Black athlete Demaryius Thomas‘ mother and grandmother will cheer for the Broncos receiver around the prison TV

The two women have never seen Thomas play in person. He was 11 when police burst through the door of their home in Montrose, Georgia, and arrested both in 1999. Police allowed Katina Smith to walk her son and his two younger sisters to the school bus one last time. Now she’s at a minimum-security prison in Florida, sentenced to 20 years. Her mother, Minnie Pearl Thomas, who had two previous drug convictions, received two life sentences with the possibility for parole after 40 years.

Nature, nurture and human behavior

Is environment really a major factor influencing human behavior?

A new report from the U.S. Department of Education tracks the educational progress of students who were sophomores in high school in the year 2002 through the year 2012

The data shows that 19.8% of the African American high school sophomore in 2002 had gone on to earn at least a bachelor’s degree over the next decade. This is less than half the rate for whites. Nearly 40% of white high school sophomores in 2002 had earned a bachelor’s degree by 2012. The results showed that another 7.5% of black sophomores in 2002 had earned an associate’s degree, but no higher degree, as had 9.1% of white high school sophomores in 2002. Nearly 5% of black high school sophomores in 2002 never completed high school compared to 1.8% of whites.

More babies are born prematurely in predominantly-black Detroit than in any major city in the United States

Prematurity, whose deadly side effects include brain hemorrhages, collapsed lungs and failing organs, is the leading killer of Detroit’s babies. It’s the major component of infant mortality — a catch-all term comprising all conditions that claim children before their first birthday. Infant mortality is the No. 1 killer of Detroit children; violence is second. In 2011 alone, 130 of the 208 Detroit children who died that year had not yet marked their first birthday. Detroit has more babies born to moms who are under 20, and to single women, than in any other major American city. And often, those young women are not themselves in good health and otherwise ill-equipped to have babies. Detroit’s high infant mortality rate has changed little over more than a decade, though the number of deaths has decreased as people have fled the predominantly-black city. Detroit’s infant mortality rate is the worst among big U.S. cities, and worse than some Third-World countries. Eighty percent of new Detroit mothers are unmarried, compared with 42% of all Michigan moms. Also, the city has more teen moms than any other in America: 18%. Detroit’s high concentration of African-Americans may play a role in the city’s infant mortality rate, because preterm births are more common in African-Americans for reasons not fully understood. African-American babies also face greater risks of death in their first days of life. From birth to 28 days, African-Americans have a mortality rate that’s approximately double that of whites.

Al Gore advocates population control for Africa

The world is expected to have more than 9 billion people by 2075, with much of that growth coming from developing countries in Africa. This is alarming to environmental activists like Gore, who argues that “fertility management” is needed to address a whole slew of global development issues, including mitigating global warming. “Depressing the rate of child mortality, educating girls, empowering women and making fertility management ubiquitously available — so women can choose how many children and the spacing of children — is crucial to the future shape of human civilization,” Gore said on an international panel on global warming. “Africa is projected to have more people than China and India by mid-century; more than China and India combined by end of the century, and this is one of the causal factors that must be addressed,” the failed Democratic presidential candidate added.

Did agriculture make Europeans white?

An ancient European hunter-gatherer had dark skin and blue eyes, a new genetic analysis has revealed. The analysis of the man, who lived in modern-day Spain only about 7,000 years ago, shows light-skin genes in Europeans evolved much more recently than previously thought. The findings also hint that light skin evolved not to adjust to the lower-light conditions in Europe compared with Africa, but instead to the new diet that emerged after the agricultural revolution, said study co-author Carles Lalueza-Fox, a paleogenomics researcher at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain. Many scientists have believed that lighter skin gradually arose in Europeans starting around 40,000 years ago, soon after people left tropical Africa for Europe's higher latitudes. The hunter-gatherer's dark skin pushes this date forward to only 7,000 years ago, suggesting that at least some humans lived considerably longer than thought in Europe before losing the dark pigmentation that evolved under Africa's sun. "It was assumed that the lighter skin was something needed in high latitudes, to synthesize vitamin D in places where UV light is lower than in the tropics," Lalueza-Fox said. Scientists had assumed that this was true because people need vitamin D for healthy bones, and can synthesize it in the skin with energy from the sun's UV rays, but darker skin, like that of the hunter-gatherer man, prevents UV-ray absorption. But the new discovery shows that latitude alone didn't drive the evolution of Europeans' light skin. If it had, light skin would have become widespread in Europeans millennia earlier, Lalueza-Fox said. The new analysis of shows that the man had the gene mutation for blue eyes, but not the European mutations for lighter skin. The DNA also shows that the man was more closely related to modern-day northern Europeans than to southern Europeans. The discovery may explain why baby blues are more common in Scandinavia. It's been thought that poor conditions in northern Europe delayed the agricultural revolution there, so Scandinavians may have more genetic traces of their hunter-gatherer past — including a random blue-eye mutation that emerged in the small population of ancient hunter-gatherers, Lalueza-Fox said. The finding implies that for most of their evolutionary history, Europeans were not what many people today would call "Caucasian", said Guido Barbujani, president of the Associazione Genetica Italiana in Ferrara, Italy, who was not involved in the study. Instead, "what seems likely, then, is that the dietary changes accompanying the so-called Neolithic revolution, or the transition from food collection to food production, might have caused, or contributed to cause, this change," Barbujani said. In the food-production theory, the cereal-rich diet of Neolithic farmers lacked vitamin D, so Europeans rapidly lost their dark-skin pigmentation only once they switched to agriculture, because it was only at that point that they had to synthesize vitamin D from the sun more readily. This new research shows that white Europeans are much more closely related to each other than scientists previously suspected.

Although Jews make up only about 2% of the United States’ adult population, they account for a third of the current Supreme Court; over two-thirds of Tony Award-winning lyricists and composers; and about a third of American Nobel laureates

Individuals of at least substantial Jewish ethnicity make up over one third of the billionaires on the Forbes 400 for America (and not insubstantial fractions for the rest of the world). And yet they still love to play the victim card in spite of all their power and success.

Human rights campaigners have called for the immediate release of a man sentenced to death under Pakistan's Islamic blasphemy laws

A Muslim judge convicted and sentenced Mohammad Asghar, from Edinburgh, Scotland following a trial. Asghar was arrested in 2010 in Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad, for claiming to be the Prophet Mohammed in letters sent to various officials, according to prosecutor Javed Gul. But a lawyer who defended Asghar said that he suffers from mental illness and the case was really a property dispute. Amnesty International's deputy Asia Pacific director Polly Truscott said: "Mohammad Asghar is now facing the gallows simply for writing a series of letters. He does not deserve punishment. No one should be charged on the basis of this sort of conduct. The blasphemy laws undermine the rule of law, and people facing charges risk death and other harm in detention. Pakistan must immediately release Mohammad Ashgar and reform its blasphemy laws to ensure that this will not happen again." Asghar, a British citizen of Pakistani origin, returned to Pakistan in 2010 after being treated for paranoid schizophrenia in Edinburgh, the lawyer said. He later fell into a dispute with a tenant who brought the blasphemy complaint against him to police. Another British citizen, Masud Ahmad, of the Ahmadi sect, was imprisoned in November 2012 for reciting a passage from the Koran, a prohibited act for Ahmadis under the country's blasphemy laws. Scores of people have been arrested in Pakistan under the country's harsh blasphemy laws, which carry sentences of life in prison or the death penalty. Rights groups say that the laws are often exploited for personal gain and that members of Pakistan's minority population are disproportionately targeted. People accused of blasphemy have also been attacked and killed by angry vigilante mobs. Few leaders in the predominantly Muslim country have been willing to tackle the contentious issue, especially after two prominent politicians who criticised the blasphemy law were murdered in recent years. One of the politicians was shot by his own bodyguard, who then attracted adoring crowds.

Hispanic women surveyed in the metro Detroit area were twice as likely as white women to be affected by vulvodynia, unexplained vulvar pain that can make sex, tampon use or even sitting excruciating

The condition affected half as many black women, new University of Michigan research shows.

Miscegenation and disease: Rates of HIV amongst white heterosexuals in Britain are rising because British women are having sex with African men and then passing the disease on to their husbands

In one case, a married man and woman were both infected by HIV along with their two young children. Upon investigation it was revealed that the woman had taken part in a humanitarian trip years earlier in sub Saharan Africa, having unprotected vaginal and anal sex with local men – infecting her husband a year later then subsequently infecting her two children through breast feeding. Popular female sex tourism destinations include the Caribbean, particularly Barbados and Jamaica and African countries such as Gambia, Senegal and Kenya. HIV infection figures suggest that condom use by the “beach boys” in the Caribbean region may be sporadic, yet female sex tourists do not appear at all preoccupied by the potential risks. Many women thinking that HIV is something that only happens to gay men and that given the unusual atmosphere and excitement of sex with an exotic man, condoms are rarely used or discussed before intercourse – and if anything are discouraged by western women.

Hispanic slashed his two baby girls to death because he’d just killed their mother — and he didn’t have car seats to take them with him to Mexico, says Miguel Mejia-Ramos who has been arraigned on murder charges

Hauled back to New York from the Mexican border, Mejia-Ramos, 28, was expressionless as a judge ordered him held with no bail for slaughtering his wife, Deisy, 21, and daughters Daniela, 3, and Yoselin, 1, during a jealousy-fueled, five-knife rampage. Mejia-Ramos admitted that he killed Deisy and then the girls in their bedroom after searching his wife’s phone and finding pictures of her with another man. The illegal immigrant was caught driving through Texas on I-85 during a non-stop dash for the border of Mexico, his country of citizenship. Mejia-Ramos was tracked by US Marshals via phone calls he made to family members in Mexico.

Yet another gang rape is making headlines in India, but this one has an especially horrific twist: Police say that village elders ordered the assault on a 20-year-old woman who made the mistake of falling for a man from a different tribal group

Thirteen men have been arrested in West Bengal state after the attack. The woman remains hospitalized. The incident began when the woman's boyfriend, who lives in a nearby village, showed up at her house to propose. Other villagers then detained him and formed what police call a kangaroo court. Both he and the woman were tied up and ordered to pay a hefty fine. He did so and was released, but the woman couldn't afford it. Her family quotes a village elder as saying to men watching the proceedings, "Her family could not pay, so go enjoy the girl and have fun." That village elder, reportedly a distant relative of the woman, was among those arrested. In Chowatta, where the attack took place, the residents appear to be unanimous in two seemingly conflicting sentiments: first, the girl deserved to be punished because she "brought disrespect to our community," as one woman puts it; second, they insist that the accused men are innocent.

Why is a mutant version of SLC24a5 so successful?

A mutant version of SLC24a5 is the biggest single cause of light skin color in Western Eurasia and it is very widespread. Its gene frequency in Moroccans is 90%; in Egypt, 88%; in Libya, 92%; amongst Saudis, 95%; 47% in South India and it is 50% in Sinhalese, right on the equator. It’s rare in most of Africa, but it is found in places like Ethiopia (55%) and amongst the Masai (27%). Could its success have anything to do with lactase persistence or vitamin D?

A black man faces the possibility of life in prison when he returns to court in March 2014 after a jury declared him guilty of first-degree murder in the stabbing death of his white girlfriend

The verdict followed a three-day trial where enough evidence was presented to convict Brian Mallory of killing Sarajane Hakopian in the bedroom of the home they shared. The verdict also comes close to bringing to a close a case spanning nearly two years and characterized by a number of procedural roadblocks and delays. The outset of the trial almost followed suit, with Mallory requesting new counsel and a change of venue, among a number of other motions from the defense denied by Circuit Court Judge J. Overton Harris. Mallory had previously undergone neurological testing and was determined competent to stand trial. Hakopian was found stabbed to death in her home. Her autopsy showed that she sustained a total of nine stab wounds, which a forensic investigator said caused her to bleed out while laying in bed. During the trial, Chief Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Shari Skipper had the witness read a number of explicit and violent text messages sent from Mallory’s phone the day before the murder regarding Hakopian. Entries from Hakopian’s journal, also submitted as evidence, revealed that Mallory had become possessive over her and did not want her to have contact with another man. In addition to the murder charge, Mallory – an already convicted felon – also faces three probation violation charges and one charge of petit larceny.

A black police officer has pleaded guilty to being a pimp for his 19-year-old white wife, who agreed to call him master and handed over all of her earnings

Lamin Manneh, 32, a former Baltimore cop, entered his plea in federal court, admitting that he had advertised the services of his teen wife and another woman online. Between February and May 2013, his prostitution business served more than 300 customers who met the women for sex at hotel rooms and homes, according to an FBI investigation.

Africa receives roughly $50 billion in aid annually from foreign governments, and perhaps $13 billion more from private philanthropic institutions

In spite of substantial foreign aid, Africa is much worse off today than it was 50 years ago being poorer, sicker, less educated, and more badly governed. The real per-capita income in Africa today is lower than it was in the 1970s, and more than 50% of the population - over 350 million people - live on less than a dollar a day, a figure that has nearly doubled in two decades.

The Housing Bubble of 2003-2006 was led by over-inflated expectations about Hispanics

An academic study of a big panel of households found that mortgage delinquency rates among Hispanics were 4.7 times the rate among whites by 2009.

New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveal that 38.6% of Asian American adults have a body mass index over 25, the threshold for being considered overweight

That’s far below the 66.7% rate among whites, 76.7% rate among blacks and 78.8% rate among Latinos. Nearly 1 in 20 Americans is an Asian American - a person of Chinese, Asian Indian, Korean, Philippine, Vietnamese or Japanese descent - according to the CDC. That amounts to 15.4 million people, a figure that has climbed by more than 40% since 2000. Asian Americans tend to be younger than white Americans, with 43.6% of the population between the ages of 20 and 39 and 19.3% past their 60th birthday, compared with 31.4% and 30% for whites, the data show. The report also notes that 72.1% of Asian Americans attended school beyond high school and that 84.5% were born in another country.

Most of the people signing up for ObamaCare so far are older — 45 and up — a trend that could force premiums to rise if younger, healthier enrollees remain a minority

The first official release of ObamaCare numbers shows that 2.2 million people enrolled in the first three months. Among them, 55% are ages 45 to 64, 24% are 18 to 34, and the largest group is 55 to 64 — about a third of the people, all just under the age for Medicare qualification.

The self-admitted hit man who said he was hired to kill the wife of a prominent southern New Jersey rabbi in 1994 will likely be freed from prison

State corrections officials say that Len Jenoff is expected to be freed February 14, 2014 after spending about 14 years in custody. The 68-year-old Jenoff has been serving a 23-year sentence for his part in the murder-for-hire death of Carol Neulander, the wife of Cherry Hill Rabbi Fred Neulander. She was found beaten to death in their home in 1994. Jenoff broke the case open in 2000 when he confessed his role in the killing and implicated Neulander in his wife's death. Jenoff twice testified that the rabbi hired him to kill his wife so he could carry on an affair, and Neulander eventually was convicted of murder in 2002. Neulander is now serving a life sentence.

From December 2012 to December 2013, the total labor force declined by 496,000

During that period, the native-born American labor force fell by 677,000 while the foreign-born labor force rose by 181,000.

One in ten children under the age of four is now Muslim in England and Wales, the latest statistics show

David Voas, Professor of Population Studies at the University of Essex, said that the number of practising Muslims could soon outnumber the number of Christians who actively worship in Britain. An Office for National Statistics breakdown of Britain’s religions and age groups shows that in 2011 there were 3.5 million children aged 0-4, of whom 320,000 were Muslim. There were 1.6 million Muslims in England and Wales in 2001, or 3% of the population, according to the census. By 2011 the Muslim population had grown to 2.7 million people or 4.8% of the population. Continuing immigration from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India has been added to by new immigration from African countries and from the Middle East. Birth rates of Muslims of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin remain quite high. There seem to be very low levels of falling away from religion among Muslims. There are now 136 Muslim schools, 125 of them in the private sector, according to the Department for Education. Britain has a total of 1,600 mosques and the first British halal food festival was held in September 2013.

South Africa's president Jacob Zuma has told how he used to practise witchcraft against white people

He promised that if his African National Congress (ANC) party was re-elected into power with over 90% of the popular vote, he would slaughter cows in celebration. Let us hope that "cows" is not a code word for white people.

East Asian populations (Japanese, Chinese) have the highest average frequency of alleles associated with higher educational attainment (39%), followed by Europeans (35.5%) and sub-Saharan Africans (16.4%)

The national ranking for scores on standardized tests of educational attainment closely mirrors the gradient observed in frequencies of genes associated with this construct. East Asians have the highest frequencies of alleles beneficial to educational attainment (39%) and consistently outperform other racial groups both within the United States and around the world, in terms of educational variables such as completion of college degree or results on standardized tests of scholastic achievement. Europeans have slightly lower frequencies of educational attainment alleles (35.5%) and perform slightly worse in terms of educational attainment, compared to East Asians. On the other hand, Africans seem to be disadvantaged both with regards to their level of educational attainment in the United States and around the world. Indeed, Africans have the lowest frequencies of alleles associated with educational attainment (16%).

Gonorrhea and syphilis are on the rise in the United States, mostly in men who have sex with men

The rate of new gonorrhea cases rose 4% in 2012 from the year before, while syphilis jumped 11%, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said in a report. Rates for chlamydia, the most common of the bacterial sexually transmitted diseases, gained less than 1%. The rise in syphilis is entirely attributable to men, particularly those who are gay or bisexual. The CDC rate for gonorrhea was 107.5 cases out of 100,000 in 2012, while syphilis was 5 cases per 100,000 people. Bacterial diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhea make it easier for people to acquire serious viral infections, such as HIV. People ages 15 to 24 account for more than half of the annual cases of gonorrhea and chlamydia, the report showed. A November 2013 study from U.S. health officials found a 20% rise in unprotected sex among gay men, with sexual risk highest for those who haven’t been tested for HIV. An analysis of data by the CDC from 20 major U.S. cities found that the number of men who reported having unprotected anal sex in the past year rose in 2011 from 2005. Men who didn’t know they were HIV positive were more than twice as likely to have sex with someone who wasn’t infected, compared with those who knew their HIV status, the report found.

Cases of identical twins being tried for the same crime may never happen again after a scientific breakthrough has found that there are subtle differences in their DNA

Forensic scientists have discovered that there is a subtle genetic difference in the DNA of twins which were previously thought to be entirely identical. The breakthrough means that there is now a definitive test to find out which twin has been at the crime scene or has fathered a child. In August 2013, detectives arrested Aftab and Mohammed Asghar, both 22, after recovering DNA from the jumper of 17–year–old girl who was attacked by at least three men in a Reading park at night. However the prosecution eventually offered no evidence against Aftab when analysis of his mobile phone showed that he was in another location at the time of the assault. Until now geneticists have not been able to prove that identical twins - also known as monozygotic twins - are not genetically identical. But in a breakthrough a forensic laboratory found the subtle difference at a genetic level which could prove vital in solving crimes and paternity cases involving identical twins. Scientists used high tech sequencing of DNA from sperm samples from one set of twins and from a blood sample from a child of one of them. Bioinformatics analysis in a forensics lab revealed five mutations, called "Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms" (SNPs) present in the twin father and the child, but not in the twin uncle. The results suggest that rare mutations will occur early after or before the human blastocyst (a pre-embryonic form) has split in two - the origin of twins.

White woman faces paralysis after she was pistol whipped and sexually assaulted by a black man to whom she gave a lift to the hospital

A 26-year-old Florida white woman may never walk again after her kind gesture to offer a black stranger a ride to the hospital turned into a nightmare attack that has ruined her life. Tallahassee-resident Katie Schlinger fought back and escaped with her life, but two spinal surgeries later, she still can't use her right arm or walk on her own. And since she's uninsured, she already owes one hospital $250,000 and is about to be kicked out of a third.

Jewish slumlord found murdered in trash

The millionaire Hasidic slumlord found burned and suffocated in a Nassau County dumpster — his body still smoldering from the waist down — had so many enemies that investigators say they almost don’t know where to start looking. “Any number of people wanted to kill this guy,” one law-enforcement source said of Menachem “Max” Stark, 39, describing the father of eight as being embroiled in several shady real-estate transactions and being up to his eyeballs in debt. “He owed a lot of people money,” said another source. Stark left behind a trail of angry tenants from more than a dozen residential properties, mostly in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, along with an untold number of unpaid contractors and angry business associates, investigators said. “He was involved in shady business deals, was known to carry around a lot of money and had a sealed arrest for forcible touching” in his past, one law-enforcement source said. The victim was a young teen girl, said the source, declining to give further details. “He’s a Hasidic Jew from Williamsburg, and we think he’s a scammer,” another investigator said of Stark, who had defaulted on more than $30 million in real-estate loans in recent years and owed tens of thousands in penalties for building violations. “He f–ked over a few people,” the source added. Many on Stark’s enemies list took to social media — and not to mourn his passing. “His slanted shtreimel on his head gives his crookedness away,” one commenter wrote on FailedMessiah.com, referring to the victim’s fur hat in a photo. “Sentence his kidnappers to live in one of his buildings,” wrote another poster to the site. Law-enforcement sources said that Stark spent his final days repeatedly calling business associates, begging for a six-figure loan. Investigators still don’t know how much he owed and to how many people, one source said. But probers do know that he left his office with a $4,000 check in his pocket — payment for a plumber who was one of his many creditors. And on the day he was abducted, Stark had called one businessman — a Borough Park-based real-estate developer — a dozen times, said the source, and had just succeeded in convincing the man to deposit $500,000 in an account for him, the source said. At the time of his death, Stark owed tens of thousands of dollars in penalties for 148 Department of Buildings violations on his 17 properties, public records show. “He owed me some money on a job I was doing for him, and he told me to go f–k myself,” one Williamsburg contractor said of his dealings with Stark, who was notorious for bouncing checks. Numerous former Stark tenants described living with vermin, plus shabby interiors and sporadic heat and water problems. “I’ve had many conversations with him, and of course in many of those conversations I wanted to kill him,” joked Greg Hanlon, who lived in a Stark-owned building in Clinton Hill. A Stark building at 239 Banker Street in Greenpoint was so decrepit that the city issued a vacate order in 2009 — and numerous tenants were left to chase Stark down in futile efforts to retrieve the four-month deposits Stark had demanded of them, one tenant organizer said. The building went into foreclosure shortly after. “He pretty much ripped off the whole building,” said the organizer, Ryan Kuonen. “They kept trying to serve him, and he kept hiding from them. When he’d hear ‘Are you Max Stark,’ he would take off running.” Investigators are finding a pattern of shady dealings in which Stark would acquire properties and then “lose” the properties by failing to pay his mortgage and improvement loans, sources said. The properties would then be snapped up at bargain basement prices by family members and associates, one law-enforcement source said. Nassau County coroners found that Stark had died from smothering. His body had been severely burned below the waist. It was unclear if he had been set on fire while still alive.

The unemployment rate for Americans ages 16-17 is 34%

The unemployment rate for teenage Hispanic Americans is 48%, and the rate for teenage Black Americans is 60%.

Israel costs the American taxpayer more than $8 million dollars each and every single day in direct financial aid

The United States gives Israel more foreign aid than it gives to all of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, all of the countries of Latin America, and all of the countries of the Caribbean combined. This remains true even as the United States struggles under mounting deficits and disintegrating infrastructure. And this figure does not even include the additional billions that the United States and the European Union must give to Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian authority, simply to maintain the peace with Israel. Giving large sums to the Israelis and other Middle Easterners is crazy. Instead, that money should be spent right here in the United States. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were mainly the result of our obsession of supporting the Jewish state. In addition to the trillions of dollars and thousands of lives lost, those wars did nothing good for the United States other than erode its standing as a beacon of peace and democracy. The United States is now viewed with suspicion and mistrust all around the world. Many, including Osama bin-Laden himself, have declared that 9/11 was a reaction to the continual stationing of American troops in the Middle East to protect Israel. America's continued military presence on Israel's behalf has spawned international terrorism and led to the creation of Al-Qaeda and similar terrorist organizations. The costs of the War on Terrorism are a direct consequence of our support for Israel. If Israel had not acquired atomic weapons in the first place, Iran would have no need for them; the ongoing debate about how to handle their nuclear program would not exist. If this issue is not handled properly, we may be facing yet another ground war in the Middle East again to protect the Jewish state.

Black crime: Barry Baldwin, 35, has been charged with five incidents in which Jewish women were viciously punched for no apparent reason — assaults some have tied to the infamous knockout game

A Brooklyn black man has been arrested for a string of assaults against women that some have connected to the infamous knockout game. Barry Baldwin, 35, has been charged with five incidents in which Jewish women were viciously punched for no apparent reason.

About 5/6ths of African-Americans have IQs below 100

Blacks tend to be better athletes than students.

Are junk bonds and corporate raiding exampless of ethnic warfare by Jews against gentiles?

Another excellent post from Tanstaafl.

Black and Hispanic people and other minorities tend to know less about skin cancer than whites, a new study suggests

Between one and five Hispanic, black and Asian people out of every 100,000 are diagnosed with melanoma each year. That compares to 20 out of every 100,000 white women and 32 per 100,000 white men. But research shows that minorities with skin cancer tend to be diagnosed at a more advanced stage and have lower chances of survival than whites.

Six Indian men face murder charges after a 16-year-old Indian girl that they gang raped twice in October 2013 died, a week after two suspects had set her on fire, according to police

An autopsy revealed that the girl was pregnant. DNA tests are being conducted to determine if one of the suspects was responsible. West Bengal police and local authorities are being assailed for harassing the girl's family and concealing her death-bed statement. Police had treated her burning as a suicide attempt. Local police hijacked the hearse and tried to cremate her body, telling her family to go back to Bihar, their hometown. Some officers and local goons tried to force her father to surrender the required death certificate. The police took away the body forcefully and tried to cremate it, but could not as the death certificate was with the girl's father. The girl's death comes a year after the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi.

Escalating violence in the Central African Republic is posing a threat to children, with at least two beheaded and thousands recruited as soldiers, the United Nations said

The United Nations says that it verified the deaths of 16 children since violence broke out in the capital of Bangui on December 5, 2013. Dozens of others have been injured. "We are witnessing unprecedented levels of violence against children. More and more children are being recruited into armed groups, and they are also being directly targeted in atrocious revenge attacks," said Souleymane Diabate, UNICEF representative in the nation.

All instances of a gene mutation that contributes to light skin color in Europeans came from the same chromosome of one person who most likely lived at least 10,000 years ago, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers

While the genetics of skin color is largely unclear, past research using zebrafish by the College of Medicine's Keith Cheng identified a key gene that contributes to lighter skin color in Europeans and differs from West Africans. In 2005, Cheng reported that one amino acid difference in the gene SLC24A5 is a key contributor to the skin color difference between Europeans and West Africans. "The mutation in SLC24A5 changes just one building block in the protein, and contributes about a third of the visually striking differences in skin tone between peoples of African and European ancestry," said Cheng, distinguished professor of pathology. Lighter skin color may have provided an advantage for the better creation of vitamin D in the lesser sunlight characteristic of northern latitudes. In this current part of the project, Victor Canfield, assistant professor of pharmacology, together with Cheng, studied DNA sequence differences across the globe. They studied segments of genetic code that have a mutation and are located closely on the same chromosome and are often inherited together. This specific mutation in SLC24A5, called A111T, is found in virtually everyone of European ancestry. A111T is also found in populations in the Middle East and Indian subcontinent, but not in high numbers in Africans. Researchers found that all individuals from the Middle East, North Africa, East Africa and South India who carry the A111T mutation share a common "fingerprint" — traces of the ancestral genetic code — in the corresponding chromosomal region, indicating that all existing instances of this mutation originate from the same person. The pattern of proportions of people with this lighter skin color mutation indicates that the A111T mutation occurred somewhere between the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. "This means that Middle Easterners and South Indians, which includes most inhabitants of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, share significant ancestry," Cheng said. This mutated segment of DNA was itself created from a combination of two other mutated segments commonly found in Eastern Asians — traditionally defined as Chinese, Japanese and Korean. "The coincidence of this interesting form of evidence of shared ancestry of East Asians with Europeans, within this tiny chromosomal region, is exciting," Cheng said. "The combining of segments occurred after the ancestors of East Asians and Europeans split geographically more than 50,000 years ago; the A111T mutation occurred afterward." Cheng plans to next look at more genetic samples to better understand what genes play the most important role in East Asian skin color. He will then use zebrafish to test those suspected genes. The differences in skin color affect skin cancer rates. Europeans have 10 to 20 times more instances of melanoma than Africans. However, despite also having lighter skin, East Asians have the same melanoma rates as Africans. The reason for this difference can only be explained after the gene mutations for both groups are found. This understanding could lead to better treatments for melanoma.

Citing a new state law allowing persons living in the country illegally to get their law licenses, the California Supreme Court has paved the way for a Latino to fulfill his dream of becoming an attorney despite his not being a U.S. citizen

In a unanimous ruling, the state Supreme Court determined that there is no reason to block Sergio Garcia's bid for a California law license, now that a new law permits the state's high court to give such licenses to immigrants who are not yet citizens. State legislators, backed by Gov. Jerry Brown, pushed the legislation as Garcia's case was unfolding in the Supreme Court, which has a final say on licensing California attorneys. During arguments, the justices appeared unlikely to back Garcia because federal immigration law precludes giving a law license to people living in this country illegally. But the court invited the Legislature to fix the problem if it wanted to solve the conflict with federal laws. In the ruling, the Supreme Court concluded that there is no longer reason to deny a law license to Garcia, or other illegal immigrants in his position. "We conclude there is no state law or state public policy that would justify precluding undocumented immigrants, as a class from obtaining a law license in California," Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye wrote for the court.