United Nations accuses Congo rebels of violence against civilians

The United Nations accused rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo of violence against civilians, including in November 2008 killing 13 people and recruiting by force some 200 young men. Rebels led by Tutsi ex-general Laurent Nkunda, who drove Congolese army forces out of parts of eastern Nord-Kivu province, have also been responsible for kidnappings and the forced displacement of people living in areas under their control, the UN mission in DR Congo, known as MONUC, said in Kinshasa. "Between November 25 and 29, there were at least 13 civilians killed, two wounded, 5,000 displaced, 20 children missing and 200 young men recruited by force to be fighters or forced labourers," said MONUC military spokesman lieutenant-colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich. He said Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) forces abused the local population living between Kiwanja, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Nord-Kiv's capital Goma and Ishasha on the border with Uganda, before withdrawing from this strategic route. "There are kidnappings, forced movements of the population by the CNDP, the imposition of taxes through road blocks and civilians being forced to repair the roads," said Dietrich. The UN spokesman explained that these "very serious" incidents were documented by a mobile MONUC team in the region. Nkunda's men have also put pressure on displaced people living close to an UN base near Kiwanja. "They told the displaced people 'You have to leave, you are not safe here'," Dietrich said, adding: "We have condemned that, the population has the right to choose where they wish to stay." The rebel assault which began in late August 2008 reached the gates of Goma and in late October 2008 Nkunda declared a unilateral ceasefire with Congolese army troops, but not their allied militias, who the CNDP blames for the violent acts. The government's coalition of forces has "succeeded in entering the zones under the control of our movement" and seeks to "challenge the authority of the CNDP and its efforts to establish peace" in the region, the CNDP executive secretary Deogratias Nzabirinda said in a statement. He added that the pro-government militias want to "promote frustration and fear among the local inhabitants to stop them from supporting or collaborating with the CNDP." Several thousand women also took to the streets of the capital Kinshasa to protest rape and sexual assaults against women and children in conflict zones. Organizers presented a statement to Alan Doss, head of the MONUC, specifically citing the violence in Nord-Kivu province. "The message is addressed to all men," Doss said. Rape is commonplace in conflicts in central Africa. In a resolution in June 2008, the UN Security Council unanimously branded sexual violence "a tactic of war" that could be regarded as a war crime.

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Who Should Be Ashamed About Whats’s Happening In The Congo

Strong evidence has emerged of children and adults being used as slaves in Sudan's Darfur region, a study says

Kidnapped men have been forced to work on farmland controlled by Janjaweed militias, a coalition of African charities says. Eyewitnesses also say the Sudanese army has been involved in abducting women and children to be sex slaves and domestic staff for troops in Khartoum. Up to 300,000 people have died since conflict began in Darfur in 2003 and at least 2.7 million people have fled their homes. Thousands of people from non-Arabic speaking ethnic groups in Darfur have been targeted, says the report, published by the Darfur Consortium. The group of 50 charities says it has around 100 eyewitness accounts from former abductees. Victims have been rounded up during joint attacks on villages by the Arabic-speaking Janjaweed and the Sudanese Armed Forces, according to the study. Civilians are also tortured and killed while their villages are razed to ethnically cleanse areas, which are then repopulated with Arabic-speaking people, including nomads from Chad, Niger, Mali and Cameroon, it says. Most of the abductees are women and girls, but there is new evidence in Darfur of kidnappers targeting men and boys for forced agricultural labour, says the report. The abducted women and girls, meanwhile, are raped and forced to marry their captors as well as carry out household chores and sometimes cultivate crops, according to the study.

Japanese people taste the best - whites are too salty!

The headhunters and cannibals of Papua New Guinea comment on which ethnic groups taste best.

The Jewish community better get serious about the cancer that's growing inside it

Shmuley Boteach:

The devastation on Wall Street carries a lot of Jewish names, from firms like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers to individuals such as Bernard Madoff, whose $50 billion Ponzi scheme collapsed over the weekend, and lawyer Marc Dreier, arrested last week for defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars.

On the Internet more and more people who don't like us are beginning to connect the dots, pointing out that there are an awful lot of Jews who bear responsibility for Wall Street's fall.

Rather, what worries me is this: what if some if it is true? What if our community has become too obsessed with money? What if our values have become about wearing the most expensive Cartier watch and driving a suped-up Mercedes? What if a disproportionately large number of young Jews are running to work on Wall Street and never even considering jobs like teaching, the rabbinate, or doing outreach because the compensation, comparatively, stinks?

FOR TOO long the Jewish community has excused all manner of material excess so long as those who sported giant jewels and enormous gold watches also gave lots of tzedaka (charity).

The cancer of multiculturalism

Vox Day:

Whenever anyone points out the undeniable fact that multiculturalism is a cancer slowly killing Western culture, it is customary for left liberals to angrily demand to know why that individual hates people from other cultures. But one need not hate anyone to prefer the continued existence of one's culture and society. A much more relevant question should be directed at the proponents of multiculturalism and immigration: Why do you hate Western society so much that you wish to see it destroyed?

A new British prison chapel has been stopped from having a crucifix in case it offends Muslims

The multi-faith room at HMP Lewes will have footbaths installed so Muslim inmates can wash their feet before prayers. For Christians, however, there will now only be a plain wooden cross and a portable altar which can be removed if other faiths are using the room. The new £200,000 development at the East Sussex jail has been designed as a multi-faith room with the space split into two. One side is dedicated to Christian worship and the other is for other faiths in the 485 inmate category B jail. But a spokeswoman from the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) revealed the traditional Christian crucifix depicting Jesus nailed to the cross will not be used. After discussions between the prison chaplain and Muslim imam it was agreed a toned-down wooden cross would be used instead of a crucifix. Zsa Roggendorff, chair of the nearby Ford HMP IMB, could not understand why the crucifix has been taken out of the chapel. She said: "At Ford we have a multi-faith chapel and all are prisoners are allowed to use it. We still have our cross and we have the altar. All the other faiths have got their own special rooms in huts to use which are part of the main prison." A portable alter will also be used at HMP Lewes so it can be removed when it is not needed while footbaths have been installed so Muslim inmates can wash their feet before prayers.

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Prison bans chapel crucifix to avoid offending Muslims

70% of black children are born to single mothers

In some neighborhoods, two-parent families have vanished. In parts of Newark and Philadelphia, for example, it is common to find children who are not only growing up without their fathers but don't know anyone who is living with his or her biological father. And what has this meant for racial progress? Fifty years after Jim Crow, black U.S. households have the lowest median income of any racial or ethnic group. Close to a third of black children are poor, and their chances of moving out of poverty are considerably lower than those of their white peers. The fractured black family is not the sole explanation for these gaps, but it is central. While half of all black children born to single mothers are poor, that is the case for only 12% of those born to married parents. At least three simulation studies "marrying off" single mothers to either the fathers of their children or to potential husbands of similar demographic characteristics concluded that child poverty would be dramatically lower had marriage rates remained what they were in 1970. Black married couples make a median household income of $62,000, which is more than 80% of what white households earn and represents a gain of 13% since the 1960s. Yet overall, black household median income is only 62% that of white households, a mere six-point increase over the same period. Merely walking down the aisle can't explain these differences. Rather, the institution of marriage appears to promote ideals of stability, order and fidelity that benefit children and adults alike. Those who pin their hopes for black progress on education tend to forget this. Numerous studies, when controlled for income and race, show that, on average, children growing up with single mothers are less likely to graduate from high school and go to college.

A new study of college freshman suggests that African Americans may obtain higher grades if they live with a white roommate

A detailed study of students at a large, predominantly-white university revealed that while living with a white roommate may be more challenging than living with someone of the same race, many Black students appear to benefit from the experience. For African American students, this could translate into as much as 0.30-point increase in their GPA in their first quarter of college. White students, on the other hand, were affected more by the academic ability of their roommate than by their race. Researchers from Ohio State University and Virginia Commonwealth University found that nearly one in every six interracial roommate relationships failed, meaning at least one roommate moved out, by the end of the first quarter. But African American students who were paired with a white roommate performed better academically than did those with a same-race roommate. These African American students may be better adjusted to college because they live with someone who can help them learn about the challenges and norms of a different environment, said Natalie Shook, lead author of the study, who started the work as a graduate student at Ohio State. "It's already known that interracial roommate relationships are more difficult than same-race relationships. But despite the problems, we've shown that there are benefits in how well Black students perform academically," said Shook, who is now an assistant professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University. She conducted the study with Russell Fazio, a professor of psychology at Ohio State, who has been studying interracial attitudes and relationships for the past 15 years. The pair published the results in the October 2008 issue of the journal Group Processes and Intergroup Relations. The pair collected data on college freshman in more than 2,700 dorm rooms at a large, predominately white university. They studied how successful relationships were for students who specifically requested to live with someone, as well those who were randomly assigned to a roommate. Room assignments were studied alongside the students' SAT or ACT scores, autumn quarter GPA in the fall of 2001 and 2002, and their ethnic background to test for significant differences between students in all room types. The results showed that randomly assigned roommates were more likely to move to another room, regardless of the students' race. Fifteen percent of randomly paired interracial relationships dissolved, compared to the 8.1 percent and 6.4 percent of randomly assigned same-race white rooms and same-race African American rooms, respectively. "The university in the study was experiencing a housing crunch that year, so more students probably may not have been able to change rooms for the first quarter. Some of the previous work showed much higher rates than did our work here. But of the 85 percent of those that did try to work things out, we see real, tangible benefits," Fazio said. The researchers found that African American students who scored higher on their ACT (24 and above) and SAT (1040 and above) were more likely to be successful in college if they were randomly paired with a white student. Black students who scored lower on their ACT and SAT did not see any improvement in their GPA if they roomed with a white student. The findings suggest that the interaction between a white and an African American student may help orient these minority students to a predominantly white university, Shook said. By living with their white counterparts, the African American students are finding someone with whom they can study and learn from in ways other African American students cannot offer. "Particularly for minority students, there is a lot of added stress to belong and succeed at a predominately white university. This intergroup contact and exposure to diversity may help minority students adjust in ways same-race relationships cannot," Shook said. "And if we can help them adjust more quickly to find their university identity, then hopefully that can also translate into more academic success." However, white students' grades were virtually unaffected by the race of their roommate. White students earned higher GPAs when assigned to someone who was more successful academically. "It's a predominately white institution, so their roommate is not a means by which they can get integrated into the community. So the race of the roommate proves irrelevant and the day-to-day environment becomes more important. If their roommate is very competent and studious, or less competent, more of a partygoer, that has a larger impact on their success," Fazio said.

What the research seems to show is that it is beneficial to have a roommate who is smarter than you are. Since whites are on average smarter than blacks this means that blacks will benefit more from having white roommates than whites will benefit from having black ones.

Religion and IQ

Are religious people less intelligent?

The children of people who live to 100 and beyond are themselves much less likely to develop cardiovascular diseases

Longevity runs in families, the saying goes, and new research shows there may be genetic and physiological reasons for the phenomenon. The children of people who live to 100 and beyond are themselves much less likely to develop cardiovascular diseases, such as heart disease and stroke, and even diabetes, researchers found. The findings stem from an analysis of health data collected over a decade by the New England Centenarian Study, which focuses on people aged 97 and older and their family members. It's the first study to track the health of children of centenarians as they age. "This confirms what we were already suspecting, and definitely suggests that there is a genetic component to the ability to create exceptional longevity," said study author Emily R. Adams, a third-year medical student at Boston University School of Medicine. Adams and her Boston University colleagues, Dr. Dellara F. Terry and Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study, presented their findings in the November 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. For the 10-year study, initial and follow-up questionnaires regarding health status were presented to 440 children of centenarians, as well as to 192 men and women whose parents had not lived past 100. The average age of the participants was 72 when the study began in 1997. The researchers found that compared to the average adult, children of centenarians had a 78% lower risk for a heart attack, an 83% lower risk for a stroke, and an 86% lower risk for developing diabetes. They were also 81% less likely to die during the course of the study. The researchers said the findings generally reinforce the important role that genetics play in reaching extreme old age, and specifically highlight the cardiovascular leg up children of centenarians appear to inherit from their parents.

Police are using "group Asbos" to ban gangs from large areas of London in a clampdown on violent crime

Officers in Camden have expelled a dozen members of the drug-dealing teenage gang TMS (The Money Squad) from the area for two years. The gang, one of whose members was shot dead in 2008 in a feud over drugs, are also banned from gathering in groups larger than three following a hearing at Highbury Corner magistrates' court. If they breach the terms of the Asbo they face jail. "It is unprecedented for this number of Asbos to be granted in a job lot," said Sergeant Roger Smith, of the Camden Town and Primrose Hill Safer Neighbourhood Scheme. "This is an innovative approach to crime. The idea is that if a group of individuals are going to cause anti-social behaviour as a group then we are not going to be afraid to deal with them as a group." James King, Camden council's deputy member for community safety, said: "TMS were pretty central to the drugs market. Associated with that were a whole string of other offences, like assault. I think this is being viewed by the Home Office ... as a good way of dealing with drug problems, and we are starting to see the results." The move follows an earlier mass Asbo operation against another notorious Camden Town gang, The African Nations Crew. Orders were granted against ten of its members after a court heard they were involved in crime, drugs and violence in the area. Police say banning the gang led to an immediate reduction in violent crime and robbery in the area - until the TMS stepped in. The TMS Asbos ban gang members from a wide area of Camden Town, including the market, around Regent's Canal and the Tube station. In May 2008, TMS member Sharmaarke Hassan, 17, was shot dead as he sat on a bench overlooking Regent's Canal. Five men have been arrested in connection with his killing. They have all been bailed until mid-January 2009.

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The ‘bad blood’ which led to murder

London teen murder number 15 confirms guns, gangs and drugs form a deadly cocktail

DRUGS RAID NETS £80,000 OF COCAINE

Mexican drug traffickers pose the biggest organized crime threat to the United States, a justice department report says

Most of the cocaine available in the US is smuggled via the US-Mexican border, while Mexican drug traffickers control most of the US drug market. Mexican smugglers are also working increasingly with US-based gangs. But the report says factors including increased border security and inter-cartel violence in Mexico have hit the cocaine supply in some areas. "Mexican drug trafficking organizations represent the greatest organized crime threat to the United States," says the annual National Drug Threat Assessment, drawn up by the justice department's National Drug Intelligence Center. "The influence of Mexican drug trafficking organizations over domestic drug trafficking is unrivalled," the report says. Mexican gangs control distribution in most US cities and are gaining strength in areas they do not yet control, the study finds. The Mexican smugglers' influence is down to a number of factors, including their use of a variety of trafficking routes and transportation methods and growing links with US-based crime organisations, including street and prison gangs. Mexican gangs maintain cross-border communication centres near the US border to co-ordinate smuggling, using satellite technology, VOIP, and encrypted messages. The report estimates that Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers make and launder between $18bn and $39bn in wholesale drug profits annually.

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Kidnapping Negotiator Is Now a Victim in Mexico

American Death toll in Mexico's drug war surges

Report: Mexico More Dangerous Than Iraq

Blacks, Latinos and hate crimes in Los Angeles

Driven by racial violence between blacks and Latinos, hate crimes in Los Angeles rose by 28% in 2007, hitting a five-year high, according to a report issued in July 2008 by the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission. This sharp rise in racially motivated criminal activity contrasted dramatically with the overall decline in the Los Angeles crime rate last year. The report documented 763 reported hate crimes, dominated by assault and vandalism. The largest category of crimes involved Latino suspects targeting black victims; the second largest was black suspects assaulting Latino victims. Officials cited racially motivated violence committed by race-based street gangs as "a major factor" in the spike in reported hate crimes. "Latino gang members were responsible for 34% of Latino-on-black [hate] crimes," the report stated. "In contrast, gang members were responsible for 42% of black-on-Latino [hate] crimes." In December 2006, an Intelligence Report cover story showed that Latino gang members, acting on orders from Mexican Mafia "shot callers" inside California prisons, were randomly targeting African-Americans in certain L.A. neighborhoods. Now, black gangs apparently are retaliating in kind. "Latino gang members shoot blacks not because they're members of a rival gang but because of their skin color," Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca wrote in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece that underlined the race-hate aspect of the violence. "Likewise, black gang members shoot Latinos because they're brown. … Gang affiliation does not matter. Only the color of the victim's skin matters." The Human Relations Commission report also noted that Pasadena, Calif., police had investigated 69 robberies and beatings of Latino immigrant workers in 2007 that were allegedly perpetrated by black offenders. Although investigators viewed these crimes as racially motivated — observing that "the act of taking the victim's property appeared to be an afterthought" — all 69 beatings were excluded from the commission's 2007 hate crime tally since they lacked "overt acts by the suspects that would prove race as the motive."

13% of adult Latinos have a college degree or higher, compared with 41% for white adults

Latino adults in San Diego County continue to lag far behind their white peers in obtaining a college education. According to U.S. census data to be released today, 13% of adult Latinos – the lowest rate among all minority groups – have a college degree or higher, compared with 41% for white adults. The statistics reflect a three-year average of census surveys taken between 2005 and 2007 and represent the most geographically detailed portrait of the county's adult population since the 2000 census. Especially telling is the disparity in educational attainment within areas of the county. In Poway, an upper-income city known for its highly regarded schools, 43% of adults 25 years or older have a bachelor's degree or higher. That compares with 26% in Oceanside and 21% in Escondido, cities that have much larger shares of Latino households. As the county's more educated white population continues to shrink over the next few decades, lower-educated Latinos will make up a much larger share of the region's workers. In 2008, 27% of adults 18 and older are Latino; in 2030, the percentage will jump to 36%, according to the San Diego Association of Governments. At the same time, the county's share of white adults will drop from 54% in 2008 to 40% in 2030.

For African-Americans and Hispanics, more than one in three high school students fails to graduate on time

Nationally, one in four high school students fails to graduate on time, according to the Education Trust, an independent nonprofit organization that focuses on high academic achievement. For African-American and Hispanic students, the rate is more than one in three. In Ohio, schools graduated only 71% of black students and 67% of Hispanic students in 2006, the last year for which figures are available. That compares to 90% of white students and 93% of Asian students.

More bowl-bound black football players are graduating, but still at lower rates than their white teammates

Of the 68 schools going to bowl games, 19 graduated less than 50% of black players, according to the report by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida. The gap between bowl-bound graduating white and black players also closed a bit, from 18% in 2007 to 16%. The number of black graduates grew from 55.5% to 59.1%. However, the gap widened among the 119-member FBS schools. At those, a total of 76% of whites graduated compared with 59% of blacks in the study. In 2007, 64% of whites and 50% of blacks graduated. The study showed the graduation rate among all black males in the student body of the schools studied is 38%.

What’s it all about?

Kevin MacDonald shows how explicit processing leads us to come up with ideologies that are guaranteed to be incompatible with our long term survival.

Jewish neocon wants socialist GOP

Bill Kristol apparently believes that Republicans should embrace the welfare state.

The daughter of a London woman who died in a so-called honor killing in India has demanded that her mother's attackers be brought to justice

Surjit Athwal died in 1998 and her husband and mother-in-law were convicted of arranging her murder in 2007. The prosecution claimed Mrs Athwal was killed because she sought a divorce. But those who carried out the attack have never been convicted and her daughter Pavanpreet, 17, called for them "to be put behind bars". Her family feel that police in India have "failed" to properly look into the case.

A man wanted by Interpol for his links to an alleged terrorist organisation is an adviser to Scotland Yard on Muslim extremism

Mohamed Ali Harrath has been the subject of the Interpol red notice since 1992 because of his alleged activities in Tunisia. His home country has issued an arrest warrant for the 45-year-old, who is chief executive of the Islam Channel in Britain. The Interpol website lists his offences as counterfeiting, forgery, crimes involving the use of weapons, explosives and terrorism. Harrath, who has lived in London for years, acts as an adviser to the Metropolitan police's Muslim Contact Unit on preventing terrorism.

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Intelligence expert calls for Scotland Yard to drop wanted terrorism adviser

Lunacy at the Yard

The fight against forced marriage

NHS doctor Humayra Abedin, who says she has been held captive by her parents ahead of a forced marriage, is returning to Britain. A Bangladesh court's decision to order her release has been hailed as a "landmark" ruling by her lawyers.

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‘Forced marriage’ doctor, Humayra Abedin, freed by Bangladesh court

Jews and the elite

Philip Weiss blogs about how the Madoff scandal shows how powerful Jews are in American society.

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He Mad-off with the Money!

Women and hair color

Do women lighten their hair to compensate for aging?

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NLSY blogging: Eye and hair color of Americans

Seven members of a family belonging to the minority Yazidi community have been murdered in northern Iraq, police say

Officers said a mother and father and their four adult children were shot dead when gunmen burst into their home in the town of Sinjar, west of Mosul. The Yazidis are an ancient, religious sect and there have been a number of attacks on them in Iraq in the past. In August 2007, some 400 people were killed in the Sinjar area in multiple bomb blasts targeting Yazidis. Thought to number about 500,000, the Yazidis are to be found in Iran, Russia and Turkey, but the largest number are in northern Iraq. Their religion is a blend of Zoroastrianism, Islam and other faiths. Some Muslims have accused them of being devil-worshippers, since they revere an angel in the form of a blue peacock. It is a charge the Yazidis reject. A number of attacks against Yazidis in recent years have been blamed on al-Qaeda in Iraq which views them as infidels.

Ugandan rebels say a stalled peace process has collapsed completely after a joint attack on its positions by forces from three African countries

Uganda, DR Congo and South Sudan launched a joint offensive against bases of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in north-eastern DR Congo. A rebel negotiator said the offensive signalled an escalation of the war. The Ugandan army has said that several LRA camps have been destroyed, including its main base. Army spokesman Paddy Ankunda said that the operation had been launched because LRA leader Joseph Kony had been unwilling to end the violence in the region. In November 2008 Mr Kony failed to sign a peace deal, despite two years of tortuous negotiations. The LRA has led a rebellion for more than 20 years in northern Uganda, displacing some two million people.

Up to 250 people were killed in clashes in Sudan's Darfur region recently, says the United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission (Unamid)

Unamid says 150 people died as hundreds of members of the Fallata and Salamat ethnic groups attacked the Habaniya in South Darfur. About 100 more died in clashes between two groups from the Gimir group. These clashes do not appear to be directly linked to the Darfur conflict between Arabs and black Africans. But UN officials say ethnic relations have not been helped by the Darfur conflict, which started in 2003 when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government, accusing Khartoum of neglecting the western region. This has seen an increased flow of weapons to the region. Unamid says it also received reports more than 5,000 people fled their homes after a village was burned and looted. Six police officers were among the dead, Unamid said. Activists have accused Khartoum of trying to arm groups from some of the groups involved in the recent fighting, of buying their allegiance and using them as proxies against the rebels. The UN estimates that up to 2.7 million people have been forced from their homes in Darfur and some 300,000 have died during five and a half years of conflict.

An elderly man opened fire on fans at a Senegal rap concert he believed were making fun of him by singing a song about cranky old men, police say

The 70-year-old began shooting with a hunting rifle at Lobaly village in the Matam region. Police say the gunman warned fans to stop singing "Pa' Tang Xol" (Angry Old Men) by popular Senegalese artist Baaba Mal before opening fire. Five people were taken to hospital and two were seriously injured, say police. Concert-goers had been listening to warm-up music before the live act at the gig on the border with Mauritania, 700km (440 miles) from the Senegalese capital Dakar. The man took offense when he heard the Wolof language track's lyrics and told the fans to stop singing it. When they did not, he opened fire four times, said police. "The elderly gentleman felt that these young people were insulting him in their songs," a policeman said. The gunman was reportedly arrested.

Mexicans, children and crime

Even children aren't safe from Mexican criminals.

Diversity and the Chicago way

Steve Sailer explains how diversity makes Chicago more prone to corruption.

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Jewish politician in Israel praises Hitler

A far-right Likud party member has become a thorn in the side of the ultra-hawkish party's leader Benjamin Netanyahu, a frontrunner in the race to become Israel's prime minister, as media reprint comments he made praising the Nazi system and denigrating Arabs. Moshe Feiglin, 46, has a strong chance of winning a parliamentary seat after gaining significant support within Likud, at a time when Netanyahu is seeking to soften the image of the right-wing opposition party. But Likud's governing body pushed Feiglin down to the 36th place on the election slate from the 20th slot following an appeal by a Netanyahu ally citing irregularities in the party primary. The support that Feiglin and other radical Likud members won at a party election to name parliamentary candidates for the legislative elections was a sharp blow for Netanyahu, a former prime minister. To make matters worse for the party leader, the Israeli media has since highlighted comments Feiglin made in a 1995 interview with the Haaretz daily, in which he praised the qualities of Hitler and spoke disparagingly of Arabs. An observant yarmulke-wearing Jew, Feiglin called the man responsible for the Holocaust an unparalleled military genius. "Hitler savored good music. He would paint. This was no bunch of thugs. They merely used thugs and homosexuals," Feiglin was quoted as saying of the Nazi regime at the time. "Nazism promoted Germany from a low to a fantastic physical and ideological status. The ragged, trashy youth body turned into a neat and orderly part of society and Germany received an exemplary regime, a proper justice system and public order," he said. The mass-selling Yediot Ahronot daily said Feiglin "was not ashamed of considering Hitler a genius." Feiglin, who lives in a Jewish colony in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has made similarly controversial comments on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He insists there is no such thing as a Palestinian people and that they and Palestinian-Israeli Arabs should be cleansed from their lands, media said, citing a text he had posted on the website of his "Jewish leadership" movement that was removed recently. "They will have to seek the right to self-determination in Arab states. Israel will encourage the Arabs to emigrate to their countries and assist any Arab who wishes to do so," Feiglin was quoted as saying. In a 2004 interview with Yediot he spoke of "a voluntary transfer to the 22 neighboring Arab states" of the some 1.4 million Palestinian-Israelis, who make up 20% of Israel's population. "Arabs don't live in the desert, they create it," he was quoted as saying.

Related:

Israeli Radical Considers Hitler to be a Genius

Indifference to Gaza Suffering Chalked Up to Jewish Ethnocentrism

A new ethnic conflict in Bosnia?

Thirteen years after the United States brokered the Dayton peace agreement to end the ferocious ethnic war in the former Yugoslavia, fears are mounting that Bosnia, poor and divided, is again teetering toward crisis. On the surface, this haunted capital, its ancient mosques and Orthodox churches still pocked by mortar fire, appears to be enjoying a renaissance. Yet for the first time in years, talk of the prospect of another war is creeping into conversations across the ethnic divide in Bosnia, a former Yugoslav republic that the Dayton agreement divided into two entities, a Muslim-Croat Federation and a Serbian Republic. The power-sharing agreement between former foes has always been tense. Now, however, the uneasy peace has been complicated by Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in February, which many here worry could prompt the Serbian Republic to follow suit, tipping the region into a conflict that could fast turn deadly. “It’s time to pay attention to Bosnia again, if we don’t want things to get nasty very quickly,” Richard C. Holbrooke, the Clinton administration official who brokered the Dayton accord, and Paddy Ashdown, formerly the West’s top diplomat in Bosnia, warned recently in an open letter published in several newspapers. “By now, the entire world knows the price of that.” The Dayton peace agreement, brokered by the Clinton administration at a United States Air Force base near Dayton, Ohio, in November 1995, accomplished its goal of ending a savage three-and-a-half year war in which about 100,000 people were killed. A million more Muslims, Serbs and Croats were driven from their homes, while much of this rugged country’s infrastructure was destroyed. But the decentralized political system that Dayton engineered has entrenched rather than healed ethnic divisions. Even in communities where Serbs, Muslims and Croats live side by side, some opt to send their children to the same schools, but in different shifts. And the country’s leaders are so busy fighting one another that they have done relatively little to help the nation recover. Locked in an impasse of mutual recrimination are Haris Silajdzic — the Muslim representative of the country’s three-member presidency, who has called for the Serbian Republic to be abolished — and the Bosnian Serb prime minister, Milorad Dodik, who is supported by Russia and Serbia and who has dangled the threat that his republic would secede. Bosnia, which has received more than $18 billion in foreign aid since 1995, remains a ward of the West, its security guaranteed by 2,000 European Union peacekeepers. Sketching a worst-case example, Srecko Latal, a Bosnia specialist at the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Sarajevo, warned that if the Serbian Republic declared independence, Croatia would respond by sending in troops, while the Bosnian Muslims would take up arms. If Banja Luka, the capital of the Serbian Republic, were to fall, he continued, Serbia would be provoked into entering the fray, leading to the prospect of a regional war.

The hormone that turns angelic children into foul-tempered teens has been isolated by scientists

Neurokinin B switches on puberty, causing the hormonal surge behind the angst and anger of adolescence, a Cambridge University study has found. More knowledge of the hormone could lead to new contraceptives as well as treatments for diseases fuelled by sex hormones, such as prostate cancer. Researcher Prof Steve O'Rahilly said: "This unexpected finding puts one more important piece in the unfinished jigsaw puzzle that is our understanding of puberty." Analysis of the DNA of Turkish families with members who did not go through puberty, published in Nature Genetics, flagged neurokinin B's key role. Neurokinin B has been linked to puberty in animals, but it had been assumed its main role lay elsewhere. Now it appears it is key to the awkwardness of adolescence. Other research has shown that the teenage brain, not yet fully developed, cannot consider how actions will affect others - leading to teens being perceived as sullen, selfish and thoughtless. They also find it harder to put themselves in others' shoes. Moodiness might be partly explained by differences in biological clocks, which leave them in a permanent state of jetlag.

Related:

Research uncovers puberty genes

Kickstarting puberty

Clint Eastwood and the Hmong

Brenda Walker has an interesting take on Eastwood's new film.

California's Latinos and blacks still lag whites and Asians in university eligibility

Despite recent improvements, Latino and black students continue to lag behind whites and Asians in becoming academically eligible to enter California's two public university systems, according to a state report just released. The study reported that 22.5% of Latino high school graduates were eligible for Cal State in 2007, up from 16% in 2003, when the last such study was done. For black students, Cal State eligibility went up to 24%, from 18.6%. Latino and black eligibility for UC's more rigorous standards were 6.9% and 6.3%,respectively, in 2007, slightly higher than four years ago. White and Asian students did better in meeting requirements for both universities. For Cal State, 37.1% of white high school graduates were eligible in 2007 and 50.9% of Asians, both somewhat higher than in 2003. For UC, 14.6% of white graduates and 29.4% of Asians met course, grade and test score requirements; those rates were both slightly lower than in the previous survey.

Young Muslims go amok at mall in Copenhagen

Police used pepper spray to dispel up to 300 Muslim young people who caused disturbances outside Fisketorvet mall in downtown Copenhagen. The youths had gathered at the shopping centre in connection with the celebration of the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha. But several of those present got out of hand, according to police. Bicycles were thrown onto the nearby S-train tracks, shoppers at the mall were harassed and rocks were thrown at police who arrived on the scene. Officers managed to split the group in two and drive them away from the mall. Five youths were eventually arrested as a result of the fracas.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has sparked controversy by saying a Palestinian state would provide "a national solution" for Israel's Arabs

Politicians from the minority Arab community have demanded she clarify if it means that Arabs citizens will face loss of rights in Israel or expulsion. Israeli politicians have long grappled with the issue of a growing proportion of ethnic Arabs in the Jewish state. "Transfer" has been mooted explicitly only by far right-wingers in Israel. Ms Livni is hoping to become Israel's next prime minister, and opinion polls suggest she is in a close race with the right-wing Likud party.

Genetic variation in South Indian castes: evidence from Y-chromosome, mitochondrial, and autosomal polymorphisms

For 32 lineage-defining Y-chromosome SNPs, Tamil castes show higher affinity to Europeans than to eastern Asians, and genetic distance estimates to the Europeans are ordered by caste rank. For 32 lineage-defining mitochondrial SNPs and hypervariable sequence (HVS) 1, Tamil castes have higher affinity to eastern Asians than to Europeans. For 45 autosomal STRs, upper and middle rank castes show higher affinity to Europeans than do lower rank castes from either Tamil Nadu or Andhra Pradesh.

Related:

Y chromosomes. mtDNA, and autosomal DNA from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh

Rupert Murdoch and the Jews

From Steve Sailer:

Rupert Murdoch once said in private, I am told on good authority, that the reason he decided to subsidize the neocons (a decision with substantial historical ramifications) was not because of any particular devotion to the tenets of neoconservatism. Instead, funding The Weekly Standard was simply to insure against being defenseless against vendettas by the American media and politicians against his American businesses. As a foreigner of generally conservative political views, he felt he needed to protect his huge investments in America by having at least one set of Jews staunchly on his side.

I doubt if Murdoch cares much about, say, West Bank settlements, but he understands that the small number of people in America who do care about them tend to be passionate, powerful, and rich.

Related:

Bernard Madoff and the Jews of Palm Beach

Pathogen resistance and auto-immune response

Yann Klimentidis points to some research that may indicate a trade-off between pathogen resistance and auto-immune response particularly in Northern Europeans.

Gene in fruit flies may engage in genetic warfare that causes speciation

A newly identified gene in fruit flies may drive the creation of new species, revealing how internal genetic environments may be just as important as external factors when it comes to speciation. The new work lends evidence to a hotly debated idea in evolutionary biology. “Conventionally, evolutionary biologists thought that speciation involved adaptation to the external environment, but these results suggest that adaptation to the internal genomic environment also sometimes plays a role,” explains study author Nitin Phadnis of the University of Rochester in New York. Phadnis and colleague H. Allen Orr identified a gene — dubbed Overdrive — that prevents two closely related subspecies of fruit flies from mingling genomes. The gene does this in two ways: It forces hybrids of the two subspecies of flies to be predominantly female, and it renders the male hybrids sterile. Both of these genetic tricks could ultimately fracture one species into two, the team reports online December 11 2008 in Science. “I think it’s great,” comments researcher Mohamed Noor of Duke University in Durham, N.C. “It represents a dramatic change in the context of the field.” To many scientists, genome-mingling is what defines a species — members within a single species can swap genetic material frequently and easily. Species can split into two when freewheeling gene exchange is no longer possible, a barrier Overdrive appears to build. An early stop on the road to complete speciation is when two subspecies can still mate, but produce offspring that are incapable of having offspring themselves. In a genetic schoolyard scuffle, the genes of one species don’t play well with the genes of a different species. This hybrid sterility plays out in fruit flies. At the same time, Jiri Forejt of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and colleagues identified an elusive gene that causes hybrid sterility in mice subspecies. The work, published in the same issue of Science as Phadnis’ study, describes the first example of a mammalian gene that may lead to speciation. This fruit fly study used two fruit fly subspecies that, although closely related, don’t encounter each other in the wild. These subspecies, called USA and Bogota after their respective habitats, produce sterile male offspring. Phadnis and Orr first tested which parts of the flies’ DNA were important for causing hybrid sterility. The researchers inserted many different parts of one subspecies’ genome into the other subspecies’ genome, and saw which DNA fragment allowed the hybrid offspring to be fertile. After many painstaking experiments, Phadnis and Orr homed in on a stretch of DNA in both flies that spanned five genes. The researchers concluded that incompatible DNA in this region is responsible for making the hybrid offspring sterile. In this DNA region, one of the genes, Overdrive, showed big differences between the Bogota version and the USA version, leading Phadnis to think that this gene was a “prime suspect” behind hybrid sterility. Usually the offspring of USA and Bogota parents would be sterile. But when Phadnis put the USA form of the Overdrive gene into a Bogota male and bred it with a USA female, the hybrid was fertile. Overdrive, Phadnis and Orr discovered, was in fact responsible for whether the hybrids were fertile or not. Taking the research a step further, Phadnis and Orr showed that when the Bogota Overdrive gene was put into USA flies, a whopping 80% of the hybrid offspring were female. Fruit flies usually produce roughly equal numbers of male and female offspring; males carry an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, and females carry two copies of the X. But, the team concluded, Overdrive, which is located on the X chromosome, was somehow driving its own propagation forward, at the expense of male heirs and, by inference, at the expense of the Y chromosome. This example of genetic warfare, in which a gene cheats the usually fair system of divvying up chromosomes, evokes a hotly debated topic in evolutionary biology. "Genetic conflict was an extremely controversial topic in the 1990s," says Phadnis. “There wasn't much empirical evidence, and the idea didn't latch on." Some researchers were skeptical that genetic conflicts, like the one Overdrive seems to wage on the Y chromosome, can drive subspecies to split. But the new research, along with two recent reports of other cheating genes, makes it more likely that internal genetic tussles can lead to a species split. The mouse study by Forejt and colleagues found no evidence of such genetic warfare. “It's amazing. These theories were proposed on intellectual grounds," says Phadnis. But now, he says, the idea has become much more believable. Phadnis and Orr don’t yet understand how Overdrive might be harming the Y chromosome in a way that ultimately leads to fewer male offspring. “We have genetic proof but very few details at this point,” says Phadnis. Just finding the gene is a big benefit to studies on how species form. Genes that may be involved in speciation have been notoriously difficult to identify, largely because of sterility problems. To date, just a handful of genes that may impact speciation have been found, mostly in fruit flies.

Related:

The first speciation gene in mammals has just been discovered

Sex, race and height

Some interesting research on how height can affect reproductive success depending on gender and race.

Jewish parents want Arabs out of Israeli school

Parents in south Tel Aviv who are seeking to prevent two Arab girls from attending their children's school are denying accusations of racism, saying they're worried about academic standings. The conflict centers around the Hagalil Elementary School in the Hatikva quarter and began when the Tel Aviv school board decided to enroll the girls, both of whom are neighborhood residents. Even in the country's handful of mixed cities, Jews and Arabs generally prefer to live - and learn - apart. Hatikva has long been a low income area suffering from crime and drug-related ills. An influx of immigrants and foreign workers within the past decade has put long-time residents on guard, and the enrollment of many of the foreign workers' children into area schools has added to the tension. Dismissing charges of racism, a core group of Hagalil parents said they're concerned that the academic level of their children's classes may drop if students who are struggling with Hebrew are integrated. "The school board already dumped the African kids here, and now they're bringing in the Arab kids without even telling us," one mother said. "They can't speak Hebrew well, they're having trouble in class and it's hurting the academic level of the school," she said. "Anyone who doesn't understand why we're so upset... should take a look at other schools in the area," the mother added. "It starts with a few students and all of a sudden parents find that there are dozens of refugees in their schools. It's simply bad for the school."

Related:

TA elementary school: No Arabs allowed

Light State, Dark State

Audacious Epigone points out how race affects political support.

A gene mutation which protects the heart against a high-fat diet has been found in the Amish population

Researchers found 5% of the Amish population in Lancaster, Pennsylvania have a mutation in a protein which breaks down fatty particles. Those with the mutation had higher levels of "good" HDL-cholesterol and lower levels of "bad" LDL-cholesterol, the journal Science reported. It is hoped the finding will lead to new therapies to reduce cholesterol.

Related:

"Inbreeding" Not so Bad After All! -- Amish Genes Ward off Stroke

The spread of lactase persistence

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe should be seen as a "21st Century Hitler", a senior South African Anglican bishop has said

Bishop of Pretoria Joe Seoka called on churches to pray for his removal, South African Press Association reports. His comments came as the US ambassador to Zimbabwe warned that the country was turning into a "failed state".

More than 80% of Somalia's soldiers and police - about 15,000 members - have deserted, some taking weapons, uniforms and vehicles, the UN says

The head of the UN monitoring group on Somalia, Dumisani Kumalo, said Islamist insurgents got many of their weapons and ammunition from the deserters. Meanwhile, the African Union wants peacekeepers from Burundi and Uganda to stay when Ethiopian troops leave soon. In the UN report, Mr Kumalo, the South African ambassador, also said most of the Somali government's security budget - supposedly 70% of its total budget - disappeared through corruption.

High IQ test scores in early adulthood were associated with a reduced risk of death by homicide

In the developing field of violence epidemiology, a series of studies have shown that social factors are associated with the risk of being a victim of homicide. Thus, persons with higher educational credentials, individuals in the professional social classes, and people with higher income experience lower homicide rates. A further individual characteristic, intelligence (IQ), a correlate of these indices of socio-economic circumstances, has recently been shown to be related to the risk of having experienced violent assault in children who were followed until age 17 years. That is, after adjustment for covariates, individuals in the highest IQ scoring group reported a marked reduction in the prevalence of assault in comparison with the lowest IQ scorers. A corollary of these different strands of evidence is that persons with high IQ will have a decreased risk of death due to homicide.

New research shows significant genetic differences between the Scots and the English

Results may show the varying proportions of continental Germanic and indigenous British ancestry in these populations.

An African-Caribbean teenager has been found guilty of killing a 14-year-old boy who had a knife plunged into his head

Jack Large was stabbed near a shopping precinct in Chigwell, Essex, in November 2007 and died in hospital two days later after having the knife removed. The 16-year-old, who cannot be named, was cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter at Chelmsford Crown Court. Jurors failed to reach a verdict on another teenager, now aged 14, who was also charged with murder. After the jury was discharged, he pleaded guilty to possession of an offensive weapon. The court was told the convicted teenager, who is African-Caribbean, believed he had been called racist names by Jack Large.

Distance from Africa, not climate explains human variation

The relative importance of ancient demography and climate in determining worldwide patterns of human within-population phenotypic diversity is still open to debate. Several morphometric traits have been argued to be under selection by climatic factors, but it is unclear whether climate affects the global decline in morphological diversity with increasing geographical distance from sub-Saharan Africa. Using a large database of male and female skull measurements, we apply an explicit framework to quantify the relative role of climate and distance from Africa. We show that distance from sub-Saharan Africa is the sole determinant of human within-population phenotypic diversity, while climate plays no role. By selecting the most informative set of traits, it was possible to explain over half of the worldwide variation in phenotypic diversity. These results mirror those previously obtained for genetic markers and show that ‘bones and molecules’ are in perfect agreement for humans.

Anti-retroviral drugs used to treat HIV/AIDS are being bought and smoked by teenagers in South Africa to get high

Reports suggest that the drugs are being sold by patients and even health care staff for money. Schoolchildren have been spotted smoking the drugs, which are ground into powder and sometimes mixed with painkillers or marijuana. AIDS patients themselves have been found smoking the drugs instead of taking them as prescribed. Anti-retrovirals are used to boost the immune system of people with HIV and to suppress the virus in the blood. "I couldn't believe it. I was shocked at first, these were school boys in their school uniforms," said documentary-maker Tooli Nhlapo. "They take a pill and grind it, until it is a powder. Some also mix it with painkillers and others mix it with marijuana," said Ms Nhlapo. "They showed me how they roll it and smoke it."

Related:

Cholera is 'S African disaster'

A fool and his money will get more women

Men who spent more (saved less) and who were more likely to shell out more than they earned reported having more sexual partners in the past five years and desired more future partners than other guys in the study. Specifically, the 25% of men who were most conservative about spending had an average of three partners in the past five years and desired about one partner in the next five years. The 2% of men with the riskiest financial strategies had double those numbers.

Gene-culture co-evolution

In 2007, a team led by anthropologist John Hawks found that natural selection seems to have modified at least 7% of the human genome over the last 40,000 years, i.e., during the period when modern humans spread out of Africa and peopled the other continents. In addition, as they moved into these different physical and cultural environments, the pace of genetic change seems to have speeded up, particularly after the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago. The rate of change may then have been over a hundred times what it had been during most of human evolution (Hawks et al., 2007).

Is diversity good for religion and bad for atheism?

From Science Blogs:

Danish lack of religious intensity is likely aided by a communitarian sense of immediate and implicit belonging indicated by a homogeneous shared ethnicity. The author explicitly suggests this at several points, and observes that perhaps with the rise to the fore of Muslim populations of some size and religiosity in Denmark that orthodox Danish Lutheranism will likely see a renaissance. Diversity is strength! (for god).

Killing spree leaves albinos living in fear

It is a sanctuary on the vast waters of Lake Victoria, a safe haven amid a gathering storm of killings. White-skinned albinos, known here as "ghosts", are being hunted down by their own people, harvested for body parts by those who believe they will add potency to black magic rituals. The remote island of Ukerewe, several hours across Lake Victoria and two days overland from the capital of Tanzania, is the one remaining shelter, a place where albinos can live in relative safety. "Life is better here on the island," says Alphonce Kajanja. Elsewhere, the killing continues. Recently, two more Tanzanian albinos were murdered. Elizabeth Hussein was hacked to pieces by men with machetes in Shinyanga province. She was just 13. Then Ezekiel John, 47, was shot and had his arms and legs cut off near the city of Kigoma on Thursday. Their deaths bring the toll to 35 murders in just more than a year. There is similar violence throughout east and central Africa. And even in west and southern Africa, albinos face persecution and discrimination. The campaign is being orchestrated by witch doctors who claim they can make people rich using limbs and blood from their white-skinned neighbors. In some areas, albino children go to school with bodyguards, others hide at home, and distraught relatives pile rocks on their dead loved ones to deter grave-robbers. Ukerewe is believed to have the highest concentration of albinos in the world. No one here is sure why there are so many zeru, the Swahili word for "ghosts". Some believe an unknown mineral in the fish the islanders live on makes mothers have albino babies. Others say intermarriage has bred an increased minority compelled to stick together. Whatever the cause, among the tin shacks, fishing dhows and tropical fruit trees of Lake Victoria's largest island there are an extraordinary number of people with the distinctive white skin, gingery blond hair and pale eyes. Albinism is an inherited disorder. It derives from a congenital lack of the melanin pigment which protects the skin, eyes and hair from the sun's ultraviolet rays. Some have very poor vision, though not all have red eyes as myth often suggests; most have blue, others have hazel or brown eyes. But all forms of albinism are associated with vision problems and those who have the condition are "legally" blind. What all albinos have in common is that they are rare. In most parts of the world, only one person in 20,000 has some form of albinism. In Denmark, the prevalence is one in 60,000, but in Africa it is thought to be about one in 5,000. In sub-Saharan Africa they are immediately visible; too white to be black. In Tanzania, an east African giant of a country that stretches beneath the equator from the Indian Ocean to the great lakes of Victoria and Tanganyika, people are five times more likely to have some form of albinism. Estimates of the numbers of albinos in the country differ, some are as high as 200,000, all of them complicated by the stigma attached to their condition which in many cases makes their family hide them from the outside world. But the prevalence has led many researchers to consider whether the original genetic variant may be traceable to this region of East Africa, or even to Ukerewe itself. In an already impoverished community, access to the goodwill and charity of the extended family or clan is vital to most peoples' survival. For albinos, a lifetime of social exclusion and abject poverty is all that awaits. Many albino children, uneducated about their condition, are left to a life of harsh labor in the sun: the result is catastrophic skin damage, agonising side-effects and an early death. Skin cancer means a life expectancy of just 30. Beyond the shores of Ukerewe, an even worse fate awaits. The one-time zeru are hearing a different nickname called to them now, "money": they are seen as walking bank notes. Jospehat Torner is attempting to document the horrific killing spree that has left albinos feeling "terrified and hunted". An albino himself, his outfit is designed for maximum protection from the sun. A baseball cap is pulled down tight to shade his face, and a suit and tie defy the soaring temperature. Despite these precautions, he looks much older than his 34 years. Torner is a leading campaigner with the Tanzanian Albino Society, an organization set up to fight discrimination that has found itself fighting for life itself. He says the recent murder of the 13-year-old girl was typical. She had been tempted to leave the safety of her home to see a film about Jesus being shown on a projector near to her village. All the local children went. On the way back is when those he calls the "greedy people" got her. "They chopped off her legs and her arms," he adds, gesturing with a look of pain as if he was losing his own limbs. The question, he says, is, "Who is the consumer of these body parts? When you go to the traditional healers they say it's the fishermen; when you go to the fishermen they say it's the miners. And they blame the traditional healers." In fact, the evidence already points in one direction alone, the healers or witch doctors who have started to market albino bones, skin, hair and blood as ingredients in potions that will make people rich. One man was caught trying to enter DRC with the head of an albino child in his luggage. He said he was taking it to a businessman in Congo who was going to pay for the head according to its weight. The severed limbs of Elizabeth Hussein were found on the premises of a local witch doctor. But he was tipped off and escaped police. Like many members of TAS, Torner has been trying to make himself more visible at just the time where it is most dangerous to do so. Everywhere he goes, he must register with the local police and district commissioner to let them know he is there. His mobile phone, which he must hold inches from his face to see who is calling, so poor is his eye-sight, has been ringing with death threats. "They say to me, 'Where are you? We want to kill you'. And I say, 'fine, let's meet'." The Tanzanian government – appalled to see the country's cherished reputation as a haven of stability and development collapsing – has been scrambling, after an acutely slow start, to look busy. Practising witch doctors have been arrested by the score and death sentences threatened to those found guilty; so far, no one has been successfully prosecuted and the killings continue. The fear has reached Ukerewe. In Masahonga, at the end of a 100km dirt road that connects the nearest paved road with the ferry to Ukerewe, a crowd had gathered recently. The district commissioner used a megaphone to hammer home the message that albino murders must stop. In angry Swahili, she denounces the witch doctors as "liars". But the deadly cocktail of traditional beliefs and modern avarice will not be easily neutralized. Torner has an even darker view. He believes the murders may have been going on unnoticed for many years. Countless numbers of albino babies die in childbirth. "What's to stop a nurse killing an albino baby and saying that it died of natural causes." Nobody knows how many disappeared before people started keeping count. The lives of many albinos have been lived in total seclusion. Inside some homes, albino graves have been dug and marked. People have grown up, he says, being told albinos are ghosts. "We don't die," he says. "We just disappear."

Liberals are starting to turn on Obama

Liberals are growing increasingly nervous – and some just flat-out angry – that President-elect Barack Obama seems to be stiffing them on Cabinet jobs and policy choices. Obama has reversed pledges to immediately repeal tax cuts for the wealthy and take on Big Oil. He’s hedged his call for a quick drawdown in Iraq. And he’s stocking his White House with anything but stalwarts of the left. Now some are shedding a reluctance to puncture the liberal euphoria at being rid of President George W. Bush to say, in effect, that the new boss looks like the old boss. “He has confirmed what our suspicions were by surrounding himself with a centrist to right cabinet. But we do hope that before it's all over we can get at least one authentic progressive appointment,” said Tim Carpenter, national director of the Progressive Democrats of America. OpenLeft blogger Chris Bowers went so far as to issue this plaintive plea: “Isn't there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration?”

Related:

Obama has no clue on energy efficiency

Diversity Hiccups in the Obama Shape-Up

Obama Expected To Reduce Illegal Alien Round-Ups

Black males were 6 times and Hispanic males a little more than 2 times more likely to be held in custody than white males

Black males represented the largest percentage (35.4%) of inmates held in custody, followed by white males (32.9%) and Hispanic males (17.9%). The custody incarceration rate for black males was 4,618 per 100,000. Hispanic males were incarcerated at a rate of 1,747 per 100,000. At midyear 2007 the estimated incarceration rate of white males was 773 per 100,000. Across all age categories, black males were incarcerated at higher rates than white or Hispanic males. Black males ages 30 to 34 had the highest custody incarceration rate of any race, age, or gender group at midyear 2007.

The brains of children from low-income families process information differently to those of their wealthier counterparts

Normal nine and 10-year-olds from rich and poor backgrounds had differing electrical activity in a part of the brain linked to problem solving. A British researcher said it could shed light on early brain development. The 26 children in the study, conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, were measured using an electroencephalograph (EEG), which measured activity in the "prefrontal cortex" of the brain. Half were from low income homes, and half from high income families. During the test, an image the children had not been briefed to expect was flashed onto a screen, and their brain responses were measured. Those from lower income families showed a lower prefrontal cortex response to it than those from wealthier households. Dr Mark Kishiyama, one of the researchers, said: "The low socioeconomic kids were not detecting or processing the visual stimuli as well - they were not getting that extra boost from the prefrontal cortex."

Related:

Cortex Matures Faster in Youth with Highest IQ

Same Brain Region For IQ And Financial Self Control

Low childhood IQ linked to later psychiatric illness

The Taboo Hypothesis

The Search for Intelligence

Complex traits & evolution

Equality: The Elusive Ideal

Genetic ancestry of African-Americans reveals new insights about gene expression

The amount of proteins produced in cells—a fundamental determinant of biological outcomes collectively known as gene expression—varies in African American individuals depending on their proportion of African or European genetic ancestry according to new research led by Alkes L. Price of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. Gene expression is known to vary among individuals and to be influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. Previous studies have reported gene expression differences among human populations, but it has been suggested that this could be due to non-genetic effects. Populations of recently mixed ancestry such as African Americans, who on average inherit about 80% African and 20% European ancestry, offer a solution to this question, since individuals vary in their proportion of European ancestry while the analysis of a single population minimizes non-genetic factors. In this study, the researchers show that gene expression levels in African Americans vary as a function of each individual's proportion of European ancestry. The differences due to ancestry (i.e. population differences between all Africans and all Europeans) were generally small—much smaller than differences between individuals within the same population; nevertheless, the authors were able to draw a distinction between effects of genetic ancestry at the location of the expressed gene (cis) and genetic ancestry elsewhere in the genome (trans). They conclude that only about 12% of heritable variation in human gene expression is due to cis regulation. First author Alkes Price says, "It was a surprise that these conclusions could be drawn given that the differences due to genetic ancestry are so small."

Related (1):How different are gene expression levels between Europeans and Africans?

Related (2): Human variation proportional to distance from Africa?

The plight of the Pygmies

Pygmies are suffering at the hands of their fellow Africans.

The witch camps of Ghana

In many parts of Africa, traditional beliefs include the existence both of powers to heal and powers to do harm. In northern Ghana, some women, accused of hurting others through witchcraft, are exiled and come to live together in so-called witches camps.

Related: Spiritual leader kills boy, 7, for witchcraft

Geneticists claim that Iberians have Jewish and Muslim ancestry

The genetic signatures of people in Spain and Portugal provide new and explicit evidence of the mass conversions of Sephardic Jews and Muslims to Catholicism in the 15th and 16th centuries after Christian armies wrested Spain back from Muslim control, a team of geneticists claims.

Related (1): Major study of Iberian Y-chromosomes (Adams et al.)

Related (2): 500 years on from the Inquisition, DNA is able to show the Moors never went home

Related (3): Past religious diversity and intolerance have profound impact on genetics of Iberian people

A Malaysian man has been stabbed to death for refusing to stop singing and hand over the microphone at a karaoke bar

Abdul Sani Doli, 23, reportedly angered some of the customers when he hogged the stage at the bar in Sandakan town on eastern Borneo island. Witnesses said he was attacked, and the fight spilled out on to the street. He was punched before being stabbed to death with a knife. His body was found a short distance from the bar. Sandakan's police chief ACP Rosli Mohd Isa said two men were in police custody, helping them with their inquiries. Karaoke, in which amateurs can sing along to their favorite songs, first emerged from Japan and became hugely popular across Asia during the 1980s, before spreading to other parts of the world.

Men of higher intelligence tend to produce better quality sperm, British research suggests

A team from the Institute of Psychiatry analysed data from former US soldiers who served during the Vietnam war era. They found that those who performed better on intelligence tests tended to have more - and more mobile - sperm. The study, which appears in the journal Intelligence, appears to support the idea that genes underlying intelligence may have other biological effects too. Therefore, if tiny mutations impair intelligence, they might also harm other characteristics, such as sperm quality. Conversely, people with robust genes might be blessed with a biological "fitness factor" making them fit, healthy and smart. Previously, scientists tended to assume that lifestyle factors were more likely to underlie any relationship between intelligence and health. For instance, brighter people may be less likely to smoke, and more likely to take exercise, both of which are known to impact on mental performance. The latest study tested the gene theory by taking two characteristics that seemed unlikely to be associated with each other - intelligence and sperm quality. They found a small, but statistically significant link, and were able to show that this could not be explained by unhealthy habits, such as smoking or drinking alcohol. The study was based on 425 men who undertook several intelligence tests and provided semen samples. The researchers found that independently of age and lifestyle, intelligence was correlated with all three measures of sperm quality - numbers, concentration, and ability to move.

Racial hatred and Islamic terrorism

Nicholas Stix points out that Muslim terrorists are often just as motivated by racial hatred as they are by religious fanaticism.

Related (1): Some Deaths are More Equal than Others

Related (2): A charity or a front for the Mumbai killers?

Related (3): Mumbai attacks: Behind the fence at 'terror' training camp

The truth about the SPLC

A journalist takes on the intellectually-bankrupt Southern Poverty Law Center.

At least 300 girls in south-western Kenya have fled from home and sought refuge in churches in a bid to escape forced female genital mutilation (FGM)

The girls, some as young as nine, are at two rescue centers in rural Nyanza province. Female circumcision is banned in Kenya, but remains common in some areas where it is considered to be part of a girl's initiation into womanhood. The traditional ceremonies take place between November and December. The girls in Kuria District are now in the care of the two churches and Maendeleo Ya Wanawake, a women's organization. Police are providing security at the centers to ensure that the girls are not forcibly removed or harassed. Beatrice Robi, Maendeleo Ya Wanawake's district chairperson and a gender activist, says that at least 200 girls are undergoing circumcision in the district a day. She said she had found a seven-year-old girl who had just been circumcised. The FGM operation involves the partial or total removal of the external genital organs. The UN World Health Organization (WHO) says it leads to bleeding, shock, infections and a higher rate of death for new-born babies. In Africa, about three million girls are at risk of FGM each year, according to the UN.

Brazilian authorities are working to identify a mystery illness that killed a 53-year-old South African man visiting Rio de Janeiro

Rio's state health ministry said the man, whose name was not given, succumbed to a hemmorhagic disease after falling ill on November 25, 2008 two days after arriving in Brazil. He was taken to hospital with fever, vomiting, blood in his urine and rashes. Doctors suspected he had contracted an arenavirus, a group of viruses that includes Lassa fever, an infection endemic to west Africa that typically spreads to humans from proximity to rodents. Dengue, malaria and ebola had all been ruled out, the ministry said. While tests were being carried out, hospital staff who had treated him were being observed to see if they showed any symptoms. Officials said the Pan American Health Organization had been informed of the case and the man's body would be sent back to South Africa in a sealed zinc casket.

A Tanzanian MP has warned that ritual killings of albinos are continuing in the country despite a Government crackdown on the practice

At least 30 albinos, including a seven-month-old baby, have been killed in Tanzania since March 2008. They are targeted by killers because of the belief that their body parts can make magic potions more effective. As part of the initiative against the killings, a former airline clerk called Al-Shymaa Kway-Geer was appointed to be Tanzania's first albino MP. Ms Kway-Geer says while the issue had garnered international attention, the killings continue. "For two years the killings are continuing. Before, many years back, when an albino was born, they were killed instantly," she said. "But at the moment they're killing them; they need their body parts. They say they'll get wealth through our body parts, which is very, very rude - it's a rudeness." She says she has been unable to find out who is responsible for the killings. "This person must be very strong because whenever the President speaks about these killings, they kill an albino," she said. "I'm asking myself who is behind this, this rude person, this evil person. Who is killing people every day? Cutting their hands." She says all albinos in Tanzania live with the stress of a "non-future". "Wherever you walk on the road you feel that someone will hunt for you. Someone is hunting behind, that is money moving there, because they say we are money, millions of money in our bodies," she said.

Related (1): Albinos targeted in Tanzania

Related (2): Burundi albinos live in fear of killers

Somalis attack white girl

Adil Mohamed Omer, 22, has pleaded guilty to two counts of robbery and one of assault for her role in the swarmings, which occurred about 70 minutes apart at the Rideau Centre and Place d’Orléans shopping malls on Nov. 14, 2006. Court heard that Ms. Omer was among a group of six young women of Somali descent who attacked Chanel Marcotte as she sat on a bench in the mall, punching, kicking and pulling her hair before one of the women stole her cellphone and wallet. The group, which included Ms. Omer, then travelled to Place d’Orléans by bus, where they cornered two more young women near some garbage bins before attempting to steal one of the women’s purses. Court heard that the victim, Jamie Kennedy, was punched and had her hair pulled when she went after the person who stole her purse. Ms. Kennedy, who struck one of her attackers in the head with the handbag, was able to escape when a passerby intervened. According to a summary of the facts read into court, the second robbery was part of a plan hatched by Ms. Omer and the other women to target a “white girl” from Orléans “because they were rich.”

Father absence and early sexual maturity in girls

Peter Frost has some interesting new research on the role of ethnicity in family structure.

Small people in Africa

Steve Sailer reports on Africa's long history of conflict between the tall and the short.

Police have arrested a man in Nigeria who said in a television documentary he had killed 110 children he believed to be possessed by evil spirits

Rights campaigners say witchdoctors in some parts of Nigeria convince parents that their children are possessed and will bring misfortune such as divorce or disease so as to extort money to perform exorcisms. Some accused children fall into the hands of child trafficking networks after being handed over by their parents. Bishop Sunday Ulup-Aya, arrested in Mbo close to the Atlantic coast with six other suspects, had claimed in a documentary to have killed 110 children beset by evil spirits. "I am not denying that I am a witchdoctor, but what I killed are witches in my patients with herbs, not children," Ulup-Aya said while in detention. Akwa Ibom is one of Nigeria's top oil-producing states but poverty is pervasive and many are superstitious. The state has the highest incidence of child-trafficking in Africa's most populous nation and belief in witchcraft is widespread.

Related: Nigeria 'child witch killer' held

A 16-year-old girl has been beaten to death by villagers in a suburb of West Bengal in India

The girl had been accused of practising witchcraft and entrancing the son of her former employer to marry her. Police say the girl, Tulu Dolui, 16, was dragged out of her hut in Ghoramara village late at night by at least eight people, who then tied her to a tree and beat her with sticks for over three hours. While police intervened to rescue the girl, she succumbed to her injuries on way to the local health center. She had sustained serious head, abdominal, chest and back injuries. The villagers alleged that Dolui was a witch and had hypnotized the son of a rich grocer, who decided to marry her against his parents' wishes. She was working in the home of the grocer as a maid servant until the grocer came to know of the relationship and fired her. No one has yet been arrested in the incident.

Related (1): Witchcraft on India's school curriculum

Related (2): Witchcraft is given a spell in India's schools to remove curse of deadly superstition

Diversity and loneliness

Vanishing American explains how increased immigration leads to social isolation.

Republican losses

House Republicans who were members of the restrictionist Immigration Reform Caucus (IRC) experienced fewer electroal losses than Republicans who were not part of the IRC.

Racial profiling and terrorism

In the shadow of Mumbai, Koen Rooijmans utters the word from which politicians shy; profiling, meaning sorting people by their racial background. "We don't like to discriminate but we know where the problem is coming from. Profiling (racial profiling) is a dirty word here in Australia, but I would do it," says the CEO of Brisbane Airport Corporation. "There's always ways to plan a terror attack. The only way to avoid it is if you have intelligence. People have guns and they can come to our car parks if they want or go to hotels or stations. You can't prevent that. You say: 'Let's be realistic. Where are these guys coming from? What is their background?'"

The brains of people who undertake serious or sexual crimes seem to differ in a number of ways

A new study from Yale University used MRI scans to compare the brains of pedophiles and those convicted of non-sexual crimes. Paedophiles had significantly less of a substance called "white matter" that connects six areas of the brain known to play a role in sexual arousal. The researchers' theory was that the lack of adequate wiring between these centres resulted in pedophiles being unable to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate sexual objects. New brain scanning called Pet (positron emission tomography) also allows the activity of the brain to be examined by measuring the uptake of glucose, the "fuel" of the brain. Pet has demonstrated that a region at the front of the brain – the prefrontal cortex – functions differently in murderers. This area normally controls the behavior that makes us "civilized" – self-control, maturity, judgment, tactfulness and reasoning. Violent crimes have also been associated with less specific abnormalities in the frontal lobe. Hormones are chemical messengers that travel in the bloodstream. Studies show many females imprisoned for aggressive criminal acts commit their crimes during the premenstrual phase of their menstrual cycle. This suggests that fluctuations in female sex hormones levels may regulate impulsive behavior. Further, recent research demonstrated that male adolescents with severe anti-social behavior don't produce as much of the stress hormone cortisol in response to high-tension situations. Fairchild and colleagues, publishing in the journal Biological Psychiatry in November 2008, speculate this may lead to less caution and more anger and impulsiveness during times of stress.

Ann Coulter, blacks and gay marriage

Any one familiar with Ann Coulter's 2005 interview in the New York Observer wouldn't be surprised that African-Americans voted 70% to 30% against gay marriage.

Ben Stein and Darwinism

Did Darwin cause the Holocaust?

Related: How Low Can Ben Stein Go? (To the Maligning of Charles Darwin)

One of Rwanda's most famous singers, Simon Bikindi, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for inciting violence during the 1994 genocide

His conviction stems from a speech he made from a vehicle equipped with a public address system encouraging ethnic Hutus to kill Tutsis. Prosecutors at the UN-backed tribunal based in Tanzania had called for the singer to be given a life sentence. Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in just 100 days. In its judgement, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) said that several of Bikindi's songs, which were widely broadcast in Rwanda at the time, had incited hatred against Tutsis. However, the judges said the songs were written before the genocide and there was no evidence to suggest Bikindi had performed or played them in 1994. Bikindi was convicted for a speech he made in June 1994 on the main road between Kivumu and Kayove, in north-western Rwanda. "Simon Bikindi used a public address system to state that the majority population, the Hutu, should rise up to exterminate the minority, the Tutsi," the judgement read. "On his way back, Bikindi used the same system to ask if people had been killing Tutsi, who he referred to as snakes." Bikindi was also a sports ministry official and founded Rwanda's Irindiro Ballet. He was arrested seven years ago in the Netherlands. The most high-profile genocide cases are being tried by ICTR in Arusha. Since 1997, the ICTR has convicted 29 people and acquitted five.

Australian scientists have discovered that a person's genetic makeup can influence how they are affected by illness

The researchers from the University of New South Wales have found people with a genetic vulnerability spend twice as long in bed when they become ill and are significantly more likely to have an intense illness during the acute stage of an infection - when fever, aches and pain first strike signalling the start of the body's immune response. According to the researchers people with certain high risk gene combinations are eight times more likely to suffer from a severe and prolonged illness when they have an infection but other people have a gene combination which makes them particularly hardy, with a less severe illness. The research is the first to explore how genetic makeup determines the severity of an illness and could lead to ways in which people who are particularly vulnerable are identified and to the provision of individualised prevention and treatment programmes for common infectious diseases.

Related: Gene 'may ward off lung cancer'

The deluded expectations of Obama supporters

A reader going under the pseudonym "Vladimir Putin" emailed me this amusing item about the views of Obama supporters when it comes to terrorism.

Related (1): The Jews were tortured

Related (2): 'No regrets': Captured terrorist's account of Mumbai massacre reveals plan was to kill 5,000

Related (3): “Curry King” Skeptical Of UK Immigration

Related (4): The Rationale of Terror

The two villages where mothers killed every baby born a boy for ten years

The Papua New Guinea jungle has given up one of its darkest secrets - the systematic slaughter of every male baby born in two villages to prevent future tribal clashes. By virtually wiping out the 'male stock', tribal women hope they can avoid deadly bow-and-arrow wars between the villages in the future. 'Babies grow into men and men turn into warriors,' said Rona Luke, a village wife who is attending a special 'peace and reconciliation' meeting in the mountain village of Goroka. 'It's because of the terrible fights that have brought death and destruction to our villages for the past 20 years that all the womenfolk have agreed to have all new-born male babies killed,' said Mrs Luke. 'The women have had enough of men engaging in tribal conflicts and bringing misery to them.' Mrs Luke said that the village women agreed that if they stopped producing males, allowing only female babies to survive, their tribe's stock of boys would go down and there would be no men in future to fight. A resident of Agibu village, Mrs Luke said she did not know how many male babies were killed by being smothered, but it had happened to all males over a 10 year period - and she suggested it was still happening. Choking back tears she added: 'It's a terrible, unbearable crime, but the women had to do it. The women have really being forced into it as it's the only means available to them as women to bring an end to tribal fights.' Confirming the shocking infanticide claims, Mrs Kipiyona Belas from the rival Amosa village, told a newspaper that getting food for their families was difficult because husbands were fighting other tribes with bows-and- arrows and spears. Often the men did not come back, having been killed on the 'battle field', usually a clearing in the jungle. Tribal fighting in the region of Gimi, in the country's Eastern Highlands, has been going on since 1986, many of the clashes arising over claims of sorcery. Papua New Guinea tribes, who dress up in warrior paint and feathered finery for special occasions, are strong believers in sorcery and often blame their enemies for bringing about deaths through witchcraft.

Hat tip, Vladimir!

Power cuts, a murky political climate and widespread violent crime are making people leave South Africa

Professionals, often young and in middle management but increasingly senior executives too, are leaving, adding to a skills shortage that is already acute. Even though the global financial crisis is cutting job opportunities abroad - prompting some South Africans to consider moving home to take them up - at least eight top-level executives at listed companies have resigned this year to emigrate. Clothing retailer Truworths said in October 2008 its financial director Wayne van der Merwe was relocating with his family to Australia, while wealth and asset management group Peregrine Holdings Ltd said in September 2008 its chief executive Keith Betty was moving to Australia. The chief financial officer of chemical and explosives firm AECI emigrated after his 12-year-old daughter was shot in a robbery. And retail giant Massmart has reported a flight of senior management at the firm. A property barometer by First National Bank released in October 2008 showed 18% of people selling their houses in the third quarter were doing so because they were emigrating, up from 9% in the fourth quarter of 2007. For many, the main worry is South Africa's shockingly high crime levels. An average of 50 people are murdered every day, according to the 2008 government crime report, with robberies, break-ins and hold-ups at businesses up almost 50%. "In most instances I think the fundamental reason for leaving is violent crime," said Azar Jammine, chief economist at Econometrix.

Related (1): Migrant women vulnerable to exploitation

Related (2): SA among top 20 most dangerous places

Related (3): South Africa under siege

Blacker states are more likely to vote Republican

Given the overwhelming propensity of blacks to vote Democratic, this suggests that the black population's effect on the white vote in a state is stronger than it is on the entire state's electoral leaning. In fact, in the 2008 election, for each percentage point increase in black representation among a state's electorate, McCain improved his support among whites by three points.

The Indonesian province of Papua is debating whether to introduce a law allowing the government to implant microchips in people living with HIV

The bill proposes tracking the movements of HIV-positive people who behave in what some MPs describe as an irresponsible way. The proposal is the most controversial of a swathe of programs to tackle the spread of HIV in Indonesia. Papua has one of the worse infection rates outside Africa.

A group of masked gunmen have killed eight people at a restaurant in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez

Police said the gunmen arrived at the restaurant in three cars, approached a group of people and opened fire. The city, across the frontier from El Paso in Texas, has seen spiralling violence in 2008, most of it connected with the drug industry. Mexican government figures have shown limited success in a campaign to reduce the murder and kidnapping rates.

Dozens of troops have run amok in the Zimbabwean capital Harare after losing their temper while queuing up to withdraw cash at bank

Riot police used tear gas to disperse about 40 soldiers and a number of civilians who joined the protest. Troops had looted shops and assaulted passers-by, before the authorities managed to restore control. The disorder comes as much of Harare is without water amid a cholera outbreak. The military is seen as one of President Robert Mugabe's core supporters and was accused of taking part in a campaign of violence against the opposition during 2008's elections. Mugabe's grip on power would be severely weakened if the security forces stopped backing him.

Related (1): Zimbabwe vows to defy land ruling

Related (2): 'No water' in cholera-hit Harare

Biohistory

The dogma that human beings are identical blank slates, differing only because of cultural influences will soon be overthrown.

Related: Culturalism or...?

Whites targeted in Bombay terrorist attack

James Fulford reports on a headline that you won’t see in the newspapers.

Minorities got half of the subprime mortgage dollars in 2004-2007

Steve Sailer reports on a federal civil rights complaint filed against two of the three largest Wall Street rating firms.