Team reporter Joe Walker has watched Portugal throughout UEFA EURO 2016 and explains how the coach masterminded his side's first triumph at a major tournament.

France forward Antoine Griezmann has been named as the UEFA EURO 2016 Player of the Tournament by UEFA's technical observers after finishing with six goals and two assists.

"We have a key word from day one: 'winning'. We are going to keep fighting hard to keep doing that," said Fernando Santos as he prepared for four more years as Portugal coach.

The International Crisis Group is honoured to announce the creation of the Giustra Fellowship for Conflict Prevention, made possible by a generous gift of $1 million from Canadian businessman and philanthropic leader Frank Giustra through The Radcliffe Foundation. Mr. Giustra has been a long-time advocate for Crisis Group, providing transformational financial support since joining its Board of Trustees in 2005.

Ahead of Matchday 8, UEFA.com looks at some obvious #UCLfantasy selections and those who could cause a surprise.

As the round of 16 comes to a conclusion, UEFA.com presents a captaincy option for each of the four gamedays.

UEFA.com studies the statistics to find out which players are predicted for big Matchday 8 totals.

With the UEFA Champions League second legs starting this week, UEFA.com studies the domestic form book for pointers.

Home advantage could be key with 13 of the 15 players in The Scout's squad playing second legs on their own ground.

An initiative to improve the use of apps and mobile technology in the instruction of special education students finds that teachers aren't receiving the professional development they want.

Source: www.bitsandpieces.us - Friday, May 08, 2020
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In India and China, indigenous drug manufacturers market arbitrarily combined parenteral β-lactam and β-lactamase inhibitors (BL-BLIs). In these fixed-dose combinations, sulbactam or tazobactam is indiscriminately combined with parenteral cephalosporins, with BLI doses kept in ratios similar to those for the approved BL-BLIs. Such combinations have been introduced into clinical practice without mandatory drug development studies involving pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic, safety, and efficacy assessments being undertaken. Such unorthodox combinations compromise clinical outcomes and also potentially contribute to resistance development.

JooYoung Seo, a doctoral candidate in the College of Education’s Learning, Design, and Technology program, has secured a highly competitive internship with RStudio that will allow him to help people just like himself — those with severe visual impairments.

OM worker Lynn, along with teammates, ministers to immigrant women in France.

OM France marks OM’s 60th anniversary, inviting International Director, Lawrence Tong, to grace this special occasion.

California's proposed curriculum guide in ethnic studies is being sent back for substantial revision after a pileup of criticism that it's anti-Semitic.

Source: www.youtube.com - Wednesday, May 06, 2020

Source: www.youtube.com - Saturday, February 29, 2020

The Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, in conjunction with several Penn State colleges, awarded more than $725,000 in seed grants to fund 32 new computational and data sciences projects. The 57 researchers involved in the awards represent 12 Penn State colleges and 31 academic departments.

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.

The Dahme-Spreewald administrative district’s local building inspection authority confirmed the completion of Terminal T1 at BER on 28 April following the completion of the construction work.

The first defender to win the UEFA Women's Player of the Year award: we salute Lyon and England right-back Lucy Bronze.

The all-time top UEFA women's club scorer among many, many honours: we salute Ada Hegerberg.

Google's quantum computer performed a computation in 200 seconds that would have taken the world's fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to calculate. But IBM is dismissing Google's claim that it achieved quantum supremacy.

The 64 entrants are confirmed, 32 in the UEFA Champions League path and 32 in the domestic champions path to be drawn on Tuesday.

Economic growth prospects are better and Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba has made the right choices about where to spend the money, says ANC national chair Gwede Mantashe.

By Bishop Arthur Serratelli

Beneath the soil of every continent lie buried the ruins of fallen civilizations. The Sumerians, Akkadians, Mayans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Minoans, Romans: all of them, faded memories of past grandeur and glory. History records the collapse of at least thirty-two major civilizations that once thrived and prospered before our time. 

No great civilization is built in a day. No great civilization disappears in a single instant. Historians try to explain how these civilizations once so great have slowly vanished into the dustbin of history. Weather, economics, population decline, wars, politics are some of the reasons that they offer. But, ultimately, a civilization disappears when it loses its identity, forfeits its unity and jettisons its commitment to the common good.

Today’s relentless front-page news reports of scandal and sin (many times, stale news served up as current), the incessant discord of our politicians, the unending string of acrimonious tweets, and the rage of angry voices make one wonder whether or not we are facing the decline of our own civilization. Has our unity as a nation become so fragmented that it cannot be repaired?

The TV sitcoms, the talk shows, the din of warring cable news channels do little to promote serious discourse. Rather, they seem at times to make us despair of receiving unbiased reporting. They hardly inspire us to respond to the gospel’s clarion call for truth, justice, compassion and charity. Have we lost our commitment to the common good? Are we in the midst of an unstoppable decline of our nation? 

Some say this is the age of tolerance. As a result, good and evil, right and wrong, vice and virtue, truth and error are accepted as equally valid. But, this is not the age of tolerance. Those who are pro-life are marginalized. Those who cherish and protect the life of the child waiting-to-be-born, the elderly and the terminally ill are branded as bigots, unwilling to show compassion to those suffering. Those who accept the sanctity of marriage and human sexuality as designed by the Creator are vilified. We live at a time when some are not only intolerant to our basic Christian values, but are actively engaged to silence Christians, target the Church and reduce her to ruins. 

In an age of relativism, has it become almost impossible to dialogue rationally on the major issues that face us, such as poverty, migration, and the sanctity of life itself ? “Relativism is the order of the day. Good and evil, right and wrong, innocence and guilt – all these binaries are deliberately confused as antipodal extremes are brought into artificial congruence. Moral clarity is muddled and logical cogency diluted. All inherent preference is suspended out of a misguided attempt to achieve balance where there is none” (Brandon Marlon, “The Decline and Fall of Modern Civilization: 8 Simple Steps to Squandering It All,” The Algemeiner, January 22, 2015).

From the Church, we receive a rich heritage of truth, morality and charity. We have solid and clear moral principles given to us by Jesus. These are the solid building blocks with which to construct a just and peaceful society. Could it be that we ourselves are slowly abandoning these principles? How is it possible that those trained in the Catholic faith assume leadership roles in government and then jettison their Catholic morals? How is it that any one of us can remain complacent to the slow moral deterioration of our country? 

Our country will not collapse if we refuse to hand over our future to those who deny the existence of God and live as if this world is all that there is. Our society will not collapse if we are courageous enough to draw on our moral and spiritual heritage to solve the issues that divide us. Our nation will not collapse if we remain true to our identity given to us by our Founding Fathers as a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Our courage as moral individuals to stand for justice, truth and compassion is the antidote to the collapse of our country.
 

By Bishop Arthur Serratelli

In The Innocents Abroad, published in1869, Mark Twain humorously narrates his travels thorough Europe and the Holy Land. He goes out of his way to praise the great hospitality that Catholic priests offered to any pilgrim traveling through 19th century Palestine. They readily welcomed all, whether they came “in rags or clad in purple.” Twain was pleasantly surprised by this, because, as he readily confesses, he had been “educated to enmity toward everything that is Catholic.” Enmity toward everything Catholic! Not a thing of the past.

Most recently, the hatred was aimed at one of the most charitable and benevolent group of individuals in this country, the Knights of Columbus. During the Senate Judiciary Committee’s review of Omaha-based lawyer Brian C. Buescher for the position of judge on the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska, Senators Mazie Hirono, a democrat from Hawaii, and Kamala Harris, a democrat from California, grilled Buescher on his membership in the Knights of Columbus. In their questions, they boldly gave voice to an anti-Catholic prejudice in our society.

Hirono accused the Knights of having “taken a number of extreme positions.” And, what are those extreme positions to which she is so vehemently opposed? The Catholic teaching on marriage as a union established by God. The sanctity of human life. The rights of a child in the womb to take his or her place at the banquet of life. For many, when it comes to birthing a child, only a woman has rights. And, when it comes to marriage, only what an individual wants matters. In their eyes, God’s design for his creation cannot limit the freedom of anyone to choose as they wish. 

Holding to what the Catholic Church has always taught, according to their line of questioning, now disqualifies someone from public office. In effect, both senators were applying a religious test as a qualification for public office. Responding to this blatant attack on a man’s religion, on January 17, 2018, the United States Senate unanimously passed the resolution that disqualifying a member of the Knights of Columbus for a federal office actually violates the Constitution of the United States. Article VI of the Constitution states that “no religious test shall ever be required as qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

Sadly, this recent attack on Catholicism is not an isolated incident. Last September, Senator Dianne Feinstein expressed serious concern about the qualifications of Amy Barrett for a judgeship on the 7th Circuit. Feinstein is an unflinching supporter of abortion. It was no surprise that she zeroed in on Barrett’s position on Roe v. Wade. Because Barrett is a practicing Catholic who faithfully holds to Catholic teaching on this and other hot button issues, Feinstein remarked “in your case, professor…the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country.” Clearly, the Senator sees no place for what the Catholic Church teaches on major moral and societal issues. 

It is becoming more and more obvious that the Catholic Church is being targeted as the public enemy of our society. Talk shows and news media attack the Catholic position on the right to life as misogyny and the Catholic teaching on marriage as intolerance and hatred. One can only wonder why those States that are investigating the Catholic Church on its record of protecting children are not looking into other public institutions. Why is there not a comparable investigation into their own school systems or other religious groups? Is the terrible crime of child abuse limited only to Catholics? Today’s media would even have people believe that abuse of minors is becoming more frequent within the Church. Patently false. But, too often facts do not matter when a villain is needed.

Those who advocate for the radical autonomy of the individual find in the Church an indomitable opponent. The Catholic Church stands firm in her teaching on contraception, abortion, stem cell research, in-vitro fertilization, marriage and divorce. The Church teaches that every choice that touches on the gift of life and the beauty of marriage is judged by a law higher than the autonomy of the individual. And, for this reason, today’s secularists judge Catholics as public enemies to the good of the society they wish to construct. A society without God. A society without a future.

Almost every day, a politician or teacher or public speaker is lambasted for a statement that is judged to be homophobic, misogynistic, racist or anti-Semitic. In some cases, not even an apology can save their careers. Yet, a free pass is given by society to any anti-Catholic view or statement. Someone can make an insulting or slanderous remark about Catholics, Catholic teachings or the Church herself and emerge unscathed. In his essay on The Significance of Jacksonian Democracy, historian and Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., himself not a Catholic, made the often cited assertion that anti-Catholic prejudice is “the deepest bias in the history of the American people.” According to Baylor University professor Philip Jenkins, anti-Catholic prejudice is “the last acceptable prejudice.”
 

By Bishop Arthur Serratelli

In February 1915, only six months after the beginning of World War I, Lancet, a British medical journal, used for the first time the expression “shell shock.” This newly coined expression was used to describe the feeling of helplessness that soldiers felt after exposure to constant bombardment. The term was new, but not the reality. After every war, soldiers return from combat, suffering “shell shock.” 

Watching their comrades mowed down by enemy fire or left maimed and strewn on the battlefield, combatants become immune to feelings of connectedness and concern. Today, this phenomenon is becoming an epidemic. We are constantly being bombarded by bad news. The catastrophic and inhumane events that interrupt our everyday life are causing many people to escape from the brutality by becoming shell shocked. 

Terrorist attacks in Belgium, Syria, Africa, and in England; daily violence on the streets of Chicago, New York, Paterson; the massacre of our children in their schools and of believers in their churches, synagogues and mosques; the interminable disputes and rancor over immigration; allegations of racism and sexism; the incessant reporting of scandals, present and past!  Moment by moment these evils confront us. So fast does news travel that one story stumbles over the other with images of the dead, the wounded, the homeless imprinted on our minds. These problems do not admit of simple solutions. And, since we are more aware of them today than in the past and yet less able to find solutions, many, left numb and disillusioned, drift into apathy.  

In addition, newspapers, blogs and TV commentaries flash before us cause after cause, such as global poverty and climate change. “Every cause seems urgent, but nobody has the time, the energy, or the information necessary to make an impact. Knowing all the ways in which the world is flawed in a very real, raw, up-close kind of way without the ability to make any sort of important change is perhaps the most unwelcome symptom of the digital age” (Jamie Varon, “Generation apathy: How internet outrage is making us all numb and hopeless,” August 20, 2015).

Some Christians have drunk the hemlock of apathy. They are becoming more and more indifferent to evil in the world and, sadly, more and more detached from religion. Unconnected. Not invested. Religion may be good; but, when it comes to God, they have hung up a “Do Not Disturb Sign.” For them, weddings, funerals, First Communions, Confirmations, if even celebrated, are mostly social occasions. 

Apathy within the Church is far more devastating than outside the Church. The Church is the sign and sacrament of salvation for the world. It is an instrument in God’s hands. But if the instrument is dull and listless, it hinders God’s activity. When people become apathetic, something more is needed than telling them to be kind and compassionate. Such preaching falls on deaf ears and hardened hearts. What is needed today is the bold proclamation of the kerygma, that is, the love of God given us in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  

God is not apathetic. He is intensely passionate about his relationship with us and his world. He is the lover who pursues his beloved. He never gives up on us, despite our sins. He woos us back to himself (cf. Hosea 2:11). He did not turn his back on the evil of our world, but sent his Son to be our Redeemer.

 “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son” (Jn 3:16). In the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s love is a fact. In Jesus, God has begun the work of forgiving sins and recreating the world. And, he gifts us with the Holy Spirit so that, together with him, we make all things new. We are not helpless. We are not alone. Apathy makes people murmur a half-silent “No” to the world in which we live. But, faith in Jesus Crucified and Risen makes us shout a resounding “Yes” to God’s work of the New Creation. Faith is the antidote to apathy.


 

An executive order signed this week is meant to address concerns of anti-Semitism on college and university campuses. But the legal underpinnings of that order apply to elementary and secondary schools, too.

Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan briefed a joint meeting of Parliament's Portfolio and Standing Committees on Public Enterprises on Wednesday evening.

Dell has some Doorbuster Deals that will not last long. Also, the Instant Pot DUO60 is back at $49.99. Plus, Prime members can grab a Ring Video Doorbell Pro and Echo Dot for $169.

Educators are invited to write about their experiences teaching online in the age of COVID-19.

Delaware State Housing Authority (DSHA) Director Anas Ben Addi today announced that DSHA was awarded $91,722 from the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) for comprehensive housing counseling services to be performed by three sub-grantees – First State Community Action Agency, NCALL Research, Inc., and YWCA Center for Homeownership. This is the first time DSHA has received funding as an intermediary for comprehensive counseling services from HUD.

Wilmington, DE – Highlighting ongoing efforts to revitalize Delaware’s downtowns, Governor Jack Markell and Delaware State Housing Authority Director Anas Ben Addi presented a grant check on Monday to the owners of Tonic Bar and Grille, money that helped Tonic fund extensive renovations throughout the restaurant. Tonic’s grant rebate was funded by Delaware’s Downtown Development […]

$3.6 million in grant funding for 16 projects to leverage $38.6 million in private investment MILFORD – Building on progress in Delaware’s downtowns, Governor Jack Markell and the Delaware State Housing Authority announced on Tuesday that sixteen new downtown revitalization projects in Harrington, Milford, Dover, Smyrna and Wilmington will receive $3.56 million in grant funding […]

Projects in Dover, Georgetown, Harrington, Laurel, Milford, Seaford, Smyrna and Wilmington Eligible For Funding DOVER — The Delaware State Housing Authority is accepting applications through December 15 for large project grants through the Downtown Development District Program. The grants provide up to 20 percent rebates on qualified real property investments in one of the eight […]

A young Kurd struggles with feeling unimportant in the world, while another no longer worries because he knows who he is in Christ.

OM’s Xenos team in Heilbronn ministers to immigrants in a holistic way by proclaiming the gospel and supporting them in their physical and emotional needs.

A member of OM Germany's Xenos team experiences the joy of seeing immigrants reach other immigrants.

Leader of OM Germany serves in the kitchen during TeenStreet, OM’s annual week-long international youth congress that started on Saturday.

How does TeenStreet, a 25-year-old ministry to youth, fit into OM's new global mission focus?

OM workers Elsbeth and Josef* are seeing vibrant communities of Jesus followers among least reached immigrants in Germany.

Google Assistant Scheduled Actions lets you schedule actions in advance—so you can tell your coffee maker to start at 6 a.m. or your air conditioner to stop at 10 p.m.

By manipulating the expression of one gene, geneticists can induce a form of “stress memory” in plants that is inherited by some progeny, giving them the potential for more vigorous, hardy and productive growth, according to Penn State researchers, who suggest the discovery has significant implications for plant breeding.

Researchers in Penn State’s College of Engineering, College of Agricultural Sciences and College of Medicine say direct LTP treatment and plasma-activated media are effective treatments against bacteria found in liquid cultures and have devised a way to create plasma directly in liquids.

The Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication announced the recipients of its 2020 Page/Johnson Legacy Scholar Grants. This year’s call will fund 12 projects that examine “organizational listening,” its role in successful corporate communications and the consequences of when companies don’t listen.

The Secretary of the Interior has signed an order that calls for the US 'domestic production capability' to build small unmanned drones. China-based DJI accused the department of imposing 'politically motivated country of origin restrictions masquerading as cybersecurity concern.'

Eight senior Penn State Scranton accounting and finance students participated in the United Way of Lackawanna and Wayne Counties’ annual Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, preparing about 2,250 free tax returns for low-income families and individuals throughout the region.

Penn State Scranton recently donated personal protective equipment (PPE) to two local hospitals, Geisinger Community Medical Center and Commonwealth Health Moses Taylor Hospital, to help them during the growing coronavirus pandemic.