“Stephen C. Webster” - Education Secretary: 82% of US public schools may ‘fail’ this year

By Stephen C. Webster

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/09/education-secretary-82-of-us-public-schools-may-fail-this-year/

In testimony to Congress Wednesday, US Education Secretary Arne Duncan made a startling claim: This year, up to 82 percent of public schools could "fail" the government's "No Child Left Behind" standards.

"No Child Left Behind is broken and we need to fix it now," he said, according to a transcript provided by the Department of Education.

"This law has created dozens of ways for schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed," Duncan added. "We should get out of the business of labeling schools as failures and create a new law that is fair and flexible, and focused on the schools and students most at risk."

Last year, just 32 percent of schools were failing the government's rigorous testing standards.

Duncan was speaking to the House Education and Work Force Committee.

The education policies, passed by the Bush administration in 2002, set a number of highly unrealistic deadlines and requirements, and tied school funding to achieving those goals.

Critics have argued the reforms changed schools from centers of learning to testing factories, increasingly irrelevant to students and communities. Increasingly, even Republicans have come to agree that the policies are largely broken.

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“Reuters” - Ohio plans to execute man with animal euthanasia drug

By Reuters

Thursday, March 10th, 2011 -- 8:16 am

COLUMBUS (Reuters) - An execution scheduled for Thursday in Ohio will be the first in that state to use the drug pentobarbital, which is often used to euthanize pets and other animals.

Johnnie Baston, 37, is scheduled to be executed at 10 a.m. local time at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio for the 1994 killing of Chong Mah, a Toledo store owner. Baston's will be the 9th U.S. execution in 2011.

Lethal injection executions in Ohio have previously used sodium thiopental. But Hospira Inc. of Illinois said in January it would stop making the drug altogether after Italy, where it planned to move production, objected, citing its use in executions.

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“Sahil Kapur” - Progressive groups raise $200,000 in hours after WI vote, will target vulnerable GOP lawmakers

By Sahil Kapur

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/10/progressive-groups-raise-200000-in-hours-after-wi-vote-will-target-vulnerable-gop-lawmakers/

The liberal groups Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy For America raised $200,000 since Wednesday night's anti-union vote in Wisconsin and intends to use the money to target vulnerable lawmakers in the state.

A joint campaign by the groups at WarOnWorkingFamilies.com witnessed a dramatic surge in fundraising after Wisconsin Republicans bypassed protesting Senate Democrats and voted to curtail the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions. State Republicans, unable to reach a quorum on the budget without Democratic support, passed the anti-union provisions in a separate bill.

"CODE RED: Wisconsin's Republican senators just voted to pass Gov. Walker's anti-worker bill -- without Democrats present," PCCC co-founder Adam Green emailed supporters after the vote. "They are bending the rules in order to break Wisconsin unions, and they need to be punished for this undemocratic action."

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“Jess Zimmerman” - Meet the zero-energy transparent TV

by Jess Zimmerman

10 Mar 2011

http://www.grist.org/article/2011-03-10-meet-the-zero-energy-transparent-tv

A zero-energy TV you can see through? I know what you're thinking: "That's called a pane of glass." But this transparent screen, which Samsung unveiled at an expo in Germany, isn't just glass, it's FUTURE GLASS.

For starters, the screen uses so little energy that it can be run by solar panels that feed off the ambient light in the room, like those old-school solar calculators. And while it can play regular TV images, it can also project pictures or data onto an otherwise transparent screen. That means it could be used for all kinds of crazy sci-fi applications -- windshields that display Google maps as you drive, for instance, or bay windows that overlay your neighbor's vinyl siding with a soothing view of Tahiti.



“Todd Woody” - Solar: It’s not just a California thing anymore

Todd Woody

10 Mar 2011 2:13 PM

http://www.grist.org/article/2011-03-10-solar-its-not-just-a-california-thing

The United States solar businesses boomed, as usual, in 2010, growing 67 percent to $6 billion, according to an annual report [PDF] released Thursday by an industry trade group.

That's been the story for the past several years, but what's notable is that solar is no longer just a California thing. The industry is expanding to the East. Back in 2004-2005, California accounted for a whopping 80 percent of the U.S. market. In 2010, that share fell to 30 percent, with 258.9 megawatts of the 878.3 megawatts of photovoltaic power installed that year, according to the report prepared by the Solar Energy Industries Association and GTM Research.

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“Rebecca Johnson” - "The rising of the women means the rising of us all"

Rebecca Johnson

9 March 2011

http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/rebecca-johnson/rising-of-women-means-rising-of-us-all

In the 1970s, the women’s liberation movement had a badge that proclaimed: women who seek equality with men lack ambition. We don’t want to participate as equals in the violence, oppression and greed of patriarchal power, says Rebecca Johnson.

About the author

Rebecca Johnson is Director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy and a former senior advisor to the International WMD Blix Commission (2004-06)

Yesterday, women crossed bridges all over the world to celebrate International Women’s Day.  I joined them too, but to demonstrate more than celebrate. Despite significant gains in the hundred years since Clara Zetkin proposed International Working Women’s Day to focus on our rights and needs, we still have a long way to go.

Economic improvements over the century have not done as much for women as for men.  In far too many countries and societies women’s security and economic conditions have been sliding backwards in the past 25 years.  Education opportunities for girls lag behind the provisions for boys in many countries, while jobs and pay remain far from equal.

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“Reuters” - Facebook puts six on Forbes billionaire list

By Reuters

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/10/facebook-puts-six-on-forbes-billionaire-list/

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facebook not only made household names out of its founders thanks to the movie "The Social Network" -- it has also minted the latest crop of the richest people on the planet.

Six of the founders and investors behind the hot Internet startup made the annual list of world's top billionaires compiled by Forbes and published on Wednesday -- and four of them are new to the roster.

They join a list of others made wealthy by the latest gold rush on the Internet, underscoring the extent of the resurgence in a sector left for dead at the turn of the millennium.

Facebook co-founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg clocked in at No. 52 with an estimated worth of $13.5 billion, up from 212 and $4 billion in 2010.

Co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, the youngest billionaire on the Forbes list at 26, Eduardo Saverin, and investors Sean Parker and Russian Yuri Milner are new to the ranks. Rounding out Forbes' "Facebook Six" is investor Peter Thiel, who has moved down to 833 from 828, despite increasing his wealth to $1.5 billion from $1.2 billion.

Created in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, Facebook rocketed from an online directory for college students to the world's No. 1 social network, quickly surpassing its predecessor Friendster and dominating its rival News Corp's MySpace in popularity.

Facebook has about 600 million users and is a threat to more established big Web businesses such as Google and Yahoo for users' time and advertising dollars.

The private Silicon Valley company recently rounded up $1.5 billion in financing led by Goldman Sachs and Milner's Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, suggesting it could be worth $50 billion and setting off a feeding frenzy among investors.

Other names familiar in tech, media and Internet circles make an appearance on the Forbes list. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page both come in at No. 24 on the Forbes list, unchanged from a year earlier though their fortunes have increased to $19.8 billion each from $17.5 billion each.

In China, Robin Li, the man behind the popular search engine Baidu, is listed with an estimated wealth of $9.4 billion. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba.com -- a site similar to eBay for businesses' transactions -- is worth $1.6 billion.

Digital Sky Technologies Chief Executive Milner, credited with beating Silicon Valley at its own game, landed on the cover of Forbes' billionaires list magazine. His firm holds stakes in the center of this generation's Internet leaders including social gaming Zynga and the online coupon site Groupon.

“David Edwards” - AOL confirms that it’s cutting 900 jobs

By David Edwards

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/10/aol-confirms-that-its-cutting-900-jobs/

U.S. Internet provider AOL Inc. confirmed Thursday that it was eliminating as many as 900 jobs as it incorporates The Huffington Post, which it agreed to buy last month.

About 200 workers will be laid off in the U.S., with the majority coming from the editorial side of the company, an AOL company spokesman told CNET.

Another 700 employees will be laid off in India, the company said. Of those, 300 will be moved to other companies where they will continue to support AOL in roles like operations and finance.

"The changes for me today are very personal," CEO Tim Armstrong said at the Bloomberg Media Summit in New York. "AOL employees deserve a tremendous amount of credit because I don't think it's easy to go from managing decline to managing growth."

"Today, we are announcing an organizational structure that will significantly improve AOL’s ability to focus on growth," he wrote in an e-mail to company employees.

The 900 jobs represent about 15 percent of AOL's overall workforce, according to regulatory filings made last year.

AOL agreed to pay $315 million for The Huffington Post last month. The companies closed the deal Monday, celebrating with the announcement that it had nabbed reporters from The New York Times, Yahoo!, and even Rupert Murdoch's new iPad newspaper The Daily.

"One of the Huffington Post Media Group's main goals is to deliver engaging and high-impact journalism, and these hires are an exciting addition to our reporting team," The Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington said.

"These new hires, which are only the beginning, demonstrate our commitment to great journalism," Armstrong said in a statement.

The latest hires boosted The Huffington's Post staff to around 150 reporters and editors.

The Newspaper Guild, a journalists' union with more than 34,000 members, has launched a letter writing campaign calling on Huffington to share her fortune with the unpaid writers who made her successful.



“Mary Margaret Chappell” - Green Party

A festival of easy recipes that'll get you hooked on dark, leafy greens

BY Mary Margaret Chappell

http://www.vegetariantimes.com/features/703

Read any nutrition article, and one food is sure to be mentioned: dark, leafy greens. Why? Because they contain most of our essential nutrients. Iron? Check. Fiber, folate, calcium, and potassium? Got those too, plus antioxidants from vitamin A to zeaxanthin. What you won't find is fat or a lot of calories. A 1-cup serving of cooked greens ranges from 21 calories (mustards) to 49 calories (collards).

Greens taste so good, they shouldn't be relegated to side dish status. We'll show you how to tame a spicy stew with turnip greens, use mustard greens in a Indian-inspired dish, and lace black-eyed peas with kale for good luck in the New Year. (Disclaimer: unlike the nutrient content of leafy greens, their luck and prosperity properties haven't been clinically proven—but it can't hurt to try!).

Spicy Sausage and Turnip Green Ragoût

Beet Green–Tangerine Salad

Collard Green Coleslaw

Broiled Tofu and Steamed Mustard Greens with Spicy Mango Sauce

Southern New Year's Day Soup



“Eric W. Dolan” - The Wire producer: War on drugs is ‘a war on the underclass’

By Eric W. Dolan

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/10/the-wire-producer-war-on-drugs-is-a-war-on-the-underclass/

David Simon, the creator and executive producer of HBO's The Wire, said the war on drugs had devolved into a war on the underclass after actress Felicia Pearson was arrested in Baltimore on drug charges.

Thirty-year-old Pearson had served a prison sentence for murder before join the cast of The Wire, an television drama series about inner-city life in Baltimore that premiered in 2002 and ended five seasons later in 2008.

Pearson and over sixty others were arrested on Thursday as part of a five-month investigation by the DEA and Baltimore police, The Baltimore Sun reported.

"In places like West and East Baltimore, where the drug economy is now the only factory still hiring and where the educational system is so crippled that the vast majority of children are trained only for the corners, a legal campaign to imprison our most vulnerable and damaged citizens is little more than amoral," Simon told Slate.

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