Education blog

Archive for July, 2010

Visitors take a tour in the Slovenia Pavilion at the World Expo Park in Shanghai, east China, May 2, 2010. Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia was named “World Book Capital 2010″ by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization this year, giving Slovenia Pavilion a perfect theme “Open Book”. Visitors is able to read through videos, audios and projection when they come to each book and enjoying a journey of Slovenia’s spectacular scenery and culture.

People’s life all over Nepal was affected by indefinite general strike and shutdown on Sunday.

The strike was called by UCPN (Maoist) as part of its agitation demanding the step down of the incumbent government.

General lives of people were affected by the strike. Local shops, private offices, industries, factories, education institutions, transportation all came to a halt due to the strike.

Few cars, ambulances, hospital buses, journalist’s motorcycles could be seen on the road.

The party workers were staging demonstrations at major thoroughfares, chanting slogans calling for the government to step down.

The Home Ministry on Saturday had issued directives to all the concerned people and professionals to carry out their general lives as it were as the security was beefed up.

However, few shops and markets are open.

The Higher Secondary Education Board (HSEB) postponed all examinations of Grade 12 ( High School ) for an indefinite period on Sunday due to the Maoist’s strike.

Security personnel were deployed at the various places in the capital city and around the country as well.

The indefinite strike Sunday ended peacefully without any reports of violence. The Maoist cadres were singing songs and merry making by gathering in the streets.

Ram Bahadur Chettri, 53, a farmer from Sindhupalchowk, was a little furious, saying he is ready to sacrifice his life for the country.

“We are fighting for constitution, we want our constitution and we want this government to be down at any cost,” he exclaimed.

Kanchi Maya Tamang, a tenth grader, told Xinhua that she came all the way from Sindhupalchowk, some 40 kilometers away from the capital, to participate in the strike and demonstration.

Kumar Lama, an icecream seller, was very happy that his business was up compared to other day. Talking to Xinhua he told that his business rose as many people on the streets are eating his ice-creams.

Apart from blocking roads the Maoist cadres were singing and dancing singing anti-governmental songs and merry making.

The roads in the Kathmandu valley were crowded with people dancing and singing in all the joyful ways.

The announcement of the general strike was made on Saturday following a mammoth rally in Kathmandu valley on the occasion of the 121st International Labor Day.

The strike was pretty much peaceful and there are no any reported violence till now.

Chinese State Councilor Liu Yandong Sunday called for reform in talent cultivation and the education appraisal system among universities to boost innovation.

The government would reform the education system to promote innovation, international vision and comprehensive abilities among students, Liu said at the opening of a forum of university presidents in Nanjing.

Universities should explore new patterns of education with open minds and more cooperation with other research institutions and businesses, Liu said.

Education and talent were the key elements in China’s development.

Liu also urged the universities to play a role as social think tanks to serve the country’s economic and social development.

Liu was speaking at the Chinese-Foreign University Presidents Forum, which was attended by the heads of about 150 universities around the world.

For those who make even a fleeting tour of the 2010 World Expo, they cannot miss the essentials that have insinuated into and meandered through all the expositions so far.

Organizers in Shanghai are therefore as assured as their predecessors, either in educated foresight or calculated retrospect, that what are on display at their expos would be morale-boosting to their visitors for years to come.

That’s perhaps why more and more people aspire to tour the grandiose expositions of their times, just to get the smack of the lift at least mentally, if not physically.

Chinese President Hu Jintao met with President of Seychelles James Alix Michel in Shanghai on Sunday.

Hu said the China-Seychelles relations could be deemed as an excellent model for relations between countries with different sizes and social systems.

China is willing to join hands with Seychelles to push forward the friendship and cooperation between the two countries in a comprehensive manner, Hu said.

He called for continuing the momentum of high-level exchanges, making further plans for developing bilateral relations, strengthening bilateral political consultations and cementing exchanges and coordination on key issues such as dealing with the global financial crisis and climate change.

Urging efforts to expand economic and trade cooperation, Hu said China is willing to offer economic aid within its capacity to Seychelles and would encourage Chinese enterprises to invest in Seychelles and participate in the country’s economic development.

He also called for more efforts to promote exchanges between China and Seychelles in the fields of culture and education and expressed China’s willingness to work closely with African countries including Seychelles to implement the follow-up programs of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation to benefit the African people as soon as possible.

Michel agreed that the Seychelles-China relations could serve as an excellent example for relations between developing countries.

He said Seychelles was willing to work jointly with China to strengthen and develop the friendship between the two countries, promote pragmatic cooperation in various fields and enhance exchanges and coordination in dealing with international and regional affairs to safeguard the common interests of developing countries.

Seychelles would firmly support China’s efforts to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity and realize the great cause of national reunification, Michel said.

A leading international expert on HIV/AIDS Friday challenged China’s gay men to front up to their responsibilities in fighting the spread of the disease.

Dr. Ray Yip, director of the China Program of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said the spread of HIV/AIDS in China through homosexual sex was “one of the biggest emerging challenges” to controling the disease.

Dr. Yip told CNC World, the satellite news television station run by Xinhua News Agency, that HIV transmission through “MSM” (men having sex with men) had boomed since 2003.

This year, the Beijing Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced sexual activity between men and men had become the main channel of HIV transmission in the city, exceeding both heterosexual sex and drug use.

Poor awareness of safe sex among gay men contributed to the sharp rise as many gay men had multiple sex partners, and did not always use condoms.

“We need the MSM group to engage their community to take part in the intervention,” Dr. Yip told CNC.

“Will they promote safe sex? Will they be promoting early testing? Will they be supporting people already with HIV? So the key is their involvement in the prevention.”

Social pressures forced many HIV carriers to remain hidden, and many were reluctant to admit they were HIV carriers, said Dr. Yip.

They need to show their faces and let their voices be heard, said Dr. Yip.

Homosexuals, sex workers, drug abusers and underground blood donors were all most at risk of infection and the biggest danger to others.

“The prevention of the spread of HIV, regardless of which group, drug users, sex workers or men having sex with men, is the same,” Dr. Yip said.

“The key thing is that the high risk behavior needs to be reduced.

“It is those people who don’t know they are HIV carriers are dangerous. We need to find them,” said Dr. Yip.

However, he said, “China represents one of the few countries in Asia that really takes AIDS seriously.”

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had committed 50 million U.S. dollars to support HIV/AIDS prevention efforts in China, supporting both governmental and non-governmental programs focused on the “priorities”: prevention services for high-risk groups, HIV testing, prevention and support for people living with HIV, and stigma reduction.

“We fund government programs in about 15 cities across China to work with NGOs who fund high-risk communities, such as MSM, to mobilize and develop their capacity to do the prevention,” Dr. Yip said.

The foundation, which cooperates closely with China’s Ministry of Health (MOH), was supporting groups that promoted “peer education” such as Zhitong, a volunteer organization.

Luo, the head of Zhitong programs who would only give his surname, said, “We give away condoms and brochures in gay bars and parks, set up a free hotline, and conduct salons or lectures regularly.”

The organization, which is financially supported by the Gates foundation and local health agencies, has more than 200 volunteers and claims to have contacted at least 60,000 people.

MOH figures showed that by the end of last year, MSM transmission accounted for 32.5 percent of China’s total HIV/AIDS infections, up from only 0.4 percent in 2005.

China had 740,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, 105,000 of whom had AIDS by the end of 2009, MOH data showed.

The Chinese government has lifted the 20-year-old ban on entry of foreigners with HIV/AIDS in a move to eliminate unequal treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Since the end of 2003, the government has carried out a policy of free blood tests for those with HIV, free education for orphans of AIDS patients, and free consultation, scanning tests and anti-virus therapies for pregnant women.

(Note: Su Jing and Li Dongxu also contributed to the story. To view the CNC World interview, please log on http://www.xhstv.com/english_video_online.asp)

Australian Labor Party’s national broadband network (NBN) on Friday sets to deliver super fast fiber optic cable Internet access to 300,000 more premises than originally envisaged.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard, campaigning in Perth, said the 43 billion dollars (38.7 billion U.S. dollars) network was being rolled out on time and on budget. About half of households and businesses in the only three state Tasmanian towns connected to the network have been accessing the service, a faster rate of uptake than many expected.

Gillard and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy on Friday released maps showing the network’s coverage had expanded to 93 percent of the nation.

Building the network was about jobs, about 25,000 of them, the prime minister said.

“Not building the NBN would effectively export jobs of the future from this country to countries in our region,” Gillard told reporters in Perth, pointing to Singapore, South Korea and Japan.

The network aimed to give Australian children a world-class education by giving them a world-class technology, Gillard said.

It is time Fiji citizens take swimming classes seriously and make an effort to learn, considering the island nation’s locality being surrounded by sea and the number of incidents recorded by authorities.

Official figures released on Friday showed that more than 555 people in Fiji have drowned in the past 11 years and 25 of them died in the last six months.

What was also of concern is that 35 percent of the 500 victims were school children.

Fiji’s Education Minister Filipe Bole has raised concern in the local media over the figures as the school holiday approaches when many adults allow children to go swimming with friends unsupervised.

He called on parents and guardians to be more alert and to exercise more caution to avoid mishaps.

Statistics from the Fiji Police Force, released on Friday, show that for the last 11 years 128 children under the age of 10 died from drowning and 64 others between 11 and 17 years.

Bole said that parents should enroll their children in swimming classes and to ensure that they accompany their children to picnics.

In most villagers in Fiji, children automatically learn how to swim as they usually bathe in rivers.

However, in urban areas parents have to take the initiative to enroll their children in swimming classes or they will definitely miss out on a skill necessary in a country surrounded by ocean.

The Venezuelan government will protect Colombian refugees currently living in Venezuela despite its diplomatic spat with Colombia, the Venezuelan National Commission for Refugees said Thursday.

Idelfonso Finol, president of the commission, said his country broke off relations “with the Colombian government, not the Colombian people.” He said that Venezuelans and Colombians were brothers sharing a common cultural and historical heritage.

On July 22, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez severed diplomatic ties with Colombia, which shares a 2,120-km border with Venezuela, after Bogota accused Caracas of harboring Colombian guerilla chiefs on its soil, a charge vehemently denied by Venezuela.

Some 350 Colombian citizens enter Venezuela every day to escape Colombia’s guerillas, paramilitary activities, terrorism and drug trafficking, according to the Association of Colombians in Venezuela.

Over four million Colombians living in Venezuela have the same rights to “food, health, education, and living in peace” as Venezuelan citizens, Finol told the state-owned news agency Agencia Venezolana de Noticias.

On Thursday, Venezuelan Trade Minister Richard Canan and Food Minister Carolos Osorio said the government will guarantee the food supplies in the states bordering Colombia, including Tachira, Zulia and Apure states.

“We promise security and food to Colombian refugees,” Osorio said, adding that there has been business as usual in the border areas.

It was Australian volunteer teacher Jiang Chao who taught 13-year-old Wu Shengqiao her favorite English-language phrase – “Never give up”. But 18-year-old Jiang says that it was Wu and her classmates, who are growing up in one of the country’s poorest villages, that taught him what that really means.

Jiang says teaching in Anhui province’s rural Yangshan has shown him the power of perseverance when facing adversity.

“I’ve learned that life’s a challenge but you can pull through if you persist,” he says. “The kids here are poor, but some of tvhem have amazing English.”

Jiang says this realization became even clearer when he met an elderly rice mill operator who lives near the school.

“He has a lot of kids and animals to feed, and machines to pay for, and he’s old. But he keeps going and doesn’t even think about retirement.”

What hardship – and overcoming it – means is one of the lessons NGOs Roots & Shoots and American Field Service (AFS) hope their 30 Chinese and foreign volunteers, aged 16 to 34, get from their experiences.

The volunteers teach summer classes for 50 of the 140 primary school students in Yangshan, a subsistence farming settlement where the average annual per capita income is 1,200 yuan ($177) – and that is a sharp increase from just 700 yuan three years ago.

Yangshan Village Primary School principal Qi Jiaquan says the paving of the village road in 2005, the tourism development of nearby Tiantingzhai National Park and expanding tea cultivation have elevated local incomes. In addition, mobile phone reception became available last year, although there’s still no Internet.

But despite improvements, local earnings still hover around a fifth of the national average.

Consequently, one-third of Yangshan’s 3,000 inhabitants – almost everyone of working age – have left to labor in cities, mostly in Shanghai and Jiangsu province.

Yangshan’s poverty, Qi explains, has mostly been caused by what villagers call “The Three 100,000s”.