Ethnic Groups

The Nazca people of Peru -- famous for their huge line drawings on an arid plateau that are fully visible only from the air -- set the stage for their demise by deforesting the plain, allowing a huge El Niño-fueled flood to ravage the Ica Valley about AD 500, researchers have found. "They died out because they destroyed their natural ecosystem," said archaeologist Alex J. Chepstow-Lusty of the French Institute of Andean Studies in Lima, coauthor of a paper in the current issue of Latin American Antiquity.

Re "Barbershop aftershocks," editorial, April 10 I must respond to your editorial about Moreno Valley's actions in the wake of inspections of African American-owned barbershops in our city. We did indeed respond to the community's concerns about the inspections. The mayor at the time was Bill Batey, who is African American. Immediately after the barbershops were inspected, Mayor Batey met with the Moreno Valley Black Chamber of Commerce president. What's more, letters were mailed to every barbershop and cosmetology shop in Moreno Valley inviting owner/operators to a public meeting where the mayor answered questions and addressed barbers' concerns.

Seated in the corner of a bustling classroom, school volunteer Hanan Masarwa is barely visible amid a scrum of first-graders. The 18-year-old Masarwa is teaching the children to add as part of an Israeli national service program created in August. The volunteer program is an attempt to provide avenues, other than mandatory military service from which they are exempt, for integrating Arabs and religious Jews more fully into the mainstream Jewish state.

Persistent violence in volatile Diyala province prompted security forces to impose a daylong vehicle ban Friday in the provincial capital, Baqubah, as frictions grew over a U.S.-backed program to recruit Sunnis to fight the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq. Hundreds of protesters also took to the streets in two other Diyala towns, Muqdadiya and Buhriz, alleging that U.S. forces had detained at least two members of the local Awakening Council, the U.S.

When men with machetes and axes chased Paul Otieno from his home here, they wanted more than his belongings. They wanted to cut off his foreskin. "They were shouting, 'If we don't kill you, we'll cut your private parts,' " Otieno, a 25-year-old mechanic, said of the attack Sunday. "They were just shouting, 'Kill! Chop them all!' " In Kenya, circumcision is a rite of passage for male members of most tribes. The Luos, however, do not practice it.

Laborers living on a tiny coffee farm here in western Kenya awoke in the middle of the night last week to an odd light radiating from their huts. At first it seemed like an early sunrise. Then they realized their homes were on fire. "I told my children, 'Now we are dead,' " recalled Rosemary Nasimiyu, 53, who warned her five youngsters not to scream as they fled, so attackers would not shoot them.

Naivasha, one of Kenya's most popular vacation spots and a onetime playground for British colonialists, on Sunday became the latest city to suffer from ethnic clashes, raising fears that the violence is spreading into previously calm areas. As many as 30 people were killed in the lakeside city, according to opposition leaders, who blamed the attacks on Kikuyu supporters of President Mwai Kibaki.

They first appeared about 18 months ago: masked gunmen in speeding cars and scooters that kick up the mud along the canals weaving through lonely villages here. The invaders pinned notices on the walls of mosques informing residents that they now lived in the Islamic State of Iraq. For the last year, U.S.-led forces have pursued the militants from one stronghold to the next in Diyala, a province of winding waterways and abundant farms stretching north and east from Baghdad to the Iranian border.

"Police, police, police!" Young recruits cradling make-believe machine guns lined up in front of a building, identified themselves three times in Arabic, then burst through the door. The drill may have been standard, but the class at the police training center here was not: For the first time, the class -- 1,830 cadets who graduated Jan. 21 -- included as many Sunni as Shiite Muslims.

Mathew Garcia of Boyle Heights goes to the movies about once a week, ignoring theaters in his Eastside Latino neighborhood and heading straight for the suburbs. His favorite destination: nearby Alhambra, where he says he prefers the more up-to-date and comfortable multiplexes, often featuring big screens, surround sound and stadium seating. The theaters in his neighborhood are "smaller and louder," he said.