A campaigner for indigenous rights in Mexico has been found dead a day after he was kidnapped

Jose Trinidad de la Cruz's body, which showed signs of torture and had four bullet wounds, was found in the western state of Michoacan. The Nahua indigenous leader, known as Don Trino, was kidnapped on his way to a meeting with other indigenous people. The region where he was abducted has seen 27 people murdered over a land dispute since 2009. Don Trino, 73, was kidnapped as he was travelling to Santa Maria de Ostula with a dozen activists from the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD). The group was heading to a meeting with Nahua people, who have reportedly been targeted by local paramilitaries after retaking 1,300 hectares (3,200 acres) of land that they say had been stolen from them by local ranchers. Activists say that 27 local people have been killed and five others have disappeared in the bloody land dispute since 2009. MPJD members were going to act as observers at a meeting organized to reach a settlement between the parties. They described how they were held up by four armed men on their way to Santa Maria, and Don Trino was separated from the rest. His body was found 24 hours later. Police said that his hands had been tied behind his back, he had been tortured and shot four times, and one of his ears had been almost completely sliced off. In a news conference, members of the MPJD denounced the killing. They said that they were also afraid for the lives of two more of their members who were kidnapped. They said that gunmen forced Eva Alarcon and Marcial Bautista off a bus in which they were travelling on heading towards Chilpancingo, in western Guerrero state. They have not been seen since. The MPJD was founded by the poet Javier Sicilia, whose son was killed earlier in 2011. Its members have been holding vigils and marches across the country in an effort to draw attention to the tens of thousands of people killed in Mexico.

Black crime in Alabama

In Alabama, African-Americans are responsible for 62% of homicide, 55% of rape, 77% of robbery, 55% of aggravated assault, and 59% of burglary. They are also 69% of TANF welfare users. Black people have used their freedom to speak ebonics, organize flash mobs, collect welfare checks, sell crack on street corners, spread infectious diseases, impregnate teenagers, and murder and assault each other while contributing virtually nothing of value to the progress of the human species. If white people disappeared from America, blacks would find themselves living in a country like Liberia where 85% of the population lives below the poverty line in one of the poorest countries in the world. The history of post-colonial Africa has shown the ability of black people to take over prosperous countries like Ghana, Congo, and Rhodesia and utterly destroy them. Similarly, America’s great cities like Birmingham and Detroit have also been destroyed by African-Americans.

Israel: Interior minister dismisses notion that some Africans are asylum seekers or refugees, says they are economic migrants

Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai vowed to exert every effort to see that the last of the infiltrators return to their countries, referring to the some 50,000 African economic migrants, asylum seekers and refugees currently in Israel. Yishai dismissed the notion that Sudanese, Eritreans and other Africans in Israel have any standing to seek political asylum. "These are not refugees, these are economic migrants who want to come to Israel for work," he said. Their presence is an existential threat to the State of Israel, he asserted, vowing to defend the Jewish majority. The interior minister added, "Each and every one of them will return to their countries." The statements come as the government is advancing the construction of a detention center in the south to house asylum seekers and infiltrators and construction of a border fence along the Egyptian border is being accelerated. Netanyahu said of the infiltrator problem, "Israel is a small country. We cannot allow ourselves to be flooded by illegal work infiltrators. This threatens our society, our economy and our security. Therefore, we must expedite our dealing with the problem."

Too many Somalians have become a burden on the British taxpayer, thanks to their welfare dependency

Over 80% of them live in taxpayer-funded homes. Moreover Somali gangs, most of them peddling drugs, have helped to create a climate of fear in parts of British cities through their enthusiasm for violence and contempt for the law. As one Somali youth from the notorious Woolwich Boys says, “We’ve come over here with one thing on our mind – money. We don’t care how we get it. The Government doesn’t stand a chance.” Tremendous double standards are at work over race crime. Racial killings of whites are frequently downplayed or forgotten in Britain. The name of Kriss Donald is almost unknown in 2011, yet the circumstances of his death could hardly have been more horrific. In March 2004, while walking through Glasgow, the 15-year-old Scottish schoolboy was kidnapped by a Pakistani gang, dragged to open land, tortured, stabbed 13 times and set on fire while he was still alive. Fortunately the Muslim gang was caught and convicted, but this monstrous crime provoked no great outpouring of moral anguish. Peter Fahy, one of Britain’s leading chief constables, once said that political correctness means it is harder to get the media interested when the victims are young white men.

An unlicensed black cosmetologist operating out of a North Carolina Motel 6 has been arrested after having injected a fake butt implant solution into an exotic dancer's rear

Lauretta Cheek, 42, was already on probation because she had been given similar treatments to 3 women in 2008 who ended up having kidney failure as a result. This time, the African-American was arrested for injecting the dancer's butt with a disfiguring potion. Cheek was released on a written promise to appear in court. She did not have a listed telephone and Guilford County Sheriff's Detective Craig Cotten did not know if she had an attorney. The latest victim was an exotic dancer from Charlotte who wanted to augment her assets. She met Cheek in a hotel room for the injection in 2010. Cheek's price was about $500, but the unknown substance sent the victim to hospital emergency rooms twice. It appears that the substance that was injected into her basically burned its way back out.

In a stunning blow to Mayor Bloomberg's legacy on education, new national exam results show that New York City's math and reading scores have flatlined since 2009

The Bloomberg administration has staked its legacy on closing the gap in achievement between minority and white students, but the national exam results show that the gap has not narrowed significantly between white and Hispanic students or white and black students since he instituted reforms. The city's white students scored better than black and Hispanic students by margins ranging from 22 points to 31 points.

Washington D.C. public schools have the largest achievement gap between black and white students among the nation’s major urban school systems

The District also has the widest achievement gap between white and Hispanic students, a federal study has found, compared with results from other large systems and the national average. The study is based on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, federal reading and math exams taken this year by fourth- and eighth-graders across the country. The tests are the only continuing and nationally representative assessment of what students know. In reading and math, the gaps in scores between black and white students were widest in D.C. schools compared with those in 20 other urban systems, including New York, Los Angeles and Miami. On the fourth-grade math test, for example, black students in the District scored an average of 212 points out of a possible 500, and their white classmates averaged 272. That 60-point difference is more than twice the national achievement gap for that test. The achievement gap has been a stubborn problem and of growing concern among educators, policymakers and civic leaders. With enactment of the No Child Left Behind law in 2002, the federal government made closing the gap a priority and a reason for increased accountability in public education. Many strategies have been deployed by schools across the country to attack the gap, but few have resulted in substantial progress. All the cities analyzed for racial and ethnic performance gaps found differences between whites and blacks and between whites and Hispanics. There are 46,191 students in the District’s public schools, with about 79% African American, 12% Hispanic, 7% white and 2% self-declared “other.”

A New Jersey man who was charged in the vandalism of several Jewish-owned shops in nearby Highland Park is apparently Jewish

Richard M. Green, 52, has been charged with numerous counts of bias intimidation and criminal mischief for smashing the windows of five Jewish-owned businesses. The vandalism took place at the end of November and Green was arrested on November 30, 2011. Green’s face was familiar to owners of Jewish establishments and institutions. Green also has been identified by authorities as the person who accosted a kipah-wearing Rutgers University student in a Dunkin Donuts on November 30, 2011. Andrew Getraer, the Rutgers Hillel's executive director, said that Green was Jewish and known to be mentally ill and has been treated for his mental illness. “We’ve met this individual,” Rabbi Yosef Carlebach, executive director of the Chabad House Lubavitch of Central and Southern New Jersey, said. “We’ve had some recent experience with him. It’s really a very sad story of someone who appears to be mentally deranged. We communicated that to law enforcement. We left it to the police to do their work. We told anyone who called that we contacted law enforcement and have a handle on it.” I very much doubt that the rabbi would be so charitable if the suspect were a gentile regardless of his mental status.

A prominent Zionist rabbi is facing trial in Jerusalem's Magistrate's Court on charges of forcible sexual assault

Moredachai Elon, known as "Moti", has been accused of trying to forcibly have sexual relations with two students who had sought his emotional and pastoral support. The indictment cites two cases of students who claim sexual assault by the rabbi. The first involves a 17-year-old male student who says that Elon hugged, stroked and kissed him on the neck under the pretext of comforting him after the death of someone close to him. The indictment then states that Elon sought the student out and invited him to his home and there he subjected him to similar unwanted sexual acts. The second case involves another 17-year-old male who had sought Elon out during a time of personal distress. The young man had a more sexually explicit encounter with the rabbi several months later. The rabbi, who appeared in court with his wife and seven of his children, was until recently considered one of the spiritual leaders of religious Zionism in Israel. Recently, former Israeli President Moshe Katsav began a seven-year jail term for rape and sexual assault.

Harvard University has dismissed an Indian Hindu professor who wrote a controversial article that appeared to disparage Muslims

In a July 2011 op-ed piece for an English-language Indian publication, Subramanian Swamy implied that the only Muslims in India who should be allowed to vote are those that acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus. He also recommended demolishing hundreds of mosques in India and banning religious conversions.

White woman confronts black rapist

The white victim of a brutal sexual assault confronted her black attacker in court and told him: "I am not the victim, I'm the victor". Heidi Damon waived her right to anonymity to be allowed to be filmed in court unleashing her anger as her attacker African-American Javon Cooper was jailed for 15 years after attempting to kill and rape her. The 40 year old told the teen: "I just want to tell you — and I want you to look at me when I address you — I woke up ecstatic today, happier than ever. You know why? Because I'm alive. I'm alive, alive, alive. You have not broken my spirit. You have not changed my belief in God. If anything, you've strengthened both. I am not a victim. I am the victor, the stronger and the winner," Damon said defiantly in court. As Damon spoke, 18 year old Cooper shifted uncomfortably and tried to avert his gaze from his victim. Cooper had pleaded guilty to attempted murder and attempted sexual battery. He was 16 years old when pounced on Damon in a multi storey car park in Ybor City, Florida. Cooper choked Damon until she blacked out, and stripped her off her pants and underwear. Such was the force of the strangling Damon’s eyes turned red and she was covered in bruises. Damon was out of work for a year and still suffers from chronic headaches. Cooper was jailed for 15 years and ten years probation. The judge told him that he would have liked to lock him up for life.

A 33-year-old black mother has been charged with making written death threats to a middle school student on Facebook

Orange County deputies said that Rayshell Lavone Smith sent an eighth-grader messages saying that she was going to the school with a gun to "off you". According to an investigative report, Smith's daughter argued with another student at Freedom Middle School about someone who brought a knife to school. The fight continued for a few days until Smith sent the student a message on November 23, 2011 saying that she would put a gun in the student's mouth. She wrote: "So you the [expletive] messing with my girls. I will see you when school gets in." The student told a school officer. Smith apologized, but the student said that she was still afraid. Deputies worked with Orange County school's safety manager Jason Loomis to secure the campus to keep Smith from coming on the grounds. The affidavit said that Smith told police she only wrote the message because people had been stirring trouble with her daughter and she was tired of it. The 33-year-old African-American is a convicted felon who has spent time in prison for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

New Orleans: The homicide rate was 10 times the national average in 2010, when there were 51 murders per 100,000 residents

Compare that to seven per 100,000 in New York and 23 in Oakland. From September 2010 to February 2011, a student attending John McDonogh high school in New Orleans was more likely to be killed than a soldier in Afghanistan. By late November, the city had seen 175 homicides in 2011 — the same as the total number for all of 2010 — and there have been eight more since then. Though New Orleans has long been known for its violence, the homicide rate has been rising since 2000 and city officials are struggling to stem it. The majority of both killers and victims are young black men, most of whom have had prior police contact, and less than a quarter of whom have a steady job.

The income gap between black people and white people is growing

The average white person earned 1.7 times more than the average black person in 2010, the widest ratio since the 1990s. Since 2000, the share of black households ranking among the poorest of the poor — meaning making $15,000 or less per year — has jumped from 20% to 26%. The black-white divide looks particularly stark in cities such as Chicago and Detroit, where mainly low-skilled minorities remain.

Obama’s uphill battle to re-election is getting steeper

A report released by the centrist think-tank Third Way showed that more than 825,000 voters in eight key battleground states have fled the Democratic Party since Obama won election in 2008. “The numbers show that Democrats’ path to victory just got harder,” said Lanae Erickson, the report’s co-author. “We are seeing both an increase in independents and a decrease in Democrats and that means the coalition they have to assemble is going to rely even more on independents in 2012 than it did in 2008.” Amid frustrating partisan gridlock and unprecedentedly low party-approval ratings, the number of voters registering under a major party is falling fast, but it is also falling disproportionately. In eight states that will be must-wins in 2012 - Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina and Pennsylvania - Democrats lost 5.4% of their registered voters while Republicans lost 3.1%. The number of independent voters in those states jumped 3.4%. “People are frustrated and the way you tune out in American politics is that is you drop the label of the two parties,” said Steven Jarding, a Harvard public policy professor and Democratic campaign strategist. “The danger for Obama in this is he is not only going to have to capture them but capture more of them because there are less Democratic voters.” There will likely be more independent voters in the upcoming election than there has been in nearly 50 years, according to the report. Obama snagged 52% of unaffiliated voters in 2008, but those independents flocked to Republicans in the 2010 midterms with 56% opting for a GOP candidate. Between 2008 and 2010, there was a 27-point shift in which party independents chose.

Crystal Mangum, the black stripper who falsely accused white members of the Duke University lacrosse team of sexually assaulting her in 2006, is competent to stand trial on murder charges in the death of her boyfriend, a Durham judge has ruled

The ruling is the latest troubling news for Mangum, 33, in the wake of her role at the center of the Duke lacrosse scandal. Mangum, an African American, accused three white lacrosse players at the prestigious private university of raping her at a house party. But Mangum's story did not hold up under scrutiny, and by April 2007, Roy Cooper, the state attorney general, declared the young men innocent, saying that they had been caught up in a tragic rush to accuse in a case that quickly took on racial overtones. Prosecutor Mike Nifong was eventually disbarred for his role in the case. Mangum was accused in February 2010 of slashing the vehicle tires of her then-boyfriend Milton Walker, smashing the windshield with a vacuum cleaner, and setting fire to a pile of his clothes in a bathtub while the police and her three children were in her apartment. A felony arson charge was dismissed, but Mangum was sentenced to time served - totaling 88 days in jail - for misdemeanor convictions for child abuse, resisting police and vandalism. Police now accuse Mangum of fatally stabbing her boyfriend Reginald Daye during an argument in April 2011. Mangum was deemed competent to stand trial after a mental evaluation at a local hospital.

Researchers have found that 19 countries in sub-Saharan Africa all had IQs in the range of 59 to 73

China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore all had IQs in the range of 105 to 108 while 29 European countries all had IQs in the range of 92 to 102.

Indians don't like daughters

A doctor found that fully 89% of Indian immigrant women carrying girls opted for an abortion, and nearly half had previously aborted girls. Many Indian immigrant women, when it was learned that they were carrying girls, became the victims of family violence. Some — in an effort to make them miscarry — had been slapped and shoved around by angry husbands and in-laws, or even kicked in the stomach. Others were denied food, water, and rest in order to coerce them into aborting their unwanted girl babies. It is not just Indians who like aborting their offspring. Columbia University economists Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund also found clear evidence of sex-selective abortions in what they called “son-biased sex ratios,” that is, a higher ratio of boys to girls than would occur in nature. Looking at the sex ratio at birth among U.S.-born children of Chinese, Korean, and Asian-Indian parents, they found that first-borns showed normal sex ratios at birth. But if the first child was a girl, the sex ratio jumped to 117, and if the first two children were girls, then the sex ratio jumped to 151. That is to say, for every 151 boys, there were only 100 hundred surviving girls. The rest had been eliminated. Abortion is also popular with African-Americans. The abortion rate among blacks is about five times higher than the American average. Blacks are only 12% of the population but have 37% of the abortions.

Philadelphia prosecutors have dropped their pursuit of the death penalty for Mumia Abu-Jamal, the black man who was convicted of shooting a police officer three decades ago

He will instead serve a life sentence in prison, prosecutors have said. "The decision to end this fight was not an easy one to make," said District Attorney Seth Williams. "There has never been a doubt in my mind that Mumia Abu-Jamal shot and killed Officer Faulkner, and I believe the appropriate sentence was handed down in 1982." Abu-Jamal was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 killing of Daniel Faulkner. Witnesses testified that Abu-Jamal shot Faulkner in the back and head after the officer pulled over Abu-Jamal's brother in a late-night traffic stop. Once known as Wesley Cook, Abu-Jamal was wounded in the encounter and later confessed to the killing. He's been on death row at a state prison in southwest Pennsylvania, where he's remained an outspoken activist from behind bars - claiming there were procedural errors during his capital sentencing, and that too few blacks were on the jury. The case has attracted international attention, amid charges of prosecutorial misconduct. Abu-Jamal, a onetime radio reporter and cabdriver, has been a divisive figure, with many prominent supporters arguing that racism pervaded his trial. Others counter that Abu-Jamal is using his race to try to escape responsibility for his actions. They point out that he has provoked community unrest for years with his writings and advocacy. In April 2011, Abu-Jamal was granted a new sentencing hearing by a federal appeals court, sparking a threat by the prosecutor to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. In its 32-page decision, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals accepted defense arguments that the jury instructions at Abu-Jamal's 1982 murder trial were unclear. The court's decision did not grant Abu-Jamal a new trial; his conviction on the murder charge stands. A 2008 appeals court ruling also had nullified Abu-Jamal's death sentence and granted him a new sentencing hearing. But the Supreme Court tossed out that ruling and ordered the appeals court to revisit the issue. The high court in 2010 denied Abu-Jamal's separate petition for a new trial.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will soon present to the Israeli government a plan to address the influx of illegal migrants from Africa

The plan will be allocated approximately NIS 630 million and will be funded by cutting 2% from every government office's budget. According to the proposal, NIS 280 million will be invested in completing the fence on the Egyptian border and adding another segment near Eilat. In recent years, NIS 1.5 billion were invested in the fence, and 70 kilometers of it have already been built. Officials at the prime minister's office said that the entire fence – which will stretch for 240 kilometers – will be completed in less than a year. The plan will also include enlarging the Saharonim detention center in Ketziot, which currently has the capacity to hold 2,000 detainees. After the construction is complete, it will be able to hold 5,000 detainees. The prime minister's office said that the detention center will allow holding illegal infiltrators for long periods of time in accordance with the law. In addition, the prime minister's office said that guidelines for deporting illegal immigrant will be established. Another step will be amending legislation in order to increase fines imposed on employers of illegal immigrants, and in some cases even to close their businesses down. Netanyahu said that "Israel is a small country, we can't afford a flood of illegal job-seekers. It is a threat to our society, our economy and our security."