South Sudan's government has expressed outrage after police in the capital, Juba, arrested over 30 women for wearing tight trousers or short skirts

Police said local officials had issued an order banning "bad behavior and the importation of illicit cultures". Gender Minister Mary Kinden Kimbo said police had exceeded their authority and violated the women's human rights. Some of the women were beaten after they were arrested outside church and bundled into trucks.

Police have raided a private hospital in Nigeria where they suspect new-born babies were being sold to traffickers

Police found the hospital in the south-eastern town of Enugu, when a 17-year-old girl escaped. Four people - two nurses and the hospital's owners - have been arrested in connection with the "baby farm", police said. Seven pregnant young women discovered in the hospital during the raid are now in the care of the state government. State police commissioner Sani Magaji said that a 17-year-old who was days away from giving birth had escaped from the hospital. The women, according to the police, had spent up to six months in the hospital, waiting to give birth. Their babies would be sold for as little as 15,000 naira ($127, £72), the police said. It is suspected the babies were to be sold to traffickers who sell children into forced labour or prostitution. Several similar cases have been discovered in Nigeria in recent years. Poor, unmarried women face tough choices if they get pregnant in Nigeria. Unmarried mothers face exclusion from society. In May 2008, a Nigerian woman was jailed in Britain for trying to smuggle a baby into the country in order to get on the list for a council flat. Police have not been able to trace the child's real parents.

Austria governor isolates asylum seekers

Joerg Haider has set up a holding facility in the remote mountains of southern Austria for asylum seekers suspected as criminals, saying they need to be isolated to protect the people in the area. Haider gained international prominence in 1999 when the Freedom Party, which he then headed, took 27% of the vote in Austria's parliamentary elections. The party's subsequent inclusion in the government led to months of European Union sanctions over Haider's statements, which were seen as anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and sympathetic to Adolf Hitler's labor policies. Haider is now governor of Carinthia province and his regional government set up the facility for asylum seekers, which sits in a secluded pasture in the mountains of southern Austria at an altitude of about 3,900 feet. "With this security precaution, we are protecting the Carinthian population," Haider told a news conference. He said the number of criminal asylum seekers was on the rise.

Small bleeds within the brain, appear to be more common in African-Americans than in Caucasians, increasing the likelihood of having a stroke

Cerebral microbleeds, which are small bleeds within the brain, appear to be more common in African-Americans than in Caucasians, increasing the likelihood of having a stroke, according to a study published in the October 7, 2008, issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. These types of brain lesions can be an important indicator for stroke. For the study, 87 people from the Washington, DC, area who had suffered a certain type of stroke, called an intracerebral hemorrhage, underwent brain scans. This kind of stroke involves bleeding in the brain and makes up 10 to 15 percent of all strokes. Researchers also determined the group's risk factors for stroke such as age, hypertension and alcohol use. Forty-two of the people were African-American while 45 were Caucasian. The study found that African-Americans had 32% more microbleeds than Caucasians. African-Americans were also more likely to have these types of lesions in several different areas of the brain. While African-Americans had more lesions in the lower and middle parts of the brain, Caucasians had them most frequently near the surface of the brain. "Finding racial differences that could be linked with a higher prevalence for these brain lesions may lead to new methods for testing and treating people to prevent stroke," said study author Chelsea Kidwell, MD, with Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, DC, and member of the American Academy of Neurology. Hemorrhagic stroke is two to three times more common in minority populations, including African-Americans. Microbleeds are found in 50 to 80 percent of this type of stroke.

Obama and science

Will Obama stop biologists from investigating human nature in order to promote diversity and multiculturalism?

Children of Chinese and South Asian immigrants to Canada do dramatically better over time than the offspring of blacks, Filipinos and Latin Americans

The findings, released quietly by Statistics Canada, suggest a new paradigm for understanding immigrants' integration and success. The old vertical mosaic – with whites from Britain and Europe at the top and visible minorities underneath – is no longer valid. Instead, second- and third-generation Chinese and Japanese surpass all other groups of newcomers, including whites, while for blacks and other groups, there is little or no economic mobility across generations. “You can no longer make broad generalizations about how badly visible minorities are doing. Some groups are doing really well, and others are not,” said Jack Jedwab, a historian and head of the Association for Canadian Studies, who wrote a report on the findings. “We need to rethink the vertical mosaic and look at why mobility is weak among certain ethnic groups.” The 2006 census data show that first-generation white immigrants with university degrees, aged 25-44, earned $68,036 a year on average – just above the Canadian-born baseline of $65,000. Those from Japan earned $58,294 and those from China $55,270, while black immigrants earned $51,317 a year. The below-average incomes relate to immigrants' language barriers, lack of Canadian job experience, and difficulties getting their credentials recognized. The balance shifts, however, with the second and third generation. The Chinese catapulted ahead, with the grandchildren of immigrants earning an average of $79,022 a year. Incomes for South Asians also increased substantially by the third generation. In contrast, blacks languished, with third-generation immigrants earning less than newcomers. The incomes of Latin Americans also fell across the generations.

Immigration authorities in Kenya say they will deport the American author of a highly critical book about US presidential candidate Barack Obama

The author, Jerome Corsi, was in Kenya to launch his book which accuses Obama of supporting an alleged plot to turn Kenya into an Islamic state. Officials said that Corsi did not have the right visa. Obama's father was from Kenya, where the US Democratic contender is a highly popular figure. Corsi - author of The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality - has been accused of a smear campaign against Obama. In a recent press release, Corsi said he would expose deep secret ties between US Democratic presidential candidate Sen Barack Obama and a section of the Kenyan government leaders.

South Africa is not the harmonious “rainbow nation” so celebrated by Nelson Mandela on his inauguration day

Two weeks ago, a vicious power struggle culminated in something like regicide, with the governing African National Congress deposing one of its own, President Thabo Mbeki, and replacing him with a stand-in for Mr. Mbeki’s archrival, Jacob Zuma. The actual changing of the guard was orderly enough, but months of behind-the-scenes back-stabbing have made many South Africans long for days more abundant with moral clarity, including those fretful about a figure as polarizing as Zuma. The past year has been especially unnerving, with one bleak event after another, and it is more than acidic politics that have soured the national mood. Economic growth slowed; prices shot up. Xenophobic riots broke out in several cities, with mobs killing dozens of impoverished foreigners and chasing thousands more from their tumbledown homes. The country’s power company unfathomably ran out of electricity and rationed supply. Gone was the conceit that South Africa was the one place on the continent immune to such incompetence. The rich purchased generators; the poor muddled through with kerosene and paraffin. Other grievances were ruefully familiar. South Africa has one of the worst crime rates. But more alarming than the quantity of lawbreaking is the cruelty. Robberies are often accompanied by appalling violence, and people here one-up each other with tales of scalding and shooting and slicing and garroting. The poor apply padlocks in defense. The rich surround their homes with concrete and barbed wire — and there are suggestions that more are simply fleeing the country. “On our street alone, just that one small street, three of the husbands in families were killed in carjackings or robberies,” said Antony McKechnie, an electrical engineer who a month ago moved to New Zealand. “If we had stayed and something had happened to any of our three children, we would never be able to forgive ourselves.” Rich and poor, black, white and mixed race: their complaints may differ, but the discontent is shared. Polls show a pervasive distrust of government, political parties and the police.

Hat tip, Half Sigma!

People who believe in God tend to be more helpful, honest and generous individuals, new research suggests

Scientists say that those who frequently pray and attend religious services report more charitable donations and volunteer work. However the review, published in the journal Science, does suggest that believers acting for the greater good may be doing so to enhance their own reputation among friends and acquaintances. In one experiment, volunteers who had been told that a dead student's ghost had been seen in the experiment room cheated less on a test than those who had not. In another, children who were told that a fictional character called Princess Alice was watching them were less likely to disobey their instructions. In Science, the authors wrote: "These findings are consistent with the idea that outward evidence of religious devotion may engender more trust." The evidence also suggests that trust in other members of a religious group is higher when those groups involve a greater degree of commitment, for example in stricter forms of religious belief, such as Mormonism. The authors say that the research supports the idea that in early societies religion helped to foster social cohesion by encouraging cooperation.

Years of extending loans to illegal aliens have contributed to the current economic crisis

Dave Gibson explains how boneheaded policies such as Bank of America offering credit cards to illegal aliens without Social Security numbers in Los Angeles helped cause our current economic problems.

Illegal immigrants are generating large crime numbers in Phoenix, Arizona

Illegal immigrants account for one-third of the drug convictions; 44% of forgery convictions and 20% of the felony DUI convictions in the Phoenix area, according to a study by Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas. Thomas said that illegal immigrants make up 19% of those convicted of crimes in Maricopa County and 21% of those in county jails. There are an estimated 579,000 illegal immigrants in the state, making up 9% of Arizona’s population, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Illegals accounted for 10% of sex crimes, 11% of murders and 13% of stolen cars, according to Thomas’ office, which looked at 2007 sentencing and jail statistics.

British cabinet papers, kept secret until now, reveal the deep pessimism felt by ministers over the future of Ghana as an independent state

According to the 1950s' documents, doubts were expressed about whether the country could be viable state. One politician said Ghanaians had every qualification for democratic government as they appeared to be "incompetent, cruel, divided and corrupt". Ghana was Britain's first African colony to win independence. Back in the 1950s, Britain was feeling the heat from calls to set free its African territories and ministers were in a hurry to do something about it. But even though the Gold Coast, as it then was, had been promised independence, ministers doubted that that Ghana would be a democratic and viable unitary state. Experts reported problems of corruption and hostility between the three main communities - Muslims in the north, tribal African communities in the interior and then the peoples of the better-off coastal strip. Ministers told the Colonial Secretary, Alan Lennox Boyd, that Ghana should instead be a federation. He said it was too late for that. Then, Harold Macmillan, the chancellor, startled the Cabinet by declaring harshly that "these people", as he put it, seemed to have "every qualification for democratic government. They appear to be incompetent, cruel, divided and corrupt" he said. He wished them "a happy future".

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres says South Africa has halted aid for some foreigners displaced during the xenophobic violence of May 2008

According to MSF, some 700 migrants in a camp near Pretoria have been left without security or food. "This is an attempt to push people out and is completely unacceptable," an MSF spokesman said. The authorities want to close all camps hosting the thousands of displaced in the attacks in May by 4 October 2008. "The authorities at the Acasia camp have stopped providing food and there is no longer any management in the camp," said Jonathan Whittall, programmes director for MSF. "This is once again an attempt to push people out of the camp and is completely unacceptable." The United Nations says that around 80,000 were driven from their homes during May's attacks in which 62 people were killed. Most of the people in the Acasia camp are from Somalia, Ethiopia and Burundi and MSF says many have refugee status. The violence - which caused the worst bloodshed in South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994 - began in a township north of Johannesburg before spreading to other parts of the country.

Flight of white Britons from Britain leaps to 70,000 per year

According to Government estimates, the established white population of England dropped by nearly 250,000 between 2002 and 2006. Official figures have previously indicated that about 50,000 Britons head for Australia each year and about 30,000 for New Zealand. In 2007, a record 400,000 left the country to live abroad for at least 12 months. The new estimates, which show how each ethnic group grew or diminished between 2005 and 2006, provide further evidence of so-called white flight. The white British population went down by 70,400 over the year through emigration. And the white Irish population fell by 4,600 because of emigration, bringing the total decline in the existing white population to 75,000. The figures have been calculated for every year back to 2002 - and this was the biggest decline yet. In the previous year, there had been a drop of just 42,300. In 2004, there was a fall of 74,100. Even though there were more births than deaths, the white British and Irish population still fell by almost 15,000 in 2006. The estimates were greeted with alarm by the immigration think-tank Migration Watch. Its chairman Sir Andrew Green said: 'The unavoidable conclusion is that the whole nature of our society will change very rapidly unless the Government moves from spin to serious action, which the vast majority of the public want to see.' Previous surveys by officials have shown that most of those who emigrate go to Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain or the U.S. The most popular is Australia. About 220,000 more Britons have gone to Australia than vice versa between 1996 and 2006. And 40,000 more Britons than Canadians have switched between the two countries.

Albinos in Burundi have been taking refuge after three of them were killed by gangs apparently seeking to sell body parts in neighbouring Tanzania

Four albinos have been moved to a provincial center in Ruyigi, Burundi, where police were protecting them. Authorities have arrested six people in connection with the murder of an albino teenage girl in August 2008. The attacks follow the killing of 26 Tanzanian albinos in less than a year. An investigation revealed that witchdoctors were behind the killings. They sought albino body parts for potions that they claimed could make people rich. Two of the albinos killed in Burundi - a man and a teenage girl - were reportedly found dead with their legs and arms missing. Police said the tip of the girl's tongue was also removed. Neighbors of another teenage albino girl killed in Ruyigi in August chased away her attackers, six of whom were later apprehended as they came to retrieve her body parts. They are said to have told police that they were planning to sell the body parts in Tanzania. Albinos in Burundi - estimated to number around 200 - are now living in fear for their lives.

Asian-white couples face distinct pregnancy risks

Pregnant women who are part of an Asian-white couple face an increased risk of gestational diabetes as compared with couples in which both partners are white, according to a new study from Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and the Stanford University School of Medicine. The researchers also found that Asian women whose partners are white are more likely than white women with Asian or white partners to have a cesarean delivery, as part of a broad analysis of perinatal outcomes among Asian, white and Asian-white couples. The study will be published in the October 2008 issue of American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The findings, the authors say, could benefit clinicians working with an increasingly diverse patient population. "There's great heterogeneity in our country; there are people of many different races and backgrounds," said co-author Yasser El-Sayed, MD, a Packard Children's Hospital obstetrician and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the medical school. "Gaining better insight into the risks facing specific populations provides for better counseling and better prenatal care." It's difficult to estimate the prevalence of Asian-white couples, but 14.3% of Americans reporting Asian race in the U.S. Census Bureau's 2000 survey also reported being of mixed Asian-white ancestry. Although past studies have looked at ethnic differences in perinatal outcomes, the majority of research has focused on white- African-American couples. Few studies have focused specifically on Asian-white couples, said El-Sayed, who is also associate chief of maternal-fetal medicine. To learn more about outcomes and risks in this population, the researchers looked at data from white, Asian and Asian-white couples who delivered at the Johnson Center for Pregnancy and Newborn Services at Packard Children's from 2000 through 2005. (During that time period, 5,575 white, 3,226 Asian and 868 Asian-white couples delivered babies at the hospital.) The team recorded the type of delivery - cesarean vs. vaginal - and examined perinatal outcomes including gestational diabetes, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, preterm delivery and birth weight. El-Sayed and his colleagues found, as noted in their paper, that Asian- white couples "represent a population with distinct perinatal risks that differ depending upon which parent is of Asian race." More specifically, the researchers found that white mother/Asian father couples had the lowest rate (23%) of cesarean delivery, while Asian mother/white father couples had the highest rate (33.2%). Because birth weights between these two groups were similar, the researchers say the findings suggest that the average Asian woman's pelvis may be smaller than the average white woman's and less able to accommodate babies of a certain size. (Asian couples had babies with the lowest median birth weight, so cesarean delivery was less common among those women.) It's important for clinicians to know which women may have an increased risk of cesarean delivery, so they can conduct proper counseling prior to childbirth, El-Sayed said. El-Sayed and his colleagues also found that the incidence of gestational diabetes was lowest among white couples at 1.61% and highest among Asian couples at 5.73% - and just under 4% for Asian-white couples. These findings weren't altogether surprising: past studies have shown an increased risk of diabetes among Asian couples, which researchers attribute to an underlying genetic predisposition. But the interesting finding, El-Sayed said, was that the risk for interracial couples was about the same regardless of which parent was Asian. Based on their findings, El-Sayed said clinicians should consider both maternal and paternal race when determining a patient's risk for perinatal complications. "One has to factor in as many relevant variables as possible when you counsel a patient about pregnancy," he said. "We've shown in this paper that if you have an interracial couple, depending on which parent is of which race, there may be different relative risks of certain outcomes that could inform and enhance clinical management." Noting the growing number of interracial couples in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, El-Sayed said he expects to see more outcomes research like this in the future. "These kinds of studies will become increasingly common," he said.

Black women are nearly 18 times more likely than white women to be infected with HIV

Blacks make up 12% of the overall population but accounted for 46% of those infected with HIV (510,100 people). About 35% of those with HIV were white and 18% were Hispanic, according to the CDC. Black women were nearly 18 times more likely than white women to be infected with HIV, while black men were six times more likely than white men, the CDC said. Hispanics were 2.6 times more likely than whites to be infected.

Low levels of the stress hormone cortisol have been linked to antisocial behaviour in adolescent boys

Cortisol levels in the body usually surge in stressful situations, thought to help people regulate emotions. But a Cambridge university study found this did not happen in boys with a history of severe antisocial behavior. The Biological Psychiatry study suggests some bad behavior may be a form of mental illness linked to a chemical imbalance in the brain. An increase in cortisol levels is thought to make people behave more cautiously, and help them to regulate their emotions, particularly their temper and violent impulses. The Cambridge team recruited participants for the study from schools, pupil referral units and the Youth Offending Service. Samples of saliva were collected over several days from the subjects in a non-stressful environment to measure levels of the hormone under resting conditions. The young men then took part in a stressful experiment that was designed to induce frustration. Samples of saliva were taken immediately before, during and after the experiment to track how cortisol changed during stress. While the average adolescents showed large increases in the amount of cortisol during the frustrating situation, cortisol levels actually went down in those with histories of severe antisocial behaviour. The researchers said the results suggest that antisocial behavior may be more biologically-based than previously considered, just as some individuals are more vulnerable to depression or anxiety due to their biological make-up.

The arrival of colonial cities in sub-Saharan Africa at the dawn of the 20th Century may have sparked the spread of HIV

US experts analyzed one of the earliest samples of the virus ever found, in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1959. The study, published in the journal Nature, suggests the virus may have crossed from apes to humans between 1884 and 1924. They believe newly-built cities may have allowed the virus to thrive. AIDS, the illness caused by HIV, was first reported by doctors in 1981, but the virus had been around for many decades before that. HIV is not a single virus - there are a number of different strains and subtypes of strains, some sharing the same founder event in history, in which a single human was infected. Scientists believe that these founder events may have involved eating monkeys infected with a similar virus. Research published in 2007 found the viral ancestor of a subtype of HIV responsible for most modern cases in the US and Europe in a blood sample taken in Leopoldville, the capital of Belgian Congo - now Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Now the same team, from the University of Arizona at Tucson, has found another sample containing a different subtype in a 1960 sample from a different patient in the same city. By analysing the genetic differences between the two viruses, and calculating the amount of time these differences would take to evolve, they now say that the two probably have a common ancestor dating from at least 50 years earlier. Dr Michael Worobey, who led the research, said: "Now, for the first time, we have been able to compare two relatively ancient HIV strains. That helped us to calibrate how quickly the virus evolved and make some really robust inferences about when it crossed into humans, how the epidemic grew from that time, and what factors allowed the virus to enter and become a successful human pathogen." HIV was and remains a relatively poorly transmitted virus, he said, so the key to the success of the virus was possibly the development of cities such as Leopoldville in the early 1900s. The large numbers of people living in close proximity would have allowed more opportunity for new infections. "I think the picture that has emerged here, is that changes the human population experienced may have opened to the door to the spread of HIV," he said. Professor Paul Clark, a researcher into evolutionary history at the University of Edinburgh, said that while the finding was mainly of historical interest, it might provide more clues about how the virus changed over time. He suggested that it was likely that all of the early cases of group M HIV-1 - the strain causing 19 out of 20 modern infections - happened in the Leopoldville area. He said: "We can now paint a remarkably detailed picture of the time and place of origin of HIV-1 group M viruses and their early diversification, and thus of the prehistory of the AIDS pandemic."

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has sharply criticized the forced closure of South African migrant camps

The camps, holding 1,200 foreigners driven from their homes by May 2008's xenophobic violence, are being shut around the city of Johannesburg. This is despite a ruling from the Constitutional Court to keep them open. In September, it ruled a full hearing should decide if it was legal to shut them. The provincial government in Gauteng argues it is now safe for the foreigners to return to their homes. The camps were set up following attacks in which 62 people were killed and thousands displaced. The camps that are being closed are those at Glenanda, on Rifle Range road, south of Johannesburg and Boksburg, east of the city and a third at Rand airport. According to MSF, which has been working in the camps, around 1,200 people have been forced out. "We are very worried," said Alexis Moens, project co-ordinator for MSF. "When people go back to their homes they have been attacked," he said.