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Several thousand people have rallied in the centre of the Ukrainian capital in the first anti-government protest of the new year.

The protesters oppose President Viktor Yanukovych's policy of strengthening ties with Russia rather than the EU.

The protests, and occupation of the square by activists, were sparked by Mr Yanukovych's decision to abandon plans to sign an association agreement with the European Union.

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has issued a profit warning after it made less money than expected in the final quarter of 2013.

"Fourth-quarter 2013 figures... are expected to be significantly lower than recent levels of profitability," the company said in a statement.

It now expects profits for the quarter to be about $2.2bn (£1.3bn) and profits for 2013 as a whole to be $16.8bn. Shell's shares fell more than 4% at the beginning of trading in London.

12 January 2014 Last updated at 22:01 ET Share this page Email Print Share this pageShareFacebookTwitter Afghan 'suicide vest girl' reveals family ordeal The girl is thought to be the sister of a prominent Taliban commander Continue reading the main story Taliban Conflict Loya Jirga: Q&A Pakistan's interests Who are the Taliban? Q&A: Foreign forces An Afghan girl has told the BBC that her family forced her to a

The girl, known as Spozhmai, said her brother and father had beaten her, ordering her to put on a suicide vest.

she has appealed to Afghan President Hamid Karzai to put her in a new home

College fraternities—by which term of art I refer to the formerly all-white, now nominally integrated men’s “general” or “social” fraternities, and not the several other types of fraternities on American campuses (religious, ethnic, academic)—are as old, almost, as the republic.

While the system has produced its share of poets, aesthetes, and Henry James scholars, it is far more famous for its success in the powerhouse fraternity fields of business, law, and politics. An astonishing number of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, congressmen and male senators, and American presidents have belonged to fraternities

They also have a long, dark history of violence against their own members and visitors to their houses, which makes them in many respects at odds with the core mission of college itself.

The introduction of coffee cultivation in 19th century Guatemala laid the foundations for the semi-feudal oppression of the Mayan Indians

Barrios also subdivided the Mayans into 3 groups. One were 'colonos,' who contracted to live and work on the plantations. The second were 'jornaledos habilitados,' who had to work as indentured servants to pay off debts to the plantation owner. The third became 'jornaledos no habilitados,' who promised to work for a number of years without any advance.

These laws compelled Indians to work 150 days a year if they cultivated less than one and five-sixteenth 'manzanas' of land, 100 days a year if they cultivated more. There were other ways to trick the Indian into forced labor.

13 November 2013 Last updated at 06:45 ET Share this page Email Print Share this pageShareFacebookTwitter Nigeria: US 'to name Boko Haram as a terrorist group' Boko Haram frequently clashes with the Nigerian armed forces Continue reading the main story Nigeria under attack Afraid to go to school Dead or alive Vigilante war Gunning for Boko Haram The US state department is expected to designate the Nigerian Islamist militant group, Boko Haram, as a foreign terrorist organisation.

The US state department is expected to designate the Nigerian Islamist militant group, Boko Haram, as a foreign terrorist organisation

t will become a crime under US law to provide material support to the group

Germany's parliament has reconvened for the first time since September's election which saw a surge of support for Chancellor Angela Merkel.

She is trying to forge a deal between her Christian Democrat bloc and the centre-left Social Democrats.

Women make up 36% of the new MPs, where one-third of members are new to the Bundestag.

“Former U.S. president Bill Clinton has called for an end to mass incarceration, admitting that changes in penal policy that happened largely under his watch put ‘too many people in prison and for too long’ and ‘overshot the mark.’”

“In 1994 Clinton championed a crime bill that laid down several of the foundations of the country’s current mass incarceration malaise. Vowing to be ‘tough on crime’ — a quality that had previously been more closely associated with the Republicans and which Clinton adopted under his ‘triangulation’ ploy — he created incentives to individual states to build more prisons, to put more people behind bars and to keep them there for longer. His also presided over the introduction of a federal three-strikes law that brought in long sentences for habitual offenders.”

The black community in America has been betrayed by Democrats and Republicans alike — it has been betrayed by America itself.

31 October 2013 Last updated at 19:42 ET Share this page Email Print Share this page2.6KShareFacebookTwitter Syria chemical weapons equipment destroyed, says OPCW Advertisement $render("advert-post-script-load"); Jerry Smith, OPCW: "We have... observed all of the destruction activities" Continue reading the main story Syria conflict Arms destruction Chemical stockpile 'Please let it be over' Assad opponents Syria's declared equipment for producing, mixing and filling chemical weapons has been destroyed, the international watchdog says. This comes a day before the deadline set by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The weapons have been placed under seal, an OPCW spokesman said. Inspectors were sent to Syria following allegations, denied by the government, that its forces had used chemical weapons in civilian areas. Continue reading the main story Analysis Jonathan Marcus BBC diplomatic correspondent The achievement of this crucial initial target is an important moment for the chemical weapons destruction effort in Syria. The inspectors' first task was to move swiftly to prevent the government from producing any more chemical agent and to destroy facilities and equipment used for mixing agents and filling munitions. Production facilities will be closely monitored to ensure that there are no moves to repair them. The next deadline is mid-November, by which time the OPCW and the Syrians must agree a detailed plan to destroy Syria's chemical weapons stockpile. All sorts of questions are raised. Where will this destruction be carried out ? Who will provide the necessary equipment and so on? Western intelligence agencies will be studying Syria's declarations carefully. They will be eager to direct inspectors to additional locations if there are any grounds to believe that Damascus has been less than frank in its disclosures. The inspections were agreed between Russia and the US after Washington threatened to use force in Syria. Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad

Syria's declared equipment for producing, mixing and filling chemical weapons has been destroyed, the international watchdog says.

nspectors were sent to Syria following allegations, denied by the government, that its forces had used chemical weapons in civilian areas.

it's hard to determine which course of study is most infested with cheating. But I'd say education is the worst. I've written papers for students in elementary-education programs, special-education majors, and ESL-training courses. I've written lesson plans for aspiring high-school teachers, and I've synthesized reports from notes that customers have taken during classroom observations. I've written essays for those studying to become school administrators, and I've completed theses for those on course to become principals. In the enormous conspiracy that is student cheating, the frontline intelligence community is infiltrated by double agents.

First I lay out the sections of an assignment—introduction, problem statement, methodology, literature review, findings, conclusion—whatever the instructions call for. Then I start Googling. I haven't been to a library once since I started doing this job. Amazon is quite generous about free samples. If I can find a single page from a particular text, I can cobble that into a report, deducing what I don't know from customer reviews and publisher blurbs. Google Scholar is a great source for material, providing the abstract of nearly any journal article. And of course, there's Wikipedia, which is often my first stop when dealing with unfamiliar subjects. Naturally one must verify such material elsewhere, but I've taken hundreds of crash courses this way. After I've gathered my sources, I pull out usable quotes, cite them, and distribute them among the sections of the assignment. Over the years, I've refined ways of stretching papers. I can write a four-word sentence in 40 words. Just give me one phrase of quotable text, and I'll produce two pages of ponderous explanation. I can say in 10 pages what most normal people could say in a paragraph. I've also got a mental library of stock academic phrases: "A close consideration of the events which occurred in ____ during the ____ demonstrate that ____ had entered into a phase of widespread cultural, social, and economic change that would define ____ for decades to come." Fill in the blanks using words provided by the professor in the assignment's instructions.

"It's unique and groundbreaking in the history of epidemiology. It's the only study to have chased an entire cohort across its life course — and it's not yet finished," says Ezra Susser, an epidemiologist who works with cohort studies at Columbia University in New York. He says that cohort research has been vital in seeding the idea that disease evolves as a result of events throughout life. "You gain enormous depth of understanding in how that disease came to be by following someone over their life course."

Bright children from the middle classes were more likely to pass the 11+ and do well at school than were equally bright working-class children, although supportive parents and good teachers could better a child's odds. The attrition of smart but poor boys (girls counted for less) became known as the 'waste of talent', turning Douglas's next two books — The Home and the School (1964) and All Our Future (1968) — into must-read educational references and contributing to the introduction of non-selective 'comprehensive' schools in the 1960s

He found that babies with the lowest birth weights had the highest risk of heart disease as adults. Study after study from the 1946 cohort supported the link, showing a tangle of connections between infant and child growth or development and adult traits from cognitive ability to frailty, diabetes, obesity, cancer and schizophrenia risk. "It isn't the same story every time, but we find an endless stream of long-term associations in quite 'noisy' data," says Kuh. "Big babies were more likely to get breast cancer. Small babies were more likely to have poor grip strength. Those who grew fast postnatally have more cardiovascular risk."

communication failure (rather than a provider’s lack of technical skill) was at the root of over 70 percent of serious adverse health outcomes in hospitals.

two out of every three patients are discharged from the hospital without even knowing their diagnosis.

Another study discovered that in over 60 percent of cases, patients misunderstood directions after a visit to their doctor’s office

As a historian, I was influenced by E. H. Carr’s thinking about the past and present as part of a continuum that stretches into the future. In What is History? (1961), Carr argued that concern with the future is what really motivates the study of the past. As a teacher and political activist, I also strongly believe that schools should promote active citizenship as essential for maintaining a democratic society.

in an effort to survive, the NCSS has largely abandoned its commitment to these ideas, twisting itself into a pretzel to adapt to national Common Core standards and to satisfy influential conservative organizations that they are not radical, or even liberal. I suspect, but cannot document, that the organization’s membership has precipitously declined during the past two decades and it has increasingly depended financial support for its conferences and publications from deep-pocketed traditional and rightwing groups who advertise and have display booths.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Since the introduction of NCLB, there has been a steady reduction in the amount of time spent in the teaching of social studies, with the most profound decline noticed in the elementary grades.”

French President Francois Hollande has vowed that his country will protect all religions, saying that Muslims are the main victims of fanaticism.

Speaking at the Arab World Institute, he said Islam was compatible with democracy and thanked Arabs for their solidarity over terrorism in Paris.

There are also funerals taking place for Charlie Hebdo columnist Elsa Cayat and Franck Brinsolaro, a policeman assigned to guard Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier.

“I don’t think any of us had any idea what the words ‘going viral’ meant when we rolled this out 10 or 12 years ago,” said James Robertson, a retired federal judge in Washington who helped guide the introduction of the federal electronic filing system.

In interviews, several plaintiffs’ lawyers said the current online environment was already deterring potential clients from filing suit. Now a Google search can forever portray even a successful litigant as “the complainer, or the slut who allegedly slept with the boss,” as Danielle Citron, a University of Maryland law professor, put it. Those who have suffered privacy violations, like nude pictures posted online, risk making the original damage worse if they sue, since courts are generally reluctant to allow plaintiffs to file anonymously.

Leigh Goodmark, another Maryland law professor, said the online boom of gender-related court documents was a harbinger of a future in which virtually no legal document — an eviction notice, a divorce pleading with embarrassing details — would be safe from public consumption.

It is fitting that Japan’s earliest remaining works, composed at a time when the country was so strongly under the civilizing influence of China, should be of a historical character. In the Confucian tradition, the writing of history has always been held in the highest esteem, since Confucianists believe that the lessons of the past provide the best guide for ethical rule in the present and future. In contrast to the Indians, who have always been absorbed with metaphysical and religious speculation and scarcely at all with history, the Chinese are among the world’s greatest record-keepers.

he wrote that it is precisely because life and nature are changeable and uncertain that things have the power to move us.

The turbulent centuries of the medieval age produced many new cultural pursuits that catered to the tastes of various classes of society, including warriors, merchants, and even peasants. Yet, coloring nearly all these pursuits was miyabi, reflected in a fundamental preference on the part of the Japanese for the elegant, the restrained, and the subtly suggestive.

To the governments of the other 27 European Union nations, the U.K. message is that failure to agree a Brexit deal would be a geopolitical calamity that could bring unimaginable risks to the Continent’s security. But to the British public, the message has been one of reassurance. The government insists that preparations are well under way to cope with any fallout should the talks fail: Brexiters have flooded the airwaves to drive home the message that no deal is no big deal.

In December’s Joint Report on the state of the negotiations, the British government accepted an obligation to pay €40 billion ($46.4 billion) to the EU in settlement of the U.K.’s outstanding financial commitments

if the U.K. leaves the EU with no agreement and refuses to pay its debts, it will become an international legal pariah, at least in the EU’s eyes. The EU will want to recover what it believes it is rightfully owed and will pursue its claims through international courts.

At Reed College in Oregon, where I work, a group of students began protesting the required first-year humanities course a year ago. Three times a week, students sat in the lecture space holding signs — many too obscene to be printed here — condemning the course and its faculty as white supremacists, as anti-black, as not open to dialogue and criticism, on the grounds that we continue to teach, among many other things, Aristotle and Plato.

In the interest of supporting dissent and the free exchange of ideas, the faculty and administration allowed this.

Those who felt able to do so lectured surrounded by those signs for the better part of a year. I lectured, but dealt with physical anxiety — lack of sleep, nausea, loss of appetite, inability to focus — in the weeks leading up to my lecture. Instead of walking around or standing at the lectern, as I typically do, I sat as I tried to teach students how to read the poetry of Sappho. Inadvertently, I spoke more quietly, more timidly.

Ever since people began to speculate about “World War III,” its very name has implied its own inevitability. We talk about it not only as something that might happen, but something that will. And it’s been on our minds for a very long time.

The phrase seems to have emerged during the early 1940s, not long after people began to think of the “Great War” of 1914 as World War I—a precursor to World War II. Time magazine mused about a third war as early as November 1941, one month before Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into WWII. More consequentially, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill started planning for a World War III while he was still fighting the second war. And he kept on worrying about it, too. “After he’s out office, during the summer of 1945 through 1946, he continually believes that the Soviet Union are going to start another war,” says Jonathan Walker, a military history writer and author of Operation Unthinkable: The Third World War.

The introduction of the atomic bomb in the 1940s and the hydrogen bomb in the 1950s gave the phrase “World War III” a new, specific meaning: nuclear annihilation. And as the U.S. and the Soviet union became locked in a Cold War, it seemed that nuclear war could break out at any moment. Writers had already been stoking people’s fears about nuclear energy long before the U.S. harnessed it into bombs, says Spencer R. Weart, a science historian and author of The Rise of Nuclear Fear. When scientists first discovered radioactivity and nuclear energy at the turn of the century, it evoked both awe and terror. One of them, Frederick Soddy, thought “it might even be possible to set off an explosion that would destroy the entire world,” Weart says.