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

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 Despite criticism from the United States and other Western countries that say the law is draconian and should be repealed, it has wide popularity among Ugandans.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Was Eva Braun Jewish?

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

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

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

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

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

According to a new analysis of test-takers, not a single girl, African-American or Hispanic student took the computer science Advanced Placement test in Mississippi or Montana in 2013 even though more than a third of the population in Mississippi is black

Maybe girls, blacks and Hispanics aren't that good at computer science?

The entire New York City public school system is only 14.5% white

Apparently even white liberals don't want to send their kids to public schools.

Good news: The Chinese believe that Jews control America

Bad news: They think this is a good thing.

Chinese immigrant crime in California: State Sen. Leland Yee has been arrested on public corruption charges after he solicited money from undercover FBI agents for his current campaign to be secretary of state, promising to use his role in Sacramento to help the moles in return for the cash

Yee, a Democrat representing San Francisco and a portion of San Mateo County, participated in a discussion with the undercover agents about an illegal gun-trafficking deal at one point. Yee was one of 26 people arrested after a lengthy racketeering, gun-running and money laundering investigation that also targeted Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow, a notorious former San Francisco gangster. Yee was charged in U.S. District Court with conspiracy to traffic in firearms without a license and to illegally import firearms, as well as with participating in a scheme to defraud citizens of honest services.

Support for Israel is weakening among evangelical Christians

While hard numbers are not available, evangelical leaders on both sides of the divide on Israel agree that members of the millennial generation do not share their parents’ passion for the Jewish state; many are seeking some form of even-handedness when approaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “What is happening is that the hard line of Christian Zionists was not successfully passed forward to the next generation, because it was based on theological themes that are now being questioned by younger evangelicals,” said David Gushee, professor of Christian ethics and director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University in Atlanta. The grip of Christian Zionists over young evangelicals has been loosening for several years, according to observers within the community. But recently, the leading evangelical pro-Israel organization, Christians United for Israel, has set off alarm bells in articles and interviews decrying the inroads made by pro-Palestinian activists into the evangelical community. In June 2011, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey among evangelical leaders convened in Cape Town, South Africa, for the third Lausanne Congress of World Evangelization. The findings indicated lower support for Israel than previously believed. A majority of American evangelical leaders (49%) expressed neutrality when asked if they sympathize more with Israelis or with Palestinians. Thirty percent expressed support for Israelis, 13% for the Palestinians.

The happiest of countries - many of which are in Scandinavia according to the latest World Happiness Report - have a robust combination of higher life expectancy, gross domestic product per capita, social support, generosity, freedom to make life choices and lower perceptions of corruption

The 10 happiest countries in the world are Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Austria, Iceland and Australia. Not surprisingly, none of these countries are in Africa or Latin America.

Study: Blacks don’t like it when other blacks associate with whites, to the point of refusing help to an African-American experiencing “a run of bad luck” — just because they have white friends

The study found the so-called “black code” alive and kicking, prompting blacks far more than whites to frown on one of their own if they associate with the other race.

In 2011 and 2012, about 55,000 residents migrated from Puerto Rico to the United States each year, according to the Census Bureau's Community Survey

The Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics is still collecting data for those who left in 2013, but it estimates that the numbers are about the same. While Puerto Ricans have migrated to the United States for several generations, the number of departures from 2000-2010 marks the largest migration wave, at 300,000, since the 1950s, when close to a half-million migrated to the mainland during the entire decade. So many residents have left the island over the years that there are a million more Puerto Ricans living in the United States (4.9 million as of 2011) than in Puerto Rico (3.7 million). Puerto Rico's unemployment rate is above 15%, more than double the 7.3% in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Recently, Standard & Poor's announced that it had cut Puerto Rico's credit rating to junk status as the Hispanic island faces $70 billion in debt, including the debt from its utility companies. In an attempt to avoid financial ruin, Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro García Padilla has signed a bill authorizing the sale of $3.5 million in tax-free general obligation bonds. Even if the auction is successful, the bonds are considered pretty risky. Basic monthly utilities including electricity, heating and water cost about $246 in Puerto Rico as opposed to New York City's $161. Puerto Ricans aren't just moving to New York, where many have typically migrated in the past. They are also moving to Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Virginia - wherever there are jobs.

Black crime in New York: A black teenager has been charged with murder after a terrifying shooting aboard an MTA bus in Brooklyn that killed an innocent commuter

The 14-year-old black suspect, has been identified as Kathon Anderson and is being charged as an adult with second degree murder, Criminal Possession of a Weapon and Criminal Use of a Firearm. He has been arraigned. The black suspect boarded the bus to go after a rival gang member, but instead hit 39-year-old Angel Rojas in the head. Rojas was rushed to Woodhull Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The black teenager was arrested at the scene while commuters scrambled to get out of the way. A firearm was recovered. The black teen fired one shot on the bus and several more outside. Six shell casings were found at the scene. The shooting appears to be gang related, and authorities say that the intended target was a member of a rival gang who had been taunting him on social media. The black teen has a prior arrest for an assault as a hate crime in 2011. He was charged as a minor, and the arrest is sealed. Rojas came to the United States four years ago from the Dominican Republic with his wife Maria and the couple's two children, 12-year-old Saury and 8-year-old Abril. This killing is one reason why the NYPD needs to aggressively implement its Stop-Question-and-Frisk program.

Lesbian mothers arrested for abusing children

Police rescued three young children who showed signs of starvation and abuse from their home in Salinas. Their lesbian mothers, who lived together as domestic partners, are in custody. The oldest child, an 8-year-old girl, had been chained at times to keep her from getting food, looked like a concentration camp victim. The girl was hospitalized for four days and is now recuperating in a foster home. The other two children are boys ages 3 and 5, and they, too, were malnourished, bruised, and showed signs of emotional abuse. But the girl apparently bore the brunt of the abuse, with investigators saying that she was shackled at the ankle or by a collar at times, and may have been held in a closet. Eraca Craig, 31, and Christian Deanda, 44, are accused of felony child cruelty, false imprisonment, and other charges. They were scheduled to be married soon.

Race crime hoax at Grand Valley State University

One of the reasons why these hoaxes persist is that nothing is done to punish the perpetrators.

Around one million Britons, or one in 33 men across the UK, can claim direct descent from the Vikings, according to a new DNA study

Men from the far north of Scotland were most likely to provide a direct match with almost a third (29.2%) of the men from the Shetland Islands testing positive for Viking blood. "Despite arriving well over 1,000 years ago the Viking legacy still remains strong in Britain and Ireland," said Dr Jim Wilson, chief scientist at BritainsDNA which carried out the test. Researchers compared Y chromosome markers, which are inherited from father to son, from more than 3,500 men to six DNA patterns rarely found outside the Norse warrior's native Norway and Sweden. Other areas that scored highly included the Orkney Islands (25.2%), Caithness (17.5%) and the Isle of Man (12.3%). Some 930,000 were a direct match. The study only tested men whose grandfathers had lived in the same areas. Dr Jim Wilson added: "The research suggests that the concentration of Norse blood is quite variable, but as the Y chromosome only relates to the nation's male population and only to one ancestral lineage for each man, there is a very real chance that many more of us are related to the Vikings."

Kenyan polygamy law: The law is supposed to bring civil law, where a man is only allowed one wife, into line with customary law, where some cultures allow multiple partners

But male MPs voted to amend the new marriage bill to allow men to take as many wives as they like without consulting existing spouses. Traditionally, first wives are supposed to give prior approval. About 30 of Kenya's 69 female MPs were in the 349-member chamber for the debate but were outnumbered by their male counterparts. The women walked out in disgust over the matter. The marriage bill now passes to the president to sign before it becomes law. MP Samuel Chepkong'a, who proposed the amendment, said that when a woman got married under customary law, she understood that the marriage was open to polygamy, so no consultation was necessary. Mohammed Junet, an MP representing a constituency from the western Nyanza province, agreed. "When you marry an African woman, she must know the second one is on the way and a third wife… this is Africa," he said.

Wales: Black teacher turned drug-dealer had a cocaine laboratory in his home worth £900,000

Macphallen Kuwale has been jailed for three and a half years after being caught with around £8,000 of the Class A substance. He is an immigrant from Malawi in Africa.

Black students are more likely to be suspended from U.S. public schools - even as tiny preschoolers

Black children represent about 18% of children in preschool programs in schools, but they make up almost half of the preschoolers who are suspended more than once. Black students of all ages are suspended and expelled at a rate that's three times higher than that of white children. Even as boys receive more than two-thirds of suspensions, black girls are suspended at higher rates than girls of any other race or most boys.

Black crime in Britain: A jealous black man who murdered his white girlfriend over her affair with a man she met on a dating site for Oxbridge graduates has been jailed for life

Jonathan Tebbs, 46, stabbed dedicated town hall chief Kate Dixon 29 times with a Swiss Army knife before reading an Oscar Wilde poem about a man who kills his wife. He stripped her clothes off and calmly carried her into the shower where he washed the blood from her lifeless body at a flat in Streatham, south London.

Police in Mexico have uncovered a grisly scheme to kidnap children and sell their organs

Authorities in the Western state of Michoacan have revealed that they have arrested Manuel Plancarte Gaspar, the nephew of one of the top leaders of the Knights Templar cartel, for his involvement. Gaspar and his cohorts would take their young captives to rented homes with medical equipment and remove their organs. Police say that the cases dated back several years. Once word of the arrest broke, a leader in a local vigilante group told a radio station that several children had been rescued from a cartel van in his town. "They were inside a refrigerated box, tightly wrapped in blankets," he said. All hailed from the same Mexico City school, and were abducted during a beach outing. The Templar cartel has for years been diversifying its operations beyond drugs; it now makes most of its money from illegal mining, logging, and extortion.

Ancestral background has much to do with our likelihood of developing or staving off disease

But separating the associations between who we are and where we come from, and genetic variations that cause disease, can be difficult and often result in false genetic study leads. A new statistical method, developed by researchers at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, can help those who study the human genome better identify ancestry as they go about isolating the genes that cause disease. The LASER (Locating Ancestry from SEquence Reads) software can establish ancestry using very small amounts of sequence data, scattered across 1% to 10% of the genome and adding only a few dollars to the cost of a genetic analysis. "You can use our method to describe the ancestry of an individual very precisely, even separating individuals from different parts of Finland," said Goncalo Abecasis, the Felix E. Moore Collegiate Professor of Biostatistics at U-M. "In studies of genetic diseases, this information helps separate changes that cause disease from more numerous changes that specify ancestry."

Britain: Immigrants have cost the British taxpayer more than £22 million a day since the mid-1990s, totting up a bill of more than £140 billion, according to a new report

MigrationWatch UK, which campaigns against mass immigration, said that in 2011 the costs were equivalent to £3,000 for each of the eight million foreign-born people living in Britain. Immigration between 1995 and 2011 cost the British taxpayer more than £140 billion, or £22 million a day, after balancing what immigrants pay in tax with what they take out of Britain’s coffers by claiming benefits and tax credits. In 2011 alone the cost was £23 billion, or £3,000 each for the eight million foreign-born population. The sum was equal to the amount spent by the NHS on GPs and dentists in a year.

Blacks and gays: Dr James Manning, a black New York City pastor who recently blamed Obama for “releasing homo demons on the black man,” is now calling on Christians to stone gay people

The Atlah Worldwide Missionary Church in Harlem, NYC, put up its new announcement recently which reads: “Jesus would stone homos. Stoning is still the law.”

Remember Kitty Genovese who was raped and murdered by black thug Winston Moseley?

A. M. Rosenthal of the New York Times distorted the crime to make her neighbors look like the bad guys.

Black man fatally stabs boss over photo

Tilus Lebrun, 36, was arrested after he fatally stabbed restaurant owner Dimitrios Karaloukas because the boss took a photo of him without his permission. Lebrun worked at Jimmy The Greek Taverna Restaurant in Boca Raton, where he pulled out a knife and stabbed the restaurant’s 61-year-old owner. The owner was sitting down in the restaurant when he was attacked by Lebrun. He was stabbed three times on his left side and once in his back and later died of his injuries. An unidentified male who was an employee at the restaurant was also attacked by Lebrun. The victim was stabbed numerous times and is undergoing life-saving surgery at Delray Medical Center. Deputies found Lebrun near the restaurant outside wearing an apron and holding a large knife. He later told deputies, “I killed him because he took my photograph on March 2nd and posted it on the Internet,” according to authorities. Lebrun has been charged with first degree premeditated murder and murder while engaged in a certain felony offense.

In 2008, black students from families with incomes of more than $200,000 scored lower on the SAT test than did students from white families with incomes between $20,000 and $40,000

It is not just poor blacks who do badly on the SAT test.

Did Europeans undergo strong selection for white skin, non-brown eyes, and non-black hair during historic times?

Peter Frost looks at the evidence.

An 18-year-old black man has been arrested for biting the nose off of his infant son

Police received a phone call from a hysterical female saying that her infant child was bleeding from its nose. Doctors determined that the infant’s nose had been severed and that the child had possible head trauma. Later, doctors determined that the 1-month-old infant had a skull fracture, a brain hemorrhage, and a third of the child’s nose had been severed off. The father, Joshua Cooper, had bitten his son’s nose off out of frustration over the infant crying. It was unclear how the child suffered the fractured skull and brain hemorrhage. Cooper has been arrested and charged with child cruelty and aggravated mayhem.

Israel is neither a friend nor an ally of the United States

Phil Giraldi, a former CIA Case Officer and Army Intelligence Officer who spent twenty years overseas in Europe and the Middle East working terrorism cases, has some interesting information about our Jewish "friends" in the Middle East.

New York City: More black and Hispanic students took the entrance exam to get into the city’s elite high schools this year, but their pass rates were as dismal as ever, officials have said

Of the 5,096 students accepted by eight specialized schools, just 5% were black and 7% were Hispanic. Nationally recognized Staten Island Tech won’t have a single black student among its incoming class of 344 freshmen. Last year, it had five. Bronx Science, consistently ranked one of the highest-achieving high schools in the city, sent admission letters to 968 middle-school students, but only 18 were black. The story was much the same at Stuyvesant, where seven black students and 21 Hispanics were among the 952 who made the cut. Even Brooklyn Tech, which Mayor de Blasio’s son, Dante, attends, will welcome just 127 black students and 130 Hispanics among 1,844 in its freshman class of ’14. Of 27,817 students who took the entrance test last October, 46% were black or Hispanic. That’s up from 43% in 2012.

A new study led by University of Pennsylvania researchers — constituting the largest investigation ever of lactase persistence in geographically diverse populations of Africans — investigated the genetic origins of this trait and offers support to the idea that the ability to digest milk was a powerful selective force in a variety of African populations which raised cattle and consumed the animals' fresh milk

Previous research has shown that northern Europeans and people with northern European ancestry, as well as populations from Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Central Asia with a tradition of fresh milk production and consumption, continue to express the lactase enzyme into adulthood. Some of these earlier studies had traced the genetic origin of this trait in Europeans to a particular mutation that regulates the expression of the gene that codes for lactase. And in 2007 a study examined African populations and found three additional genetic variants associated with lactase persistence that had not been previously identified. But these variants didn't completely account for the reason why some Africans were able to digest milk. To try to reconcile these apparent discrepancies between genotype, the genetic basis of a characteristic, and phenotype, the characteristic itself, researchers led field studies to often-remote areas of Kenya, Tanzania and Sudan to collect blood samples and perform a lactose tolerance test on people from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The idea was that the researchers wanted to sample as many populations, and as diverse a set of populations, as possible. They included pastoralists, agro-pastoralists, agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers, so the four major subsistence patterns were all covered. To look for genetic variations among the populations' abilities to digest milk, the team sequenced three genomic regions thought to influence the activity of the lactase-encoding LCT gene in 819 Africans from 63 different populations and 154 non-Africans from nine different populations in Europe, the Middle East and Central and East Asia. They also examined the results of the lactose tolerance test in 513 people from 50 populations in East Africa. Their sequencing and phenotyping efforts confirmed the association between lactase persistence and three known single–nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, places where the DNA sequence varies in just one "letter." But they also identified two new SNPs associated with the trait located in regions that are thought to regulate lactase gene expression. Their analysis revealed strong evidence of recent positive selection affecting several variants associated with lactase persistence in African populations, likely in response to the cultural development of pastoralism. The distinct geographic patterns in which these variants were present correlate in many cases with historic human migrations, mixing between populations as well as the spread of cattle, camels or sheep. For example, they found the variant associated with lactase persistence in Europeans, T-13910, in central and northern African pastoralist groups, suggesting that these groups may have mixed historically with a non-African population. The age of this genetic mutation is estimated to be 5,000-12,300 years old, coinciding with the origins of cattle domestication in North Africa and the Middle East. And a variant, G-13915, found at high frequencies in the Arabian Peninsula, and also present in northern Kenya and northern Sudan, dates to roughly 5,000 years ago, around the time that archaeological evidence suggests that camels were domesticated in the region. Another variant, G-13907, was identified in the northern reaches of Sudan and Kenya as well as in Ethiopia. The researchers speculate that the mutation may have arisen in Cushitic populations in Ethiopia, who later migrated into Kenya and Sudan in the last 5,000 years. They observed still another variant, C-14010, in Tanzania and Kenya as well as in southern Africa. This variant is believed to have arisen 3,000 to 7,000 years ago, a timing in line with the migration of pastoralists from North Africa into East Africa. The researchers' analysis suggests that this variant spread more recently into southern Africa, perhaps only in the last 1,000 years. Even with the new variants that the team identified, there were still patterns that the genetic data couldn't explain. Some groups that appeared to be able to digest milk lacked any genetic sign of this ability. The Hadza, nearly half of whom had the lactase persistence trait, are one example. This raises the strong possibility that there are other variants out there, perhaps in regions of the genome that haven't yet been examined. Another possibility is that commensal bacteria in the gut could offer humans a helping hand in digesting milk. The team is now assaying Africans' gut bacteria to see if that might be the case.

Black ignorance: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D., Texas) declared the U.S. Constitution to be 400 years old on the House floor, which would mean that it was signed in 1614

That would be seven years after Jamestown, Virginia became America’s first permanent English settlement. Lee is off by only 173 years. It was adopted on September 17, 1787.

A diet high in protein, particularly animal protein, may help elderly individuals function at higher levels physically, psychologically, and socially, according to a study

The research suggests that as people age, their ability to absorb or process protein may decline. To compensate for this loss, protein requirements may increase with age. Due to increasing life expectancies in many countries, increasing numbers of elderly people are living with functional decline, such as declines in cognitive ability and activities of daily living. This can have profound effects on the health and well-being of older adults and their caregivers, as well as on health care resources. Researchers found that men in the highest quartile of animal protein intake had a 39% decreased chance of experiencing higher-level functional decline than those in the lowest quartile. These associations were not seen in women. No consistent association was observed between plant protein intake and future higher-level functional decline in either sex.

Intelligent people are more likely to trust others, while those who score lower on measures of intelligence are less likely to do so, says a new study

Oxford University researchers based their finding on an analysis of the General Social Survey, a nationally representative public opinion survey carried out in the United States every one to two years. The authors say that one explanation could be that more intelligent individuals are better at judging character and so they tend to form relationships with people who are less likely to betray them. Another reason could be that smarter individuals are better at weighing up situations, recognising when there is a strong incentive for the other person not to meet their side of the deal. The study supports previous research that analysed data on trust and intelligence from European countries. The authors say that the research is significant because social trust contributes to the success of important social institutions, such as welfare systems and financial markets. In addition, research shows that individuals who trust others report better health and greater happiness. The Oxford researchers found, however, that the links between trust and health, and between trust and happiness, are not explained by intelligence. For example, individuals who trust others might have only reported better health and greater happiness because they were more intelligent. But this turns out not to be the case. The finding confirms that trust is a valuable resource for an individual, and is not simply a proxy for intelligence. Lead author Noah Carl, from the Department of Sociology, said: "Intelligence is shown to be linked with trusting others, even after taking into account factors like marital status, education and income. This finding supports what other researchers have argued, namely that being a good judge of character is a distinct part of human intelligence which evolved through natural selection. However, there are other possible interpretations of the evidence, and further research is needed to disentangle them." Researcher Professor Francesco Billari, also from the Department of Sociology, said: "People who trust others seem to report better health and greater happiness. The study of social trust therefore has wider implications in public health, governmental policy and private charity, and there are good reasons to think that governments, religious groups and other civic organisations should try to cultivate more trust in society. Social trust has become an increasingly important topic for academics, who want to understand the causes of better health and greater happiness within society."

Genes and musical ability

Researchers took blood samples from 767 people from 76 families, ranging in age from seven to 94 years. Some families had a strong musical tradition, boasting several professional players. The scientists unravelled the genetic code from the samples and carried out a comparison between the volunteers, looking for variants in their DNA. They also asked the volunteers to do three musical tests. The guinea pigs were asked to distinguish between notes that had slightly different tones and durations, and to identify sequences of notes that were subtly different from each other. Among those who performed well in these tests, the big standout was tiny but significant differences in several genes located on Chromosome 4 which help determine how we hear and perceive sound. One variant lies on a gene called GATA2, which is important for the hair cells in the inner ear. The delicate fibres on these cells move in response to different frequencies and transmit a signal through the auditory nerve to the brain. Another telltale variant was found in a gene called PCDH7, which plays an important role in a part of the brain called the amygdala — believed to be the driver for how we transform sounds into patterns.

Thirty-five percent of the population in Puerto Rico receives food stamps, an abnormally large proportion due in part to a 31% increase in the number of Puerto Ricans over 60 who qualify for benefits

Seniors account for 264,000 of the 1.3 million people on the island receiving help under the Puerto Rican equivalent of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Together, people in the over-60 and under-18 age cohorts total more than half of the food stamp recipients in the U.S. commonwealth, the director of Puerto Rico's Administration for the Socioeconomic Development of the Family, Marta Elsa Fernández, said. She pointed out that Puerto Rico "is a poor country" and that therefore it is understandable that 1.3 million of the island's 3.7 million residents would qualify for help. By the standards of the U.S. mainland, 45% of Puerto Ricans are poor, Fernández said. The increase in unemployment - which already exceeds 15% - and especially the fact that seniors are losing other types of public aid is increasingly pushing people over 60 to request food stamps, which they then share among their other younger family members. Regarding the amount of the aid, Fernández said that, on average, each of the recipients receives $112 per month, while for a family of four that amount rises to $400. Fernández said that her agency is rigorous when it comes to approving such aid, adding that each year all people who receive food stamps are subjected to a rigorous analysis. Her agency has been allocated $1.9 billion for the current fiscal year to distribute food stamps among the Puerto Rican population.

Direct evidence for positive selection of skin, hair, and eye pigmentation in Europeans during the last 5,000 years

Anthropologists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and geneticists at University College London (UCL), working in collaboration with archaeologists from Berlin and Kiev, have analyzed ancient DNA from skeletons and found that selection has had a significant effect on the human genome even in the past 5,000 years, resulting in sustained changes to the appearance of people:

While investigating numerous genetic markers in archaeological and living individuals, Sandra Wilde of the Palaeogenetics Group at the JGU Institute of Anthropology noticed striking differences in genes associated with hair, skin, and eye pigmentation. "Prehistoric Europeans in the region we studied would have been consistently darker than their descendants today," says Wilde, first author of the PNAS article. "This is particularly interesting as the darker phenotype seems to have been preferred by evolution over hundreds of thousands of years. All our early ancestors were more darkly pigmented." However, things must have changed in the last 50,000 years as humans began to migrate to northern latitudes.

"In Europe we find a particularly wide range of genetic variation in terms of pigmentation," adds co-author Dr. Karola Kirsanow, who is also a member of the Palaeogenetics Group at Mainz University. "However, we did not expect to find that natural selection had been favoring lighter pigmentation over the past few thousand years." The signals of selection that the Mainz palaeogeneticists and their colleagues at University College London have identified are comparable to those for malaria resistance and lactase persistence, meaning that they are among the most pronounced that have been discovered to date in the human genome. The authors see several possible explanations. "Perhaps the most obvious is that this is the result of adaptation to the reduced level of sunlight in northern latitudes," says Professor Mark Thomas of UCL, corresponding author of the study. "Most people of the world make most of their vitamin D in their skin as a result UV exposure. But at northern latitudes and with dark skin, this would have been less efficient. If people weren't getting much vitamin D in their diet, then having lighter skin may have been the best option."

"But this vitamin D explanation seems less convincing when it comes to hair and eye color," Wilde continues. "Instead, it may be that lighter hair and eye color functioned as a signal indicating group affiliation, which in turn played a role in the selection of a partner." Sexual selection of this kind is common in animals and may also have been one of the driving forces behind human evolution over the past few millennia.

"We were expecting to find that changes in the human genome were the result of population dynamics, such as migration. In general we expect genetic changes due to natural selection to be the exception rather than the rule. At the same time, it cannot be denied that lactase persistence, i.e., the ability to digest the main sugar in milk as an adult, and pigmentation genes have been favored by natural selection to a surprising degree over the last 10,000 years or so," adds Professor Joachim Burger, senior author of the study.

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers have unraveled the genetic basis of a hereditary disease that causes severe brain atrophy, mental retardation and epilepsy in Jews of Moroccan ancestry

The disease, which the researchers have called PCCA2 (Progressive Cerebello-Cerebral Atrophy Type 2), is caused by two mutations in the VPS53 gene. It results in defective circulation of vacuoles (endosomes) within patents' cells and leads to detrimental excessive storage of "junk" within the cells. Children who contract the disease are seemingly fine at birth and develop well until about six months of age. However, deterioration begins soon after with brain atrophy, severe retardation and epilepsy by age one. One of every 37 Moroccan Jews carries one of the two mutations and based on the high carrier rate, PCCA2 is the most common severe genetic disease in Moroccan Jews discovered to date. Fifteen percent of Israel's total population (1 million people) is of Moroccan ancestry. Nearly 100,000 Moroccan Jews also live in the United States, largely in New York City, Washington D.C., Boston, and Florida. In Israel, carrier testing and prenatal diagnosis of PCCA2 will enable eradication of this severe disease. Routine carrier testing in Moroccan Jews will likely begin within months. PCCA2 is a recessive disease: if both parents are carriers of a VPS53 mutation then there is a 25% risk of the disease in each pregnancy. The research team was led by Prof. Ohad Birk, head of the Genetics Institute at Soroka University Medical Center and the Morris Kahn Lab at the National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev at BGU. Birk's research has led to the discovery of more than 20 genetic diseases common in Arabs and in Sephardic Jews, providing insights into the nature of illness and unraveling molecular pathways of normal human development. In 2010, Birk's group discovered another gene for a similar disease, PCCA, which is also common in Jews of Moroccan and Iraqi descent. Birk's translational approach has led to dozens of routine massive genetic carrier tests, prevention and practical eradication of numerous severe neurological disorders common in Arabs and in Sephardic/non-Ashkenazi Jews. "There was an idea that Ashkenazi [of European descent] Jews have more disease than others, but when one begins looking at Sephardic Jewish diseases, they are there," Birk says. "They have just not been sorted out. Because they have not been sorted out, there was no carrier testing, no prevention programs or anything. I have shifted part of my lab into Jewish non-Ashkenazi—or Sephardic Jewish—diseases." Ashkenazi Jewish diseases that now have carrier testing in the United States and Israel include Tay-Sachs disease, Canavan, Niemann-Pick, Gaucher, Familial Dysautonomia, Bloom Syndrome, Fanconi anemia, Cystic Fibrosis, and Mucolipidosis IV.

Robots and immigrants

Robots will become omnipresent according to Google Chairman Eric Schmidt — so why do we need unskilled immigrants?

According to a new study by the National Urban Research Group (NURG), math instruction and the educational system in the United States are deeply unfair, especially to black and Latino students from poorer families

Once again blacks and Hispanics are the victims of our evil educational system:

The results on the Common Core Math tests are disturbing for all students, but especially disturbing when broken down by race, ethnicity, and social class. While the percentage of New York City middle school students scoring at proficiency level (Level 3 and 4) dropped for all grades and all groups, it was much steeper for students from minority and poorer families. For example, in the sixth grade, Hispanic students recorded the steepest declines. Their proficiency rate dropped from 50.4 percent in 2012 to 17.4 percent in 2013. Black students had the second largest decline amongst sixth graders. Their proficiency rate dropped from 45.8 percent in 2012 to 15.3 percent in 2013. White and Asian sixth graders declined, but not by as much, and their proficiencies rates were significantly higher at 49.6% and 62%. Larger percentages of White and Asian students scored at the highest proficiency level (4) while larger percentages of Black and Hispanic students scored at the "well below proficient" level (1). The report found that proficiency scores were similar for seventh and eighth grade.

Funny how Asians never end up as victims of the educational system the way blacks and Hispanics do.

Decades of quantitative research in the field of personnel psychology have shown that across fields of employment, measurements of "general cognitive ability" — which is another way of referring to the old-fashioned concept of intelligence or IQ — are consistently the best tools employers have to predict which new employees will wind up with the highest performance evaluations or the best career paths

More than 86% of people at Google have a college education (or more), and most of them come from the most elite schools.

Employment in America: In February 2014, native-born American employment fell by 57,000

Foreign-born employment rose by 99,000 during that month. From January 2009 to February 2014, foreign-born employment rose by 2.197 million while native-born employment rose by only 848,000.

Black crime: The daughter of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s former minister, has been convicted by a federal jury of laundering thousands of dollars from a $1.25 million state grant for a Chicago-based job-training program

Jeri Wright, 48, has been found guilty of 11 counts that included money laundering, lying to federal agents and lying to a grand jury. Her attorney described Wright as a victim of a web spun by longtime friend Regina Evans, the black Country Club Hills police chief who has pleaded guilty to corruption in the case. Evans had secured the state loan for the job-training program but allegedly diverted the money rather than use it for the purpose she proposed. Prosecutor Timothy Bass contended that Wright took as much as $11,000 in cash from more than $30,000 in checks in a scheme where she also sent money back to Evans. Evans tapped the funds for what Bass had called a "spending spree," including a trip to Las Vegas, a basement remodeling and the purchase of vehicles for a security business with her husband.

Haredi rabbi who solicited sex from a 14-year-old gets no-jail sentence

Rabbi Nathan David (Nosson Dovid) Rabinowich sent explicit electronic messages and also arranged to meet a person whom he thought was a 14-year-old girl for sex in Queens. Rabinowich was originally charged with four sex crimes, including attempted rape, but pleaded guilty to only one count of Attempted Criminal Sex Act-2 on a victim younger than 15-years-old. He was sentenced to a $5,000 fine, 10-years probation and registration as a Level 1 (low level) sex offender.

Detroit: A woman who called police for protection was sexually assaulted by a black officer who responded, according to the Wayne County prosecutor's office

Detroit police officer Deon Nunlee has been charged with second-degree sexual assault, assault with intent to penetrate and misconduct in office. According to the prosecutor's office, the 31-year-old victim called 911 to report an assault by her boyfriend. When Nunlee and a second officer responded, she told authorities that Nunlee assaulted her in a separate room. "Nunlee took the woman upstairs and his partner remained with the male downstairs," Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy's Office said. "It is alleged that when Nunlee was in an upstairs bedroom with the woman he sexually assaulted her. While they were alone upstairs Nunlee indicated he would be coming back to the house later at 7 a.m. When officer left the house the woman reported the crime to two friends and the next day reported it to the police." Nunlee has been arraigned and held on a $50,000, 10% surety bond.

Between individuals and populations, intellectual capacity seems to differ through small differences at many genes

Peter Frost looks at population differences in intellectual capacity:

Intelligence is a complex trait that involves many different genes interacting with each other and with the environment. If one gene changes, the immediate effect may be beneficial, but there will be side effects at other genes, and most of those side effects will likely be harmful. The bigger the effect at any one gene, the greater the likelihood of negative side effects elsewhere.

So evolution has proceeded through tinkering. A small effect here, a small effect there, but nothing that will rock the boat.

We must therefore pool data from many genes to understand the evolution of complex traits like intelligence. This is what Davide Piffer (2013) has done in a recent study. He began with seven genes (SNPs) whose different alleles are associated with differences in intellectual capacity, as measured by PISA or IQ tests. Then, for fifty human populations, he looked up the prevalences of the alleles that seem to increase intellectual capacity. Finally, for each population, he calculated their average prevalence at all seven genes.

The average prevalence was 39% among East Asians, 36% among Europeans, 32% among Amerindians, 24% among Melanesians and Papuan-New Guineans, and 16% among sub-Saharan Africans. The lowest scores were among San Bushmen (6%) and Mbuti Pygmies (5%).

Crime and the black politician: Assemblyman William Boyland Jr. has been convicted of extortion and soliciting bribes by a federal jury and was immediately sent to jail

The corrupt Brooklyn black Democrat closed his eyes and held his head with both hands as the jury foreman pronounced him guilty of all 21 counts in the indictment. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Capers then told the judge that Boyland, 43, broke the law even while on trial. FBI agents surveilled him driving in Brooklyn and Manhattan recently despite the suspensions of his license, registration and auto insurance. “I have a concern about Mr. Boyland claiming to be one place when he is actually in another,” U.S. District Judge Sandra Townes said before revoking his $100,000 bail. There’s no doubt where federal inmate No. 18913-076 is now. He faces up to 30 years in prison. The disgraced political scion emptied his pockets for U.S. marshals and left the courtroom without turning back to look at his heartbroken father, former Assemblyman William Boyland Sr., or his mother, who attended every day of the month-long trial. The Boyland political dynasty — in which family members were known as the “Black Kennedys of Brownsville” and a main thoroughfare in the neighborhood was named after Jr.’s late uncle Thomas Boyland, who had held the same assembly seat — has been tarnished. The four-term black assemblyman in Brooklyn's 55th District, represented some of the poorest constituents in New York City and referred to his political office as the family “hardware store” handed down to him by his father and uncle. Boyland fancied himself a Mafia don, and beat a separate corruption rap in 2011. In 2013, he chose to turn down a plea deal worked out by his lawyers. But he wasn’t the Teflon Don after all. The feds had amassed a mountain of evidence on audio and video tape in a sting operation that initially targeted another Brooklyn councilman. FBI agents posed seeking his favors in the Brooklyn Democrat's impoverished community. Boyland brazenly sought payoffs from undercover FBI agents posing as shady businessmen proposing shady real estate schemes in the assemblyman's district. During the 10-month probe, Boyland pocketed more than $14,000 in bribes and demanded a $250,000 payoff in exchange for securing government approvals for the undercover agents. Boyland’s chief of staff, Ry-Ann Hermon, pleaded guilty and testified against about the bribery schemes and how her former boss looted for political purposes from a nonprofit for the elderly. Boyland was also convicted of stealing more than $70,000 in per diem by falsely claiming that he was in Albany when he was actually in New York City and Istanbul, Turkey.

A study shows that the city of Atlanta has among one of the highest concentrations of young black gay men living with HIV in the United States

Research shows that HIV prevalence for the group is running at 12.1% a year. It means that a young black gay man becoming sexually active at the age of 18 in the city has a 60% chance of being HIV positive by the age of 30. The research showed that black men who have sex with men (BMSM) are 3.8 times more likely to acquire HIV compared with their white male counterparts.

Roughly 47% of the millennial women who had babies in 2012 weren't married, compared with 35% of mothers from Generation X when they were that age, according to a new Pew study on the generation

The survey found that millennials, who range in age from 18 to 33, are more diverse and less trusting than their forebears. They are distinctly liberal on many issues with 60% of them voting for Barack Obama in 2012. It is the only generation in which conservatives don't significantly outnumber liberals. Millennials are more racially diverse than any previous generation; about 43% are not white. Expect that trend to continue in future generations; about half of babies born today are not white (which is probably why so many of them are illegitimate). Millennials are the first generation in the modern era to be worse off in terms of poverty, unemployment, income, and personal wealth than the two previous generations were at the same age. Only 26% are married — compared to 36% of Gen Xers when they were this age, and 48% of Baby Boomers.

Shocker: Statistics show a correlation between murder rates and black populations in America

Seven of the 10 worst cities for murders also ranked in the top 10 for percentages of black residents: Detroit (1st in black population), Baltimore (2), Memphis (3), New Orleans (4), Atlanta (5), Cleveland (6) and Philadelphia (8). Conversely, 15 of the 25 cities with the lowest murder rates had black populations under 10%.

A black cop in Baltimore faces animal cruelty charges after he beat his girlfriend's 7-month-old puppy to death and then texted her a photo of it

The black police officer – a five-year veteran named Eugene Taylor – has been suspended without pay after beating the dog with a mop and strangling it to death. He is charged with animal cruelty and abuse. Taylor, 27, killed his girlfriend’s 7-month-old Jack Russell Terrier, named Rocko, for relieving himself on the carpet of their apartment. Taylor told investigators that he used a mop not only to retrieve the dog from behind the dryer but as a weapon to beat the helpless animal before using his bare hands to choke the dog to death. Montgomery County Police say that the black cop then took a picture of the dead dog and actually sent it to his girlfriend before dumping the pup in a dumpster.

Gays and Muslim Africans: Four young men were convicted of gay sex and whipped publicly as punishment in an Islamic court in northern Nigeria, a human rights activist has said

The four were among dozens caught in a wave of arrests after Nigeria strengthened its criminal penalties for homosexuality with the new Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act in January 2014. The men could face further violence in prison if human rights organizations do not come up with an additional fine of 20,000 naira ($120) each meted out by a judge in Bauchi city, Dorothy Aken'Ova, convener of the Coalition for the Defense of Sexual Rights Network, said. The four were sentenced to 15 strokes plus a year's imprisonment if they cannot pay their fines. Aken'Ova said that the men, aged between 20 and 22, should not have been convicted because their confessions were forced by law agents who beat them. She said that they had to lie on the floor of the court to be whipped on their backsides. The men's families, mainly subsistence farmers in rural areas where everyone knows everyone else, refused an offer of legal representation because they preferred to negotiate with the judge and get the case behind them, said Aken'Ova. She said that the families were embarrassed by the stigma attached to homosexuality, which many highly religious Nigerians consider an evil imported from the West. The hearings in Bauchi city, capital of the state of the same name, had been delayed from January 2014, when a crowd tried to stone the accused men outside the court and demanded that the judge pass the death sentence. Security officials had to fire into the air to save the men and disperse the crowd. Under Islamic Shariah law in some north Nigerian states, homosexuals can be sentenced to death by stoning or lethal injection. Aken'Ova, who got her information from the men's families, said that the judge was lenient because the men had promised that the homosexual acts occurred in the past and that they had since changed their ways. For fear of further disruption, Judge El-Yakub Aliyu held hearings unannounced and in secret. He said that the hearing for another four men accused of sodomy would be heard at a later date.

Halal and kosher slaughter of animals should be outlawed, Britain's leading vet has said

John Blackwell, president-elect of the British Veterinary Association, has argued that the ritual killing of poultry, sheep and cattle by cutting their throats causes unnecessary suffering to animals. Traditionally, Jewish and Islamic slaughter practices involve animals having their throats slit and the blood drained because it is "humane." But Blackwell, who has been accused of "inflaming prejudice" by religious leaders, says that animals must be stunned before the cut because some will be conscious for up to two minutes before death. The Danish government has been accused of religious persecution after it banned the religious slaughter of animals for halal and kosher meat. Blackwell said that the way halal and kosher meat is created, through the throat being slit, resulted in "five or six seconds" of pain for the animal. "They will feel the cut," he said. "They will feel the massive injury of the tissues of the neck. They will perceive the aspiration of blood they will breath in before they lose consciousness." More than 6,000 animals are killed in religious abattoirs every week in Britain. The halal meat market is believed to be worth up to an estimated £2 billion. Charities including Compassion in World Farming and the RSPCA also support the move to ban the slaughter of animals without stunning first. Lewis Grant, of the Veterinary Public Health Association, said that cuts left over from animals which have been slaughtered for halal and kosher meat often enter the general meat trade and people do not realise that they are eating it. The Jewish practice of slaughtering animals is known as shechita. Animals must be conscious when killed for the meat to be kosher under Jewish law and halal under Islamic law.

A Brooklyn rabbi and teacher at a girls' seminary has been arrested on a child pornography distribution charge

Prosecutors have announced the arrest of 52-year-old Samuel Waldman at his Brooklyn residence. A criminal complaint in federal court in Manhattan charged Waldman with distributing child pornography over the Internet in November 2013 by enabling others to download multiple videos depicting children in sexual acts, including girls ages 4 to 11. Waldman was charged with one count of transporting or distributing child pornography. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison. He was released on $100,000 bond after an initial court appearance. He was also ordered to have no unsupervised contact with children and no employment with access to children.

A team of researchers at Edinburgh University in Scotland has found a correlation between genes associated with height and those associated with intelligence

The group describes how they studied the DNA of 6,815 unrelated people and discovered what they describe as a direct correlation between height and intelligence — taller people are smarter, they say. While the team's study results are likely to cause quite a stir, particularly among those lower in physical stature, it does add to a growing body of research that suggests there are physical, mental and in some cases emotional differences between people related to body size (both height and girth). In this effort, the team used data obtained from Generation Scotland: Scottish Family Health Study — where both medical tests and mental aptitude were tested — intelligence was measured via four basic metrics: mental reaction times, linguistic ability, processing speed and powers of recall. In analyzing data from the study, the team found what they describe as a "significant genetic correlation" between IQ and height — between taller and shorter people. Those that were shorter were on average, found to be slightly less intelligent than their taller counterparts. It's important to note that the researchers are not suggesting that all short people are less intelligent, or that all tall people are more intelligent. Instead they are pointing out averages across a population. Also important to note is that the Family Health Study did not use standard IQ tests to measure intelligence. The research team also claim that 70% of the differences that they found regarding IQ and height could be attributed to genetic factors — the rest could be chalked up to environment. Other studies have found that there exists different health risks for people of different heights — some have found that shorter people, for example, are more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease, while taller people tend to die younger than shorter people. Studies that have looked for intelligence differences based on height, however, have been few and far between. The researchers in Scotland point out that prior studies have relied mainly on testing people related to one another — theirs, they claim, is the first study to measure people who are completely unrelated.

Muslim "Justice": An Iranian court has ruled that a man who poured acid on a girl's face will have his eyes gouged out

The ruling also orders that the criminal's nose and right ear be cut off as punishment for blinding and disfiguring his victim.

On average Latinos have about 70% European ancestry, 14% Native American ancestry and 6% African ancestry

The remainder ancestry is difficult to assign because the DNA is either shared by a number of different populations around the world, or because it’s from understudied populations, such as Native Americans. Obviously that large “unassigned” percentage means that those “averages” could be higher. Looking at the regional and state-to-state numbers for self-identified Latinos, the differences are striking. For example, some Latinos have no discernible Native American ancestry, while in others have as much as 50% of the ancestry being Native American. Latinos in states in the Southwest, bordering Mexico — New Mexico, Texas, California and Arizona — have the greatest percentage of Native American ancestry. Latinos in states with the largest proportion of African Americans in their population — South Carolina, Louisiana and Alabama — have the highest percentage of African Ancestry.

Female genital mutilation: More than 125 million girls and women alive today have been cut in 29 African and Middle Eastern countries, the World Health Organization says

Female genital mutilation comes in many different forms. One type is called suna which involves the removal of the clitoris and the labia minora. The other form is sewing the vagina shut until marriage.

In 1960, 85% of Americans were white and 10% were black

Now, only 63% are white, while 13% are black, 17% are Hispanic and 5% are Asian. In 2050, those shares are projected to be 47% white, 13% black, 28% Hispanic and 8% Asian. In 2011, unmarried women accounted for 41% of U.S. births, up from just 5% in 1960. The rate is 29% for whites, 53% among Hispanics and 72% among African Americans. Although 60% of single mothers have live-in boyfriends, half of these relationships end within five years. Single parenthood’s stigma is gone.

In 2013, 46% of white fourth-grade students were proficient in reading but only 18% of blacks and 20% of Hispanics meet the same benchmark

Since blacks and Hispanics do so poorly academically why do we continue to let them migrate to the United States?

Africa and gays: A day after Uganda passed harsh anti-gay laws, a tabloid newspaper came out with a list of what it called the country's top homosexuals

The cover of the Red Pepper newspaper read, "EXPOSED! Uganda's 200 Top Homos Named," with several photographs next to the headline. Recently, President Yoweri Museveni signed into law a bill that made some homosexual acts punishable by life in prison. "They're disgusting. What sort of people are they?" he said. "I never knew what they were doing. I've been told recently that what they do is terrible. Disgusting. But I was ready to ignore that if there was proof that that's how he is born, abnormal. But now the proof is not there." This isn't the first time that a Ugandan newspaper have identified people that it claimed were gay. In November 2010, Rolling Stone - a local tabloid which has no relation to the U.S. music magazine - listed 100 of what it called the country's top gays and lesbians, with photos and addresses alongside a yellow banner reading, "hang them." The next month, the paper listed 10 more people it claimed were gay. The list included addresses and alleged intimate details about them. Museveni had commissioned a group of Ugandan government scientists to study whether homosexuality is "learned," concluding that it is a matter of choice. "I was regarding it as an inborn problem," he said. "Genetic distortion - that was my argument. But now our scientists have knocked this one out." The bill was introduced in 2009 and originally included a death penalty clause for some homosexual acts. The nation's Parliament passed the bill in December 2013, replacing the death penalty provision with a proposal of life in prison for "aggravated homosexuality." This includes acts in which one person is infected with HIV, "serial offenders" and sex with minors, according to Amnesty International. The new law also includes punishment - up to seven years in prison - for people and institutions who perform same-sex marriage ceremonies, language that was not in the 2009 version. Lawmakers in the conservative nation said that the influence of Western lifestyles risked destroying family units. The bill also proposed prison terms for anyone who counsels or reaches out to gays and lesbians, a provision that could ensnare rights groups and others providing services to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Attitudes against homosexuality are prevalent in Uganda. A 2013 report from Pew Research found that 96% of Ugandans believe society should not accept homosexuality. Thirty-eight African countries have made homosexuality illegal. Even before Museveni signed the bill into law, homosexual acts were punishable by 14 years to life in prison. Ugandan gay rights activist Pepe Julian Onziema said that some gay people in Uganda would rather kill themselves than live under the new law. "Prior to the bill becoming law today, people attempted suicide because they are like, 'I'm not going to live to see this country kill me - so I would rather take my life.' "

An Indian man fatally stabbed his American wife before killing himself near the Taj Mahal, four months after the couple married near the legendary monument

Erin W. Willinger's body was found with multiple stab wounds in a deserted part of the city, said Agra police chief Shalabh Mathur. Her husband Bunty Sharma committed suicide by igniting cooking gas and causing a massive explosion in his home, Mathur said. Willinger and Sharma met in 2013 when she visited the Taj Mahal with friends. She and Sharma fell in love and got married in October 2013, police said. Willinger, 35, from West Chester, Pennsylvania, adopted an Indian name, Kiran Sharma, and began working with a local non-governmental organization to promote tourism in Agra. Sharma, 32, was a rickshaw cab driver in Agra city. But police say that they separated soon after because of differences. "Both of them tried to resolve their differences and even met with a marriage counselor," Mathur said. On the night of the murder, Sharma took Willinger out in his vehicle, and - on reaching a secluded place - stabbed and killed her and dumped the body on the side of the road, Mathur said.

Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto ordered a New York City police officer to arrest his top aide’s business rival, according to allegations in a civil complaint filed in New York State Supreme Court on February 19, 2014

The officer, Detective Eric Patino, allegedly said that he would release the rival, an Israeli businessman named Tomer Shohat, if Shohat gave him a computer containing information that he had gathered on alleged misconduct by Ben Zion Suky, Pinto’s right-hand man. Pinto, a powerful Israeli rabbi, is at the center of an unrelated scandal that’s made headlines in Israel in recent weeks. Haaretz reported on February 21, 2014 that authorities are preparing to indict Pinto on charges of bribing and threatening Israeli police. Pinto is about to be indicted for threatening and attempting to bribe Israeli police officers. In October 2012, Pinto and his wife were placed under house arrest in connection to the same bribery case. Suky is a former pornography distributor with multiple legal entanglements related to his real estate investments.

A new University of British Columbia study finds that we prefer voices that are similar to our own

The researchers say this is because they convey a soothing sense of community and social belongingness. I wonder if genetics has anything to do with this.

Of the 53,019 homicides from 2005 through 2010, white-on-black homicides accounted for only 3.9%, while black-on-white homicides were 8.77%

Whites are more likely to be killed by blacks than the other way around.

Homosexuals have been branded “vermin” by an African president

The comments came from Yahya Jammeh, president of Gambia, who said that his government would tackle gays in the same way it fights malaria-causing mosquitoes. It comes amid a renewed crackdown on same-sex relationships in Africa, where homosexuality is illegal in 37 countries. In recent months, Nigeria has outlawed same-sex relationships and Uganda has voted for life imprisonment for some homosexual acts. Jammeh said that his country would defend its sovereignty and Islamic beliefs, and not yield to outside pressure on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues. He also said that as far as he was concerned, LGBT can only stand for Leprosy, Gonorrhoea, Bacteria and Tuberculosis; all of which are detrimental to human existence.

Israel has begun to send African asylum seekers to Uganda

Another example of the Jews supporting diversity and non-white immigration everywhere except Israel.

Crime and the black politician: Former U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds has pleaded not guilty in a Zimbabwe court to charges of possessing pornography

Reynolds will also have to enter a plea on a separate charge of breaking Zimbabwe's immigration laws. Reynolds lost his seat representing Illinois almost 20 years ago after being convicted of statutory rape. Reynolds, who is 62, overstayed his visa and brought several Zimbabwean models and other women to his hotel room where he took photographs and videos. In Zimbabwe, Reynolds helped draw investment to hotel and office projects and is also known for his opposition to U.S. sanctions against President Robert Mugabe. Reynolds, a Harvard graduate and former Rhodes scholar, was once viewed as a rising star in the Democratic Party. He resigned from his congressional seat in 1995 after he was convicted by a jury of having sex with a former campaign worker while she was underage, and then trying to thwart the investigation. While in prison he was also convicted of bank and campaign fraud for concealing debts to obtain bank loans and diverting money intended for voter registration drives into his election campaign. He was in jail until his sentence was commuted by then-President Bill Clinton in January 2001.

A large-scale survey of South African healthcare workers has revealed major gaps in workplace protection against tuberculosis, HIV and hepatitis

Preliminary results of the 2012 baseline survey of more than 1,000 healthcare workers in three hospitals show that more than 68% of patient care staff had never been screened for TB; nearly 20% were not vaccinated against hepatitis; and 55% did not wear respiratory protection when needed. Despite South Africa's high TB and HIV rates - 18% of its adult population is HIV-positive - and risk of hepatitis transmission, recapping of used needles before disposal and washing and reusing of gloves were common, with more than 20% surveyed reporting needle-stick injury or unprotected exposure to bodily fluids. Healthcare workers in South Africa are at three times the risk of contracting TB than other South Africans, and more than seven times more likely to be hospitalized for drug-resistant TB. A 2013 WHO estimate showed that South Africans were almost 300 times more likely to contract TB than Americans.

Male sexual orientation may be influenced by genetics, a new study suggests

The findings revealed that in a study that tested the DNA of 409 gay men, at least two chromosomes may affect a man’s sexual orientation. The study involved drawing blood from 409 gay brothers and heterosexual members of their families. Analysis confirmed that an area on the X chromosome – which men inherit from their mothers - known as Xq28 has some impact on sexual orientation. Another stretch of DNA on chromosome 8 also affects male sexual behavior. The findings confirm the results of a controversial study conducted in 1993 by Dean Hamer, a scientist at the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Hamer studied the family history of more than 100 gay men and found that more than 10% of brothers of gay men were gay themselves. This is a vast difference from just 3% for the general population. Hamer tied sexual orientation to the mother’s side of the family. In a follow-up work, he found 33 out of 40 gay brothers had similar genetic markers on the Xq28 region of the X chromosome. At the time, Hamer’s study concluded that there is “99.5% certainty that there is a gene (or genes) in this area of the X chromosome that predisposes a male to become a heterosexual.” The latest study confirms Hamer’s findings and suggests that a man’s sexual orientation depends on about 30% to 40% of genetic factors, while environmental factors, including the hormones a fetus is exposed to in the womb, may also influence a man’s sexuality. "It is not completely determinative; there are certainly other environmental factors involved," said Michael Bailey of Northwestern University, who carried out the research. The study raises the possibility of prenatal testing to determine whether the child will be gay or straight. “Although this could one day lead to a prenatal test for male sexual orientation, it would not be very accurate, as there are other factors that can influence the outcome,” Bailey said. “Clearly parents should not be allowed to torture or kill babies. But they can currently choose to terminate a pregnancy early on, so they should be allowed to have as much information on the future child as possible.” Bailey’s colleague, Alan Sanders, says the findings should not be used to test for sexual orientation. "When people say there's a gay gene, it's an oversimplification," Sanders said. "There's more than one gene, and genetics is not the whole story. Whatever gene contributes to sexual orientation, you can think of it as much as contributing to heterosexuality as much as you can think of it contributing to homosexuality. It contributes to a variation in the trait."

Babies are born with an inherent bias, and start off as little bigots, eagerly dividing the world into us versus them and strongly favoring their own group over everyone else

Babies are not politically correct.

Non-Hispanic White/Hispanic marriages are the most common type of interracial marriage in the United States, accounting for over a third of all interracial marriages

White/Black marriages are scattered throughout the country, and forty seven years after the Supreme Court struck down laws against them, they are still fairly uncommon.

Hispanic child murderer executed in Florida

In a crime that deeply shocked Florida, Juan Carlos Chavez kidnapped, raped and murdered 9-year-old Jimmy Ryce in 1995, hiding his dismembered remains in planters sealed with concrete. Burn in hell, Juan.

A black member of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's inaugural committee who had two outstanding warrants was arrested after a traffic stop but was spared a night in jail in a case in which the mayor contacted a top police official, New York Police Department officials said

Bishop Orlando Findlayter, the pastor of New Hope Christian Fellowship in Brooklyn, endorsed de Blasio in June 2013, when the candidate was running behind in the polls. The bishop helped solidify de Blasio's support among African-Americans, and was named to the mayor's inaugural committee. Mayor de Blasio called Deputy Chief Kim Royster, a top official in the NYPD's press office, shortly after two police officers pulled over Bishop Findlayter as he drove a 2012 Lincoln sedan at the southeast corner of Clarkson Avenue and East 92nd Street in Brooklyn, officials said. The officers said that the bishop had made a left turn without signaling, according to the report. De Blasio spokesman Phil Walzak said that the mayor reached out to the deputy chief to "get clarification on word that there had been an arrest of a respected local clergyman."

Black crime and politics: Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has been convicted of accepting bribes in exchange for helping businessmen secure millions of dollars in city work including after Hurricane Katrina

The federal jury found Nagin guilty of 20 of 21 counts against him. The Democrat, who left office in 2010 after eight years, was indicted in January 2013 on charges that he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and truckloads of free granite for his family business in exchange for promoting the interests of local businessman Frank Fradella. He was also charged with accepting thousands of dollars in payoffs from another businessman, Rodney Williams, for his help in securing city contracts. The charges against Nagin included one overarching conspiracy count along with six counts of bribery, nine counts of wire fraud, one count of money laundering conspiracy and four counts of filing false tax returns. He was acquitted of one of the bribery counts. Each charge carries a sentence from 3 to 20 years, but how long he would serve was unclear and will depend on a pre-sentence investigation and various sentencing guidelines. No sentencing date has been set. Nagin took hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of bribes including money, free travel and granite for Stone Age LLC, a family granite business. The corruption spanned the time before and after Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005, plunging the city into chaos. The conviction wasn't a surprise to Rainelle Smith, 64, of New Orleans, who said that she voted for Nagin. "I don't believe he served the city as well as he should have," she said. "He was supposed to come in and prevent the corruption the city was known for. We, in my family, thought of him as the 'cleanup man.' Instead he gets in office and he soiled it more." The charges resulted from a City Hall corruption investigation that had resulted in several convictions or guilty pleas by former Nagin associates by the time trial started on January 27, 2014. Fradella and Williams, both awaiting sentencing for their roles in separate bribery schemes alleged in the case, each testified that they bribed Nagin. Nagin's former technology chief, Greg Meffert, who is also awaiting sentencing after a plea deal, told jurors that he helped another businessman, Mark St. Pierre, bribe Nagin with lavish vacation trips. St. Pierre did not testify. He was convicted in the case in 2011.

A gene which may make people more intelligent has been discovered by scientists

Researchers have found that teenagers who had a highly functioning NPTN gene performed better in intelligence tests. It is thought that the NPTN gene indirectly affects how the brain cells communicate and may control the formation of the cerebral cortex, the outermost layer of the human brain, also known as "grey matter." Previously it has been shown that grey matter plays a key role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought and language. Studies have also proved that the thickness of the cerebral cortex correlates with intellectual ability. However, until now no genes had been identified. Teens with an underperforming NPTN gene did less well in intelligence tests. An international team of scientists analyzed DNA samples and MRI scans from 1,583 healthy 14 year old teenagers. The teenagers also underwent a series of tests to determine their verbal and non-verbal intelligence. The researchers looked at over 54,000 genetic variants possibly involved in brain development. They found that, on average, teenagers carrying a particular gene variant had a thinner cortex in the left cerebral hemisphere, particularly in the frontal and temporal lobes, and performed less well on tests for intellectual ability. The genetic variation affects the expression of the NPTN gene, which encodes a protein acting at neuronal synapses and therefore affects how brain cells communicate. Their findings suggest that some differences in intellectual abilities can result from the decreased function of the NPTN gene in particular regions of the left brain hemisphere.

Inconvenient truths about diversity

The more ethnically diverse the people we live around, the less we trust them.

Is Puerto Rico a tropical Detroit?

Puerto Rico, about 1,000 miles from Miami, has long been poor. Its per capita income is around $15,200, half that of Mississippi, the poorest state. In addition, 37% of all households receive food stamps; in Mississippi, the total is 22%. Puerto Rico’s drop in population has far outpaced that of American states. In 2011 and 2012, the population fell by nearly 1%, according to census figures. From July 2012 to July 2013, it declined again by 1%, or about 36,000 people. That is more than seven times the drop in West Virginia, the state with the steepest population losses. Of the island’s 3.67 million people, only one million work in the formal economy. The island has one of the lowest labor participation rates in the world, with only 41.3% of working-age Puerto Ricans in jobs; one in four works for the government. There were 1,136 murders in 2011, a record and far higher than the mainland’s rate.

A narrow majority of voters in Switzerland has approved proposals that would reintroduce restrictions on the number of foreigners who are allowed to live and work in the country, a move that could have far-reaching implications for Switzerland’s relations with the European Union

The referendum on the changes to the country’s liberal immigration law was a rebuke to the Swiss government, the banking industry and business leaders who had lobbied against the restrictions, warning that such a move could endanger Switzerland’s prosperity. The Swiss initiative foresees annual quotas on the number of immigrants allowed to work in the country, as well as limits for specific sectors. It would also require preference be given to Swiss applicants for open positions. In Brussels, the European Commission issued a statement saying that it was “disappointed” that the initiative had passed, adding that it would have to study the vote’s implications on relations between the European Union and Switzerland.

Two surprising risk factors - diminished lung function and low serum potassium levels - appear to have nearly the same impact as obesity in explaining why African-Americans are disproportionately prone to developing type 2 diabetes

The finding clarifies some of the large racial disparities associated with diabetes risk and provides potential new avenues for developing treatments. According to estimates from the National Health and Nutrition Exam Survey (NHANES), the prevalence of diabetes is 70% higher among African-Americans than non-Hispanic whites. Traditional risk factors such as obesity, socio-economic status, diet and behavioral factors account for some of the racial disparities, but not all. Researchers analyzed data from nearly 11,200 people with type 2 diabetes, including 8,840 whites and 2,322 African-Americans. Among the African-Americans, many well-known distinctions emerged: there were more women; they were heavier; they had higher blood pressure; and they were more likely to have lower incomes. Those and other known risk factors accounted for about 42% of the increased tendency for type 2 diabetes among African-Americans. Other, less well-known factors also surfaced, notably low lung function and lower serum potassium levels among the African-Americans who developed diabetes. Compared to obesity, which accounts for a 22% increased risk of developing diabetes, low lung function (measured as forced vital capacity) was nearly equally culpable, accounting for a 21.7% increased risk among the African-American diabetes patients. Low serum potassium levels accounted for 17.7% of the increased risk. It is unclear what role reduced lung function and low potassium levels might play in type 2 diabetes; whether they are markers, causes or consequences of the disease needs additional study. Both factors are typically different among African-Americans and whites.

Primitive Africa: A restaurant in the Nigerian state of Anambra has been shut down after the authorities found it has been selling dishes made of human meat

The police recovered at least two fresh human heads when they arrested 11 people from the restaurant including the owner, six women and four men, following a tip-off. The blood-soaked heads were found wrapped in cellophane sheets. Officials have also seized two AK-47 rifles, other weapons, dozens of rounds of ammunition and several mobile phones during the raid. Reports of cannibalism sometimes emerge in Nigeria, but this is the first time a restaurant has been booked for selling human meat dishes.

African American women are almost twice as likely to deliver a preterm baby as white, Hispanic or Asian women in the United States - a disparity that medical conditions, socioeconomic status, access to prenatal care and health behaviors haven’t been able to fully account for

Two new studies explore the complex relationship between race, stress and inflammation and potential impacts on pregnancy in the hope of reducing preterm births and infant mortality, and improving maternal mental health.

Infection is a stronger trigger of stroke death in African-Americans than in whites, a University of Michigan study shows

African-Americans were 39 times more likely to die of a stroke if they were exposed to an infection in the previous month when compared to other time periods while whites were four times more likely and Hispanics were five times more likely to die of stroke after an infection. The most frequent infections were urinary, skin, and respiratory tract infections and occurred within 30 days of a stroke. "Infection before stroke appears to be most lethal for black Americans," says lead author Deborah A. Levine, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of medicine in the division of general medicine in the U-M Medical School. "We know that African-Americans have a much greater risk of dying from a stroke than white Americans, and we wanted to know if infection - which research suggests is a stroke trigger - might contribute to this disparity." Infection is believed to promote the formation of blood clots and fat buildup in arteries, which block the artery and stop the flow of blood to the brain causing a stroke. Racial disparities in stroke death continue to widen in the United States where blacks are twice as likely to die from stroke as whites. The new findings show that all ethnic and racial groups had a higher risk of stroke following an infection but there were significant disparities in subsequent stroke deaths. Infection appeared to be a trigger of stroke death in whites and Hispanics as well, but it was particularly potent in African-Americans. Infection also occurred more often before stroke death in black Americans, with 70% experiencing an infection in the 30 days before stroke death compared to a frequency of 15% in months that were not followed by a stroke death. Infection occurred less often before stroke death in white Americans, with 45% experiencing an infection in the month before stroke death compared to a frequency of 19% in months that were not followed by a stroke death. Although earlier studies suggested that respiratory infections are the most potent triggers of stroke, Levine and colleagues found that urinary tract infections and skin infections seemed to be just as strong of triggers.

Black Hispanic crime in Massachusetts: Jailed state Rep. Carlos Henriquez has been expelled from the House by a 146-5 vote

The overwhelming move to kick him out and end his $60,000 annual pay came after he pleaded to keep his job during the historic State House hearing. His former colleagues weren't swayed and a call for a “censure” rather than expulsion was shot down 143-10. Henriquez has continued to insist he is innocent of holding down and punching a then-girlfriend after she wouldn’t have sex with him in July 2012. He has been found guilty and sentenced to six months in the Middlesex County House of Corrections in Billerica. Speaker of the House Robert A. DeLeo, speaking in a statement following the expulsion vote, defended the committee's probe into the assault case as an independent investigation which included reviewing 11 police reports, 78 exhibits and nearly 1,000 pages of trial testimony. The House, DeLeo said, "found that a representative could not serve as a member while incarcerated in jail after being convicted of two charges of a serious nature. With that vote completed, the House will now move forward to address the budget, gun safety, domestic violence and other important legislative matters." State Rep. Christopher Fallon of Malden, in one of most impassioned speeches, said that the House has to show zero tolerance for abuse against women. He urged the vote on expulsion, saying from his seat: "We don't have a choice today. ... This body is legally and morally responsible" to uphold laws. Earlier, the NAACP asked lawmakers to sit out the vote on the expulsion of Henriquez, a member of the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus and of the advocacy organization. “The NAACP, New England Area Conference (NEAC), respectfully requests that the Massachusetts House of Representatives abstain from voting in the matter of the expulsion of Representative Carlos Henriquez, expected to come before the House today,” the organization said in a letter. “In the alternative, Members of the House are asked to vote against the expulsion of their colleague.”

Primitive Africa: Girls as young as ten are being sent to initiation camps in Malawi to be taught about how to have sex and in some cases lose their virginity

The girls are told by their families that they are attending a camp with their friends, but when they arrive they are shown how to have sex and told that they must lose their "child dust" as soon as they can or they will get a skin disease. The horrifying practice is not new - it is a time-honored ritual passed through generations and the girls are sent by their families to make sure they are accepted into their communities as adults. Malawi, like most countries is Southern Africa is facing an AIDS crisis that has orphaned at least half a million children so far. During the initiation ceremonies, many girls have to have unprotected sex with a man to prepare them for womanhood. Without undergoing this process, a girl was considered to be a child and was therefore illegible for marriages.

When humans first left Africa some 60,000 years ago, they went on to leave their genetic footprints around the world, these same footprints have revealed that some humans decided to return to Africa, carrying genes from the rest of the world back to the continent

A new study of southern African genes reveals that a previously unknown migration took western Eurasian DNA back to continent 3,000 years ago. The study looked at the DNA of Khoisan tribes of southern Africa. The Khoisan tribes are thought to have lived in near-isolation from the rest of humanity for thousands of years. The study by Harvard University revealed that that some of their genes closely match people from modern-day southern Europe, including Spain and Italy. Researchers have now identified two migrations: One about 3,000 years ago, of non-Africans entering east Africa, and a second one 900–1,800 years ago. Dating methods suggest that the European DNA made their way into the Khoisan DNA sometime between 900 and 1800 years ago, before known European contact with the region. Meanwhile, archaeological studies of the region suggest that a subset of the Khoisan, known as the Khoe-Kwadi speakers, arrived in southern Africa from east Africa much earlier. Professor David Reich of Harvard University found that the proportion of Eurasian DNA was highest in Khoe-Kwadi tribes, who have up to 14% of western Eurasian ancestry. The recent research confirms a 2012 study by Luca Pagani of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute which found non-African genes in people living in Ethiopia. They found that the genomes of some Ethiopian populations bear striking similarities to those of populations in Israel and Syria, a potential genetic legacy of the Queen of Sheba and her companions. The team detected mixing between some Ethiopians and non-African populations dating to approximately 3,000 years ago.

Minnesota: A 69-year-old white man has been shot dead after opening his door to a black man who claimed he was being chased

Thomas Sonnenberg called 911 for 20-year-old Devon Derrick Parker who police say told him he was being pursued by assailants with baseball bats. When police arrived at the home in north Minneapolis, they found Sonnenberg dead. Parker was apprehended inside the house. Sonnenberg's daughter Raina Baldwin said that Parker was attempting to rob the house but did not realize that her mother was also in the home. Sonnenberg answered the door to Parker begging to come in because he was in danger. He let the young black man inside and closed the door before calling 911. It was then that Parker shot him in the head. Thomas Sonnenberg's wife Elaine Sonnenberg, 68, was in the kitchen at the time of the shooting. "When the murderer found out she was here, he threw her around and choked her, and he was going to rape her," Baldwin said. The front door locked behind Parker when he entered the house. When Parker realized, he threatened Elaine Sonnenberg to force her to give him the keys, says Baldwin. Police, who Thomas Sonnenberg had called on Parker's behalf, arrived before he could escape. Police recovered a handgun in the house which is believed to be the murder weapon. Court records show that Parker was on probation for a felony assault in 2011. Records show that he has been booked on numerous felony charges, including shooting at a public vehicle or facility and throwing bodily fluids or feces and has drug and trespassing convictions.

Police in eastern India have arrested the husband and parents-in-law of a young woman for burning her and her baby girl alive

The primary motive behind the attack is suspected to be dowry-related, as claimed by the parents of the dead woman, Jharkhand state police superintendent N.K. Mishra said. The three suspects poured kerosene on Annu Devi, 22, and the baby girl at their village home in the state's Dumka district and set them on fire, Mishra said. The 1-year-old child died instantly, and the mother later succumbed to her injuries in a hospital, police said. A court has sent the three suspects to jail to await trial, Mishra said. Asked whether the fact that Devi gave birth to a girl was also a motive, Mishra said: "That could be a factor. But it was mainly for dowry. Her family has said in their complaint she was harassed for money and other things." Devi married three years ago, Mishra said. Dowry is banned in India, but giving expensive "gifts" to the grooms and their relatives at weddings hosted by the brides' families remains a common practice in the country. Police across India registered 8,233 murders of women as dowry deaths in 2012, according to national crime data.

New York City: Blacks commit nearly 80% of all shootings and two-thirds of all violent crime

Heather Mac Donald on Bill de Blasio's crime policies.