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Muslims will be more than one-quarter of the Earth’s population by 2030, according to a study released today.

By Garrett Hubbard, USA TODAY

Umaid Qureshi leading an afternoon prayer for family members in their home in Herndon, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C.

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By Garrett Hubbard, USA TODAY

Umaid Qureshi leading an afternoon prayer for family members in their home in Herndon, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C.

The number of U.S. Muslims will more than double, so you are as likely to know a Muslim here in 20 years as you are to know someone Jewish or Episcopalian today.

Those are among key findings in ” The Future of the Global Muslim Population,” the first comprehensive examination of Muslims, whose numbers have been growing at a faster rate than all other groups combined.

Article extracted from usatoday.com

Fliers traumatized by emergency landings and frightening events in the air can expect little or no help from U.S. airlines in dealing with the aftereffects.

USA TODAY has found that the well-being of passengers who are traumatized in harrowing incidents can often be ignored or forgotten.

Instead of getting passengers help to deal with shock and trauma, some say, airline and airport personnel are often more preoccupied with rebookings, collecting baggage information and issuing meal or travel vouchers.

TRAUMA: Lingers for passengers long after flight

Airlines are required by law to inform survivors and families of victims that the American Red Cross will provide care and crisis assistance when there’s a crash that involves deaths.

However, there’s no law requiring airlines or anyone else to help those who have near-death experiences while flying — a situation that some air victims and passenger groups say needs to be changed.

“The emotional and psychological needs of fliers traumatized in harrowing incidents have been neglected for too long,” says Gail Dunham, executive director of the National Air Disaster Alliance/Foundation, largely made up of families of air crash victims. “Airlines and the government should be required to provide assistance and help them recover.”

Any support that passengers get from the airlines after frightening incidents is offered voluntarily by the airlines.

The Air Transport Association, which represents U.S. airlines, would not comment on whether airlines should be required to assist passengers.

Dunham says the federal law for providing help in fatal accidents, the 1996 Aviation Disaster Family Assistance Act, should be broadened to assist fliers who say they’ve been traumatized in harrowing incidents even when there’s no death or serious injury.

“The act has worked well and been terrific for many families, but it needs to be updated and expanded,” Dunham says.

Others disagree and say broadening the law would expose airlines to unnecessary litigation by anyone saying they were traumatized.

“If the family assistance act was expanded to folks on airplanes that had non-fatal incidents, it would need to be renamed the Lawyers Assistance Act,” says veteran aviation consultant Michael Boyd. “It would be a field day for airplane chasers trying to prove their clients had severe mental strain.”

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When it comes to the important issues of the day, it’s usually easier to relate to one person’s dramatic story than to overwhelming statistics.

FAITH & REASON: Ted Williams, once homeless, uses golden voice to thank God

That was the case recently with golden-voiced Ted Williams, the Columbus man who was living on the streets until a newspaper reporter helped turn him into an overnight sensation.

It’s also the idea behind Dayton-area pastor Ryan Riddell’s January journey.

The clergyman is hoping to bring awareness to the issue of homelessness this month by sleeping and living in his van on the streets of Dayton instead of in his comfortable Miamisburg home. He seeks shelter from bitter January days at the downtown library or bus hub.

According to Joyce Probst MacAlpine, Montgomery County’s manager of housing and homeless solutions, there are about 4,000 homeless in the Dayton area and there was an 11% increase in people at local shelters in 2010.

It’s the medium that makes Riddell’s experiences unique; he’s using social media to bring home his message in creative new ways. He’s constantly updating his website, tweeting and posting on Facebook to let followers know when someone he’s encountered on the streets needs a pair of long johns, overnight housing or a pair of shoes.

Riddell, bundled up and unshaven, shares his daily reflections through both video and written blogs, appearing on television and radio to tell his story and to grow his audience. He’s been featured in media outlets ranging from the Huffington Post to ABC.com and was one of Friday’s Intriguing People on CNN’s “This Just In.”

He’s racked up 1,000 friends on Facebook and has had 30,000 hits on his web page.

A minister at Shelter Community Church of the Nazarene in Belmont as well as a realtor for Keller Williams, Riddell, 45, also owns a roofing business in Miamisburg.

“I have four reasons for doing this,” he explains. “The first is for my own spiritual renewal. I’m trying to take 30 days to step back from the things I do in the business world and the church.”

A second reason, he says, is that “Jesus became like us in order to reach us.” Riddell says the more he gets into the world of the homeless, the more receptive people have been, allowing him to be of help.

That help may range from passing out drinks and snacks to locating overnight shelter for someone who has been sleeping in a tent and on the street for months. A growing number of followers, including area church members, are helping him by filling needs as they arise.

For example, earlier this week, Riddell was attending a service and meal at Target: Dayton Ministries when an 18-year-old girl named Samantha asked if he could get her a Bible. Within 45 seconds after he’d posted the request on Facebook, someone had offered to drop off the book at St. Vincent’s that night. The same thing happened when Riddell requested a pair of new shoes for a young person who had been wearing the same pair for the past three years.

Riddell says he also hopes to create an awareness of what’s happening downtown, just minutes from where many members of his congregation reside.

“We all hang out at the Oregon District, we socialize, eat, find entertainment, but on the other side of the trestle there’s a semi-tractor trailer and people are sleeping under that on skids with cardboard for insulation,” he says. “I typically drive through there with my windows up and have no awareness of the stuff going on there. I’m trying to live and walk these streets to create an awareness.”

Riddell says we all expect our community organizations to “take care of these things.”

“I believe that biblically we have a responsibility to cry out and help these people,” he says, adding that many people are quick to insist that the homeless get a job and help themselves.

“These folks are so beaten down and so consumed with basic needs such as food and shelter, it’s hard to get out of that hole,” he explains.

He is particularly concerned about the kids who “age out” of the foster care system and end up living on the streets. He’s working with Salem Church of God in Englewood to help create a new nonprofit organization, New Family Tree, that will provide transitional housing for young people who may have no place to go after age 18.

Riddell insists he isn’t “pretending” to be homeless. He set up rules for himself from the get-go: He’s sleeping in a van rather than taking up a bed at a shelter, eating alongside the homeless at local food missions by invitation. He’s seeing his wife and children and showering twice a week; he carries and uses a credit card when he feels it can help someone.

At first, Riddell says, he was intimidated when hanging out at places like the downtown bus hub. One day, a lady to whom he’d recently sold a house didn’t recognize him.

“I had no idea how engaged I would become,” he says. “It’s gripping me more than I had expected. These weeks on the street have helped me better understand those who are homeless.”

“These people have a story,” he says. “They have a name and a soul. They want their story told, they want to be heard. They appreciate my being their voice.”

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Online:

http://30dayshomeless.wordpress.com/

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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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We all know that smartphones, tablet computers and big-screen TVs are transforming the workplace and home. But the newest gadgets could also be a tonic for medicine and health care.

Cellphones have already proven to be a potent medical instrument in improving patient outcomes. Diabetes patients who are sent videos on their cellphones and actually view them are more likely to check blood sugar levels and comply with their care regimens, said U.S. Army Col. Ron Poropatich, who spoke at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week.

And wounded veterans sent text messages via cellphone have better follow-up treatment routines and feel more connected to caregivers, said Poropatich, deputy director of the U.S. Army’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center at Fort Detrick, Md.

Several military-run treatment trials are testing the promise of cellphones and online apps in patient care. Poropatich foresees patients tracking their blood pressure and other measurements using computers and devices, and those findings being monitored remotely by caregivers. Similarly, cellphones and online video can connect care-intensive patients who want to remain in their homes with off-site doctors and families.

Both of Poropatich’s parents are alive and “I would like to be able to log onto my Blackberry and see how they are doing,” he said.

Already, commercial firms are making their own evolutionary strides in telemedicine and personal health monitoring.

A look at some of the health and medical advances on display last week at CES:

•Homebound parents can stay connected online using VitalLink, a touch-screen based computer system that allows real-time video chatting using the phone line and webcam. The New Jersey-based company created online software that can be used with touchscreens, no mouse or keyboard required. “We’re keeping it easy to use for the elderly who are computer-phobic and don’t have the skills,” says company president Rich Brown.

Photo galleries can also be uploaded for viewing. Chat and photo software features start at $4.99 monthly; touchscreens start at about $300 (vitallink.net).

In some assisted living and skilled nursing facilities, VitalLink is being tested with an additional activity monitor feature that lets caregivers and primary family members track the resident’s involvement. “If they are not active, you can try and call or you can initiate a call from their end and see what’s going on,” Brown says.

•For elderly relatives who want to remain in their own homes, the My Guardian Angel service provides automated fall and wander detection, emergency readings and other behavioral and medical monitoring. Residents wear a wristwatch that tracks location, sends out fall alerts, records body temperature and can be upgraded to record pulse as well.

Additional health data from Bluetooth devices (blood pressure, glucose monitoring) can be captured by My Guardian, too. Base price for the system with watch, wireless Internet gateway, three wireless electrical plug-in routers and charging unit is under $1,000; $79.95 monthly service (atguardianangel.com).

The system is highly customizable. “My mom does not like to sleep with (the watch on) and she takes it off every night. If she doesn’t have it on by 8 a.m. I get a text message to call my mom and tell to put it on,” said CEO Ed Caracappa. “It’s a very complete and fully functional system for those who wish to age in place.”

•Data tracking can also help those who aim to get – and remain – physically fit. MapMyFitness records and tracks your workout progress using free iPhone apps and compatible devices such as hear monitors and GPS devices.

Runners and bicyclists can wirelessly input data from a heart rate sensor (made by Garmin, Wahoo, Adidas or Timex, for instance) to the iPhone or iPod Touch (also compatible with Blackberry and Android devices). ” That gives you instant feedback,” says MapMyFitness senior mobile development manager Chris Glode. “You can just look at your phone and know whether you are in your target zone or not.”

Other data types that can be input include runner cadence and speed, power expenditure (good for cyclists) and weight ($130-up, www.mapmyfitness.com).

Beyond that, a Web-based subscription service lets you view workout charts and reports, as well as training plans (free to $100 annually). “More and more people are wanting to track every aspect of their life using more and more sophisticated types of sensors,” Glode says. “The data you get, in addition to how you feel during the workout and how many calories you burned, is crucial to people.”

•Workouts can tracked and more enjoyable by incorporating your big-screen TV. BodyMedia’s Fit Armband BW ($249) tracks calories burned and consumed, physical activity, steps taken and sleep. The Bluetooth device lets you monitor activity on your iPhone or Android phone already, but starting in April Panasonic will let you access BodyMedia’s software on its Viera HDTVs.

That will allow exercisers to watch their activity levels and calories burnt add up while they watch movies, TV shows or while playing video games. “Our partnership with Panasonic is on the cutting edge for adding important health and wellness information to everyday TV viewing,” says BodyMedia chief information officer Steve Menke. “The integration of a body monitoring technology with the TV is enabling real-time health and wellness management.”

The marrying of consumer electronics and medical technologies is going to be needed especially as baby boomers age, Poropatich says. “Electronic devices are going to hooked to the cloud. That’s all happening.”

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During Pope John Paul II’s 2005 funeral, crowds at the Vatican shouted for him to be made a saint immediately. “Santo subito!” they chanted for one of the most important and beloved pontiffs in history.

His successor heard their call. On Friday, in the fastest process on record, Pope Benedict XVI set May 1 as the date for John Paul’s beatification — a key step toward Catholicism’s highest honor and a major morale boost for a church reeling from the clerical sex abuse scandal.

He set the date after declaring that a French nun’s recovery from Parkinson’s disease was the miracle needed for John Paul to be beatified. A second miracle is needed to be canonized a saint.

Benedict himself will preside at the May 1 ceremony, which is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Rome for a precedent-setting Mass: Never before has a pope beatified his immediate predecessor.

Although the numbers may not reach the 3 million who flocked here for John Paul’s funeral, religious tour operators in his native Poland were already preparing to bus and fly in the faithful to celebrate a man many considered a saint while he was alive.

“We have waited a long time and this is a great day for us,” said Mayor Ewa Filipiak of John Paul’s hometown of Wadowice, where the faithful lit candles Friday and prayed at a chapel in the town church dedicated to John Paul.

The Rev. Pawel Danek, who runs a museum in John Paul’s family home, said Benedict had listened to the prayers.

“The Holy Father has confirmed what we all felt somehow,” he said. “For us, John Paul II’s holiness is obvious.”

Benedict put John Paul on the fast track to possible sainthood just weeks after he died, waiving the typical five-year waiting period before the process could begin. But he insisted that the investigation into John Paul’s life be thorough to avoid any doubts about his virtues.

The beatification will nevertheless be the fastest on record, coming a little more than six years after his death and beating out Mother Teresa’s then-record beatification in 2003 by a few days.

It is not without controversy, however. While John Paul himself was never accused of improprieties, he has long been accused of responding slowly when the sex abuse scandal erupted in the United States in 2002. Many of the thousands of cases that emerged last year involved crimes and cover-ups during his 26-year papacy.

Critics have faulted John Paul’s overriding concern with preserving the rights of accused priests, often at the expense of victims — a concern formed in part by his experiences in communist-controlled Poland, where priests were often accused of trumped-up charges.

The most damaging case linked to John Paul concerned the Rev. Marciel Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, a conservative order beloved by the late pope because of its orthodoxy, fundraising prowess and ability to attract priestly vocations.

Allegations that Maciel had raped young seminarians were brought by the victims to the Vatican in the 1990s, but under apparent orders from John Paul’s No. 2, a canonical trial was shelved.

Only after Benedict became pope was Maciel sanctioned in 2006; Maciel died two years later.

Despite the Maciel case, Vatican officials have said there was nothing in John Paul’s record that put his beatification into question. Vatican watchers noted on Friday that beatification isn’t a “score card” on how John Paul administered the church but rather a recognition that he led a saintly life.

Carl Anderson, head of the Knights of Columbus, one of the world’s largest Catholic fraternal service organizations, said John Paul’s life was a model of “love, respect and forgiveness for all.”

“We saw this in the way he reached out to the poor, the neglected, those of other faiths, even the man who shot him,” Anderson said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. “He did all of this despite being so personally affected by events of the bloodiest century in history.”

The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano described his saintliness in these terms Friday: “A passionate witness to Christ from his childhood to his last breath.”

The last remaining hurdle before beatification concerned Benedict’s approval that the cure of the French nun, Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, was a miracle due to the intercession of the late pope.

The nun has said she felt reborn when she woke up two months after John Paul died, cured of the disease that had made walking, writing and driving a car nearly impossible. She and her fellow sisters of the Congregation of Little Sisters of Catholic Maternity Wards had prayed to John Paul.

On Friday, Simon-Pierre said John Paul was and continues to be an inspiration to her because of his defense of the unborn and because they both suffered from Parkinson’s.

John Paul “hasn’t left me. He won’t leave me until the end of my life,” she told French Catholic TV station KTO and Italy’s state-run RAI television.

Wearing a white habit and wire-rimmed glasses, she appeared in good health and showed no signs of tremors or slurred speech, common symptoms of Parkinson’s.

“John Paul II did everything he could for life, to defend life,” she said. “He was very close to the smallest and weakest. How many times did we see him approach a handicapped person, a sick person?”

Last year, there were some questions about whether the nun’s original diagnosis was correct. But in a statement Friday, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints said Vatican-appointed doctors had “scrupulously” studied the case and determined that her cure had no scientific explanation.

Once he is beatified, John Paul will be given the title “blessed” and can be publicly venerated, or worshipped. Many people, especially in Poland, already venerate him privately, but the ceremony will allow Catholics to publicly worship him.

The Vatican said John Paul’s entombed remains, currently in the grotto underneath St. Peter’s Basilica, will be moved upstairs to a chapel just inside a main entrance for easier access by the public.

Visitors are expected in droves. Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno had a previously scheduled audience with Benedict on Friday and said he had assured the pope that the city was up to the task.

Born as Karol Wojtyla in 1920, John Paul was the youngest pope in 125 years and the first non-Italian in 455 years when he was elected pontiff in 1978.

He brought a new vitality to the Vatican, and quickly became the most accessible modern pope, sitting down for meals with factory workers, skiing and wading into crowds to embrace the faithful.

His Polish roots nourished a doctrinal conservatism — opposition to contraception, euthanasia, abortion and female priests — that rankled liberal Catholics in the United States and Western Europe.

But his common touch also made him a crowd-pleasing, globe-trotting superstar whose papacy carried the Catholic Church into Christianity’s third millennium and emboldened eastern Europeans to bring down the communist system.

He survived an assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square in 1981 — and promptly forgave the Turk who had shot him.

After suffering for years from the effects of Parkinson’s, he died in his Vatican apartment on April 2, 2005. He was 84.

Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul’s most trusted friend and aide who was at his bedside that night, gave thanks Friday from Krakow, where he is archbishop.

“We are happy that this process came to an end, that what people asked for — “Santo subito” — was fulfilled,” Dziwisz said. “I express great joy on behalf of the entire diocese of Krakow — and I think I am also authorized to express this on behalf of all of Poland.”

The selection of May 1 — the first Sunday after Easter — as the beatification date is significant. It’s the Feast of Divine Mercy, which John Paul himself inaugurated in 2000 after canonizing Sister Faustina Kowalska, a 20th century Polish mystic to whom he was particularly devoted.

It’s also May Day or labor day, what was once a major communist holiday. While there was some irony in the date, few in Poland noted it and Poles today celebrate May 1 as a welcome and uncontroversial holiday like the rest of Europe.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Tucson shooting suspect Jared Loughner’s recent history of instability — including five disruptions at his community college and bizarre rants on YouTube videos — probably would have been sufficient to commit him to a psychiatric facility, even against his will, experts said.

Arizona makes it easier than most states to commit mentally ill people to psychiatric care, even against their will. But that doesn’t mean that everyone gets the help they need.

“The state laws are some of the best in the country,” said Jack Potts, a forensic psychiatrist in Phoenix. “The follow-up is not.”

Under Arizona law, anyone can call the county or regional health authorities with concerns about a person’s mental health, and authorities are required to send out mobile units to assess the person’s condition, said Brian Stettin, policy director at the Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Va., which advocates for involuntary commitment for mental illness.

The person who files a request for commitment must list the names of two witnesses who can attest to the subject’s behavior, although they don’t have to sign the document themselves, Potts said.

REPORTS: Loughner had ‘dark personality’

POLL: Conservatives not to blame for Ariz. shooting

Typically, states allow involuntary commitment only if people pose a danger to themselves or others, or if they are profoundly disabled by their mental illness, to the point of being unable to take care of themselves, said Paul Ragan, associate professor of psychiatry at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville.

But Arizona allows for involuntary commitment if someone is deteriorating from a mental illness and could benefit from treatment, Potts said. The law is intended to catch people before they do something dangerous.

He said he knows of a high school principal, for example, who requested a mental health evaluation for an unstable student.

The law also provides up to 90 days of inpatient hospital treatment, Potts said. A judge can order a patient to take his medication; patients who refuse can be sent back to the hospital.

Yet Arizona often lacks the resources to treat people, he said. The state has one of the lowest ratios in the country for inpatient psychiatric beds for its population size.

Across the USA, budget cuts have forced hospitals to close 4,000 inpatient psychiatric beds since 2009 — leaving them less able to take in the mentally ill, said Michael Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

Arizona has eliminated hundreds of positions for mental health case workers, who help coordinate patients’ care, Fitzpatrick said.

In a national score card rating the accessibility of mental health services, the alliance in 2009 gave Arizona a C, “which is pretty close to a failing grade,” said psychiatrist Anand Pandya of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles; 21 states scored a D, and none earned an A.

To create the score card, the alliance had volunteers in each state try to schedule an appointment with a mental health professional.

“It’s very hard to get an appointment with a psychiatrist in Arizona,” Pandya said. “Pretty much across the board, it takes a lot of time. There’s no one clear number to call, and it’s hard to figure out where to go from their website, even if you are completely mentally competent. The services in Arizona just aren’t designed to be readily accessible.”

PARENTS: Mental health lessons from the Tucson tragedy

Arizona state officials, for example, were unable to tell NAMI how many patients they actually serve, according to the report.

Arizona residents who spoke to NAMI for the report said they had many problems getting care, facing six- to eight-week waits to see a psychiatrist. Others complained of overworked case workers with nearly 100 clients.

One unnamed patient quoted in the report told NAMI, “When I first tried to get help after attempting suicide, I was told that I wasn’t sick enough to qualify.”

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Survivors of Haiti’s 2010 quake and those who lost loved ones at the Hotel Montana say they are forever bound by a shared tragedy that unfolded over three months as workers recovered bodies from the debris of the five-story hotel.

Once popular with foreign visitors, the hotel became a symbol of the disaster, its pancaked ruins shown frequently on TV. Eighty people, including 17 Americans, died there.

Those affected by the Montana tragedy say the year has been one of change, grief, acceptance and a recommitment to helping Haiti. They had a year of sadness, some marking birthdays and holidays for the first time with a loved one missing. For those who survived the collapse, it’s been a year of accepting that they lived while many others died.

Unshaken

“This was clearly one of those events that separates your life before and after,” says Woolley, 40, of Colorado Springs. Woolley spent 65 hours trapped in a pitch-black elevator shaft near the lobby. He was in the country to document the work of Compassion International, a Christian charity.

Woolley’s story became known for the blood-stained goodbye notes he wrote to his wife and two small boys in case he was not rescued. He used a first-aid app on his iPhone to treat his injuries. He spent the past year writing a book, Unshaken: Rising from the Ruins of Haiti’s Hotel Montana. He calls it a testament to the power of faith in difficult circumstances.

He was pulled out through the elevator shaft in a dramatic rescue by firefighters from Fairfax County, Va. He had a broken foot and a head injury. His colleague, David Hames, died. Woolley met his rescuers in June and visited them in December.

“I’ve had to wrestle with, do I celebrate?” he says. “Do I celebrate getting back with my family? Do I walk around morose because there was so much tragedy there? Rightly or wrongly, what I landed on is both.”

On Wednesday, Woolley was back in Haiti for the first time. He met with Gulley and other survivors at the hotel, which is being rebuilt. The only parts of the 145-room hotel left standing were a conference room and a few apartments.

Gulley, a Methodist minister, was trapped in another part of the lobby with five colleagues. He and Woolley could not see each other, but they talked about their faith and their families, giving each other courage during moments when rescue seemed unlikely, Woolley says.

Gulley’s group was underground for 55 hours. Two of his co-workers died.

Gulley, 65, of Frisco, Colo., says his experience deepened his commitment to Haiti. He has returned eight times, working with the church to help farmers.

“I serve God by serving people,” Gulley says. “Why would an earthquake change that?”

A new normal

The Gengel family is dealing with their loss by honoring the last wish of their oldest child. Britney texted her mother a few hours before the earthquake to say she had found her calling: She wanted to build an orphanage in Haiti.

As a student at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., Britney, 19, was in Haiti to work in orphanages. Three other Lynn students and two professors also were killed in the Montana.

Now her family plans to build the orphanage Britney dreamed of running. They started a foundation, Be Like Brit, to raise money for it. The 19,000-square-foot building will be in the shape of a B, says Len Gengel, 50.

They have the land overlooking a bay in Grand Goâve, a fishing village Britney was to visit on her trip, about an hour from the capital. Her parents hope to open the orphanage by 2012. They say it will have space for 33 girls and 33 boys — commemorating the 33 days Britney was under the rubble before her body was found.

“Any time you lose a child it’s unfathomable,” he says. “As her father, I feel an obligation to honor her wish.”

Lisa Birch, 47, is helping the Gengels, making blankets for the children to help them feel protected, she says.

“My heart is forever in Haiti, good, bad and ugly,” Birch says. “They need our help. This is personal to us.”

Jim Birch, 50, was in Haiti on a business trip. In the year since his death, Lisa and their daughter, Megan, moved from Modesto, Calif., to Seattle to be closer to relatives.

It’s been a year of emotional ups and downs. Just in the past week, Lisa Birch says, she was finally ready to put the photos from their last family Christmas in a scrapbook.

“We’ve gotten to the point where we know we have to stand on our own two feet,” she says.

Still, nights are especially hard. “It’s lonesome,” she says. “It’s forever.”

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Anglicans defecting to Rome are being told they must leave their churches with
clergy even been asked to move away from their parish.

Fr Ed Tomlinson (L) is leading the defectors at St Barnabas 

By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, and Rebecca Lefort

9:00PM GMT 08 Jan 2011

They have worshipped together for decades on the pews of their parish church.
Generations of their loved ones have been baptised, married and buried there.

But now a Church of England congregation is being torn apart by the Pope’s
offer to welcome disaffected Anglican traditionalists into the Catholic
Church.

In a vote which has split the local community and left long-standing friends
on opposite sides of a growing divide, 54 parishioners at St Barnabas
Tunbridge Wells have indicated that they intended to become Catholics while
18 said they would remain in the established Church.

While the Kentish churchgoers are among the first to take such a stand,
congregations up and down the country will soon follow suit as worshippers
and clergy weigh up whether to enter the Ordinariate, the structure set up
by Pope Benedict XVI to embrace defectors from the established Church.

At St Barnabas the move
towards Rome is being led by the vicar, Fr Ed Tomlinson. He believes
that traditionalists who oppose the ordination of women have been badly let
down by Church leaders.

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Article extracted from telegraph.co.uk

The new show from the Canadian circus act Cirque du Soleil is disappointingly
stale and complacent. Rating: * *

Po-faced: Massimiliano Medini Denise Garcia-Sorta performing in Totem at the Albert Hall Photo: Alastair Muir

By Charles Spencer

6:22PM GMT 06 Jan 2011

Comments

It’s easy to admire Cirque du Soleil, much harder to love it. The circus acts
are usually superb but there is something curiously soulless about this
world-conquering Canadian organisation whose shows have now been seen by 100
million people in more than 300 cities around the world.

No wonder the company’s founder Guy Laliberté could afford to pay £22 million
for a twelve day trip into space with the Russians a year or so ago. With
corporate packages selling at £195 a head and the best seats going for £90
at the Albert Hall, the show has become a licence to print money.

This year, however, hopes were high. Robert Lepage, one of the most
imaginative and engaging theatre-makers working anywhere in the world today,
is both writer and director of the new show, Totem. I was expecting
him to revolutionise the stale format, in which desperately unfunny clowns,
bland world music, and flimsy narratives that combine the pretentious and
the incomprehensible, have all become de rigueur.

In fact, even Lepage hasn’t been able to rouse the company from its
complacency. The clowns are still there, as fey and irritating as ever,
while the big theme of creation and evolution doesn’t amount to much more
than having humans dressed as monkeys and a bearded fellow who might be
Charles Darwin pottering around the stage.

There’s a genuine coup at the start when the ensemble is discovered performing
amazing acrobatics on a gigantic turtle skeleton, and a neat re-creation of
the famous image of evolution in which an ape is shown metamorphosing into
man. But as far as narrative and depth go, that’s just about it. The
lighting and projection effects that often seem to flood the stage with
water are brilliant but otherwise you would never guess that a man as
inventive as Lepage was at the helm. Meanwhile, his decision to send in the
clowns, rather than shoot the blighters, is a craven cop-out.

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Article extracted from telegraph.co.uk

An overwhelming majority of Americans are frustrated that it’s too difficult to get rid of bad teachers, while most also believe that teachers aren’t paid enough, a new poll shows.

The Associated Press-Stanford University poll found that 78% think it should be easier for school administrators to fire poorly performing teachers. Yet overall, the public wants to reward teachers — 57% say they are paid too little, with just 7% believing they are overpaid and most of the rest saying they’re paid about right.

School districts have struggled for years over how to keep good teachers. This has led to controversial techniques like using standardized test scores to measure how much a student has learned in a teacher’s class. Some districts, like New York City schools, are considering making the data public so parents know how teachers rate.

The Los Angeles school district announced in late August it would adopt such a model to assess teacher performance. Unions have fought against the release of such data, saying it’s an unproven methodology that doesn’t truly reflect how a teacher is performing in the classroom.

Carmen Williams, 53, an office manager from Yates City, Ill., said the issue is simple: Pay teachers more and get rid of the bad ones.

“Good teachers are hard to find, and one of the reasons they are hard to find is because they’re not paid enough to support themselves, especially if they have a family,” she said. “There are very good teachers out there, but there comes a day when they need to retire and they don’t and what happens at that point is the kids suffer.”

It’s not just bad teachers that people want set loose. Nearly as many in the AP-Stanford poll — 71% — say it should be easier to fire principals at schools where students are performing poorly.

Half say that teachers’ salaries should be based on their students’ performance on statewide tests and on the evaluations they receive from local school officials. About 1 in 4 say pay should be determined solely by school administrators’ ratings, while under 1 in 5 say salaries should be based only on how well students do on statewide testing.

While eager to send bad teachers packing, just 35% say a large number of bad teachers is a serious problem in America’s schools and only 45% say teachers’ unions are to blame. In contrast, more than half are critical of parents and federal, state and local education officials, and 55% say the inability to recruit and keep good teachers is a big problem.

Larry Cuban, a professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, says some of the public’s negative views come from frequent criticism from policymakers and in news reports.

“It’s become a throwaway line: ‘Oh, sure U.S. schools are lousy,’” said Cuban. “I think we have schizophrenia in the U.S. that we believe all U.S. schools are lousy except the schools we send our kids to.”

To help school districts cope, the Obama administration has begun programs like the $4 billion “Race to the Top,” which gave money to 11 states and Washington, D.C., in exchange for promises of innovative reforms to raise student achievement and improve graduation rates. Part of the requirements for getting the money included a teacher performance pay program and better use of student achievement data to make sure teachers are doing their jobs.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said the poll results show that parents understand that teachers are not to blame for all the woes in public education.

“The scapegoating of teachers must stop and collective responsibility must start,” Weingarten said. “This should be a wakeup call to education leaders and policymakers that all of us have to do our part. Of course teachers are important, but they can’t do it all and policymakers have to stop blaming them.”

People in the poll were closely divided over whether teachers should be allowed to strike, with just over half in favor.

The AP-Stanford poll on education was conducted Sept. 23-30 by Abt SRBI, Inc. It involved interviews on landline and cellular telephones with 1,001 adults nationwide and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

Stanford’s participation in this project was made possible by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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