Day: September 10, 2023

As young children went back to school across Sweden last month, many of their teachers were putting a new emphasis on printed books, quiet reading time and handwriting practice and devoting less time to tablets, independent online research and keyboarding skills.

The return to more traditional ways of learning is a response to politicians and experts questioning whether the country’s hyper-digitalized approach to education, including the introduction of tablets in nursery schools, had led to a decline in basic skills.

Swedish Minister for Schools Lotta Edholm, who took office 11 months ago as part of a new center-right coalition government, was one of the biggest critics of the all-out embrace of technology.

“Sweden’s students need more textbooks,” Edholm said in March. “Physical books are important for student learning.”

The minister announced last month in a statement that the government wants to reverse the decision by the National Agency for Education to make digital devices mandatory in preschools. It plans to go further and to completely end digital learning for children under age 6, the ministry also told The Associated Press.

Although the country’s students score above the European average for reading ability, an international assessment of fourth-grade reading levels, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, highlighted a decline among Sweden’s children between 2016 and 2021.

In 2021, Swedish fourth-graders averaged 544 points, a drop from the 555 average in 2016. However, their performance still placed the country in a tie with Taiwan for the seventh-highest overall test score.

In comparison, Singapore — which topped the rankings — improved its PIRLS reading scores from 576 to 587 during the same period, and England’s average reading achievement score fell only slightly, from 559 in 2016 to 558 in 2021.

Some learning deficits may have resulted from the coronavirus pandemic or reflect a growing number of immigrant students who don’t speak Swedish as their first language, but an overuse of screens during school lessons may cause youngsters to fall behind in core subjects, education experts say.

“There’s clear scientific evidence that digital tools impair rather than enhance student learning,” Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said in a statement last month on the country’s national digitalization strategy in education.

“We believe the focus should return to acquiring knowledge through printed textbooks and teacher expertise, rather than acquiring knowledge primarily from freely available digital sources that have not been vetted for accuracy,” said the institute, a highly respected medical school focused on research.

The rapid adoption of digital learning tools also has drawn concern from the United Nations’ education and culture agency.

In a report published last month, UNESCO issued an “urgent call for appropriate use of technology in education.” The report urges countries to speed up internet connections at schools, but at the same time warns that technology in education should be implemented in a way so that it never replaces in-person, teacher-led instruction and supports the shared objective of quality education for all.

In the Swedish capital, Stockholm, 9-year-old Liveon Palmer, a third-grader at Djurgardsskolan elementary school, expressed his approval of spending more school hours offline.

“I like writing more in school, like on paper, because it just feels better, you know,” he told the AP during a recent visit.

His teacher, Catarina Branelius, said she was selective about asking students to use tablets during her lessons even before the national-level scrutiny.

“I use tablets in math and we are doing some apps, but I don’t use tablets for writing text,” Branelius said. Students under age 10 “need time and practice and exercise in handwriting … before you introduce them to write on a tablet.”

Online instruction is a hotly debated subject across Europe and other parts of the West. Poland, for instance, just launched a program to give a government-funded laptop to each student starting in fourth grade in hopes of making the country more technologically competitive.

In the United States, the coronavirus pandemic pushed public schools to provide millions of laptops purchased with federal pandemic relief money to primary and secondary students. But there is still a digital divide, which is part of the reason why American schools tend to use both print and digital textbooks, said Sean Ryan, president of the U.S. school division at textbook publisher McGraw Hill.

“In places where there is not connectivity at home, educators are loath to lean into digital because they’re thinking about their most vulnerable (students) and making sure they have the same access to education as everyone else,” Ryan said.

Germany, which is one of the wealthiest countries in Europe, has been famously slow in moving government programs and information of all kinds online, including education. The state of digitalization in schools also varies among the country’s 16 states, which are in charge of their own curricula.

Many students can complete their schooling without any kind of required digital instruction, such as coding. Some parents worry their children may not be able to compete in the job market with technologically better-trained young people from other countries.

Sascha Lobo, a German writer and consultant who focuses on the internet, thinks a national effort is needed to bring German students up to speed or the country will risk falling behind in the future.

“If we don’t manage to make education digital, to learn how digitalization works, then we will no longer be a prosperous country 20 years from now,” he said in an interview with public broadcaster ZDF late last year.

To counter Sweden’s decline in fourth-grade reading performance, the Swedish government announced an investment worth $64.7 million in book purchases for the country’s schools this year. Another 500 million kronor will be spent annually in 2024 and 2025 to speed up the return of textbooks to schools.

Not all experts are convinced Sweden’s back-to-basics push is exclusively about what’s best for students.

Criticizing the effects of technology is “a popular move with conservative politicians,” Neil Selwyn, a professor of education at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said. “It’s a neat way of saying or signaling a commitment to traditional values.”

“The Swedish government does have a valid point when saying that there is no evidence for technology improving learning, but I think that’s because there is no straightforward evidence of what works with technology,” Selwyn added. “Technology is just one part of a really complex network of factors in education.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit California’s Silicon Valley next week before traveling to New York for the U.N. General Assembly, his office said on Sunday.

Netanyahu’s office did not give specific details of who he would be meeting.

Israeli news website YNet reported the visit to Silicon Valley would focus on strengthening ties in the field of artificial intelligence.

Survivors of Morocco’s deadliest earthquake in more than six decades struggled to find food and water on Sunday as the search for the missing continued in hard-to-reach villages and the death toll of more than 2,000 seemed likely to rise further.

Many people spent a second night in the open after the 6.8 magnitude quake hit late on Friday. Relief workers face the challenge of reaching the worst-affected villages in the High Atlas, a rugged mountain range where settlements are often remote and where many houses crumbled.

Moroccan media reported the collapse of a historically important 12th century mosque, underlining damage to the country’s cultural heritage. The quake also damaged parts of Marrakech old city, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

In Moulay Brahim, a village near the epicentre 40 km (25 miles) south of Marrakech, residents described how they had dug the dead from the rubble using their bare hands.

“We lost our houses and we lost people also and we are sleeping like two days outside,” said 36-year-old Yassin Noumghar, a Moulay Brahim resident. Complaining of shortages of water, food and power, Noumghar said he had received little government aid so far. “We want just for our government to help us,” he said, expressing a frustration voiced by others.

Later, sacks of food were unloaded from a truck which local official Mouhamad al-Hayyan said had been organised by the government and civil society organisations.

Twenty-five bodies had been brought to Moulay Brahim’s small medical clinic, according to staff there who warned they were starting to face a shortage of some first aid supplies.

With many homes built of mud bricks and timber, structures in the area crumbled easily. It was Morocco’s deadliest earthquake since 1960 when a quake was estimated to have killed at least 12,000 people, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Makeshift tents had been erected on a dirt soccer pitch.

Residents were wrapped in blankets after spending the night outside. One man, who was salvaging mattresses and clothes from his wrecked home, said he believed his neighbours were still under the rubble.

In the village of Amizmiz, 27 km (17 miles) west of Moulay Brahim, residents also struggled to find food. “We used blankets to make a tent,” said Ali Ait Youssef. “The tents the government distributed are not enough.”

The government said on Saturday it was taking urgent measures to address the disaster including reinforcing search and rescue teams, providing drinking water and distributing food, tents and blankets.

France said it stood ready to help and was awaiting a formal request from Morocco. “France is ready to offer its aid to Morocco if Morocco decides it is useful,” President Emmanuel Macron said at the G20 Summit in New Delhi.

“The second they request this aid, it will be deployed,” he added.

Other countries offering assistance include Turkey, where earthquakes in February killed more than 50,000 people. By Sunday, the Turkish team had not yet departed.

Spain, however, said it had on Sunday received a formal request from Morocco for assistance and would be sending search and rescue teams. Qatar also said its search and rescue team had departed for Morocco.

“The next 2-3 days will be critical for finding people trapped under the rubble,” Caroline Holt, global director of operations for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told Reuters.

She said the international aid system has been waiting for an invitation from Morocco to assist, adding this was not necessarily unusual as the government assesses needs.

A spokesperson for Morocco’s government did not immediately respond to Reuters phone calls seeking comment.

The latest casualty figures from the Interior Ministry, released late on Saturday, put the death toll at 2,012, with 2,059 people injured, including 1,404 in critical condition.

The World Health Organization said more than 300,000 people have been affected by the disaster.

Pope Francis offered prayers and solidarity for the victims.

Morocco has declared three days of mourning and King Mohammed VI called for prayers for the dead to be held at mosques across the country.

The quake’s epicentre was 72 km (45 miles) southwest of Marrakech, a city beloved of Moroccans and foreign tourists for its medieval mosques, palaces and seminaries richly adorned with vivid mosaic tiling amid a labyrinth of rose-hued alleyways.

Marrakech is due to host the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank from Oct. 9.

An IMF spokesperson, asked on Saturday about the planned meetings, said: “Our sole focus at this time is on the people of Morocco and the authorities who are dealing with this tragedy.”

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Sri Lanka’s president said Sunday he will appoint a committee chaired by a retired Supreme Court judge to investigate allegations made in a British television report that the South Asian country’s intelligence was complicit in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 269 people. 

The attacks, which included simultaneous suicide bombings, targeted three churches and three tourist hotels. The dead included 42 foreigners from 14 countries. 

President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s decision to appoint a committee headed by a judge to investigate claims that Sri Lankan intelligence had a hand in the bombings that were carried out by Islamic militants came under pressure from opposition lawmakers, religious leaders, activists as well as the victims’ relatives. They say that previous probes failed to reveal the truth behind the bombings. 

The committee’s primary mission is to investigate the “serious allegations recently brought to light by Channel 4 in a broadcast video,” the president’s office said in a statement Sunday. It said that the “allegations have added fuel to the fire.” 

The statement said that a former attorney general “has made similar claims, suggesting the existence of a mastermind behind the devastating Easter bomb attack.” It said that a parliamentary committee would separately investigate and “address these concerns comprehensively.” 

In a program broadcast Tuesday, Channel 4 interviewed a man who said had arranged a meeting between a local Islamic State-inspired group, National Thowheed Jamath, and a top state intelligence official loyal to former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to formulate a plot to create instability and enable Rajapaksa, a former senior defense official, to win the 2019 presidential election. 

Rajapaksa was forced to resign in mid-2022 after mass protests over the country’s worst economic crisis. 

Rajapaksa on Thursday denied the allegations against him, saying that the claim that “a group of Islamic extremists launched suicide attacks in order to make me president is absurd.” 

AMIZMIZ, Morocco — An aftershock rattled Moroccans on Sunday as they prayed for victims of the nation’s strongest earthquake in more than a century and toiled to rescue survivors while soldiers and workers brought water and supplies to desperate mountain villages in ruins. The disaster killed more than 2,000 people — a number that is expected to rise.

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The United Nations estimated that 300,000 people were affected by Friday night’s magnitude 6.8 quake and some Moroccans complained on social networks that the government wasn’t allowing more help from outside. International aid crews were prepared to deploy, but waited for the Morocco government to request their assistance.

“We know there is a great urgency to save people and dig under the remains of buildings,” said Arnaud Fraisse, founder of Rescuers Without Borders, who had a team stuck in Paris waiting for the green light. “There are people dying under the rubble, and we cannot do anything to save them.”

Help was slow to arrive in Amizmiz, where a whole chunk of the town of orange and red sandstone brick homes carved into a mountainside appeared to be missing.

“It’s a catastrophe,’’ said villager Salah Ancheu, 28. “We don’t know what the future is. The aid remains insufficient.”

Residents swept all the rubble off the main unpaved road leading to town and aid crews began arriving but pleaded for more help.

“There aren’t ambulances, there aren’t police, at least for right now,” Ancheu said.

Those left homeless — or fearing more aftershocks — slept outside Saturday, in the streets of the ancient city of Marrakech or under makeshift canopies in Atlas Mountain towns like Moulay Brahim, among the hardest-hit. The worst destruction was in small, rural communities that are hard for rescuers to reach because the roads that snake up the mountainous terrain were covered by fallen rocks.

Those areas were shaken anew Sunday by a magnitude 3.9 aftershock, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It wasn’t immediately clear if it caused more damage or casualties, but it was likely strong enough to rattle nerves in areas where damage has left buildings unstable and residents feared aftershocks.

Friday’s earthquake toppled buildings not strong enough to withstand such a mighty temblor, trapping people in the rubble and sending others fleeing in terror. A total of 2,012 people were confirmed dead and at least 2,059 more people were injured — 1,404 of them critically, the Interior Ministry reported Saturday.

“We felt a huge shake like it was doomsday,” Moulay Brahim resident Ayoub Toudite said. “Ten seconds and everything was gone.”

Flags were lowered across Morocco, as King Mohammed VI ordered three days of national mourning starting Sunday. The army mobilized specialized search and rescue teams, and the king ordered water, food rations and shelters to be provided to those who lost their homes.

He also called for mosques to hold prayers Sunday for the victims, many of whom were buried Saturday amid the frenzy of rescue work nearby.

Aid offers have poured in from around the world and the U.N. said it had a team in Morocco coordinating how international partners can provide support. About 100 teams made up of a total of 3,500 rescuers are registered with a U.N. platform and ready to deploy in Morocco when asked, Rescuers Without Borders said.

In a sign that Morocco may be prepared to accept more outside help, the Spanish military said it had sent an air force plane carrying an urban search and rescue team of 56 soldiers and four dogs to Marrakech. Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said in a radio interview the deployment was in response to a request for help from Moroccan authorities. Another rescue team from Nice, France, also was on its way.

In France, home to many people with links to Morocco, towns and cities have offered more than 2 million euros ($2.1 million) in aid, and popular performers are rallying to collect donations.

The epicenter of Friday’s quake was near the town of Ighil in Al Haouz Province, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) south of Marrakech. The region is known for scenic villages and valleys tucked in the High Atlas Mountains.

About 45 kilometers (28 miles) northeast of the epicenter, fallen walls exposed the insides of damaged homes, and piles of rubble blocked alleys. In Moulay Brahim, a poor rural community of fewer than 3,000 people, many of the homes made of clay brick and cinder block were destroyed or no longer safe.

Devastation gripped each town along the High Atlas’ steep and winding switchbacks, with homes folding in on themselves and people crying as boys and helmet-clad police carried the dead through the streets.

”I was asleep when the earthquake struck. I could not escape because the roof fell on me. I was trapped. I was saved by my neighbors who cleared the rubble with their bare hands,” said Fatna Bechar in Moulay Brahim. “Now, I am living with them in their house because mine was completely destroyed.”

Hamid Idsalah, a 72-year-old mountain guide, said he and many other survivors had little future to look forward to as they lack the financial means to rebound.

Rescuers backed by soldiers and police searched for victims in collapsed homes in the remote town of Adassil, near the epicenter. Military vehicles brought in bulldozers and other equipment to clear roads of rocks that crumbled off mountainsides, the state news agency MAP reported. Ambulances took dozens of wounded from the village of Tikht, population 800, to Mohammed VI University Hospital in Marrakech.

In Marrakech, where authorities were assessing the damage, large chunks were missing from a crenelated roof, and warped metal, crumbled concrete and dust were all that remained of a building cordoned off by police tape.

Tourists and residents lined up to donate desperately needed blood. Jalila Guerina said she ran to help when she learned of the need because of her duty as a Moroccan citizen.

“I did not even think about it twice,” she told The Associated Press, “especially in the conditions where people are dying, especially at this moment when they are needing help, any help.”

In the market, stray cats clambered over piles of stones and wooden bars, but shoppers were scarce at stalls set up under parasols by food and souvenir vendors.

The quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 when it hit at 11:11 p.m., lasting several seconds, the USGS said. A magnitude 4.9 aftershock hit 19 minutes later, it said. The collision of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates occurred at a relatively shallow depth, which makes a quake more dangerous.

It was the strongest earthquake to hit the North African country in more than 120 years, according to the USGS, which has records dating to 1900, but it was not the deadliest. In 1960, a magnitude 5.8 temblor struck near the Moroccan city of Agadir, killing at least 12,000. That quake prompted Morocco to change construction rules, but many buildings, especially rural homes, are not built to withstand such tremors.

In 2004, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake near the Mediterranean coastal city of Al Hoceima left more than 600 dead.

Friday’s quake was felt as far away as Portugal and Algeria, according to the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere and Algeria’s Civil Defense agency, which oversees emergency response.

___

Angela Charlton in Paris, Brian Melley in London, Mark Carlson in Marrakech and Houda Benalla in Rabat, Morocco, contributed.

HANOI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday secured deals with Vietnam on semiconductors and minerals as the strategic Southeast Asian nation lifted Washington to Hanoi’s highest diplomatic status alongside China and Russia.

The U.S. has been pushing for the upgrade for months as it sees the manufacturing dynamo as a key country in its strategy to secure global supply chains from China-related risks.

A half-century after a lengthy and brutal Cold War-era conflict, Biden arrived in Hanoi to a ceremony organised by the ruling Communist Party that included school children waving American flags and honour guards carrying bayoneted rifles.

Biden noted the strides that had been taken toward improved ties.

“We can trace a 50-year arc of progress between our nations, from conflict to normalization, to this new elevated status,” he said.

The partnership with Vietnam is part of the Biden administration’s push “to demonstrate to our our Indo-Pacific partners and to the world, the United States is a Pacific nation and we’re not going anywhere,” Biden told reporters after the meeting in Hanoi.

Vietnam is navigating frosty relations between Washington and Beijing as the tech and textile exporter seeks its own foothold in the international competition to be a low-cost manufacturing hub.

Top Chinese officials, possibly including President Xi Jinping, are expected to visit Vietnam in the coming days or weeks, officials and diplomats said, as Hanoi seeks to maintain good relations with all super powers.

Biden also said in Hanoi he had talked with Xi’s deputy at the G20, and that the two talked about stability.

Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, 79, remarked on the 80-year-old U.S. president’s appearance inside party headquarters, saying “You have nary aged a day and I would say you look even better than before.”

Vietnam’s longstanding relationship with Russia faces tests over the war in Ukraine, including talks with Moscow over a new arms supply deal that could trigger U.S. sanctions.

Reuters has seen documents describing talks for a credit facility that Russia would extend to Vietnam to buy heavy weaponry, including anti-ship missiles, antisubmarine aircraft and helicopters, antiaircraft missile systems and fighter jets.

One of them, a letter sent in May by Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh to the Russian government, showed interest in the possible new deal.

A Vietnamese military officer confirmed the authenticity of the letter and the talks for a new $8 billion credit facility to buy heavy weaponry.

A spokesperson for Vietnam’s foreign ministry did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the documents, which show Moscow pushing for months for a loan deal that would bypass Western sanctions on Moscow.

Hanoi is in similar talks with multiple arms suppliers, including the United States. In recent weeks, Vietnam has engaged in several high-level defence meetings with top Russian officials.

The U.S.- Vietnam upgrade will include a security dimension, Jon Finer, the U.S. principal deputy national security adviser, told reporters on Sunday, while on the plane with Biden to Vietnam from a Group of 20 summit in India.

He said he had no arms deals to announce at this stage but stressed that the U.S. and its partners could offer Vietnam help to diversify away from Russian military supplies, an offer which he said Vietnam was receptive to.

That would help Vietnam reduce military reliance on Moscow, “a relationship we think they are increasingly uncomfortable with,” Finer said.

Biden’s visit comes as bilateral trade and investment ties are growing and a long-simmering territorial dispute between Vietnam and China heats up in the South China Sea.

Vietnam Airlines is expected to sign an initial agreement to buy about 50 Boeing (BA.N) 737 Max jets in a deal valued at $10 billion, timed to the trip.

Highlighting Vietnam’s growing importance as a “friendshoring” destination for U.S. technology companies, executives from Google, Intel, Amkor, Marvell, GlobalFoundries and Boeing are expected to meet on Monday with Vietnamese tech executives and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Hanoi.

Still, semiconductors are the centrepiece of an action plan adopted during Biden’s visit, U.S. officials said.

Besides possible announcements by U.S. corporations, it is unclear what else the the partnership could mean. The US government has $100 million a year for five years available under the CHIPS Act to support semiconductor supply chains globally. A large part of it could go to Vietnam, officials said.

More support to train skilled workers is also part of the deal, as Vietnam faces a major shortage of engineers in the chips sector.

Another key issue is strengthening supply chains of critical minerals, especially rare earths, of which Vietnam has the world’s largest deposits after China, according to U.S. estimates, officials said.

Two people familiar with the plans said an agreement on rare earths was expected during Biden’s visit, which ends on Monday when he flies back to America.

Details, however, are scant. Past attempts by U.S. companies to partner with Vietnamese rare earth firms have not succeeded, according to a person involved in one recent plan.

Human rights remain a controversial issue, with U.S. officials regularly criticising Hanoi for jailing activists and limiting freedom of expression. Vietnam may show goodwill, with diplomats suggesting activists could be freed.