Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
“Unlike the Pantheon … virtually all the concrete structures one sees today will eventually need to be replaced,” writes Robert Courland is his weighty tome Concrete Planet, “costing us trillions of dollars in the process.”
While there is some debate over when and where the first concrete was used – the Göbekli Tepe temple in modern-day Turkey was built using T-shaped pillars of carved limestone approximately 12,000 years ago, desert traders used early concrete to make underground water cisterns 8,000 years ago, and the ancient Egyptians used gypsum and lime to make mortars – there is little dispute that the first people to use concrete in the way we do today were the Romans.
Department for Education unveils fresh guidelines for sex and health lessons in England
The Department for Education (DfE) has unveiled fresh guidelines for sex and health education across England, with relationships, cyber safety and mental health all set to be included as part of the new curriculum.
Three new subjects have been created – relationships education from primary school, relationships and sex education at secondary school, and health education for all ages in which students will learn about the importance of getting enough sleep, the dangers of sexting and how to spot anxiety in their friends.
Sex education shake-up in secondary schools means learning about grooming, forced marriage and domestic abuse
The dangers of female genital mutilation will be taught to all secondary school pupils in England from 2020 as part of a bold shake-up of relationships and sex education.
New proposals will be presented to parliament on Monday which would see the curriculum reformed to include relationship education for primary age pupils and health education for pupils of all ages in state-funded schools. Secondary school pupils will also be taught about grooming, forced marriage and domestic abuse.
The 16-year-old’s lone protest last summer has morphed into a powerful global movement challenging politicians to act
Greta Thunberg is hopeful the student climate strike on Friday can bring about positive change, as young people in more and more countries join the protest movement she started last summer as a lone campaigner outside the Swedish parliament.
Chinese and Hongkonger university applicants now outnumber those from Wales
Record numbers of students from China and Hong Kong are applying for places at British universities, overtaking the number of applicants from Wales, according to official figures.
Data from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) shows a spike in demand for undergraduate places from mainland China and a small rise in applications from the EU, despite fears over Brexit.
Men allowed back on campus early after University of Warwick reduces suspension
Women discussed as rape targets by a group of male students at the University of Warwick say they are terrified of seeing the men return to campus after the university reduced the length of their suspension.
Last year five men were barred or suspended by the university over their membership of a long-running group chat that discussed rape and sexual assault of women, including individual students, as well as racism, antisemitism and homophobia.
Temple Quarter’s rich past includes housing squatters, Royal Mail, a factory and cattle market
Demolition work is under way at Bristol’s most famous eyesore, bringing an end to a sprawling, derelict building that became a playground for squatters, illegal ravers and graffiti artists.
Scotland and north of England dominate top five as measured by housing, crime and schools
Orkney is the best place to live in the UK, with cheap houses, low crime, good schools and a population who are among the happiest and healthiest in the country, according to the annual Halifax quality of life survey.
The survey found that all the top five best places to live in the UK were in Scotland or the north of England. Richmondshire in the north of the Yorkshire Dales came second, while the appropriately named Eden district in Cumbria was third.
Italian doctoral student’s family seek truth about his torture and murder in early 2016
Three years after the disappearance, torture and murder of Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni in Cairo, Egypt is stonewalling Italy’s efforts to investigate.
In November, Italian prosecutors officially named five members of Egypt’s security services as subject to investigation in the case of Regeni, who went missing on 25 January 2016 aged 28. But two months on, Egypt has barely acknowledged the development.
Mansoura and Al-Azhar universities backtrack after video of celebratory embrace goes viral
Two students expelled from university in Egypt for the “immoral act” of hugging in celebration of their engagement have been reinstated after a viral video of their embrace drew widespread public sympathy.
The universities of Al-Azhar and Mansoura initially told both students they would be thrown out after footage emerged showing the male student kneeling and proposing to the teenage woman before presenting her with a bouquet of flowers. The video, shot on the campus of Mansoura University, then showed the pair embracing, a moment greeted by cheers from their friends.
California youths traded racist and violent messages in county called ‘hotbed for white supremacists’
A group of California junior high students were caught forming a swastika with their bodies on school grounds and exchanging racist and violent messages on a group chat, administrators said.
The scandal at Matilija junior high school, which culminated in an emotional meeting with parents and school officials Monday night, has sparked intense debate in a region that has experienced a sharp increase in reported antisemitic incidents.
A longtime Harvard University dean will return to the stand Wednesday in Boston federal court to defend the school's admission process against allegations that it discriminates against Asian Americans - in a case that could change affirmative action policies across the country. The Ivy League school was sued in 2014 by the group Students for Fair Admissions, which claims that Asian American applicants - who, despite top-notch academic records, had the lowest admission rate among any race.
In the days leading up to the trial accusing Harvard of discriminating against Asian American applicants, supporters of the university worried that the group behind the litigation, Students for Fair Admissions , would turn the case into a broader attack on affirmative action and race-based admissions policies. It's one thing to say the use of race in admissions is negatively affecting a minority group to the benefit of white students, but a completely different thing to say that the advantage is going to other minority groups.
With Canada's Supreme Court backing Ecuadorian Indigenous peoples against Chevron, four of the world's leading environmental groups have thrown their support behind leading U.S. human rights attorney Steven Donziger as the oil giant continues its unprecedented retaliation campaign targeting those who held it accountable for the dumping of billions of gallons of toxic oil waste in the Amazon.
After slashing their states' education funding for years, some incumbent governors up for re-election in 2018 are trying to convince voters that they've seen the error of their ways by claiming that they will prioritize education going forward. But voters should be cautious about believing such promises.
Florida's two main contenders for governor are making widely different promises when it comes to the state's education system. Republican Ron DeSantis on Tuesday vowed to expand the state's private school voucher program while at the same time pledging to spend more on classrooms by making cuts in other parts of the education budget.
The parents wanted them to come to their home on a Sunday to help sell it. The School Board recently reassigned their neighborhood from Seven Springs Middle and Mitchell High to River Ridge middle and high schools.
Recently, President Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate the use of affirmative action in elite university admission. The extent to which this policy helps minority students has diminished to the point that the simultaneous disadvantage to white and Asian students is unmerited.
Prominent charter school supporters are dishing out campaign money, as key gubernatorial races in several states have now begun in earnest. June primary contests set up a number of state battles for governor in the midterm elections this November, with both Democratic and Republican candidates that could change how public resources flow into charter and private schools in the coming years.