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climbed two notches higher to 11th place from 13th position last year in the EF English Proficiency Index which saw over 60 countries being surveyed.

Malaysia, which was placed in the ‘High Proficiency’ category, had overtaken Singapore who fell behind to 12th position in the world ranking. Malaysia scored 58.99 points in the survey while neighbouring Singapore received a 58.92 score.

The analysis of evolving English proficiency over a six-year period (2007 to 2012 inclusive) uses test data from nearly five million adults.   EF Academic Affairs and Research Network head Dr. Christopher McCormick said: “Comparison of countries with their neighbours, trading partners, and rivals provides a fascinating study in divergent national priorities and educational policies worldwide,”

This is Meena. She’s 17 years old. She’s a student in Balkh province in northern Afghanistan. Meena is also one of the 687 Afghan students interviewed for Oxfam’s new report, High Stakes: Girls’ Education in Afghanistan, published today. Since the fall of the Taliban, girls’ enrolment in education has increased from an estimated 5,000 under the Taliban, to a current total of 2.4 million girls. Obviously, this is a significant gain, but there’s still a long way to go.

Malaysia apparently has the best English language speakers in Asia, beating out Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, China and Kazakhstan - according to a Singapore-based English Language school.

The school, Education First, which released the findings of their English Proficiency Index on their website Wednesday, ranked Malaysia as having the highest level of English proficiency out of 13 countries in Asia.

On the global scale, Malaysia was ranked 11th out of 60 countries, with four of the top five slots going to Scandinavian countries, with Sweden and Norway taking the top two spots and Malaysia outperforming Singapore, Belgium, Germany, Latvia and Switzerland - countries which took the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th spots respectively.

From speeches and media appearances to incessant info-graphics, the human shield claim has been used as the crux of Israeli propaganda to absolve the government of any accountability. There’s only one problem. Besides rockets found in an abandoned school, there’s been zero evidence to back up the claim that is regurgitated without question across the media establishment. The pro-Israel talking point has been so repetitive that some critics, like Max Blumenthal have employed sarcastic black comedy as a retort, “Hamas must be hiding rockets inside Palestinian children”