Split (1)

train · 2.59M rows

text stringlengths 12 56.8k
The U.S. has a tradition of educational philanthropy ( along with generous tax breaks for the benign billionaire) which can't be matched in the U.K. And a whole way of thinking in these matters can't just be summoned up as a response to a few government initiatives. It took over a century and a half to develop that tradition of generous giving in the U.S.- and Oxbridge, rather like British higher education as a whole, doesn't have that long to prepare its alternative strategy.
It may be that Britain needs, as Hamilton advocates, some version of the U.S. government's federal loans scheme which helps researchers to finance their work. But in the meantime people who would once have been very happy to research in Oxford and Cambridge are saying "no thank you" and going elsewhere.
Privatisation would allow both universities to cut free from the state's financial strings, to raise money as they wanted, and to set variable fees according to students' ability to pay- as long as the endowment funds could be massively augmented through private donations. But the option would outrage almost the entire university class of lecturers, and their hostility to any reform is part of the ancient fabric of academic politics. Oxford's Congregation- the university's body of dons- voted overwhelmingly for a vote of no confidence in the government's higher education minister David Willetts recently. In the very near future therefore we are going to see the end of a very long Oxbridge tradition. Many dons have charted the rise of a globalised economy, and now they are going to see its practical impact on their own market place of research and learning.
Are you feeling better and nicer today?
Do you think that you're better, more moral and less violent than your ancestors? Do you consider human beings now to be a good deal kinder and more peaceful than at any previous stage in human history? Wives, as it were, have you stopped beating your husbands yet- and/or vice versa ?
If the answer is yes then you will be in agreement with Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard, who has just published a new book: The Better Angels of Our Nature. There's no doubt, he says, that the nasty stuff is still lurking deep down in the psyche- the bit that says " Let's go biffing now" when you're overwhelmed by rage and the knuckle duster or its equivalent is within easy reach. But all over the world, he thinks, more and more people now make a strategic calculation: if we give in to the biffing option- beating, kicking, and killing our adversaries- we know that it's more trouble than it's worth. We will get punished ourselves for behaving like hunter gatherers straight out of Neolithic civilisation. But we also know that violence just isn't a very effective way of getting justice done.
There's an extra inducement too in the world that is Pinker. Inside our minds we have 'mirror neurons' which prompt us to empathise with other human beings. That bit of clinical psychology seems to be true, and Pinker draws from it the conclusion that all over the world and in every little way things are getting better. More and more of us are using those mirror neurons when we feel sorry for people who may be very different from ourselves. And even when they've done wrong we want to help those people get better.
The idea that humanity is evolving towards universal niceness does seem to be a shade counter-intuitive when we look back at the history of the twentieth century. States and governments became more enlightened in the way they treated their subjects from the 18th century onwards- less inclined to use torture for example. The French Revolution and its invention of state terrorism was a bad blip but by the 1900s Europeans and Americans in particular could take a lot of satisfaction when looking at their mostly peaceful societies. After which came two world wars, Mao's mass extermination of opponents, Stalin's instruments of state torture and murder, the genocide of Jews and Armenians, the wars in Indochine that culminated in the Vietnam war, atrocities in Rwanda, repressive Latin American dictatorships....: it's not a great record if you think that humanity's on the up.
But the point is statistical as well as moral. Yes- far more people were killed in the twentith century than in previous centuries. But then- there were an awful lot more people around than in the past. So on a percentage basis the overall trend has been down, and humanity's chances of avoiding physical violence has been on the up.
Even within the period 1900-2000 most of the really terrible wars and atrocities occurred in 1914-45. From the end of the second world war to now there's been a dramatic decline in the number of states that are prepared to declare war on each other. And when war does happen fewer combatants get killed compared to the masses that were mowed down on the fields of battle in the days when techno- warfare was less 'sophisticated'. We ought to be more amazed than we are that Europe from 1945 to 2011 has known no wars ( with the exception of the Bosnian conflicts in the 1990s). That sixty-six year peace is a phenomenon without parallel in the continent's history. One day we may look back at that period and lament its passing. But for the moment Europe peace is the norm- and so we've stopped thinking of it as exceptional.
War and violence were just two of the Four Horsemen of the Apoclypse. That still leaves famine and disease. Bad politics and corrupt governments can still accentuate the effects of famine, as in large areas of Africa. But the vulnerability of pre-modern societies to food shortages has now largely disappeared in the developed world. Fewer and fewer societies exist at a bare subsistence level, and the mass epidemics- such as the Spanish flu of 1919 which killed more peple than the First War-can be kept at bay by modern medicine.
So Pinker can rely on a lot of evidence if he wants to show that the world is a better place. But are we better? And is that why the world has improved? Women, children, ethnic minorities: all get a better deal these days. Animals too are looked after more considerately- though in Britain they always did have a special place. But it is legislation which has enforced better conduct in these cases. And if the treatment is better that's surely connected to the punishment that will fit the offence if we don't obey the law. Even Pinker has to admit that there is a lot of strategy involved in better behavior since being a stinker no longer pays.
When it comes to those empathy inducing neurons I'm a sceptic. I have no doubt that they exist, and that is why we experience those fleeting stabs of pity. But the point is that they are fleeting, and a moral code needs to be consistent rather than episodic. There's certainly more talk these days about 'feeling' other people's pain, and there's been a marked rise in hugging as a result. One of the more revolting contemporary sights is that of middle-aged men giving each other a bear hug at any and every opprtunity. Whenever anybody tries to do that to me I know that I'm in the presence of an insincere human being.
Empathy comes and goes. It is thoroughly unreliable and can also lead to unjust results. Juries can be swayed by a pretty face or a cute contriver, and nepotism in job appointments is based on empathy. So beware the mirror neurons and their empathetic promptings whuch are really a source of self- satisfaction. Look how good I am at feeling! But the point of morality is doing- not feeling. And in the history of morality acts speak louder than words, as well as being a good deal more difficult.
Why shouldn't headteachers carry the can?
There now seems every prospect that Sir Michael Wilshaw, headmaster of Hackney's Mossbourne Academy, is going to be appointed to run OFSTED as the new Chief Inspector of Schools. Everybody who thinks that education should be about teaching ought to be encouraged by the news. In his time at Mossbourne Wilshaw has turned his school into a beacon of excellence. Critics like to portray the place as a kind of military boot camp. But the emphasis on disciplined behaviour, respect for teachers, punctuality and homework, is the norm in most independent schools. Two generations ago Mossbourne would not have been exceptional in the state sector either.
Wilshaw is a remarkable man - neother particularly 'left' nor 'right' he just has a phenomenal instinct for what makes a good school tick. In emphasising that competition is the key to educational achievement Wilshart is going with the grain of human nature- rather than imposing some alien ideology. Allowing people to 'coast along' -whether they are children or adults- is a real cruelty since it leads so often to a dead end. Structure gives meaning in life and art- whether it's a time table, a sonnet, or a sonata. What is important is that the structure makes sense and is achievable, and that is where good teaching comes into play.
Wilshart's emphasis on the unique responsibility of the head has been perhaps the single most important element in Mossbourne's success. There's a sharpness of definition here setting him apart from the sloppy orthodoxy which says that everybody has a right to a point of view and that schools should therefore be democratic experiments. Of course questions of interpretations matter when it comes to the content of teaching. Was John that bad a king? Did Germany 'cause' the outbreak of war in 1914? Does global warming come and go ? But there's a bedrock of information which needs to be acquired before those debates can be fruitful. And when it comes to behaviour the head who says that ' it all depends what you mean by good standards' is surely doomed. And so are his or her pupils. Making socio-economic and ethnic excuses for low achievement- that major preoccupation of British educationalists- is actually a form of snobbery and racism.
So a good head ought to know how to be scary- not necessarily all the time but just often enough to remind people who is in charge. It's a demanding and lonely business being a proper head. Which is why most state schools have comforting managerial structures to take the strain away. Assistant heads, deputy heads, heads of year, heads (pastoral), heads (academic): in that Panglossian world everyone it seems is a head. And that is why so many of those kind of schools fail. They have no one who really and truly carries the can - no one who is brave enough to say 'this is my show and I take responsibility for what happens'. Wilshaw has shown immense resolution and flair at Mossbourne. Now he's going to be a different kind of head- one charged with leading the inspectors of schools. I suspect that he will find them more fractious than the stroppiest adolescent in Hackney.
In a dramatic break with its recent past OFSTED has announced that from now on its schools' inspection teams will be concentrating on how effective schools are at......... teaching. It's an announcement that will bemuse many people who are unfamiliar with the weird world of Britain's educational business and the bizarre priorities that lurk behind all those acronyms that dance before the eyes. What on earth has OFSTED been doing in recent years that makes this such a significant departure? Isn't teaching what schools are set up to do ? What on earth have the inspectors been up to in recent years if they haven't been taking at least a passing interest in the question of how knowledge is transmitted from one generation to another?
The answer of course lies with OSTED's preoccupation with what it calls "well-being issues". Schools' inspectors were once intellectually distinguished figures and the heirs to a mighty tradition inaugurated by that great Victorian Matthew Arnold- a second rate poet but a first rate Chief Inspector of Schools. They now seem indistinguishable from itinerant peddlers of crazy remedies, bogus potions, dodgy pills and suspect creams. Perhaps these days, like travelling salesmen, the inspectors arrive at schools equipped with samples in their cases? Having problems with "community cohesion" ? Then why not have a stab at this tried and tested social outreach programme? Guaranteed to raise your profile in the local community. Worried about your pupils' bowel movements ? Here's a video of Jamie's School Dinners. Eager to avoid prosecution by the health and safety brigade? Have a look at this action programme designed to reduce out-of-school activity.
For a very long time now in British education context has been everything. Schools have been measured and graded as if they were agencies specifically set up to promote social change. And educational content- teaching- has come very low down in the list of things to do. That is why over a quarter of schools deemed to be 'oustanding' by OFSTED in recent years are in fact, even by the inspectorate's own limply defined categories, not actually that hot at teaching. They've just got brilliant school meals and superb relations with the local mosque.
So I suppose we should all be glad that 'teaching standards' and 'pupils' achievements' should now be mentioned explicitly in the inspectorate's brave new proclamation of its own 'core skills'. As always with OFSTED though there's a kick in the tail. There's going to be a new website where parents can go on line, anonymously, and register complaints about teachers. This seems both cowardly and sinister. Running to nanny-OFSTED and bleating is surely no alternative to going along to the school and expressing complaints in person. And on line anonymity is a recipe guaranteed to excite some pretty dodgy people.
Like any governmental organisation OFSTED exists primarily in order to exalt its own self-importance and to promote the self worth of its staff. And despite all their talk about 'diversity and excellence' the inspectors, by their very existence, concentrate power in the hands of the state. An on-line complaints system would of course suit OFSTED purposes. It makes the organisation seem more 'caring' while also giving it an opportunity to intervene. But it is schools themselves, not these highly paid bureaucrats, who should sort out a local mess when it manifests itself. And they need to do so in the light of day- transparently and face-to-face.
The case of Peter Wilson, the Blackpool teacher suspended on account of malicious charges of inappropriate behaviour, throws into sharp relief one of modern schooling's nastiest aspects- kid power endorsed by pen pushers. When the matter came to court he was acquitted of all charges in a matter of minutes, but he remains suspended while the local authority continues with its internal investigation. And his wife- a teacher at the same school-is also suspended simply because she happens to be married to him.
Wilson has endured months of indignity, and all because he patted pupils on the back in order to encourage them in their work. He forms one of the very small minority of male primary teachers, and his misfortune illustrates one of the reasons why it's so difficult to get men to opt for a career in the classroom.
Awareness of child abuse hardly registered at all before the 1980s. But local authorities and their social services departments have now gone into overdrive, and any form of physical contact - even somethng as innocuous as patting on the back- can become evidence of a diseased mind.
We are all now familiar with the idea that certain children are at risk, but teachers can be vulnerable too. Theirs is an unusual trade because for most of the time they do not work side by side with colleagues. Accountants, say, or lawyers, work in an office environment where colleagues' professional patterns of work and personal character are very obvious. But once a teacher closes the classroom door he or she is a solo performer. Most teachers I think rather like that individual style and group teaching- two or more instructing before a class- rarely works out. And the dynamic that is established when the teacher with flair is in command of the material (and of the class) is something very precious. Peter Wilson came before the court with gowing testimonials as an effective and popular teacher. But if you set high standards there is no doubt that some children can resent the amount of work involved and form grudges as a result. And since no colleague was around at the time of the alleged incidents Wilson was vulnerable to infantile malevolence.
It is surely a terrible thing that our society- with its very high level of sexual awareness- has now produced pre-teen children who are so familar with the vocabulary of child abuse that they can use it in order to blacken a professional's reputation. Those who should be hanging their heads in shame today include the parents of the accusers. It is natural to wish to support your children, but parents have a pretty sure instinct about whether their child is lying or telling the truth.
This is a case which should never have come to court. But today's bureaucracy of 'care' operates according to the rulebook rather than by applying common sense. Even after Wilson's swift acquittal at Preston Crown Court, Blackpool council and Lancashire's social services department are still not falling on their swords and offering apologies. Those council officials are not acting out of care and concern for childen. Rather they are part of a self-interested bureaucracy whose members want to make sure that they keep their jobs by following the rules- however perverse and unjust the consequences.
SHOULD UNIVERSITIES COOK THE EDUCATIONAL BOOKS?
I like to think I'm a meritocrat. People with real ability ought to be recognised, whatever their social origins, and they should be given the opportunity to excel. And so I worry about the British record in this regard. If you're born poor in this country, the probability is that you will stay poor. This country's vast reservoir of unrecognised ability rivals that of mid-Victorian England before educational reformers got to work. There is of course a personal cost here in terms of lives blighted and hopes crushed. And there is also an immense,and unquantifiable, cost to the national economy.
Britain in the mid-20th century was a good deal more socially mobile than it has now become, and the socially very mixed grammar schools played a key role in opening our country up to new talent. Their abolition by the Labour governments of the 1960s was the fatal first step towards the cataclysm, and the goal of a classless society, which was supposed to justify the comprehensive experiment, has in fact helped to create a whole new social grouping-Britain's under-class.
Streaming by ability- an anethema during the 1970s heyday of comprehensive faith- has now made a come back in our state secondary schools. But the comprehensive school is a neighbourhood phenomenon, and selection by post code has replaced competitive selection at eleven years old. If your family lives in a leafy suburb or country town where most parents belong to the professional middle clases then your chances of going to a well-run and high achieving local school are high. But if life's lottery means that you were born in the metropolitan inner city then the schooling outlook is pretty bleak.
Bright pupils who work in order to get on and get out of the bog-standard comprehensive face an almighty challenge. And those who have Oxbridge hopes will often be discouraged by teachers who may well resent the evidence of ambition. But if they do make it there- or to one of the other major UK universities- the evidence is pretty clear: clever students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds tend to carry on striving and are statistically much more likely to get a first or an upper second class degree than their contemporaries who were admitted from independent schools.
So why do I oppose the idea that universities ought to skew their admissions procedures in favour of applicants from sink schools and whose A level results are poor? Universities are in the business of picking winners, so shouldn't they make allowances when minds that are naturally bright just haven't been taught? This though would take so much of the pressure away from state educators that bad schools might get even worse. Once it's known that an university may not pay much attention to A level results then why bother with the whole business of school improvement?
It really should not be the job of our universities to intervene in secondary education in order to try and correct the system's failings by disregarding exam results. Standards applied by different examination boards in awarding A level grades may be a tad variable, but at least the results offer empirical evidence of what the student can or can not do. And if there's a need to justify giving a place to bright Andy who slipped a grade but comes from Bog.Comp. then university departments should look at administering intelligence tests and setting their own swift and quick entrance exams without a syllabus but with plenty of rigour.
The proposal though to disregard grades would involve universities in having to make a whole series of judgements about just how bad a school might or might not be. And that kind of data is very uncertain. School X- let's call it 'Gove Academy'- might be going through a very bad patch in 2010-15, and as a result some pupils might be rewarded when it came to university entrance. But even poor schools are not monoliths- and some departments at Gove Academy- say physics- might be abysmal while others- history for example- are just mediocre. So is the admission tutor expected to make the necessary adjustment in expectations- and to say yes to the candidate who wants to study chemistry and no to the one who wants to study history?
Schools, moreover, change. Bad ones can can get even worse- but they can also improve. And good schools can also slip down. From 2015 onwards Gove Academy might be improving dramatically under a new head. But does that mean its pupils ought to be discriminated against in the allocation of university places? And is it in any event realistic to suppose that all UK universities are going to be well informed about the changes that have been going on in the Gove Academy's staff room over the past few years? Miss Stinks might have transformed the Chemistry deaprtment, but history would have gone down the plughole after Dr Macaulay's nervous breakdown.
British education has not been wanting in hare-brained schemes that end in bureaucratic chaos. And this is the latest example. Let's not take the spotlight away from what's actually going wrong in the classrooms, and let universities keep to their proper role in teaching and reseraching instead of attempting to cook the educational books.
JULIAN ASSANGE: pretentious,pompous and preposterous.
Was there ever a more pompous, preposterous, self-righteous, cynical,preening, hypocritical and downright creepy figure in the annals of recorded time than Julian Assange, the self-styled servant of truth whose 'unauthorised autobiography' (something of a literary first surely as a genre) is about to be published? This malevolent figure has spent most of his quasi-adult life hacking into information systems, and the release of secret intelligence through his Wikileaks has endangered the safety of many people who, in circumstances of great danger, have been passing on valuable information about ruling despots, corrupt megalomaniacs,and remorseless tyrants. Having accepted a huge advance from his publishers Canongate to write an autobiography- and then spent some fifty hours talking to the writer charged with the melancholy task of ghosting the rambling quasi-authorial peregrinations around an inflated self- Assange then grew uneasy and withdrew his cooperation from the project. No mention of course of returning the advance- presumably since his legal bills are so enormous.
In a rare moment of self-knowledge Assange seems to have decided that his conversations- the basis of the book-actually tell us rather too much about his personality and motivation. In that regard at least- if in no other- he's right on the money. 'I'm not an original political thinker' he informs us from that aloof distance occupied in cyber space by the loopily self-deluded . But his understanding of 'the structures of government' was so profound, he tells us, that he was ready to throw them 'into a bath of acid and boil them down to the bone'. That kind of violent language tells us a lot about a man who seems to have a grievance against the whole idea of organised civilisation. He managed to get some friends to join him in the Wikileak conspiracy, but any idea of loyalty is alien to this self-absorbed manipulator: ' friendship, in my experience, will only buy you some nine hours of free labour'. Quite soon Assange- a hero to himself but surely to one else- was living out of a small rucksack as he dragged his malodorous ego around whichever location gave him an opportunity to spy. He has the self-pity of the true narcissist: ' I felt completely crushed, knowing Wikileaks could be great, but that I was just ailing under the sheer volume of work required to make it happen.... It was a lonely time'. I bet it was. But loneliness is the chosen condition of this utterly dreadful man who thrills his selfhood with the thought of hacking away and 'typing into this wonderful emptiness.' Assange hacked under the pseudonym of Mendax, a highly appropriate handle for one whose identity and personality are so so false and manufactured.
We need people who will scrutinise governments, excoriate tyrants, and hunt for the truth in a world where lies become powerful and where democracies are deceived. But what we do not need are hackers lacking in any sense of decency and respect for other people, and who live their lives by remote control rather than through real human engagement. Even those celebrity backers who once crowded around Assange now seem to have grown silent as the true character of this entirely lamentable and grotesque personality is laid bare before us. He is the latest example of one of our culture's most depresing features- the imagined celebrity who hugs himself with glee and says 'look at me' but who has nothing of any value to say.
When in doubt and stuck for an argument remember to use the word ' community' as often and as loudly as you possibly can. This iron law of Welsh public life has been well to the fore in recent days as politicians, clergy and commentators struggled to find the right vocabulary when responding to the deaths of four miners at the Gleision colliery in the Swansea valley. Giving voice to other people's grief is often expected of public figures, since it's part of their representative role. And finding the right words can be difficult. That though is no reason just to press the default button marked 'community'- and hope that that will do.
Just four micro-pits survive in the south Wales coalfield compared to the hundreds, large and small, coalworks that were once scattered across that dramatic landcape. The industry's decline can be dated back to the 1950s when coal extraction became very expensive compared to cheaper foreign imports. Even before then though the industry was running into difficulties and the real beneficiaries of nationalisation were the owners of the coal mines who received a massively generous compensation package. Landowners with a a coal mine on their hands had every reason to bless the Labour government of 1945-50.
The horror at Gleision is a reminder that coal extraction is both dfficult and dangerous however modern the technology. And an investigation will need to discover whether safety standards were allowed to slip, as happened with the railways after their privatisation. But the comparison with the Aberfan disaster of almost half-a-century ago shows how much has changed in de-industrialised Wales. The upper Swansea and the Neath valleys now look green again, and the local villages have been suburbanised into a commuter belt. Further east- and into the Rhondda valley and Merthyr- there's also a recovered greenery as well as a pattern of poverty and dereliction which can take the breath away.
All of these settlements contain neighbours, friends and families- the people who will be needed by the bereaved of Gleision. But they do not show that ' a sense of community' is uniquely Welsh. Communities of neighbours exist in their different ways right across the UK- whether they are crofters in Skye or Islington-based traders in derivatives. What is uniquely Welsh is all the backward-looking talk about community.
The limp sentiment that ' a sense of community still survives' is really just a reflection of the fact that no one knows what to do with large areas of industrial Wales. Those tightly terraced villages came into existence to serve just one purpose- the housing needs of those who worked in the pits. Now that coal has gone nothing really has taken its place. Development agencies and light engineering plants come- and then go- talking of little apart from grants given and subsidies taken. This is a reflection of the larger picture in Wales- a country where a ruinous two-thirds of the national income is accounted for by government expenditure.
Having chosen to be governed locally by just one party for most of the twentieth century Wales has limped into the twenty-first century burdened by a public and official class which is bereft of ideas and ambition. Talk about the wonder that is 'community' is both banal and hypocritical. Those who indulge themselves in this way are comfortably placed public sector professionals who invoke the ghosts of the valleys of the past in order to avoid thinking about how to solve the catastrophe of the valleys of today. Communities - real and living ones-evolve in order to serve an outside purpose. Take that meaning away and all you end up with is a community centre, that infallible sign to a dead end.
Why has literacy become such a problem in English education? By the end of the nineteenth century the country was recording well over ninety per cent rates in basic literacy and numeracy. The new state primary schools- as well as the Sunday schools run by the chapels and churches- had pioneered a vast transformation. But the late twentieth century- a period of hectic change in educational policy- has created a real waste land in England. Twenty per cent of pupils fail to reach the level of English expected of them when they leave school, and ten per cent of eleven- year- old boys have the reading standard of a seven-year-old. It's a problem with huge knock-on effects. Teachers in secondary schools end up trying to teach their pupils skills that should have been learnt years previously. Work at sixth form level suffers correspondingly, and many university lecturers spend their time correcting elementary mistakes in grammar and spelling.
Any government which tries to do something about this catastrophe enters a minefield of vested interests, low expectations, and educational jargon. There's nothing quite like the education business when it comes to creating a cloud of unknowing.
On Friday the government announced that that from next summer onwards all five and six-year olds in England will face a new reading test based on phonics- a system whereby children learn the sound of letters and of groups of letters clustered together. Phonics is really what most of would call an introduction to spelling: the child (sorry-'pupil') relates the sound that he or she makes to the shape of the letter seen on the page. Put these sounds together and then you have a word. Phonics is a way of getting going in the business of literacy, and it's certainly better than the competing system of instruction called 'whole language' which brings with it a whole baggage of once-fashionable nonsense.
Schools went in for 'whole-language' in a very big way from the 1970s onwards with children being taught that the meaning of a word is determined by the way it is used. This dreadful nonsense- endorsed by some bogus philosophy and shallow linguistics- gave some teachers an opportunity to spend their time supervising 'creative writing' in schools rather than actually teaching spelling and grammar. There are still, sadly, quite a lot of 'whole language' true believers out there, and these are the people who lament the new phonics test. It's a familiar enough line: the tests will dominate teaching time in the classrooms and cause anxiety among parents and children. Anxiety though about the limited achievements of current six-year-olds is surely the more appropriate response.
If phonics gets children to learn the alphabet and its sounds- then all well and good. But you hardly a need an educational philosophy ( and phonics has its own forest of jargon) in order to justify the point that there is a connection between letter patterns and the sounds they represent. It's a striking proof of the poverty of our educational system that it's now thought necessary to explain fairly ponderously why this - rather obvious alphabetical point- should be the basis of a school's work when teaching literacy. Teaching the alphabet was once something that most parents did with their children during the pre-school years. It was done for free and out of love. This meant that from the age of five onwards children could get down to the next stage and start to learn the basics of grammar and syntax. Where English education is concerned we always seems to be making up for lost time.
CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamic State claimed responsibility for a gun attack on a checkpoint east of the Libyan capital Tripoli earlier this week, the group’s Amaq news agency said on Saturday.
Thursday’s attack took place between the towns of Zliten and Khoms on the coastal road leading from Tripoli to the port city of Misrata, an area in which members of the Islamist militant group are known to be operating, according to the Zliten mayor.
Amaq said “seven Libyan road security personnel were killed” in the attack by Islamic State fighters, while around 10 more were wounded. It provided no evidence.
A local official and a resident on Thursday said at least four people had been killed in the attack, among them security personnel.
Libya has seen occasional attacks by Islamist militants who have benefited from the turmoil that followed a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
Islamic State has said it was behind a deadly attack by gunmen on the offices of the electoral commission in Tripoli in May and an attack on a court complex in Misrata last year.
Local forces drove the militant group from its former stronghold in Sirte, southeast of Misrata, in 2016, but Libyan and Western officials say militants have sought to regroup through mobile desert units and sleeper cells in northern towns.
The United Nations is leading efforts to prepare for national elections in Libya, which it hopes will reunify rival factions based in Tripoli and the east of the country.
The BAE Systems Harrier GR9, Nimrod MRA4 and Lockheed Martin’s short take-off and vertical landing F-35B have been confirmed as the main casualties of the UK coalition government’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR).
Announcing the results of the review process on 19 October, prime minister David Cameron said the Royal Air Force’s long-delayed Nimrod MRA4 programme is to be cancelled, while the UK’s remaining Harriers will be retired early to safeguard the service’s fleet of Panavia Tornado GR4s, which he says deliver more capability in Afghanistan.
Cameron also slammed the previous Labour government’s selection of the F-35B, and says the UK intends to switch its selection to the JSF’s “more capable, less expensive and longer-range” carrier variant (F-35C pictured below). The decision will also require one of the Royal Navy’s two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers to be equipped with catapult launch equipment.
Previous plans to greatly increase the size of the RAF’s Boeing CH-47 Chinook fleet have also been watered down, with the Ministry of Defence to acquire just 12 more aircraft. This will increase the RAF’s inventory of the type to 60 aircraft, Cameron says, with an earlier commitment to upgrade the service’s Eurocopter Puma transports to be safeguarded.
Other actions announced by Cameron include plans to cut 5,000 RAF personnel by 2015. This will leave the service with an operating strength of 33,000. The service's Lockheed Martin C-130J tactical transports will be retired from use in 2022, 10 years sooner than previously planned, with the UK to retain its commitment to buying 22 Airbus Military A400Ms.
Cancellation of the Nimrod MRA4 programme brings to an end a troubled acquisition programme worth around £3.6 billion – the bulk of which has already been spent. Contracted in 1996, the project was originally to have delivered 21 maritime patrol aircraft, but had subsequently been slashed to just nine.
The decision leaves the UK with no dedicated maritime patrol aircraft capability, and extends a gap caused by the retirement of the RAF’s last Nimrod MR2s earlier this year. And in another blow to the RAF's future intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance operations, the SDSR has also recommended that its newly-fielded Raytheon Systems Sentinel R1 airborne ground surveillance fleet be retired when it is no longer needed to support the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan.
Cameron says the measures to be adopted will result in financial savings worth £4.7 billion over the life of the review period. The process was launched to address a defence budget “Black Hole” totalling £38 billion.
London was calling Jordyn Woods, and the timing was no coincidence, according to Us Weekly.
“Jordyn is thrilled to be in London and actually timed her trip around when the Keeping Up With the Kardashians trailer dropped so she could distract herself and focus on the future,” a source told the publication.
Woods was recently banished by the Kardashian tribe after kissing Khloé Kardashian’s on-again, off-again boyfriend Tristan Thompson. Khloé and Tristan share a daughter together, True, who celebrates her first birthday on April 12.
The falling out was particularly hard on makeup mogul Kylie Jenner, who had been best friends with Woods. Not only had Kylie often referred to Woods as daughter Stormi’s “Auntie Jordy,” but she had also let Woods live in her mansion in Hidden Hills.
After the scandal broke, Kylie cut off contact and Jordyn has since moved out.
The KUWTK trailer, which dropped on March 27, focuses heavily on the cheating scandal, with multiple shots showing a heartbroken Khloé crying to the camera. In one clip, she emotionally screams “Liar!” into the phone.
However, it only mentions Jordyn once, when Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner offers a toast to Jordyn and Kylie. The trailer is currently trending at #12 on Youtube.
Nonetheless, Jordyn was “mortified by the trailer, and her mom is upset about it too, but they expected it,” the source added.
Jordyn has indeed been posting regularly on social media and seems to reference her recent zeal in a post from when she first arrived in London on March 26.
Happy to be back ???? good morning London.. don’t mind all of the photos I’m going to be posting this week ????
Though Kylie Jenner is still not reportedly speaking to Jordyn, she is following her on Instagram.
In addition to getting away from gossip, Woods is also in London for the launch of her new Eylure false eyelash collection. The lashes retail for $8-$10 and have been earning positive reviews.
Jordyn was not the only woman caught in a scandal with basketball star Thompson. The Cleveland Cavaliers player was infamously caught on video cheating on Khloé days before she was due to give birth.
Though Khloé forgave Thompson in an attempt to keep the family together, she ended their relationship after the Jordyn revelations surfaced in February. Thompson has another child, Prince, with ex Jordan Craig.
Fascinated by the ludicrous laws she had heard about from friends around the U.S., photographer Olivia Locher set about documenting them—in her signature style.
In the state of Michigan, it is illegal to paint a sparrow with the intention of selling it as a parakeet. Which means, unfortunately, that if you are skilled enough to catch a white-and-brown sparrow, hold it still for long enough to paint it green, blue and yellow, then pawn it off on to some poor schmuck as a parakeet, your deceitful artistry would be considered a criminal act. In some states, you would be tried as a con artist; in Michigan, crafty birder, there is a law just for you.
At least that’s according to Olivia Locher’s photo book I Fought The Law, which warns readers in the introduction to take its proclamations with a grain of salt. An offshoot of Locher’s 2013 photo series of the same name, the book’s colorful and satirical images illustrate “America’s most unusual laws.” Some remain on the statute books, while others have since been removed, or were merely myths to begin with. All of them make supremely fun and surreal photographs in Locher’s hands.
For example, Alabamans will be relieved to hear that it is in fact not illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your back pocket. You can do that freely there. But in the 1800s, that act was against the law in Kentucky and Georgia, where thieves would lure horses away from their owners with sugary-sweet ice-cream in their back pocket. If caught, the thieves could say that they didn’t steal, the horse merely followed—which, incidentally, does seem pretty unlawful.
Locher found that online and in conversations with people, there were all kinds of rumors and facts about completely bizarre laws in every state. Most of them were so surreal-sounding that they conjured up a very distinct image in Locher’s mind. From 2013 to 2016, she shot 50 photos—of myths, past laws or actual laws—one for each state. In the book, each spread features an absurd law on the left and an absurdist photograph, popping with color, on the right. Some of the photos are literal translation (see: In Kentucky, it is illegal to lick a toad). Others take a more interpretive approach. The photo for a Sesame Street ban in Mississippi, for example, also takes a stab at why–it features Burt and Ernie kissing. All of them are playfully rebellious: The woman in Ohio’s photo doesn’t seem to care that it’s illegal to disrobe in front of a portrait of a man. At the very least, these unusual laws gave Locher stellar prompts for creating unusual photos—which happen to be her specialty. If you want to know which laws are real and still in place, you’ll have to look it up yourself. But for the time being, put down your parakeet paint brush. This is no country for disingenuous bird-sellers.
With Halloween around the corner, I'm thinking you're looking for some totally adorable, incredibly delicious, seriously easy treats to make, right? Well, you're in luck! This yummy Cupcake Graveyard is the perfect thing to whip up for a Halloween party, or simply for your family. And honestly -- what kid wouldn't want to help making these?
1. Prepare cupcakes according to package directions.
2. Frost cupcakes after they've cooled.
3. Crumble chocolate cookies, and sprinkle onto frosting.
4. Place wafer cookies into cupcakes as "graves"
5. Decorate wafer cookies with chocolate icing.
6. Place ghosts next to graves.

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.