Newsweek

Europe
"Why, we ask, do Americans continue to tolerate gun laws and a culture that seems to condemn thousands of innocents to death every year, when presumably, tougher restrictions, such as those in force in European countries, could at least reduce the number?"
—The Times of London, in an editorial delving into the American psyche and the gun laws across the nation

"It is a delusion … to imagine that controls on their own will stop the rise of gun crime, and the killing that results … what is needed is a wholesale shift in the national culture—and that will take rather longer than an arms ban."
—Mangus Linklater, The Times of London columnist

"There's only one real ‘freedom' in America—the freedom to kill one another… if guns weren't so readily available in the ‘land of the free,' this tragedy might never have happened."
—London's Daily Mail columnist Russell Miller

"There is such a high murder rate in the United States that even if you excluded the deaths caused there by the use of guns, their homicide rate would still be higher than ours. In other words, even if there were not a single gun in America, there would still be more murders and manslaughters than in Britain. Bringing gun control to America would not stop it being a country where a lot of people get killed."
—James Bartholomew, political commentator at the Daily Express in London

"[T]he response of many who wish America ill will have been gratuitous schadenfreude. They see a people who live by the gun also dying by it, be they Marines in Anbar province or students in Virginia…. How can American soldiers disarm Iraqi families of their weapons in Baghdad yet claim the right to arm themselves to the teeth back home?"
—The Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins

"In a country where ‘the right to bear arms' is written into the Constitution and where there are an estimated 192 million firearms, the problem isn't simply one of a particular interest group. After the tragedy, voices rose up to deplore the fact that professors and students are not authorized to arm themselves, since one of them could have neutralized the killer. With that kind of reasoning, America is not close to overcoming its violence."
—Excerpts from an editorial headlined "Tragédie Américaine," in France's Le Monde newspaper

"What is, for us, an archaism remains, for many Americans, a fundamental right, a right to remain armed, which is becoming more and more costly. That is the difference between us and them"
—Pierre Rousselin, from Paris's Le Figaro

"In France, we say everything ends in song. In the land of John Wayne, Charlton Heston and George Bush, a great partisan of the NRA, everything, individual anger, heartbreak, neighborhood disputes, quarrels between dealers or depression, ends in shootouts. That is why students die on campuses, without anyone, starting with Hillary Clinton, thinking to do anything much about it."
—Laurent Joffrin, writing in the French newspaper Libération

"In Virginia at the age of 13, you can buy a revolver at a supermarket."
—From the Italian newspaper il Messaggero, in an article headlined Pistole Facili (Easy Guns). Italian newspapers carried extensive comments from Marina Cogo and Giancarlo Bordonaro, two 23-year-old Virginia Tech students from Milan. Cogo is returning home, vowing not to return.

Iraq

"It is a big loss for the American people and I think that this is a message from Allah to them to stop and think of what is happening in Iraq. Thousands of Iraqis lost their sons or fathers and all of this was because of the so-called American democracy being exported to Third World countries."
—Haifa Salim, a 34-year-old Baghdad housewife

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If, as I believe, we are part of the problem, then obviously we can be part of the solution.

Greenpeace offer to save stricken whaler

Efforts continued today to save a disabled Japanese whaling ship which caught fire off the Antarctic coast, after an offer of help by the environmental group Greenpeace was rejected.

Japanese officials said the 8,000-ton Nisshin Maru - left without engine power and carrying hundreds of thousands of litres of oil - posed no environmental threat.

Other ships from the whaling fleet have been helping to stabilise the ship and fight the blaze, which broke out yesterday and has left a crewman missing, presumed dead.

Greenpeace had said it was willing to send its ship the Esperanza - in the Southern Ocean to try to stop the whale hunt - to help.

The expedition's leader, Karli Thomas, said: "Our first thoughts are for the missing crewman and the rest of the people on board. This is not a time to play politics."

But Glenn Inwood, a spokesman for the Institute of Cetacean Research which runs Japan's whaling programme, told the Associated Press news agency: "The whole Greenpeace offer is a red herring. Their assistance is not required and will not be accepted."

A spokesman for the Japanese fisheries agency said Greenpeace had not been in touch, though the Nisshin Maru might have refused help because the ship was boarded by Greenpeace activists in New Caledonia in 1998.

The Nisshin Maru has been lashed between two other ships to stop it drifting ice while crew members fight to contain the fire below deck.

A spokesman for New Zealand's maritime agency told Reuters reporters that fears of an oil or chemical spillwere had eased after the crew managed to pump away excess water and correct the list to the ship.

It is not yet known whether the vessel will be able to restart its engines. It has been wallowing without power, less than 100 miles from the world's largest Adelie penguin colony, in an area known for stormy weather.

Anti-whaling activists have not been linked with the fire, which could put an end to the whaling season if the ship remains inoperable.

Passengers overpower hijacker

Passengers overpowered a hijacker who had commandeered a Mauritanian plane when he was knocked off his feet during a hard landing, a source close to the Mauritanian presidency said.

The Air Mauritania Boeing 737 was on a domestic flight with 71 passengers and eight crew members when the hijacker, armed with pistols, demanded to be flown to France, officials said. The pilot landed in Spain's Canary Islands instead, where police arrested the suspect.

The pilot "deliberately braked very hard" and the man fell, the Mauritanian source said. A spokeswoman for the Spanish emergency services said 20 people suffered minor cuts and bruises.

UNICEF: U.S., British children worst off in industrialized world

BERLIN - The United States and Britain ranked at the bottom of a U.N. survey released Wednesday evaluating the well-being of children in wealthy countries.
The Netherlands topped the report issued by UNICEF, followed by other European countries with strong social welfare systems - Sweden, Denmark and Finland.
Among the report’s overall findings was that wealth alone did not guarantee a child’s well-being, with some poorer countries scoring ahead of richer ones. The U.S. and Britain finished 20th and 21st overall, respectively, behind Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
The British government immediately criticized the report, saying it used old data that did not measure recent improvements in things like teen pregnancies.

UNICEF ranked 21 industrialized countries in six categories: material well-being, health and safety, education, peer and family relationships, behaviors and risks, and young people’s own subjective sense of well-being.
The U.S. was last for health and safety, measured by rates of infant mortality, low birth weight, immunization, and deaths from accidents and injuries.
Britain was last in the family and peer relationships ranking, which measured such things as the rate of single-parent families and whether families ate the main meal of the day together more than once a week.
Britain also finished at the bottom in behaviors and risks, which considered factors such as the percentage of children who ate breakfast, consumed fruit regularly, were overweight, used drugs or alcohol or were sexually active.
The U.S. was second from the bottom in both of those categories.
The British government said information used in the study did not take note of recent improvements in education, health and general living standards. Some of the statistics went back as far as 2000 or 2001, it said.
”In many cases the data used is several years old and does not reflect more recent improvements such as the continuing fall in the teenage pregnancy rate or in the proportion of children living in workless households,” said a spokeswoman for British Department for Education and Skills, on customary condition of anonymity.
She said reforms introduced to tackle ”teenage smoking, drinking, and risky sexual behavior ... are delivering improvements that are making real differences to children’s lives.”
Opposition Liberal Democrat lawmaker Annette Brooke said the report reflected a ”shameful level of child poverty” in Britain.
”It is shocking that we are doing so badly at bringing up our children,” Brooke said. ”Every child should be entitled to live in a stable, loving family environment.”
Marta Santos Pais, the study’s director, said future reports would devote even more energy to assessing how children perceive their own well-being and needs.
”Very often we base our assessment and governments shape their policies on the basis of what adults feel the policy measures are achieving,” she said. ”It’s always important to see how the beneficiaries of those policies are assessing the impact of the policies.”

Clash of titans over Singapore's biomed push

A*Star's Philip Yeo and NNI's Lee Wei Ling trade barbs over the direction Singapore's biomed research drive should take

AT THE centre of the sprawling $500 million Biopolis is a shining $250,000 sculpture of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) virus.

Here, in the open air, researchers of all shades lounge with coffee cups in hand. The talk: the boxing match that had been playing out before them for the past week.

There is a lot of money riding on the outcome of the bout, which has the feisty Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) chairman Philip Yeo in one corner and the equally outspoken National Neuroscience Institute head Lee Wei Ling, in the other.

Mr Yeo, Singapore's science salesman, has been leading the research charge - scouring the world for foreign heavyweights and training the next generation of top scientists.

Having made a hugely successful bet on the petrochemical industry, he is convinced that research 'whales' are needed to take research in cancer and heart disease to a higher plane.

Challenger Dr Lee wants Singapore to change direction in its multi-billion dollar biomedical sciences (BMS) research drive, which she says has gone astray.

'At the end of the day, I want biomedical research to benefit patients, and as a Singaporean, I do not want taxpayers' money to go to waste,' she said.

Among her criticisms: Biomedical resources were spread too thinly and that Singapore should focus on niche areas such as hepatitis B and head injuries, instead of competing with the West on big-name research.

Both have come out arms swinging. Mr Yeo noted that Dr Lee had never stepped into the Biopolis and did not understand that this was no short-term effort that would lead to swift returns.

Dr Lee retorted that Mr Yeo might be a successful salesman but he was no doctor, and therefore, not in touch with diseases that matter here.

Foreign researchers who have moved here are understandably worried about descriptions of them as 'footloose' scientists.

Genome Institute of Singapore chief Edison Liu, a cancer expert from the United States National Institutes of Health, became a Singapore permanent resident on Friday, the day he turned 55.

'I quit a permanent position in the US to come here because I believed in Singapore's vision, and I am committed to this country,' he said.

'I am amazed at its development and I plan on staying.'

He said he was puzzled by the controversy over medical relevance given that his institute focused on medical questions that were important here, including key research that helped resolve the 2003 Sars crisis in Singapore.

In cyberspace, opinion is divided, but talk centres on who will ultimately prevail in the heavyweight clash.

One blogger described it as a clash of the titans with a member of the Lee family pitted against a top civil servant.

Other unrelated aspects of the clash have also coloured the talk.

That Dr Lee blew the whistle on Dr Simon Shorvon, her NNI predecessor - for unethical conduct, pops up often in conversation. He was sacked here and sanctioned, but in Britain, where he now works, the medical council dropped his case.

That her examples of research that Singapore should pursue include areas the NNI are focused on have given rise to unkind comments that she covets funding for her own institute.

No, says Dr Lee, she is fighting to promote all areas where Singapore has a competitive advantage and which are important here, including liver, gastric and breast cancers.

Researchers say that the daughter of Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and sister of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong might well have enough persuasive powers to shift the tide.

They recall too how Mr Yeo, a man never to mince words, had pooh-poohed the relevance of the then Institute of Molecular Agrobiology - a key research institute here - in 2001.

His riposte then: 'It's a criminal waste of taxpayers' money.

'I would close it down tomorrow if I could...We have no agriculture.'

The gloves are off

MR YEO has been as colourful this time. And it is apparent that he and his A*Star colleagues had been expecting Dr Lee to land more punches ever since her article appeared in The Straits Times on the issue in November.

They did not react until Dr Lee reached a wider audience when she gave an interview with the news agency Reuters earlier this month.

Then the gloves came off.

An indication: Just five days after, at a press conference, the executive director of the A*Star Biomedical Research Council Beh Swan Gin picked up a piece of paper and read from it: 'I've been instructed to make this statement by our leaders. Which is that 'the BMS initiative has been successful and there is no rethink or change in the government's BMS policy.''

Quizzed by reporters, Mr Yeo, who was at the same event, declared that he would leave dealing with the vocal criticism to incoming A*Star chairman Lim Chuan Poh whom he described as 'more polite'.

Then eyes flashing, he carried on: 'For me, I've got a job to do. My job is to steal whales and steal young guppies...These are my main concerns.'

The whales, such as cancer experts David Lane and Edison Liu, were needed as role models and mentors for the guppies.

The number of guppies enrolled in elite universities abroad rolled off his tongue: 'We have now 25 PhDs at Stanford, 118

PhDs at MIT, six at Harvard, 20 in Cambridge in the UK, they just went in 2005.'

He is well-known for lavishing his personal attention on them. These scholars, who address him as 'chairman' have an open line to him. He in turn can rattle off not just their names and areas of study, but also their hobbies, family backgrounds and grade point averages - to three decimal places.

Adding that Dr Lee had never stepped into the Biopolis, he asked: 'Who cares about one voice in the wilderness?

'How many people get head injuries? Get hepatitis? Young kids after 1987 have been vaccinated. Hepatitis is not relevant to us. Head injuries? Unless you bang your head against the wall...'

Cancer happened not just to the old, but young people as well, he said.

The foundation for biomedical sciences has been set with output by Singapore's drug factories jumping by over a third last year, pushing overall biomedical production up by 30.2 per cent.

This robust growth puts biomedical output at a record $23 billion, almost four times production in 2000.

The fledgling biomedical sector already accounts for one quarter of the gross domestic product (GDP) generated by the manufacturing industry as a whole, making it second only to electronics, which accounts for 29 per cent.

The biomedical sciences cluster employed 10,571 people last year, up 3.9 per cent from 2005.

Not a lone voice

STRESSING she was 'no voice in the wilderness', Dr Lee has countered: 'I have received more fanmail than I can remember from Singapore doctors and researchers thanking me for pointing out the obvious mistake in the way the biomedical drive has been carried out.'

To be sure, she has fans, among them doctors and scientists from Singapore and indeed, the Biopolis.

One doctor e-mailed her: 'I cannot agree with you more on the point that we need to focus on niche areas that are of local or regional concerns. Some of our highly respected professors have led by their excellent examples in how they prioritise and focus on the problems we see at our 'doorsteps'.'

Another said he was hoping 'her voice will get through to the ivory tower which has so far been sound-proof.'

Dr Lee added: 'Many local diseases which are potential niche areas are also diseases where to date there is no satisfactory treatment.

'Not only does it make financial and strategic sense to concentrate on these areas, we owe it to our own citizens and our ethnically-related neighbours in Asia.'

Carrying through the whale and guppy analogy, she said that promising local researchers would be more aptly called dolphins.

'Our dolphins can travel pretty fast on their own,' she said.

'I would say that Mr Philip Yeo, having never practised as a doctor, is strategising about biomedical research directions in an ivory tower. That is why he can dismiss hepatitis B and head injury as unimportant.

'Head injury is one of the leading causes of death and disability in young people.'

And the referee's decision...

THERE is no question that both Dr Lee and Mr Yeo have Singapore's best interests at heart.

But their opinions could not be more different - change direction and minimise the damage says one; stay the course and reap the rewards, says the other.

The stakes are high.

New research shows that around the world, biotech's shine could be dulling.

A recent Harvard Business School article quoted Business Administration professor Gary Pisano as saying that the biotech business - caught between the differing needs of business and science, had underperformed. The industry needed to realign itself to integrate research and focus on long-term efforts, he said.

Singapore might have the odds stacked against it even higher.

The World Bank said late last year that the Republic had a 50-50 chance of succeeding in its drive. Some of the challenges included lack of scale, heavy dependence on foreign researchers and long gestation periods.

Mr Yeo has opted to speak no further on the matter.

Dr Lee, on her part, says that she was not hitting below the belt.

'I'm not picking a quarrel with Philip, I'm not interested in taking on titans, neither am I a titan myself.

'There was a lot of thunder, lightning, fireworks. It wasn't from me.

'I'm merely trying to point out, in a series of logical arguments, why we should change direction.'

She reiterated that big-name biomedical companies set up shop here because the Government promoted foreign investment and enacted strong IP laws.

To date, none of the massive Economic Development Board- or A*Star-initiated biomedical research drives have resulted in pharmaceuticals or devices ready for the production line, she maintained.

On the flip side, critics of this argument counter that research and industry development go hand in hand. Companies would not have come if not for a strong scientific and technological base to anchor them here, they say.

Dr Lee added that she was not trying to score points. 'I have my life to live, I leave it to my other family members to do their duty,' she said.

Neither side is down for the count.

But the referee has weighed in.

'We believe that our biomedical effort is heading in the right direction, but we will continue to fine-tune our policies as we gain more experience,' said the Ministry of Trade and Industry on Friday.

Responding to queries, a spokesman noted that A*Star was doing important work in biomedical research, which had contributed significantly to the growth of the biomedical sector and the creation of high value jobs.

Singapore's small size and limited resources called for focus in its efforts, which A*Star has been doing. By looking at cancer and heart disease, for example - the top killers in Singapore and the rest of the world - A*Star was placing priority on ground-breaking research in these areas, to help develop more effective treatments.

'The emphasis on talent development and close public-private sector research collaboration has put us on the world map,' said the spokesman.

To those sitting on the fence, that sounds like an endorsement for the status quo from officialdom.

ailien@sph.com.sg

' Who cares about one voice in the wilderness? Hepatitis is not relevant to us. Head injuries? Unless you bang your head against the wall...' -Mr Philip Yeo on Dr Lee's opinion as to what areas the biomedical sector should tackle

'Mr Philip Yeo, having never practised as a doctor, is strategising about biomedical research directions in an ivory tower.' Dr Lee Wei Ling who added that her 'fan mail' over the issue proves she is no voice in the wilderness

Activists clash with whalers

By Rob Taylor

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Anti-whaling activists hunted a Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean on Tuesday, intent on ramming its flagship, as pro-whaling nations met in Tokyo to push for a return to commercial fishing of the giant creatures.

A Japanese fisheries spokesman dubbed anti-whaling protesters as terrorists after one of their vessels collided with a whaling boat in the Southern Ocean late on Monday, while Australia called on the activists to back off before someone was killed.

The two sides blamed each other for the clash at sea, which holed a Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship, the Robert Hunter, but not badly enough for it to abandon the chase.

The activists next planned to ram a vessel into the back of a Japanese factory vessel, the Nisshin Maru, to stop whales being hauled on board for processing, said Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd founder and the captain of the group's flagship, Farley Mowat.

"We're not going to sink their ship, we're just going to obstruct their activities. We'll probably have the Farley Mowat permanently stuck up their rear-end," he said.

Previous clashes saw some activists swept into the sea and almost lost in the fog and Australian Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the protesters should halt their harassment of the Japanese fleet.

"This is not about whaling. It is simply unacceptable for any vessel to threaten or to use violence against other ships at sea. These are dangerous and irresponsible actions," said Turnbull.

DIPLOMATIC JOSTLING

In Tokyo, a special meeting of the International Whaling Commission began on Tuesday, with host Japan and like-minded countries trying to build momentum to resume commercial hunting.

Japanese officials say the meeting is a final attempt to save the commission but prospects for dialogue in the polarized organization appear slim.

Only 36 of the International Whaling Commission's 72 members are expected to attend the three-day meeting, with some 26 anti-whaling nations -- including Australia, New Zealand and the United States -- refusing to attend.

"One of our goals is to improve the atmosphere of the IWC, which has become one of confrontation, and to improve dialogue," Minoru Morimoto, the commissioner for Japan, told the meeting.

"It's a shame that most anti-whaling nations chose confrontation," he said, adding he hoped the commission would at its annual meeting in May seriously consider normalization, as Japanese term commercial whaling.

Outside the meeting, three anti-whaling protesters, including a man wearing a mask of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's face, carried a sign reading "Welcome to the commercialization meeting." One activist was dressed as a weeping whale.

Pasted to the sign were 10,000 yen ($82) notes and names of several countries, an allusion to charges by anti-whalers that Japan had bought pro-whaling votes at the IWC with foreign aid. Japan has repeatedly denied the allegations.

Anti-whaling nation Britain has set out to recruit more like-minded nations to join the commission and block Japan's drive to end a 1986 ban on commercial whaling.

In the Southern Ocean, the whalers and the protesters blamed each other for the continued clashes.

The Kaiko Maru was rammed from both sides by the Robert Hunter and the Farley Mowat, leaving it temporarily disabled with a damaged propeller, Japanese fisheries spokesman Hideki Moronuki said.

WHALE "TERRORISTS"

"They are terrorists and their activities are piracy," Moronuki told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

But Watson said the Robert Hunter had been deliberately side-swiped by the Kaiko Maru, leaving gashes in the hull in two places and damaging the ship beneath the water line.

The gashes had been welded shut and the chase, using helicopters, had resumed, the activists said.

Japan, which says whaling is a cherished cultural tradition, began scientific research whaling in 1987. The meat, which under whaling commission rules must be sold for consumption, ends up in supermarkets and pricey restaurants.

Many Japanese ate whale in school lunches following its introduction by U.S. Occupation authorities after Japan's defeat in World War Two, when it was an important source of protein.

Appetites have waned, but Japan remains determined to keep on whaling despite both consumer indifference and international opposition, to which Tokyo is usually extremely sensitive.

(With additional reporting by Elaine Lies in Tokyo)

Harvard names 1st woman president

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Harvard University on Sunday named historian Drew Gilpin Faust as its first female president, ending a lengthy and secretive search to find a successor to Lawrence Summers and his tumultuous five-year tenure.

The seven-member Harvard Corporation elected Faust, a noted scholar of the American South and dean of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, as the university's 28th president. The 30-member board of overseers ratified the selection.

Faust, 59, recognized the significance of her appointment.

"I hope that my own appointment can be one symbol of an opening of opportunities that would have been inconceivable even a generation ago," Faust said at a news conference on campus. But she also added, "I'm not the woman president of Harvard, I'm the president of Harvard."

With Faust's appointment, half of the eight Ivy League schools will have a woman as president. Her selection is noteworthy given the uproar over Summers' comments that genetic differences between the sexes might help explain the dearth of women in top science jobs, comments which sparked debates about equality at Harvard and nationwide.

Faust oversaw the creation of two faculty task forces, formed in the aftermath of Summers' remarks, to examine gender diversity at Harvard. She has been dean of Radcliffe since 2001, two years after the former women's college was merged into the university as a research center with a mission to study gender issues.

"This is a great day, and a historic day, for Harvard," said James R. Houghton, chairman of the presidential search committee.

Some professors have quietly groused that — despite the growing centrality of scientific research to Harvard's budget — the 371-year-old university is appointing a fifth consecutive president who is not a scientist. No scientist has had the top job since James Bryant Conant retired in 1953; its last four have come the fields of classics, law, literature and economics.

Faust is the first Harvard president who did not receive an undergraduate or graduate degree from the university since Charles Chauncy, an alumnus of Cambridge University in England, who died in office in 1672. She attended Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pennsylvania, where she was also a professor of history.

Faust pivots from managing Radcliffe, a think-tank with 87 employees and a $17 million budget, to presiding over Harvard's 11 schools and colleges, 24,000 employees and a budget of $3 billion. The Harvard presidency is perhaps the most prestigious job in higher education, offering a pulpit where remarks resonate throughout academic circles and unparalleled resources, including a university endowment valued at nearly $30 billion.

"Faculty turned to her constantly as someone whose opinion is to be trusted," said Sheldon Hackney, a former president of The University of Pennsylvania and southern historian who worked closely with Faust. "She's very clear, well-organized. She has a sense of humor, but she's very even-keeled. You come to trust in her because she's so solid."

In Faust, Harvard not only has its first female leader, but a president who has candidly discussed her feminist ideals in a memoir, "Shapers of Southern History: Autobiographical Reflections."

Born Catherine Gilpin in the Jim Crow era, to a privileged family in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, Faust wrote that a conversation at age 9 with the family's black handyman and driver inspired her to send a letter to President Eisenhower pleading for desegregation.

She then began to question the rigid Southern conventions where girls wore "scratchy organdy dresses" and white children addressed black adults by their first names.

"I was the rebel who did not just march for civil rights and against the Vietnam War but who fought endlessly with my mother, refusing to accept her insistence that 'this is a man's world, sweetie, and the sooner you learn that, the better off you'll be,'" she writes.

Faust joins an exclusive roster of former Harvard presidents that have included colonial clergymen, Bay State patricians and a cabinet secretary. Former President Derek Bok has been leading the university this academic year on an interim basis.

The other three female presidents of Ivy League schools are Amy Gutmann of the University of Pennsylvania, Shirley M. Tilghman of Princeton University, and Ruth J. Simmons of Brown University.

While the presidential search was marked by disciplined secrecy — committee members met behind closed doors in a Georgian mansion and were quietly ushered away in idling Lincoln Town Cars — it also revealed an embarrassing trend: several top-tier candidates said they weren't interested.

In January, Thomas R. Cech, head of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a Nobel prize winner, asked the search committee to remove him from consideration. The presidents of Columbia, Brown and Princeton all said they did not want the job.

Harvard to name first woman president

Harvard University, whose last president was forced out two years ago amid charges of sexism, is about to name a woman president for the first time in its 370-year history, according to reports yesterday.

The university, the scene of controversy two years ago over the president's unscripted comments about women and science, is expected to make a formal announcement tomorrow, the Boston Globe reported.

Its expected choice, Drew Gilpin Faust, 59, emerged as the frontrunner for the post late last month when another leading contender, Thomas Cech, who was awarded a Nobel in chemistry, took himself out of the running. Dr Faust, 59, and dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, is widely seen as the antidote to the tumultuous reign of Lawrence Summers, who stood down in 2005.

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"The corporation nearly always elects someone who is the polar opposite of the most recent occupant of the office," the Reverend Peter Gomes, the head of Harvard's memorial church, wrote in the Harvard Crimson.

The university is soon to embark on other changes following a report calling for the first major curricula reforms in 30 years, which would include greater emphasis on civic life and ethics. The report also proposes that professors devote more time to teaching rather than research, now the priority.

In his relatively brief term at Harvard, Dr Summers, who had served as treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, had multiple run-ins with members of the faculty. His arrival at Harvard soon led to the acrimonious departure of a prominent African-American professor, Cornel West, to Princeton. Dr Summers went on to acquire a reputation for an abrasive management style.

He also angered some department heads because of his efforts to exert greater central control over budgets in advance of an ambitious expansion programme across the river from the Cambridge campus. But his downfall in the end was due to unscripted musings about the lack of prominent women in science and mathematics, made at a conference about minorities and academics.

As one of his explanations, he offered up the notion that women lack an "intrinsic aptitude" for science, which provoked accusations of sexism, targeted at Dr Summers and at Harvard as an institution.

Dr Faust, a historian and women's studies professor, is seen as a consensus builder.

Kids at greater risk of seeing online Internet porn than ever

According to a report called ‘Taking on the Internet Porn Industry’, and a report from the Pediatrics Journal, kids are at greater risk of being exposed to online porn than ever before, giving parents a tougher time than ever in keeping their kids safe online.

The ‘Taking on the Internet Porn Industry’ report from ‘The Third Way’ has some pretty stark facts on the online porn industry and how it is targeting young children.

According to the report:

- The most frequent viewers of Internet porn are kids 12-17 years old.
- The average age at which children are first exposed to online pornography today is 11 years old.
- Certain Internet pornography producers imbed children’s words like Teletubbies and Pokemon as “meta-tags” to drive kids to their sites.
- Approximately 20 new children appear on pornography sites every month, many of them kidnapped and sold into sex.

This follows news reports from Reuters and the Associated Press that the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics is set to unveil a report in their now-available February edition that “Unwanted and Wanted Exposure to Online Pornography in a National Sample of Youth Internet Users”.

An abstract of the report is available, written by Janis Wolak, JD, Kimberly Mitchell, PhD and David Finkelhor, PhD.

According to the abstract, the objective of the study “was to assess the extent of unwanted and wanted exposure to online pornography among youth Internet users and associated risk factors”, and was conducted via a telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 1500 youth Internet users aged 10 to 17 years was conducted between March and June 2005.

The results are startling. According to the abstract, “Forty-two percent of youth Internet users had been exposed to online pornography in the past year. Of those, 66% reported only unwanted exposure. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was used to compare youth with unwanted exposure only or any wanted exposure with those with no exposure”.

The abstract continues that: “Unwanted exposure was related to only 1 Internet activity, namely, using file-sharing programs to download images. Filtering and blocking software reduced the risk of unwanted exposure, as did attending an Internet safety presentation by law enforcement personnel. Unwanted exposure rates were higher for teens, youth who reported being harassed or sexually solicited online or interpersonally victimized offline, and youth who scored in the borderline or clinically significant range on the Child Behavior Checklist subscale for depression”.

The abstract continues that: “Wanted exposure rates were higher for teens, boys, and youth who used file-sharing programs to download images, talked online to unknown persons about sex, used the Internet at friends’ homes, or scored in the borderline or clinically significant range on the Child Behavior Checklist subscale for rule-breaking. Depression also could be a risk factor for some youth. Youth who used filtering and blocking software had lower odds of wanted exposure”.

The abstract concludes that: “More research concerning the potential impact of Internet pornography on youth is warranted, given the high rate of exposure, the fact that much exposure is unwanted, and the fact that youth with certain vulnerabilities, such as depression, interpersonal victimization, and delinquent tendencies, have more exposure”.

Parents concerned that their children are at risk should use parental control software to explicitly block unwanted content, and can also find very useful information at the Common Sense website, which also has excellent information on how to deal with and understand websites popular with children and teenagers, such as MySpace.

School timetables could get shake-up

LONDON (Reuters) - Pupils could see a shake-up in their timetables as part of plans to make learning more exciting and relevant, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said on Monday.

Children between 11 and 14 could see the length of their lessons varied from next year, with some classes such as languages being taught in short bursts lasting no more than 15 minutes.

Arabic and Mandarin could replace French, Spanish and German, and global climate change and racism could gain more prominence in geography and citizenship lessons.

Teachers would be able to juggle the timetable so that pupils could spend up to a week concentrating on one subject.

"We are bringing the curriculum into the 21st century so that it will inspire and challenge learners and prepare them for the future," said Sue Horner, head of curriculum development at the QCA, at the start of a two-month consultation process.

The current curriculum has been in place since 1989.

The 12 core national curriculum subjects will stay in place, but teachers will be offered more flexibility in the classroom.

"We want to encourage schools to be innovative in the way that they plan the school timetable," added Ken Boston, chief executive of the QCA.

The proposals would make it easier for schools to connect subjects. For example, science lessons on anatomy could be taught jointly by science and PE teachers.

Pupils would also be encouraged to learn outside the classroom by visiting museums, art galleries, sports centres and theatres.

Education Secretary Alan Johnson has said he wants more emphasis on the teaching of climate change, slavery, the British Empire, immigration and cookery.

US presidential hopeful Al Gore's video on global warning, "An Inconvenient Truth", is to be shown to all secondary schools in the country.

Johnson also wants pupils to learn about the anti-slavery movement and reformers such as William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano so they can "think critically about ethnicity, religion and race and assess our modern-day society through the lens of our recent past".

Teachers have said they want Shakespeare's Othello dropped from the curriculum for 14-year-olds because it is "too mature and sensitive for this age group".

They believed the topics of racism and sexual jealousy were "beyond the experience" of these children, and objected to the large number of sexual puns.

Teaching unions said any new proposals should "include the message to teachers that their judgements about when and what to teach are respected".

"Cooking, Shakespeare and Mandarin are all important but at the moment they look like ministers' bright ideas rather than part of a coherent curriculum that will enthuse teachers and youngsters alike," said Steve Sinnott, general-secretary of the National Union of Teachers.