National / International News

Syrian rebel fighters launch an attack on Aleppo prison, and government forces respond with air raids and tank shells, reports say.

Human cloning is used to produce early embryos, marking a "significant step" for medicine, say US scientists.

Ali Abdulemam was perhaps the most prominent online activist in Bahrain when he went into hiding in March 2011 to avoid arrest. He recently escaped the Gulf nation and made his first public appearance in more than two years on Wednesday.

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Made in Aleppo for centuries, it's become a casualty of war

The Congressional Budget Office expects the federal deficit to shrink from more than $1 trillion in 2012 to $642 billion in the 2013 fiscal year. Economists say a few factors, including higher taxes, are contributing to the dramatic shift, and many caution against celebrating the news.

"What we're doing is looking at what's happening to a little bush in front of a forest of obligations," said Boston University Professor Laurence Kotlikoff, who warns that while the CBO's near-term projections may look bright, the federal government's obligations like social security and health care costs will tick up inexorably as a growing number of Americans live longer.

The shrinking deficit isn't likely to resolve any disputes in Washington over whether austerity measures are a boon to the economy.

"If what you think the government should be doing is trying to stimulate the economy in a time of mass unemployment, then this is in fact the result of a bad set of policies," said Justin Wolfers, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan.

Rebel fighters have launched a massive assault on the prison in Syria's northern city of Aleppo, reports say.

War crimes are increasingly defining the conflict in Syria. But a recent workshop for opposition fighters held in southern Turkey hopes to teach them international humanitarian law that helps them be "Fighters Not Killers."

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War crimes are increasingly defining the conflict in Syria. But a recent workshop for opposition fighters held in southern Turkey hopes to teach them international humanitarian law that helps them be "Fighters Not Killers."

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Actor Nigel Havers has revealed how he was cheated out of money by a lettings agency when he rented a property in Manchester during his time in the television soap Coronation Street.

The World Health Organization says its annual statistics show progress is being made in cutting child mortality, but not enough.

Comedian Rory McGrath is arrested on suspicion of assaulting a couple near his former home town of Redruth, Cornwall.

Some of the nation's most elite professors are taking up a new teaching fad: Massively Open Online Courses. MOOCs rhymes with nukes, and the reach is about the same. These classes streamed on the Internet have millions of students around the world enrolling. They're free of charge. But when you add up all the work it takes on and off camera to make a MOOC, the cost to professors is pretty high. As Prof. Kevin Werbach can attest, the life of a MOOCs rockstar is not pure glitz.

Intro to gamification

Werbach teaches at Penn’s Wharton School of Business. He was a lead advisor on President Barack Obama's transition team. And despite his impressive Ivy League pedigree, he shows up to Day 1 of his online course as an avatar -- a little monster with big elephant-like feet and a tent on his back.

“Now don't worry,” Werbach assures viewers, “I'm not actually going to teach the class from inside a video game. But I am going to show you how some of the techniques that designers use in games like this one can be applied to problems in business, education, health and other fields.”

After providing this simple definition of the course’s core concept “gamification,” the little monster flies away and the real Prof. Werbach reappears in a cozy office with a walnut bookcase. He's professorial in his starched white shirt, and quite good-looking.

Virtual class is hard work

More than 140,000 students have enrolled in Werbach’s online gamification class. That’s rock-star status in the MOOC world. But it took more than just a webcam and an Internet connection to get him there.

Over half of MOOCs professors polled in a recent survey report that the online class has diverted time away from traditional teaching and faculty work.

Werbach has spent hundreds of hours turning his semester-long course into a simple six-week mini-series on Coursera, the online education start-up. He says, “it’s as time-consuming as writing a book.”

He’s replaced hour-long lectures with six- and 10-minute videos. Students have the option of pressing a fast-forward button, to get through the shrink-wrapped lectures even faster. So Werbach throws in an exercise every few minutes, to ensure viewers are paying attention.

By teaching so many at one time, MOOCs risk turning thousands of students into a faceless aggregate. Werbach tries to disaggregate them, using social media. On Twitter he responds to student gripes about grades and homework. In lieu of traditional office hours, he invites students from around the world into Google Hangout. The first session included top students from the U.S., the United Kingdom, Poland, Romania and Spain.

“I hear from them all the time,” Werbach says. “I’m having more conversations with students than I’ve ever had in a course.”

The real-world payoffs

I met up with the non-virtual Werbach at a Gamification conference in San Francisco, where he delivered a keynote address about his MOOC to a packed house.

The professor who is always sitting down in virtual class is a towering 6'4" tall.  Comfortable in front of a webcam and an audience, you can see why he’s become a go-to guy for colleagues nervous about MOOCs: "They're worried that they're going to let slip something that's going to offend someone. If it's just in the classroom with ten students, it's nothing. But if it's online, it'll ruin their careers. The reality is that rarely happens."

Werbach says MOOCs are great advertising, and not just for him.  He has more students online than Wharton has living alumni. According to the Babson Survey Research Group, about a third of students in American colleges and universities have taken at least one online course.

Werbach is willing to bet, the MOOC will create brand new customer-bases for the education industry. About three-quarters of his students report they are not in school.

"They're people, typically professionals, who are taking this for what we would call lifelong learning,” Werbach says. “So if that ratio is right, there's what, half a billion people who would be motivated even at this early stage in taking one of these courses."

Werbach says there’s a payoff for offline teaching too. The MOOC has taught him to make classes more interactive, and rethink test design. A professor may not give too much weight to a couple of students complaining about an exam question. But when two percent of 140,000 complain, they’re louder. Werbach ended up revising one question when “enough [students] noted the problems on the discussion board to attract our attention.”

The Ivy League brand

Deirdre Woods directs the Open Learning Initiative at Penn. Woods says schools need to get in the game because MOOCs are part of the future.

"You're rowing in the river and you're learning about what's going on,” Woods says, “ or you're just standing on the banks watching the boat go by."

Woods admits the business model is shaky right now. Coursera just began charging around $50 for a certificate of completion, for MOOC students who want to document their online coursework.

That certificate does not grant university credit. People who ace Werbach's class are Penn fans, not Penn graduates.  "These courses are not Penn courses yet. They're intentionally not Penn courses because of the experimental nature of them."

While the professor and university take on extra work for a tiny honorarium, Woods says there's little downside. If not every professor turns out to be a Kevin Werbach, that’s okay. While a MOOC does take more than an internet connection and a webcam, it’s a small price to pay for Internet celebrity.

An ABC News report ignited a firestorm. It added to suspicions that the White House had tried to shape "talking points" about the attack in Libya. The network now says it was told about a key email, but did not see it. And what appears to be the real email isn't as dramatic.

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We could have a conversation about over-consumption in America, and the virtues of simple living. But how big retail chains are doing offers useful insight into the state of the American economy. Macy's reported its profits are up and that it is raising the dividend it pays shareholders, despite modest gains in sales.

How are retailers in the U.S. and abroad responding to last month's clothing factory collapse in Bangladesh, one of the worst industrial accidents ever? So far, the answer has been piecemeal. More than fifteen major retailers in Europe have signed on to a legally binding plan to help pay for safety improvements at facilities in Bangladesh. But in the U.S., many companies are coming up with their own individual approaches to making the factories they use safe.

Investigators with the European Commission have raided several oil industry offices this week. The U.K. offices of BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and Platts, an industry data provider, were subject to what the Commission called "unannounced inspections." The investigation is in its early stage, and it is not clear if anything illegal will be found, but the concern is price manipulation.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is taking a stab at the government inefficiency beast. The committee is set to hold a hearing on 380 ways to make Washington more efficient. The number 380 comes from congressional reports outlining 380 areas of government waste and duplication. Yet despite the catchy title, governtment watchers aren't getting too excited.

There's this dream techies have been chasing. That one day, our computes will speak to us, anticipate our needs and maybe even have  a personality. C3PO comes to mind. At Google i/o, the talking computer on "Star Trek" came up a few times.

Well, we’re still waiting for the dream of the computer as the ultimate personal assistant to become a reality. Tech companies are in hot pursuit of the dream. There’s Apple’s Siri. Amazon and Microsoft are also moving into voice technology. Your Xbox may be talking to you in the future.

And, today, at its big developers conference Google announced that Google Voice is moving beyond phones to desktops and laptops. I recently caught up with Scott Huffman, who leads the Google Voice team.

Sitting in a conference room at Google’s Mountain View headquarters, Huffman pulled out his Android and asked it this question. “How far is San Louis Obispo from here?” he asked.

 “The drive from your location to San Luis Obispo is 197.6 miles,” Google voice answered.

Voice recognition technology -- or simply transcribing the phonetics of the spoken word -- is commonplace. Call centers use it a lot. But tech companies are racing to actually “teach” computers to understand “language.” Remember, Huffman’s question: How far is San Louis Obispo from here?

He says the example shows how steep that learning curve is.

“I like this example because of the word here, such a simple word but if you actually think about it means a lot of different things,” Huffman said.

There’s “hear” – as in I can “hear” you. And then “here I am.” And here’s another example...

Getting a computer to understand the we speak naturally is sorta like teaching it to become human.  Huffman says it’s a long ways off. But he says, we’re getting closer. Computing keeps getting more powerful. Meanwhile, Google has a ton of on language and knowledge. The next jump is to turn that information into intelligence.

“We’re moving beyond search as we traditionally think of it of finding kind of documents to a broader assistant you can find information for you and can do things for you,” Huffman said.

In the meantime, there are other economic forces that are bigger than search, said Tony Costa, an analyst at Forrester.

“It’s about smart phones and tablets and this huge growing list of devices, such as smart tvs, our cars and wearable computers,” Costa said. 

He says unlike desktops computer, computers of the future don’t really lend themselves to the keyboard and mouse.

“And this really presents a problem for Apple and Google and Microsoft,” he said. “They’re all really trying to find ways to make this technology easy and efficient to use.”

If the trend to hook up everything we use to computers continues, than the company that masters voice could master, well, almost every part of our lives, says Michael Chui, who leads the tech research at McKinsey & Company.

“You want to be able to do naturally in your day-to-day life, you know, please turn on the TV or raise the temperature.”

Are you listening C3PO?

Researchers spot particles called neutrinos coming from outside our Solar System for the first time, a find that could spark a new era in astronomy.

Nigerian troops are struggling to quell insurgency, says Will Ross

Fish are moving away from the equator and toward the poles in order to maintain their preferred water temperature. That means, for example, that fishermen are seeing swordfish normally found in the Mediterranean swimming near Denmark. But in the tropics, there are no fish to replace the ones that are leaving.

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Scientists say 1.5-billion-year-old water drilled from rock in a North American mine is the most ancient yet found on Earth.

When Angelina Jolie went public about her preventive mastectomy, women who have struggled with the same tough choices spoke out about the dilemmas of medical choice.

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