AP — The number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. has dropped for the first time in two decades – decreasing by 8 percent since 2007, a new study finds. The reasons range from the sour economy to Mexican violence and increased U.S. enforcement that has made it harder to sneak across the border. Much of the decline comes from a sharp drop-off in illegal immigrants from the Caribbean, Central America and South America attempting to cross the southern border of the U.S., according to the Pew Hispanic Center, which based its report on an analysis of 2009 census data. Read article
Related article: Obama signs $600 million border security bill
ABC – Attorney-General Delia Lawrie has introduced legislation to stop Northern Territory courts asking people to swear to God. Ms Lawrie says the change is needed because the current oath is too complicated to translate accurately into Indigenous languages. Read article
Wall Street Journal – The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation took advantage of sagging stock prices in the second quarter to add Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), one of the most storied names in finance, to its portfolio, according to a 13F regulatory filing. Read Article
Huffington Post – Monsanto in Gates’ Clothing? The Emperor’s New GMO’s – If you had any doubts about where the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is really placing its bets, AGRA Watch’s recent announcement of the Foundation’s investment of $23.1 million in 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock should put them to rest. Genetic engineering: full speed ahead. Read Article
NY Times — Sunita Laxman Jadhav is a door-to-door saleswoman who sells waiting. She sweeps along muddy village lanes in her nurse’s white sari, calling on newly married couples with an unblushing proposition: Wait two years before getting pregnant, and the government will thank you. It also will pay you. Ms. Jadhav explained that the district government would pay 5,000 rupees, or about $106, if the couple waited to have children. Waiting, she promised, would allow them time to finish their schooling or to save money. Read article
BBC – Police in Tanzania say they have arrested a Kenyan national who was attempting to sell an albino man. The arrest was made in a sting operation as police pretended to be businessmen buying albino body parts. Police say they struck a deal equivalent to more than $250,000 (£159,000) for the 20-year-old man. Read article
Daily Telegraph – France is experiencing “a significant resurgence of racism” and lacked the political will to fix the problem, experts from the UN’s anti-discrimination watchdog have said. The criticism came as a panel of 18 experts from the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination presented a 90-page report on racism in France, the first since 2005. After the session, the French delegation unexpectedly announced the preparation of a national action plan against racism. Read article
Reuters – President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law a $600 million bill to beef up security on the U.S. border with Mexico, and his aides pressed lawmakers to set aside election-year politics and work toward broader immigration reform. With illegal immigration seen as a key issue in the November congressional elections, the Obama administration touted the border enforcement plan as laying the groundwork for a revived effort to overhaul the U.S. immigration system. Read article
Washington Post — Inside a crowded rural hospital, gray-haired Nananki Rohtash rested on a cot, her swollen legs elevated while her sister-in-law paced nearby. Rohtash is a 60-year-old mother of five and a grandmother of eight. She’s also nine months pregnant, the result of an in vitro fertilization clinic, one of hundreds that have opened recently in India, urging clients to “Come alone. Leave as a family. Age no bar.” With 1.2 billion people, India is still growing rapidly, and there are few efforts to control population growth, in sharp contrast to China’s one-child policy. Read article
Daily Telegraph – Archaeologists in the Philippines have unearthed a 67,000-year-old human bone in a discovery they claim proves the area was settled by man 20,000 years earlier than previously thought. The foot bone – found during a four-year excavation project of a network of caves – predates the 47,000-year-old Tabon Man that was previously known as the first human to have lived in the Philippines. The discovery was made at the Callao caves near Penablanca, 210 miles north of Manila. Read article
The Guardian – Senators plan to halt ‘invasion by birth canal’ by overturning constitutional guarantee for anyone born on US soil. Senior Republicans have escalated the increasingly bitter fight over immigration with proposals to rewrite the US constitution to block the children of illegal aliens from obtaining citizenship. In the latest move to inflame the racially tinged issue ahead of November’s congressional and state elections, Republican senators say they intend to call hearings on overturning the 14th amendment to the constitution, which grants citizenship to anyone born in the US. Read article
Daily Telegraph – By examining DNA, we can plot the bumpy ride followed by humanity to today’s astonishingly populous position, says Steve Jones. The world is booming. Nobody before the 20th century had seen the human population double, but anyone of my age (think bus pass) has done so, and a few elders have seen it grow threefold in their lifetimes. Read article
Reuters – Arizona on Thursday appealed a judge’s decision to block key parts of the state’s crackdown on illegal immigrants and police in Phoenix arrested scores of activists protesting the remaining measures in the law. Lawyers for Governor Jan Brewer and Arizona asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to lift an injunction blocking the most intrusive parts of the law, known as SB 1070, and asked for the appeal to be handled quickly. Read article
NY Times – With 267 people being born every minute and 108 dying, the world’s population will top seven billion next year, a research group projects, while the ratio of working-age adults to support the elderly in developed countries declines precipitously because of lower birthrates and longer life spans. Read article
Reuters – Arizona on Thursday appealed a judge’s decision to block key parts of the state’s crackdown on illegal immigrants and police in Phoenix arrested scores of activists protesting the remaining measures in the law. Lawyers for Governor Jan Brewer and Arizona asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to lift an injunction blocking the most intrusive parts of the law, known as SB 1070, and asked for the appeal to be handled quickly. U.S. District Court judge Susan Bolton on Wednesday blocked the law’s most controversial elements arguing that immigration matters are the federal government’s responsibility. Read article
Washington Post — A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona’s immigration law from taking effect, delivering a last-minute victory to opponents of the crackdown. The overall law will still take effect Thursday, but without the provisions that angered opponents – including sections that required officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws. Read article
AP — The U.S. Senate has rejected a $3.4 billion government settlement with American Indians that had been added to a much larger war-funding bill. The Senate passed the almost $60 billion bill funding President Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan late Wednesday – but not before stripping out the settlement and $20 billion in other domestic spending approved by the House. The Senate’s approval would have given the Obama administration the authority to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in 1996 by Elouise Cobell of Browning, Mont. Between 300,000 and 500,000 Native Americans claim the Interior Department mismanaged billions of dollars held in trust by the government. Read article
The Guardian – State’s tough new rules capture mood of growing fury – and are starting to set a national trend. JD Hayworth, a barnstorming Arizona Republican who is campaigning for the Senate, has strong opinions about his state’s new law on illegal immigration. The law, known as SB1070 and due to come into effect this week, requires police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants and makes it a crime not to have valid immigration papers on your person. It has prompted Hispanics to fear racial profiling, immigrants to flee the state in droves, activists to organise consumer boycotts and the Obama administration to sue in federal court. Read article
ABC – The number of people using Facebook has hit 500 million, meaning one in every 14 people on the planet has now signed up to the online social networking service. To celebrate, the California firm introduced an application that lets members of the online community “tell the incredible stories of the moving and interesting ways they’ve used Facebook”. Read article
The Independent – HIV infections among the over-50s have more than doubled in seven years, it was revealed today. The number of new cases per year recorded in England, Wales and Northern Ireland rose from 299 to 710 between 2000 and 2007, research has shown. Half were diagnosed late, increasing the risk of an early death from Aids. Among younger age groups, a third have the HIV infection identified at a similar level of progression. Read article
The Guardian – The intersection of 43rd Avenue and Thomas Road on the west side of Phoenix is lined with the same monotonous range of petrol stations, fast-food outlets, pharmacies and clothes stores that you’ll find in any modern city in America’s heartlands. It is distinguished only by the exceptionally mundane. Look closer, though, and a disturbing pattern emerges. Here is a real estate office that is shuttered and empty, here a panaderia – a bread shop – that has closed, and next door to that, a children’s clothes store also shut. Across the road a cellphone outlet is boarded up and a large grocery store has vanished. A Mexican restaurant still has its sign proudly boasting “Tacos Since 1975″, but there are no tacos being made here any more. Read article
DIGITAL JOURNAL – A new US government study shows a dramatic increase in painkiller abuse that cuts across all age, race and ethnic groups as well as in every region of the country. The Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) conducted a 10-year study (1998-2008) on the non-medical abuse of prescription painkillers that shows an increase of more than 400 percent on those aged 12 and older, from 2.2 percent to 9.8 percent. Read article
Xinhua — The world’s population reached 5 billion on July 11, 1987, and the United Nations set that date as World Population Day. The theme of this year’s 21st World Population Day is “Everyone counts”, and the activities in China will focus on the 2010 population census and emphasize the right to life. It also aims to stress the importance of efficient population control by means of collecting and analyzing the latest data so as to make an impact on decision-making and improve people’s lives. Read article
Daily Telegraph – Officials say the rise in population to more than 1.6 billion by 2050 will threaten the country’s rapid economic development. The subject of population growth in the country has been almost taboo since Indira Gandhi’s heavy-handed population policies, which included forced sterilisations and vasectomies, caused widespread anger in the mid 1970s. Read article
Daily Telegraph – The Government’s immigration cap has been labelled a “sham” as new figures reveal that companies will be able to bypass the restriction to bring in thousands of foreign workers. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, announced last week that the number of migrant workers coming to the UK from outside the European Union will be limited to 24,400 a year, fulfilling a Conservative manifesto pledge. Read article
AP — Nearly 1 in 5 American women beyond childbearing years never gave birth as fewer couples, particularly higher-educated whites, view having children as necessary to a good marriage. An analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center, being released Friday, documents the changes in fertility rates that are driving government projections that U.S. minorities will become the majority by midcentury. Read article
