Amid uproar in conservative circles about perceived anti-American bias in the new Advanced Placement U.S. History course and exam, Texas on Wednesday moved to require its high school students to learn only state-mandated curriculum — not be taught to the national test.
The Board of Education approved a measure declaring that the history curriculum its members set trumps that covered by the AP history course created for classrooms nationwide. That class concludes with an exam that can earn college credit for students who score high enough.
The board must still take a final vote, but the measure's content isn't expected to change.
Texas limiting new Advanced Placement history course's influence
Are Routine Scans Causing Cancer?
. A recent article in the Journal of American Medical Association noted that “a sizeable proportion of patients with advanced cancer continue to undergo cancer screening tests that do not have a meaningful likelihood of providing benefit.” Another published in the September 28, 2010 issue of Health Imaging noted that “as many as 30 percent of diagnostic imaging procedures are inappropriate or contribute no useful information.”
Elsewhere, statistics cited by the American College of Radiology (ACR) estimate that “60 million CT scans and 20 million nuclear medicine scans annually in the US might cause up to 40,000 fatal cancers.”
Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
In Moscow this summer, while reporting a story for Wired magazine, I had the rare opportunity to hang out for three days with Edward J. Snowden. It gave me a chance to get a deeper understanding of who he is and why, as a National Security Agency contractor, he took the momentous step of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents.
Among his most shocking discoveries, he told me, was the fact that the N.S.A. was routinely passing along the private communications of Americans to a large and very secretive Israeli military organization known as Unit 8200. This transfer of intercepts, he said, included the contents of the communications as well as metadata such as who was calling whom.
Trump Plaza closes its doors, becomes 4th Atlantic City casino to close this year
The supervisor drew his finger in a slashing motion moments after the final hand of blackjack had been dealt at Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino.
And with that, gambling was done.
The 30-year-old casino at the heart of the Boardwalk shut its doors at 6 a.m. Tuesday, becoming the fourth Atlantic City casino to close this year. Beset by crushing debt, fleeing customers and run-down facilities, Trump Plaza had been the town's worst-performing casino for years. This year, it has won about the same amount from gamblers that the Borgata takes in every two weeks. And at pennies on the dollar, no one wanted to buy it.
Fracking may put drinking water supply at risk for many countries, study finds
A new study by the World Resources Institute finds that many places with water scarcity are using too much of their resources on fracking. "Eight of the top 20 countries with the largest shale gas resources face arid conditions or high to extremely high baseline water stress where the shale resources are located; this includes China, Algeria, Mexico, South Africa, Libya, Pakistan, Egypt, and India," the study states.
The United States is also at risk, according to the study, since many of the places inside the United States that are good for fracking are going through a drought or generally have low water supply.
To drill a fracking well takes 5 million gallons of water, on average. States like Texas have a strong fracking industry, but lack of water supplies has forced frackers to import water from elsewhere to continue their business.
Gaza struggles to rebuild under blockade
A U.N. representative urged Israel to lift a blockade around Gaza so humanitarian aid and construction materials can reach the region.
Robert Turner, United Nations Relief and Works Agency director of operations in Gaza, visited the region Thursday and said the strip has been left destitute by Israeli shelling over the course of a two-month conflict.
"We need resources. We need funding to rebuild for both the refugees and the non-refugee families in Gaza," he told Voice of America.
Israeli intelligence veterans refuse to serve in Palestinian territories
Forty-three veterans of one of Israel’s most secretive military intelligence units – many of them still active reservists – have signed a public letter refusing to serve in operations involving the occupied Palestinian territories because of the widespread surveillance of innocent residents.
The signatories include officers, former instructors and senior NCOs from the country’s equivalent of America’s NSA or Britain’s GCHQ, known as Unit 8200 – or in Hebrew as Yehida Shmoneh-Matayim.
Bob Alexander: By My Clock It’s Always 9/11
I wrote this about 4 years ago:
We were in a canoe paddling towards the middle of the lake. The sky and water was blue as the blue in a Maxfield Parrish painting. I looked down and it seemed I could see forever into the depths of the lake. And I wondered … What would it be like to lose something … Something of great value … Right here in the middle of the lake? What would it be like if my wedding band slipped off my finger into the lake?
It would be lost the moment it hit the water.
Even if I immediately dove in after the ring it would sink faster and deeper than I could swim. But I would be able to clearly see it as it sank … for a long time. That’s the terrible part. To see it fall away with absolute clarity … sunlight glinting off the gold as it rapidly receded farther and further into the depths … finally passing deeper than light can penetrate … and then … wink out of existence.
Lost.
Warren Commission Experts To Reveal Secrets of JFK Murder, Cover-up at Sept. 26-28 DC Conference
Washington, DC — Forty-four prominent authors, medical doctors, academics, lawyers and other research experts convene from Sept. 26 to 28 to reveal recent findings undercutting the Warren Commission’s 1964 report ascribing President Kennedy’s murder to a sole assassin.
On the unique, historic occasion of the Warren report’s 50th anniversary, experts and surviving witnesses will examine evidence showing the commission was wrong about its core finding, that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing the president with three shots from behind. Polls for decades have shown that most Americans – sometimes more than 70 percent – disbelieve the commission, which was chaired by the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren.
“Few serious scholars believe the Warren Report any longer,” said Assassinations Archives and Record Center President James Lesar, whose non-profit group AARC has organized what he called, “one of the most important JFK assassination conferences in history.”
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