from 38% to 39%. Going back to the 1980s, never have whites been so pessimistic about their futures, according to the General Social Survey, which is conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. Just 45% say that their family will have a good chance of improving their economic position based on the way things are in America. The divide is especially evident among those whites who self-identify as working class: 49% say that they think their children will do better than them, compared with 67% of non-whites who consider themselves working class. In November 2012, Obama won the votes of just 36% of those non-college whites, the worst performance of any Democratic nominee among that group since 1984. Some Democratic analysts have urged renewed efforts to bring working-class whites into the political fold, calling them a potential "decisive swing voter group" if minority and youth turnout level off in future elections. "They don't trust big government, but it doesn't mean they want no government," says Republican pollster Ed Goeas, who agrees that working-class whites will remain an important electoral group. "They feel that politicians are giving attention to other people and not them."

The black gunman wanted for shooting a family of five outside a Brooklyn park has been arrested in Springfield, Massachusetts

Curtis Peterson, 23 — who fired on a crowd near the Bushwick park because one of the victims reported him to police — was picked up by U.S. Marshals and NYPD officers with the Regional Fugitive Task Force. Peterson — whose rap sheet includes arrests for burglary, drugs, weapons possession and robbery — was aiming for Ronaldo Pizarro, 45, the father of his baby’s mother, police sources said. Pizarro had filled out a police report a day after Peterson harassed the 18-year-old mother during her shift at a local McDonald’s — because he found out she had been dating another man. The jilted Peterson splashed a milkshake in the teen’s face before he left. But when Peterson found out that the incident had been reported to police, he decided to settle matters with a gun. The armed man was with three others when he opened fire on Pizarro, striking him in the stomach. Pizarro’s wife, Melody Amill, 37, was shot in the knee and his son, Ronaldo Jr, took a bullet in the leg. Pizarro’s 45-year-old aunt, Wanda Espinoza, was hit in the stomach and another relative, Manuel Rivera, 62, was wounded in his ankle. All five victims were taken to local hospitals, where they were treated for their wounds.

Hispanic violence: Police have identified the now-dead gunman who was behind the death of six people in a South Florida shooting spree as 42 year old Pedro Vargas

Authorities have named five of the six victims: Italo Pisciotti, 79, Camira Pisciotti, 69, Carlos Javier Gavilanes, 33, Patricio Simono, 64, and Merly S. Niebles, 51. The sixth victim was identified only as a 17-year-old female, though relatives have said that she was Niebles' daughter, Priscilla Perez. Vargas was a tenant of the Hialeah apartment complex where the shooting took place. It was previously reported that the killings began when the Pisciottis, the building's managers, came to question the gunman over a tenant dispute. But the police say it was more than that: Vargas had lit his fourth-floor apartment on fire, and they went to investigate the smoke coming out of it. When the couple came to the door Vargas shot them. As firefighters arrived on scene, Vargas fired at them from his balcony, but instead hit Gavilanes, who was walking across the street with his son. Vargas then went into a third-floor apartment, where the bodies of Simono, Niebles, and the 17-year-old were later found. A neighbor says that their lock was shot off and the teen girl had been hiding in the bathroom. "Seven people have lost their lives in this incident, six innocent victims and the one shooter," says a police spokesman. "Now starts the investigation, how and why this happened."

The voters who are most important to the GOP's success in 2016 are non-college educated whites

It is a waste of time and resources for the Republicans to try appealing to Hispanics. But does Sheldon Adelson or any of the GOP's other Jewish donors care?

Is Jewish pervert Anthony Weiner just a symbol of a mentally and morally sick society?

Pat Buchanan points out that thanks to liberalism it has become increasing difficult to argue that anything is morally wrong.

Some surprising common sense from super liberal Maureen Dowd regarding Jewish pervert Anthony Weiner

Dowd points out that he is a creepy loser who, during his 12 years in Congress, only managed to get one minor bill passed and that was on behalf of a donor.

Women vary in skin color over the course of their menstrual cycle

From mid-cycle on, their skin steadily reddens because of an increase in blood flow that peaks in the day or two preceding menstruation. This cyclical “blushing” mainly affects the torso. Facial skin, especially around the eyes, shows a similar cyclical change. Unlike the torso, the face doesn’t redden towards the end of the cycle. Instead, it becomes browner through increased melanocyte activity.

Only 52% of whites and 38% of blacks have a favorable opinion of race relations in the country, according to a poll, which has tracked race relations since 1994 and was conducted in mid-July 2013

That’s a sharp drop from the beginning of Obama’s first term, when 79% of whites and 63% of blacks held a favorable view of American race relations. Negative views on race relations have also increased substantially. According to the poll, 45% of whites and 58% of African-Americans now believe that race relations are very or fairly bad, compared with 2009, when only 20% of whites and 30% of blacks held an unfavorable view.

Puerto Rican says that Jewish politician should apologize to Latinos for using the pseudonym "Carlos Danger"

Was Anthony Weiner being racist when he chose his weird Internet name?

A new study of nearly 145,000 post-menopausal women found a strong correlation between height and cancer risk — stronger even than the correlation for well-known risk factors such as obesity

The link was seen across a host of cancers, from thyroid to melanoma.

Some pupils are naturally brighter than others, a study of twins suggests

The research shows that inherited intelligence accounts for almost two thirds of marks in GCSEs, while the amount of work done in class accounts for the rest. This suggests that raising the standard of teaching in schools may have a limited impact on children’s academic achievement when compared with the genes they are born with. Or, put more simply, nature trumps nurture. Analysis of the GCSE results of more than 11,100 of them suggested genetic background had a substantial impact on their results. In science it accounted for 58% of scores, in math for 55% and English 52%. IQ scores have been linked with genes before and the advantage appears to increase with age. Little genetic differences become bigger and bigger as you go through life.

A 19-year-old Hispanic accused of beating and raping an elderly woman who later died will now face a murder charge

Prosecutors said that Sergio Martinez-Perez beat and sexually assaulted 93-year-old Louise Sollowin in her home. Sollowin later died. Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said that Martinez-Perez will be charged with first-degree murder. Autopsy results showed that Sollowin's cause of death was blunt force trauma. Martinez-Perez, who already faces charges of first-degree sexual assault, first-degree assault and burglary, is set to appear before a judge to be arraigned on the new charge. Prosecutors said that Martinez-Perez admitted to the assault and rape, saying that he was mad at women after a night of drinking. Investigators said that Martinez-Perez is not a legal resident of the United States, and that his country of origin is not yet clear. The victim’s family said that a detective told them that Perez has been in the country for about four months.

CDC report: African-American males continue to die younger, with heart disease and homicide shortening their lives

White females have the longest life expectancy at 81.3 years, black females at 78 years, white males at 76.5 years and black males have the shortest at 71.8 years. The report highlights the causes of death that affect the differences in life expectancy between blacks and whites - namely, heart disease, cancer, homicide and diabetes. “We expected heart disease and cancer, those are still the main focus, but what’s interesting is when you look at the graph for males, you see how important homicide is for directly affecting life expectancy for African-Americans,” says Kenneth D. Kochanek, lead author of the report and statistician with the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. For black males, homicide decreased life expectancy by almost a year. Heart disease was the most significant cause of death affecting the disparity in life expectancy, but for black males, homicide was number two - ahead of cancer and stroke. “We have to look at [violence and homicide] like a disease,” says Dr. Robert Gore, emergency medical physician at Kings County-SUNY Downstate Hospitals and executive director of KAVI - the Kings Against Violence Initiative in Brooklyn. “There are over 700,000 reported violent acts per year involving U.S. youth presenting to our hospitals. We have to stop looking at violence as a purely social problem.” The majority of homicides involve youth and young adults between the ages of 10 and 24. In fact, it’s the number one cause of death among black males in this age group. And despite making up just 13% of the population, the FBI reports that half of the homicide victims in 2011 were black. But now, this new CDC data illustrates just how striking those numbers are - dramatic enough to affect the overall life expectancy for all black men, across all ages. The report also showed that suicide, unintentional accidents, Alzheimer’s disease, liver disease and chronic lung diseases had the opposite effect, and were associated with a longer life expectancy as compared to whites.

Africans with HIV are more susceptible to TB

Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death by infectious disease, causing 1.5 million deaths around the world each year. Its prevalence is rising because of drug resistance and an increasing number of patients who are co-infected with HIV. They represent nearly 30% of all TB-related deaths. The convergence of these epidemics is particularly prominent on the African continent, which has the highest rates of TB cases and deaths — 80% of which occur in people living with HIV. Globally, a higher incidence of tuberculosis is known to occur in Africans and African-Americans than in American or European whites, and genetic susceptibility has long been suspected. Researchers found that a low-expressing version of the immune response gene known as macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) — a cell-signaling molecule secreted by the body's innate immune system — conferred a two-and-a-half two and a half-fold increased risk for severe tuberculosis in a group of patients from Uganda. Low-expressers of MIF are almost twice as common among people of African ancestry as whites. "This helps to explain the increased incidence of TB in Africa," said senior author Richard Bucala, M.D., professor of rheumatology, pathology, and epidemiology at Yale School of Medicine and Yale School of Public Health.

African-Americans and whites are sharply divided on the Zimmerman verdict, reveal new polls

In a Washington Post-ABC poll, more than 1,000 Americans were asked whether they approved of the Zimmerman verdict. A whopping 81% of blacks said no, while just 9% said yes. The numbers were sharply reversed among whites, with 51% favoring the jury's decision and 27% disapproving. And shortly after Attorney General Eric Holder was assuring the NAACP at its convention that his Justice Department was still investigating the Zimmerman case, an 81% majority of blacks told pollsters that they believe Zimmerman should face new civil rights charges in federal court. Just 13% disagreed. White respondents were opposed, but less strongly, by a 59-27 margin. Overall, ABC found that 39% of Americans thought Zimmerman should be charged again. Forty-six percent disagreed. ABC conducted its poll July 18-21, 2013. A separate poll of 1,000 Americans conducted July 15-16, 2013 by Rasmussen Reports found that in the days immediately following Zimmerman's acquittal, just 21% - barely half the number in ABC's poll a few days later - thought federal civil-rights charges were warranted. Asked if they agreed with the jury verdict in Sanford, Florida, less than half overall - 48% - told the Rasmussen researchers that they did. Thirty-four per cent disagreed. In a separate Rasmussen poll conducted July 17-18, 2013 48% of Americans said that they view Zimmerman unfavorably, compared to 32% who had a favorable view of him. Just 17% of self-identified Republicans, The Washington Post reported, think the Justice Department should file civil-rights charges over the death of Martin, a 17-year-old young man when his life ended. Among Democrats, 57% say that Zimmerman should face new federal charges. Approval of the jury's verdict was also split along party lines, with 65% of Republicans and 22% of Democrats in favor.

Britain: White children are less likely to continue their eduction at university than any other ethnic group, official figures reveal

Fewer than 29% leave school with the aim of starting an undergraduate course – compared with 57% among Chinese children and 41% of South Asian pupils. Black children – once the worst-performing ethnic group in schools – are now the third most ambitious, with an application rate of 34%. White children have long trailed behind Chinese and Asian pupils in terms of chasing university places. But the figures from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service show they have been bypassed by other groups. They also come behind two wider categories used by Ucas – mixed race children (31%), and all other ethnic groups (33%). Ucas chief executive Mary Curnock Cook said: "Our new analysis of demand by ethnic group shows that white pupils at English schools now have the lowest application rate of any ethnic group. There has been significant growth in demand from black pupils." Chief schools inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw has published a major report which found under-achievement is now most pronounced among white working-class children in suburbs, market towns and seaside resorts. Previously, black children from inner-city schools had presented the biggest problem. White children still make up the majority of undergraduates because they are by far the largest ethnic group. But the Ucas figures, which relate to 18-year-olds at state schools, show that applications by white boys and girls have dropped for the last three years. The largest increase has been among black pupils, whose application rate has soared by 70% since 2006. Of course, thanks to policies such as affirmative action, white students have been sent the message that they are not wanted at British universities.

AJC, the global Jewish advocacy organization, has praised the Latino-Jewish Congressional Caucus initiative on immigration reform

More evidence that Jews are working with Hispanics to undermine white gentiles.

Illegal immigrant crime in Texas: Police in Austin have arrested two Mexican nationals who participated in the gang-rape of a 13-year-old girl

The girl, a runaway, who lives at the Settlement Home for Children, was picked up by three Latino men and driven to the Avalon Arms apartments, where she was raped by a large group of men for several hours, according to police. As many as 13 men took turns sexually assaulting the girl. Many cheered and filmed the sickening crime on their cell phones, according to court documents. Juan Lozano Ortega, 25, and Edgar Gerardo Guzman Perez, 26, have been charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child. Both are currently being held in the Travis County Jail on immigration detainers. The girl was taken to a nearby hospital, where doctors determined her injuries were consistent with her allegations. Austin police are currently searching for the other assailants.

Nearly one black teenager a day is shot dead on the South Side of Chicago — to name only one city — by another black teenager

Why are black leaders only interested in some black-victim homicides?

Hispanic crime: A livery cab driver has been arrested after he killed his traffic agent girlfriend and stuffed her body in the trash can of a Bronx apartment, possibly in a fit of jealous rage, according to police sources

Police have arrested 52-year-old Moises Martinez in the killing of 29-year-old Yajaira Reyes, whose body was found wrapped in a blanket and stuffed head-first in a trash can in the couple's Walton Avenue apartment in Mount Eden. Martinez told investigators after he was arrested that his girlfriend was having an affair, according to police sources. The couple has several children together, though they are believed to be out of town. Authorities towed Martinez's car from near the Bronx apartment after he was spotted carrying items to it, according to police sources. He worked in the Bronx as a livery cab driver for Diplo First Class Car Service for about three years, according to Fernando Mateo, president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers. The car company had no comment on Martinez's arrest. Reyes was a traffic enforcement officer with the NYPD, police sources said. Martinez's building superintendent, Jesus Ulloa, said in Spanish that he never noticed issues or indications of domestic problems with the couple. Neighbors said that Martinez and Reyes lived in the neighborhood for only a few months. Martinez faces charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter, police said.

Food stamps are paying for trans-Atlantic takeout — with New Yorkers using taxpayer-funded benefits to ship food to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels for the trip overseas. The practice is so common that hundreds of 45- to 55-gallon cardboard and plastic barrels line the walls of supermarkets in almost every Caribbean corner of the city. The federal authorities say that the movable feasts go against the intent of the $86 billion welfare program for impoverished Americans. A spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service said that welfare benefits are reserved for households that buy and prepare food together. She said that states should intervene if people are caught shipping non-perishables abroad. Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, called it just another example of welfare abuse. “I don’t want food-stamp police to see what people do with their rice and beans, but it’s wrong,” Tanner said. “The purpose of this program is to help Americans who don’t have enough to eat. This is not intended as a form of foreign aid.” The United States spent $522.7 million on foreign aid to the Caribbean in the last fiscal year, government data show. Still, New Yorkers say that they ship the food because staples available in the United States are superior and less costly than what their families can get abroad. “Everybody does it,” said a worker at an Associated Supermarket in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn. “They pay for it any way they can. A lot of people pay with EBT.” Customers pay cash for the barrels, usually about $40, and typically ship them filled with $500 to $2,000 worth of rice, beans, pasta, canned milk and sausages. Workers at the Pioneer Supermarket on Parkside Avenue and the Key Food on Flatbush Avenue have confirmed the practice. They said that food-stamp recipients typically take home their barrels and fill them gradually over time with food bought with EBT cards. When the tubs are full, the welfare users call a shipping company to pick them up and send them to the Caribbean for about $70. The shipments take about three weeks.

Between 1985 and 2011, Washington’s homicide rate dropped by 26%, robbery fell 27%, and violent crime in general was cut by 30%; but the city’s black population also dropped by 27% during this same period

Official FBI statistics indicate that blacks are over 600% as likely to commit homicide as non-blacks and their robbery rate is over 700% larger. Generally, the most effective way to reduce crime in a city is to reduce the size of its black population.

Black crime: Police say that Michael Madison, the registered sex offender suspected in the murders of three women in Cleveland, has confessed to one of the killings

He has been charged with three counts of aggravated murder and his bail has been set at $6 million. Meanwhile, one of the victims has been identified as Angela Deskins, 38. Authorities are asking for anyone with information on possible IDs of the other two women to call 1-800-CALL-FBI. Autopsies on the badly decomposed bodies are complete, but cause of death has not yet been determined. Volunteer searchers have been told to expect more remains to be found. All three victims are believed to have been murdered recently. The mayor says that detectives, who are still questioning Madison, have lots of reasons to believe there are more victims. A neighbor who saw Madison frequently says that the man threatened recently to attack women in a similar fashion as fellow black serial killer, Anthony Sowell, who was convicted of murdering 11 women whose bodies were found in his Cleveland home in 2009. Madison also indicated to police that Sowell may have influenced him.

Black Minnesotans who have reached the age of 65 can expect to be healthy for far less of their remaining years than whites, according to new federal government data

A report released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concludes that black Minnesotans can expect a little over half of their remaining years - or 57% - to be healthy. On average Minnesotans 65 and older can expect 77.5% of their remaining years to be healthy. But while that is true for whites, black senior citizens will not see as many healthy years. "That is a significant difference," said Paula Yoon, acting director of the Epidemiology and Analysis Program Office at the CDC. "So in Minnesota whites can expect about 15.6 years of healthy life, and blacks have a healthy life expectancy of about 11.5 years," said Yoon. The study marks the first time that the CDC has looked at healthy life expectancy by state. Healthy life expectancy is the proportion of a person's remaining years that they can expect to live in good health. Minnesota is among the top tier of states for life expectancy and good health among people who reach age 65, according to the government data. It also confirms that Minnesota's reputation as a state where people tend to live long, healthy lives remains true for most residents as they reach retirement age. But it reveals that stark health disparities persist among Minnesota seniors, depending on their race and sex. Across the nation, the CDC found that healthy life expectancy for whites was greater than for blacks in all of the states and the District of Columbia. The study also showed that healthy life expectancy for females was greater than for males in all states. It also found that healthy life expectancy for people living in the southern states tended to be lower than for other parts of the country.

Norwegian interior designer Marte Deborah Dalelv has spoken out after being handed a 16-month prison sentence in Dubai - after she went to police to report that she had been raped by a colleague

The 24-year-old was convicted and sentenced on charges of having unlawful sex, making a false statement and illegal consumption of alcohol. Her story is dominating the headlines in Norway, and has raised serious questions over the way women who allege sexual assault are treated in the United Arab Emirates. Dalelv, who had been working at an interior design firm in Qatar since September 2011, said how a work trip to Dubai in March 2013 with three colleagues turned into a nightmare. She had been out at a bar with her colleagues and friends, and asked a male colleague to walk her to her room when they returned at 3 a.m. to the hotel. She'd asked him to escort her because the hotel was large and confusing, and she didn't want to be wandering on her own, knowing she'd been drinking, she said. When they reached a room, she realized it wasn't hers - but the man then pulled her inside despite her vocal objections, according to Dalelv. "He dragged me by my purse in, so I thought, 'OK, I just need to calm the situation down. I will finish my bottle of water, I will sit here and then I will excuse myself and say I feel fine,'" she said. That was pretty much the last thing she remembers before the sexual assault. "I woke up with my clothes off, sleeping on my belly, and he was raping me. I tried to get off, I tried to get him off, but he pushed me back down." After someone knocked - the hotel wake-up call - she managed to get dressed and make it downstairs to the hotel reception, Dalelv said. "I called the police. That is what you do. We are trained on that from when we are very young," she said. Some 10 or 12 male police officers arrived, but no female police officers were present, she said. Statements were taken from both Dalelv and the rapist. She was then taken to Bur Dubai police station, she said. After again giving her version of events to officers, Dalelv said, "They asked me, 'Are you sure you called the police because you just didn't like it?' I said, 'Well of course I didn't like it.' That is when I knew, I don't think they are going to believe me at all." Dalelv was taken for an intimate medical exam and tested for alcohol consumption. Her belongings were taken and she was kept in jail for four days, she said, with no explanation as to why. Dalelv managed to call her parents on the third day to tell them that she had been raped and ask them to contact the Norwegian Embassy. A day later, a representative from the Norwegian consulate came to the police station and she was released - but her passport was not returned. A piece of paper with Arabic text was handed to her, she said. An Arabic speaker told her it listed two charges against her: one for sex outside of marriage and the other for public consumption of alcohol. Both are violations of the law in the United Arab Emirates. It was the first time that she was made aware that she faced charges, Dalelv said. She was allowed out on bail and has been staying since at the Norwegian Seaman's Center in Dubai. Subsequently, her manager advised her to tell the police it was voluntary sexual intercourse and likely the whole issue would just go away. She followed the advice and in one of the many hearings at the public prosecutor's office, she made a statement saying it was voluntary. Dalelv was then charged with making a false statement. "That was my biggest regret because it wasn't voluntary. I just thought it would all go away," she said. But a representative of Al Mana Interiors, who Dalelv worked for, said that she was not advised by her manager to say the sex was consensual but rather by a police officer, who told her that in Arabic and it was translated into English by her manager. Dalelv said that a month after the rape, while forced to stay in Dubai as the case wound through the legal system, she was fired. The representative said that Dalelv and the Sudanese man she accused - who is married with three children - have both been terminated by Al Mana Interiors for "drinking alcohol at a staff conference that resulted in trouble with the police." The company is owned by Qatari billionaire Wissam Al Mana, who made headlines earlier in 2013 after it was revealed that he secretly married singer Janet Jackson in 2012. Dalelv has been convicted on all three charges and was sentenced to one year in jail for having unlawful sex, three months in jail for making a false statement and one month for illegal consumption of alcohol. Dalelv is scheduled to appear at the court on September 5, 2013 to begin the appeal proceedings. Dalelv, who is not allowed to leave the UAE pending the appeal, said that her lawyers have instructed her to be prepared to go back into jail while they submit a request for bail while the appeal is ongoing. A Facebook page has been set up calling for Dalelv's release, as well as a petition urging the Norwegian government to take action on her behalf. Her conviction may risk wider diplomatic repercussions. Norwegian Foreign Affairs Minister Espen Barth Eide called his UAE counterpart, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed al-Nahyan, to protest Dalelv's sentencing, a statement from the Norwegian ministry said. "I emphasized that we believe that the conviction is contrary to fundamental human rights, including conventions that the UAE have officially ratified," Eide is quoted as saying. "Norway will continue to do what we can to support her in what is a very difficult situation. Our cooperation with the UAE is strong and good, but I conveyed to my colleague that we are worried that this difficult case may disturb our good relations if we do not reach a good solution in the near future." Dalelv said that she received a call from Eide reiterating Norway's support. While Dubai has a reputation as a cosmopolitan city that boasts Western influences, where visitors can drink at bars and restaurants and unmarried couples can share hotel rooms, the country adheres to Islamic laws and traditions. The United Arab Emirates has been heavily criticized by rights groups, which say it condones sexual violence against women. Human Rights Watch has called its record shameful, saying that it must change the way it handles such cases. In December 2012, a British woman reported being raped by three men in Dubai. She was found guilty of drinking alcohol without a license and fined. In January 2010, a British woman told authorities that she was raped by an employee at a Dubai hotel. She was charged with public intoxication and having sex outside of marriage. An Australian woman reported in 2008 that she was drugged and gang-raped. She was convicted of having sex outside marriage and drinking alcohol, and she was sentenced to 11 months in prison.

Is homosexuality biological?

Mark Joseph Stern looks at the evidence:

Some of the strongest current evidence that some people are born gay is based on a phenomenon called the fraternal birth order effect. Several peer-reviewed studies have shown that men with older biological brothers are likelier to be gay than men with older sisters or no older siblings. The likelihood of being gay increases by about 33 percent with each additional older brother. From these statistics, researchers calculate that about 15 to 30 percent of gay men have the fraternal birth order effect to thank for their homosexuality.

Why does this happen?:

One of the leading explanations is called the maternal immunization hypothesis. According to Ray Blanchard of the University of Toronto, when a woman is pregnant with a male fetus, her body is exposed to a male-specific antigen, some molecule that normally turns the fetus heterosexual. The woman’s immune system produces antibodies to fight this foreign antigen. With enough antibodies, the antigen will be neutralized and no longer capable of making the fetus straight. These antibodies linger in the mother’s body long after pregnancy, and so when a woman has a second son, or a third or fourth, an army of antibodies is lying in wait to zap the chemicals that would normally make him heterosexual.

Or so Blanchard speculates. Although the hypothesis sounds reasonable enough, it’s premised on a number of assumptions that haven’t been proven. For instance, no one has shown that there is a particular antigen that controls sexual orientation, let alone one designed to make men straight. And if that antigen does exist, does it control orientation only? Blanchard refers to its antibody attackers as “anti-male,” implying that the antigen controls for various aspects of masculinity. But when I asked him about this, he was noncommittal. Moreover, the hypothesis proposes a loose, two-way flow of antigens and antibodies between the fetus (whose antigens spread to the mother) and the mother (whose antibodies spread to the fetus). But this exchange has never been observed—and the antibodies and antigens in question are hypothetical, anyway. If they do exist, there’s no assurance that they perform this placental pirouette.

Does this mean that homosexuality is pathogenic?:

If Blanchard is right, then (at least some) gay people are indeed born gay, but there’s still something wrong with them. The hypothesis turns homosexuality into a birth defect, an aberration: Gay people are deviants from the normative mode of heterosexuality. We may have been born this way, the hypothesis implies, but that’s not how it was supposed to happen.

What about a cure?:

If homosexuality is truly biological, discrimination against gay people is bigotry, plain and simple. But if it’s a birth defect, as Blanchard’s work tacitly suggests, then being gay is something that can — and presumably should — be fixed.

Let us hope that if homosexuality does turn out to be biological then scientists will be able to come up with a way to solve it.

Are black riots really about Obama and his policies?

An interesting post from Brenda Walker:

My two cents on the Trayvon frenzy: there’s a big element of emotional displacement of black anger with the President transferred to this case. Many blacks are deeply disappointed with the Obama Presidency, in particular the terrible unemployment because of his destructive handling of the economy. Life for millions of black citizens has gotten worse, not better, under the African-American President, but it is taboo to criticize him, so their outrage has been funneled into the highly publicized shooting and trial.

If there were jobs and a sense of hope about the future, the trial’s outcome might have been more easily accepted. But Obama has given far more attention to the imagined concerns of hispanics than to his own paternal race, who have to riot to get noticed by the President.

Trayvon Martin and the Jews

Another great post from Tanstaafl.

Black crime in Britain: As many as a fifth of 18-34 year old black men in Hackney could be part of a gang according to researchers

The figures emerged in a study which concluded that gang members suffer unprecedented levels of psychiatric illness, placing a heavy burden on mental health services. Researchers at Queen Mary, University of London, surveyed 4,664 men aged 18 to 34 in Britain, with the sample weighted to combine significant numbers from areas with high gang membership - including 700 from Hackney. Of the total sample 2.1% of men said that they belonged to a gang - but in Hackney the figures were much higher at 8.6%. If membership of a gang is narrowed down to black men in Hackney the figure shoots up to 20%. Professor Jeremy Coid, director of forensic psychiatry research unit at Queen Mary, and lead author of the paper said: “One of the most interesting things is that you actually have a real changing social demography in Hackney. So if we look at white men in Hackney the figures are fractionally higher than the rest of the country for gang membership, but it’s extremely raised among black men."

Even in Scotland it is considered racist to notice that blacks commit a lot of crimes

A Crimestoppers poster that depicts a black drug dealer being tackled by a giant mobile phone has drawn complaints from equality campaigners in Scotland. The African and Caribbean Network (ACN) represents more than 2,000 people in Glasgow and the surrounding region, and said that the new billboard “sends out completely the wrong message”. Graham Campbell, vice-chairman of ACN Glasgow, said: “This is not an image I would want to see associated with black people in Glasgow. These types of billboards were a problem when I was growing up in London back in the 1980s and we've moved on since then. But we rarely see black people represented at all, so it's hugely disappointing that when we do they are portrayed negatively.” He added that one of the posters had been placed in an area of Glasgow with a predominantly black community, and said: “The implication is being given to people that they should mistrust their neighbor.” Crimestoppers released a statement saying that they apologised if any offence had been caused, but that the poster came as part of a wider awareness campaign depicting “a broad cross section of society”. They said: “Crimestoppers exists to provide a voice to those who otherwise may find themselves without a means of reporting crime and criminal behavior. The charity aims to unite communities in doing so and provides a platform for people to do something positive in making their town or city a safer place to live irrespective of gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation or beliefs. We are a non-judgmental charity here to help and support communities.” Responding to the poster on Twitter, user @_mozz_ said: “Think this objection is completely valid & posters should be taken down.” And the Glasgow-based Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights posted a link about the campaign, adding: “Crimestoppers advert criticised by Glasgow activists over racial stereotyping.” So remember the next time you see a black committing a crime it is just your eyes being racist.

Charges have been filed against a black man accused of holding four men against their will at a northwest Houston home, police said

Walter Renard Jones, 31, is charged with two counts of injury to the elderly - serious bodily injury in the 263rd state District Court. Investigators with the Houston Police Department said that the four men were held captive in a garage and were living in deplorable conditions while being forced to hand over their monthly incomes. The victims told officers that they were held against their will in the converted garage and given only scraps to eat. Three of the men, who appeared to be suffering from malnutrition, were taken to LBJ Hospital. They are in stable condition, police said. The victims were discovered after a resident called police after seeing a man at the window rubbing his stomach as if he was hungry. When officers arrived at the duplex on White Castle, they were shocked. They described the living conditions as like a dungeon. The owner of the house is 83-year-old Essie Scranton. There was no bathroom and a chair was the only piece of furniture. The garage had burglar bars and locked doors. Police were told that the men were lured to the home with the promise of food, alcohol and cigarettes. Investigators are looking into whether they were homeless before. They were also forced to turn over their Social Security and Veteran’s benefits checks to their captor. Investigators said that Jones apparently did not live in the house. Four women live in the other side of the duplex, three of whom appeared to have mental disabilities, police said. The fourth was a caretaker. Harris County Adult Protective Services is also looking into this case. The agency will be checking into the mental capacities of the men held captive and the official residents, including the homeowner. Court records showed that Jones had previous charges beginning in 2002 for theft, marijuana possession and failing to register as a sex offender.

A brave anti-Zionist has died: Veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas is dead at age 92

Her career was destroyed when she stood up to Jewish power. It is a pity that more gentiles are not as brave as she was.

Does the criminal justice system really discriminate against blacks?

Not according to Heather Mac Donald:

A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases from the country’s 75 largest urban areas discovered that blacks actually had a lower chance of prosecution following a felony than whites did and that they were less likely to be found guilty at trial. Alfred Blumstein has found that blacks are underrepresented in prison for homicide compared with their arrest rates. A meta-analysis of charging and sentencing studies showed that “large racial differences in criminal offending,” not racism, explained why more blacks were in prison proportionately than whites and for longer terms, according to criminologists Robert Sampson and Janet Lauritsen.

She points out that blacks are generally safer around whites than they are around other blacks:

In fact, if a black parent wants to radically reduce his son’s chance of getting shot, he should live in a white neighborhood. New York’s crime profile is typical of urban-crime disparities across the country. The per capita shooting rate in predominantly black Brownsville, Brooklyn, is 81 times higher than that of predominantly white and Asian Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, according to the New York Police Department. Blacks in 2012 committed about 75 percent of all shootings in New York, and whites a little over 2 percent, though blacks are 23 percent of the city’s population and whites 35 percent. Blacks are 60 percent of the city’s homicide victims. Their killers? They aren’t white. The picture is the same nationally. Black males between the ages of 14 and 24 committed homicide at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic males combined in the same age category in 2008, resulting in a homicide victimization rate nearly as disproportionate. As for interracial crime, black homicide offenders in 2010 had nearly three times the absolute number of white and Hispanic victims as there were black victims of white and Hispanic homicide offenders, despite blacks’ much lower population numbers.

Justice Department: Blacks are at least seven times more likely than people of other races to commit violent crimes and young black men are the most dangerous people in America

Is it now a hate crime for a "racist" to use violence in self-defense against a black assailant?

Barack Obama: African-American boys are more violent

According to our first - and hopefully only - black president, African-American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system and are disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence.

In New York from January to June 2008, 83% of all gun assailants were black, according to witnesses and victims, though blacks were only 24% of the population

Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 98% of all gun assailants. Forty-nine of every 50 muggings and murders in the Big Apple were the work of black or Hispanic criminals. New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says that blacks and Hispanics commit 96% of all crimes in the city, but only 85% of the stop-and-frisks are of blacks and Hispanics. An analysis of single offender victimization figures from the FBI for 2007 finds that blacks committed 433,934 crimes against whites, eight times the 55,685 whites committed against blacks. Interracial rape is almost exclusively black on white — with 14,000 assaults on white women by African Americans in 2007. Not one case of a white sexual assault on a black female was found in the FBI study. Though blacks are outnumbered 5-to-1 in the population by whites, they commit eight times as many crimes against whites as the reverse. By those 2007 numbers, a black male was 40 times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse. And if the FBI stats for 2007 represent an average year then over one-third of a million white women have been sexually assaulted by black males since 1987.

Lack of public safety in black run Detroit

If you're a Detroiter who needs a police officer, it will take 58 minutes to get help - more than five times what it takes elsewhere in the United States. And if you're walking around the city, it might make sense to bring a flashlight - about 40% of the 88,000 street lights don't work. Response times for Emergency Medical Services and the Detroit Fire Department average 15 minutes, which is more than double the 7-minute averages seen in other cities. The police department closes only 8.7% of its criminal cases. The city's violent crime rate is five times the national average, and the highest of any city with a population exceeding 200,000.

Predominantly black Detroit files for bankruptcy

Detroit has filed for bankruptcy, becoming the nation's largest public sector bankruptcy. The move could slash pension benefits to city workers and retirees, and leave bond holders with only pennies on the dollar. The bankruptcy was filed by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr and approved by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. Snyder said that the financial condition of the city left him no choice, and that Detroit could not meet its obligation to either its citizens or its creditors. "The only feasible path to ensuring the city will be able to meet obligations in the future is to have a successful restructuring via the bankruptcy process," Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said in the letter authorizing the filing. Orr has already halted payments on about $2 billion in debt recently, saying that the city needed to preserve its dwindling supply of cash. The city faces total liabilities of about $18 billion. Orr's reorganization plan calls for cutting $11.5 billion in debt down to $2 billion. That would mean that investors and retirees would receive an average of just 17% of what they are owed. Specific plans for the cuts are unknown at this time. But cutting retiree's pensions in a municipal bankruptcy has never been done before, said Michael Sweet, a California bankruptcy attorney. "It's relatively easy to blow off a creditor. It's much harder when it's people who are the fabric of your community," he said. "You need a police force, you need a fire department. You're saying [to them] you're not worth what you were previously promised." Sweet said that case law on whether pensions can be cut this way is very limited, and it could take years for a court fight over pension cuts to work its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Given the poor state of funding for many public sector pension funds nationwide, "it's a big enough question, that (the Supreme Court) is where it likely will have to go," he said. When employees of a bankrupt business lose their promised pensions, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. steps in and provides a minimal level of benefits. But that federal agency doesn't back pensions in the public sector. Snyder spokeswoman Sara Wurfel said that the decision to file for bankruptcy came after careful deliberation. "This has been a huge problem for decades and it's come to a crisis point," she said. "The emergency manager tried to work with all the creditors, including pensioners." Retirees and city employees say that they can't accept cuts in their pension benefits. "How am I supposed to live without my pension?" said David Sole, 65, after a protest in Detroit. Sole retired from the city's water department in January 2013 after 22 years. Investors say that the bankruptcy will make it more difficult for cities and towns everywhere to raise the money they need to build bridges, schools and other infrastructure. It will also hurt municipal bonds held by individual investors. There are more than $1 trillion worth of bonds at risk, said Peter Hayes, head of municipal bonds at BlackRock. He said that there will be a ripple effect nationwide. Orr said that the city needs to cut debt to restore services and lower costs, such as taxes and insurance, that he says have chased businesses and residents out of the city. Detroit's population has fallen 28% since 2000. The unemployment rate, while down from a peak of 27.8% in the summer of 2009 - when General Motors and Chrysler Group were going through their own bankruptcies - is still at 16.3%, nearly twice Michigan's statewide average. While the auto industry has enjoyed a resurgence with strong car sales and profits, most of the industry's Michigan plants lay outside of city limits.

Ann Coulter: To avoid looking like a criminal, don't commit a crime

She has some useful advice for blacks, but will they be smart enough to follow it?

The UN's new population forecast for the world has some eye-popping figures, especially about Africa in general and Nigeria in particular

Its charts show that Nigeria, about the size of Texas, will surpass the entire United States in population by 2050. By 2100, it is expected to have an astonishing 1 billion people and be poised to overtake China. (The latter country will be shrinking and likely headed for a demographic nightmare.) As for the African continent, it will see a population explosion nearly unprecedented in human history. The biggest nation in 2100, however, is expected to be India, with a population somewhere around 1.5 billion. But its growth will level off around 2065 — meaning Nigeria looks on track to be No. 1 in the subsequent decades. As for the United States, its growth will rise slowly but steadily over the century and should be around 500 million by 2100. The world's overall population, now at 7.2 billion, is expected to be at 11 billion by then.

A black man has admitted that he killed his uncle's 6-year-old stepdaughter, whose body was found in a Louisiana trash can, a spokesman for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office has said

Matthew Flugence admitted to detectives that he stabbed Ahlittia North, a girl he previously babysat, Col. John Fortunato said. Flugence, 20, was arrested in the case on the day that authorities found Ahlittia's body in a trash can down the street from her mother and stepfather's apartment in the New Orleans suburb of Harvey. Flugence, who had an outstanding warrant charging him with sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl in 2012, has been charged with murder in Ahlittia's death, Fortunato said. "I don't know what I else I can say about the character of an individual that just admitted to killing a 6-year-old," Sheriff Newell Normand said when asked about Flugence's background. "I think that speaks for itself." Flugence's brother Russell, 21, was arrested on suspicion of obstructing justice in Ahlittia's death, Normand said. Russell Flugence had information about the crime that he didn't come forward with, and he also had information implicating his brother, the sheriff asserted. Matthew Flugence told investigators that he killed Ahlittia after finding her outside the Harvey apartment where her mother and her stepfather - Flugence's uncle - lived, Normand said. "(Flugence's) story is (that) in the early morning hours ... he happened to see her out and about, and he was out and about, walking through the neighborhood," Normand said. The investigation began after Ahlittia's mother awoke to find her gone from the apartment, authorities said. The girl was living with her mother for the summer, but normally lived with someone else in Donaldsonville, about 60 miles to the west, Normand said. After she was reported missing, investigators spent the day combing the neighborhood, looking in alleys, dumpsters and boarded-up four-plexes. They found a pool of blood in one of the buildings, Normand said, and when DNA results came back showing the blood belonged to Ahlittia, investigators searched the area again. That's when they found the girl's body in a garbage can, wrapped in a blanket from her house and covered in a garbage bag, Normand said. Investigators looked at the garbage can during their first search of the neighborhood, so they know the body was put inside sometime after that, he said. Flugence told detectives that he killed Ahlittia with a knife that investigators found on him when he was arrested, Normand said. Flugence was arrested after people told authorities that he was walking along a road in nearby Westwego, asking for money and telling them that he was on the run from police, officials said. Ahlittia suffered four stab wounds - two to her neck, likely the fatal wounds, and two to the abdomen, Jefferson Parish Coroner Gerald Cvitanovich said. She also had bruises to the front and back of her head, shoulder, lower back, and lower extremities.

Nearly 15% of all blacks have diabetes, a rate that is about four times the national average

In addition, the rate of HIV/AIDS among blacks is nine times higher than for whites. Blacks account for about 13% of the U.S. population, yet 49% of the cases of HIV/AIDS. Also, black men are 30% more likely to die of heart disease than non-Hispanic white males and about 40% of blacks have high blood pressure. Finally, more than half of black women (53%) and more than a third of black men (36%) are obese. Overall in the United States, the rate among adults is 26%.

Blacks with chronic kidney disease have faster progression to end-stage renal disease than their white counterparts, a Dutch study shows

Starting 15 months after the initiation of pre-dialysis care, black patients were more than two-and-a-half times more likely to need renal replacement therapy (HR 2.87, 95% CI 1.29-6.41), according to Moniek de Goeij, MSc, a PhD student at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, and colleagues. And black patients had a faster decline (by 0.18 mL/min/1.73 m2 per month) in estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) during the study period, the researchers reported. The results suggest that health care system factors have a less influential role in explaining black-white differences in the progression of chronic kidney disease. "Our results may implicate that black patients with chronic kidney disease should be referred to pre-dialysis care earlier than white patients to assure timely preparation for renal replacement therapy," they wrote. "Fortunately, in the Netherlands this is already the case because our data showed that black patients had a higher eGFR at the start of pre-dialysis care than white patients." U.S. studies have shown that among patients with chronic kidney disease, blacks more rapidly deteriorate to end-stage renal disease than whites.

Chicago: A black grandmother accused of killing her 8-year-old granddaughter inflicted abuse for so long that the dead little girl had maggots living in a head wound that had gone untreated, police said in a shocking case

Helen M. Ford, 51, eventually strangled and beat Gizzell Kiara Ford to death, police say, ending weeks, maybe months, of systematic abuse. The black grandmother is being held on no bail and faces a murder charge. The details of the grisly and horrifying crime were unveiled by prosecutors who presented a disturbing case against the girl's caretaker and, police say, executioner. Police found the girl "cold" and dead when they responded to a call of a person not breathing. The girl lived with her grandmother and bedridden father, both of whom were home when the girl died. Ford initially told police that the girl inflicted the injuries herself, but police found several bruises, burns and cuts on her body, lying face up in a bedroom in the home. Some of the blunt force trauma happened so long ago that maggots had hatched in a head wound and moved to the front of the girl's scalp while she was still living, prosecutors said while detailing the case in court. The horrific list of abuse also included deep cuts on her buttocks, ligature marks on her ankles and wrists and possible cigarette burns on her body, prosecutors said. Ford kept the little girl away from her family and friends, Gizzell's uncle, Osvaldo Mercado, said. "Helen blocked everybody," Mercado, 30, said. "She would say, 'Gizzell can't talk - she's in the shower, or on punishment.' It was an excuse every time we called." Blood-splattered twine, cables and a pole were found in the girl's home during the investigation. Blood was found on the bedroom wall near where her body was found, prosecutors said.

A new study suggests that Chinese people may be at higher risk for stroke than whites

"While stroke is the second most-common cause of death worldwide, in China it is the leading cause of death and adult disability," said study author Chung-Fen Tsai, MD, with the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. "The global impact of stroke in the decades ahead is predicted to be greatest in middle income countries, including China. It is important to gain a better understanding of how stroke affects different populations as we try to reduce the burden of the disease worldwide." For the analysis, researchers reviewed studies from 1990 onward that included first strokes in Chinese people in China and Taiwan. A total of 404,254 Chinese were included. The study included more than two million person-years and 3,935 strokes. The researchers also identified 10 community-based studies among whites including 1,885,067 people, more than 3.2 million person-years and 4,568 strokes. Comparing the two groups, the research found a slightly higher overall risk of stroke in Chinese people than in whites, with a range of 205 to 584 strokes per 100,000 Chinese people age 45 to 74, compared to 170 to 335 strokes per 100,000 white people the same age. Chinese also had a higher risk of intra-cerebral hemorrhage, a type of stroke due to bleeding into the brain from a ruptured blood vessel, compared to white people, or 33% of all strokes compared to 12% of all strokes in community-based studies. Chinese people had a lower average age of stroke onset of 66 to 70 years-old, compared to 72 to 76 years-old for whites.

If blacks have been stigmatized it is due to their own misbehavior

When is the media going to stop treating black thugs like Trayvon Martin as victims?

A group of black males shouted “This is for Trayvon!” as they beat up a Hispanic man

This is what happens when the Hispanic guy doesn't have a gun. Plus, a photo of Zimmerman's great-grandfather raises questions about so-called racial profiling. And in order to deal with black crime and violence, many cities are enacting curfews.

Hispanics of all ages in the United States are more than twice as likely to identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party

Which is why the GOP should be against allowing more Latino immigrants into the country.

Authorities have arrested a Latino doctor on suspicion of carrying out two attacks in Omaha in May 2013 and in 2008 in which four people were killed who had ties to Creighton University's medical school, which fired him twelve years ago

Dr. Anthony Garcia, who now lives in Terre Haute, Indiana, was arrested by Illinois State Police while driving near the Indiana border, Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer said. Officers said that he appeared to be intoxicated when they arrested him, and he had a .45-caliber handgun with him. Garcia, 40, is being held on suspicion of four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of using a weapon to commit a felony, Schmaderer said. Public records show that since 2003, Garcia has held medical licenses in California, Illinois and Indiana, but his temporary Indiana license expired in January 2013. Investigators believe that Garcia was responsible for an attack in May 2013 in which pathology professor Roger Brumback was shot to death and his wife, Mary, was fatally stabbed, Schmaderer said. They also believe that Garcia was behind a 2008 home invasion in which the 11-year-old son and family housekeeper of another Creighton pathology department professor, William Hunter, were stabbed to death. Roger Brumback and William Hunter fired Garcia from his pathology resident position in the department in 2001 for displaying erratic behavior, Schmaderer said. He said that the task force of local, state and FBI investigators believe that Garcia fits all the criteria of a serial killer. "We didn't feel this individual would stop unless an arrest was made," Schmaderer said. Schmaderer said that the task force investigating this case is in the process of searching several places where Garcia lived since 2001, but officers believe that he acted alone. The attacks happened in Omaha neighborhoods where homicides are rare. The city averages about 40 per year.

The Justice Department has said that it was restarting its investigation into the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin to consider possible separate hate crime charges against George Zimmerman

Obama and the media won't be happy until Zimmerman commits suicide.

Race and tuberculosis: By analysing the levels of various inflammatory markers in blood samples taken before treatment, scientists have showed that immune responses of Asians and Europeans are similar to each other, but different from those of Africans

This difference was caused by ethnic variation in the patients’ genetic make-up and was not related to the strain of TB bacterium that the patients were infected with. Dr Adrian Martineau, Reader in Respiratory Infection and Immunity at the Blizard Institute, part of Queen Mary, said: “The TB bacterium has co-evolved with humans following migration to Europe and Asia some 70,000 years ago, and different strains of the TB bacterium disproportionately infect particular ethnic groups. Experiments with white blood cells cultured in the lab have shown that different strains of the TB bacterium elicit different amounts of inflammation. One might therefore expect that TB patients’ immune responses would differ according to the strain of TB bacterium that they are infected with. However our study has shown, for the first time, that it is actually ethnic differences in the patient’s genetic make-up that cause most of this variation in immune responses – with little effect of the TB strain they are infected with.” By analyzing blood samples taken from 85 of the original cohort after an eight-week period of intensive treatment, the researchers found that ethnic variation in immune responses became even more marked. A number of immunological bio-markers, which correlated with either fast or slow clearance of the TB bacteria, were identified and found to differ between Africans and Europeans/Asians. Dr Anna Coussens, who measured immune responses in patient samples at the NIMR, said: “These findings have important implications, both for the development of new diagnostic tests, which increasingly rely on analyzing the immune response, and also for work to identify candidate bio-markers to measure response to anti-TB treatment. In the future, diagnostic tests and bio-markers will need to be validated in different ethnic populations.” A key factor in determining the ethnic variation identified in the study appears to be the patients’ genetic type of vitamin D binding protein – a molecule which binds vitamin D in the circulation. Dr Martineau said: “There are different genetic types of this protein which vary in frequency between ethnic groups, adding to the growing evidence that vitamin D and the way it is carried in the blood is crucial in determining how a patient’s immune system will respond to TB.”

Crime and the black family: The adult son of Giants legend Lawrence Taylor has been arrested in Georgia on three felony charges of statutory rape, sodomy and child molestation

Lawrence Taylor Jr., 32, has been jailed on no bond after his arrest in Powder Springs. L.T., the once great Giant linebacker, himself faced rape charges after a 2010 rendezvous with an underage prostitute. The elder Taylor served no jail time but is a registered sex offender and remains on probation in that case. He pleaded guilty to charges of patronizing a prostitute and sexual misconduct, lesser offenses than the original felony statutory rape charge.

ZIMMERMAN: NOT GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS

Will Angela Corey resign? Blacks are already threatening to kill Zimmerman on Twitter.

KTVU accidentally names Asiana pilots Sum Ting Wong and Ho Lee Fuk in crash report

Oakland's KTVU accidentally used prank names in reporting the Asiana Flight 214's crash-landing in San Francisco. KTVU's Channel Two broadcast the “confirmed” pilot names as Captain Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Low, Ho Lee Fuk and Bang Ding Ow.

Zimmerman case: The Special Prosecutor’s Office of Angela Corey has fired the IT specialist who blew the whistle on the prosecution’s concealment of evidence

State Attorney Angela Corey fired her office’s information technology director after he testified about being concerned that prosecutors did not turn over information to George Zimmerman’s defense team in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. On the same day that attorneys finished their closing arguments in the nationally watched trial, a state attorney investigator went to Ben Kruidbos’ home to hand-deliver a letter stating that Kruidbos “can never again be trusted to step foot in this office.”

Between 1980-2008, African-Americans were six times more likely than whites to be victims of gun violence and seven times more likely to kill with guns than whites, according to the Justice Department

African-Americans represent a mere 13% of the US population yet more than 50% of federal prisoners are black. In Chicago, blacks make up about 33% of the city's population, but they accounted for nearly 78% of the homicide victims through the first six months of 2012. Americans, especially black Americans, have come to accept blacks killing other blacks as normal.

In 2011, 91% of all blacks murdered that year were killed by their own people

Of course, many blacks refuse to accept the reality of crime in their community.

Low vitamin D blood levels are linked to greater risk of heart disease in whites and Chinese, but not in blacks and Hispanics

Growing evidence has suggested that low blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin are associated with higher risk of developing coronary heart disease among whites. Few of these studies included substantial numbers of people from other races. Vitamin D levels tend to be lower among people from other racial and ethnic minority groups, and some of these populations have higher rates of heart disease. However, after correcting for other risk factors for heart disease in their large, multi-ethnic study group, researchers did not find an association between low vitamin D and cardiovascular events in their black and Hispanic study participants. "Our study suggests that the results of ongoing vitamin D clinical trials conducted in white populations should be applied cautiously to people of other racial and ethnic backgrounds," said Cassianne Robinson-Cohen. "Our future studies will examine the genetics affecting the levels and use of Vitamin D in the body to try to figure out why the link between low vitamin D blood levels and heart disease varies by race and ethnicity," she said. "We don't know for sure, but perhaps genes affecting the need for and use of vitamin D could have evolved to adapt to different levels of sun exposure in places where various ethnic subgroups of people originated." Her team plans to look for variations in genes known to mediate Vitamin D activation and metabolism. She said that these genes have been identified, but at present scientists haven't determined how gene variation influences susceptibility to the adverse effects of low vitamin D.

A Mexican drug cartel known for kidnapping random civilians and beheading its rivals has expanded its operations into the United States

Isn't immigration and diversity wonderful?

Black/African American women and Latinas are disproportionately affected by HIV infection compared with women of other races/ethnicities

In 2010, the fourth largest number of all new HIV infections among all people in the United States occurred among black/African American women with heterosexual contact (5,300 infections). Of the total number of new HIV infections among women in the United States in 2010, 64% occurred in blacks/African Americans, 18% were in whites, and 15% were in Hispanics/Latinas. At some point in their lifetimes, an estimated 1 in 32 black/African American women will be diagnosed with HIV infection, compared with 1 in 106 Hispanic/Latino women and 1 in 526 white women. In 2010, the rate of new HIV infections (per 100,000 population) among black/African American women was 20 times that of white women, and the rate among Hispanic/Latino women was 4 times the rate of white women. In 2010, HIV was among the top 10 leading causes of death for black/African American women aged 15 to 64 and Hispanic/Latino women aged 25 to 44.

Belgian doctors have developed a low-cost version of test-tube baby technology for use in developing countries, where sophisticated Western systems are unaffordable for most couples

Do Third World countries really need more babies?

Brazilian funk artist Daniel Pellegrine, known as MC Daleste, is dead after being shot in the abdomen while performing in the city of Campinas

Pellegrine was mid-song when a bullet struck him, causing the 20-year-old performer to fall back in a sitting position before others on stage came to his aid. He died after being brought to a nearby hospital.

A lawyer for 19 former students at Yeshiva University High School for Boys has filed a federal lawsuit claiming that two former rabbis there carried out hundreds of acts of sexual abuse during the 1970s and 80s, and that the university’s leaders covered it up

According to a 148-page complaint lodged in Federal District Court in White Plains, the abuse included one case, in 1980, of a rabbi who sodomized a 16-year-old student with a toothbrush in his dormitory room in Upper Manhattan. Another boy claims a different rabbi abused him at least 30 times, in his office and the school’s halls, between 1978 and 1982, the lawsuit says. The lawyer, Kevin T. Mulhearn, said that the depth of the abuse, which the plaintiffs claim occurred between 1969 and 1989, did not come to light until recently. The lawsuit said that administrators of Yeshiva University, which runs the high school, brushed off complaints about the two rabbis for years, and after they left the school, the university did not notify their future employers about the complaints. One of the men, Rabbi George Finkelstein, went on to work at a Jewish day school near Miami for several years. “Their abuse should have been avoided with a bare minimum of responsibility and compassion for the children in their charge,” Mulhearn said. The lawsuit contains complaints from 16 former students who say that they were abused by Rabbi Finkelstein, an administrator who became principal in the late 1980s before the school, responding to complaints, asked him to leave in 1995. The lawsuit says that Rabbi Finkelstein rubbed his genitals against students, either in an office at the school, at a dormitory or in his apartment, sometimes under the guise of wrestling. He also groped boys’ genitals while checking to see if they were wearing tzitzis, traditional fringes under the outer clothing, the suit says. The three other complaints, including the one claiming sodomy, are against Rabbi Macy Gordon, who taught Judaic Studies and left in 1984. The lawsuit also said that Yeshiva allowed a former student with a reputation for improper behavior to enter the high school dorm rooms, where he fondled students. Each of them is seeking $20 million in damages, for a total of $380 million.

A new analysis has found that among patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, African Americans more commonly present with advanced disease, and they tend to have shorter survival times than whites despite receiving the same care

The results suggest that biological factors may account for some racial disparities in cancer survival. Among cancer patients, minorities tend to have a worse prognosis than whites for reasons that are unclear. In African American patients, lower socioeconomic status and limited access to high-quality care often can play a role, but some researchers propose that certain cancers can behave more aggressively in minority individuals, which also can lead to worse outcomes. Because chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a type of blood cancer, is rare in African Americans, investigators from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and the Duke University Medical Center in Durham led a study that combined the two centers' experiences with African American and white patients. Their analysis included 84 African American patients and 1,571 non-black patients referred to the two centers. All patients, regardless of race, had access to healthcare services and received the same treatments. "We sought to isolate race as a prognostic factor from other known demographic and clinical prognostic parameters in CLL," explained Dr. Falchi. The investigators found that while the time from diagnosis (made either incidentally or because of clinical symptoms) to referral was shorter for African Americans than white patients, African Americans were more likely to have CLL that was more advanced at the time of referral. Also, although African Americans responded as well to first-line therapy as white patients, their cancer progressed more rapidly and their survival was shorter. The inferior survival of African American patients persisted when patients were grouped according to factors related to the severity of their disease. "These findings suggest that while inducing similarly high response rates, standard treatments do not overcome racial differences in outcome among patients with CLL," said Dr. Ferrajoli. She added that a number of questions remain unanswered. For example, do distinct biologic characteristics of African American patients with CLL account for the disparities seen in this study?

Obama's America: There are now a record number of Americans with temporary jobs

Approximately 2.7 million, in fact. And the trend has been growing. In fact, nearly one-fifth of all jobs gained since the recession ended have been temporary. While part-time and temp jobs reached highs in June 2013, full-time jobs decreased by another 240,000. The recovery, or lack thereof, is being fueled by a shift from full-time to part-time work.

Blacks, who constitute 23% of New York City’s population, committed 66% of all violent crimes in 2011, according to victims and witnesses, and 73% of all shootings — but they were only 53% of all stop subjects

By contrast, whites, who constitute 35% of the city’s population, committed 6% of all violent crimes and 3% of all shootings. They made up 9% of all stops. In other words, the NYPD’s stop rate for blacks is actually lower than their representation among known violent offenders. In addition, young black men in New York are 36 times more likely to be murdered than young white men — and their assailants are virtually always other black (or Hispanic) males.

Running for public office in Mexico has long been perilous, with threats, assaults and sometimes outright killings by criminal gangs, political rivals and other opponents, but this season is one of the worst in recent years with at least six candidates killed since February 2013 and another wounded in an attack that left her husband and an assistant dead

Party and campaign officials have also been assaulted, their family members targeted and sometimes killed as well. As nearly half of Mexico’s states prepare to hold local elections, the outbreak of violence has proved an embarrassment for the new government of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who has promised to control violence and has sought to portray the country as on the mend from wanton killings. While the Peña Nieto administration promised to take steps to protect voters, opposition leaders have called on the president to put the army in the streets in some states to ensure peaceful voting proceedings, a common practice in Mexico. “We are in the midst of the most violent elections in our history,” said José María Martínez, a member of a conservative-leaning opposition party and president of the special electoral commission of the Senate. “This is not the country that any Mexican deserves.” Martínez’s National Action Party, which lost the presidency in 2012, is one of the two main opposition parties that have threatened to break a collaborative pact with Peña Nieto if the elections are neither fair nor safe. The motives for many of these attacks, from which no major party has been spared, remain unclear. Local investigations of crimes, even killings, are notoriously haphazard and thin. The number of cases, meanwhile, continues to grow. Recently, Nicolás Estrada Merino, leader of a state branch of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, was found shot to death in a sugarcane field in the southern state of Oaxaca. Isaac López Rojas, a candidate for deputy mayor from the small, leftist Cardenista Party in the coastal state of Veracruz, was kidnapped and killed, also in June 2013. A few days earlier, in the border state of Chihuahua, a mayoral candidate from the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, Jaime Orozco Madrigal, was found dead after being forcefully taken from his house. Newspapers have reported a number of candidates dropping their campaigns out of fear, and news channels have featured interviews with bloodied and bruised party members speaking after unexplained attacks. The violence presents a problem for Peña Nieto, who has sought to highlight the country’s economy and court foreign investors while playing down the persistent trouble with crime and offering vague plans on how to address it. Analysts say that the recent electoral violence has highlighted the extent to which Mexico has failed to make progress in confronting the impunity that allows attacks during each voting cycle. “It would seem like we are in the postrevolutionary years,” said Jorge Chabat, a drug and security expert at CIDE, a Mexico City research group, referring to the period after the revolution of 1910, when the number of political assassinations was particularly high. “I can’t remember so many candidates getting killed before an election.” These acts “disturb the peace,” said Leonardo Valdés Zurita, president of the Federal Electoral Institute, during a council meeting in which he asked for a minute of silence to honor the victims. Most of the killings have taken place in small towns, which are especially unprotected and vulnerable to drug and organized-crime groups seeking to expand their turf. “That’s where the organizations fight for control of plazas, of routes,” said Eric L. Olson, director of the Latin American program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. “They often depend on control of local mayors and local officials to ensure that they are protected.” Still, the motives are murky. After the killing of a campaign coordinator’s teenage son in Sinaloa State, the authorities denied any political motivation, citing the boy’s possible involvement in crime as a theory. The kidnapping and killing of a candidate in Veracruz, state officials also insisted, was unrelated to his political aspirations. Some analysts and members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party warned about over-blowing the violence, which is common in elections but usually does not interfere with balloting. “The conditions to carry out the elections do exist,” said Patricio Martínez, a senator from the party. “They’re not perfect; perfect is only left to God.” But some observers remain unconvinced. “A state that cannot protect its candidates,” said Ernesto López Portillo, director of the Institute for Security and Democracy, a research group in Mexico City, “is a state that cannot protect democracy.”

Don't mess with NPR!

Steve Sailer looks at what happens to black neighborhoods situated near liberal institutions.

Why is economic development so bad in sub-Saharan Africa?

Richard Lynn thinks it has to do with racial differences in IQ:

The Ashkenazi Jews have the highest IQ at an average of 110. This is one of the reasons that they are so successful and prominent in the professions, business and academia and as recipients of awards and prizes for outstanding intellectual work such as the Nobel Prize. For instance, in the United States Jews have been about three percent of the population during the last century and have won about a third of the Nobel prizes.

The Chinese, Japanese and other Northeast Asians have the next highest IQ at 105. This explains why Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, have done so well economically during the last half century, and why China has achieved such high rates of economic growth in recent years since it has introduced a market economy.

The European nations have an average IQ of 100, which makes it difficult for them to compete economically against the Northeast Asians.

The lowest IQs are those of the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert and the Pygmies of the West African rain forests at an average 53, and the Australian Aborigines at an average 62. IQs in sub-Saharan Arica are approximately 70 and this retards their economic development.

The calculation of IQs for all nations in the world has shown that IQ differences contribute significantly to differences in economic development and to our understanding of why some nations are rich while others remain poor.

Muslim violence: A series of small bombs went off in and around a world-famous Buddhist temple in eastern India, injuring two people, authorities said

Four of the eight explosions occurred at the Mahabodhi temple complex, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Bihar state that houses a tree where Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment. The other four blasts hit other sacred locations around Mahabodhi, said Bihar police official S.K. Bhardwaj. A 50-year-old Tibetan and a 30-year-old Myanmar national were injured in the attack, Bhardwaj said. While no one took responsibility for the attack, suspicion fell on the home-grown Islamist group Indian Mujahideen, Bhardwaj said. The group, designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, is blamed for dozens of deadly bomb explosions throughout India since 2005.

Men with Y-chromosome haplogroup I have a 50% greater risk of developing heart disease

A study found that men in haplogroup I have lower numbers of copies of two important Y chromosome genes in macrophages - the type of white blood cells involved in both defence against infections and atherosclerosis. Specifically, men with haplogroup I were shown to have decreased expression of 2 genes: the ubiquitously transcribed tetratricopeptide repeat, Y-linked gene (UTY) and protein kinase, Y-linked, pseudogene (PRKY) in macrophages.

The jobless rate for poor black teen dropouts is 95%

So why do we need more immigrants if the people who are already here can't get jobs?

White skin privilege?

Is white skin considered to be more attractive because of European power?

A referee at an amateur soccer match in Brazil stabbed and killed a player after an on-field disagreement

That isn't the most gruesome thing that happened during the game that day. In retaliation, fans lynched the ref — 20-year-old Otavio Jordao da Silva — beating, stoning, quartering, and decapitating him. They then mounted his head on a spike in the middle of the pitch. So far, one man has been arrested over the incident. He admits to attacking the ref, but denies killing him.

The U.S. economy lost 240,000 full-time workers in June 2013, while gaining 360,000 part-time workers

The underemployment rate increased to 14.3% from 13.8%. There are 28 million part-time workers in the United States now versus 25 million before the Great Recession. There are 116 million full-time workers in the United States now versus 122 million before the Great Recession. In other words, 19% of the (smaller) U.S. workforce is part time versus 17% before the Great Recession. Only 47% of Americans have a full-time job. If the labor force participation rate were back to pre-recession levels, the unemployment rate would be 11.1%. Since January 2009, when Barack Obama was inaugurated as president, the United States has seen 54 straight months with the unemployment rate at 7.5% or higher, which is the longest stretch of unemployment at or above that rate since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started calculating the national unemployment rate.

The Labor Department has reported that unemployment remained stuck at 7.6% in June 2013

This persistently high unemployment is not surprising: nearly half of the June 2013 job gains are needed just to absorb the 90,000 legal immigrants that arrive in the United States every month. The June 2013 data indicates that the job market is fairly strong — but for immigrant workers only. Native-born Americans continue to lose jobs, exit the labor force, and retire earlier than planned. The immigrant displacement of American workers has reached an all-time Obama Era high. In June 2013, native-born employment fell by 84,000 while foreign-born employment rose by 244,000. Since January 2009, foreign-born employment rose by 1.895 million. During that same time period, native-born American employment declined by 58,000. Since June 2012, the labor force participation rate — a measure of worker confidence — increased for immigrants but declined for native-born Americans. At 67.2%, the immigrant participation rate in June 2013 was 3.8% points above the native-born American rate.

Why are we so afraid of Nazis when it is the Jews who have the power to hurt us?

Fear of Jewish power makes many people fearful of talking about Jewish power.

Immigrants — both legal and illegal — have accounted for all of the job gains in the U.S. labor market since 2000, according to a report that highlights the stiff competition for jobs in a tight economy as Congress debates adding more workers to the mix

The Center for Immigration Studies report says that 22.4 million immigrants of working age held jobs at the beginning of 2013, up 5.3 million over the total in 2000. But native-born workers with jobs dropped 1.3 million over that same period, from 114.8 million to 113.5 million. Meanwhile, the number of Americans who aren’t in the labor force at all has jumped by almost 13 million to reach 48.6 million — a finding that the report’s authors say signals profound changes in the American job market and challenges conventional wisdom that immigration is good for the economy. “The last 13 years, or even the last five years, make clear that large-scale immigration can go hand-in-hand with weak job growth and declining rates of work among the native-born,” the authors, Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler, say in their report. “Given the employment situation in the country, the dramatic increases in legal immigration contemplated by the Gang of Eight immigration bill seem out of touch with the realities of the U.S. labor market.” Whether immigrants compete for jobs is a heated topic — though the Senate all but ignored it during the chamber’s debate on its bill to legalize most illegal immigrants and create opportunities for new immigrants and temporary workers to enter the United States. The outlines of those programs are coming into view. The Congressional Budget Office calculated that boosts in immigration and guest-worker programs would add about 12 million new people to the United States in 2023, in addition to millions of illegal immigrants who would gain legal status and work permits.

The chancellor of a Jewish university has admitted that he mishandled allegations of sexual abuse at the university's high school decades ago

In a letter announcing his retirement from Yeshiva University, Rabbi Norman Lamm said that his response to the allegations was "ill-conceived." Lamm is stepping down amid an investigation into abuse accusations made by alumni of the all-male high school that's part of the university. Lamm's decision to retire was based on an agreement reached three years ago and was not connected with the abuse investigation, the university said. Lamm was the university president from 1976 to 2003 before he became chancellor. Nearly two dozen men claim that they were sexually and physically assaulted by administrators and teachers at Yeshiva University High School from 1971 to 1989. In December 2012, Lamm said that he never notified the police of the complaints about sexual abuse. Lamm said that when the school received a complaint about a staff member, he allowed the staff member to go quietly. "At the time that inappropriate actions by individuals at Yeshiva were brought to my attention, I acted in a way that I thought was correct, but which now seems ill-conceived," Lamm wrote in his retirement letter. He added, "True character requires of me the courage to admit that, despite my best intentions then, I now recognize that I was wrong." A private law firm hired by the university, Sullivan & Cromwell, is investigating the allegations by the men. "It is anticipated that the investigation will be finalized and a comprehensive report will be released by Sullivan & Cromwell in the coming weeks," the university said in a statement. "We will address the findings publicly once the report is issued." Attorney Kevin Mulhearn, who represents 22 plaintiffs alleging abuse, said that his clients came forward to report the abuse years ago but the Jewish school turned a blind eye and did nothing. Mulhearn said that he is conducting his own investigation and has advised his clients not to speak to the media until a lawsuit is filed. He said that the rabbi's statement was a good first step in the right direction. "But Yeshiva University, as a whole, has to make amends as an institution," Mulhearn said. "Not just one man. Because there are many high-level administrators who had knowledge of misconduct and did nothing." More than 6,000 students study at the university's campuses in New York City and Israel.

A Johns Hopkins study of more than 1,800 men ages 52 to 62 suggests that African-Americans diagnosed with very-low-risk prostate cancers are much more likely than white men to actually have aggressive disease that goes unrecognized with current diagnostic approaches

Although prior studies have found it safe to delay treatment and monitor some presumably slow-growing or low-risk prostate cancers, such "active surveillance" (AS) does not appear to be a good idea for black men, the study concludes. "This study offers the most conclusive evidence to date that broad application of active surveillance recommendations may not be suitable for African-Americans," says urologist Edward M. Schaeffer, M.D., Ph.D., a co-author of the study. "This is critical information because if African-American men do have more aggressive cancers, as statistics would suggest, then simply monitoring even small cancers that are very low risk would not be a good idea because aggressive cancers are less likely to be cured," he says. "We think we are following a small, nonaggressive cancer, but in reality, this study highlights that in black men, these tumors are sometimes more aggressive than previously thought. It turns out that black men have a much higher chance of having a more aggressive tumor developing in a location that is not easily sampled by a standard prostate biopsy." Previous published research has revealed significant racial disparities in prostate cancer, with African-Americans having a much higher incidence of death from the disease than white men. According to the National Cancer Institute, black men have considerably higher incidence rates (236 cases per 100,000 from 2005 to 2009) than white men (146.9 cases per 100,000 per 2005 to 2009).

A Wayne State University researcher has found that sleep apnea severity is higher among African-American men in certain age ranges, even after controlling for body mass index (BMI)

A study by James A. Rowley, M.D., professor of internal medicine in WSU's School of Medicine, showed that being an African-American man younger than 40 years old increased the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) by 3.21 breathing pauses per hour of sleep compared to a white man in the same age range with the same BMI. Obstructive sleep apnea affects at least 4% of men and 2% of women. It involves repetitive episodes of complete or partial upper airway obstruction occurring during sleep despite an ongoing effort to breathe. Among participants in Rowley's study ages 50 to 59, being an African-American man increased AHI by 2.79 breathing events per hour of sleep. No differences in AHI were found between African-American women and white women. "The results show that in certain age groups, after correcting for other demographic factors, the severity of sleep apnea as measured by the apnea-hypopnea index is higher in African-American males than Caucasian males," he said. Rowley said that the mechanism for a racial difference in sleep apnea severity is unclear, but that possibilities include anatomical differences that affect the upper airway mechanics and collapsibility, as well as differences in the neurochemical control of breathing.