Scientists studying the Y chromosomes of hundreds of Scottish males have discovered that the rate of a key Celtic marker dating back to 6th Century Ireland is more than twice as common in the DNA of men in Glasgow and the west than Edinburgh and the east of Scotland

The data, which has been gathered as part of the Scotland's DNA project, is helping to shed light on major ancestral differences between Scotland's regional populations. One of the most significant discoveries to date is in the ratios of a marker known as R1b-M222, the "Ancient Irish" marker. Men carrying this on their Y chromosome - it can be passed only from father to son - are all distant descendants of Niall Noigiallach, a High King of Ireland who lived about 1500 years ago. Current data shows that it is present in the DNA of 12% of men living in west Scotland, against 5% in the east, a legacy of hundreds of years of Irish immigration. The researchers want to map the ratios of the Celtic markers, and determine whether men in the east are more likely to carry Germanic and Anglo-Saxon markers owing to the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria, which encompassed Edinburgh from the 7th to 10th centuries. Dr Jim Wilson, a geneticist and the chief scientist behind the Scotland's DNA project, said: "The most interesting thing for me is we can now break these groups up into subgroups. You can split the M222 up into about 20 different subtypes. The fact we can do that is interesting because maybe we can home in on whether it is one subtype of M222 that is responsible for the difference between east and west or multiple. If it is one, that might help us understand more clearly when in history this difference occurred. But to do that accurately, we need a lot more samples." The genetic picture is less distinct for women, possibly indicating increased movement and interbreeding creating more similar X chromosomes among Scotland's female population.

An international team of researchers have identified a previously unknown neurodegenerative disorder and discovered it is caused by a single mutation in one individual born during the Ottoman Empire in Turkey about 16 generations ago

The genetic cause of the rare disorder was discovered during a massive analysis of the individual genomes of thousands of Turkish children suffering from neurological disorders. "The more we learn about basic mechanisms behind rare forms of neuro-degeneration, the more novel insights we can gain into more common diseases such as Alzheimer's or Lou Gehrig's Disease," said Murat Gunel, the Nixdorff-German Professor of Neurosurgery, and professor of genetics and neurobiology at Yale. Gunel and colleagues at Yale Center for Mendelian Genomics along with Joseph Gleeson's group at University of California-San Diego compared DNA sequencing results of more than 2,000 children from different families with neurodevelopmental disorders. In four apparently unrelated families, they identified the exact same mutation in the CLP1 gene. Working with the Frank Bass group from the Netherlands, the researchers also studied how CLP1 mutations interfered with the transfer of information encoded within genes to cells' protein-making machinery. The discovery of the identical mutation in seemingly unrelated families originally from eastern Turkey suggested an ancestral mutation, dating back several generations, noted the researchers. Affected children suffer from intellectual disability, seizures, and delayed or absent mental and motor development, and their imaging studies show atrophy affecting the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and the brain stem. Gunel said that the high prevalence of consanguineous marriages [between closely related people] in Turkey and the Middle East leads to these rare recessive genetic neurodegenerative disorders. Affected children inherit mutations in the same gene from both of their parents, who are closely related to each other, such as first cousins. Without consanguinity between parents, children are very unlikely to inherit two mutations in the same gene.

Britain: The Cornish are to be recognised as a national minority group for the first time

Chief Secretary Danny Alexander announced the decision saying that it meant for the first time that Cornish people would receive the same rights and protections as other minorities in Britain. It will also mean that they are classified under the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities the same as Britain's other Celtic populations, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish. Residents of Cornwall traditionally spoke a Celtic language similar to that of France's Brittany region. The Cornish and Welsh are the oldest peoples on the island of Britain.

New York City: A black transit cop shot and killed his wife in front of their two young children in their home

Kevin Canty, 43, was taken into custody about a mile from his home, where earlier his 40-year-old wife was shot in the upper body. The couple's two young children, a girl aged four and a boy aged eight, were home at the time of the shooting.

There are over 100,000 gang members in Texas alone and a large majority of them are Latino

Pro-Amnesty groups such as the Jewish ADL and the SPLC have been spreading false information to downplay the crimes committed by Latino immigrants.

A 27-year-old black man has been identified as the gunman in a dozen recent highway shootings that have wounded three people in Kansas City

Jackson County prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said that Mohammed Pedro Whitaker has been charged with 18 felony counts and is being held on $1 million cash bail. Whitaker has been charged with two counts of shooting into a motor vehicle and injuring a person, seven counts of shooting into a motor vehicle and nine counts of armed criminal action.

An illegal immigrant who stabbed a 15-year-old boy to death less than a year after arriving in Britain cannot be deported because he claims to be gay, a court has ruled

The 29-year-old Jamaican was given a life sentence at the age of 16 when he and another schoolboy killed Abdul Maye following an argument over a £10 debt outside his school in east London. A judge at the Old Bailey ordered that he be deported once he had served a minimum of eight years. Judge Paul Focke told the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons: "You are a Jamaican national and within months of coming to this country you committed murder. I am of the view that your continued presence in this country will be detrimental to its citizens." But now the Court of Appeal has ruled that he could not return to Jamaica because he risked degrading treatment for being homosexual which would breach his human rights. Lord Justice Kay cited Article Three in the Human Rights Act, which protects against inhuman or degrading treatment. Douglas Carswell, Tory MP for Clacton, said: "Most people would think this is outrageous. It’s a gross distortion of the concept of justice. Until we have freed ourselves from the European Convention on Human Rights, these sorts of basket-case decisions will carry on happening thick and fast." The murderer stabbed his victim, who fled to Britain from the civil war in Somalia in 1995, less than 12 months after arriving in Britain in December 2000 on a temporary visa to visit his mother. He and another 14-year-old boy were jailed for life in September 2002 and told to serve a minimum of eight years and two months. But this was reduced on appeal to six years and two months. In 2009, the Secretary of State ordered his deportation but after one failed appeal, the Jamaican launched a second appeal in April 1012, arguing for the first time that he was gay. The Jamaican successfully appealed the deportation decision another two times before Lord Justice Kay said that he believed the evidence of the man's mother, who said that she "knew all along" that her son was gay.

Muslims in Africa: As many as 200 girls were abducted from their boarding school in northeastern Nigeria by heavily armed Boko Haram Islamists who arrived in trucks, vans and buses

The group has recently stepped up attacks in the region, and its leader released a video recently threatening to kidnap girls from schools. Dozens of gunmen stormed the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, about 81 miles west of Maiduguri, as the students slept in their dormitories, officials said. They engaged the soldiers guarding the school in a lengthy gun battle and then herded the girls onto vehicles. "Many girls were abducted by the rampaging gunmen who stormed the school in a convoy of vehicles," said Emmanuel Sam, an education official in Chibok. Sam could not say exactly how many girls were kidnapped, but one student who managed to get away said at least 200 students were taken. "The Boko Haram attackers came to town around 9 p.m. and made straight for the school where they had a gun battle with soldiers stationed at the school and killed two soldiers," said Chibok resident Maina Babagana. The gunmen then burned homes and businesses in the town in Borno state as they fled with the girls, witnesses said. A military spokesman in the region declined to comment on the abduction, saying that the Nigerian Defence Ministry would issue a statement later. Boko Haram, which translates as "western education is sin," is known to have carried out deadly attacks on other schools in the northeast. In a clip recently released by the group, leader Abubakar Shekau threatened to launch raids and abduct girls from schools. In early March 2014, Borno state government closed all of its 85 secondary schools and sent more than 120,000 students home following increasing Boko Haram attacks on schools. There are fears that the Muslim terrorists will turn the captured girls into sex slaves.

Toddlers show racial bias when picking playmates, a study reveals

Researchers tested the reaction of white 15-month-olds as toys were distributed. Two white adults divided the toys, one equally and the other unequally. Seventy per cent of the toddlers chose to play with the researcher who distributed the toys fairly. But in a second test, when one researcher favored a white recipient over an Asian one, they picked the "fair" researcher less often. And the babies are more likely to help those who share the same ethnicity, which is known as in-group bias when people favor those with the same characteristics as oneself. The study revealed that when it came to picking a playmate, the babies seemed more tolerant of unfairness when the white recipient benefited from it. They picked the fair experimenter less often when the unfair experimenter gave more toys to the white recipient rather than the Asian one. The researchers say that this implies that babies can take into account both race and social history when deciding which person would make a better playmate.

The first major study of color blindness in a multi-ethnic group of preschoolers has revealed that white male children have the highest prevalence among four major ethnicities, with 1 in 20 testing color blind

Researchers also found that color blindness, or color vision deficiency, in boys is lowest in African-Americans, and confirmed that girls have a much lower prevalence of color blindness than boys.

A group of countries — all of them in either the Americas or Africa — accounting for just 11% of the global population are the location of 46% of the world’s homicides

Honduras has the world’s highest homicide rate at 90.4 murders per 100,000 people, and it’s not even close. Venezuela is next with 53.7. Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Jamaica all have rates around 40. The world’s safest country, in terms of homicide, is tiny Liechtenstein, which didn’t have any murders in 2012, but there are a number of countries, especially in Europe and East Asia, with rates lower than 1 per 100,000.

Ann Coulter points out what a bag of scum Sheldon Adelson really is

Here is the Jewish billionaire's views on immigration:

Adelson is an especially telling example of the self-interest of businessmen on immigration. His newspaper, Israel Today, the largest newspaper in Israel, is wildly patriotic on immigration (and everything else).

Israel Today has trumpeted the success of the 15-foot razor-wire fence along Israel’s 140-mile border with Egypt, triumphantly noting last August that, for the first time, “no infiltrations were recorded from the Egyptian border, compared to 193 from the same month last year.”

Adelson himself had suggested just such a policy to the Los Angeles Times last year, saying he wanted to “Put a big fence around our country.”

By “our country,” he, of course, meant Israel. In America, he wants illegal immigrants pouring across the border to provide him with an endless supply of cheap labor.

I hope this is a sign that many conservatives are waking up to the reality that Jewish billionaires like Adelson are bad for America's future.

Fugitive Israeli Rabbi Eliezar Berland, head of the Shuvu Banim Hassidic sect, has been arrested in Zimbabwe

The rabbi was later released but faces deportation from the African country due to an expired visa. Berland fled Israel some 18 months ago after being accused of committing indecent acts against several female followers, some of whom were minors at the time of the abuse. He spent time in the United States, Italy, Switzerland and Morocco before arriving in Zimbabwe two months ago. Shortly after he fled Israel, his son, grandson and several other followers were arrested on suspicion of fraud and money laundering involving the sect's finances.

Human rights activists say that Israel should be ashamed of its treatment of asylum seekers at Holot, a holding facility for infiltrators deep in the Negev desert

The men behind the forbidding barbed-wire topped fence had no doubts about their status. "This is a jail. We are prisoners here," said Tumizgie Okebamrime, standing with a group of fellow African refugees, all with arms raised and interlocked in symbolic handcuff gestures. He was speaking from inside the grounds of Holot, a detention center for illegal immigrants in Israel's Negev desert which the country's authorities describe as "open". But Okerbamrime, an asylum-seeker from Eritrea, described the isolated encampment in different terms. "Inside we have police, security guards and immigration," he said. "I came to Israel because I thought it was a democratic country. I would never have come here if I had known it was like this." Holot - a wilderness of prefabricated huts and fenced-in compounds close to the Egyptian frontier - has become the focal point of Israel's treatment of roughly 50,000 African refugees, whom the government considers to be illegal economic migrants. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, sees the refugees - whom he calls "infiltrators" - as a threat to Israel's character as a Jewish democratic state. Ignoring criticism from the UN High Commission for Refugees, his government has refused to consider all but a handful of asylum requests - even though most have escaped war-torn regions and authoritarian dictatorships. The refugees, mainly from Eritrea and Sudan and including Christians as well as Muslims, began migrating into Israel from Egypt in 2006 before the Israeli authorities completed a long border fence nearly two years ago to stem the tide. Now they say that Israel is using the threat of Holot, together with cash inducements of £2,100, to pressure them into "voluntarily" returning home - where most fear their lives would be in danger - or leaving for a third country. The center was opened in December 2013 - supposedly as a compromise - after the Israeli high court struck down a law allowing illegal immigrants to be jailed without trial for three years. Instead, the government added an amendment that reduced jail terms to one year but enabled migrants to be housed indefinitely in an "open" facility. Those in Holot - whose numbers have climbed in recent weeks to 1,500 men, housed 10 to a room - say that conditions are far from open and in many ways worse than prison. While they are supposedly free to leave, stringent rules requiring them to register three times a day, together with the center's remote location, render that impractical. Failing to register twice is considered a criminal offence, likely to result in a jail term. "It's called open but it doesn't feel open," said Angusam Hadish, 28, a former political prisoner in Eritrea who spent nearly two years in the nearby Saharonim prison after being arrested on entering Israel from Egypt. "In Saharonim you knew it was closed and had no hope of getting out. Here they say it's open but when you go from place to place, there's one guard after another telling you to go back. There are no basic facilities like food and clothing. The worst thing is the lack of health care. If someone becomes sick, they just give them a yellow medicine. There is absolutely nothing to do." Worse still, perhaps, is the isolation. Located in open scrub land next to a foul-smelling chicken breeding plant, Holot feels far from civilisation. The stillness of the surroundings is broken only by the frequent over-flights of Hercules planes and Apache helicopters from nearby military bases. Beersheba, the nearest town, is 60 miles away. Banned from working and with just £82 "pocket money" a month to live on, few can spare the bus fare to go. Those who can fear not being back before the centre's 10:30 pm closing time. Most spend the day sleeping, talking or taking occasional walks outside. Meanwhile, buses arrive daily from Tel Aviv and elsewhere carrying refugees who have been summonsed to report to Holot after their visas expired.

Irony alert: A black man and his black girlfriend were arrested following a fight that resulted in him hitting her with an anger management book and her cutting his arm with a box cutter

Sheila Thompson and her boyfriend, Tyler Ford were watching a movie when a scuffle broke out. Thompson claims that Ford threatened to kill her, put her phone in the oven to prevent her from calling 911, and struck their infant daughter twice on the legs because she was crying. During the fight, Ford struck Thompson in the head with his anger management book. Thompson retaliated by cutting his arm with a box cutter. Ford claims that the fight started when he asked Thompson about their relationship and why she tried to get him angry all the time. Thompson's shrugging responses prompted Ford to hit her on the foot and the cheek with his book. Thompson fled outside, only to be commanded by Ford to come back in. Thompson began to hit Ford, which prompted him to shut and lock the door. When Ford opened the door again, they exchanged blows before Thompson stabbed him. Both were arrested and charged with criminal domestic violence. Ford had been charged with domestic violence in the past.

Only 34% of white Millennials rate Obama’s performance positively

Politically, 50% of Millennials classify themselves as Independents rather than Democrats or Republicans, compared to about 36% of their elders. Millennials largely voted for Barack Obama — 66% in 2008 and 60% in 2012. But only 49% approve of his performance now.

Immigration and Jewish values

Why do Jews believe that they have a moral obligation to use immigration to destroy the United States but not Israel?

Twenty percent of software developers are women, according to the Labor Department, and fewer than 6% of engineers are black or Hispanic

Of course, this is entirely the fault of evil white guys.

Gays and Africa: Ugandan police raided the offices of a United States-funded project known to offer AIDS services to homosexuals, a government spokesman has said, in what appeared to be the first public action by police to enforce a new law that strengthened criminal penalties against gay sex

The Makerere University Walter Reed Project in the Ugandan capital of Kampala was targeted for "training youths in homosexuality," spokesman Ofwono Opondo said on Twitter. He offered no further details but said a "top diplomat" was involved in the alleged training. The project said in a statement that it was suspending its activities in Uganda after one of its staff, a Ugandan citizen, was arrested and briefly detained by police. "We are working with police to understand the circumstances under which this person was detained," the statement said. "Until we have greater clarity as to the legal basis for the police action, the operations of the program are temporarily suspended to ensure the safety of staff and the integrity of the program." Frank Mugisha, a gay leader in Uganda, said that the project — a nonprofit partnership between a Ugandan university and the U.S. Military HIV Research Program — was known to offer services to gays who suffer from AIDS, he said. "A lot of LGBTI people found it comfortable to go there for anti-retroviral treatment," he said. Patrick Onyango, a spokesman for Ugandan police, denied the raid, saying a man pretending to represent the police threatened workers at the project. He said that authorities were now looking for the man, after police in his jurisdiction briefly arrested him and then freed him. Daniel Travis, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Kampala, declined to comment. Uganda's president in February 2014 enacted a new measure that allows up to life imprisonment for those convicted of engaging in gay sex and sets a seven-year jail term for the offense of "attempted homosexuality." Despite criticism from the United States and other Western countries that say the law is draconian and should be repealed, it has wide popularity among Ugandans. It has become the first legislation in Uganda to be publicly celebrated in a rally attended by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who told a raucous crowd that he was "mobilizing" to fight Western gays he accuses of promoting homosexuality in Africa. At that rally, attended by thousands of Ugandans, Museveni said that gays deserve to be punished severely because homosexuality is "criminal and it is so cruel." The United States, the World Bank and some European countries have cut, delayed or reviewed development assistance to Uganda since the bill was enacted, action that some Ugandan government officials have described as blackmail. Ugandan gay leaders say that many homosexuals have had to flee their old homes in the weeks since the measure was enacted, apparently to escape angry mobs, and some are reported to have been evicted by landlords who discovered that they were gay. About 1.5 million Ugandans are infected with HIV, according to UNAIDS, the United Nations program on HIV and AIDS.

The prevalence of HIV/AIDS in South Africa is rising due to the world's fastest growth in new infections and a higher patient survival rate, according to a new health study

An estimated 12.2% of South Africa's population was infected with the HIV virus in 2012, compared with 10.6% in 2008, according to a survey of 38,000 people carried out by the country's Human Sciences Research Council. The percentage rise was partly due to 400,000 new HIV cases in the year studied, the highest in the world, taking the total number of people infected in South Africa to 6.4 million. Young black African women were the worst affected, with 23.2% of females aged 15-49 infected, compared with 18.8% of men, the study showed. Treatment of the virus is increasing, with around 2 million people on an expanded antiretroviral treatment plan. However, the study found the overall knowledge about how HIV is transmitted and can be prevented fell to 26.8% in 2012, from 30.3% in 2008. Three-quarters of those surveyed believed that they were at low risk of contracting HIV, even though one-in-ten of those tested were found to be already infected. South Africans under fifty were having increasing numbers of sexual partners and using condoms less. "The increases in some risky sexual behaviors are disappointing, as this partly accounts for why there are so many new infections still occurring," said Professor Leickness Simbayi, an investigator on the study. Despite a government push to spread the treatment of HIV, medical charities warned that that many clinics were running short of life-saving HIV/AIDs drugs.

A new study from the Netherlands suggests that oxytocin might only make you love people in your in-group, and can contribute to conflict with outsiders

The oxytocin hormone is often described as the “love hormone” or “cuddling chemical,” but there might be a darker side to it. Not only does it make you feel all loved-up and happy, but also racist and nepotistic, a new study suggests. In the study, professor of psychology at the University of Amsterdam Carsten de Dreu found that the loved-up feeling you get when flooded with oxytocin — which is also released by the popular party drug Molly, also known as Ecstasy or MDMA — only extends to your “in-group.” Oxytocin, he said, “motivates in-group favoritism” and “derogation” of outsiders. He added that it had “a role in the emergence of intergroup conflict and violence.” In the study’s experiments, the participants — all Dutch males — were told that they had to choose five persons out of six that would gain access to a life-saving lifeboat. The men on oxytocin were more likely to deny men with Muslim or German-sounding names access and save the men with Dutch names, while the men who were given a placebo didn’t pay attention to the origin of the names. So maybe oxytocin is not as touchy-feely as we thought.

Police in Pakistan have charged a 9-month-old baby with attempted murder

Little Muhammad Mosa Khan even showed up in court on his father's lap, clutching his bottle. Police say that the kid, his dad, and about 30 adults pelted officers with rocks — hence the attempted murder charges — when cops went after gas thieves in Lahore. The baby's father says that the charges against everyone, not just his baby boy, are trumped up. "Our crime is that we had protested against non-availability of electricity in our locality," he says. The judge at the hearing seemed aghast at the infant's presence but couldn't dismiss the charges because it wasn't within his jurisdiction. He did, however, grant bail to the baby, and it looks like the kid will have a clean record soon: The chief minister in Punjab suspended the official who filed the charges and ordered an investigation.

Was Eva Braun Jewish?

Nazi leader Adolf Hitler might have married a woman of Jewish descent, according to a DNA analysis conducted for a British documentary. The program will claim that Eva Braun, the lover that the fuhrer married shortly before they both took their own lives in 1945, was possibly of Jewish ancestry. Dead Famous DNA tested hair samples which are said to have come from a brush used by Braun and found at Hitler’s mountain retreat. The German leader was 23 years older than his lover — who fell in love with him when she was a teenager — and worried that the relationship would affect his image, he kept her largely hidden away at his Alpine residence, the Berghof. A team of scientists examined the hair — which was sourced by the program’s presenter, Mark Evans — and found a particular sequence within the DNA, which had been passed down the maternal line — the haplogroup N1b1 — which the channel said was “strongly associated” with Ashkenazi Jews, who make up around 80% of the global Jewish population. Apparently, many Ashkenazi Jews in Germany converted to Catholicism in the 19th century. Evans said: “This is a thought-provoking outcome — I never dreamt that I would find such a potentially extraordinary and profound result.” Although program makers said that the provenance of the hair was strong, the only way to prove beyond doubt that it was from Braun would have been to take a DNA swab from one of her two surviving female descendants. Both refused when approached, so there is still an element of mystery.

Researchers have found that Europeans inherited three times as many genes involved in lipid catabolism, the breakdown of fats to release energy, from Neandertals as did Asians

The researchers also found that Africans did not carry any of these Neanderthal variants. The research team found that Europeans had differences in the concentration of various fatty acids in the brain that were not found in Asians or chimpanzees, which suggests that they had evolved recently. The Europeans also showed differences in the function of enzymes that are known to be involved with the metabolism of fat in the brain.

A new report on child well-being, measured by state and race, has turned an unflattering spotlight on some places not used to being at the bottom of such lists, including Wisconsin, with a worst-in-the-nation ranking for its black children, and South Dakota, with abysmal results for its American Indian youth

The report, released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, detailed nationwide racial disparities that put Asian and white children in a far more advantageous position than black, Latino and American Indian children. For some advocates for children, the state-specific results were stinging. "Wisconsin is a state that claims to value opportunity and community and fairness," said Ken Taylor, executive director of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families. "That we are the worst in the nation when it comes to the well-being of our African-American children is unacceptable." He noted that a report by his council in 2013 on Wisconsin's Dane County — home to the University of Wisconsin's main campus — had turned up glaring black-white discrepancies in and around Madison, the relatively progressive and prosperous capital city. "We knew we were among the worst, but there is something striking about having a national organization rank us last ... especially when our white children are ranked 10th," said Colleen Butler, racial justice director for the YWCA in Madison. The essence of the Casey report is a newly devised index based on 12 indicators measuring a child's success from birth to adulthood. The indicators include reading and math proficiency, high school graduation data, teen birthrates, employment prospects, family income and education levels, and neighborhood poverty levels. Nationally, Asian children had the highest composite score at 776, followed by white children at 704. Then there was a sharp drop-off: the scores were 404 for Latino children, 387 for American-Indian children and 345 for black children. Wisconsin had the worst score for its black youth at 285, followed by Mississippi, then Michigan. In Michigan, unlike Wisconsin, white children also ranked in the bottom half of the index. The net result is "a very distressful picture about all children in Michigan," according to Tonya Allen, president and chief executive of the Detroit-based Skillman Foundation, which invests $17 million each year in education, community programs and youth development. "When you look at the people who have left Michigan and have left the city of Detroit, the largest percentage is families with young children," she said. "People are not finding Michigan — or Detroit — a compelling place to raise their children." In the Casey index for American Indian children, the South Dakota score of 185 was the lowest of any racial group in any state.