A decade-long slide in high schoolers’ reading and math performance persisted during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 12th graders’ scores dropping to their lowest level in more than 20 years, according to results released Tuesday from an exam known as the nation’s report card. Eighth-grade students also lost significant ground in science skills, according to the results from the National Assessment of Education Progress. The assessments were the first since the pandemic for eighth graders in science and 12th graders in reading and math. They reflect a downward drift across grade levels and subject areas in previous releases from NAEP, which is considered one of...
Private Funeral Service Held For Italian Designer Giorgio Armani In Church Near His Birthplace
Family members and close friends attended a private funeral service on Monday for Giorgio Armani in a 14th century Italian church located within a medieval hamlet near the legendary fashion designer’s native city of Piacenza. Armani, one of the most recognizable names and faces in the global fashion industry, died Thursday at the age of 91. More than 15,000 mourners paid their respects during two days of public viewing in Milan over the weekend. But the funeral was kept strictly private, with only close friends and family attending the service in the Church of San Martino Vescovo in Rivalta, south of Milan. Several dozen bystanders waited alongside the...
Nepal Lifts Ban On Social Media Platforms After Protests Where Police Killed 19 People
Nepal’s government lifted its ban on social media platforms Tuesday a day after police opened fire on mass street protests against the ban, killing 19 people. The district administration ordered an indefinite curfew in the capital and schools were closed. A curfew was also imposed in other cities too. Small protests erupted on Tuesday violating the curfew orders. Police quickly tried to push back the protesters but appeared to be not using any force. “Punish the murders in government. Stop killing children,” the protesters chanted while police used loudspeakers urging them to return home. The protesters’ anger was turning toward the government...
Brazil’s Supreme Court Nears A Verdict In Coup Plot Trial Of Former President Jair Bolsonaro
A panel of Supreme Court justices is set to decide this week whether former President Jair Bolsonaro is guilty or not of plotting to overthrow Brazil’s democracy and hang onto power illegally after his 2022 electoral defeat. The far-right ex-president is facing five counts at trial for allegedly conspiring to stage a coup after his narrow loss to current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist who first won the presidency two decades earlier. If convicted by the five-judge panel in the verdict expected Thursday or Friday, Bolsonaro could be sentenced to decades behind bars. Bolsonaro has always denied any wrongdoing, repeatedly...
Lincoln Crown Court Sentences Man To Over Two Years Imprisonment Over Kicking Wife ‘Like A Football’
A man has been jailed for two years and four months after admitting carrying out a campaign of violence against his new wife. Lincoln Crown Court heard that Mohammed Ali, 35, dragged his victim by her feet, repeatedly slapped her and threatened her with a large stick. Prosecutor Alice Ibbotson said the victim described being repeatedly hit and then kicked “like a football.” The court was told Ali, of High Street, Lincoln, would lose his temper when he felt his wife, who came to the UK from Bangladesh in October 2023, was disobeying him and he also believed she did...
ICC Postpones Hearings For Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte Over Health Concerns
The International Criminal Court announced on Monday it was postponing a pretrial hearing for former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte over concerns about his health. Lawyers for the 80-year-old filed a motion in August for the proceedings to be delayed indefinitely, saying their client is “not fit to stand trial.” Prosecutors at the ICC accuse Duterte of crimes against humanity for deadly anti-drugs crackdowns he oversaw while in office. The exact concerns over the former president’s health are not specified and the filings in the case are heavily redacted. A pretrial panel of judges have allowed for a “limited postponement” to give the...
Freight Train Slams Into A Bus Outside Mexico City And Kills At Least 10 People
A freight train sheared a double-decker bus in half at a crossing northwest of Mexico City on Monday, killing at least 10 people and injuring 55, authorities said. The accident took place in an industrial area of warehouses and factories in the town of Atlacomulco, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northwest of the Mexican capital. The state of Mexico’s civil defense agency said on X that authorities were still working at the site of the accident, and the state prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation. The bus from the Herradura de Plata line was ripped apart by the collision. Authorities...
French Government Collapses In A Confidence Vote, Forcing Macron To Seek Yet Another Prime Minister
Legislators toppled France’s government in a confidence vote on Monday, a new crisis for Europe’s second-largest economy that obliges President Emmanuel Macron to search for a fourth prime minister in 12 months. Prime Minister François Bayrou was ousted overwhelmingly in a 364-194 vote against him. Bayrou paid the price for what appeared to be a staggering political miscalculation, gambling that lawmakers would back his view that France must slash public spending to rein in its debts. Instead, they seized on the vote that Bayrou called to gang up against the 74-year-old centrist who was appointed by Macron last December. The demise of Bayrou’s short-lived minority government...
ICC Opening Its War Crimes Case Against Ugandan Rebel Leader Joseph Kony
International Criminal Court prosecutors will begin presenting evidence Tuesday to support their charges against fugitive Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony at the global court’s first ever in absentia hearing. Kony, the founder and leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, faces accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The court’s so-called confirmation of charges hearing comes two decades after it issued an arrest warrant for Kony over his alleged leadership of the brutal rebel group which became notorious for atrocities, including kidnapping children and mutilating captives. The ICC hearing is not a trial, but allows prosecutors to outline their...
