For months I had been dreaming that I was an inmate in prison. In every dream an unseen enemy had set me up by planting drugs of some kind on me. Because of these dreams, a burden I had never experienced came on me. As a result, I began to research the criminal justice system in America. I have a bachelor's degree in criminology, yet I was never taught what my research revealed. I learned that, according to statistics compiled by Common Sense for Drug Policy:

Of the 246,100 state prison inmates serving time for drug offenses in 2001, 56.7 percent were black, 23.2 percent were white and 19 percent were Hispanic, according to 2002 Justice Department statistics.

In 1998, a federal Household Survey found that 72 percent of all drug users were white, 15 percent black and 10 percent Hispanic. Despite these numbers, blacks constituted 36.8 percent of those arrested for drug violations, more than 42 percent of those in federal prison for drug violations and 58 percent of those in state prisons for drug felonies.

In 1986, and before mandatory minimums for crack offenses became effective, the average federal drug-offense sentence for blacks was 11 percent higher than for whites, according to a 1992 report published by the Federal Judicial Center. In 1990, when harsher drug-sentencing laws were implemented, the rate skyrocketed to 49 percent higher for blacks.

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On Oct. 8 and 9 the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, a committee consisting of clergy, scholars, government officials and health officials, gathered for the first-ever conference to help end HIV/AIDS in the African-American community. Co-chaired by Bishop T.D. Jakes and the Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts, III, the committee hopes to develop a five-year plan to strategically and significantly reduce cases of HIV/AIDS infections among African-Americans. Jakes also noted that African-Americans are 10 times more likely than whites and three times more likely than Hispanics to be infected with the deadly disease. “While the struggle with HIV/AIDS in any community is tragic and devastating, the battle within the African-American community is a unique one,” said Jakes, senior pastor at Dallas megachurch The Potter's House. “African-Americans wrestle with socioeconomic issues, a lack of education, delays in early detection, treatment and prevention, and insufficient access to affordable care and medications. These factors contribute to a rapid and startling ascent of African- Americans who contract and are dying from the disease,” he said.

Those attitudes, if generous, were often patronizing; and if not, they were probably outright racist. In fact, it is one of the historical curiosities of American religious history that the Azusa Street Pentecostal phenomenon of 1906 was widely denounced at the time precisely because, as the Los Angeles newspaper of the day, The Daily Times, put it: “Whites and blacks mix in religious frenzy.” In short, when Pentecost came to North America big-time in the early 20th century, it was striking for its departure from conventional racial separatism.

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Answer:When we develop bad habits related to our diet by eating the wrong foods, such as sugar (in excess), fast foods, fried foods, highly processed carbohydrates and meats (in excess), we become prone to obesity. You're right, being obese does increase the risk of developing either heart disease or cancer.

This correlation occurs because fat cells promote inflammation. It's an established medical fact that most heart disease and much cancer is actually caused by inflammation. Fat cells also play a beneficial role in the body–they produce substances that assist in regulating the immune system. But an excess of fat will easily outdo any healthful benefit it normally brings to the body. For example, too much fat in the body can:

• trigger excessive inflammation, which eventually will lead to heart disease or cancer
• cause the blood to clot, creating a predisposition to heart attack or stroke
• constrict blood vessels, a reaction that eventually leads to hypertension
• promote cell growth and blood vessel growth, which increases the risk of cancer. 
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This summer Italian police arrested an imam and two of his aides, all from Morocco, in a mosque in the central city of Perugia they were using as a “terrorism school.”
 
The “religious” leader taught courses on preparing poisons, bomb making, and hand-to-hand combat. Perhaps most chilling, according to the Italian anti-terrorist police, the imam had downloaded videos from the Internet on how to pilot a Boeing 747 – presumably enough to fly one into a skyscraper.
 
The Ponte Felcino mosque held dozens of barrels of chemicals used to make explosives. Its grounds were used for weapons training and practicing ambushes and attacks. “We have discovered and neutralized a real 'terror school' which was part of a widespread terrorism system made up of small cells that act on their own,” said police anti-terrorism head Carlo De Stefano.
 
“It's time to halt the terrorist production line by closing the mosque terrorism schools.”
 
Police said the cell was in contact with another organization, the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group, which is believed linked to al-Qaida and the 2004 Madrid bombings and 2003 attacks in Casablanca.
 
Islamofascism is being exported from the Middle East and cultivated in mosques linked throughout the world. One such linkage is a mosque in England that was involved in the mass murder of schoolchildren in Beslan.

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