Ex-wife of Jeff Bezos gives to 286 groups and says she wants to donate ‘fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change’
The American novelist and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott said on Tuesday she had given a further $2.7bn (£1.9bn) to 286 organisations.
Scott, who was formerly married to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, issued a statement regarding distribution of the latest tranche of her $57bn fortune.
Continue reading...Announcement of £430m funding for 90 countries came only weeks after ‘inexcusable’ foreign aid cuts
• G7 summit: latest news and reaction
Boris Johnson was accused of hypocrisy after announcing at the G7 leaders summit he would provide £430m of extra UK funding for girls’ education in 90 developing countries only weeks after his government made “inexcusable cuts” of more than £200m set aside for the same cause from its bilateral programme this year.
The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, announced in April that he was providing only £400m from the main UK aid budget for girls’ education in 2021, down from £600m in 2019. Johnson has dismissed stories of aid cuts, and their consequences as “lefty propaganda”, but refused to hold a Commons vote on the issue.
Continue reading...Many are beginning to fear the world may soon be caught in the crossfire between Beijing and Washington
In July 1971, US national security adviser Henry Kissinger embarked on a secret mission to China, then America’s sworn enemy. This 48-hour ice-breaking trip paved the way for Richard Nixon’s historic handshake with Chairman Mao a year later. Nixon’s visit altered the strategic geometry of the cold war and influenced Washington’s subsequent movement towards détente with Moscow.
Half a century on, as Joe Biden arrived in Cornwall to attend the G7 meeting, there was a looming sense of history in the making again – one that involves the talk of allies (a group of like-minded democracies) and adversaries (notably Russia and China). It is also one that invokes memories of the cold war in the 1970s, when strategists like Kissinger crafted the art of balancing power between the US, China and the Soviet Union.
Continue reading...Parts of the continent potentially face a decade of crisis. These two measures are more important than any other in avoiding it
There are so many good causes in the world it is often difficult to know where aid money should go. As leaders line up to attend the G7 summit in Cornwall, the most effective destinations for aid money have become clearer – a global vaccination programme and improving girls’ education.
This is especially true in sub-Saharan Africa, where so much can go wrong over the next 10 years – a population explosion, massive biodiversity loss, desertification, famine and mass migration to mention just a few – that unless we focus our efforts on vaccines and girls’ education, whatever is done to alleviate poverty or tackle the climate emergency will be threatened or even sabotaged in almost every other region of the world.
Continue reading...Actor writes in New York Times that he ‘never read a page of any school history book’ about 1921 massacre
In an essay lamenting the long neglect of the Tulsa race massacre, the Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks said “white educators and school administrators” in the US had “omitted the volatile subject for the sake of the status quo, placing white feelings over Black experience – literally Black lives in this case”.
Related: ‘They didn’t talk about it’: how a historian helped Tulsa confront the horror of its past
Continue reading...Talk of ‘freedom day’ and foreign holidays may be premature when so many pupils are testing positive, writes Guardian science correspondent Linda Geddes
On the Thursday night before half-term, our eight-year-old son complained of a pain in his chest and felt hot to touch, although our digital thermometer said he was normal. Covid? It seemed highly unlikely: in Bristol, where we live, less than two in every 10,000 people were infected – below the national average and well below where we were just a few months ago. It is probably a cold, I thought.
The next morning he appeared by our bedside at 7am complaining that his eyeballs hurt. “Maybe we should keep you off school,” I said. But he wanted to go and had already put on his school jumper and karate trousers; they were allowed to wear what they wanted as part of their end-of-term “class treat”. “Why don’t you have some breakfast, and we’ll see,” I suggested.
Continue reading...As part of the Guardian’s 200th anniversary, we asked young people how the worst global pandemic in a century has affected their lives, hopes and dreams. Fifty from Europe’s Generation Z tell us how they see their future
Leeds headteacher forced to apologise after saying Palestinian flag was seen as ‘call to arms’
The recent Middle East conflict has prompted a wave of pro-Palestine protests in British schools and controversy over the staff response, with pupils being accused of antisemitism and one headteacher describing the Palestinian flag as a “call to arms”.
Mike Roper, the headteacher of Allerton Grange high school in Leeds, was forced to apologise after he claimed in an assembly that some people saw the flag as a “symbol of antisemitism”.
Continue reading...Academics suspect papers with grabby conclusions are waved through more easily by reviewers
Scientific research findings that are probably wrong gain far more attention than robust results, according to academics who suspect that the bar for publication may be lower for papers with grabbier conclusions.
Studies in top science, psychology and economics journals that fail to hold up when others repeat them are cited, on average, more than 100 times as often in follow-up papers than work that stands the test of time.
Continue reading...Exclusive: commission’s finding follows number of protests over colonial legacy at Oriel College
A independent commission set up to examine the future of Oxford University’s controversial statue of British imperialist Cecil Rhodes has recommended its removal.
The commission was set up last June after Oxford University’s Oriel College voted in favour of removing its statue. The commission was asked to look into the issue after a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston was torn down in Bristol at the height of last summer’s Black Lives Matter protest.
Continue reading...When Covid shut schools, fees still had to be paid even if rural pupils could not access online lessons
Iqbal Khan works as a chauffeur in Lahore. His children are in his home village in a rural area north of Peshawar. Both of these very different areas of Pakistan have the same problem for many of their young people: no means of getting access to an education.
Online learning was not an option for Khan’s children as the pandemic locked down schools across cities and countryside. Even as he worked to pay the school fees, his two sons, aged 16 and 13, were unable to access any lessons as their schools went digital.
Continue reading...Hazara community in mourning but defiant after more than 60 people killed in school bomb blasts
Latifa and Hosnia had been sharing a wooden bench in their classroom at Kabul’s Sayed Al-Shuhada school for the past three years.
When Latifa transferred to Sayed Al-Shuhada, the two girls were immediately drawn to each other and became best friends, always together in their free time, studying side by side, walking home together after school. They found comfort in each other’s presence; support in a place that has never been easy for girls and women.
Continue reading...Levelling up agenda accompanied by bills bringing in voter ID and banning conversion practices
Ministers are to unveil a legislative programme aimed at its new electoral strongholds in northern England and the Midlands, with a Queen’s speech focused on adult education and homeownership.
It also features proposals to bring in mandatory voter ID, which has been condemned by US civil rights groups as akin to Republican-style voter suppression. Another plan will pave the way to outlaw conversion practices.
Continue reading...UK surveillance agency says it has long valued neuro-diverse analysts – including Alan Turing
Apprentices on GCHQ’s scheme are four times more likely to have dyslexia than those on other organisations’ programmes, the agency has said, the result of a drive to recruit those whose brains process information differently.
GCHQ says those with dyslexia have valuable skills spotting patterns that others miss – a key area the spy agency wants to encourage as it pivots away from dead letter drops and bugging towards high-tech cybersecurity and data analysis.
Continue reading...Prof David Richardson cites systemic issues that disproportionately affect black and minority ethnic students
UK universities are institutionally racist and must do more to support students of colour, a leading vice-chancellor has said.
Prof David Richardson, chair of Universities UK’s advisory group on stamping out racial harassment on campuses and vice-chancellor of University of East Anglia, said there was evidence of systemic issues that disproportionally affect students from black and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.
Continue reading...It’s good for the environment and your wallet – so it’s no surprise that repairing is all the rage. From vacuum cleaners to microwaves, here’s what to fix and what to forget
My kettle’s broken. It still boils water, but it doesn’t switch off – just boils on, converting the kitchen to a sauna, wastefully, expensively. Put another way, the Polly component still functions well, but Sukey’s lost it. Time to bin it, splash out on a new one. Or maybe not …
Could it be repaired? Could I repair it? “It depends on the kettle and how it was put together,” says Kyle Wiens, a co-founder of iFixit, which publishes free repair guides for consumer electronics and gadgets, as well as selling kits and parts. He’s speaking to me via Skype from San Luis Obispo, California, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Never take broken for an answer” – and he thinks it sounds as if the switch is the problem.
Continue reading...Fatima Khalil school has given some children the first taste of education – and love – in their lives
Laughter and excited chatter burst out of the colourfully painted classrooms. In a quiet garden schoolhouse amid the jam-packed Afghan capital, Kabul, pupils run around, study and play in the country’s first official school for children with disabilities.
It’s a far cry from what most of these children have previously experienced. For many, it’s the first time in their lives they feel loved and accepted.
Continue reading...Donna, 42, was a devoted and popular member of the teaching staff. Yet at the height of the second wave, working conditions left her terrified of doing the job she loved
The joke went: it was impossible to get Covid at Burnley College. The virus didn’t exist there. All through September, October, November and December 2020, as more and more people came down with Covid yet the further education (FE) college stayed open, Donna Coleman would make this gag to her sisters, Steph Coleman, 38, and Vicki Coleman, 45. She spoke to them on the phone every day. “It was a running joke,” Steph says. “‘Who’s come down with Covid now?’”
Although the sisters laughed about it, in truth they were alarmed. Donna was a member of the teaching staff at the college in Lancashire. She worked with teenagers who had been kicked out of school, as well as long-term unemployed people, helping them to continue their education or find work. (Steph and Vicki had previously worked at the college, too, although they had left by September 2020.)
Continue reading...The mobile library services are an education lifeline for students in Balochistan, where schools have closed during the pandemic
Sharatoon had wanted to continue her studies, but she had to leave school and her beloved books when she got married aged 15.
Now 27, Sharatoon is happy reading again, as every Friday a camel visits her small town, his saddle panniers full of books.
Continue reading...Exclusive: compulsive hygiene habits and fear of public places could remain for some after lockdown lifted, researchers say
Scientists have expressed concern that residual anxiety over coronavirus may have led some people to develop compulsive hygiene habits that could prevent them from reintegrating into the outside world, even though Covid hospitalisations and deaths in the UK are coming down.
The concept of “Covid anxiety syndrome” was first theorised by professors last year, when Ana Nikčević, of Kingston University, and Marcantonio Spada, at London South Bank University, noticed people were developing a particular set of traits in response to Covid.
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