'It's turned into kind of an amazing ensemble,' Jesse Eisenberg tells MTV News.
By Todd Gilchrist, with reporting by Josh Horowitz
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1706822/now-you-see-me-set-jesse-eisenberg.jhtml
charles taylor bruins boston bruins carl crawford mad cow disease rampart nick collins
MOSCOW (AP) ? Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday argued the U.S. case to Russian President Vladimir Putin for Russia to take a tougher stance on Syria at a time when Israel's weekend air strikes against the beleaguered Mideast nation have added an unpredictable factor to the talks.
Putin and Kerry met in the Kremlin more than three hours behind schedule. The former Massachusetts senator thanked Putin for Russia's cooperation on the Boston Marathon bombing investigation. On Syria, Kerry said the US and Russia share common interests: Stability in the region, not wanting to see extremism grow and hopes for a peaceful transition in Syria.
"It is my hope that today we'll be able to dig into that a little bit and see if we can find some common ground," the secretary said going into the talks.
Putin, through an interpreter, said that he looked forward to working together with U.S. leader on the problems of today. Kerry arrived in Moscow earlier Tuesday for the high-level talks with Russia, which is the most powerful ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.
U.S. officials had said that Kerry hoped to change Moscow's thinking on Syria with two new angles: American threats to arm the Syrian rebels and evidence of chemical weapon attacks by the Assad regime.
Over the weekend, Israeli warplanes targeted what Israel claimed were caches of Iranian missiles bound for Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based terror group. Such weapons would allow Hezbollah to strike Tel Aviv and as far as southern Israel from inside Lebanese territory.
Israel's willingness to hit Syrian targets it sees as threats to its own existence has complicated the Obama administration's internal debate over what to do about Syria.
Israel's actions put Damascus and Moscow on notice that the U.S. and its allies may not wait for an international green light to become more actively engaged in the Syrian conflict. The administration said last week it was rethinking its opposition to arming the Syrian rebels or taking other aggressive steps to turn the tide of the two-year-old civil war toward the rebels.
At the same time, Israeli involvement in the war carries risks. Instead of prodding Russia into calling for Assad's ouster, it could bring greater Arab sympathy for Assad and prompt deeper involvement from Iran and Hezbollah, actors committed as much to preserving Assad as to fighting the Jewish state.
Although Israel hasn't officially acknowledged it carried out the airstrikes, Syrian officials on Monday were blaming Israel, calling them a "declaration of war" that would cause the Jewish state to "suffer."
Russia, alongside China, has blocked U.S.-led efforts three times at the United Nations to pressure Assad into stepping down.
U.S. officials are hoping Syria's behavior could shift Russia's stance.
"We have consistently, in our conversations with the Russians and others, pointed clearly to Assad's behavior as proof that further support for the regime is not in the interest of the Syrian people or in the interest of the countries that have in the past supported Assad," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
U.S. officials said the administration doesn't believe the weekend activity will force President Barack Obama's hand, noting that the main U.S. concern is the use of chemical weapons by Assad, while Israel's top concern is conventional weapons falling into the hands of its enemies.
The chemical weapons argument is now under surprising attack, with former war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte saying over the weekend she and fellow members of a four-member U.N. human rights panel have indications the nerve agent sarin was used by Syrian rebel forces, not by government forces.
That theory was rejected by U.S. officials. The State Department said the administration continues to believe that Syria's large chemical weapons stockpiles remain securely in the regime's control.
The Obama administration opened the door to new military options in Syria after declaring last week it strongly believed the Assad regime used chemical weapons in two attacks in March. Two days after that announcement, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said arming the Syrian rebels was a policy consideration.
Until now, U.S. efforts to bolster the rebels' fighting skills and gather intelligence on the groups operating inside Syria have been limited to small training camps in Jordan, according to two U.S. officials who weren't authorized to speak about secret activities and demanded anonymity.
There are several options for escalation, ranging from arming the rebels to targeted airstrikes and no-fly zones. However, arming the rebels is the most likely escalation, officials said.
While the Israeli actions have made Kerry's Russia efforts more unpredictable, some in Congress tried to be optimistic.
Maryland Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he hopes Kerry can persuade Russia to use its influence to convince the besieged Syrian leader that he should step down.
"Hopefully the cooperation on the (Boston) Marathon bombing will open the door there," Ruppersberger said.
After visiting Moscow for the first time since he became secretary of state, Kerry will travel to Rome for talks with members of the new Italian government, as well as meetings with Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh to discuss Middle East peace prospects.
___
Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/israel-airstrikes-loom-over-us-diplomacy-syria-205537658.html
When Is Veterans Day 2012 brooke burke Alexa Vega Bram Stoker books Paula Broadwell Photos Veterans Day 2012 Nate Silver
The Role of Research in the Digital Age
We all know that the Internet has led to an explosion of available information. When students search for information about a topic, they are met with a plethora of articles, from both credible and non-credible resources. The skill of research has always been considered to be a pillar of the social studies discipline, though the nature of research itself has been rapidly changing as the Internet develops and our society becomes less dependant on paper-bound books. As social studies teachers, it is our job to be cognizant of how these changes are having an impact on our discipline.
The Encyclopedia
The Value of a Website
After receiving too many research papers that relied solely on Wikipedia, we realized that these skills needed to be explicitly taught, and that they needed to be developed in our social studies class. When looking for previously published curricula about Internet skills, we found Common Sense Media?s Test Before You Trust materials, which were exactly what we were looking for. They guide students through asking tough questions about each source: Is the bias readily apparent? Who paid for the website? How many sources are cited for their information? Thanks to this material, students can at least ask the right questions about the online source.
In order to have the skills to evaluate a source found on the Internet, we need to not only teach tools to do this ?like those found in Common Sense Media?s Test Before You Trust materials? but we need to teach how to evaluate the perspective of the sources students read, and to students even younger than before. In other words: we need to teach about bias.
Perspective
Obviously, before the advent of the Internet, historians wrote from particular perspectives. The perspective of the author of a primary source was written from the perspective of ?personal experience. The letters of Abigail Adams reflect her perspective on politics, women?s ?rights, and slavery in a different way from the writings of Thomas Jefferson. ?Throughout history, historians have looked at events through the lens of their own biases? their writings are colored by their politics, culture, and experience. Also, the availability of certain information to those historians limited what they could and couldn?t write about. ?It wasn?t as often though, when we were in middle school, that students encountered a secondary source or tertiary source beyond the encyclopedia?so teaching about bias wasn?t as necessary.
Instead now, secondary and tertiary sources on the Internet can be found by anyone and written by anyone?evaluating the bias of the source plays an important part in evaluating whether the site is useful. Since the Internet is not peer reviewed like academic journals, students are going to have to do the evaluation themselves. We teach our history students to evaluate bias by reading two different sources writing from different perspectives on the same historical event. Students find the details in the text that help shed light on what a source?s perspective is. Students find telling adjectives, figure out what information is included, what is omitted. Everything is data.
Analysis and Evaluation in Social Studies Research
The tools used for detecting the bias of a source, and the critical thinking skills they require, must become part of social studies curriculum, and earlier now than ever before. However, ?critical thinking skills of evaluation and analysis that are required to detect bias aren?t necessarily developed until students reach the formative operations stage described by Piaget. While the seeds of perspective analysis need to be planted early, some students may not yet be developmentally ready for learning how to discern on their own. To assist them, there are tools to help sort through the vast amount of resources available. For example, search engines like SweetSearch only display results appropriate for students (though that doesn?t mean the sites they find are without bias).
Today, people are not necessarily considered knowledgeable based on how much information they know, but by how much facility they have with that information. As teachers in the discipline of history we have to own the idea that teaching students how to analyze and evaluate the information they find is more important than gathering that information together in one place. We ask our students to research, but it is not simply about finding information anymore. Students will need to sift through multiple perspectives on the Internet, and ultimately decide which perspectives are valuable and useful for their purpose. As social studies teachers, we have to show them HOW to research.
Images: freedigitalphotos.net
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=c776aee7c8295d15c9925025216af704
slow jam the news madden cover obama slow jams the news metta world peace ron artest gladys knight private practice
This picture may be simple?monochromatic, a deep black background, and just a hunk fo rock to admire?but it's also stunningly beautiful.
     |
azores emmylou harris disco inferno b.i.g 1000 words ron white ron white
White House
By RT
The White House says President Barack Obama may approve using military force against the Syrian government.
On Friday, White House press secretary Jay Carney said the administration has a number of options with regards to handling reports that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons, and those include using military force among other possibilities.
Fielding a question from the media during the afternoon presser, Carney said he could not speculate on what action if any Pres. Obama would pursue against Assad, but said ?as a general principal the United States retains the ability to act unilaterally.?
Just one day earlier, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the US intelligence community determined ?with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons.? The White House sent a letter to members of the US Senate that morning informing lawmakers that Pres. Assad is believed to have used the odorless liquid sarin on at least two occasions.
?Thus far, we believe that the Assad regime maintains custody of these weapons, and has demonstrated a willingness to escalate its horrific use of violence against the Syrian people,? the letter read in part.
Following up on Friday, Carney said, ?We still believe based on the information that we have that the stockpiles of chemical weapons in Syria are under control of the Syrian regime.?
?Because of that, Assad is responsible for the disposition of those chemical weapons and it is his responsibility first and foremost not to use them or to transport them to terrorist groups, but to secure them and make sure they aren?t used by anyone else.?
?That?s all I can really say about it. That?s our assessment at this time,? said Carney, adding that the Obama administration is working with allies and partners, including the United Nations and the Syrian opposition, to gather credible facts to corroborate earlier reports.
Source: http://www.albanytribune.com/26042013-white-house-says-us-may-use-military-force-against-syria/
tupac andrew shaw hologram pulitzer prize winners nfl 2012 schedule gmail down tim lincecum
Leap has been accepting pre-orders for its motion controller for some time now, and has been promising a ship date of May 13th since February, but there's now been a slight change of plans. The company has confirmed that it's delaying those shipments until July 22nd. In a letter sent to pre-order customers (included after the break), Leap CEO Michael Buckwald explains that the company has already manufactured over six hundred thousand devices and delivered twelve thousand to developers, and says "the reality is we very likely could have hit the original ship date." But, he adds, "it wouldn't have left time for comprehensive testing."
That's now set to begin in the form of a beta test that will start in June, which will see developers who've already received a unit get a feature complete product, and other non-developers invited to join as well. According to Buckwald, that expanded beta test is "the only way we felt 100% confident we could deliver a truly magical product that would do justice to this new form of interaction." He'll be participating in an open Google Hangout tomorrow to discuss the move further -- specific details on it are promised to be coming soon.
Filed under: Peripherals
ryan broyles jerel worthy alshon jeffery bulls california earthquake california earthquake tyson chandler
Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.
Source: http://pheedo.msnbc.msn.com/id/18424736/device/rss
cyber monday deals small business saturday small business saturday best cyber monday deals best cyber monday deals macaulay culkin Larry Hagman
