Sunday’s brutal beat-down of a Black man by four Hispanics was not a hate crime, argues a Latino advocacy group. On Wednesday, members of the group, Hispanics Across America, rallied in front of the New York deli where, according to police, a group of Hispanics beat up 52-year-old Darryl Jackson while yelling racial slurs, reports Newsday. But the public is just getting half of the story, the group’s president, Fernando Mateo said. He says the attack wasn’t motivated by race at all, and that Jackson was actually the one who threw the first punch. Click here.

Obama assassination planners were “too disorganized.” Two White supremacists charged with plotting to shoot children, behead other Black Americans and assassinate Barack Obama while wearing White top hats and tuxes were likely too disorganized to carry out the plot, authorities said, and their planning was riddled with blunders. Paul Schlesselman, 18, of Helena-West Helena, Ark., and Daniel Cowart, 20, of Bells, Ark., are accused of hatching the plot. While authorities say they had guns capable of creating carnage, documents show they never got close to getting off the ground. Among the blunders: They drew attention to themselves by etching swastikas on a car with sidewalk chalk, only knew each other for a month after meeting over the Internet, couldn’t even pull off a house robbery, and a friend ratted them out to authorities. Despite making sure the plot was stopped, authorities did not believe Cowart and Schlesselman had the means to carry out their threat to assassinate Obama, said a federal law enforcement official who spoke anonymously to The Associated Press. Asked whether the two suspects had Obama’s schedule or plans to kill him at a specific time or place, a second law enforcement official who also was not authorized to speak publicly said, “I don’t think they had that level of detail.”
 

Authorities are keeping an eye on a Hollywood, Calif., house where an effigy of the Republican vice presidential nominee hangs from a noose. The Halloween display showing a likeness of Sarah Palin hanging by a noose has angered some residents who reported it as a hate crime, authorities said Monday. But Los Angeles County Sheriff’s officials said the mannequin sporting a beehive hairdo, glasses and a red coat does not rise to the level of a hate crime because it was part of a Halloween display. Read the rest here. Get more at You(th) Vote.

Homeowner crisis is hitting Blacks and Hispanics harder. A report shows that the racial mix of new homeownership in New York City changed dramatically in 2007, with fewer Blacks and Latinos getting mortgages. The report, released Monday by the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University, says that new home loans to White borrowers remained steady, while new mortgages to Blacks and Latinos dropped 44 percent and 34 percent, respectively. It is based on an analysis of federal mortgage data. The center says the report puts the credit crisis into perspective by showing how it affects homeownership by different ethnic groups. Furman Center Co-director Ingrid Ellen says the numbers suggest “that it’s going to be increasingly difficult for Black and Hispanic borrowers to get mortgages.”

LA Police stop more Blacks, Hispanics than Whites

. Los Angeles police officers stop and search Black and Hispanic residents before they stop White ones, even though Whites are more often found carrying guns and contraband, according to a report released Monday by a civil liberties group. “The results of this study raise grave concerns that African Americans and Hispanics are over-stopped, over-frisked, over-searched and over-arrested,” wrote report author Ian Ayres, a Yale Law School economist and professor.  Ayres’ findings, published by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, are based on the Los Angeles Police Department’s own numbers for pedestrian and motor vehicle stops in the year July 2003 to June 2004. Even after researchers controlled for demographics and neighborhood crime rates, they found significantly higher stop rates for Black and Latino residents. For every 10,000 residents, Blacks were nearly three times more likely to be stopped than White and other “non-minority” residents, facing 3,400 more stops. Hispanics were stopped on 350 more occasions. “These stark statistics … give a numeric lens for the lived experience of ‘driving while Black’ or ‘driving while Hispanic,”‘ Ayres wrote.

The diets many Americans eat increases heart attack risk. In a comparison of diets around the world, scientist found that the fried foods, salty snacks and meats that are staples of the Western diet – and many Americans – is responsible for about 35 percent of  the people at risk for heart attacks worldwide. But a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, the so-called “Prudent” diet, is tied a low risk of heart attack, according to the study, published in the Oct. 21 issue of Circulation. The research done by the Population Health Research Institute at Hamilton Health Sciences in Ontario, Canada, looked at dietary habits in 52 countries. It found that people who ate a Western diet had a 35-percent greater risk of having a heart attack, compared to those who ate little or no fried foods and meat. Those who followed a “Prudent” diet had a 30-percent lower risk of heart attack than those who went light on fruits and vegetables, reports HealthDay. The authors also looked at an “Oriental” diet, rich in tofu, soy and other sauces, and found it did not increase or decrease the risk of a heart attack, mostly because it is high in salt, an aggregating factor for some people at risk for heart disease. “This study indicates that the same relationships that are observed in western countries exist in different regions of the world,” study senior author Salim Yusuf, a professor of medicine at McMaster University and director of the Population Health Research Institute at Hamilton Health Sciences in Ontario, said in an American Heart Association news release.

Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to die in emergency rooms. Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to die in U.S. emergency rooms after a trauma than White patients, researchers report. Uninsured ER patients are also more likely to die, compared with insured patients, according to the study in the October issue of the Archives of Surgery. “Both race and insurance status independently influence survival after trauma,” said lead researcher Dr. Adil H. Haider, from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, in Baltimore. “Of the two, insurance status appears to have the stronger association with death after trauma.” Compared with an insured White patient, equally injured Black patients have 20 percent higher risk of dying, while Hispanic patients have a 51-percent increased odds of dying, Haider said. This problem is even worse for the uninsured, Haider said. “If we look at a similarly injured uninsured White patient, the odds of death go up by 55 percent. For uninsured minorities the odds of death go up even higher – 78 percent for Blacks and 130 percent for Hispanics.” The results are based on the scientific team’s study of information from 430,000 people treated in trauma centers across the country, reports HealthDay. The data came from the National Trauma Data Bank. Haider’s group found that 8.2 percent of Blacks and 9.1 percent of Hispanics died, compared with 5.7 percent of Whites. In addition, 8.6 percent of uninsured patients died compared with 4.4 percent of insured patients. Minorities were much more likely to be uninsured; two-thirds of both Black and Hispanic patients in the study were uninsured, while only one-third of White patients had no health insurance. Haider believes lack of health insurance may mean that Blacks and Hispanics are less likely to call for an ambulance after being injured. So, by the time they reach the hospital, their condition is more serious than a similarly injured White, insured patient.