Israel critic denied post at university

By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Published: 12 June 2007

A top American university has denied tenure to a prominent academic amid allegations of anti-Semitism and his defence of the Palestinian cause. continue...

Paris Hilton thanks God for her prison sentence

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 12 June 2007

After an inglorious public career in which she has had her sex life paraded on the internet, appeared in a TV reality show, tried and failed to launch herself as a singer and gone to many, many paparazzi-filled Hollywood parties, Paris Hilton announced yesterday that she had found God and was now "a different person". continue...

Brown promises to avoid the mistakes that led to war in Iraq

By Andrew Grice and Ben Russell
Published: 12 June 2007

Gordon Brown has promised to prevent the "party political" use of intelligence material so that he would never repeat Tony Blair's mistake in taking Britain to war on a flawed prospectus. continue...

India's air crews asked to 'battle the bulge'

By Andrew Buncombe in Delhi
Published: 12 June 2007

As every air traveler has been heard countless times, the stewards on board the flight are primarily there for everyone’s safety. And what flyer would dare risk breaching political correctness to admit they like their in-flight crew to look attractive? continue...

Introduce a sugar line and a fat line on food packaging

Introduce a sugar line and a fat line on food packaging, similar to the Plimsoll Line on ships. This would provide a visual guide as to just how much sugar and fat there is in the product.  Jenny Torr  Comment on this idea 

Diplomas Count, Full Access

Dear Educator:
The 2^nd Annual Diplomas Count is here. Produced with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, this eye-opening report is now available online at edweek.org.  During our edweek.org Open House, you can access the whole report for FREE! The report examines college and career readiness and provides the most accurate and far-reaching analysis of high school graduation policies and trends. While you’re at it, be sure to check out some of our past reports and our most recent edition of Technology Counts.
Some things you shouldn’t miss in this year’s Diplomas Count:

• A national snapshot of graduating high school students in the Executive Summary.
• Feature stories, commentaries, and analyses such as:
• 
  
• What it takes to graduate for the class of 2007 - By Sterling C. Lloyd

• ‘Soft Skills’ in Big Demand: Interest in teaching students interpersonal skills needed for success in life is on the rise. - By Catherine Gewertz

• Learning and Earning: An analysis that shows the relationship between education and pay. - By Christopher B. Swanson

• Access to Opportunity: Skilled workers for the jobs of the future are in short supply, risking further expansion of the American family-income divide. - By Anthony P. Carnevale

• Our totally new edweek maps tool allows you to map graduation rates by school district. You can see how your district compares to other districts in your area and nationwide. This great tool gives you access to incredible amounts of information right at your fingertips!

Remember, our doors will be wide open through June 25.  That means you’ll have access to everything our premium subscribers see daily for a full two weeks!
 
If you like what you see on edweek.org, get even more by adding a 4-week trial subscription to Education Week. This trial offer of 4 weeks of print and online access is available for only a short time at: www.edweek.org/go/4weektrial.

Tell your colleagues about the complete, FREE access to Diplomas Count and our Open House!
See you there,

Virginia B. Edwards
Editor and Publisher

Why Teachers Quit

Published: May 1, 2007

By Kimberly Palmer

It wasn’t her teenage students who drove Meghan Sharp out of teaching—it was the crippling inflexibility of her administrators.

All the innovative curriculum ideas and field trips she proposed to engage her 10th grade biology students were promptly shot down, and she left the profession after just two years.

“I still enjoyed teaching, but it was a constant battle with the administration,” says Sharp, who worked in an urban district in northern New Jersey. “I had to do things like submit weekly lesson plans. There was a lot of bureaucracy.” She now goes by her maiden name and asked Teacher Magazine not to identify her old school because she works as an education policy analyst. continue...

Bush U-turn as 'surge' sceptic to oversee war

By David Usborne in New York
Published: 09 June 2007

The White House has sidelined the main proponent of "troop surge" in Iraq in what looks a tacit acceptance that, after several months, the much-vaunted strategy is not working.

Final responsibility for guiding President George Bush on conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been shifted from his National Security adviser, Stephen Hadley, and handed instead to his new war tsar, Lt-Gen Douglas Lute, who has long voiced doubts about the surge. continue...

The wrath of 2007: America's great drought

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 11 June 2007

America is facing its worst summer drought since the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression. Or perhaps worse still.

From the mountains and desert of the West, now into an eighth consecutive dry year, to the wheat farms of Alabama, where crops are failing because of rainfall levels 12 inches lower than usual, to the vast soupy expanse of Lake Okeechobee in southern Florida, which has become so dry it actually caught fire a couple of weeks ago, a continent is crying out for water. continue...

101 Really Useful Websites

The net's not just about eBay and MySpace. The ingenious sites here can transform your life in the real world. Want to be first in line for gig tickets, find free parking or get paid to shop? It's all just a click away

Compiled by Rebecca Armstrong, Rhodri Marsden, Abigail Outhwaite and Jimmy Lee Shreeve
Published: 11 June 2007

www.hitflip.co.uk
Swap unwanted DVDs, games, books and CDs on this site that uses credits - " flips" - as currency. Users receive flips when trading items with other Hitflip members. Actually super-simple to use.

continue...

Why the British love nothing more than a current pun

The pun, especially the bad pun, is so embedded in our national psyche that it is folly to deny it. Even if we make an accidental pun, we draw attention to it

Published: 11 June 2007

A BBC radio producer once told me a sad story. He had been asked at short notice, when he was already very busy, to put together half an hour of jollity to fill a gap in the coming Easter radio schedule. Even though under great pressure, he had managed to do so, but had signified his displeasure by giving the programme the worst possible name he could think of, namely "Easter Eggstra".

The executive producer had taken the rough tape of the programme away to listen to, and had rung the producer to say he liked it.

"And loved the title! Brilliant!" continue...

Install kitchen storage units that double as dishwashers

Install kitchen storage units that double as dishwashers. Put dishes in in
the cabinets dirty, press a button and they are washed and dried right
where they belong.

Michael Katz

To comment on this idea

Idea-a-day

Human rights in Iraq: a case to answer

Revealed: How Lord Goldsmith advised Army chiefs to deny detainees 'full' legal protection

By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Published: 29 May 2007

The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, is facing accusations that he told the Army its soldiers were not bound by the Human Rights Act when arresting, detaining and interrogating Iraqi prisoners.

Previously confidential emails, seen by The Independent, between London and British military head-quarters in Iraq soon after the start of the war suggest Lord Goldsmith's advice was to adopt a "pragmatic" approach when handling prisoners and it was not necessary to follow the " higher standards" of the protection of the Human Rights Act.

That, according to human rights lawyers, was tantamount to the Attorney General advising the military to ignore the Human Rights Act and to simply observe the Geneva Conventions. It was also contrary to advice given by the Army's senior lawyer in Iraq, who urged higher standards to be met. continue...

\Pakistani same-sex couple jailed for 3 years on perjury charges

By Asif Shahzad, Associated Press Writer
Published: 29 May 2007

A same-sex couple who sought legal protection from harassment were separated and sentenced to three years in jail yesterday for lying to a Pakistani judge that surgery had turned one partner into a man.

The case of Shumail Raj, who was born female but had two operations to remove her breasts and uterus 16 years ago, and Shahzina Tariq has made waves by raising issues of homosexuality and transsexuality that are taboo in the conservative Muslim society. continue...

Astronomers eagerly await potential birth of 'super' sun

  By Simon Baker and Martin Hickman
Published: 29 May 2007

Astronomers have pinpointed two massive stars, orbiting close to each other in space, that could merge to create a "super" sun, 100 times bigger than our own. continue...

Student, 62, sets masters record

By Richard Garner, Education Editor
Published: 29 May 2007

Many people would consider studying for just one master's degree in their retirement quite an achievement. Not Tom Norton. The 62-year-old former civil service librarian, who took early retirement a decade ago, is about to take his eighth. continue...

Help educate the media about what's really going on in Israel

Help tell the world about Hamas rockets from Gaza Your generous donation allows The Israel Project to provide facts to the media and the world about Israel. Help stop these rocket attacks. Please give now.

May 29, 2007

An Israeli woman was just killed by a Palestinian rocket from Gaza. If you haven’t heard about this tragedy, you’re not alone. Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Palestinian terrorists have fired more than 1,300 rockets into Israel — on a recent Tuesday alone, 24 rockets hit Israel, wounding 30 people.

Yet these attacks go largely unreported by the international media.
We know that the media usually decides that “if it bleeds, it leads” and “good news is no news.” The body count in Iraq and Lebanon is high and tragic. Yet how many more Israeli women need to be killed and how many more Israeli children wounded before the press starts to report on these unprovoked attacks?

That’s why I am writing you today.
The Israel Project (TIP) needs your help to educate the media about what is really going on in Israel, Gaza and the Palestinian territories. Please give today at www.theisraelproject.org/sderot .

Last week, as rockets fell onto Sderot, Calev Ben-David, who heads our office in Israel, was there on the ground with a bus full of journalists—who heard and saw the effects first-hand. The stories they reported reflected the terrible reality of the situation.

Meanwhile, Leah Soibel, one of our in-house terrorism experts, worked out of a Sderot bomb shelter — emailing facts to journalists around the world.

At the same time, with me in New York, Jennifer Packer, Michal Slawny, and others from our staff and board hosted Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, at a press luncheon with more than 80 reporters. Ambassador Gillerman gave reporters the facts and context they needed to get the story right.

TIP’s French and German speaking staff went into overdrive to make sure that reporters in Europe——a frontline area of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism — had the facts they needed to accurately cover the Sderot story.

But much more must be done!  Donate now at www.theisraelproject.org/sderot.

During the Second Lebanon War, TIP set up media centers in Northern Israel to provide journalists with sources, press briefings, background research, transportation, information on lodging and anything else they needed. Press coverage of the war was seen worldwide.  And according to public opinion research, Israel was portrayed as defending herself and her citizens. Support for Israel in the United States increased. But with harmful media coverage, that support can once again wane. 

Today we need to do much more in Sderot, the town being bombarded by rockets from Hamas, an Iranian-backed organization openly bent on Israel’s destruction. We need to act now to make sure Israel is again seen as defending her citizens against terror from the sky. International support is critical to Israel’s security.

Almost daily, Sderot suffers under a barrage of rockets fired from Gaza into civilian centers. But the world is mostly unaware because they don’t hear about these attacks on the news. Yet, when Israel does take action to defend herself, it’s on the front page of the paper and “breaking news” on television. If the world doesn’t know about the relentless terror attacks on Israeli civilians, then Israel will be seen as an aggressor and will once again be unfairly judged. Israel has learned this hard lesson too many times. We must not allow that to happen again.

We need to immediately get new media services set up in Sderot and around the world. But we can’t do it without you.

Your gift of $1,000, $500, $360, $100, or whatever you can afford, to The Israel Project will make a difference. Your gift will allow The Israel Project to get this story out and educate the world’s media.  

www.theisraelproject.org/sderot

With your support TIP will:

• Staff Sderot med ia services
• Host press briefings and conferences not only covering the rockets being shot into Sderot, but also on the root causes including the Palestinian culture of hate and the long arm of Iran
• Helicopter top journalists over the attack area so they can see Israel’s intense security challenges
• Train international victims of the rocket attacks to speak to the media, in multiple languages, so that the world can understand their suffering and the need to protect the people of Israel
• Shoot video and photos for journalists to use in their stories
• Take and distribute photos to illustrate newspaper articles
• Provide researched background information hourly to help journalists meet their deadlines

Today there are huge and deadly fights between Hamas and Fatah. The Lebanese army is fighting radicals on its own soil. And Palestinian terrorists want nothing more than to draw Israel into their fight so they can use the media to manipulate world opinion against Israel.

That’s why it is so important that you send in your contribution today. The media are already coming to Sderot and Gaza to cover this story. And your support will make sure they get the facts they need to present the truth.
Please help fund our media services by donating at www.theisraelproject.org/sderot .

Sincerely,

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi
Founder and President
The Israel Project

P.S. Make your contribution of $1,000, $500, $360, $100 or whatever you can afford at at www.theisraelproject.org/sderot  today. Your gift will allow TIP to continue to educate the media on this and other stories and will give valuable support to Israeli families under the threat of attack from terrorist rockets.

On the horizon: news from the frontiers of science

Scientists forecast solar outbursts, why ants are selfless road workers, and how farmers can benefit birds.

By Peter N. Spotts

How to forecast a solar outburst
Powerful eruptions from the sun can trigger magnetic storms on Earth that can cause power blackouts and disrupt radio communications. And they can also trigger radiation storms in space that may damage satellites and threaten astronauts.

Now, a team of scientists has found that these powerful outbursts, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), emit telltale radio signals. The signals travel at the speed of light – far faster than the billions of tons of hot, electrically charged gas that CMEs hurl through space. As a result, the signals can be used to provide earlier warnings of impending magnetic or radiation storms. The lead time can range from tens of minutes to a few hours, according to Natchimuthuk Gopalswamy, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who led the team.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0531/p17s01-stgn.html

The scar of Hariri's murder will never heal in Lebanon

Published: 01 June 2007

They were handing out white roses where the bomb went off. On 14 February 2005, ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri was killed there and the 20ft bomb crater has remained a scar on the surface of Beirut history ever since.

But yesterday, as the Lebanese learned that there would indeed be a United Nations tribunal to condemn his killers, the crater - from which vital evidence was removed by Syria's friends in the security services - was filled in and the road resurfaced and the flowers handed to motorists by young men in T-shirts bearing Hariri's portrait. continue...

Chicken Sales Nuggets

Companies hire political strategists to market products – including, in this writer's imagination, chicken in the shape of presidential faces.

By Peter Grier

News item: Political veterans are bringing their sophisticated campaign techniques into the corporate world, reports The Wall Street Journal. That's because the best political marketers may now be as good as – or even better than – top business strategists, due to the high pressure and high stakes of elections. continue...