DeVos reinstated for-profit college accreditor despite staff objections, report shows
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos earlier this year reinstated an accreditor of for-profit colleges despite findings by her agency’s career staff that the organization failed to meet federal standards, an internal document shows. The report, released by the Education Department on Friday in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, shows that career department analysts had serious concerns about restoring the federal recognition of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools just a month before DeVos issued an order reinstating the accreditor’s federal status. Story Continued Below Career analysts wrote in the report that ACICS failed to meet 57 of the 93 criteria that accreditors are required to meet under federal law. The Obama administration’s termination of ACICS in 2016 was based on its findings that the accreditor had not followed 21 of the standards, though its review was more limited in scope.
My friend Denis Mukwege is a beacon for all men to follow
Today’s announcement of the Nobel peace prize for Denis Mukwege, with co-winner Nadia Murad, is a deeply deserved recognition for an extraordinary man who has risked everything to heal, cherish and honour women. It is a call to men across the planet to do the same. There are many reasons why the world needs to know the story of my friend Mukwege, who founded the Panzi hospital and co-founded the City of Joy in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But in 2018, we need to hear that story more than ever. This week, the president of the United States mocked a survivor of sexual abuse in front of a crowd who jeered and laughed along with him. Violence against women and the rampant misogyny that fuels it is resurgent all over the world.
The trouble with charitable billionaires
In February 2017, Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in the headlines for his charitable activities. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, founded by the tech billionaire and his wife, Priscilla Chan, handed out over $3m in grants to aid the housing crisis in the Silicon Valley area. David Plouffe, the Initiative’s president of policy and advocacy, stated that the grants were intended to “support those working to help families in immediate crisis while supporting research into new ideas to find a long-term solution – a two-step strategy that will guide much of our policy and advocacy work moving forward”. This is but one small part of Zuckerberg’s charity empire.
Capital - Why getting distracted can be a very good thing
Alexander Graham Bell was not a fan of multitasking. The inventor of the telephone believed that true creativity came from a single-minded concentration on the issue under consideration – and any distraction would only take you further from your goal. This phenomenon is known as cognitive fixation, and many psychologists now consider it to be the principle barrier to true creativity. “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand,” he once told the author Orison Swett Marden, for the early Twentieth Century inspirational book, How They Succeeded. “The sun’s rays do not burn until brought into focus.” And until recently, psychological research seemed to agree, showing that we are more efficient – and in jobs that require precision, more accurate – when we keep our minds firmly on track.
Two Koch Insiders Are Creating a New Office Inside the FCC - TYT Network
Federal Communication Commission Chairman Ajit Pai at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), February, 2018. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. By Alex Kotch Two recent employees from key groups financially supported by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch are creating a new office within the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that will provide economic data and analysis relating to FCC policy initiatives. The office could provide FCC Chairman Ajit Pai with analytical justification for slashing regulations.
I was an Isis sex slave. I tell my story because it is the best weapon I have
The slave market opened at night. We could hear the commotion downstairs where militants were registering and organising, and when the first man entered the room, all the girls started screaming. It was like the scene of an explosion. We moaned as though wounded, doubling over and vomiting on the floor, but none of it stopped the militants. They paced around the room, staring at us, while we screamed and begged.
Trump will personally save up to $15m under tax bill, analysis finds
Donald Trump and six members of his inner circle will be big winners of the Republicans’ vast tax overhaul, with the president personally benefiting from a tax cut of up to $15m a year, research shows. The US president chalked up his first big legislative win on Wednesday with the $1.5tn bill, the most sweeping revamp of the tax code in three decades, slashing taxes for corporations and the wealthy and dealing the heaviest blow yet to Obamacare. But analysis by a leading Washington thinktank, the Center for American Progress (CAP), finds that changes to business rules will save Trump roughly $11m to $15m per year, while an amendment to the estate tax – the tax on the transfer of an estate of a deceased person – would potentially save his heirs $4.5m. Under current law, the first $11.2m of a couple’s estate’s value is excluded from taxation, and any amount above this is taxed at a 40% rate. The new bill doubles the exemption to $22.4m.
Consent Form
On a Thursday evening in late January, the faithful gather. They trickle into the Church of Perpetual Life, about an hour’s drive north of Miami, until a throng of around 100 people cram around tables lining the first-floor hall of this renovated house of worship. Along one wall is a display of reading material: pamphlets on heart disease, flyers itemizing the additives in Cheez-Its and their detrimental health effects, a handbill about the Ms. Senior Florida pageant. On the other side of the room, there’s a snack buffet with beans, broccoli, carrots, cubed cheese, sliced meats, and olives. It’s easy to pick out the regulars, who mingle clutching biology textbooks or readily shaking hands.
