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Abu Dhabi: Public schools are to be inspected for the first time to assess their quality of education alongside private schools as part of the Abu Dhabi Education Council’s (Adec) new Irtiqa’a programme, senior officials revealed at a press conference on Tuesday.

"This initiative is designed to identify quality levels of school performance, provide necessary support in order to help achieve the highest standards, encourage the implementation of best practice in education and exchange professional expertise," said Salem Al Sayari, Adec’s Executive Director of Support Services.

"It will be rolled out across the emirate at the beginning of the 2012/2013 academic year, along with the school inspection schedule," he added.

Schools will be evaluated on eight categories including pupil achievement and progress, teaching quality and competence of leadership and management of the school.

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Inspections will be carried out by a team of international experts in addition to 20 Emiratis who were chosen to receive specialised training in school inspection.

"The aim of this programme is to enhance the performance level of schools by creating a competitive environment, increasing awareness among educators on the importance of quality performance in education and providing inspection tools and established standards," said Mariam Saqr, Manager of School Inspection and Monitoring at Adec.

The council has launched a pilot phase of the programme with 12 public schools Abu Dhabi, Al Ain and Al Gharbia (Western Region). Its aim is to familiarise principals with the programme through workshops.

Pilot phase

"The pilot phase will begin with two schools in March, with other schools following suit prior to our announcement in September. As part of the workshop, school representatives will be provided with information on how they can address any deficiencies uncovered during the inspection process and so enhance their educational environment," Saqr said.

To learn more about the Irtiqa’a programme, please visit http://www.adec.ac.ae/english/Irtiqaa/Pages/AboutIrtiqaa.aspx

How are schools judged?

Grading scale based on performance standards

1 – Excellent

2- Very Good

3- Good

4-Fair and develops

5- Fair and stable

6- Unsatisfactory

7- Largely Unsatisfactory

8- Poor

Grading scale based on overall effectiveness

Report

Story By: by Megan Verlee

Artist Christo finances his projects by selling design drawings like this one, a preparatory sketch for the Over the River project on Colorado’s Arkansas River.

Christo stands next to one of his works at a 2010 exhibition in Paris about the Over the River project. If approved, the installation could begin in the fall.

“If you like nature pretty much as it is, having an industrial-scale project come in here for a period of time will forever change it,” he says.

That change will not be for the better, McFarland says. He and other opponents are lobbying local county commissioners to turn down Christo, and they’re suing the Bureau of Land Management for issuing a permit in the first place.

However, many people in the region are excited about the project. They’re looking forward to the massive economic infusion from years of construction jobs. Rafting company owner Andy Neinas says Over the River could be a lasting boost for tourism in a region that needs the help.

“This is a small, rural Colorado town. This is real Colorado. You want to see where the real Coloradans live, you come to Canon City or Salida,” he says. Those are the towns on either end of the canyon.

Economics aren’t the only thing exciting Neinas, though. The fabric panels also are designed to be viewed from underneath by rafters — trips he looks forward to leading.

“You know, I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to see and imagine and enjoy what this project will be like,” he says, “but I don’t think you can fully appreciate it until you’re actually in it.”

If the courts and permit agencies agree, construction could start this fall. If they don’t, Christo has made a career of outlasting refusals. But he’s also 76 years old. If Over the River happens, it could be one of the final works of his career.

In Iran, the what-you're-not-allowed-to-do list keeps expanding. Supporters of the opposition Green Movement are no longer allowed to demonstrate. What's more, they're not allowed even to talk about thinking of demonstrating.

The Green Movement of 2012 struggles to define its goals. Iran's government has made it almost impossible for anyone sympathetic to the opposition to make his or her voice heard.

International human rights organisations accuse Iran of carrying out a wave of arrests in recent months against political activists, lawyers, students, journalists, bloggers, filmmakers, religious and ethnic minorities.

"Iran's multiple and often parallel security bodies – including a new cyber police force – can now scrutinise activists as they use personal computers in the privacy of their homes," writes Amnesty International in a new report entitled Expanding Repression of Dissent in Iran.

"They have restricted bandwidth and are developing state-run servers, specific internet protocols (IPs), internet service providers (ISPs) and search engines. Countless websites, including international and domestic social networking sites are blocked," the report continues.

These tactics have helped the government to see off recent attempts by the opposition to stage demonstrations. On 14 February, reformists called for protests to mark the anniversary of the house arrest of Mr Mousavi and his fellow Green Movement leader Mehdi Karroubi.

The government was quick to respond. It blocked access to foreign email services. The Intelligence Ministry warned known activists to stay indoors on the day of the planned protests. Uniformed and plain clothes security forces were deployed in great numbers in Tehran. The opposition was unable to demonstrate.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports that 10 reporters were jailed in January (in addition to the 42 journalists and bloggers whom Iran was already holding in December 2011).

"The government's intolerance of dissent is rising as parliamentary elections approach," said the CPJ's Mohamed Abdel Dayem in a statement. "Tehran is using the mass arrests of journalists as an intimidation tactic to silence those who dare criticise it."

The Green Movement has little choice but to try to turn that silence to its own advantage. It's asked its supporters not to take part in the forthcoming parliamentary elections on 2 March. It hopes that the silence registered by a low turnout at the ballot box will remind the country that the opposition still exists.

"Boycotting the election is a national duty," is the slogan written on posters stuck to walls and benches in the northern city of Tabriz.

"Didn't you want graveyard silence across the country?" the Co-ordination Council of Iran's Green Movement says in a statement directed towards Iran's government.

"Now the people want to demonstrate the results of this graveyard silence. In a graveyard no-one celebrates, not even for your sake. If you want to – as you put it – turn up the election heat, rig the figures as in 2009, order the state radio and TV to prepare extensive reports from provinces and show the waiting queues longer than ever… what is these people's sin if they do not want to be the fuel for your fire?"

In the 2009 presidential election, supporters of the Green Movement voted, then they protested on the streets. In the 2012 parliamentary election, the only way they can resist is to stay at home. As is the case with Mir Hossein Mousavi, their silent leader.

Mandatory religion course doesn’t infringe on freedoms, top court rulesKirk Makin ("The Globe and Mail," February 17, 2012)

Toronto, Canada – A mandatory Quebec school program focusing on the historical significance of various religions and creeds does not harm the religious freedoms of parents and their children, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Friday.

Resolving an important test of Charter of Rights values, the Court firmly sided with the province and a school board whose right to administer the plan had been challenged by angry parents.

Far from shoving religious views down the throats of children, the program opens them to a wide variety of viewpoints and beliefs, Madam Justice Marie Deschamps wrote for the majority.

“Exposing children to a comprehensive presentation of various religions without forcing the children to join them does not constitute an indoctrination of students that would infringe the freedom of religion of L and J,” Judge Deschamps said, referring to the children of the litigants.

“Furthermore, the early exposure of children to realities that differ from those in their immediate family environment is a fact of life in society,” she said. “The suggestion that exposing children to a variety of religious facts in itself infringes their religious freedom or that of their parents amounts to a rejection of the multicultural reality of Canadian society and ignores the Quebec government’s obligations with regard to public education.”

The contentious program, known as the Ethics and Religious Culture program, was made mandatory in Quebec schools in May, 2008.

Its stated purpose was to expose children to a range of cultures, creeds and religious traditions such as Judaism, aboriginal spirituality and other religious traditions. The goals of the program specified that an emphasis would be placed on the historical significance of French culture and the role Catholic and Protestant Christian traditions.

The parents behind the constitutional challenge, a Catholic couple who reside in Drummondville, Que., argued that the program was at odds with guarantees in the provincial Education Act.

They alleged that the program could expose their two children to harm and disruption, “caused by forced, premature contact” with beliefs that are incompatible with those held by the parents. They said that the program could also have an adverse effect on the religious beliefs the children were being taught in their home.

Judge Deschamps asserted that an individual cannot simply claim that their religious rights were infringed without showing some objective proof of actual interference.

“It is not enough for a person to say that his or her rights have been infringed,” she said. “The person must prove the infringement on a balance of probabilities.”

Judge Deschamps also said that the litigants did not go beyond claiming that the program damaged their ability to pass on their Catholic precepts to their children – there was no evidence to prove the allegation.

Two judges – Mr. Justice Louis LeBel and Mr. Justice Morris Fish – agreed with their seven colleagues on the crux of the decision but said that documentary evidence furnished to the court of the program’s aims and specific teaching was sketchy.

“The state of the record does not permit to conclude that the (program) and its implementation could not, in the future, infringe the rights granted to L and J and persons in the same situation,” they said.

The parents cannot be identified because of a publication ban on the names of their children. One of the children was in Grade one and had not yet had the course. The other was part way through secondary school and had completed the program.

The local school board – the Commission scolaire des Chênes – refused to grant the children an exemption from the program based on a directive from the province that stated there would be no exemptions.

Both the school board and the Quebec government were respondents in the challenge.

At trial, a Quebec Superior Court judge refused to grant the children an exemption, ruling that the mandatory program did not violate their Charter right to religious freedom. Their appeal was rejected in 2010 by the Quebec Court of Appeal.

The case necessitated the Supreme Court delving into a key portion of the Charter guarantee of religious freedom – the intersection of provincial education priorities and the independence of school boards.

The case had echoes of a previous case heard by the Ontario Court of Appeal, in which it held that an Ontario regulation imposing mandatory prayer sessions violated the Charter because it forced students to adopt a religious practice.

The Ontario Court of Appeal warned against the imposition of educational material that amounts to indoctrination of students.

In legal arguments in the case before the Supreme Court, lawyers for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association asked the judges to strike a balance between freedom of conscience and religion of parents while, at the same time, protecting the “ultimate interests of the child.”

The CCLA said that courts need a flexible legal test they can apply to future cases in order to gauge whether an attempt by government to intervene in education violates the freedom of conscience or religion of either the parents or their children.

It suggested that in many cases, the needs of both sides can be accommodated. For example, exempting students from part or all of an educational program might be reasonable, provided the educational objectives of the program are achieved by other means in the home or at school.

The CCLA argued that any legal test should involve consideration of the moral and intellectual needs of children – even if they conflict with their parents’ perspective.

Legal intervenors in the case included the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and an umbrella group representing the Association of Catholic Parents of Quebec, Faith and Freedom Alliance, the Catholic Civil Rights League and the Coptic Christian Association of Greater Montreal.

WASHINGTON Feb 27 (Reuters) – A Canadian company’s
decision on Monday to proceed with part of a U.S. pipeline might
end up muffling one of the Republicans’ loudest arguments in
this election year: that President Barack Obama has pursued
failed energy policies.

TransCanada Corp announced it intended to begin
work on the southern leg of the $7 billion Keystone XL project,
from Oklahoma to Texas, leaving for later another run at the
more controversial, and complicated, northern segment.

For months, Republicans have hammered Obama for blocking the
pipeline project out of concern for the environmentally
sensitive areas south of the U.S.-Canada border. Republicans
seeking re-election to Congress uniformly branded his decision
as a job-killer that undermines energy independence.

While Obama must still face Republican wrath over rising
gasoline prices, his opponents will now find it harder to press
their attacks over Keystone, a project that garners wide support
among American voters.

According to an early February poll by the Pew
Research Center, 66 percent of those who had heard about the
Keystone XL project thought it should be approved.

With gasoline prices rising significantly even before the
heavy summer driving season has begun – average retail prices
are now nearly $3.70 a gallon, up from $3.35 a year ago -
Republicans tried to connect Keystone with pain at the pump.

For Republicans, Keystone was more than a pipeline project.
It was their poster child for what was wrong with White House
energy policy.

So the White House was swift to welcome TransCanada’s latest
announcement. “We’ll make sure that any federal permitting that
is involved … will be acted on very quickly” for the southern
leg, Obama spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

A senior Senate Democratic aide said that with a
large portion of the pipeline moving toward federal approval,
“Republicans have less and less ground” on which to attack
Obama.

But Republicans continued on Monday to press for U.S.
approval of the entire Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline.

“It is time for President Obama to stop putting politics
ahead of struggling families and small businesses and approve
the Keystone XL pipeline,” House of Representatives Speaker John
Boehner, the top congressional Republican, said in a statement.

The White House said it had been advised by TransCanada in
advance of Monday’s announcement, but gave no details of any
discussions between the company and the administration.

BREAKING THE BOTTLENECK

TransCanada’s move also gave the White House a backdrop for
talking about the growing “glut” of U.S.-produced oil that is
getting backed up in Oklahoma, where the southern leg of
Keystone XL will start. That highlights administration
assertions that Obama has presided over a sharp uptick in
domestic production, contrary to Republican attack ads.

The southern leg of the pipeline, which could be operational
by late next year – if environmentalists fail to persuade
federal, state and local governments to block it – could ease a
bottleneck at Cushing, Oklahoma, and help speed it to Texas
refineries on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

For Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, who faces a tough
re-election campaign in Missouri, which borders Oklahoma,
TransCanada’s decision was “good news for American jobs, and a
good step toward increasing energy production right here at
home.”

A senior Republican aide on the Senate Energy Committee
acknowledged that building the southern leg would “hopefully
resolve the bottleneck at Cushing.”

With retail gasoline prices on a path to top $4 a gallon
soon and possibly touch $5 if political tensions with
oil-producing Iran get worse by midyear, voter frustration with
Obama likely will rise – with or without Keystone being built.

“Delaying the Keystone XL pipeline is not the
reason gasoline prices have been going up, and moving forward on
a variant of Keystone will not bring them down,” said Michael
Levi, an energy analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations.
“When it comes to today’s gas prices, the Keystone fight is a
sideshow,” he said.

As Democrats in Congress perked up over the TransCanada
announcement, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski went to the
floor of the Senate to squash any celebration. She complained
that in her home state, the Trans Alaska Pipeline was only “half
full” with oil because Democrats had blocked new drilling in the
environmentally sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as
well as some offshore drilling projects.

Obama is countering that there are no easy answers to rising
energy prices and that “drill baby drill,” a policy of expanded
domestic oil exploration advocated by Republicans, will not end
U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

But that “is a big communications challenge for him” at a
time when the cost of filling the gas tank is rapidly
escalating, said the senior Senate Democratic aide.

Michael Douglas, who played a greedy executive in the movie Wall Street, is the Federal Bureau of Investigation's new spokesman against insider trading.

In the movie, Mr Douglas played the character Gordon Gekko who famously boasted that "greed is good."

For critics the phrase came to embody the excesses of the Wall Street boom years and subsequent problems.

However, in his new role Mr Douglas is warning executives against following his on-screen credo.

"The movie was fiction, but the problem is real," he said in an announcement.

"Our economy is increasingly dependent on the success and integrity of the financial markets. If a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is."

The move is a part of Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) efforts to tackle insider trading and fraud.

Release Date: 01/26/2012Contact Information: Wally Moon, EPA Preparedness and Prevention Unit Manager, 206-553-6323, moon.wally@epa.gov
Tony Brown, EPA Public Affairs, 206-553-1203, brown.anthony@epa.gov

(Seattle—Jan. 26, 2012) Oregon Potato Company failed to report an anhydrous ammonia release at their facility in Warden, Washington and will pay the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a $66,235 penalty.

On July 2, 2009, the facility released approximately 300 pounds of anhydrous ammonia into the environment, according to the EPA settlement. The facility, located at 1900 First Avenue West in Warden, Washington, produces dried and dehydrated frozen potato products.

According to Wally Moon, EPA Preparedness and Prevention Unit Manager in Seattle, these cases are about protecting workers, emergency responders and the community.

“When unintended chemical releases occur, every minute counts if it is an emergency,” said EPA’s Moon. “Emergency responders need to be notified promptly to react effectively.”

The leak occurred when a circuit breaker failed, causing a pressure relief valve to open releasing the anhydrous ammonia. EPA alleges that Oregon Potato failed to immediately notify local and state agencies about the release. While no injuries were reported at the time of the incident, ammonia is a pungent, toxic gas that attacks skin, eyes, throat, and lungs and can cause serious injury or death.

The ammonia release and the failure to notify appropriate agencies are violations of the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA).

For information on EPA’s Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act, visit http://www.epa.gov/compliance/civil/epcra/epcraenfstatreq.html

For more about toxic effects of Anhydrous Ammonia (NIOSH GUIDE): http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0028.html

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* Oscar audience up from 2011, retains 18-49 year-olds

* Host Billy Crystal seen as old-fashioned

* Angelina Jolie’s leg gets own Twitter account

(Adds more Web traffic information, paras 11-12)

By Jill Serjeant

LOS ANGELES, Feb 27 (Reuters) – Billy Crystal,
Angelina Jolie’s leg and French silent film “The Artist” brought
the Oscars bouncing back from recent slack viewership, drawing a
larger-than-expected 39 million TV viewers and setting social
media abuzz.

Some 39.3 million Americans watched the Oscars ceremony on
television on Sunday, up from the 37.6 million audience in 2011,
according to preliminary ratings data.

Broadcaster ABC said it was the second largest TV audience
for the Academy Awards since 2007.

The bigger audience came and stayed tuned-in despite
criticism that host Billy Crystal, 63, put on an old-fashioned
show, and that the big awards went to “The Artist”, a film that
few people have seen.

The Academy Awards also retained all of its 2011 audience in
the 18-49 year-old age group prized by advertisers, and drew
more women in that viewer category than last year.

The annual Oscars ceremony show is traditionally one of the
most watched events on U.S. television but audiences have fallen
away in the past few years, especially when blockbuster films
like “Avatar” are not in the running for the biggest honors in
the movie industry.

“The Artist”, which has made only about $30 million at the
North American box office, was the big winner on Sunday with
five Oscars including best picture, best director and best actor
for Frenchman Jean Dujardin.

Crystal, making his 9th appearance as Oscar host, got mixed
reviews. Alessandra Stanley at the New York Times said “the
whole night looked like an AARP pep rally,” while Tim Goodman
at the Hollywood Reporter called Crystal’s efforts a “safe
unfunny retro-disaster.”

But the news was not all bad for Crystal. Entertainment
Weekly’s Ken Tucker said it was a “jolly good show,” and the New
York Daily News said that Crystal “recaptured smartly the
formula that worked for him in the past: quick-hit opening
monologue, a song-and-dance number, then a sprinkling of jokes
that had an edge but never drew blood.”

Despite the jibes from critics about being old-fashioned,
the Internet was abuzz with Oscar talk as millions of people
watched and chatted online before and after the telecast. ABC
said four million people visited website Oscar.com or used an
Oscar smartphone app on Sunday alone.

Social media tracker Trendrr said social activity during the
show – ranging from online buzz to Twitter comments and Facebook
‘likes’ – doubled from 2011 to 4.2 million hits on Sunday.
Red Carpet coverage brought 3.9 million hits.

Meryl Streep, who was a surprise best actress winner over
presumed front-runner Viola Davis, attracted the most mentions
on social media, Trendrr said. The most-mentioned actor was
“The Artist” star Jean Dujardin.

Angelina Jolie set the online world alight when she thrust
her leg out of her thigh-high slit dress while presenting an
award. Within minutes, a Twitter account had been set up with
the handle “angiesrightleg,” and by Monday it had some 17,000
followers.

Sunday’s Academy Awards TV audience was on a par with
February’s Grammy Awards show, which was watched by a bumper
39.9 million Americans and fueled by the sudden death of singer
Whitney Houston.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)