The Nahmias Cipher Report

What made America? What makes us? These two questions are at the heart of the new PBS series Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Harvard scholar turns to the latest tools of genealogy and genetics to explore the family histories of 12 renowned Americans — professor and poet Elizabeth Alexander, chef Mario Batali, comedian Stephen Colbert, novelist Louise Erdrich, journalist Malcolm Gladwell, actress Eva Longoria, musician Yo-Yo Ma, director Mike Nichols, Her Majesty Queen Noor, television host/heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, actress Meryl Streep, and figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi. Source: PBS @ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/facesofamerica/

Ayanna Nahmias, Editor-in-Chief Last Modified: 15:46 PM EDT, 17 May 2012 Al Jazeera reported on the release of a film about the explosive increase in the Netherlands of forced prostitution of girls as young as 12 by their Dutch-Moroccan ‘boyfriends.’ The film by Julia Rooke and Caroline Pare features Ibrahim, a Dutch-Moroccan social worker who [...]

Ayanna Nahmias, Editor-in-Chief Last Modified: 00:57 AM EDT, 16 May 2012 WASHINGTON, DC – David Morgan of Reuters UK first broke the news that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering approval of an over-the-counter home HIV test kit. If approved, the test could further empower sexually active men and women, by [...]

Ayanna Nahmias, Editor-in-Chief Last Modified: 18:19 PM EDT, 10 May 2012 KATHMANDU, Nepal – Wednesday, 8 May 2012, was a day of great disruption and equal measure of sorrow for the residents of the shanty town at UN Park in the Thapathali area in Kathmandu. Most of the make-shift neighborhood encompassed an area 400-metre long, [...]

Reblogged from myownstormypetrelwords: I’ve written about a few of these subjects before: the obscene incarceration rate in America http://www.myownstormypetrelwords.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/georgia-another-proud-moment/; Doug Blackmon’s ground-breaking book, Slavery by Another Name, in which he describes the forced labor system in place for more than a century after the end of the Civil War. http://www.myownstormypetrelwords.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/slavery-by-another-name/ But now, Michelle Alexander has [...]

Ayanna Nahmias, Editor-in-Chief Last Modified: 14:16 PM EDT, 8 May 2012 MONROVIA, Liberia – Across Africa water shortages and drought are an increasingly prevalent phenomenon. Some instances are a consequence of natural disaster, but in some cases clean water is being hoarded by powerful factions and used to extort impoverished people, or as a means [...]

Ayanna Nahmias, Editor-in-Chief Last Modified: 15:20 PM EDT, 4 May 2012 POTISKUM, Nigeria – This town in Yobe state is at the epicenter of the radical Islamic group, Boko Haram‘s reign of terror. The group has perpetrated over 480 killings since the beginning of the year as they seek to bring Northern Nigeria and then [...]

Ayanna Nahmias, Editor-in-Chief Last Modified: 16:00 PM EDT, 3 May 2012 Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is currently one of the most egregious women’s rights abuses occurring globally. It is a subject that is hard to discuss because of its intimate, sexual and graphic nature. However, it is exactly because of the life-long psychological and physical [...]

Ayanna Nahmias, Editor-in-Chief Last Modified: 13:55 PM EDT, 1 May 2012 LOUISIANA, United States – On the second anniversary of the massive British Petroleum (BP) Gulf of Mexico oil spill, very little if any information has percolated through the American media about the ongoing impact of this disaster. As a consequence of the Gulf of [...]