There were many odd things about my recent Havana stopover (apart from the dolphin show, which I’ll get to shortly), but one of the most unusual was Fidel Castro’s level of self-reflection. I only have limited experience with Communist autocrats (I have more experience with non-Communist autocrats) but it seemed truly striking that Castro was willing to admit that he misplayed his hand at a crucial moment in the Cuban Missile Crisis (you can read about what he said
toward the end of my previous post

– but he said, in so many words, that he regrets asking Khruschev to nuke the U.S.).

Even more striking was something he said at lunch on the day of our first meeting. We were seated around a smallish table; Castro, his wife, Dalia, his son; Antonio; Randy Alonso, a major figure in the government-run media; and Julia Sweig, the friend I brought with me to make sure, among other things, that I didn’t say anything too stupid (
Julia is a leading Latin American scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations

). I initially was mainly interested in watching Fidel eat – it was a combination of digestive problems that conspired to nearly kill him, […]

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The strength of your handshake could indicate how long you will live, according to scientists.

Other pointers to the length of your life are your usual walking speed, how long it takes you to get up from a chair and your capacity to balance on one leg.

As markers of physical health they are simple and cheap to measure. Now scientists have conducted a systematic review of research to assess the extent of their influence on the risk of death.

The findings are based on 33 studies from across the world, which included more than 50,000 men and women who were followed for up to 43 years.

The results show that people with a stronger hand grip and better performance on the other tasks lived substantially longer than their weaker counterparts.

Death rates were 67 per cent higher in people with the weakest grip strength compared with the strongest over the period of the studies, after taking age, sex and body size into account. Average grip strength declines with age and is around 27 kilos for a middle-aged woman and 40 kilos for a middle-aged man. One study showed a 3 per cent reduction in mortality for every kilo increase in grip strength.

Normal walking speed […]

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The Catholic Church in Belgium released an independent report Friday detailing hundreds of assertions of sexual abuse of children by clergy and others working for the church from the 1950s into the late 1980s.

‘We can say that not a single congregation escaped sexual abuse of minors by one or more of its members,’ said the Commission on Church-Related Sexual Abuse Complaints, which was led by Dr. Peter Ariaenssens, who is both a church investigator and psychiatrist.

The commission said it received about 500 reports from alleged victims, about 60 percent of them from males.

It cited 320 alleged abusers, of whom 102 were known to have been clergy members from 29 congregations.

Thirteen of the alleged victims committed suicide, it said.

Investigators had information about when the abuse started for 233 of the alleged victims. Forty-eight were 12; one was 2; five were 4; eight were 5; seven were 6; 10 were 7.

Of the 230 alleged victims about whom investigators said they had reliable information, more than 70 percent are currently between the ages of 40 and 70, it said. Ten percent are 31 to 40.

Four alleged victims are 20 to 30 years of age, and one is younger than 20, it said.

At the […]

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A major study was just published in the Annals of Internal Medicine from Harvard. In approximately 85,000 women who were followed for 26 years and 45,000 men who were followed for 20 years, researchers found that all-cause mortality rates were increased in both men and women who were eating a low-carbohydrate Atkins diet based on animal protein.

However, all-cause mortality rates as well as cardiovascular mortality rates were decreased in those eating a plant-based diet low in animal protein and low in refined carbohydrates. Although this plant-based diet was called an ‘Eco-Atkins’ diet, it’s essentially the same diet that I have been recommending and studying for more than 30 years.

In many debates with Dr. Atkins before he died, I always made the point that it’s important to look at actual measures of disease, including mortality, not just risk factors such as HDL cholesterol. This is the first study that examined mortality rates in those consuming an Atkins diet, and it confirms what I’ve been saying all along: an Atkins diet is not healthful and may shorten your lifespan.

Dr. Atkins and I agreed that the American diet is too high in refined carbohydrates such as sugar, white flour and concentrated sweeteners) […]

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Economists say immigration, legal or illegal, doesn’t hurt American workers.
Summary

Do immigrants take American jobs? It’s a common refrain among those who want to tighten limits on legal immigration and deny a ‘path to citizenship’ - which they call ‘amnesty’ - to the millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. There’s even a new Reclaim American Jobs Caucus in the House, with at least 41 members.

But most economists and other experts say there’s little to support the claim. Study after study has shown that immigrants grow the economy, expanding demand for goods and services that the foreign-born workers and their families consume, and thereby creating jobs. There is even broad agreement among economists that while immigrants may push down wages for some, the overall effect is to increase average wages for American-born workers.
Analysis

Arizona’s tough new law targeting illegal immigrants and the possibility of congressional action on immigration have brought a renewed focus to the issue. Among lawmakers and others who seek stricter immigration limits and stronger enforcement, we’ve noticed a common theme that may have particular resonance at a time when the unemployment rate remains stuck at close to 10 percent: that immigrants take American jobs. But […]

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