A severe HIV epidemic rages on around the world and in sub-Saharan Africa in particular

Globally, more than 34 million people are infected with HIV; in sub-Saharan Africa alone, 3 million new infections occur annually. In South Africa, 17% of the population is infected with HIV.

For years Muhammad has been racing up the chart of Britain’s most popular baby names – and now he has been joined by his sisters Nur and Maryam

The two girls’ names have been among the most popular of 2014, according to website BabyCentre. The data shows a surge in Arabic names in Britain in 2014, with Omar, Ali and Ibrahim all entering the boys’ top 100 for the first time. For girls, Maryam has shot up 59 places to number 35, while Nur is a new entry in the girls’ top 100, jumping straight to number 29. And Muhammad has risen an astonishing 27 places compared to 2013 to claim the number-one spot for boys. The Royal relegation continued with George falling a further five places. The name slipped out of the top ten to number 13 shortly after the future king’s birth in 2013. Other royal names – such as Harry and William – also continued to fall in popularity in 2014.

HIV in New York City: People newly diagnosed with HIV in 2013 were predominantly male, black or Hispanic, young gay men or people living in high-poverty areas

HIV diagnosis rates were strikingly high among black and Hispanic males and females relative to other racial/ethnic groups. The World Health Organization and the United Nations first declared December 1st World AIDS Day in 1988. According to the organization, 39 million people have died from the disease worldwide. In 2013, AIDS claimed 1.5 million lives. According to the Florida Department of Health, 1 in 6 HIV-infected adults aren't aware of their status and each year more than 50,000 people in the United States become infected with HIV, with over 4,000 cases in Florida. More than 1.1 million people are living with HIV in the United States, 106,000 in Florida. HIV is the second-leading cause of death among black women and the fifth-leading cause of death among Hispanic women. Men account for 70% of people living with HIV/AIDS in Florida.

Why are so many Indian crooks called Patel?

Thomas O. Meehan looks at the criminal activities of Indian immigrants.

Black football player Mario Balotelli could be facing a Football Association investigation over posts on social media which provoked claims of racism and anti-semitism

The Liverpool striker reposted an image from the computer game 'Super Mario' on his Instagram page which included the comment "jumps like a black man and grabs coins like a Jew". Former FA executive and current chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council Simon Johnson said that Balotelli should face action. "We abhor all forms of racism, wherever it is found," Johnson said. "We call upon the FA to investigate this offensive social media post and to take action if appropriate if we are to succeed in kicking racism out of football." Under the FA's social media guidelines, the minimum ban for race-related breaches of rules is five games.

Warfare not only hastened human technological progress and vast social and political changes, but may have greatly contributed to the evolutionary emergence of humans' high intelligence and ability to work together toward common goals, according to a new study from the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS)

How humans evolved high intelligence, required for complex collaborative activities, despite the various costs of having a big brain has long puzzled evolutionary biologists. While the human brain represents only about two percent of the body's weight, it uses about 20% of the energy consumed. Other costs of having a large brain include a need for extended parental care due to a long growth period, difficulties giving birth to larger-headed babies, and some mental illnesses associated with brain complexity. So how did the human brain evolve to become so large and complex? Another long-running question is how did humans evolve strong innate preferences for cooperative behavior, as cooperative behavior is vulnerable to exploitation by cheaters and "free-riders." A free-rider doesn't contribute or cooperate and thereby undermines the effectiveness of the group's collaborative effort, something scientists call "the collective action problem." Thus, collaborative behavior is expected to be rare, and indeed, in animals it is typically limited to close relatives. Humans, however, are a unique species where collaboration is widespread and not limited to relatives. In the new study, lead author Sergey Gavrilets, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and mathematics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and NIMBioS associate director for scientific activities, developed a mathematical model that offers answers to both evolutionary puzzles. The model shows that intelligence and cooperative behavior can co-evolve to solve the problem of collective action in groups and to overcome the costs of having a large brain. The research points to the types of collective actions that are most effective at hastening collaboration. According to the model, collaborative ability evolves easiest if there is direct conflict or warfare between groups, what Gavrilets calls "us vs. them" activities. In contrast, collective activities, such as defending against predators or hunting for food, which Gavrilets calls "us vs. nature" activities, are much less likely to result in a significant increase in collaborative abilities. The study also predicts that if high collaborative ability cannot evolve, perhaps for example because the costs of having a big brain are too high, the species will harbor a small proportion of individuals with a genetic predisposition to perform individually-costly but group-beneficial acts. In addition, the model challenges influential theories on when large-game hunting and within-group coalitions first appeared in humans. Some scientists say that within-group coalitions and collaborative hunting came first and then subsequently created conditions for the evolution of collaboration in between-group conflicts. Yet, Gavrilets' model shows the opposite: that collaboration in between-group fighting preceded both within-group coalitions and collaborative hunting. "Our ability to effectively collaborate with others is largely responsible for what our species came to be. The big question is how this ability first evolved when there are large metabolic and physiological costs related to human brain size and when collaboration can be easily undermined by free riders. The model offers an answer which emphasizes the role of between-group conflicts in shaping unique human features," Gavrilets said.

Experts say that 6.4 million of South Africa’s 50 million people are HIV positive

In South Africa, females between the ages of 15 and 24 are four times more likely to contract HIV than their male counterparts. HIV prevalence in young women is rising at a faster rate than in young men. The infection rate among females 15 to 19 is 5.6%. The gap grows even wider in the 20 to 24 age category. Studies show that women in this group become HIV positive five years earlier than their male counterparts. Among people age 20 to 24, the infection rate is 5.1% among males and 17.4% among females. About one quarter of all new infections are in young women between the ages of 15 and 24, with the women being infected by older men in exchange for gifts and clothing, because older men have a higher accumulated risk of HIV. In South Africa, girls as young as 12 are allowed to have sex, use contraceptives and abort unwanted pregnancies without the consent of their parents which may be a factor in the high rate of HIV infection among young women.

Bill Cosby's long relationship with his beloved Temple University has come to an end, another effect of the scandal engulfing the once adored television star and comedian

Cosby has resigned from Temple's board of trustees, a position he held for 32 years. At least 15 women have spoken publicly accusing the comedian of sexual misconduct, and many of the women say that he drugged them before he raped them. Some of the attacks took place decades ago. "I have always been proud of my association with Temple University," Cosby said in a statement released by the university. "I have always wanted to do what would be in the best interests of the university and its students. As a result, I have tendered my resignation from the Temple University Board of Trustees." "The Board of Trustees accepts Dr. Cosby's resignation from the board and thanks him for his service to the university," was the university's response. The board of trustees had been under pressure from alumni and other members of the Temple community to cut ties. A change.org petition demanding the university end its relationship with Cosby has more than 1,000 signatures. One of Cosby's accusers worked at Temple. In a report to police in her home province of Ontario, Canada, in January 2005, Andrea Constand said that in January 2004, when she was a 31-year-old staffer for the Temple women's basketball team, she was at the comedian's Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, home when Cosby provided her medication that made her dizzy. She told police that she later woke up to find her bra undone and her clothes in disarray. Though no charges were filed, Cosby settled a civil suit with Constand that alleged 13 Jane Does had similar stories. Janice Dickinson, a former supermodel, says that Cosby assaulted her in 1982 after the two had dinner in Lake Tahoe. She alleges that he gave her a pill and a glass of red wine shortly before she passed out. When asked what went through her mind when she heard there were other women accusing Cosby, Dickinson said: "I am here for those women ... I want to validate these women and I want to applaud them for their courage." At one point in the interview, she broke down in tears and covered her face. "But I'm strong, and I'm gonna stand on my own two feet and I'm gonna tell my side of the story, and it's not gonna end here," she said. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst recently also cut ties with Cosby. "Bill Cosby has agreed to resign as an honorary co-chair of UMass Amherst's capital campaign. He no longer has any affiliation with the campaign nor does he serve in any other capacity for the university," said Ed Blaguszewski, a spokesman for University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Cosby got his master's and doctorate in education from the university in the 1970s.

Black mob kills white man in St. Louis

Police downplay the race factor.

Some Indian women are beginning to fight back against the violence of Indian men

Two sisters getting harassed and touched by three men on a bus in India weren't getting any help from other passengers, so they took matters into their own hands: A video of them using their belts to beat the men has gone viral. Police, meanwhile, have since arrested the three men. The sisters are identified as Arti and Puja (also being spelled by some sources as Pooja) Kumar, ages 22 and 19, and local law authorities say that they will get some kind of cash award for their bravery. "The men started to abuse me and touch me. I told them, 'If you touch me again, you'll get beaten up,'" says Puja. "They called a friend on the phone and told him to 'come over because we have to beat up some girls.'" The girls began fighting when the men began harassing a pregnant passenger, too. It was the pregnant woman who recorded the altercation on her phone. The girls were eventually forced off the bus and say that they fended off the trio yet again. The pregnant woman got off at the next stop and accompanied the sisters to the local police station in the northern state of Haryana. Puja's view: “A woman's rape starts the moment she withstands the dirty looks of such men. If you hit back hard, then only you can survive." The incident resonates in light of the gang rape of a young Indian woman on a bus in 2012.

According to Gallup, thanks to Obamacare, Americans earning $30,000 to $75,000 a year are more likely to skip medical care because of cost than Americans earning under $30,000 a year

Working class white people don't like Barack Obama much. According to the latest Gallup poll, only 27% approve of him. That's 21 percentage points down since he took office in 2009. One in three Americans has put off seeking medical treatment in 2014 due to high costs, according to Gallup — the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 2001. Thirty-three percent of Americans have delayed medical treatment for themselves or their families because of the costs they’d have to pay, according to the survey. Obamacare, of course, had promised that it would help make health care more affordable for everyone, but the number of people who can’t afford a trip to the doctor has actually risen three points since 2013, before most Obamacare provisions took effect.

Israel: Suspected Jewish extremists set fire to a classroom in an Arab-Jewish school in Jerusalem, police said

The premises were empty when a fire was started in a classroom of the Hand in Hand school, where Palestinian and Israeli children study together in Hebrew and Arabic. "Death to Arabs" had been scrawled on a schoolyard wall. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that the slogan pointed to "nationalist motives", a reference to suspected Jewish attackers. More than 600 pupils attend Hand in Hand, where its student population is divided equally between Jews and Arabs. There are four other such schools in the Hand to Hand network in Israel. Violence in Jerusalem and other areas of Israel and the Palestinian Territories has surged in the past few months. In July 2014, a Palestinian youth was burned to death by Jewish attackers, allegedly in revenge for the killing of three Israeli teens by Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank in June 2014. Attacks carried out by Palestinians have killed 11 Israelis, and 12 Palestinians have also been killed, including several of the assailants. At the school, Brian Callan, a father of one of the children whose class was burnt, accused the government of "encouraging, inciting and legitimizing this behavior through populist, racist legislation". Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been criticized for promoting a new bill that would decree Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people only, a step that critics say will further alienate the country's Arab minority.

Several members of the Congressional Black Caucus are urging the Obama administration to withhold federal recognition of a Virginia Indian tribe over its history banning intermarriage with African-Americans

In January 2014, the US Department of the Interior proposed recognizing the Pamunkey tribe in southeast Virginia, which would make members eligible to receive special benefits in education, housing, and medical care, as well as allow the tribe to pursue a casino. A decision on recognition, which would be the first for a Virginia tribe, is due by March 30, 2014. Congressional Black Caucus members urged interior secretary Sally Jewell and attorney general Eric Holder to hold off the decision until the Justice Department investigates any discriminatory practices by the tribe. Neither department has responded to the request, made in a September 23, 2014 letter, according to a spokeswoman for Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson, who signed the letter. The letter cited a report by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs that quoted tribal law: “No member of the Pamunkey Indian Tribe shall intermarry with anny [sic] Nation except White or Indian under penalty of forfeiting their rights in Town.” The bureau said that there was no indication the tribe had changed its ban, but Pamunkey chief Kevin Brown responded in a letter to the CBC that the ban had been repealed in 2012. The Bureau of Indian Affairs said that the significant number of Pamunkey-Pamunkey marriages and efforts to encourage them helped satisfy a criterion for federal recognition: that a predominant portion of the group comprises a distinct community and has existed as one from historical times to the present. The Congressional Black Caucus called the government findings disturbing. “The BIA seems to justify the discrimination and surprisingly cites this as a reason” [to recognize the tribe], their letter said. In addition to Thompson, the letter was signed by 10 other Democrats.

Black Muslim superstition: Emmanuel Adebayor's older brother Kola claims that the striker has been brainwashed by Islamic spiritual healers into thinking their mother used black magic to sabotage his form on the pitch

Kola, 42, a truck driver based in Bremen, Germany, said: "[Emmanuel] has been brainwashed by these Muslim alfas - spiritual men - who prophesise when he scores goals and why he is not playing well. They have convinced him his sister and mother put juju curses on him. My mother is very sad. Every day she is crying. I just talked to her on the phone and she was crying again." Adebayor was recently moved to deny accusations from his sister Maggie that he had kicked their mum Alice out of his house in Africa because he thought she had performed Juju curses on him. Maggie claimed on radio station Peace FM in neighboring Ghana that the Premier League striker was refusing to give his mother money and has not seen her in over a year. She said that their mother was selling polythene bags, padlocks and other things to provide for her family.

Peter Frost looks at the differences in mentality between hunter-gatherers and farmers.

Life in Latin America: Families point to police in young men's brutal deaths in Brazil

Paulo Pinheiro da Silva, 21, and Luan da Silva, 18, (no relation) and two others, also teenagers, were shot to death by police in September 2014. According to police, the four were killed in a shootout after being chased for more than 6 miles in a stolen car. Authorities haven't provided further details. Family and friends say that the youths were last seen at a party in the poor suburb where they grew up. Some witnesses say that they saw police detain them when they went for a walk outside. The next day, their desperate families learned that they could find them in the morgue. Tereza Pinheiro still keeps her son Paulo's clothes neatly folded in the bedroom the whole family shares. "I lost my son, I lost my son," she sobs. "All I know is the police were involved. They say there was a shootout, but where was the exchange of fire? The bullets were all going in one direction." The four young men died in September 2014, and their families still haven't received forensic reports. But at the funerals, friends and relatives say that they started to receive anonymous messages on their cell phones with gruesome photos of the crime scene and also of cadavers riddled with holes. Luan's brother, Alan da Silva, says that he thinks these were messages from the police. "The police were the only ones in a position to take those pictures," he says. "They wanted to intimidate us, intimidate the community and say, 'We're not fooling around.' " The families say that they believe the killings all point to torture. In the photos, there are 13 bullet wounds on Luan's body, some forming a ring around his neck, and what looked like a smiley face carved into his chest. Relatives say that some of the teeth were also pulled out at the root. "I don't know why they did it," says Luan's mother, Antonia Maria Miguel. "They were killed like animals." But her eldest son, Alan, says that police brutality is not uncommon in Brazil's poor shantytowns and suburbs. "It doesn't matter if you're white, black, blue or gray. If you were born in poverty, you were born guilty," he says. The Sao Paulo public defender's office agrees. "It's a serious case itself, but it's also representative of what happens in Brazil," Public Defender Samuel Friedman said. Recently his office sent an urgent appeal to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions to investigate the case. Friedman says that "at the very least that the police used force illegally, but it also points that (the young men) might have been executed. It is likely they have been executed." Brazilian police killed more than 11,000 civilians from 2009 to 2013, according to a recent report by the Forum on Public Safety, a group that collects and disseminates government safety data. The report concludes there is an "abusive use of lethal force" in Brazil. By comparison, the reports says, police in the United States killed roughly the same number of people over 30 years - from 1983 to 2012. Alan da Silva says that he hopes the United Nations will intervene and find out what really happened to his brother. And also step up pressure so that nothing like it happens to the baby son he left behind.

The number of people with Ebola in west Africa has risen above 16,000, with the death toll from the outbreak reaching almost 7,000, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says

The number of deaths is more than 1,000 higher than the figure issued by the WHO just two days earlier, but it is thought to include deaths that have gone unreported in the weeks or months since the outbreak began. Most of the new deaths were recorded in Liberia. The WHO has warned that its figures could be a significant underestimation of the number of infections and deaths. Data from the outbreak has been patchy and the totals often rise considerably when backlogs of information are cleared. The latest confirmed data shows that almost half those known to have been infected with Ebola have died. The outbreak has been centred on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. They account for the vast majority of the cases reported to date, with about three dozen cases elsewhere. Liberia has recorded the highest number of cases and deaths, but the rate of infection is slowing there. The disease is now spreading fastest in Sierra Leone. Mali has started recording infections after sick people crossed over from neighboring Guinea. It has reported two new cases recently. This outbreak has been the worst partly because it occurred in a highly mobile region, where Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone meet, and quickly spread to their respective capital cities. Another UN agency, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, warned that families in the three countries were at risk of both malnutrition and under-nutrition. Vincent Martin, of the FAO, said that 70% of people interviewed in Sierra Leone had been eating only one meal a day since the outbreak, rather than two or three. Restrictions on movement had led to panic buying, food shortages and severe price hikes, the agency said.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan vowed to track down the perpetrators of bomb blasts that killed more than 100 people at the central mosque in the city of Kano

Jonathan said that his government will "continue to take every step to put an end to the reprehensible acts of all groups and persons involved in acts of terrorism." More than 102 people were killed in the bomb explosions at the central mosque in Kano, said a hospital worker. The blasts injured more than 150. "Most of those receiving treatment ... are in dire need of blood, and we are appealing to people to come and donate their blood to rescue the victims," Dr. Usman Bashir said. Hundreds had gathered in the mosque for a sermon in a region terrorized by attacks by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram. Witnesses said that heavy smoke could be seen billowing in the sky from a long distance away. Immediately after the blasts, hundreds of angry youths took to the streets in riots, throwing stones, brandishing sticks, and shouting at security officials. Boko Haram has not claimed responsibility, but the attack bears the hallmarks of the Islamic terrorist group that has carried out numerous such attacks in northern Nigeria, including in Kano. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the attack "horrific" and pledged UN support for Nigeria's fight against terrorism.

A clothing store in Beijing has provoked outrage after posting a sign in the window banning Chinese customers

The sign translated to: "Chinese not admitted, except for staff." A shop assistant explained that it was because Chinese customers are irritating. One employee at the shop on Yabaolu Street, a popular shopping destination, said that Chinese customers are too annoying and that Chinese women often try on lots of clothes but end up buying nothing. A reporter from the Beijing Youth Daily entered the store posing as a customer but was refused by staff, who said that they did not sell clothes to Chinese nationals. An employee said that the sign had been put after a Chinese customer stole a tourist's wallet and the owners of the shop were forced to pay $5000 in compensation. "We didn't mean to debase our nationals, but sometimes they have gone too far", one employee said. Li Xiandong, a professor from China University of Political Science and Law, said that although the sign is discriminatory, the owner hasn't broken any laws as racial discrimination is not illegal in China.

Israel's hard-line foreign minister says that he supports paying Arab citizens to leave the country

In a manifesto of his Yisrael Beitenu party, Avigdor Lieberman says that he favors ceding Arab majority areas in northern Israel to a future Palestinian state and providing economic incentives for Arab-Israelis — about 20% of Israel's population — to encourage them to emigrate. The manifesto does not set out positions on the most difficult issues in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including the status of Jerusalem and Israel's borders. But it does acknowledge the necessity of territorial compromise in reaching a peace deal with the Palestinians, and also with moderate Arab countries. Once a close associate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Lieberman is now seen as harboring prime ministerial ambitions himself.