How Israel deals with Muslims

Israeli police officers razed a mosque they said was built illegally in the southern city of Rahat as residents hurled rocks at them. Hundreds of police officers accompanied by land authority officials arrived in the city. They had bulldozers and trucks, and said they were carrying out a court order, according to Mayor Faiz Abu-Sahaban. The mayor said residents built the mosque before they had permits. The mayor said resolving the issue through dialogue was better than razing the mosque. Residents protested the demolition and threw stones at the police, who used rubber bullets to disperse them, he said. Residents started rebuilding the mosque, he said, and declared a strike in protest of the demolition. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the mosque was razed to honor a July 2010 court ruling. Rosenfeld said five residents were arrested. Rahat is home to more than 50,000 Bedouins and is just north of the southern city of Beer Sheva. The Bedouins are an Arab Muslim minority and are citizens of Israel. They have lived in the Negev desert for centuries leading a Nomadic lifestyle. Half of them live in unrecognized villages with no basic rights or municipal services. The other half who live in permanent towns are socially and economically disadvantaged with the lowest income in the country.

18 people have been killed in separate shootings throughout Mexico's Ciudad Juarez

In one incident, a family of seven was slaughtered while they were outside their home in the southeastern part of the city, Chihuahua State Attorney General's Office spokesman Carlos Gonzalez said. Local newspaper El Diario de Juarez reported that five of the bodies were found inside a car and another two bodies were found lying in the street. In another gruesome incident, an unidentified dismembered body was found wrapped in a blanket inside a bag, Gonzalez said. Figures provided by the Chihuahua Attorney General's office and corroborated by Gonzalez showed that 352 people were killed in the month of October 2010, making it the bloodiest month in Juarez since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched his war on organized crime four years ago. Local estimates put Juarez's death toll at more than 2,600 so far in 2010. In 2009, at least 2,575 people were killed in the city.

Race and out of wedlock births

The black community’s 72% rate eclipses that of most other groups: 17% of Asians, 29% of whites, 53% of Hispanics and 66% of Native Americans were born to unwed mothers in 2008, the most recent year for which government figures are available. The rate for the overall U.S. population was 41%. In 1965, blacks had a 24% illegitimacy rate while the white rate was 4%.

Jewish activist wishes to see an end to whites in America

Kevin MacDonald writes about anti-white activist Tim Wise.

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Of the 5% of the general population who donate blood, only 1 out of 10 are African American or Hispanic

Blood that closely matches a patient’s is less likely to be rejected by the patient and can mean fewer complications after a transfusion. Genetically-similar blood is superior for people who need repeated blood transfusions, for conditions such as sickle cell anemia which tends to affect people of African ancestry.

Black people are six times more likely to be arrested than white people for drug offenses and 11 times more likely to be imprisoned in Britain

In the United States, black people are three times more likely than white people to be arrested and 10 times more likely to be jailed for drugs offenses. Fewer than two in 1,000 white people were arrested for drug offenses in 2007 to 2008, compared with more than 10 in 1,000 black people. In terms of imprisonment, the rates varied from 0.1 in 1,000 white people to 1.1 in 1,000 black people, meaning that black people in England and Wales are 6.1 times more likely to be arrested and 11.4 times more likely to be jailed. for drug offenses than white people. Black people were also 9.2 times more likely to be stopped and searched for drug offenses. Around a quarter of the people serving sentences for drug offenses were of African or Caribbean origin, although only 2.2% of the British population aged over 10 are categorized as belonging to that ethnic group. The research found that South Asian people were two times more likely to be arrested and 3.1 times more likely to be imprisoned than white people for drug offenses.

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Do humans evolve faster in non-tropical regions?

Peter Frost points out that humans who spread out of the tropical zone and into temperate and arctic environments have tended to evolve more than those who remained within the tropical zone such as Australian Aborigines, Papua-New Guineans, and Andaman Islanders.

Mexican police have found a mass grave near the Pacific resort of Acapulco, holding what they believe to be victims of the country's drug war

So far 18 bodies have been recovered but officers were due to conduct further searches of the site. Police have so far not confirmed the identities of the dead, fueling speculation they may be from a group of 20 men abducted recently. The region is the scene of a violent turf war between rival drug cartels. Police officers and troops went to examine a site just outside Acapulco, following an anonymous telephone call alerting them to two dumped bodies. There they discovered two murdered men with a message beside them, saying: "The people they killed are buried here." Officers began digging and recovering bodies from the mass grave. Authorities said they could not confirm that the victims in the grave were among 20 men from the neighboring state of Michoacan who were kidnapped by gunmen on 30 September 2010 while visiting Acapulco. In a grisly development, a video had earlier appeared on YouTube showing two men, with their hands apparently tied behind their backs, saying they killed what they called the "20 michoacanos". They tell an unseen questioner they were ordered to kill them in a revenge attack against La Familia Michoacana, a violent drug cartel active on Mexico's Pacific coast. The two men discovered lying by the mass grave were wearing the same clothes as the men in the video. A police spokesman said DNA tests would be needed to confirm the identities of the victims found in the grave. Mass killings and the discovery of mass graves have become more frequent recently, while the use of gruesome video messages has also become more common. More than 28,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006 when President Felipe Caldeorn began deploying troops to take on the traffickers.

Republicans won whites in the national House vote by a 22-percentage point margin (60% to 38%) according to exit polls

In 2006, Republicans won whites by a mere 4 points. Whites shifted at three-fold the rate of Hispanics between the two midterms, while the black vote remained steady. Democrats did even worse than in 1994, when Republicans won whites by 16 points (58% to 42%) and with them, a landslide. Democrats' problems with whites reflect whites' problems with Obama. Whites' support for Democrats in 2010 roughly matches the president's standing prior to the September 2008 crash. Before the crash, Obama polled like earlier Democratic nominees with whites. After the crash, Obama earned the support of more white men than any other Democrat since 1976. He also improved with white women, winning a traditional share for Democrats. Those gains are gone. Obama's approval rating with whites has declined from the low 60s to the high 30s. Only 35% of white men voted for Democrats compared to 40% of white women. That marks a 9-point Democratic loss with both blocs since 2006. Democrats performed especially poorly with white women compared to past House elections - 6 points worse than in 1994. In post-war congressional elections, 2010 signifies Democrats' worst showing with white women and the floor of Democrats' standing with white men. Among whites, for the first time in post-war congressional elections, Republicans hit the 60-point level of support and Democrats fell below the 40-point mark.

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Black minister says that Jesus had HIV

A South African pastor has provoked outrage after beginning a recent sermon with the claim that Jesus Christ was HIV-positive. Xola Skosana stunned his congregation in Cape Town's Khayelitsha township with the bold statement, news of which then quickly spread across the country. And Christians have reacted angrily, claiming it portrays Jesus as sexually promiscuous. Pastor Skosana, whose non-denominational Hope for Life Ministry is part of a growing charismatic movement in South Africa, insists his message is more about giving hope than anything else. By making the claim, he hopes to remove the stigma attached to HIV suffers in his country. More than 5.7million people live with the virus in South Africa - more than in any other country. Pastor Skosana himself lost two sisters to AIDS.

In many parts of India, people are more likely to have access to a cellphone than to a toilet

The Mumbai slum of Rafiq Nagar has no clean water for its shacks made of ripped tarp and bamboo. No garbage pickup. No power except from haphazard cables strung overhead illegally. And not a single toilet or latrine for its 10,000 people. Yet nearly every destitute family in the slum has a cellphone. Some have three. India is a country buoyed by a vibrant business world of call centers and software developers, but hamstrung by a bloated, corrupt government that has failed to deliver the barest of services. Its estimated growth rate of 8.5% a year is among the highest in the world, but its roads are crumbling. It offers cheap, world-class medical care to Western tourists at private hospitals, yet has some of the worst child-mortality and maternal death rates outside sub-Saharan Africa. While tens of millions have benefited from India's rise, many more remain mired in some of the worst poverty in the world. In fact, up to 800 million Indians live on less than $2 a day while only 366 million Indians have access to a private toilet or latrine. In Annabhau Sathe Nagar, a raised latrine of corrugated tin empties into a river of sewage that children splash in and adults wade across. The slum in east Mumbai has about 50,000 residents and a single toilet building, with 10 pay toilets for men and eight for women, two of which are broken.

Mixed race actress dies from leukemia

Shannon Tavarez, the 11-year-old who starred on Broadway in "The Lion King" and whose battle with leukemia won the hearts of many, including Alicia Keys, Rihanna and 50 Cent, has died. Shannon died of acute myelogenous leukemia, a common type of leukemia among adults, but rare among children. Her doctor, Dr. Larry Wolfe, said that a perfect bone marrow match for Shannon could not be found. The search for a match was especially daunting because Shannon's mother is African-American and her father is Hispanic, from the Dominican Republic. For bone marrow transplants, minorities and those of mixed ancestry have a more difficult time finding good matches because there aren't as many people from those groups signed up as potential donors. Right now, 83% of African-American patients who need marrow transplants don't find matches after six months of searching, according to the National Marrow Donor Program, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping patients receive transplants.

Race and hepatitis C

Hepatitis C patients who receive a liver from a white donor have significantly more aggressive recurrent hepatitis than those who receive a liver from a black donor, researchers have found. This is especially true for black patients who receive a liver from a white donor. Researchers looked at 165 hepatitis C patients who received a liver transplant at the hospital between 2000 and 2006. The patients were given a recurrent hepatitis C virus (HCV) score between 1 and 3. The average recurrent HCV score for patients for each donor/recipient race combination was:

White donor/white recipient: 1.54
White donor/black recipient: 1.89
Black donor/white recipient: 1.18
Black donor/black recipient: 1.23

Plague may have originated in China

The Black Death had its origins in China more than 2,600 years ago and a Chinese admiral, who may have inspired the tales of Sinbad the Sailor, helped spread the disease to Africa. An international team of scientists studied 17 strains of Yersinia Pestis, the bacterium that causes the plague, from sites around the world. They then used their data to draw up a common family tree, showing how the different strains had mutated, over time, from a common root. The tree shows a branch of the disease splitting off about 728 years ago, around the time the Black Death struck. The Black Death was the middle of three great waves of plague. The first strain appeared in the sixth century during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian. That plague is thought by historians to have peaked in the 14th century and killed up to a third of the population of Europe. The third wave of plague began in China in the late 19th century, spreading along shipping lines from Hong Kong and hitting San Francisco in 1900. All three waves have the same common ancestor and bubonic plague may have been carried to South East Asia, India and East Africa by rats aboard the ships of Zheng He in the 15th century, the Chinese version of Captain Cook who is thought to be the inspiration for Sinbad the Sailor.

Blacks bare a large proportion of the burden of hepatitis C in the United States compared with Caucasians and the overall general population

According to data compiled from 1999 to 2002, one in seven African American men between the ages of 50 and 59 in the United States is living with hepatitis C. Not only do blacks have a greater prevalence of hepatitis C than whites but also a historically lower cure rate for the disease.

About four-in-five of the nation’s estimated 11.1 million illegal immigrants are of Hispanic origin

About 82% of the native born and 90% of the foreign born Latinos say they support giving citizenship to illegal immigrants.

Ovadia Yosef forbids selling land to gentiles

During a Halahic lesson at his house in Jerusalem, Shas Spiritual Leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef said that it is forbidden to sell a house or land in Israel to a non-Jew. Rabbi Yosef said that it is still forbidden to sell a house to a non-Jew even if he offers a great sum of money.

Circumcision and South African prisoners

The authorities in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province say they have been "overwhelmed" by the number of prisoners wanting to be circumcised to help combat the spread of HIV. Some studies suggest being circumcised can help men halve their chances of contracting the HIV/AIDS virus. KwaZulu-Natal has one of the highest HIV infection rates in South Africa. More than 5.7 million people in South Africa live with the HIV virus - more than in any other country. The Zulu king, Goodwill Zwelithini, recently lifted a traditional ban on circumcision, in a bid to fight HIV. It had been prohibited by King Shaka in the 19th Century because he said it robbed him of young warriors for months at a time.

At least 9 Mexican police officers have been shot and killed in an ambush on their convoy in western Jalisco state

Recently, 5 women in Ciudad Juarez were killed when buses taking them home from work were ambushed by gunmen. In Mexico City, 6 youths were shot dead in what police say may have been a gang-related feud. Mexico is suffering a wave of violence, mostly linked to the drugs trade. The 20 officers in the convoy in Jalisco were on patrol when they were attacked by gunmen in at least 10 sport utility vehicles, said a police statement. Nine officers were killed, while a 10th is still missing. Separately, at least 5 people were injured in grenade attacks in a suburb of Guadelajara, the state capital of Jalisco. Two of those wounded were toddlers and a third was a 17-year-old girl. The killings in Mexico City may have been drug-related, said Miguel Angel Mancera of the attorney-general's office, but there had also been disputes between local car-jacking gangs. The Tepito district, just north of Mexico City's historic center, is a poor neighborhood with a high crime rate. The killings have raised concerns that the drug-related violence raging in the northern border states and some other regions of Mexico is coming to the capital. The latest killings in Ciudad Juarez, a border city at the heart of the drugs conflict, do not appear to be drug-related. Gunmen opened fire indiscriminately on 3 buses carrying female factory workers back from a shift at a plant making car parts. At least 14 others were wounded in the attack, with some in a critical condition. Some 28,000 people have died in drugs-related violence in Mexico since 2006. More than 7,000 people have died in the violence in 2010 - making it the bloodiest year since President Felipe Calderon dispatched some 50,000 troops to take on the drug cartels.

Harvard Law School professor panned Sotomayor

Barack Obama's legal mentor privately urged him not to appoint Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court in 2009, criticizing her intellect and warning that her style could "simply add to the firepower" of the court's conservative wing. Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor and currently a senior official in the Justice Department, made the critique of Sotomayor in a confidential May 4, 2009 letter shortly after Justice David Souter announced his plan to retire. Tribe said Sotomayor was "not nearly as smart as she seems to think she is, and her reputation for being something of a bully could well make her liberal impulses backfire."