Life is not a movie, says one worker who shares her life and Christ with the many broken women in Hong Kong’s brothels.

The story of how OM’s Ship Ministry began

OBJECTIVES:

To summarize baseline data and lessons learned from the Autism Learning Health Network, designed to improve care and outcomes for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We describe challenging behaviors, co-occurring medical conditions, quality of life (QoL), receipt of recommended health services, and next steps.

Bus4Life is OM’s mobile missions centre to the unreached people of Central and Eastern Europe, bringing books and also participating in summer programmes, as it did in summer 2017.

Words: Abbie Lyall

IT is a truth universally acknowledged – at least by its advocates – that all things inexorably advance the cause of independence.

What is it?

THE news earlier this week that Tennis Scotland will be on the receiving end of a £12 million package from the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) is hugely significant.

IRAQ’S prime ministerial merry-go-round continues to spin apace. Spy chief Mustafa al-Kadhimi, director of the country’s National Intelligence Service, is now the third prime minister designate this year, following the withdrawal of the two previous prospective candidates.

Staying home can save you money. You won't be spending your cash on your commute, on eating out or going to the pub whilst in lockdown, but that's not all. There are other ways you can be savvy with your spending and find ways to save.

Location: Littleferry, Sutherland

NEATEBOX, the Scottish technology firm which specialises in improving accessibility for people with disabilities, has been accepted into an accelerator programme run by Royal Bank of Scotland.

WHEN Malian quartet Songhoy Blues performed at last year's Celtic Connections, audiences were treated to a form of music appealingly dubbed “desert blues”. A user-friendly term, it sounds like it could have been dreamed up by a marketing agency and applied equally well to a perfume, a brand of jeans or a chain of upmarket Tex-Mex restaurants.

Strife of Brian

Flat out

Rocket man

Obi-Moran Kenobi

Uniformly bad

A couple of weeks ago, I attended an “in conversation” event with the American sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild at Harvard University.

What do professional golfers do in this coronavirus-induced hiatus?

The Scottish political world is holding its breath this weekend.

Nicola Sturgeon won plaudits from some unlikely quarters this week for her “grown-up conversation” on lifting the lockdown.

The free literacy app Khan Academy Kids boosted early literacy skills in children and parents said it improved their home-teaching skills.

A report suggests that the $2.5 billion program should focus more on continuous improvement than on scattershot activities.

Three new studies show that a web of factors appear to influence how often black and Hispanic children are identified for special education compared to similar white peers.

A Chicago-based former Little League team has filed a lawsuit against Little League International over the organization's decision to strip the team's United States championship earlier this year.

In the lawsuit, the Chicago-based team's parents allege Little League was aware of potential residency issues, "but chose to ignore and/or deliberately conceal these facts in order to garner higher ratings, publicity, and money."

Filled with jargon, "meaningless" tables and missing data, state report cards can be difficult for parents to use, an analysis by the Data Quality Campaign says.

A district reading intervention specialist explains how she makes sense of a sea of data to foster more proficient readers.

A SUNDAY shift on The Herald’s Politics Watch tends to begin the same way, with an early trip to buy the papers. Usually it is just myself, a couple of other larks, and the woman who keeps an eye on the self-checkout area. All quiet on the supermarket front.

Following the thrill of launching new businesses, two ed-tech startups are facing the challenges of making smart decisions to attract more customers and grow revenues.

A new nonprofit that will convene technology experts from across business, nonprofit, government, and education sectors will begin its big-picture problem solving in the educational arena.

LIKE many people with a wee bit of time on their hands at the moment, I enjoy a morning walk along the cycle track between Elderslie and Castlehead, a nice enough stroll, if you like litter that is; and I mean, really like litter.

Supporters of the bill say it would extend critical civil rights protections to more students. But opponents say it ignores parents' rights in schools and could lead to confusing situations for some children.

What have we done? That’s what Hawick housewife Carol Martin said when she realised her lottery ticket had scooped £33 million.

Military bases are providing more support and resources for the growing number of military families who are choosing to home school their children.

RIGHT now, Tori Amos says, the big thing is to resist despondency. “That is an illness,” she tells me near the end of our conversation. “That is cancerous. And it can spread through your whole being and you don’t even realise. You’re in a mental war and you don’t know how to get out of it, and you do have to have words with yourself.”

Moonlight, Film 4, Wednesday, 9pm

Expert says labels, books, and writing centers all help with skill development

Education needs to stop going around in circles, writes Stanford’s Thomas S. Dee.

IT was impossible to escape a heart-sinking feeling this week when reading reports that a senior UK Government source believed people were “addicted” to the furlough scheme.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan may only have eighteen months left in office—but they're critical months when it comes to the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Part two of Marc Tucker's suggestions to state leaders as ESEA reauthorization swings responsibility for standards and accountability systems back to the states.

Discrimination based on race and disability demands our attention—and action, writes Catherine E. Lhamon, the chair of U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Are you smarter than a teacher in 1966? Take this real test, taken from the "Equality of Educational Opportunity" report, to find out how you fare.

40 groups will band together to push principles for "modernizing and elevating" teaching, but many of the groups have contrasting agendas.

This week, you'll hear from guest blogger and longtime reader favorite Heather Harding. Heather kicks off the week by discussing reforms to identify, retain, and prepare high-quality teachers—and why it's still important that we pay attention to these things.

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner said that half of Chicago teachers were "illiterate" in a 2011 email, recently released to a city newspaper.

Dozens of states offer the seal of biliteracy, but more than 80 percent of students who earn the honor are concentrated in just five states, a new report reveals.