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Tuesday,22-April-2025
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UN calls for end to education gap

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3 years ago

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The UN’s Transforming Education Summit has offered an opportunity to galvanise global action to recover learning losses and rethink education systems.

With Covid-19 exposing the fault lines of education systems globally, more than 130 countries have committed to rebooting their education systems and accelerating action to end the learning crisis, said the organisers of the summit, which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres convened, reports Xinhua news agency.

Education is in a deep crisis. Instead of being the great enabler, education is fast becoming the great divider, said Guterres in his speech to the opening of the leaders’ meeting day of the summit.

The summit was held on the sidelines of this year’s UN General Assembly high-level week.

Some 70 per cent of 10-year-olds in poor countries cannot read a basic text. Even in developed countries, education systems often entrench rather than reduce inequality, reproducing it across generations. The rich have access to the best resources, schools and universities, leading to the best jobs. At the same time, the poor, especially girls, face huge obstacles to getting the qualifications that could change their lives, said Guterres.

Displaced people and students with disabilities face the highest obstacles of all. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on learning worldwide. But the education crisis began long before, and runs much deeper, he said.

Education systems are failing students and societies. Too often, curricula are outdated and narrow. Education systems take little account of life-long learning. Teachers are under-trained, undervalued and underpaid. The digital divide penalizes poor students. The education financing gap yawns wider than ever, said Guterres.

“We will not end this crisis by simply doing more of the same, faster or better. Now is the time to transform education systems,” he said.

The UN chief called for action in five areas to transform education.

First, more work is needed to protect the right to quality education for everyone, especially girls, everywhere.

He said today’s teachers need to be facilitators in the classroom, promoting learning rather than merely transmitting answers.

“We also need to tackle the global shortage of teachers, and look at increasing their quality by raising their status and ensuring they have decent working conditions and continuous training and learning opportunities and receive adequate salaries,” he said.

Schools must also become safe, healthy spaces with no place for violence, stigma or intimidation. Education systems should promote the physical and mental health of all students, including their sexual and reproductive health, he said, adding that the digital revolution must benefit all learners.

He said that none of the above will be possible without a surge in education financing and global solidarity.

Guterres and Gordon Brown, the UN special envoy for global education, launched the International Facility on Financing for Education during the summit, a first-of-its-kind tool that aims to mobilize $10 billion to help 700 million children in lower-middle-income countries to access quality education.

The tool combines direct grants and guarantees that can multiply donor resources.

It uses donor guarantees to provide a new form of quasi-equity to multilateral development banks, which can raise additional financing in capital markets and provide funding to countries for education.

Setting out a vision statement at the summit, he called on countries to revisit the purposes of education, proposing that curricula must respond to broad purposes, including learning to learn, learning to live together, learning to do and learning to be.

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Entertainment

Andrew Garfield speaks up on his return as ‘Spider-Man’

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18 mins ago

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April 22, 2025

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Los Angeles, April 22: Hollywood actor Andrew Garfield, who has openly expressed his desire to return as Spider-Man, has said that the idea has to be very novel.

If the actor returns as the web-slinging superhero, it will be his fourth movie following 2012’s ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’, 2014’s ‘Amazing Spider-Man 2’ and 2021’s ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’, the latter of which powered to $1.9 billion at the worldwide box office on the strength of Garfield teaming up with fellow web-slingers Tom Holland and Tobey Maguire, reports ‘Variety’.

However, Andrew Garfield said at Middle East Film & Comic Con that coming back as Spider-Man hinges on an offbeat story idea.

He said (via Entertainment Tonight), “It would have to be very weird. I would like to do something very strange. Something very unique, and offbeat and surprising, kind of like the creative freedom they have with the animated ‘Spider-Verse’ movies”.

In an interview with Esquire magazine last year, the two-time Oscar nominee said he was “left dangling” when his Spider-Man role came to such an abrupt end after ‘Amazing Spider-Man 2’ disappointed at the box office.

As per ‘Variety’, that film’s lackluster performance resulted in Sony coming to an agreement with Disney to share ‘Spider-Man’ so that the superhero could officially enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Tom Holland took over the role with 2017’s ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’. But the success of ‘No Way Home’ proved there’s still a lot of love for Garfield’s iteration of the comic book hero.

“For sure, I would 100% come back if it was the right thing, if it’s additive to the culture, if there’s a great concept or something that hasn’t been done before that’s unique and odd and exciting and that you can sink your teeth into”, Garfield told Esquire.

“I love that character, and it brings joy. If part of what I bring is joy, then I’m joyful in return”, he added.

Tom Holland’s next ‘Spider-Man’ movie is officially titled ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ and is set to hit theaters July 31, 2026.

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disaster

US: Three killed in severe storms in Oklahoma

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23 hours ago

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April 21, 2025

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Houston, April 21: Three people were killed as heavy storms hit the central US state of Oklahoma over the weekend, authorities said.

A 12-year-old boy and his mother died in Moore, about 10 miles (about 16 km) south of Oklahoma City, on Sunday after floodwaters washed away their vehicle, said local police.

“This was a historical weather event that impacted roads and resulted in dozens of high-water incidents across the city,” Moore police said in a statement.

Another person was killed on Saturday night after a tornado hit Spaulding, a town in Hughes County, the county wrote on Facebook, Xinhua news agency reported.

Several homes and structures were destroyed, and there were “numerous washouts” of county roads, it said.

On April 20, the National Weather Service issued multiple tornado warnings across several states, including Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Illinois, Missouri, and Louisiana. According to AccuWeather, regions of Missouri, Arkansas, and Illinois faced a high risk of severe thunderstorms.

The Storm Prediction Centre warned that strong, damaging winds, hail, and thunderstorms were likely to persist throughout the night. Severe weather was expected to continue across parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, extending into the Ozark Mountains and the mid-Mississippi Valley.

By late evening, local news outlets in Arkansas and Montana confirmed at least two tornado touchdowns. In Illinois, the National Weather Service issued alerts for severe storms capable of producing tornadoes.

Around 9 p.m. local time, a tornado was detected east of East Moline, a city in northwestern Illinois that’s part of the Quad Cities. At the time, no injuries or damages were reported.

Looking ahead, forecasters predicted ongoing showers and thunderstorms along and ahead of a front stretching from the Great Lakes down through the Tennessee and Lower Mississippi Valleys to the Gulf Coast on Monday. While heavy rainfall could lead to flooding, the severe weather threat was expected to diminish throughout the day.

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International

Death toll from US airstrikes on Yemeni fuel port rises to 38: Houthis

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4 days ago

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April 18, 2025

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Sanaa, April 18: The death toll from US overnight airstrikes on the Yemeni fuel port of Ras Isa has increased to 38, with 102 others wounded, Houthi-run al-Masirah TV reported on Friday, citing Houthi-controlled local health authorities.

According to al-Masirah, the casualties include five paramedics who were killed upon arriving at the scene, when the US military launched another wave of airstrikes on the port just minutes after the first on Thursday night.

More than 14 airstrikes on the fuel port were reported during the two waves, igniting massive fires in tanks storing imported fuel. The fires were extinguished within hours, said the report.

The US Central Command said earlier in a statement that it struck and destroyed the Ras Isa port on Thursday to “eliminate this source of fuel for” and “degrade the economic source of power of” the Houthis, Xinhua news agency reported.

In mid-March, US President Donald Trump ordered “decisive and powerful military action” against the Houthis after the group announced plans to resume attacks on Israeli vessels in the Red Sea, citing Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza as the reason.

Earlier on April 17, Yemen’s Houthi leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi had said his group had launched 26 attacks against Israel and 33 strikes on the US aircraft carrier and warships in the Red Sea since March 15.

In a televised speech aired by the group’s al-Masirah TV on Thursday, the Houthi leader said the attacks on Israel were carried out using “30 ballistic missiles and drones,” while those targeting the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier and its escorts involved “122 ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as drones”.

However, the Israeli military has reportedly intercepted many of the Houthi projectiles before they reached targets, Xinhua news agency reported.

The US Central Command dismissed the Houthi claims of daily attacks on the US aircraft carrier as “outlandish” in a post on the social media platform X.

Meanwhile, the Houthi leader noted that the US military had conducted more than 900 airstrikes against his group’s positions across northern Yemen during the past 30 days.

Tensions between the Houthi group and the US military have escalated since Washington resumed airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen on March 15 to deter the group from attacking Israel and US warships in the Red Sea.

The Houthis, which control much of northern Yemen, said their attacks aim to press US-backed Israel to stop the offensive against the Gaza Strip and allow humanitarian aid into the Palestinian enclave.

Israel’s Channel 12 News reported last Saturday that a Yemeni drone was intercepted near the Dead Sea within the Jordanian airspace before it could reach Israel.

The Jordanian army confirmed later last week that an unidentified drone entered Jordanian airspace and crashed in the Ma’in area of Madaba governorate, near the Dead Sea, and no casualties were reported.

Even since Israel renewed its intensive strikes in March across the Gaza Strip, the Houthis have been launching frequent attacks against Israeli and US targets.

Earlier last week, the Houthi military spokesperson claimed fresh attacks against the US aircraft carrier, USS Harry S Truman, and other US warships in the northern Red Sea.

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