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Fayette leads all campuses in funds raised for THON with over $71K

Fifty students of Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus have generated $71,063.48 in donations for the annual Penn State IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon (THON), held Feb. 22 to 23 in the Bryce Jordan Center at University Park.




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Penn State Fayette to hold virtual info session for Early College Program

The Early College Program at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus offers high school juniors and seniors the opportunity to complete college credits at a fifty percent tuition adjustment and earn scholarships. A virtual information session will be offered on Thursday, April 30 at 6:00 p.m. for interested students and families.




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Communications alumnus' latest thriller focuses on college admissions scandal

Penn State alumnus and author Paul Levine's latest novel, "Cheater's Game," focuses on the college admissions scandal.




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Key to care: nurses innovate care, shape policy, impact lives

Nurses act as caregiver, adviser, confidante, educator, advocate – often all at once – and for multiple patients. Nurses also shape policies at the national level as representatives of professional organizations. During National Nurses Week, we’re celebrating the important role nurses play, now and every day of the year.




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Microsoft Closes Ebook Store, Will Refund All Purchases

The books category has disappeared from the Microsoft Store and you'll no longer be able to access purchased or rented ebooks from July. Expect a full refund, though.




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Common Assessments a Test for Schools' Technology

As the two big groups of states craft common-assessment systems, experts warn that the smallest details could undermine their work.




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Performance Assessment: 4 Best Practices

This isn't the first time states and schools have turned to projects, portfolios, exhibitions, and essays to measure students' learning. Here are lessons from the last go-around.




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Instead of Standardized Testing, Consider Portfolio Assessment

Since learning is so nuanced, so too should be the means in which we assess it. Let's offer students the opportunity to be seen as whole people who can demonstrate different skills and knowledge in a plethora of ways over a period of time.




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Overhauling Student Assessments: A View From the Pilot's Seat

Louisiana and New Hampshire are among the handful of states that have stepped up to experiment with crafting new student assessments under the Every Student Succeeds Act.




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How to Assess Group Projects: It's About Content and Teamwork

Group projects founder when students don't work well together. Here's the latest thinking on evaluating students on both content mastery and collaboration skills.




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Three Teachers, One Test Question: Will Their Responses Differ?

Education Week asked three 8th grade teachers to evaluate real student responses to an open-ended question on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in social studies. Here's what they said.




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What Is Performance Assessment?

Here's a handy glossary on terms like project-based learning, competency-based learning, and standards-based grading.




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Teachers Should Design Student Assessments. But First They Need to Learn How

"When the day came to administer the first test I had designed," writes Brandon Lewis, "my heart sank."




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Readiness Assessments Fuel Testing Jitters

The collection and use of data about just how prepared individual children are to enter kindergarten can be a ticklish proposition.





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Holocaust Education Initiative releases first set of free instructional material

To help teachers remotely engage their students during the coronavirus crisis, Penn State’s Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative has released its first set of free learning resources.




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Center for the Performing Arts picks proposals for inter-domain courses

The Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State, through a program funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has selected five proposals for the development of inter-domain courses that include the performing arts at their cores.




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Campuses transform learning through immersive technology

Penn State faculty are going beyond using traditional video in their courses by incorporating virtual-reality immersive experiences. They are discovering how those experiences help enhance active learning and focus students' attention on critical lessons in their courses.




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Netgear Teases Better 5G Hotspot, Probably for AT&T

The Netgear M5 is the 5G hotspot we've been waiting for, but it isn't coming out until the second half of the year. A separate Netgear CES announcement, meanwhile, showed another weakness of 5G in the US right now.




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EURO 2016 technical report 3: Crosses

In the third extract from the new UEFA EURO 2016 technical report, the expert panel look at how crosses have become increasing important sources of goals.




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EURO 2016 technical report 5: Does possession matter?

In the last extract from the new UEFA EURO 2016 technical report, the expert panel examine whether having the majority of possession was really much use at all.




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There's still time to register for virtual summer courses with Penn State York

There’s still an opportunity to take classes this summer with Penn State York. The two six-week summer sessions, offered remotely, give students a chance to get ahead for fall, catch up on classes, or just get started.




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Crisis Group Releases Landmark Report on al-Qaeda and the Islamic State




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Elon Musk Teases Talking Teslas

External speakers will allow drivers to talk to pedestrians without opening a window, or play pre-recorded clips to passers-by.




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Biases Can Hurt Boys' Reading

Children adapt their attitudes toward reading to conform to their classmates' perceived gender stereotypes, in ways that put boys at a disadvantage, according to a new study in the journal Child Development.




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How best can businesses, workers and the economy be supported during the Covid-19 crisis, asks Holyrood’s Economy Committee

The Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee has today issued a call for views from Scottish businesses and workers on the current Covid-19 crisis.




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Justice Committee stresses new laws on family breakdowns must be properly funded if they are to help children

The Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee is backing Scottish Government plans to change the law on deciding parent-child contact in family breakdown cases.




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In 2022, Apple's AR Glasses Will Be Perfectly Timed for 5G

Apple doesn't release products early; it releases them when supporting technologies are ready.




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Supercapacitor promises storage, high power and fast charging

A new supercapacitor based on manganese oxide could combine the storage capacity of batteries with the high power and fast charging of other supercapacitors, according to researchers at Penn State and two universities in China.




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NCLB Was Right: Assessment Can Change Instruction

What gets tested gets taught, so performance assessments that measure the competencies that matter can lead to instruction that yields those competencies, argues Ben Kornell of Envision Learning Partners.




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Grants for New Assessment Systems Signal the End of the Big Test

The Assessment for Learning Project, a partnership between Center for Innovation in Education and Next Generation Learning Challenges, granted twelve grants totaling $2 million for rethinking assessment.




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UEFA 'Press Play' vlog series passes three million views

UEFA's ground-breaking weekly vlog Press Play has now had over three million views on the Together #WePlayStrong Youtube channel.




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Jerusalem archbishop blesses city with True Cross relic

CNA Staff, Apr 6, 2020 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- Unable to lead the traditional Palm Sunday procession through Jerusalem, Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, OFM, apostolic administrator of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, blessed the city with a relic of the True Cross on April 5.

The annual procession, which recalls Christ’s entry into the city and the beginning of Holy Week, was cancelled in line with international efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19, with public gatherings and events suspended in Israel. 

“We decided since we cannot have the palm procession, to have anyway a moment of prayer this afternoon,” said Pizzaballa on Sunday. The archbishop led a short, multi-lingual “moment of prayer” at Dominus Flevit, a church located on the Mount of Olives.

The church, which is shaped like a teardrop, overlooks the city, and was built to mark the Gospel account of Jesus weeping as he envisioned the destruction of Jerusalem.

The prayer service ended with Pizzaballa raising a relic of the True Cross over the city in benediction. 

Jerusalem, said Pizzaballa, “is a symbol of the church, the symbol also of humanity. It is the house of prayer for all the people, according to the scriptures.”

“So when we cry [over] Jerusalem, together with Jesus, we cry [over] all our human fraternity, for this difficult moment we are living, for this sad Palm Sunday, this Easter we have to celebrate.”

Pizzaballa said that sadness over being unable to celebrate the liturgical feasts of Holy Week is real, but “maybe, in a way also very true, very essential.” 

“Today we have not celebrated the solemn and beautiful entrance of Jesus to the city of Jerusalem like every year, with faithful from all the parishes of the diocese and with pilgrims from all over the world,” Pizzaballa said during the prayer service.

“We have not raised our palms and olive branches to cry out ‘Hosanna’ to our king, Jesus the Christ.” 

Instead, the archbishop asked Catholics in the Holy Land and around the world to consider what the Lord may be trying to say during these times.

He noted that, while the people of Jerusalem in the Gospel greeted him with cheers on Palm Sunday, Jesus knew that “He came to Jerusalem, not to be on the throne like David, but to be put to death.” 

“The meaning that Jesus attributes to his ‘triumphal entry’ is different from the meaning that the people of Jerusalem saw in it,” he said.

“Perhaps this is the lesson that Jesus wants to teach us today. We turn to God when there is something that harms us. When we are in trouble, suddenly we all want to ask big and difficult questions.”

While people may be praying for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic as we often do for solutions  to other problems, the archbishop said that  “Jesus responds in His own way” to these prayers. 

“Precisely because Jesus says ‘yes’ to our deepest desires, He will have to say ‘no’ to our immediate desires,” he said.

Drawing comparisons between this year's Palm Sunday and the biblical Palm Sunday during Christ's earthly life, Pizzaballa said the story of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem “is a lesson on the discrepancy between our expectations and God’s response.” 

The crowd who greeted Jesus was disappointed that their salvation was not immediate, said Pizzaballa, but “Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is truly the moment when salvation is born.” 

“The ‘Hosannas’ were justified, even if not for the reasons the Jerusalemites had supposed,” he said. 

This remains true today, he explained. Although it may seem as though God is not answering prayers and leaves people “disappointed,” this is in part because “our expectations remain without an apparent response.”

Christianity, he said, “is based on hope and love, not certainty,” and that while God will not answer all problems with certainty, “He won’t leave us alone.” 

“And here, today, despite everything, at the gates of His and our city, we declare that we really want to welcome Him as our King and Messiah, and to follow Him on His way to His throne, the cross,” he said.  

“But we also ask Him to give us the strength necessary to carry it with His own, fruitful love.”



  • Middle East - Africa

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Turkey disputes US religious freedom commission's assessment of Turkey

CNA Staff, May 1, 2020 / 12:09 pm (CNA).- The Turkish foreign ministry on Wednesday rejected Turkey's inclusion in a report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, charging that the report comes from a “biased mindset”.

“The report contains baseless, unaccredited and vague allegations as in the past years while trying to portray isolated incidents as violations of religious freedoms through far-fetched accusations,” Hami Aksoy, a spokesperson for the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said April 29.

“The importance attached by Turkey to protect religious freedoms, including those of religious minorities, is expressed at the highest level by our Government officials. Our authorities make it clear that any harm to the religious freedoms of our citizens will not be tolerated,” Aksoy added.

In its 2020 report, USCIRF recommended that the State Department add Turkey, as well as 10 other countries, to a “Special Watch List” of countries where abuses of religious minorities are taking place, but not at a level as severe as in those designated as “countries of particular concern.”

The commission wrote that “religious freedom conditions in Turkey remained worrisome” in 2019, “with the perpetuation of restrictive and intrusive governmental policies on religious practice and a marked increase in incidents of vandalism and societal violence against religious minorities.”

It cited the Turkish government's prevention of the election of board members for non-Muslim religious groups and its limitations on the election of the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople.

The report added that Alevis, a group related to Shia Islam and the country's largest religious minority, “remained unable to gain official recognition for their gathering houses (cemevleri) as places of worship or to exempt their children from compulsory religious classes, despite European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rulings finding that these policies violated Alevis’ rights.”

According to the US commission, Turkish religious minorities “expressed concerns that governmental rhetoric and policies contributed to an increasingly hostile environment and implicitly encouraged acts of societal aggression and violence.”

The report also drew attention to the permission given for a museum, that was originally a Greek Orthodox church and later a mosque, to be reconverted into a mosque. It noted also that president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called for the same thing to happen to the Hagia Sophia, which has the same history.

USCIRF also said the Turkish government has “continued to dismiss, detain, and arrest individuals affiliated with, or accused of affiliation with, the U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, for alleged complicity in a July 2016 coup attempt or involvement in terrorist activity.”

Gülen has lived in the US since 1999, and is considered a terrorist by the Turkish government.

The Turkish foreign ministry charged that Gülen's mention in the report “amounts to deliberately turning a blind eye” to the coup attempt, and added: “We invite the US authorities to earnestly examine the evidence we have provided” about the Gülen movement “and to engage in effective cooperation in line with the spirit of alliance in order to reveal the true nature of this terrorist organization.”

Aksoy added that the recommendation of adding Turkey to a “special watch list” for religious freedom “is a clear indication of the biased mindset behind it and the circles under whose influence it was drawn up.”

“In the report that is supposed to include global trends that threaten religious freedoms, the Commission does not mention a single word about xenophobia, Islamophobia and discrimination on religious grounds that is on the rise in the West and the US,” Aksoy stated.

“This clearly reveals that the purpose of the report is not to protect religious rights and freedoms. It is clear that the Commission, which has been accused of being anti-Muslim in the past, has drawn up this report based on its unwarranted agenda and priorities under the influence of circles that are hostile to Turkey, rather than objective criteria. We recommend the authors of this report to look in the mirror and engage in self-criticism.”

Earlier this year, Turkish authorities arrested a Syriac Orthodox priest on terrorism charges after he provided bread and water to members of a Kurdish separatist group that has been deemed illegal.



  • Middle East - Africa

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32-Bit vs. 64-Bit OSes: What's the Difference?

Chances are good you're running an x64-based operating system, but what does that even mean?




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AMD Teases 64-Core Mega-CPU, the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X

Not content to dominate the high-end desktop (HEDT) market with its new 32-core CPU, today AMD announced the upcoming launch of its most powerful Threadripper yet: the 64-core, 128-thread Ryzen Threadripper 3990X.




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AMD Teases Ryzen 4000-Series CPUs, 64-Core Threadripper

Unveiled here at CES, the new Ryzen 4000 CPU family is the first to use AMD's cutting-edge 7-nanometer production process.




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CES 2020: The Hottest PC Cases and Modder Gear

What's CES without a little desktop-PC excess? These dozen products were the ones that mesmerized the PC modder and builder in us.




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Wintrust Financial Corporation to Make Loans to Approximately 8,900 Small Businesses Through the Paycheck Protection Program

To view more press releases, please visit http://ir.wintrust.com/news.aspx?iid=1024452.




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Fin24.com | WATCH: Mkhize praises positive Budget 2018

Budget 2018 initiatives to stimulate industrialisation in various sectors of the economy is a welcome issue, says Zweli Mkhize, former ANC treasurer general.




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10 Skills Needed Most in 2020 and 30 Free Courses to Learn Them

It's 2020 and time to upgrade your business skill set. Creativity and persuasion are the most desirable soft business skills, while blockchain and cloud computing skills dominate as the most in-demand hard skills as we begin the new decade.




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How Businesses Can Engage Their Millennial and Gen Z Employees

Millennials and Generation Z make up 48 percent of the US workforce. Here are some insights on how businesses can better connect with these employees and engage this dominant market segment.




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Facebook Chooses Singapore for $1B Data Center

While it won't be ready until 2022, it will create hundreds of jobs, run on 100 percent renewable energy, and be the first data center to take advantage of a new StatePoint Liquid Cooling system that promises a 50 percent reduction in water use.




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Education Funding Bill Progresses in House After School Safety Money Restored

The House appropriations committee voted Wednesday to advance a bill providing a slight funding increase for the U.S. Department of Education, bringing overall funding to about $71 billion.




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These Students Are Already Solving Problems for Local Businesses

An after-school program in North Carolina teaches teenagers to collaborate and problem-solve by tasking them with real work-world problems drawn from their community.




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Delaware State Housing Authority Releases Delaware Housing Needs Assessment 2015-2020

Governor Jack Markell today joined Delaware State Housing Authority (DSHA) for the release of the Delaware Housing Needs Assessment 2015-2020. The report, prepared by GCR Incorporated of New Orleans, Louisiana and The Reinvestment Fund (TRF) of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, will drive planning for housing resources at DSHA and in communities around the State. With this new analysis of housing needs and market conditions in the state for years 2015-2020, DSHA will be identifying priorities for the next five years and evaluating its programs and strategies.




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DSHA Increases Rental Assistance in Areas of Opportunity

Changes will offer more housing choice near job centers, quality schools DOVER, DE — To ensure that all Delawareans have more choice of where to live, the Delaware State Housing Authority is increasing available rental assistance in Areas of Opportunity across the state, allowing families with housing vouchers to move closer to employment centers, quality […]



  • Delaware State Housing Authority
  • Former Governor Jack Markell (2009-2017)

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Trail work temporarily closes Cooper Road access to Wintergreen Gorge

The final phase of a $690,000 trail-improvement project will limit access to the Cooper Road trailhead for Wintergreen Gorge over the next two weeks. The 14-mile trail system will still be accessible from locations at Penn State Behrend.




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Performance Flat, But Gaps Widen in International Assessments

The United States has gained ground against other countries in a global assessment of teenagers' reading, math, and science skills. That's ironic, though, considering this country has been running in place for years in all three subjects.




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Gunnar Intercept Gaming Glasses (Work-Play)

Gunnar's Work-Play gaming glasses react to sunlight, shifting from a blue-ray-reducing amber tint indoors to full-on sunglasses outside.