A compilation of brief news reports for Saturday, August 8, 2009.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

The Interacademy Panel on International Issues (IAP), a global network of the world’s science academies, has released a statement urging parents and teachers to provide children with ‘the facts about the origin and evolution of life on Earth’. The statement is signed by 67 of the 92 member academies of the organisation, and notes that in some schools around the world, “testable theories” about evolution are being “concealed, denied or confused by theories not testable by science”.

The statement presents four “evidence-based facts” that no scientific evidence has ever contradicted. These include the Earth being approximately 4.5 billion years old, life on Earth being at least 2.5 billion years old, and commonalities in all living organisms indicating a common primordial origin based on the process of photosynthetic organisms.

The news follows developments, mainly in the United States, where there is a concerted effort to include the teaching of ‘intelligent design‘ (ID), a theory which claims that complex biological features indicate that the presence of an intelligent ‘designer’ in schools. Opponents of this movement argue that it doesn’t qualify as a scientific theory, and is simply a disguise for creationist beliefs. In the US, where the separation of church and state is mandated by constitutional law, efforts to include ID in school syllabi were quashed by the courts, as the teaching of religion in schools is against the Establishment clause of the constitution of the United States. Despite this, George Bush has in the past remarked that he believes intelligent design should be taught in schools. The President has not shown any sign of plans to personally intervene in the legal debate however.

In December 2005, following legal case between the parents and the school district of Dover (Pennsylvania, USA), the judge decided that intelligent design was a religious view, and that it was unlawful to teach it as an alternative to evolution within the classroom. The IAP statement suggests that the science academies believe that ID is still being taught within some schools, however.

A Gallup poll conducted in May concluded that 46 percent of Americans believe that God created man in his present form sometime in the past 10,000 years, with 13 percent believing mankind evolved with no divine intervention and 36 percent saying that mankind developed over millions of years from lesser life forms, but with God guiding the process.

The IAP statement acknowledges limitations in current understanding, but argues that the process of science allows it to be open-ended and subject to correction and expansion as new understanding emerges.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Brian Jackson is running for the Ontario Liberal Party in the Ontario provincial election, in the Oxford riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

The prime minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, told a news conference earlier today that there will be a ten-month stop in the construction of new settlement housing in the West Bank. The Israeli cabinet approved the move by a margin of eleven to one.

“We have been told by our friends that once Israel takes the first meaningful steps towards peace, the Arab world and the Palestinians will follow,” said Netanyahu following the cabinet’s endorsement of the move. “Well, the government of Israel has taken a very big step towards peace today, and I hope the Palestinian and the Arab world will work with us to forge a new beginning for our children and theirs.”

The freeze was made “out of broad national interests with the aim of encouraging negotiations with our Palestinian neighbours,” he continued. “When the period of freeze ends my government will return to the previous policy of building in Judea and Samaria [the Jewish name for the West Bank].”

“This is a far-reaching and painful step […] We hope that this decision will help launch meaningful negotiations to reach an historic peace agreement that will finally end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians,” Netanyahu later said.

Under the plan, construction permits for new residential buildings would be put on hold for ten months. The government said that “natural growth” — characterised by the construction of homes by young people, who were raised in the settlements and want to build houses for their own families — would be exempt from the freeze. Parts of the West Bank that Israel annexed to the Jerusalem municipality would also be excluded from the freeze. The building of schools and places of worship, which will enable settlers to live what Netanyahu described as “normal lives”, will also continue.

“We will not halt existing construction and we will continue to build synagogues, schools, kindergartens and public buildings essential for normal life in the settlements,” he commented.

The prime minister added that there would be no change to Israel’s existing policy on the issue of Jerusalem. “Regarding Jerusalem, our sovereign capital, our position is well-known. We do not put any restrictions on building in our sovereign capital,” he said.

Several members of the Israeli cabinet expressed their disapproval at the proposal, with the conservative, ultra-Orthodox Shas party boycotting the cabinet meetings.

“I think it’s a complete crumbling of Netanyahu’s position and is contrary to all of his electoral promises. He promised an end to unilateral steps, and here we see him after only a few months in office giving up, even though there is no reciprocity from the Palestinians,” said the head of the main settler lobby, Danny Dayan, to the Christian Science Monitor. We are 300,000 citizens, living in 150 communities. It is impossible to freeze us. I don’t how it will happen, but we will break this freeze.”

Many Palestinians also criticised the proposal, mainly because East Jerusalem was not included in the settlement freeze. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a Palestinian spokesman, said to the Wafa news agency that Palestine “rejects returning to peace talks without the complete cessation of settlement activities in the West Bank and Jerusalem.”

Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad also rejected the plan. “The exclusion of east Jerusalem is a very, very serious problem for us. We are not looking for the resumption of the process just for the sake of it, for it to falter a week or two down the road,”

Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordanian control, following Israel’s victory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The Jewish state annexed that part of the city in a move that was not recognized by the international community.

Earlier this week, on a visit to Argentina, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stepped up his campaign to put international pressure on Israel to stop building on lands that Palestinians say are their own. Abbas urged US president Barack Obama, as well as leaders of other nations that support Israel, to press the Jewish state to end its construction of settlements on occupied lands.

Netanyahu has in the past offered to restrain settlement growth, but today’s announcement was the first time that he set a clear timeframe.

Thursday, July 5, 2007

On Wednesday morning at 2:15 a.m., PDT (UTC-7) the son of former Vice President Al Gore, Albert Gore III, was pulled over by Orange County Sheriff’s Department in California for driving 100 mph (approximately 160 km/h) on the San Diego Freeway.

The deputy smelled marijuana in his car which, when searched, contained a small amount of marijuana along with the prescription drugs Valium, Xanax, Vicodin, and Adderall. Albert Gore III was arrested on suspicion of drug possession. He did not have prescriptions for any of the drugs found with him at the time of the arrest.

Gore was booked in Santa Ana. He was released on Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. PDT on a US$20,000 bond. Gore was previously arrested in 2003 for marijuana possession and in 2002 for suspected drunken-driving.

Tuesday, October 4, 2005

Dr. Stephen Schoenthaler, a Professor of Criminal Justice at the California State University in Stanislaus, has long argued that there is a link between a healthy diet and decreased aggressive behaviour, as well as with increased IQ and school performance.

Dr. Schoenthaler is well-known for a youth detention center study where violations of house rules fell by 37% when vending machines were removed and the cafeteria replaced canned food by fresh alternatives. He summarizes his findings by saying that “Having a bad diet right now is a better predictor of future violence than past violent behaviour.” In a very large test, Schoenthaler directed a study in meals at 803 New York City schools, in low-income neighbourhoods, finding that the number of students passing final exams increased by 16%.

Critics have questioned some of Dr. Schoenthaler findings, due to the lack of placebo control groups. However, more recent work by Dr. Bernard Gesch, a physiologist at the University of Oxford, has placed some of the work on a more scientific footing. Dr. Gesch found that nutrition supplements produced a 26% drop in violations of prison rules over a placebo, and a 37% decrease in violent offences. The Netherlands has embarked on a wider scale dietary research program in 14 prisons.

The short term behaviour consequences of ingesting sugar are well understood: an initial burst on energy, followed a sugar low in which your body produces adrenalin, which makes you irritable and explosive. However, Schoenthaler and Gesch suggest that there are long term impacts over and above the short term consequences of blood sugar variations.