Sinkhole Swallows Buildings in China

Photograph from AFP/Getty Images

The sinkhole that formed in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou (pictured) is, unfortunately, not a new occurrence for the country.

Many areas of the world are susceptible to these sudden formations, including the U.S. Florida is especially prone, but Guatemala, Mexico, and the area surrounding the Dead Sea in the Middle East are also known for their impressive sinkholes. (See pictures of a sinkhole in Beijing that swallowed a truck.)

Published January 31, 2013

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What If Undocumented Immigrants Had Voted?

If every undocumented immigrant had cast a vote for President Obama in 2012, he would have won Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas, and he would have beaten Mitt Romney by nearly 11 percentage points nationally, instead of three.

Only citizens can vote, however, and 11.2 million unauthorized residents didn't get the chance.

But with immigration overhaul on the table, legalizing new Democratic voters looms as a threat for conservatives who don't want to hand their political foes a potential windfall of 11.2 million new voters with the creation of a pathway to citizenship -- and to voting rights -- with a comprehensive bill.

"The fear that many people have is that the Democrats aren't interested in border security, that they want this influx," Rush Limbaugh griped during his Tuesday interview with overhaul champion Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. "For example, if 70 percent of the Hispanic vote went Republican, do you think the Democrats would be for any part of this legislation?"

New immigration policies could mean in influx of new voters, but Republicans needn't worry about it in the short term.

See Also: Gang of Eight Accelerates Immigration Reform Pace

"Under almost any scenario, it's pretty far in the distance," Jeff Passell, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, said of the prospect that unauthorized immigrants' gaining voting rights would pump up numbers significantly enough to meaningfully change the U.S. electorate.

Whitney Curtis/Getty Images

And yet, the "influx" wouldn't be negligible: "Realistically, we're talking about potentially adding probably 5 million potential voters or so in 10 years," he said.

Hispanic voters broke 71 percent for Obama in November, and Republican strategists recognize that the party has failed to court Hispanic voters effectively. But depending on how slowly the citizenship line moves, the Republican Party will have a decade or so to shake its anti-Hispanic stigma.

See also: A Glossary for Immigration Reform

"It's a long time coming. You're talking about 15 to 20 years before we're talking about a whole slew of new voters coming into the electorate," said Jennifer Korn, executive director of the Hispanic Leadership Network, who served as Hispanic outreach director for George W. Bush's presidential campaign.

"If Republicans can map out and change their positions with things that Hispanics do support -- on less government, lower taxes, less regulations on small businesses -- then they can really compete for the Hispanic vote over the next 20, 30 years."

There are 11.2 unauthorized immigrants living in the United States, according to the Pew Hispanic Center's estimate. While most are of voting age (Pew estimates just 1 million younger than 18), the deluge of new Democratic voters might not be as substantial as Limbaugh implied.

In other words, it's not as if Democrats will gain 11.2 million votes in the next few years. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Not All Hispanics Vote for Democrats. Most do, but not all, and voter preferences vary from state to state. In Florida, 60 percent of Hispanic voters backed Obama, according to 2012 exit polls; in Arizona, 74 percent voted for the president. Even if all 11.2 million had voted in 2012, Obama would only have picked up North Carolina if they simply hewed to Hispanic voter trends. Romney still would have carried Arizona, Georgia and Texas, although he would have won Georgia by less than 1 percentage point. (Note: There were no exit polls in Texas or Georgia, and here the national rate provides rough estimates of how results would have changed.)

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Japan December factory output up 2.5% on-month

TOKYO: Japan on Thursday said the nation's factory output for December rose 2.5 per cent from the previous month thanks to brisk production of cars and semiconductors.

The gain -- still worse than a 4.0 per cent expansion expected by the market -- came as Japan's new government under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vows to breathe new life into the world's third-largest economy with huge stimulus and easing aimed at tackling long-running deflation.

"Industrial production shows signs of having bottomed out," said a statement from the economy ministry.

The ministry added that a survey of manufacturers found they expected another output increase for January and February of 2.6 per cent and 2.3 per cent, respectively.

Annual industrial output figures were not immediately released, but on a quarterly basis the country's factory output was down 1.9 per cent from the previous three months.

And the rosy monthly data comes just a week after Japan said it logged a record trade deficit for 2012 as exports were hit by a bitter diplomatic spat with its biggest market China and plunging demand in debt-wracked Europe.

Japan's economy contracted in the third quarter, meeting the technical definition of a recession.

The figures underscored the size of the task ahead for the new government which has heaped pressure on the Bank of Japan for aggressive easing measures to boost the country's fortunes.

- AFP/ck

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Don’t curse the darkness, light a lamp instead: Vineet Jain

Following are excerpts from Times Group managing director Vineet Jain's welcome address:

We emerged into the New Year in a somber mood — our hearts broken by the brutal death of a 23-year-old girl right here in Delhi. But it has been inspirational to see so many young people rise up and decide that this girl's death must never be forgotten.

This spirit of looking at the injustices that surround you and deciding, that from you the change will begin — is a deeply Indian one. It's what drove the fight for our Independence ... ... Our winners tonight drew strength and inspiration from this spirit of protest, and then harnessed this energy to drive real change. They drew inspiration from an old saying, that it is better to light a lamp than to curse the darkness ...

... Tonight, we have gathered a group of remarkable Indians who have lit numerous lamps and brightened the lives of millions...

... Our winners from Corporate India acknowledged that not everything should be government's problem. Our NGO awardees used protests to draw attention, but also did the hard work of policy change, quietly. Our winners in the government category demonstrated that some in the administration take pride in going beyond the call of duty when they could have just gone home at 6 every day...

These are times of great cynicism. Too many people have decided that no good exists and no good will come of this country. The Times of India knows that this is not true. As a newspaper, it is our duty to highlight the decline of governance and probity in public life. But we also need to reach beyond the present climate of negativity and tell people that there are still many good women and men who are working honestly and tirelessly to bring about lasting change.

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Deer Antler Velvet—What Is It, How Does It Work?

It may sound warm and fuzzy, but deer antler velvet is at the center of a new sports controversy involving Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis.

Lewis, who's headed to the Superbowl in New Orleans this weekend, looked into using a nasal spray made of deer antler velvet to heal his torn right triceps, Sports Illustrated reported in their February 4 issue. Lewis denies the story, calling the rumor a "trick of the devil," according to USA Today.

Made from the soft fuzz that grows annually on male deer antlers, the unproven performance enhancer is often used by athletes who believe it helps heal cartilage and tendon injuries more quickly and boosts strength and endurance.

However, it's not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and is banned by the National Football League.

Even so, it's a big business, especially in New Zealand, a major exporter of deer velvet, which ships tens of millions of dollars worth of the substance to Asia and the U.S. each year, according to the New York University Langone Medical Center.

Deer farming is a huge industry in the country, with about 2,800 farmers that own approximately 1.1 million deer, most of them red deer, elk, and red deer-elk hybrids, according to the company New Zealand Deer Velvet.

Before removing the velvet from a stag's antlers, certified veterinarians or farmers give the animal stag a local anesthetic to minimize stress.

We asked a few medical experts to give us the facts on deer antler velvet.

What Is It?

Deer antler velvet is essentially a growth hormone called "insulin-like growth factor 1," or IGF-1.

Growth hormones, which are naturally produced by the liver, regulate how our bodies grow. If the body doesn't produce enough growth hormones, dwarfism can occur; too much, and a person may get acromelagy, a type of gigantism. (See a human-body interactive.)

Doctors give growth hormones to young people with stunted growth, but they don't recommend it for athletes or bodybuilders, according to Spyros Mezitis, an endocrinologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

That's because many athletes take several times the recommended dosage, which can result in adverse effects, Mezitis said. For example, too much IGF-1 may cause tendons to become too tight and break or may disrupt how the body metabolizes fats and sugars.

What Does It Do?

Early research shows that IGF-1 may be effective in healing some cartilage and tendon injuries, noted Leon Popovitz, an orthopedic surgeon and founder of New York Bone & Joint in Manhattan.

A recent study found that taking IGF-1 supplements is linked to improving cartilage damage in joints due to repetitive trauma, Popovitz said.

Even so, such studies are still very preliminary, and growth hormone research is still unproven, he cautioned. At the moment, deer antler velvet is available as an unregulated supplement.

"What often happens is these supplement companies grab these promising [hormone] factors, jump on them, and market them before the entire medical community has the ability to know the real detrimental effects," Popovitz said.

How Does It Work?

IGF-1 affects how the body repairs itself. First, the hormone aids in building up a matrix or base—essentially a building block of protein—that's needed for cells to grow.

Then, the substance increases the number of new cells that accumulate on that base, which get busy healing the injury.

What's the Bottom Line?

IGF-1 has shown promise for helping kids with stunted growth or people with dwarfism, as well as for healing cartilage or tendon injuries. It should not be used without a doctor's care, especially as a performance enhancer.

But as far as linebacker Lewis goes, since he's "looking to improve his recovery, I don't think he's necessarily doing anything wrong," noted Popovitz.

That said, "we have to be mindful that professional athletes are not typical athletes," Popovitz said, noting some are known for taking extreme measures.

For your average weekend warrior, he said, "it's a little too soon to be rushing to use it."

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Obama Confident Immigration Reform Will Pass

President Barack Obama expressed confidence on Wednesday that he would sign comprehensive immigration reform into law by the end of this year.

In an interview with Univision's Maria Elena Salinas, Obama explained that significant details of a bill still must be worked out by lawmakers, including the structure of a pathway to citizenship for many of the 11 million undocumented immigrants. But Obama said that the progress made by a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the Senate has given him hope that a deal can get done.

See Also: What Will Be Obama's Immigration Legacy?

When asked by Salinas if we will have immigration reform by the end of the year, Obama said, "I believe so."

"You can tell our audience, 'Sí, se puede?'" Salinas asked.

"Sí, se puede," Obama responded.

Later in the interview, Obama said that he hopes a bill could be passed as early as this summer.

But cognizant of deep divisions a topic like immigration has sewn in the past, Obama said that's contingent on bipartisan negotiations continuing to proceed well.

"The only way this is going to get done is if the Republicans continue to work with Democrats in Congress, in both chambers, to get a bill to my desk," he said. "And I'm going to keep on pushing as hard as I can. I believe that the mood is right."

Although the president threatened to introduce his own bill if negotiations in Congress stall during his speech in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Tuesday, he said he is content to let lawmakers hash out the details among themselves for the time being.

"If they are on a path as they have already said, where they want to get a bill done by March, then I think that's a reasonable timeline and I think we can get that done. I'm not going to lay down a particular date because I want to give them a little room to debate," he said. "If it slips a week, that's one thing. If it starts slipping three months, that's a problem."

The president's principles and the Senate's principles on immigration broadly align with one another, but there are still thorny issues that could spark a division between Obama and Republicans, such as the pathway to citizenship.

The Senate's path to citizenship would allow many undocumented immigrants to obtain legal status immediately upon passage of the law. But their ability to then seek legal permanent residency would be contingent upon the U.S.-Mexico border being deemed secure. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a member of the bipartisan "Gang of Eight" on immigration, has been particularly vocal in stating that border security is a precondition for gaining legal permanent residence, and then citizenship.

While the White House has said that it is withholding judgment on that plan until actual legislative language is drafted, Obama said that he wants a bill that makes it clear from the outset that undocumented immigrants eligible to earn their way to citizenship can eventually obtain it.

"What we don't want to do is create some kind of vague prospect in the future that somehow comprehensive immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship will happen, you know, mañana," Obama said. "We want to make sure we are very clear this legislation provides a real pathway."

The president said that enhancing border security measures and workplace enforcement provisions are a part of his plan, as well as the Senate's, and cited his administration's efforts to bulk up border security during the past four years, saying that illegal crossings have dropped 80 percent since 2000.

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Senators send John Kerry some love

If he does say so himself, Sen. John Kerry has an impressive record.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday approved an over-the-top resolution honoring the Massachusetts Democrat. It also voted out of committee his nomination to be secretary of state, and just hours later the full Senate voted to confirm Kerry.

The resolution describes Kerry in glowing terms, praising “everything but his strong jawline,” as one amused reader put it (though perhaps a follow-up resolution could take care of that omission).

In an odd wrinkle, the resolution was touted in a news release from the committee, which Kerry still technically chaired at the time (New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez is taking over the gavel).

A sample of the resolution’s effusive prose: “honor, conviction and a sense of civility,” “great skill,” “patience, fair-mindedness and tenacity.” And let’s not forget: “a voice of courage and conscience” and “uncommon passion and commitment.”

It places him, too, in no less august company than John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and John Sherman.

Vatican, too

A recent Loop item noted that outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, despite a record number of countries visited, was one of only two secretaries since Richard Nixon’s administration not to visit the Vatican — along with
Warren Christopher
.

We were relying on the official records compiled by the State Department historian’s office.

But some former top aides to Christopher insist the records are wrong, and they are pretty sure they were at the Vatican with Pope John Paul II, President Bill Clinton and Christopher.

Well, let’s see.

The historian’s records say Christopher “accompanied President Clinton to meetings with Prime Minister Berlusconi, President Scalfaro, and senior Italian officials.” He was in Rome and the resort town of Nettuno in June 1994, the record says.

No mention of the Vatican or the pope.

We asked The Washington Post’s Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, about this. He unearthed a briefing transcript in which Ray Flynn, as Clinton’s ambassador to the Vatican, introduces Christopher by saying that “if only he looked like Gregory Peck, he’d be the greatest public official in America” and notes that they met on that June 2 with the Vatican’s secretary of state.

Flynn told us via e-mail that Christopher was at the Vatican. In addition, Flynn has a picture on Page 110 of his 2001 book on John Paul II of a gathering at the Vatican with John Paul II, Clinton, Flynn and, yes, Christopher.

So the column should have said that Clinton is the only secretary of state since Nixon’s first secretary of state, William Rogers, to bypass the Holy See.

Exterior department

An Interior Department official whose official travel and other conduct was being investigated has resigned.

Tony Babauta
, the assistant secretary for insular affairs, is leaving the agency Feb. 1, a spokesman tells the Loop, though Babauta has been on administrative leave since Nov. 17 while the investigation was pending.

President Obama named Babauta, a native of Guam, to the position in 2009. He was tasked with overseeing U.S. territories including Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Interior’s inspector general reportedly was looking into Babauta’s travels as well as grants awarded by his office.

His attorney responded to the Loop’s request for comment by sending his client’s resignation letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, in which Babauta defended his record, saying that he thought he had “improved” the office he ran and that his work had “benefitted my island brothers and sisters.”

He also urged Salazar to maintain the practice of having a presidential appointee serve in the position he was vacating. Before he was named to the job, a “lower-level” official had run the office of insular affairs, he noted.

Babauta’s job is being filled by Eileen Sobeck, the acting deputy assistant secretary.

In transit

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, an Obama favorite and, at least for now, the only Republican in the Cabinet, said Tuesday that he will leave the administration as soon as a successor is confirmed.

The news was not unexpected. LaHood has always been uncertain about what he wanted to do. He indicated in 2011 that he was leaving at the end of the first term but then seemed to hedge.

Earlier this month, when a White House official listed some of the Cabinet members who were staying, LaHood, a former seven-term member of Congress, was not on the list.

With Emily Heil

The blog: washingtonpost.com/intheloop. Twitter: @InTheLoopWP.

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US judge postpones Texas woman's execution

CHICAGO: A Texas judge on Tuesday granted a last-minute reprieve to death row inmate Kimberly McCarthy, who had been scheduled to become the first woman executed in the United States since 2010.

District Judge Larry Mitchell postponed her execution until April 3 after her lawyers asked for time to bring forward an appeal on grounds of racial discrimination.

McCarthy -- who has been on death row for 14 years -- had been due to be executed at 6:00 pm, 2300 GMT, after the US Supreme Court rejected her previous appeal.

"The previous warrant of execution is hereby recalled," Mitchell wrote in a two-page order issued five hours before she was set to die.

"We are very pleased that we will now have an opportunity to present evidence of discrimination in the selection of the jury that sentenced Kimberly McCarthy to death," defence attorney Maurie Levin told AFP in an email.

"As recognised by the US Supreme Court (Miller-El v. Dretke, 2005), these facts must be understood in the context of the troubling and long-standing history of racial discrimination in jury selection in Dallas County, including at the time of Ms McCarthy's trial."

McCarthy, 51, is African American. Her victim, 70-year-old retired professor Dorothy Booth, was Caucasian.

Despite the fact that her home county is 22.5 per cent African American, only one non-Caucasian juror judged McCarthy and three non-Caucasian jurors "were unilaterally excluded by the state despite being fully qualified to serve," her lawyers wrote.

They further argued that 42 per cent of people sentenced to death in Dallas county were African American while 70 per cent of the 24 men exonerated with DNA evidence in the same county were African Americans.

"A remedy is not only warranted, but demanded," her lawyers argued Monday in a letter urging Texas Governor Rick Perry to issue a 30-day reprieve.

McCarthy was set to be just the 13th woman executed since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976.

She was convicted of forcing her way into her elderly neighbour's home near Dallas under the pretext of borrowing some sugar in 1997, court records show.

She then smashed Booth in the face with a candle stick, stabbed her five times and cut off her finger to steal her diamond ring.

McCarthy drove off in Booth's Mercedes and tried to buy some crack, court documents showed. She also used Booth's credit cards at least four times and pawned her wedding ring for US$200 before she was caught.

Prosecutors also accused her of killing two other elderly people.

She was sentenced to death in 1998, saw her conviction overturned on appeal and then was convicted and condemned again in a second trial in 2002.

"It is a shame that courts allowed Ms McCarthy to come so close to execution before granting the stay," said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Centre.

"There certainly are signs and a history of racial discrimination in jury selection in Dallas County."

There is also a good chance that she would not be sentenced to death if tried now due to mitigating factors like her drug addiction, Dieter told AFP.

Texas was sentencing as many as 40 people to death a year before the courts began providing juries with the alternative sentence of life without parole. That number has now since dropped to about eight people a year, Dieter said.

McCarthy would have been the fourth woman executed in Texas since 1976, out of a total of 493. Nine other women are among the 304 people on the state's death row.

A dozen women were among the 1,321 people executed since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre. Of the 3,199 people on death row as of October 1, 63 were women and 42 per cent were African American.

- AFP/jc

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Free power behind Punjab's decline: Report

CHANDIGARH: Punjab's biggest strength, its agriculture, is proving to be its curse as well. A report, Economic Freedom of the States in India, 2012, has analyzed the reason for Punjab's decline from 6th position to 12th and has put the blame at the doors of politicians for monopolizing trade in mandis and inflicting the curse of free rural electricity on the entire state.

The report, which was recently published, has been authored by eminent economists including Swaminathan S A Aiyar, a research fellow at the Cato Institute USA, Bibek Debroy, professor at centre for policy research, Ashok Gulati, chairman of the commission for agricultural costs and prices besides Lavessh Bhandari, also an eminent economist.

Busting the 'myths', doled out as excuses by politicians for Punjab slipping badly on the economic front, Aiyar said, " Being a border state is no excuse. Gujarat too is a border state, is the most industrialized and fastest growing state. Terrorism caused decline, yes, but 1992, when it ended, was long time ago. Chattisgarh has worse situation presently fighting Maoists, so does Orissa and Bihar, but they have surged ahead of Punjab registering 10% growth, way ahead of 'peaceful' Punjab."

The usual rhetoric doled out by politicians that Punjab is landlocked and has lost out to other states, has been slammed in the report citing example of fast growing neighboring Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, which too are landlocked. "Punjab may not have rich minerals and ores but it has the biggest natural wealth - its fertile soil, which no other state can boast of," he said.

Citing real reasons for Punjab's decline, the report says, "Punjab used to have large revenue surpluses in its glory days but now it has the highest fiscal deficit. This high figure arises out of huge unwarranted subsidies, the chief culprit being free power to farmers, so that the government is not even able to pay salaries on time, leading to demoralization and cynicism among staff, who look for avenues to make money illegally. The excuse of terrorism wears thin since the state has been given debt relief by three finance commissions in a row for insurgency that died 20 years ago."

"Free electricity to farmers is sinking Punjab," says Aiyar. The report too states that apart from the destruction of acquifers, free farm electricity has now become the biggest cause of state's fiscal troubles, costing Rs 5,000 crore every year.

The report has sought to put into black and white, a known truth, which the politicians and bureaucracy keeps silent about. "Why is there so much control of government on agriculture. Why are the farmers not allowed freedom?" said Aiyar.

The report says, apart from wheat and paddy, "in case of other crops, the mandis have obtained a trade monopoly that is mercilessly exploited by a limited group of traders with political connections." Former chief secretary SC Aggarwal has been quoted saying, "several bureaucrats have attempted to end the monopoly of mandis but met with severe political resistance - traders are prominent politicians and are also traditional financers of leading political parties."

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Timbuktu’s vulnerable manuscripts are city’s "gold"

French and Malian troops surrounded Timbuktu on Monday and began combing the labyrinthine city for Islamist fighters. Witnesses, however, said the Islamists, who claim an affiliation to al Qaeda and had imposed a Taliban-style rule in the northern Malian city over the last ten months, slipped into the desert a few days earlier.

But before fleeing, the militants reportedly set fire to several buildings and many rare manuscripts. There are conflicting reports as to how many manuscripts were actually destroyed. (Video: Roots of the Mali Crisis.)

On Monday, Sky News posted an interview with a man identifying himself as an employee of the Ahmed Baba Institute, a government-run repository for rare books and manuscripts, the oldest of which date back to the city's founding in the 12th century. The man said some 3,000 of the institute's 20,000 manuscripts had been destroyed or looted by the Islamists.

Video showed what appeared to be a large pile of charred manuscripts and the special boxes made to preserve them in front of one of the institute's buildings.

However, a member of the University of Cape Town Timbuktu Manuscript Project told eNews Channel Africa on Tuesday that he had spoken with the director of the Ahmed Baba Institute, Mahmoud Zouber, who said that nearly all of its manuscripts had been removed from the buildings and taken to secure locations months earlier. (Read "The Telltale Scribes of Timbuktu" in National Geographic magazine.)

A Written Legacy

The written word is deeply rooted in Timbuktu's rich history. The city emerged as a wealthy center of trade, Islam, and learning during the 13th century, attracting a number of Sufi religious scholars. They in turn took on students, forming schools affiliated with's Timbuktu's three main mosques.

The scholars imported parchment and vellum manuscripts via the caravan system that connected northern Africa with the Mediterranean and Arabia. Wealthy families had the documents copied and illuminated by local scribes, building extensive libraries containing works of religion, art, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, history, geography, and culture.

"The manuscripts are the city's real gold," said Mohammed Aghali, a tour guide from Timbuktu. "The manuscripts, our mosques, and our history—these are our treasures. Without them, what is Timbuktu?"

This isn't the first time that an occupying army has threatened Timbuktu's cultural heritage. The Moroccan army invaded the city in 1591 to take control of the gold trade. In the process of securing the city, they killed or deported most of Timbuktu's scholars, including the city's most famous teacher, Ahmed Baba al Massufi, who was held in exile in Marrakesh for many years and forced to teach in a pasha's court. He finally returned to Timbuktu in 1611, and it is for him that the Ahmed Baba Institute was named.

Hiding the Texts

In addition to the Ahmed Baba Institute, Timbuktu is home to more than 60 private libraries, some with collections containing several thousand manuscripts and others with only a precious handful. (Read about the fall of Timbuktu.)

Sidi Ahmed, a reporter based in Timbuktu who recently fled to the Malian capital Bamako, said Monday that nearly all the libraries, including the world-renowned Mamma Haidara and the Fondo Kati libraries, had secreted their collections before the Islamist forces had taken the city.

"The people here have long memories," he said. "They are used to hiding their manuscripts. They go into the desert and bury them until it is safe."

Though it appears most of the manuscripts are safe, the Islamists' occupation took a heavy toll on Timbuktu.

Women were flogged for not covering their hair or wearing bright colors. Girls were forbidden from attending school, and boys were recruited into the fighters' ranks.

Music was banned. Local imams who dared speak out against the occupiers were barred from speaking in their mosques. In a move reminiscent of the Taliban's destruction of Afghanistan's famous Bamiyan Buddha sculptures, Islamist fighters bulldozed 14 ancient mud-brick mausoleums and cemeteries that held the remains of revered Sufi saints.

A spokesman for the Islamists said it was "un-Islamic" for locals to "worship idols."

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