US:  License Plate Photos Could Catch Illegal Immigrants – The ongoing hunt for illegal immigrants could soon be going high-tech in Texas.  Dallas office of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has asked companies to assist in designing a way of using a national database to locate vehicles being driven by illegal immigrants.  The technology would work by tapping into a license plate database of images captured by a camera network.  These cameras mounted on stationary police cars would be used to scan and capture tags then compares them to a “hot list’ of images setup to alert authorities.  Full Story

Africa – Severe Food Crisis Could Kill Kids - 60,000 Mali refugees in Burkina Faso have arrived at a major camp during one of the worst food shortages since 2005.  Lack of rain has taken a toll on crops and donor countries have given just 13% of funding needed to provide food for the hundreds of thousands of stricken families.  The broader food crisis in Mauritania, Burkina Faso, northern Nigeria, Niger and Chad is placing more than 4-million children is a life and death struggle to survive.  More than 4-million children 5-years and under are now suffering from acute malnutrition, including 1.1 million who will potentially face starvation.  Full Story

 Indonesia:  Jakarta Getting Impatient With Australia - Both Australia’s Opposition Leader and asylum seekers are being accused of threatening Indonesia’s sovereignty.  Now Jakarta wants Australia to start accepting some of the 10,000 asylum seekers using Indonesia as a waiting room.  This issue they say is a growing domestic problem for them when they already struggle to house and feed 35-million of their own citizens.  Only 61-people from the 1200 recognized refugees from Indonesia have been settled in Australia.  Full Story

Canada: Massive Human Trafficking Ring Bust – They alluded police for almost 18-months, then finally on Tuesday, 3-people accused of running Canada’s largest human trafficking ring, were arrested.  Officers tracked them to an apartment block in Ontario where they were staying with friends.  The ring’s kingpin was arrested earlier in the year.  Ferenc Domotor, Hungarian mastermind of the human trafficking ring, lived the life of a successful immigrant while secretly building and managing his massive slave trade.  A regular churchgoer, Domotor was jailed for 9-years, Canada’s toughest sentence metered out for human trafficking.  Full Story

UK: Campaign Against New Forced Marriage Law Gathers Momentum – Ethnic minority campaigners and parliamentarians fear new government legislation banning forced marriages could drive the practice underground and deny victims justice.  They say the problem is the new law distinguishes between the illegalities of “forced marriages” while recognizing the legality of “arranged marriages” and herein lies the potential problem.  Campaigners point out that victims without knowing it, could be sweet-talked or black-mailed into agreeing to a “forced marriage” and in the eyes of the law that union transforms into a legally binding “arranged marriage”, exempt from prosecution.  Full Story

Pakistan: Women’s Rights Become Fight To The Death – Farida Afridi was shot to death for promoting women’s rights in northern Pakistan. Zar Ali Khan Afridi chair of the Tribal NGO’s Consortium says it’s the first time a Pakistani woman working for an NGO had been targeted and killed.    Islamic militants suspected of killing her, have been waging an ongoing war against anyone promoting equality for women.  Tribal elders are now accusing female NGO workers in the region, of “promoting Western agendas” and “spreading obscenities”.  Following the lead of other international NGO’s, the Red Cross has pulled out personnel.  Full Story

World: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage – Many accused of bible bashing and old-fashioned thinking claim they’re not against homosexuals and they’ve not bigots, they’re just against same-sex marriage.  The Australian Christian Lobby argues that same-sex marriage denies the rights of children to have both a mother and a father as their parents.  These reforms they say - made with the intention of eliminating discrimination - have inadvertently discriminated against children. Catholic priest Frank Brennan says it’s wrong to label this debate as homophobic when the rights of children are at stake.  Full Story

US: Native American Migration Happened in 3-Waves – David Reich, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School says "there are at least three deep lineages in Native American populations."  After exploring almost 300,000 gene variations, the genetic investigation concluded that the first migration wave likely occurred about 15,000 years ago, back in the last ice age.    Reich says most Native Americans have first wave DNA.   The two subsequent migration waves have Asian lineages and they apparently settled in Canada and the Artic.  The professor also found some Eskimo-Aleut speakers migrated back to Asia taking Native American genes with them.  The international team analyzed samples from 52-Native American and 17-Siberian groups.  Full Story