ISIS Has Massacred 322 People From Sunni Tribe; The Myth of Chinese Super Schools

ISIS Has Massacred 322 People From Sunni Tribe; Leader Says Iraqi Gov't Abandoned Them ... Iraq's Ministry of Human Rights confirmed confirmed that 322 people in total have been killed, following news that ISIS militants shot dead 50 men and women from the tribe on Friday night into Saturday morning. Another 65 people are said to have been kidnapped.

ISIS, or the Islamic State as the group is also known, has accused the tribesmen and women of retaliating for being displaced from their homes.

The Islamic militants have targeted religious and ethnic minorities during their conquest of large amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria, while at the same time they have sought to unite jihadists from various countries around the world who are flooding in to join them...

Obama’s Border Policy Fueled EV-D68 enterovirus epidemic, Evidence Shows   The deadly EV-D68 enterovirus epidemic, which struck thousands of kids this fall, was likely propelled through America by President Barack Obama’s decision to allow tens of thousands of Central Americans across the Texas border, according to a growing body of genetic and statistical evidence.

The evidence includes admissions from top health officials that the epidemic included multiple strains of the virus, and that it appeared simultaneously in multiple independent locations...

The rapid spread of Christianity is forcing an official rethink on religion  ...Christianity is hard to control in China, and getting harder all the time. It is spreading rapidly, and infiltrating the party’s own ranks. The line is blurring between house churches and official ones, and Christians are starting to emerge from hiding to play a more active part in society. The Communist Party has to find a new way to deal with all this. There is even talk that the party, the world’s largest explicitly atheist organisation, might follow its sister parties in Vietnam and Cuba and allow members to embrace a dogma other than—even higher than—that of Marx.

Any shift in official thinking on religion could have big ramifications for the way China handles a host of domestic challenges, from separatist unrest among Tibetan Buddhists and Muslim Uighurs in the country’s west to the growth of NGOs and “civil society”—grassroots organisations, often with a religious colouring, which the party treats with suspicion, but which are also spreading fast...

The Myth of Chinese Super Schools
...This was written after officials who administer the PISA examinations had hailed Shanghai for its remarkably high test scores. Zhao says this is what Chinese students, even in rural areas, are best at: high test scores. Chinese students regularly win any competition that depends on test performance. Where they fall short is creativity, originality, divergence from authority. The admirers of Chinese test scores never point out that what makes it the “best” education system is also what makes it the worst education system. It is very effective in “eliminating individual differences, suppressing intrinsic motivation, and imposing conformity.”...