African population growth causes ecological problems

A new study reveals that the carbon footprints for African cities are rapidly deteriorating because their population is growing faster than cities elsewhere in the world. Yet the ecological impact of this development is almost completely ignored because it's hardly being documented, according to the study’s author, Joy Clancy, a Dutch scientist. "One of the most important ecological changes in Africa’s history is being over-looked", according to Ms Clancy, who published an abstract of her research in the African Journal of Ecology. She provides a first hand insight in the worst side of the problems, pointing out that demand for fuel wood and charcoal isn't really the biggest cause of deforestation in Africa. A far bigger factor in deforestation is change in land use, according to Ms Clancy. She says the most dramatic change is around cities – the peri-urban areas – where woodlands are cleared for agriculture to feed the new centers of population. Clancy believes that this, in combination with the effect on water demand and waste disposal on aquatic ecosystems, means that the carbon footprint of African cities is bound to be much larger than their current footprint calculations suggest.

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The 10 Poorest Countries Of The World; Ethiopia 10th place

Mexico presidential guardsman accused of dealing with drug cartels

An army officer in the Mexican presidential guard is accused of selling secrets about the movements of President Felipe Calderon to drug cartels, a government official has said. Army Maj. Arturo Gonzalez, who was arrested recently, allegedly received $100,000 a month to track the president for powerful Mexican drug gang leaders and is suspected of selling weapons to drug gangs and training their hit men, said the official, who asked not to be identified. "The major was part of the presidential guard and a protected witness said he received money to pass information about (the president's) official visits," the official said. Local media reported the drug gang leaders wanted information on Calderon's movements to ensure they were never in the same location as the president and his heavily armed guard. Gonzalez, whose arrest was announced on December 26 2008, was detained as part of "Operation Clean-up," which has netted several high-ranking officials accused of collaborating with the Beltran Leyva brothers, who split off from the Sinaloa cartel run by Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman. Most of the officials arrested recently are senior policemen, including Mexico's liaison to Interpol and the head of the country's organized crime unit. The presidential guard is a specialized army unit responsible for protecting the president and his family. Gonzalez's suspected collaboration with drug traffickers was revealed by a protected witness who was a member of the Beltran Leyva cartel, the government official said. Since taking office in 2006, Calderon has deployed thousands of troops and federal police to drug hot spots to take on the powerful cartels. The offensive by the government has failed to curb soaring drug violence. More than 5,300 people have been killed in 2008, more than twice as many as 2007, as traffickers fight each other and the government over drug smuggling routes. Calderon deployed the army to fight organized crime partly because soldiers have traditionally been seen as less corrupt than police. Military men across the ranks have said they too are being offered thousands of dollars to ignore drug shipments or tip off cartels. Recently, police found the beheaded and tortured bodies of eight soldiers in a town near Acapulco, their heads stuffed in a black plastic bag and tossed outside a shopping center.

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Organizers strip Mexican beauty queen of title after drug bust

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Ethnic strife in Kenya

Many Kenyans are still displaced a year after ethnic violence during 2007 elections.

Is it alright for Jews like Madoff to swindle goyim?

From CounterCurrents:

For Rabbi Burton Visotzky of the Jewish Theological Seminary: "The fact that he stole from Jewish charities (emphasis on "Jewish") puts him in a special circle of hell." Unstated, but perhaps implied, is it's OK to steal from "goyim" or at least not as bad.

Much of the criticism that you see directed at Bernie Madoff is not because he was a swindler but because he swindled Jews. If Madoff had stuck to ripping off gentiles would he still be held in high regard in the Jewish community?

Acute child malnutrition in parts of Zimbabwe has increased by almost two-thirds compared with 2007, British aid agency Save the Children says

The agency said some five million people in Zimbabwe - or about 50% of the country's population - were now in need of food aid. Zimbabwe's farming sector collapsed after President Robert Mugabe launched a controversial land reform program. As well as suffering economic meltdown, Zimbabwe is experiencing a cholera outbreak, fuelled by the collapse of its health, sanitation and water services. Aid agencies have warned that the disease, which has already claimed more than 1,100 lives, could infect more than 60,000 unless its spread is halted.

A serving police officer named in a leaked list of British National Party members is set to face a misconduct panel, his force has said

PC Steve Bettley, of Merseyside Police, was included in the list of the far right party's entire membership register which was leaked on an internet blog. The officer, who was briefly the driver for chief constable Bernard Hogan Howe, has been suspended from duty since the list became public in November 2008. A Merseyside Police spokeswoman said: "Merseyside Police has completed its investigation of an officer alleged to be a member of the BNP. It has been recommended that the Police Constable face a misconduct panel. The matter is now in the hands of Merseyside Police's solicitors for further consideration. The Constable remains suspended." The leak provoked outrage after members of the BNP were revealed to be current and former servicemen, teachers and doctors. The list included the names, professions, addresses and telephone numbers of thousands of BNP supporters. When the list was published, BNP leader Nick Griffin pledged to take court action against those behind the leak. Dyfed-Powys Police is leading a joint investigation with the Information Commissioner's office into the alleged breach of the Data Protection Act. A Dyfed-Powys spokeswoman said: "Two people were arrested in Nottinghamshire on December 4 in connection with an allegation of a criminal offence under the Data Protection Act. They have been bailed pending further inquiries."

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is changing from a fight over border and territory into an ethnic conflict

Former peace negotiator and advisor for the Israeli government, Professor Menachem Klein, expects more and more violent, ethnic clashes within the state of Israel.

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Changing the Ethnic Vocabulary

Merry Christmas, Kwanzaa is Over

Michael C. Moynihan on the disappearance of a strange black holiday.

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Vdare: War on Christmas

Radical Islamists linked to al-Qaeda set to take control of Somalia

Fears are growing that this lawless area, bordering Kenya and Ethiopia, could become a stronghold for terrorists with possible links to al-Qaeda. Somalia's weak official government, the 14th in the last 17 years, depends entirely on the presence of Ethiopian troops, who are deployed in and around the capital, Mogadishu. They invaded in December 2006, mounting an American-supported operation which overthrew an earlier Islamist regime, styling itself the Islamic Courts Union. But Ethiopia has pledged to withdraw its troops at the end of December 2008. When they leave, the official government is likely to fall - or be forced to evacuate Mogadishu. An armed group styling itself Al-Shebab is likely to take over. Already, its fighters are believed to control more than 80% of southern Somalia. These radical Islamists believe in imposing Sharia law and they recently approved the stoning of a 13-year-old girl. Al Shebab, the fanatical armed wing which broke from the Islamic Courts Union which ran Somalia for the second half of 2006, now holds more than 80% of the country – more territory than the Courts controlled during their reign.

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Somalis held in Ethiopia capital

Taleban militants in the Swat valley in north-west Pakistan have threatened to kill girls who attend school

A local Taleban commander ordered parents to stop sending their daughters to school by 15 January 2009. In comments broadcast on an illegal radio station, he threatened to blow up schools which enrolled female students. In 2008 alone, Taleban militants have destroyed more than 130 schools in the Swat valley. They want to bring in Islamic sharia law in the region. Militant attacks on schools in the region have deprived more than 17,000 students of education.

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Indians warned to avoid Pakistan

A military junta that toppled Guinea's government has announced its new leader in a nationwide radio address

Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara declared himself president of the National Council for Democracy, which he called a transitional body that will oversee the country's return to democracy. In effect, that would make Camara president of Guinea, which was thrown into turmoil after the death of President Lansana Conte. Guinea's parliament is holding negotiations with the military. Camara, previously the spokesman for the National Council for Democracy, suspended the government, constitution, political parties and trade unions. The newly formed government, made up of 26 military personnel and six civilians, is negotiating a power-sharing deal that would reflect its ethnic make-up. But some in the military may not support the new leadership. International institutions, including the African Union, have condemned the coup. Guinea, in western Africa bordering the Atlantic Ocean, has had two presidents since gaining independence from France in 1958. Conte came to power in 1984, when the military seized control of the government after the death of the first president, Sekou Toure. The country did not hold democratic elections until 1993, when Conte was elected president. He was re-elected in 1998 and 2003 amid allegations of electoral irregularities. Worsening economic conditions and dissatisfaction with corruption and bad governance prompted two massive strikes in 2006. A third nationwide strike in early 2007 sparked violent protests that resulted in two weeks of martial law. To appease the unions and end the unrest Conte named a new prime minister in March 2007. Guinea is one of the poorest countries in the world, despite its mineral wealth. The country hosts large refugee populations from neighboring Liberia and Ivory Coast.

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African Union Condemns Guinea Coup Attempt

Ousted Guinean government call for international intervention

Muslims put up banner for Christmas saying that "Allah has no son"

This shows how much respect Muslims have for Christianity.

A Saudi judge has refused to annul a marriage between an 8-year-old girl and a 47-year-old man

A Saudi judge has refused to annul a marriage between an 8-year-old girl and a 47-year-old man - a union apparently arranged by the girl's father to settle his debts. The judge, Sheikh Habib Abdallah al-Habib, dismissed a petition brought by the girl's mother because she "is not the legal guardian of the girl," the woman's lawyer Abdullah al-Jutaili said. "Therefore, she cannot represent her daughter in these proceedings," al-Jutaili said. Her parents are separated, he said. The girl's father arranged the marriage in order to settle his debts with the man, who is "a close friend" of his. The judge did ask for a pledge from the husband, who was in court, not to consummate the marriage until the girl reaches puberty. The judge ruled that when the girl reaches puberty, she will have the right to request a divorce by filing a petition with the court, the lawyer said. Christoph Wilcke, a Saudi Arabia researcher for Human Rights Watch, said his organization has heard many other cases of child marriages. "We've been hearing about these types of cases once every four or five months because the Saudi public is now able to express this kind of anger, especially so when girls are traded off to older men," Wilcke said.

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Saudi Judge OKs Marriage of Girl, 8

Spanish police arrest Nigerians over credit card fraud

Spanish police said they had arrested 24 Nigerians as part of an international crackdown on credit card fraud. The suspects "belong to an international organization specialising in 'carding'," police said in a statement, referring to a practice where criminals fraudulently use credit card numbers to buy items over the Internet. It added that they used credit card numbers, obtained by other members of the network - residents of Canada and Vietnam - through computer hacking. The 24 people, who were seized in Madrid, would usually order expensive items like electronic goods over the Internet that they would then sell on, the police said. One, who specialised in buying plane and train tickets, had built-up a "veritable travel agency," police said.

Immigrant violence in Stockholm suburb

For the second night running unrest broke out in the Stockholm suburb of Tensta. A massive police presence managed to gain control of the situation in the early hours of Christmas Eve 2008. the fire service had come under attack from stone-throwing youths in the predominantly immigrant-occupied area of Tensta in north west Stockholm on the evening of December 22, 2008. When police units arrived at the scene youngsters were found to have set fire to car tyres, rubbish bins and a skip. Jannes Hedlund at Stockholm county police described Tuesday's rioting as in principle a repeat of the events of the night before. "Among other things they had set fire to a skip and thrown a Molotov cocktail at a police vehicle," Hedlund said. The police were prepared for the possibility of renewed unrest and had deployed eight specially trained units to the area. Hedlund said that he believed that similar preparations were in force for any potential trouble on Christmas Eve. Several cars were also set alight in Vårberg in southern Stockholm.

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VIOLENT MUSLIM RIOTS IN SWEDEN SPREAD TO STOCKHOLM

Troops at a vehicle checkpoint in western Mexico have detained a beauty queen and seven men along with guns and cash, police say

The eight were stopped on the outskirts of Guadalajara, Mexico's second city reportedly following a tip-off. Laura Zuniga, 23, was crowned Miss Sinaloa in July 2008. She reportedly told police she had been planning to travel with the men to Bolivia and Colombia "to go shopping". Regional police director Francisco Alejandro Solorio said that two SUVs were stopped at the checkpoint. The SUV in which Ms Zuniga was found contained a large stash of weapons, including two AR-15 assault rifles, 38 special handguns, 9mm handguns, nine magazines, 633 cartridges and $53,300 in US currency, he added. An unnamed police spokesman said that security forces had received a tip-off that drug-traffickers were moving through the area. "No one expected this young woman to be aboard," the spokesman added. Ms Zuniga came third in the Nuestra Belleza Mexico pageant in Monterrey in September 2008 and was expected to represent Mexico in the 2009 Miss International contest.

Genes, popularity and bad behavior

It's all in the DNA, according to new research. Genes prompt rabble-rouser behavior. But they also foster popularity, according to Alexandra Burt, a Michigan State University behavioral geneticist who released a groundbreaking study that suggests good news for bad boys. Men who had a gene associated with rule-breaking behavior were rated most popular by a group of previously unacquainted peers, she found. "The idea is that your genes predispose you to certain behaviors, and those behaviors elicit different kinds of social reactions from others," said Ms. Burt. "And so, what's happening is, your genes are to some extent driving your social experiences." Other researchers have bandied about the idea of a genetic predisposition for popularity, a theory known as "evocative gene-environment correlation." The new research is the first to establish clear connections between a specific gene, particular behaviors and actual social situations, Ms. Burt said. She collected DNA from more than 200 male college students; after some socializing and a student survey, the subsequent analysis found that the most popular had a particular form of a serotonin gene associated with rule-breaking behavior. Her findings were published by the American Psychological Association. Is there a party gene? Some say it's the serotonin transporter gene, already identified by the National Institutes of Health as the gene behind binge drinking. In August 2008, the University of North Carolina also revealed a link between three particular genes and "a life of crime" after following 1,100 teenage boys over a six-year period, clearly establishing a link between the presence of those genes and aggressive behavior.

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Serotonin Gene Makes Some More Popular?

Violent Mexican cartels that have killed thousands in a drug war at home in 2008 are increasingly smuggling drugs to Europe by way of Africa

Recent high-profile arrests of Mexicans around the globe show how the Gulf cartel and its main rival, the Sinaloa federation run by Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, are moving beyond their traditional market in the United States. A 15-month international drug sweep called "Project Reckoning" captured 500 Gulf cartel collaborators in the United States, Mexico and Italy, where the Mexicans have teamed with the notorious Italian 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate. The arrests, which came to a head in September 2008, were one of the biggest busts of Mexican operatives working with European counterparts. They came as Mexican cartels move in on trafficking routes traditionally dominated by Colombians, who produce most of the world's cocaine, experts say. Mexican President Felipe Calderon has deployed thousands of soldiers and federal police to dangerous U.S.-Mexico border towns to take on drug gangs after coming to office in 2006. "Given the pressure from the Calderon government, we are seeing some of the Mexican groups seeking alliances with Europeans," University of Miami drug expert Bruce Bagley said. Cocaine can be sold for more than four times as much in Europe as in the United States and in 2005 some 80% of the drug not destined for the U.S. market went to Europe, according to the United Nations. The U.S. government estimates cocaine consumption in western Europe has increased nearly 60% since 1998, creating huge opportunities for profit. The shift comes as Colombian cartels are splintering from years of government pressure, opening more trans-Atlantic opportunities for Mexican gangs either collaborating with or working around the Colombians. The capture in Spain in September 2008 of top Colombian cartel member Edgar Vallejo, who pioneered trafficking routes to Europe via Africa, has made room for Mexican operatives, a senior Drug Enforcement Administration official said. "This key Colombian trafficker gets popped in Europe and had a fairly big fraction of the market and that arrest may contribute to the flux in of this entire global model of world wide dominance of cocaine distribution," he said. The major fear is the violence that has plagued Mexico in recent years will spread as the cartels expand. More than 5,300 people have died in 2008, many tortured or decapitated as rival traffickers fight each other and the government. Seventeen people were killed in Guatemala in November 2008 in a shootout between Mexican drug gangs and their proxies and a U.N.-backed study warned that Mexico's drug war is spilling over into Honduras. Europe has so far been free of major narco-violence. The poor and weak states of West Africa make an ideal base of operations for international drug traffickers, according to the United Nations. In July 2008, two Mexicans were among crew members arrested landing a plane with fake Red Cross markings in Sierra Leone packed with more than 600 kilos of cocaine. It was the largest drug bust in the country's history. As well as being a shipment point for cocaine, Mexico is the No. 1 producer of methamphetamine for the United States. Organized crime groups are seeking more clandestine routes since Mexican authorities have cracked down on the legal import of its main ingredient, pseudoephedrine. A seizure in Democratic Republic of Congo in 2007 of several tons of pseudoephedrine indicates Mexican drug cartels could be using Africa's Atlantic seaboard for transport or storage purposes, Interpol says. Mexicans also are going straight to coca-growing countries in South America to buy up the raw material for cocaine that may end up in Europe. Peruvian President Alan Garcia recently blamed a rash of drug-related violence in his country - the world's second-largest cocaine producer after Colombia - on powerful Mexican drug cartels collaborating with local drug lords.

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Drug gang violence surges in Honduras

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Gender difference in reading, writing and mathematical abilities

Girls continue to outperform boys on the writing section of the SAT (501 vs. 488). Girls' average score on the reading section was 500, while boys' was 504. But that was a narrowing of a gap that stood at 7 points a decade ago. Girls continue to lag in math, where boys on average scored 33 points higher (533 vs. 500).

Child beggars of Nigeria's Koranic schools

Another problem caused by Islamic schools.

Sneakiness and brain size

In a comparative survey of primate behavior, Richard Byrne and Nadia Corp of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland found a direct relationship between sneakiness and brain size. The larger the average volume of a primate species’ neocortex — the newest, highest region of the brain — the greater the chance that the monkey or ape would pull a stunt like this one described in The New Scientist: a young baboon being chased by an enraged mother intent on punishment suddenly stopped in midpursuit, stood up and began scanning the horizon intently, an act that conveniently distracted the entire baboon troop into preparing for nonexistent intruders. Much evidence suggests that we humans, with our densely corrugated neocortex, lie to one another chronically and with aplomb. Investigating what they called lying in day-to-day life, Bella DePaulo, now a visiting professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her colleagues asked 77 college students and 70 people from the community to keep anonymous diaries for a week and to note the hows and whys of every lie they told. Tallying the results, the researchers found that the college students told an average of two lies a day, community members one a day, and that most of the lies fell into the minor fib category. "I told him I missed him and thought about him every day when I really don’t think about him at all," wrote one participant. "Said I sent the check this morning," wrote another. In a follow-up study, the researchers asked participants to describe the worst lies they’d ever told, and then out came confessions of adultery, of defrauding an employer, of lying on a witness stand to protect an employer. When asked how they felt about their lies, many described being haunted with guilt, but others confessed that once they realized they’d gotten away with a whopper, why, they did it again, and again.

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Overall Brain Size, and Not Encephalization Quotient, Best Predicts Cognitive Ability across Non-Human Primates

Neocortex size predicts deception rate in primates

Brain size and cognitive ability: Correlations with age, sex, social class, arid race

Waists and women

While women with curvy figures might enjoy more attention from men in Western culture, and find it easier to become pregnant, new research suggests they may also face some evolutionary disadvantages compared to women with thicker waists. That's because the same hormones that increase fat around the waist can also make women stronger, more assertive, and more resistant to stress, according to a new study published in the December 2008 issue of Current Anthropology.

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Why women with love handles are better at dealing with stress

Did warfare drive out-of-Africa migration?

Roving bands of men might have waged history's first traceable war against the ancestors of all Europeans, Asians and other non-Africans, some 60,000 years ago. A new analysis of DNA variations in contemporary humans indicates that non-Africans descend from a population that contained far more males than females. This is potential evidence for conquests of the first people who embarked out of Africa, says Alon Keinan, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston. It might be that they killed some males, stole the females, and kept on moving, he says. A steady trickle of peaceful wandering men could have accomplished the same genetic effect – but if prehistoric migrations worked anything like Viking conquests, or the discovery of the New World, male migrants did not go looking for peace and love. Keinan's theory rests on comparisons of more than 100,000 genetic differences, peppered across the genomes of African, Asian and European men. In populations where males pair equally with females, on average they will have three X-chromosomes for every four of a non-sex chromosome called an autosome. This is because women have two Xs and men just one. If more men than women pass on their DNA over time, the female contribution to the gene pool falls, resulting in less X-chromosomes. "You have many more grandfathers than grandmothers," Keinan says. This skew exists in peoples from all parts of the world except Africa, Keinan and colleague David Reich have found. The ancestors of Europeans and Asians left Africa sometime between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago. Keinan's team speculate that males from Africa, who may have settled in the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, or elsewhere, attacked the first "out of Africa" population. "It sounds plausible to me," says Martin Richards, a geneticist who studies human history at the University of Leeds. "We don't know the route people used to get out of Africa," says Chris Stringer, an anthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London. But he thinks the Nile valley is a strong contender for the path of the first migrants – and perhaps their later adversaries. However, the chance of finding archaeological evidence for these migrants is slim. "You're looking for a population that was there only a short period of time, perhaps only 10 generations, so the physical impact of that population in that environment wouldn't be enough to detect," Reich says. Their analysis also challenges a study published earlier in 2008, which found that all humans descend from fewer numbers of males than females. The researchers suggested that polygyny, where few men procreate with many women, accounts for this result. "It's possible, in principle, that both are true in some level," says Reich. Polygyny that occurred over the last million years of human evolution could have left an imprint in our genomes, says Michael Hammer, a geneticist at the University of Arizona, who led that study. Reich and Keinan, on the other hand, focused their analysis on the period when anatomically modern humans left Africa. "We'll have to figure out this issue in future work," Reich says.

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There are as many as 6,000 child soldiers, some as young as 11 years old, in the war-torn region of Darfur, the head of Unicef in Sudan says

Ted Chaiban said some children were linked to rebel movements, others to government-backed militia and some were fighting alongside the Sudanese army. The UN is trying to convince armed groups to release the children. Chaiban told journalists that some had signed up voluntarily but others had been forcibly recruited.

A jury has found five Muslim men guilty of conspiring to kill US soldiers at the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey

The five, who are all foreign-born but have spent much of their lives in the US, were arrested in May 2007. All five could face up to life in jail after being found guilty. Prosecutors said the men wanted to wage an Islamist holy war on the United States. The verdicts followed an eight-week trial and six days of deliberations by the federal jury in Camden, New Jersey. The men were not accused of links to any international terrorist groups, though investigators said they were inspired by Osama bin Laden. A sixth man pleaded guilty in 2007 to providing weapons to some of the defendants, and is serving a 20-month prison term. Those convicted include Serdar Tatar, a legal US resident from Turkey; Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, a US citizen born in Jordan; and brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, illegal immigrants from the former Yugoslavia.

Nine men decapitated in Mexico drug violence

Mexican police found nine decapitated bodies in a city near the tourist resort of Acapulco, and at least some of the victims might have been soldiers who were battling against powerful drug gangs. The bodies of the men, which were marked with signs of torture, were left on the side of a highway, while their heads were stuffed in a plastic bag found outside a shopping center, police in the state of Guerrero said. Local media reported that nine soldiers were abducted as they left a regional military base near the city of Chilpancingo, about an hour north of Acapulco. An army spokesperson could not confirm that the victims were soldiers. Mexico's President Felipe Calderon has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police since 2006 to take on cartels that move cocaine and other drugs into the United States. A note left with the severed heads warned that more authorities would be decapitated, the state police said. The state police chief said some of the victims were soldiers. Calderon's offensive has helped fuel a major increase in drug violence. More than 5,300 have died so far this year, over twice as many as in 2007, according to the attorney general's office.

The geographical distribution of a skin color gene

Skin color gene becomes less common the farther you move from Europe.

War is a biological phenomenon

How we evolved to be warlike.

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Researchers discover genetic mutations that make ethnic Chinese more susceptible to lung cancer

Researchers in China and the United States say they've identified mutations of two genes which appear to make ethnic Chinese more susceptible to lung cancer. The genes were thought to help eliminate carcinogens from the lungs. But scientists analyzed 500 patients with lung cancer and 517 without, and say the gene variants were found much more often in individuals with lung cancer than in cancer-free patients.

We are better able to detect anxiety in members of our own racial group than in people of different racial backgrounds

Psychologist Heather M. Gray from Boston University, along with Wendy Berry Mendes and Carrigan Denny-Brown of Harvard University, investigated whether the ability to detect a person’s anxiety declines when perceptions are made across the racial divide. Although interactions with members of other racial groups are becoming increasingly more common, they are still a source of anxiety for many people. This interracial anxiety can “leak out” in the form of uncontrollable, stressful behaviors such as fidgeting and vocal tension. But how sensitive are we to signs of interracial anxiety, and does race influence the ability to detect interracial anxiety in other people? To answer these questions, the researchers videotaped White and Black participants as they performed a difficult task in front of a panel of either same-race evaluators (i.e. White participants with White evaluators) or different-race evaluators (i.e. White participants with Black evaluators). In addition, the researchers measured the participants’ cortisol (a hormone that increases when we are stressed) levels to gauge how stressed participants were. Then, a separate group of White and Black observers watched the videotapes of the participants (without seeing the evaluators) and were asked to rate the participants’ anxiety. The results of the study, reported in the December 2008 issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveal that we are better able to detect anxiety in members of our own racial group than in people of different racial backgrounds. Only the same-race observers detected an increase in anxiety when participants were engaged in an interracial encounter; different-race observers failed to detect this change. And even more interesting, only the same-race observers noticed changes in anxiety that matched up with the participants’ actual stress levels (as determined by measuring cortisol). The authors suggest that “race-matched observers appeared to draw upon subtle nonverbal indicators of intergroup anxiety that were undetectable to race-mismatched observers.” They note that being out of tune to the emotional states of people from different backgrounds “may make it difficult to develop a sense of shared emotional experience.”

Blacks and Hispanics disagree over naming of new high school

Hispanics want the school to be named after Cesar Chavez while blacks want it to be named after a slain police officer.

The death of Paul Weyrich

Marcus Epstein on the death of a leading opponent of illegal immigration.

Lesbian gang raped by Latino and African-American men

An openly lesbian resident of a San Francisco suburb was allegedly kidnapped and gang-raped by four men. The brutal attack reportedly took place on Dec. 13 2008 and involved several Latino and one African-American man. Police are investigating the assault as a hate crime because of anti-lesbian utterances from the suspects. The assault took place around 9:30 on the evening of Dec. 13 2008 in Richmond. Four men attacked a lesbian woman with a rainbow sticker on her car, assaulting her as she emerged from her vehicle and then shoving her back into her vehicle and driving her several blocks away from an extended period of time - estimated at 45 minutes - during which the four men raped her. The suspects then drove off in the woman’s car, leaving her nude. The woman sought help from the occupants of a nearby residential building. Richmond Police Force Lt. Mark Gagan was quoted as saying, "The emotional impact has changed her life." Added Lt. Gagan, "It is an absolute nightmare for her to have gone through. For 45 minutes, four strangers brutalized her." The woman was treated at a local hospital; her car was found the following day. The four suspects are wanted for sexual assault, robbery, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, and carjacking. One suspect was described as a Latino weighing 180 lbs. with a height of five and a half feet. Thought to be the leader, he was said to be in his 30s. Two other men were also described as Latinos between 18-20 years of age, with one of them having been referred to as "Pato." The fourth suspect was described as an African-American man of about 170 lbs., with a height of 5’10". He was referred to as "Blu," and was said to be in his early 20s. Police have offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspects.

Riots in Sweden over closure of Islamic center

Scores of young people rioted in Rosengård, the Malmö suburb in which tensions have been running high since the recent closure of an Islamic cultural center. Some 100 youths ran amok for the second straight night, setting cars and garbage bins ablaze and throwing stones at police, police said. "We've had a very difficult evening. There have been fires burning since this afternoon in garbage bins and cars, there's extensive damage to public property, and there's been stonethrowing and bomb threats against police," police spokeswoman Ewa-Gun Westford said. One person was arrested during the riots, she said. Westford said the troubles were linked to the recent closure of an Islamic cultural center in Malmö's heavily-immigrant populated neighbourhood Rosengård.

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Flaming youth

The UN envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, has said there is a hidden genocide taking place in the country

Abdallah spoke as the African Union's peace and security council held urgent talks on how to boost the peacekeeping force there. Ethiopia says its 3,000 troops will withdraw by the end of 2008, which some fear will lead to a power vacuum. The AU force already in Mogadishu is too small to resist resurgent Islamist and nationalist fighters. UN head Ban Ki-moon has rejected calls for UN peacekeepers to be sent. He said the situation in Somalia was too dangerous and there was no peace to keep. "The Somali problem is a problem for the whole region," said Mr Abdallah, the UN special envoy to Somalia. "There is a hidden genocide in Somalia which has sacrificed entire generations." Somalia has not had a functioning national government since 1991. Ethiopian troops intervened two years ago to oust Islamists from the capital and install the internationally recognised government. But that government is now in disarray and different Islamist groups now control much of southern Somalia.

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Somalia Revisited

Food production is dropping in South Africa

Randall Parker says that South Africa could end up becoming the next Zimbabwe.

Ethnic cleansing in Israel

According to Israel, Bedouin Arabs have no right to live on the desert land in the Negev region of the Jewish state.

Hat tip, Mondoweiss!

Malcolm Gladwell and outliers

Steve Sailer reviews Malcolm Gladwell's new book.

Hilarious investment advice

There is actually a book with the title "Dow 30,000 by 2008" Why It's Different This Time.

Islam and Somali immigrants

Patrick Cleburne comments on the tendency of Somali immigrants to support Islamic terrorism.

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Somalia crisis talks in Ethiopia

China to deploy ships off Somalia

Madoff, Schapiro and Obama

Mary Schapiro, Barack Obama's choice to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), previously appointed one of Bernard Madoff's sons to a regulatory body that oversees American securities firms. It has emerged that in 2001, Schapiro, currently chief executive of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra), employed Mark Madoff to serve on the board of the National Adjudicatory Council — the division that reviews disciplinary decisions made by Finra. Recently, Mark Madoff, with his brother, Andrew, were understood to have approached the authorities after their father apparently confessed to orchestrating a $50 billion securities fraud. Madoff is under house arrest in his $7 million Manhattan apartment and will be electronically tagged after he failed to secure further signatories to guarantee his $10 million bail.

Related:

The Forward: "Madoff on the Couch"

The evolution of ethnocentric behavior

Researchers show how ethnocentrism can be beneficial to group survival.

The Australian government has decided to open a controversial new detention center on Christmas Island, reversing its previous policy on the issue

The center was commissioned by the previous government, and completed a few months ago. The new administration had been resisting pressure to open it. But seven boatloads of asylum seekers have been intercepted trying to reach Australia in the past three months. Analysts say the government is struggling with the influx of people. When Kevin Rudd took power in 2007, he was quick to distance himself from the former government's policy of detaining all asylum seekers. He inherited the new 800-bed, A$400m (£182m) Christmas Island facility, but resisted using it, saying it was unsuitable for families. Refugee advocates who have toured the facility describe it as extremely harsh, and say that it resembles a prison. But 164 asylum seekers have been caught trying to enter the country since January 2008, up from 148 in 2007, and the authorities have decided to open the center anyway. Thirty-seven men - believed to be a mix of Afghans and Middle Eastern nationals - will arrive there over the weekend, having been intercepted in an unauthorised boat off the north-east of Darwin.

IQ and brain size

Study tries to identify the role of genetic factors in brain size and IQ.

The genetic time bomb

A psychoanalyst discusses the problems being created by genetics for social scientists.

Spain proposes tougher immigration laws

Spain has proposed changes to immigration laws to limit an influx of foreigners as it faces recession and the highest unemployment rate in the European Union. The measures, which must be approved by parliament, would allow police to hold illegal immigrants for up to 60 days pending deportation and make it harder for foreigners to bring relatives over to live in Spain. "In our difficult current situation, decisions have been taken to adapt immigration levels to the labor market," Labour Minister Celestino Corbacho told a press conference following a cabinet meeting on the reform. Nearly 5 million immigrants have settled in Spain during the past decade, more than in any other European country, drawn by a construction boom that has collapsed in the global financial crisis. With unemployment expected to end 2008 at 13% and rise as high as 20% by 2010, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government says there are not enough jobs for immigrants who make up 11% of the population. The proposed reforms would impose higher fines for employers recruiting foreigners who do not have proper legal papers, but expand civil rights for foreigners already living legally or illegally in Spain. Prior to his re-election in 2008, Zapatero heaped praise on immigrants and said they were responsible for half rapid economic growth that has reduced unemployment among Spaniards. But, now the government has started a campaign featuring posters of an immigrant and the caption "Have you thought of going back?". Immigrants are finding it harder to secure jobs as layoffs force Spaniards to seek lower paid work previously done by foreigners, such as fruit picking, construction and waiting on tables. The government has offered among other incentives to pay jobless immigrants unemployment benefit in their home countries and part of the cost of their journey home. Unemployment is rising three times faster among immigrants than Spaniards and the government is wary of unrest after clashes between police and African migrants turned away from 2008's olive harvest in Andalucia.

Parents and students are angry at principal for pointing out racial achievement gap

Some students at South Lake High School in St. Clair Shores are upset and can not believe they were singled out as African-Americans. The principal sent a letter to parents and students pointing out an achievement gap between white and black students at the school. The letter was accompanied by a graph showing the gap from subject to subject. About 80 students staged an in-school protest as the principal met with parents to explain why the letter was written. The school district says the letter was not meant to offend anybody, only to point out that it wants all students to achieve. However, the principal who wrote the letter is apologetic. One parent says she would like to see a second letter apologizing for the first, which she feels should never have been written at all. She also thinks the principal should personally apologize to all of the students at a school assembly.

A Jamaican teenager has been found guilty of taking part in the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl in Britain

Seventeen year-old Rodel McMorris of North London, England is reportedly a member of a gang called 'Tugs From Around' which carried out the alleged rape. In January 2008, he reportedly lured the girl to meet him and then he and other gang members raped her. The girl, who has a learning disability, was reportedly assaulted by about 10 boys who then doused her with caustic soda. Some of the attackers have still not been identified. However, those convicted were caught by DNA and fingerprint evidence, along with data proving their mobile phones were at the location at the time. Three of the attackers, McMorris, Jason Brew, and Hector Muaimba, were all found guilty of rape and will be sentenced in January 2009.

Related:

Three guilty of raping teenager

Three jailed for acid rape hell

Laughing Tottenham gang rapists who burned disabled girl found guilty

Black families showing gains?

Kay Hymowitz points out that it all depends on what you mean by gains.

A series of anonymous notes have been posted outside schools in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez threatening to kidnap pupils if money is not paid

The notes state that teachers should hand over their end-of-year bonuses to avoid the threat to their students. No arrests have been made over the threats, but drug cartels are believed to be responsible. The city, on the US border, has one of the world's highest murder rates with more than 1,400 homicides in 2008. Recently several notes have been mysteriously pinned up at the entrance to schools in Ciudad Juarez. They demand money from the staff, and threaten to harm both teachers and pupils if the request is not met. One of the notes was pinned to a wall outside a kindergarten. The extortion campaign appears to be timed to coincide with the Christmas bonuses teachers in Mexico receive in their December pay packets. When news of the notes became public, many parents removed their children from school. Ciudad Juarez is becoming infamous as the place where some of the most gruesome violence in Mexico's ongoing drug wars is concentrated. More than a quarter of all the murders linked to organized crime in the country in 2008 have been in the city. As well as schools, hospitals are finding it increasingly difficult to function normally. Recently, hundreds of doctors staged a protest in the city denouncing the extreme level of threats and kidnappings they face every day. There have been several reports of gunmen entering hospitals to finish off wounded rivals, as they are being treated. Several medical clinics have closed permanently. Government officials say that they are doing all they can to defeat the drug cartels, and say much of the violence is a reflection of their success, as leaderless gangs fight one another for dominance. But the social consequences of such prolonged and prolific violence might present a future battle for this country. In many schools in northern Mexico, teachers report that their pupils have an increasing tendency to idolise narco-traffickers as untouchable heroes.

Related:

Extreme drug violence grips Mexico border city

A Ugandan mother and daughter talk about their joy at being reunited after 26 years

Five-year-old Florence Kampi was kidnapped at her father's funeral by a family who used her as a slave. She was taken to Yemen where she was eventually rescued by a Tanzanian oil worker who, after he paid the family money, was allowed to marry her. "I feel so happy," she said about the reunion. Her mother said, "I burst out crying... but they were tears of joy." Language is now a barrier for the pair as Florence, now called Sara Aisha Abdulhakim, speaks Swahili and Arabic. Her mother, Sesiriya Biryeri, speaks Lesoga, the local language in the eastern Ugandan district of Iganga. "We have a few people here helping with translations from Swahili to Lesoga and vice versa; it is a nice confusion," Ms Abdulhakim, who arrived in Uganda with her four sons, said.

An Egyptian mathematics teacher has gone on trial accused of beating an 11-year-old pupil to death because he did not do his homework

After using a ruler, Haitham Nabeel Abdelhamid, 23, allegedly took the boy outside the classroom and hit him violently in his stomach. Islam Amr Badr fainted and later died in hospital of heart failure. The incident, at Saad Othman Primary School on the outskirts of Alexandria in October, caused national outrage. The Egyptian education minister is expected to be called as a witness during the trial. Islam's father, Amr Badr Ibrahim, says others should stand trial with his son's teacher. "The problem is the teaching and the teachers because they cannot find good teachers," he said. "The minister of education should be the first person to be accused - how can he agree to let such a young man teach children?" For many Egyptians, the case is a shocking reminder of the failings of their state education system, where young, inexperienced and under-resourced teachers often struggle to control classes of 60 to 100 children. The Egyptian government says it is bringing in education reforms - including new teacher testing. It is also trying to tackle violence in schools and has issued new statements on the prohibition of corporal punishment.

Jews and Hollywood

Steve Sailer comments on how fashionable it has become to be ignorant of the real world.

Governor meets with the family of an Ecuadoran immigrant beaten to death by three black men

Gov. Paterson has met with the family of an Ecuadoran immigrant beaten to death in a Brooklyn bias attack and urged New Yorkers to help police find the thugs who did it. "I urge anyone that knows anything about the attacks that led to the tragic death of Jose Sucuzhañay to please let the authorities know and help this family to at least know that the tragic loss of their bother, their son, will be avenged in a court of law. Society is judged on how we treat our fellow man. This is not the New York we aspire to." Sucuzhañay, a 31-year-old real estate broker and father of two, was badly bludgeoned in Bushwick by three black men who shouted anti-gay and anti-Hispanic slurs, witnesses said. Sucuzhañay's body is being flown back to his native Ecuador today to be buried. Paterson said he promised the family he would do all he can to help find the killers. "I wanted to let them know that the power of the executive branch and the powers of the state will be utilized to the fullest extent," he said. Recent statistics show that hate crimes against Hispanics have risen in the United States by 40% from 2005 to 2007.

A well-known emigre South African writer has unleashed his pen against crime and corruption in his homeland in a U.S. magazine

In an open letter to Nelson Mandela in the December 2008 issue of Harper's magazine, Breyten Breytenbach described horrific attacks on relatives and others in South Africa, saying they are evidence of "a society in profound disarray." And the poet, memoirist and one-time anti-apartheid activist charges that Mandela is doing little more than raising funds for his charities from celebrities "who treat you like some exotic teddy bear to slobber over." Breytenbach, who is white, had been an outspoken critic of apartheid who served seven years in prison for treason, convicted in 1975 for assisting Mandela's then-outlawed African National Congress guerrilla group in its sabotage campaign against the white-minority government. Breytenbach left South Africa for Paris after his release from prison in 1982. He remained active in the anti-apartheid cause in exile, but has made his life abroad.

Related:

South Africa's crime and grime

'If you can stand the loss, leave SA'

British-born Muslim terrorists are returning to Britain after learning deadly skills in the world’s most dangerous country

Many British-born Muslims are travelling to Pakistan for terrorism training.

Related:

Moroccan jailed over Madrid bombs

Terror director Briton given life

Decades after a notorious experiment, scientists have found test subjects are still willing to inflict pain if told to by an authority figure

Researchers repeated the famous Milgram test, with volunteers told to deliver electrical shocks to another volunteer - played by an actor. Even after faked screams of pain, 70% were prepared to increase the voltage, the American Psychology study found. Both may help explain why apparently ordinary people can commit atrocities. Yale University professor Stanley Milgram's work, published in 1963, recruited volunteers to help carry out a medical experiment, with none aware that they were actually the subject of the test. A "scientist" instructed them to deliver a shock every time the actor answered a question wrongly. When the pretend 150-volt shock was delivered, the actor could be heard screaming in pain, and yet, when asked to, more than eight out of ten volunteers were prepared to give further shocks, even when the "voltage" was gradually increased threefold. Some volunteers even carried on giving 450-volt shocks even when there was no further response from the actor, suggesting he was either unconscious or dead. Dr Jerry Burger, of Santa Clara University, used a similar format, although he did not allow the volunteers to carry on beyond 150 volts after they had shown their willingness to do so, suggesting that the distress caused to the original volunteers had been too great. Again, however, the vast majority of the 29 men and 41 women taking part were willing to push the button knowing it would cause pain to another human. Even when another actor entered the room and questioned what was happening, most were still prepared to continue. He said: "What we found is validation of the same argument - if you put people in certain situations, they will act in surprising and maybe often even disturbing ways." He said that it was not that there was "something wrong" with the volunteers, but that when placed under pressure, people will often do "unsettling" things. Even though it was difficult to translate laboratory work to the real world, he said, it might partly explain why, in times of conflict, people could take part in genocide.

Data shows that the average black high school graduate has learned no more than the average white or Asian eighth-grader

Apparently discriminating against white job candidates can be seen as race-neutral by some judges.

Study says immigrants have lapped up every new job in Britain since 2001

Immigrants have snapped up almost every new job created in Britain since 2001, according to a Migrationwatch research. The research says 1.3 million foreigners have flooded into Britain over the last seven years to take up employment. But while Labor claimed to be behind a jobs boom, hardly any of the new posts have gone to British workers. Instead the vast majority went to immigrants says the Daily Star. Migrationwatch says little effort has been made to help jobless Brits find work. Instead, they have languished on the dole while foreigners - such as Africans and Indians - have nabbed their jobs. Migrationwatch says its dossier makes a mockery of Gordon Brown's "British jobs for British workers" pledge. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show overall British employment went up 320,000 from 29.17 million in 2006 to 29.49 million. But during that period the number of Britons in work actually fell by 149,000.

Men consistently outperform women on spatial tasks which is the ability to identify how a 3-D object would appear if rotated in space

Men consistently outperform women on spatial tasks, including mental rotation, which is the ability to identify how a 3-D object would appear if rotated in space. Now, a University of Iowa study shows a connection between this sex-linked ability and the structure of the parietal lobe, the brain region that controls this type of skill. The parietal lobe was already known to differ between men and women, with women's parietal lobes having proportionally thicker cortexes or "grey matter." But this difference was never linked back to actual performance differences on the mental rotation test. UI researchers found that a thicker cortex in the parietal lobe in women is associated with poorer mental rotation ability, and in a new structural discovery, that the surface area of the parietal lobe is increased in men, compared to women. Moreover, in men, the greater parietal lobe surface area is directly related to better performance on mental rotation tasks. The study results were published online Nov. 5 2008 by the journal Brain and Cognition. "Differences in parietal lobe activation have been seen in other studies. This study represents the first time we have related specific structural differences in the parietal lobe to sex-linked performances on a mental rotation test," said Tim Koscik, the study's lead author and a graduate student in the University of Iowa Neuroscience Graduate Program. "It's important to note that it isn't that women cannot do the mental rotation tasks, but they appear to do them slower, and neither men nor women perform the tasks perfectly." The study was based on tests of 76 healthy Caucasian volunteers - 38 women and 38 men, all right-handed except for two men. The groups were matched for age, education, IQ and socioeconomic upbringing. When tested on mental rotation tasks, men averaged 66% correct compared to 53% correct for women. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed an approximately 10% difference between men and women in the overall amount of parietal lobe surface area: 43 square centimeters for men and 40 square centimeters for women. "It's likely that the larger surface area in men's parietal lobes leads to an increase in functional columns, which are the processing unit in the cortex," said Koscik. "This may represent a specialization for certain spatial abilities in men." The findings underscore the fact that not only is the brain structure different between men and women but also the way the brain performs a task is different, said Peg Nopoulos, M.D., a study co-author and professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine.

What a Jewish writer really thinks of non-Jewish Americans

Ron Rosenbaum:

If you look at the history of America, the big money has always been made by criminals of non-Jewish persuasions. The non-Jews who committed genocide to steal the land in the first place. The non-Jews who built up big fortunes through the disgusting and murderous crime of slavery. The non-Jews who built "respectable" old-money fortunes on the broken backs of the wage slaves they exploited. As Balzac famously said, behind every great fortune is a great crime. Old money in America is for the most part just old crime well-varnished by time.

Researchers have discovered a genetic mutation which increases aggression and impulsiveness in drinkers

Dr Roope Tikkanen, one of the researchers from Helsinki University Central Hospital in Finland, said that alcoholism, alcohol consumption and violence were closely related. 'People react quite differently to acute alcohol exposure,' he said. 'Most individuals become relaxed and talkative, while some - particularly persons who are introverted while sober - become expansively extroverted and aggressive.' Alcohol was found to increase the risk of impulsive violence among men born with a highly active version of a gene which produces the substance monoamine oxidase A, the researchers found. Unusually high levels of this chemical are linked to depression and hyperactivity. The mutation is less likely to trigger violence as people get older, the scientists said. The findings, which come from a study of 174 men with histories of violence and alcohol abuse, could pave the way for new drugs to stop drinkers becoming abusive.

The working conditions of many poor African migrants in rural areas of southern Italy are "appalling", the international medical charity MSF says

The charity, which calls the workforce an invisible and vulnerable army, says migrants live in dilapidated buildings, with no electricity or running water. Thousands of Africans, many of them without papers, seek jobs as fruit pickers in the Calabria region. MSF says they are paid about 20 euros (£19; $29) for 12 hours' work daily. MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres) calls the lack of basic hygienic facilities "appalling". It has distributed sleeping bags and hygiene kits to migrant workers in Calabria. MSF said respiratory diseases could easily spread among the Africans, as they were living in overcrowded, unheated buildings.

The best way to solve this problem would be to deport the Africans.

The biological and social aspects of race

Anthony Hilton and Kevin MacDonald discuss the impact of social structures on racial identification.

Affirmative Action will be swept aside to address skills shortage in South Africa

Affirmative action and employment equity policies will not be allowed to stand in the way of municipalities and local authorities hard hit by skills shortages, the African National Congress (ANC) said after meeting the leadership of The Afrikaans Handelsintitut (AHI). The ANC said there were at least 70 municipal authorities in the country without a single engineer or artisan. "South Africa is running so short of skills that affirmative action cannot realistically be considered an issue," Gwede Mantashe, the general secretary of the African National Congress said. “Important statistics show that unless we produce at least 2400 a year we are not going to cope with the skills shortages in the country”. Mantashe said compounding the skills crisis in South Africa today was that the country was saddled with a rapidly ageing artisan population with an average age of 54 years and practically no decent national programs of training younger people are in place. Mantashe said the main purpose of meeting the AHI was to build both an inclusive South African society and a national vision of where the country was to go rather than an ANC vision of South Africa. AHI President Venete Klein said her organization had a broad range of hard skills that could contribute directly in alleviating the skills and business management crisis in most municipalities in the country.

A blind man has been turned away from a fashionable Indian restaurant because his guide dog offended Muslim staff in Britain

Alun Elder-Brown, a recruitment executive, said he was left feeling "like a piece of dirt" after being barred from bringing the animal into Kirthon Restaurant in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, on religious grounds. The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association said the decision was illegal under the Disability Discrimination Act and Mr Elder-Brown, 51, is now considering suing the establishment in The Pantiles. It follows a series of successful prosecutions of Muslim taxi drivers who refused to carry guide dogs in their cars because they considered them unclean on religious grounds.

Scientists using the latest tools to scan the human genome must pay attention to ancestry when analyzing and interpreting their results

Dr. Gregersen studies rheumatoid arthritis, and in 2004 his team discovered an important risk gene called PTPN22. In the US, the disease associated variant of PTPN22 is present in about eight-to-10 percent of the population. Since the vast majority of Caucasians living in the US had ancestors who once lived in Europe, the few thousand genetic markers identified by Dr. Seldin were used to track those with European origins. They tested the DNA from hundreds of people in Europe and found that there was an enormous difference in the frequency of the risk variant for PTPN22, according to whether a person’s ancestors are from southern vs. northern Europe. In Southern Italy, for instance, only about three percent of the population had this specific PTPN22 allele. Moving north into Sweden, about 12-to-15 percent of the population carries this variant. This variant increases the risk for rheumatoid arthritis and a number of other autoimmune conditions. With these same genetic markers in hand – so called “ancestry informative makers,” or “AIMs.” the scientists went after their US sample, asking whether these markers could be used to identify where a person’s ancestors were from – even if the subjects themselves did not know this information. Indeed, the study showed that they could. In November 2008, Dr. Gregersen presented findings from their work at the American Society of Human Genetics meetings in Philadelphia. The team showed that these markers distinguish ancestry more precisely than any tool available today. The genetic information is so specific that one could look at genes from an Asian individual living in New York and tell whether their ancestors migrated from Cambodia, Japan, Korea or any other country in Asia. Going back to the PTPN22 gene, this team of investigators found that it is not a risk factor for rheumatoid arthritis in the Asian population. That means that if Asians were mixed into a genetic study on rheumatoid arthritis it could greatly skew the findings. “When you put thousands of these markers together, you get a probability of who comes from Sweden or Southern Italy,” said Dr. Gregersen.

Women having unsafe sex may be at more risk of HIV than thought after tests revealed the virus could breach even healthy vaginal tissue

It had been believed that only damaged skin inside the vagina could provide a route to infection. However, researchers say HIV can get past this intact barrier within hours. British HIV charities said it reinforced the need for women to avoid unprotected sex unless their partner's health is known. The lining of the vagina - the squamous epithelium - had been believed by many to be capable of keeping HIV at bay. While transmission of the virus from men to women through unprotected sex is commonplace in many parts of the world, it was thought that HIV was most likely travelling through cuts or sores in the vaginal tract, or penetrating a much thinner layer of skin further up the reproductive tract. The scientists from Northwestern University in Chicago found that, far from this being the truth, HIV could move quickly between the skin cells themselves. The weak point, they said, occurs when skin cells are about to be shed, as the cells are no longer as tightly bound together. Using HIV "tagged" with a marker which gives off light, they observed that, within four hours, the virus had reached a fraction of a millimeter below the surface. At this depth, according to the researchers, it could encounter the immune cells it needed to invade to establish itself in the body. Professor Thomas Hope, leading the research, said: "This is an important and unexpected result - we have a new understanding of how HIV can invade the female vaginal tract."

Related:

Duffy-HIV association: an odd choice of ancestry markers

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.

Related:

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.

Related:

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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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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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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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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