See the discussion page for instructions on adding schools to this list and for an alphabetically arranged listing of schools.

Due to the damage by Hurricane Katrina and subsequent flooding, a number of colleges and universities in the New Orleans metropolitan area will not be able to hold classes for the fall 2005 semester. It is estimated that 75,000 to 100,000 students have been displaced. [1]. In response, institutions across the United States and Canada are offering late registration for displaced students so that their academic progress is not unduly delayed. Some are offering free or reduced admission to displaced students. At some universities, especially state universities, this offer is limited to residents of the area.

[edit]

Thursday, November 30, 2006

At its official launch in Washington DC yesterday, the Appignani Humanist Legal Center (AHLC) announced its filing of a lawsuit in Florida challenging the use of a church as a polling place during the recent U.S. midterm elections. The AHLC is representing Jerry Rabinowitz and the action is against Arthur Anderson in his capacity as supervisor of elections for Palm Beach County. But the organization indicates that more lawsuits in other states are expected to follow—all being part of an effort to show that churches are improper polling places because they cannot be religiously and politically neutral and because their use is subject to widespread abuse.

“Churches are currently the most common polling location in America” according to James Hurley, the lead attorney handling the case. Speaking at yesterday’s press conference, Hurley noted that while some churches cover or remove religious symbols in those parts of their facilities used as polling places, not all do so, nor is the practice required everywhere. “When asked, the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office said there was no rule requiring removal of such religious icons,” Hurley added.

Rabinowitz’s complaint is that, because he was assigned to vote at Emmanuel Catholic Church in Delray Beach, Florida, he found it necessary when entering the polling place to “walk past a church-sponsored ‘pro-life’ banner framed by multiple giant crosses before even entering the church” to vote. This caused him to be “extremely upset” regarding the religious setting of the polls. According to Hurley, “Rabinowitz observed many religious symbols in plain view” in the voting area. They were “surrounding the election judges and in direct line above the voting machines. These objects included a sign declaring that ‘Each of Us Matters to God,’ multiple crucifixes, a sign that says ‘God, I Make a Difference,’ a large copy of the Lord’s Prayer and a Hail Mary, and a large poster of the Ten Commandments.” When Rabinowitz objected and “asked election officials to remove or cover them for the remainder of the voting” officials allegedly refused to do so.

“This is clearly a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” Hurley concluded, because it “has the primary effect of advancing religion.”

Also speaking at the press conference were the president and executive director of the American Humanist Association, the organization behind the new legal center, and Heidi Bruggink, the center’s legal coordinator. Speaking of the AHLC in general, Bruggink reported, “Our attorney roster includes many accomplished and prominent nontheistic attorneys, including Jim McCollum, Wendy Kaminer, and Michael Newdow.” These three are the most famous members of a legal team that “now consists of twenty-seven committed lawyers supported by several law students” and others.

The litigation challenging churches as polling places is a result of volunteer action nationwide by members of the American Humanist Association. “We put out a call to our members whose polling places were churches, asking them to report what they saw,” said the organization’s president, Mel Lipman. And this is what led to the Florida case and others that are expected to follow.

Friday, January 20, 2017

Yesterday, the German Bundestag passed a law to legalise cannabis drug for medicinal purposes. The law is to come under effect in March.

“Seriously ill people must be treated in the best ways possible” ^{((de))German language: ?Schwerkranke Menschen müssen bestmöglich versorgt werden.}, German health minister Hermann Gröhe tweeted. Doctors can prescribe marijuana — cannabis — for patients suffering from multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, or loss of appetite or nausea from cancer’s chemotherapy treatment.

Christian Democrats (CDU) lawmaker Rainer Hayek said this law would still prevent recreational use of cannabis. The cost of cannabis is to be covered under health insurance. Patients can buy dried buds or cannabis extracts from pharmacies with a prescription or get synthetic derivatives from other countries, though possession of the drug in large quantities is not allowed.

Cannabis cultivation is to be monitored by the government. Germany has joined other European countries such as Austria, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and Netherlands in legalising the drug to some extent.

In October, a 53-year-old multiple sclerosis patient showed cannabis was the only solution to reduce his pain, and the court granted him permission to grow as many as 130 plants in one year for personal use. Purchasing, rather than growing, medical cannabis at the time cost about €15 (US$16.85) per gram.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

It can be difficult to be John Reed.

Christopher Hitchens called him a “Bin Ladenist” and Cathy Young editorialized in The Boston Globe that he “blames the victims of terrorism” when he puts out a novel like Snowball’s Chance, a biting send-up of George Orwell‘s Animal Farm which he was inspired to write after the terrorist attacks on September 11. “The clear references to 9/11 in the apocalyptic ending can only bring Orwell’s name into disrepute in the U.S.,” wrote William Hamilton, the British literary executor of the Orwell estate. That process had already begun: it was revealed Orwell gave the British Foreign Office a list of people he suspected of being “crypto-Communists and fellow travelers,” labeling some of them as Jews and homosexuals. “I really wanted to explode that book,” Reed told The New York Times. “I wanted to completely undermine it.”

Is this man who wants to blow up the classic literary canon taught to children in schools a menace, or a messiah? David Shankbone went to interview him for Wikinews and found that, as often is the case, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Reed is electrified by the changes that surround him that channel through a lens of inspiration wrought by his children. “The kids have made me a better writer,” Reed said. In his new untitled work, which he calls a “new play by William Shakespeare,” he takes lines from The Bard‘s classics to form an original tragedy. He began it in 2003, but only with the birth of his children could he finish it. “I didn’t understand the characters who had children. I didn’t really understand them. And once I had had kids, I could approach them differently.”

Taking the old to make it new is a theme in his work and in his world view. Reed foresees new narrative forms being born, Biblical epics that will be played out across print and electronic mediums. He is pulled forward by revolutions of the past, a search for a spiritual sensibility, and a desire to locate himself in the process.

Below is David Shankbone’s conversation with novelist John Reed.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Methane gas was blamed for the explosion deaths of 8 miners in southern Polish‘s Halemba coal mine Tuesday, November 21. Officials say at least 15 are missing.

Rescue efforts were halted because dangerously high levels of methane gas returned, according to Zbigniew Madej, spokesman for state-owned Coal Co., which operates the mine.

The missing miners’ locater devices were not emitting signals, increasing rescurers’ concerns for their well-being. Grzegorz Pawlaszek, head of Coal Co., said the 15 missing miners’ fate is “not known,” but added that “there is a chance to find someone still alive.”

“This is a tragedy. People have died here,” Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said when he came to Ruda Slaska to see the blast.

Earlier Wednesday, a reconnaissance rescue team descended 3000 feet toward the blast scene, only to retreat because of safety concerns related to high methane gas levels. Rescue digging efforts were also halted because of explosion concerns.

The missing men were aged 21-59. One of the miner’s family members, Andrzej Pytlik, 30, remained on scene with his sister, hoping and waiting for news of her husband, Krystian Gaszka.

Pytlik, also a miner, said through teary eyes that, “I work in the mines and I know that hope is scant because that’s the truth.”

The explosion occurred in a closed portion of the mine where the now-missing miners were working to retrieve abandoned equipment. According to Pawlaszek, the value of the equipment was $23 million, adding that “It was new equipment and that is why we decided to retrieve it.”

He indicated that the recovery work was performed under the supervision of gas detection specialists, and that the bodies of the recovered miners were difficult to identify because of the severity of burns and because their ID tags were blown away in the explosion.

The Halemba mine, located in Ruda Slaska, has produced coal for nearly 50 years, has been fraught with safety concerns and has a track record of serious accidents. One of the oldest mines in Poland, it is centrally located in the industrial Silesia region.

Earlier this year, a miner was trapped underground in the Halemba mine five days after a cave-in. In 1990, 19 miners were killed and 20 hurt in a gas explosion, and five were killed in collapse in 1991.

Inside, priests and mining officials were comforting and counseling with distraught relatives. Outside, eight white candles flickered on a main gate wall.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

After months of secrecy and lawsuits intended to suppress reporting on unannounced products by independent news outlets, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer, began his keynote address at 17:11 UTC this morning, before an enthusiastic audience.

The keynote, held at Moscone Center in San Francisco as part of the annual Macworld Expo, began with a recap of Apple’s retail progress over the past year, media coverage, and a demo of the new Spotlight search technology in the upcoming Mac OS X Tiger, which was announced at the previous 2004 event.

Jobs then made a number of product announcements as he continued his demonstrations:

• Mail is revamped to include high-speed Spotlight search support.
• QuickTime 7, a new release with H.264 codec support for future DVD formats, will be included with Tiger.
• Dashboard will provide miniaturized applications, or “widgets”, for controlling iTunes, performing currency conversion, obtaining stock quotes, looking at the weather, and more. Developers will be able to create new widgets using the developer APIs provided by Apple.
• iChat, Apple’s A/V conferencing tool, will provide support for 10 simultaneous participants over an audio-only feed, and four simultaneous participants over a video feed.

• iLife ’05 is a major upgrade with major new versions of three of its included applications:
  • iPhoto 5 now supports MPEG-4 and RAW photo format (for increased control over color fidelity and filtering).
  • iMovie HD now supports video in the High-Definition (HD) format.
  • iDVD 5 now supports both DVD-R and DVD+R.
  • GarageBand 2 upgraded to record up to 8 tracks of audio simultaneously, with “real-time music notation”, a new “loop authoring tool”, “vocal transformation filters” and other features from Apple’s higher-end Logic audio tool.

• Final Cut Express HD to ship in February.

• iWork ’05 suite:
  • Keynote 2 has new features for animation and self-running kiosks.
  • Pages is a new word processor with PDF support and Apple designed templates.

• Mac mini is a new $499 “headless”, small form-factor Macintosh with no monitor, no keyboard, nor a mouse. Dimensions were given as “6.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall”. 1.25GHz G4 CPU, 256MB RAM, 40GB hard disk, FireWire, USB, modem and Ethernet. Upgraded unit with 1.42GHz G4 CPU and 80GB disk for $599. Scheduled to ship Jan. 22.

Jobs then made his final announcement, in his trademark “One More Thing” style:

• iPod shuffle is a $99, miniature version of the iPod with 512MB of flash memory. $149 for the 1GB version. Shipping today.

Jobs then exited as music artist John Mayer began his live entertainment act.