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@ISIDEWITH submitted…5 days5D
U.S. scores were no better than when the tests were first given in 1995. In math, the recent declines wiped out years of gains. American science scores have fallen since 2015, although the latest drops from 2019 weren’t statistically significant.The results come as President-elect Donald Trump has criticized America’s education system and pledged to abolish the federal Education Department. Wednesday’s release did come with a slice of good news, though: U.S. students still score above international averages, which include countries with a range of economic levels.Some other countries’ scores also declined since before the pandemic, but U.S. rankings slid comparatively on some measures, falling to 24 out of 45 education systems in eighth-grade math and 15 out of 63 in fourth-grade science.Countries whose performance moved ahead of the U.S. included Finland in math, England in science, and Poland for both subjects in fourth grade.High-scoring countries included Singapore, Japan and England. Officials say it is difficult to determine why some places excel and others struggle. The quality of a country’s schools, as well as other factors like poverty, can influence test performance. Carr said some countries use curriculum that is more closely aligned with the TIMSS exams.Even as U.S. schools have long since returned to normal from Covid-19 closures, educators struggled with new challenges. More teachers have left the profession. Student misbehavior and absenteeism jumped. “Coming out of Covid, parents and students got comfortable with the idea that it’s OK to stay home,” said Suzan Harris, a middle-school principal in Butts County, Ga. Chronic absenteeism rates have improved recently, but remain elevated compared with prepandemic figures, according to an American Enterprise Institute compilation of state data.In the years before the pandemic, national exams showed that school achievement was already stagnating or declining.
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…2wks2W
Many factors fed into Benjamin Netanyahu’s eventual decision to take up a US-brokered ceasefire and stop Israel’s offensive in Lebanon. His war aims against Hizbollah were also always more modest than the “total victory” he has sought against Hamas in Gaza.But in confronting the many domestic critics of the deal — including far-right government ministers, northern Israeli mayors and opposition figures — Netanyahu calculated that his goals had been largely met, while the risks of pushing on were mounting.“Hizbollah is not Hamas. We cannot totally destroy it. It was not on the cards,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Netanyahu who now works at Washington think-tank Jinsa. “Lebanon is too big. Hizbollah is too strong.”This ceasefire deal “is not the dream that many Israelis had”, he said. But Amidror highlighted Israel’s dwindling munition stockpiles and the “pressure” on military reservists who had been fighting for months. “Israel cannot afford another year of war” at its current scale in the north, he said.Israeli officials consistently said their goal was the safe return to their homes of the tens of thousands of northern residents evacuated after Hizbollah began firing on Israel following Hamas’s October 7 attack last year.Officials said this would require pushing Hizbollah fighters back from the Israel-Lebanon frontier and changing the “security reality” along the border.After months of relatively limited exchanges of cross-border fire with Hizbollah, Israel escalated in September, setting off thousands of explosive pagers and walkie-talkies in an audacious covert operation, launching waves of air strikes across Lebanon, and initiating a punishing land invasion of its northern neighbour for the first time in almost two decades.In the span of a few weeks, most of Hizbollah’s leaders, including chief Hassan Nasrallah, were killed, and much of the group’s vast missile and rocket arsenal was destroyed. Israeli warplanes struck Beirut at will, and ground troops ranged across southern Lebanon.
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An Israeli-Moldovan man who had been missing in the United Arab Emirates has been found dead, announced Israeli authorities on Sunday, branding his killing “an abhorrent act of antisemitic terrorism”.Emirati intelligence and security services located the body of Zvi Kogan, an emissary for the Jewish Chabad religious group, three days after he vanished after leaving the store where he worked.Neither Israel or the UAE gave any details about the circumstances in which Kogan was killed. The Israeli prime minister’s office said Israel would “use all means and will deal with the criminals responsible for his death to the fullest extent of the law”.It also told Israeli citizens to take extra precautions in the UAE, and reiterated a warning against all but essential travel to the country. The Gulf state, which is the region’s trade, tourism and finance hub, was the first of three Arab countries that normalised relations with Israel in a landmark deal in 2020, known as the Abraham Accords.After the deal, the UAE welcomed Israeli tourists and business people, particularly technology entrepreneurs as it sought to build economic ties, with a focus on tapping Israeli technology.The small, autocratic state, which has a highly sophisticated security apparatus, was considered one of the safest countries in the region for Israelis to travel to.The UAE did not immediately comment on Kogan’s killing. In a statement on Saturday after Israel announced that Kogan had gone missing, the UAE’s foreign ministry said Emirati authorities were taking “extensive measures” to find him, referring to Kogan only as Moldovan.The killing comes at a turbulent time in the Middle East, which is in the grip of a spiralling conflict that began with Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack on Israel. It has since escalated across the region, with Israeli forces launching a ground invasion of Lebanon, exchanging missile salvos with Iran, and trading fire with Iranian proxies in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.The UAE has remained committed to the Abraham Accords, while joining other Arab states in condemning the devastation caused by Israel’s more than year-long assault against Hamas in Gaza.
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…3wks3W
Matt Gaetz announced he is withdrawing his name from consideration as President-elect Donald Trump's pick as attorney general, noting in a social media post that his nomination had become a distraction.Gaetz held multiple meetings with GOP senators over the past couple of days as he sought to game out his chances of getting confirmed.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowed to purge the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shortly before being chosen as President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for health secretary. Any changes he wants to make will come up against a pharmaceutical industry that pays much of the regulator's bills.Kennedy, an environmental activist who has helped sow doubts about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, would have authority over the nation's agencies responsible for public health, government-funded health insurance plans for more than 140 million including the poor, those 65 and older, and the disabled, medical research and more if confirmed as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.Kennedy has been most vocal about the FDA, an agency that oversees nearly $3 trillion in medicines, food and tobacco products. In interviews and on social media, Kennedy has accused agency staff of doing the bidding of Big Pharma and Big Food."FDA's war on public health is about to end," Kennedy wrote on X in late October. "If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags."FDA officials were not immediately available to comment on the Kennedy nomination.Shares of vaccine makers including Pfizer Inc (PFE.N), opens new tab, and Moderna (MRNA.O), opens new tab, fell after news of Kennedy's appointment and were down in after-hours trading by as much as 2%.Calling the drug industry "a crown jewel of the American economy," the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the leading industry lobby group, said in a statement it wanted to work with the Trump administration to improve health for patients.The group stressed achievements such as the elimination of polio and smallpox, both of which were accomplished through vaccination. It did not mention Kennedy by name in the statement, released after the announcement.Del Bigtree, who was director of communications for Kennedy's election campaign and remains close to the former candidate, said he expected a careful look at any FDA employee ties to industry.
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Donald Trump’s new administration will revive its “maximum pressure” policy to “bankrupt” Iran’s ability to fund regional proxies and develop nuclear weapons, according to people familiar with the transition.Trump’s foreign policy team will seek to ratchet up sanctions on Tehran, including vital oil exports, as soon as the president-elect re-enters the White House in January, people familiar with the transition said.“He’s determined to reinstitute a maximum pressure strategy to bankrupt Iran as soon as possible,” said a national security expert familiar with the Trump transition. The plan will mark a shift in US foreign policy at a time of turmoil in the Middle East after Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack triggered a wave of regional hostilities and thrust Israel’s shadow war with Iran into the open.Trump signalled during his election campaign that he wants a deal with Iran. “We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal,” he said in September.People familiar with Trump’s thinking said the maximum pressure tactic would be used to try to force Iran into talks with the US — although experts believe this is a long shot. The president-elect mounted a campaign of “maximum pressure” in his first term after abandoning the 2015 nuclear deal Iran signed with world powers, and imposing hundreds of sanctions on the Islamic republic.In response, Tehran ramped up its nuclear activity and it is enriching uranium close to weapons-grade level.The sanctions remained in place during the Biden administration, but analysts say it did not implement them as strictly as it sought to revive the nuclear accord with Iran and ease the crisis.Iran’s crude oil exports have more than trebled in the past four years, from a low of 400,000 barrels a day in 2020 to more than 1.5mn b/d so far in 2024, with nearly all shipments going to China, according to the US Energy Information Agency.
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