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Parents were upset over a geography assignment on world religions from teacher Cheryl LaPorte, who had students practice calligraphy by writing the Muslim statement of faith, which translates to "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah," according to Staunton, Virginia, paper the News Leader. Students were also shown a copy of the Quran, according to the News Leader

Augusta County Superintendent Eric Bond said a statement to the News Leader that the Arabic message was not translated and that LaPorte did not ask students to "translate it, recite it or otherwise adopt or pronounce it as a personal belief."

"The students were presented with the statement to demonstrate the complex artistry of the written language used in the Middle East, and were asked to attempt to copy it in order to give the students an idea of the artistic complexity of the calligraphy," Bond said.

The American presence in Japan now extends far beyond the fast-food franchises, chain stores and pop-culture offerings that are ubiquitous the world over.

some very rarefied versions of America to be found in today’s Japan.

In Japan, the ability to perfectly imitate—and even improve upon—the cocktails, cuisine and couture of foreign cultures isn’t limited to American products; there are spectacular French chefs and masterful Neapolitan pizzaioli who are actually Japanese.

Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge and worked there until late 2014, said of its leaders: “Rules don’t matter for them. For them, this is a war, and it’s all fair.”

“They want to fight a culture war in America,” he added. “Cambridge Analytica was supposed to be the arsenal of weapons to fight that culture war.”

But the full scale of the data leak involving Americans has not been previously disclosed — and Facebook, until now, has not acknowledged it. Interviews with a half-dozen former employees and contractors, and a review of the firm’s emails and documents, have revealed that Cambridge not only relied on the private Facebook data but still possesses most or all of the trove.

It seldom connects us with people who don’t fit our expectations of behavior, and it does not build the understanding and empathy that can come from those disparate connections. The creation, strengthening and protecting of these like-us tribes saps the bridging social capital that is essential to addressing so many of our problems. Bridging social capital, that key element that traverses socioeconomic, geographic and racial lines, simply cannot be gained through algorithms set up to steer people away from uncomfortable truths.

Photo: iStock/Getty Images By Joshua Jamerson Mar 1, 2018 7:18 am ET 0 COMMENTS Save Article Save Remove View Saved Articles <circ

He also dashed conservative hopes that he would support a move now for gun owners who legally carry concealed firearms in one state to carry them in the other 49 states, a long-sought goal of the National Rifle Association.

he bucked Republican orthodoxy by suggesting the swift removal of guns from people who are potentially mentally ill,

History guided them as they crafted the American system of governance. This included the European traditions they were partially rejecting, but also elements from an older generation of republics that they wished to copy, especially the Roman Republic.

Not surprisingly, then, Rome inspired many features of our own Constitution, including its checks and balances, bicameral legislature, term limits and age requirements. In some cases, the Founders copied terms straight out of the Roman constitution: words like senate, capitol and committee.

A tour through the artwork of the U.S. Capitol today reveals early Americans saw the Roman ideals of farming, working hard, raising strong families and participating in local government as the building blocks for a strong national republic.

Siberia has warmed up faster than almost anywhere else on Earth. Scientists say the planet's warming must not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius — but Siberia's temperatures have already spiked far beyond that.

the region near the town of Zyryanka, in an enormous wedge of eastern Siberia called Yakutia, has warmed by more than 3 degrees Celsius since preindustrial times — roughly triple the global average.

The permafrost that once sustained farming — and upon which villages and cities are built — is in the midst of a great thaw, blanketing the region with swamps, lakes and odd bubbles of earth that render the land virtually useless.

The newfound Republican climate position can be summarized as follows: The climate problem is real, the Green New Deal is bad and the GOP needs a proactive climate solution of its own. Our big question is what form it should take.

There are essentially three ways to reduce emissions — regulations, subsidies and pricing. The first is the worst of all options for a party committed to free markets and limited government. Many Republican legislators are, therefore, gravitating toward the second option: tax credits and research-and-development spending to promote innovation. Those now introducing legislation along these lines deserve praise.

Republicans are correct to focus on clean-energy innovation as a crucial driver of climate progress.

“So actually in the Constitution of the United States, [if you] are found guilty of being a socialist member you either go to prison or are shot,” Garcia told Michels.

Anthony Johnstone, a law professor at the University of Montana, told The Washington Post that “nothing in the Constitution of the United States authorizes the government to punish socialists or anyone else on the basis of their political beliefs.” In fact, the First Amendment prohibits punishing political speech, and the Constitution of Montana “expressly prohibits discrimination on the basis of political beliefs,”

People often misunderstand the Treason Clause in Article III of the Constitution, interpreting it to justify punishment of political opponents, Johnstone said. The framers, he said, “were careful to define treason narrowly so it could not be used for merely political purposes.”

Another key question is what time period the White House’s 100,000-to-240,000 projection covers. Imperial College’s worst-case scenario calculated the toll exacted by the virus over a couple of years. But if the White House’s projection covers only the next few months, like the IHME model does, the true death toll will almost certainly be larger because the United States will probably see additional waves of covid-19 until a vaccine is deployed.

IHME, however, took an entirely different approach. It is a statistical model that takes the trending curve of deaths from China, for example, and “fits” that curve to emerging death data from cities and counties to predict what might come next.

“It’s a valuable tool, providing updated state-by-state projections, but it is inherently optimistic because it assumes that all states respond as swiftly as China,”

“All traitors must die miserable deaths,” a man from Michigan allegedly wrote in an email to Mark Zaid, the lawyer for the whistleblower who got the scandal rolling that ultimately resulted in President Trump’s impeachment. The man added: “We will hunt you down and bleed you out like the pigs you are.”

The author of this email has now been charged by federal prosecutors with making a death threat, Politico’s Natasha Bertrand reports. This came after Trump tweeted about the whistleblower many, many times, after Trump suggested the whistleblower should be executed and after Trump ripped into the whistleblower’s lawyer at a rally.

despite this, Trump and his allies have kept up the attacks on the whistleblower and have engaged in transparent efforts to place him in danger. House Republicans kept insisting that the whistleblower testify, and even as late as Trump’s trial, Senate Republicans were threatening to haul him in.

There are outbreaks. There are epidemics. And there are pandemics, where epidemics become rampant in multiple countries and continents simultaneously. The novel coronavirus that causes the disease named covid-19 is on the verge of that third, globe-shaking stage

Amid an alarming surge in cases with no clear link to China, infectious disease experts believe the flulike illness may soon be impossible to contain

the language coming from the organization’s Geneva headquarters has turned more ominous in recent days as the challenge of containment grows more daunting.

Sanders has denounced the attacks on Warren and her campaign by those claiming to support him, saying he was “aghast” and “disgusted” by them.That apparently did not satisfy Warren, who said that Sanders and all candidates “are responsible for the people who claim to be” supporters “and do really threatening and dangerous things,”

“We need to reckon with this in our political discourse,” said Warren, adding that what’s needed is “an understanding that nobody puts somebody’s family at risk or puts you at risk.”

She said that Democrats cannot “follow that same kind of politics of division that Donald Trump follows.”

It doesn’t hurt either that South Korean authorities ensured testing was essentially free to all and that the country’s single-payer health care system does not disincentivize low-income people from seeking preventive treatment, as is often the case in the United States.

And then there’s the question of leadership. President Trump spun the crisis as a Chinese menace easily dealt with at U.S. borders. He bemoaned his political opponents for inflating a minor threat. And he repeatedly shared inaccurate information and advice to Americans about the reach of the virus and the government’s capacity to reckon with it

Contrast that with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has taken a back seat as health officials communicate twice a day to the public about the state of the outbreak.

in wealthy places on China's periphery — Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea — a rapid response swung into action.One reason was that they had learned from the past.

“We were all burned very badly with SARS, but actually it turned out to be a blessing for us.”

Political will, dedicated resources, sophisticated tracking and a responsible population have kept coronavirus infections and deaths in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore relatively low. South Korea, with more deaths, has led the way in widespread testing.

The president dug in on his use of the term “Chinese virus” to describe the novel coronavirus that was first detected in Wuhan, China, late last year and did not rule out directing economic retaliation toward Beijing.

Trump’s use of the term has become a point of pride among some White House aides and supporters, and the president has used it more as his handling of the public health emergency has been increasingly faulted.

“China unleashed this plague on the world, and China has to be held accountable,” Cotton said in an interview Wednesday evening with Fox News host Sean Hannity. “That’s why I’m introducing legislation that will say we’re no longer going to buy our basic pharmaceuticals from China. There will be a total ban on buying.”

“flatten the curve” — slowing the spread of the contagion so it doesn’t overwhelm a health-care system with finite resources.

Success means a longer — though less catastrophic — fight against the coronavirus. And it is unclear whether Americans — who built this country on ideals of independence and individual rights — would be willing to endure such harsh restrictions on their lives for months, let alone for a year or more.

Only by enacting an entire series of drastic, severe restrictions could America shrink its death toll further, the study found. That strategy would require, at a minimum, the nationwide practice of social distancing, home isolation, and school and university closures. And such restrictions would have to be maintained, at least intermittently, until a working vaccine is developed, which could take 12 to 18 months at best.

With all the foresight of Napoleon invading Russia and all the caution of George Pickett charging the Union lines, Trump barreled ahead Tuesday with his plan to send Americans back to their workplaces — and, consequently, their airplanes, subways and restaurants — within 19 days, even as the rapidly spreading pandemic builds toward a peak.

“We’re opening up this incredible country,” he declared midday in the Rose Garden to Fox News interviewers, hours after the World Health Organization declared a “very large acceleration” of coronavirus infections in the United States, raising the prospect of this country becoming the pandemic’s new epicenter.

“I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter,” Trump declared. He went on to say he “wasn’t happy about” his public health experts’ recommendations, but he reluctantly accepted two weeks of restrictions because “we would have been unbelievably criticized for not doing it.”

The Trump administration is pushing to reopen much of the country next month, raising concerns among health experts and economists of a possible covid-19 resurgence if Americans return to their normal lives before the virus is truly stamped out.

Trump regularly looks at unemployment and stock market numbers, complaining that they are hurting his presidency and reelection prospects, the people said.

Trump said at his daily briefing Thursday that the United States was at the “top of the hill” and added, “Hopefully, we’re going to be opening up — you could call it opening — very, very, very, very soon, I hope.”

Our country can avoid long-term economic catastrophe, but only if we accept what would normally seem a preposterous idea: The $2.2&nbsp;trillion in relief that Congress has approved is not nearly enough.

In the short term, the aid Congress has already authorized must be pushed out with far greater urgency. As of now, it could take up to five months for some Americans to get their one-time relief checks. Independent contractors and the self-employed faced delays in applying for help under the program for small businesses

Yes, a certain amount of confusion might be forgiven for a novel effort. But the Trump administration’s bungling of so many aspects of the pandemic tells us to be deeply wary