The Obama administration on Saturday called for a broad overhaul of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, proposing to reshape divisive provisions that encouraged instructors to teach to tests, narrowed the curriculum, and labeled one in three American schools as failing. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images President Obama spoke to students in October at a school in Silver Spring, Md., that was named a ‘Blue Ribbon school under the law in 2005. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images President George W. Bush visited a Philadelphia school in January 2009 to speak about No Child Left Behind. By announcing that he would send his education blueprint to Congress on Monday, President Obama returned to a campaign promise to repair the sprawling federal law, which affects each of the nation’s nearly 100,000 public schools. His plan strikes a careful balance, retaining some key features of the Bush-era law, including its requirement for annual reading and math tests, while proposing far-reaching changes. The administration would replace the law’s pass-fail school grading system with one that would measure individual students’ academic growth and judge schools based not on test scores alone but also on indicators like pupil attendance, graduation rates and learning […]
This Sunday most U.S. residents will gain an hour of daylight as it’s time to spring forward. Few people will likely wake up exactly at 2:00 a.m. local time to move the clock hand, or dial, forward an hour. But that’s when daylight saving time officially begins on the second Sunday in March. It ends on the first Sunday in November, when clocks are turned back at 2:00 a.m. local time to read 1:00 a.m. That is, for everyone except those who live in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and by most of Arizona, with the exception of the Navajo Nation. Why two o’clock? The thinking goes it’s late enough that most people would be at home, with few bars and restaurants being affected. In addition, it prevented the date from switching to yesterday; it would be confusing if, say, we changed the clocks at midnight back to 11 p.m. The time is also early enough that the clock-hand change occurs before early shift workers and early churchgoers might be impacted, according to the WebExhibits, an online museum. Turning clocks back in the fall could mean an extra hour at bars, which tend […]
A central figure behind the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) claims disputing the link between vaccines and autism and other neurological disorders has disappeared after officials discovered massive fraud involving the theft of millions in taxpayer dollars. Danish police are investigating Dr. Poul Thorsen, who has vanished along with almost $2 million that he had supposedly spent on research. Thorsen was a leading member of a Danish research group that wrote several key studies supporting CDC’s claims that the MMR vaccine and mercury-laden vaccines were safe for children. Thorsen’s 2003 Danish study reported a 20-fold increase in autism in Denmark after that country banned mercury based preservatives in its vaccines. His study concluded that mercury could therefore not be the culprit behind the autism epidemic. His study has long been criticized as fraudulent since it failed to disclose that the increase was an artifact of new mandates requiring, for the first time, that autism cases be reported on the national registry. This new law and the opening of a clinic dedicated to autism treatment in Copenhagen accounted for the sudden rise in reported cases rather than, as Thorsen seemed to suggest, the removal of mercury from vaccines. Despite […]
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican on Saturday denounced what it called aggressive attempts to drag Pope Benedict XVI into the spreading scandals of pedophile priests in his German homeland. It also insisted that church confidentiality doesn’t prevent bishops from reporting abuse to police. The Vatican’s campaign to defend the pope’s reputation and resolve in combatting clergy abuse of minors followed acknowledgment by the Munich archdiocese that it had transferred a suspected pedophile priest to community work while Benedict was archbishop there. Benedict is also under fire for a 2001 church directive he wrote while a Vatican cardinal, instructing bishops to keep abuse cases confidential. Germany’s justice minister has blamed the directive for what she called a ‘wall of silence’ preventing prosecution. Skeptical about the Vatican’s handling of abuse, a U.S.-based advocacy group for abuse victims, Survivors Network of those Abused for Priests, urged faithful to bring candles and childhood photos to vigils outside churches, cathedrals and German consulates across the U.S. this weekend to remind people to ‘call police, not bishops’ in cases of suspected abuse. But the Holy See’s so-called prosecutor for clergy sex abuse cases, providing some of the first statistics about his […]
HADDONFIELD, N.J. — An American seized in Yemen in a sweep of suspected al-Qaida members had been a laborer at six U.S. nuclear power plants, and authorities are investigating whether he had access to sensitive information or materials that would be useful to terrorists. Sharif Mobley, 26, worked for contractors at plants in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland from 2002 to 2008, mostly hauling materials and setting up scaffolding, plant officials said. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan said Friday that investigations are under way into which areas Mobley entered. But he noted that areas containing nuclear fuel are tightly controlled, and that a laborer typically would not have access to security information or other sensitive matters. The plants are also checking areas where Mobley worked to ensure everything is in order, said NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci. Mobley, a U.S. citizen of Somali descent, has not been linked to any wrongdoing at any of the plants. And officials said nothing he did when he worked there aroused any suspicion. Officials said Mobley passed the necessary screenings, which include criminal background checks, drug testing, psychological assessments and identity verification. Nevertheless, Edwin Lyman of the […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
