Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Families are on the run in Gaza, reports Lyse Doucet; Quentin Sommerville in Israel says its tanks are on the move

 The Israeli military has begun a ground offensive against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, stepping up its 11-day-old military operation.

 Troops and tanks were sent into Gaza to deal "a significant blow to Hamas", Israel said.

 A Hamas spokesman said Israel would "pay a high price" for its actions.

 Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the invasion after days of intensive rocket fire and air strikes between the two sides.

 Gaza's health ministry said 24 Palestinians had been killed and 200 injured since the ground offensive began on Thursday night.

 A five-month-old child was among the dead, Palestinian medics told AFP news agency. Israel said it had killed 14 "terrorists" overnight.

 Israel meanwhile suffered its first military fatality, with the death of a soldier during the invasion, it said.

 Some 258 Palestinians - three-quarters of them civilians - have died since the start of the wider Israeli operation on 8 July, officials in Gaza say.

 An Israeli civilian was killed from mortar fire, and several Israelis have been seriously injured, Israeli medics say.

 'Heavy clashes'

 Announcing the ground offensive, the Israeli military said: "Following 10 days of Hamas attacks by land, air and sea, and after repeated rejections of offers to de-escalate the situation, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] has initiated a ground operation within the Gaza Strip."

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Lyse Doucet was among the journalists and residents evacuated from an area of Gaza

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption "Clearly this is a major escalation of this conflict," reports Quentin Sommerville in Tel Aviv

 It said the goal was to "establish a reality in which Israeli residents can live in safety and security without continuous indiscriminate terror, while striking a significant blow to Hamas' terror infrastructure".

 In Gaza City overnight, plumes of black smoke could be seen from the border area where Israeli troops were operating, AP news agency reported.

 At the scene: Paul Adams, BBC News, Gaza City

 It's hard to get a detailed picture, since the main focus of Israeli activity is some distance from downtown Gaza. But it's clear this is not yet a full-scale ground invasion.

 Areas in the north and south of the Gaza Strip came under heavy bombardment overnight, but ground operations are so far limited. An Israeli military spokesman told us that troops had destroyed tunnels along the border.

 He also confirmed that troops and armour remain just inside a largely unpopulated area in the north.

 The Israeli military is testing the water, gauging the level of opposition before deciding whether or not to move deeper inside the Gaza Strip. The death of one of its own soldiers, at this early stage, will have come as a warning of the dangers ahead.

 But Prime Minister Netanyahu seems determined to inflict greater damage on Hamas and that could mean sending his troops into densely populated areas. This will be dangerous for them, and potentially devastating for any Palestinian civilians in the way.

 Israel said the initial phase was aimed at targeting tunnels Hamas has dug under the border with Israel to use in attacks.

 On Wednesday 13 militants infiltrated into Israel through a tunnel aiming to attack a kibbutz, Israeli officials said. The Israeli military said it killed at least one of the militants, while the others retreated through the tunnel.

 Reuters news agency said Palestinians reported heavy clashes along the length of the eastern border, as well as in the northern towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.

 Image copyright AFP Image caption Palestinian militants fire missiles at Israel amid Israeli air strikes

 Military spokesman Gen Moti Almoz warned residents of Gaza to evacuate areas in which the army was operating. "This operation will be extended as much as necessary," he said.

 Israel approved the drafting of 18,000 more reservists on Thursday evening, bringing the total of extra troops called up since 8 July to 65,000.

 Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal said that the Israeli ground operation was "destined to failure".

 "What the occupier Israel failed to achieve through its air and sea raids, it will not be able to achieve with a ground offensive", he said.

 Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the ground operation would lead to "more bloodshed" and called on Israel to stop.

 Mr Abbas, whose Fatah party recently agreed to a unity government with Hamas, was meeting Egyptian officials in Cairo amid efforts to negotiate a truce.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Are Israeli strike warnings effective? The BBC examines footage from both sides

 The BBC's Kevin Connolly in Jerusalem says it is possible that with the ground invasion Israel is seeking to improve its military position in advance of any deal, but that more probably it has concluded that a ceasefire at the moment in unlikely.

 Israel says it has carried out more than 1,960 attacks on Gaza since 8 July, while militants have fired some 1,380 rockets at Israel. It says more than 50 rockets have been fired at Israel since the ground operation began.

 The UN says at least 1,370 homes have been destroyed in Gaza and more than 18,000 people displaced in recent hostilities.

 The ground offensive follows attempts in Cairo to negotiate a new ceasefire.

 There was a temporary ceasefire on Thursday to allow Palestinians to stock up on supplies and aid workers to distribute water, food and hygiene kits.

 The truce lasted for five hours, although both sides reported violations. ||||| Story highlights IDF: "We have hit Hamas hard, and we will continue to hit Hamas hard"

 Hamas condemns Israel for launching ground action

 Operation follows 10 days of airstrikes and bombings

 Palestinian security sources say airstrikes killed 7 children

 The Israeli military launched a ground operation into Gaza late Thursday and called an extra 18,000 reservists into the conflict with Hamas.

 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon ordered the ground action to destroy tunnels from Gaza into Israeli territory, according to a statement from Netanyahu's media adviser.

 Thirteen Hamas militants used a tunnel earlier Thursday to launch an attempted attack in Sufa, near an Israeli kibbutz, but were stopped by Israeli soldiers, the Israel Defense Forces reported

 CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Mark Regev, Netanyahu's spokesman, whether Israel planned to occupy Gaza for a long time.

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 Regev didn't answer directly, but said Israel's goals are to "diminish" the Hamas military force and to show Hamas it cannot attack Israel with impunity.

 "We have hit Hamas hard, and we will continue to hit Hamas hard," the Israel Defense Forces tweeted

 Hamas immediately condemned the Israeli operation.

 Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told CNN that "the beginning of the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza is a dangerous step with unknown consequences. Israel will pay a heavy price for it."

 Later, appearing on Aqsa TV, Barhoum said, "the resistance will confront the Israeli ground invasion and will defend the people of Gaza."

 He said Hamas military forces are "far stronger" than in 2009 and 2012, when Hamas and Israel clashed.

 Militants are prepared to capture Israel soldiers and use them to trade for some of 5,000 prisoners in Israeli jails, Barhoum said.

 CNN's Palestinian security sources said Israeli tanks have reached Abu Holeh and that Israeli troops are clashing with Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters along the Kissufim road.

 Abu Holeh is about in the center of Gaza, said CNN reporter Ben Wedeman. If Israeli forces go from there to the sea they can split Gaza as they did during the 2009 ground operation, Wedeman said.

 Wedeman said Israeli forces struck near a mosque in Gaza City's Zaitoun neighborhood, which has been pounded since start of bombing, with many casualties reported.

 Gaza hospital struck

 Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said Israeli bombs hit Wafa Hospital in Gaza while four patients were inside. Seventeen others had evacuated, he said.

 The long-awaited ground operation follows one of the worst nights of fighting since the war began. That fighting began after a temporary cease-fire ended earlier in the day.

 The Gaza Health Ministry said seven children were killed in three hours on Thursday.

 Before the incursion, the IDF dropped leaflets in 14 areas of Gaza, urging residents to temporarily leave their homes.

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 Map of the Middle East

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 CNN reporter Ian Lee described the action: "Periodic fire balls illuminate the sky over Gaza. We see rockets screech toward the sky. Minutes later we see an intercepting missile rise from the iron dome, reducing the rocket into confetti of light and fire.

 "We've seen red tracer rounds fly across the horizon. The repetitive thud of naval guns echoes throughout the coastal strip."

 A 4-year-old girl was killed in an Israeli airstrike near the customs building in Khan Younis, Palestinian medical and security sources said, and another airstrike killed a 29-year-old man east of Khan Younis.

 Aqsa TV reported that an Israeli was killed and another injured in shelling of Ashkelon and that seven Israeli soldiers were injured in an attack on a military location.

 Aqsa TV also reported that Israeli gunboats near Beit Lahiya north of Gaza strip, fired at the homes of residents.

 Palestinian medical and security sources say 246 people have been killed in Gaza and more than 1,850 injured. Israel says one of its citizens has died.

 Cairo talks

 In recent decades, Palestinians launched two armed uprisings against Israel, known as Intifadas, that each went on for years.

 In late 2008 and early 2009, Israel carried out airstrikes and then a ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza that killed hundreds of Palestinians. In November 2012, the two sides fought a bloody eight-day conflict that ended in a cease-fire.

 Egypt, which as been trying to broker a cease-fire, said Thursday, "If Hamas had accepted the truce Palestinian lives could have been saved."

 Earlier, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Al-Arabi held talks in Cairo aimed at reaching a cease-fire agreement.

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 An Israeli delegation also attended, leaving after several hours, the state-run al-Ahram news agency reported.

 "I expect that we will reach an agreement very soon; the efforts of a cease-fire is to stop the bloodshed, killing and destruction in Gaza," said Nabil Shaath, an Abbas adviser and member of the central committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

 He said negotiators were focusing on stopping bloodshed above all else. He said they would later discuss Hamas demands, including opening Gaza border crossings and freeing prisoners whose exit from jail was negotiated in exchange for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

 "These are all legitimate demands by Hamas, but the priority is for an immediate cease-fire," Shaath said.

 Hamas leaders had rejected an earlier Egyptian cease-fire proposal, saying they had not been consulted on the deal and complaining that it did not address their broader demands.

 Egypt is playing a large role in the talks despite its distrust of Hamas.

 Like Israel, Egypt considers Hamas a terror organization because of the group's roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt's military-led government banned after the country's 2013 coup.

 Temporary cease-fire

 During Thursday's temporary cease-fire, Gaza banks opened for the first time in 10 days. Residents poured into the streets.

 Red Cross officials visited hospitals and damaged houses to assess medical needs, and worked with local officials to fix water pipelines. Some work was also done to repair power lines, the United Nations said.

 At least 10 to 15 trucks entered Gaza through the Karem Shalom border crossing once it opened at 1 p.m. (6 a.m. ET), according to Ra'ed Fatooh, the Palestinian official in charge of the crossing in Gaza.

 Goods were limited to medical supplies and basic foodstuffs such as rice, sugar, oil, canned food, flour and other basic goods, he said.

 Deaths on Gaza beach

 Fallout continued from the deaths the day before of four cousins ages 9 to 11 who died in an Israeli military strike on a Gaza beach.

 The results of a preliminary investigation suggests the deaths were the result of a "a tragic misidentification of the target," Regev told CNN.

 "We didn't want to kill those four boys. That was not our intention," Regev said. "I'd even say the opposite is true. Had we known that that missile was aimed at four young men like that we would have not sent the missile."

 A Hamas official called the killings a "war crime."

 "Those children were not firing rockets, they were just playing," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zhuri told reporters Wednesday.

 Regev, however, said a legitimate Hamas target was nearby, highlighting what he called a "complex combat environment" in crowded Gaza City and surrounding areas.

 Israeli officials say militants often use mosques, schools and other crowded places to hide rockets and other weapons. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Optimists hoped today's humanitarian cease-fire might lead to a longer peace in Israel and Gaza, but that's not the case by a long shot. In fact, Israel just raised the stakes considerably by launching a ground offensive into Gaza, reports the BBC. A military statement said the goal was “establish a reality in which Israeli residents can live in safety and security without continuous indiscriminate terror," reports the New York Times. Troops were expected to focus on so-called "terror tunnels" used to infiltrate the country. It's not clear whether the ground offensive will be a quick strike or a longer one with the goal of taking control of Gaza. An Israeli defense official who speculated yesterday about such a move said that a takeover of Gaza wouldn't be too much of a challenge, but that any such mission would have to last "many months" in order to fully secure the area. Today's development comes after 10 days of back-and-forth bombing, notes CNN.


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Claiming Shakespeare authorship can be a perilous endeavor. In 1996, Donald Foster, a pioneer in computer-driven textual analysis, drew front-page headlines with his assertion that Shakespeare was the author of an obscure Elizabethan poem called “A Funeral Elegy,” only to quietly retract his argument six years later after analyses by Mr. Vickers and others linked it to a different author.

 This time, editors of some prestigious scholarly editions are betting that Mr. Bruster’s cautiously methodical arguments, piled on top of previous work by Mr. Vickers and others, will make the attribution stick.

 “We don’t have any absolute proof, but this is as close as you can get,” said Eric Rasmussen, a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, and an editor, with Jonathan Bate, of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s edition of the complete Shakespeare.

 “I think we can now say with some authority that, yes, this is Shakespeare,” Mr. Rasmussen said. “It has his fingerprints all over it.”

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 Mr. Rasmussen and Mr. Bate are including “The Spanish Tragedy” in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new edition of Shakespeare’s collaboratively authored plays, to be published in November. And Mr. Bruster plans to include the Additional Passages in his new edition of the Riverside Shakespeare (renamed the Bankside Shakespeare), coming in 2016.

 If embraced by the broader world of Shakespeareans, the Additional Passages would become the first largely undisputed new addition to the canon since Shakespeare’s contributions to “Edward III” — another play that some have attributed to Kyd — began appearing in scholarly editions in the mid-1990s.

 Acceptance is by no means assured. Three years ago, some scholars were skeptical when the Arden Shakespeare published “Double Falsehood,” an 18th-century play whose connection with a lost Shakespeare drama had long been debated, in its prestigious series.

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 Tiffany Stern, a professor of early modern drama at Oxford University and an advisory editor for the Arden Shakespeare, praised the empirical rigor of Mr. Bruster’s paper, but said that some new attributions were driven less by solid evidence than by publishers’ desire to offer “more Shakespeare” than their rivals.

 “The arguments for ‘The Spanish Tragedy’ are better than for most” putative Shakespeare collaborations, Ms. Stern said. “But I think we’re going a bit Shakespeare-attribution crazy and shoving a lot of stuff in that maybe shouldn’t be there.”

 Elizabethan theater was intensely collaborative, with playwrights often punching up old plays or working with other dramatists to cobble together new ones, in the manner of Hollywood script doctors. The 1602 Additional Passages to “The Spanish Tragedy,” inserted more than a decade after Kyd wrote the original, updated the bloody revenge play with a bit of psychological realism, which had become fashionable. (It is not known whether Kyd, who died in 1594, ever met Shakespeare.)

 The idea that Shakespeare may have written the Additional Passages — which include a “Hamlet”-like scene of a grief-maddened father discoursing on the death of his son — was first broached in 1833 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But that claim remained a distinctly minority position well into the 20th century, even as scholars began using sophisticated computer software to detect subtle linguistic patterns that seemed to link the passages to Shakespeare’s other work.

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 Mr. Bruster said he himself was a skeptic until he read Mr. Vickers’s 2012 article, which presented voluminous circumstantial historical evidence alongside linguistic patterns unearthed by software designed to uncover student plagiarism.

 “I had to rethink my entire position,” Mr. Bruster said. “His arguments based on literary history were just so strong.”

 Mr. Bruster was less persuaded by the linguistic parallels, which he calls merely “suggestive.” And so he turned to perhaps the most literal source of authority: Shakespeare’s own pen.

 Photo

 Scholars have long cited the idiosyncrasies of Shakespeare’s handwriting — surviving mainly in three densely scribbled pages held in the British Library that are widely attributed to Shakespeare — to understand oddities in the earliest printed versions of his plays. (In the 1604 quarto version of “Hamlet,” for example, Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, is called “Gertrad” — probably a reflection, Mr. Rasmussen said, of Shakespeare’s tendency to close up his u’s and drop his final e’s.)

 In his paper, Mr. Bruster identifies 24 broad spelling patterns — including shortened past tenses (like “blest” for “blessed”) and single medial consonants (like “sorow” instead of “sorrow”) — that occur both in the Additional Passages, for which no known manuscript survives, and the Shakespeare handwriting sample in the British Library. He also cites nine textual “corruptions” (like “creuie” instead of “creuic,” modernized as “crevice”) that he believes can be explained as misreadings of Shakespeare’s handwriting.

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 These irregularities, considered individually, are not necessarily unique to Shakespeare. But taken together, Mr. Bruster argues, they strongly suggest that the Additional Passages were set in type from pages written, in the most literal sense, by Shakespeare.

 “What I’m getting at is the DNA of Shakespeare’s words themselves, the way he formed those words with his pen on the page,” he said.

 A printer’s misreading, Mr. Bruster argues, may also explain a particularly clumsy and nongrammatical stretch in the Additional Passages. During a moving speech, the grieving father, Hieronimo, meditates on the nature of a father’s love for his son.

 The 1602 quarto renders it: “What is there yet in a sonne? He must be fed,/Be thaught to goe, and speake I, or yet./Why might not a man loue a Calfe as well?”

 But that baffling “I, or yet,” Mr. Bruster argues, is likely a misreading of “Ier” — an abbreviation indicating the line is spoken by Hieronimo, a name that in Shakespeare’s time was sometimes rendered as Ieronimo.

 The passage, Mr. Bruster argues, should really read (with modernized spelling): “What is there yet in a son?/He must be fed, be taught to go, and speak./Yet why might not a man love a calf as well?”

 Mr. Bruster once counted himself among the many scholars who have thought the passage in the quarto was simply too poorly written to be Shakespeare. “But once you realize that it’s Shakespeare’s handwriting that’s responsible for the misreading, it’s no longer a bad line,” Mr. Bruster said. “It’s actually a gorgeous passage.”

 Finding some of Shakespeare’s lines embedded in another writer’s plays may not carry the frisson of announcing the discovery of a previously unknown poem entirely by Shakespeare. But Mr. Bruster’s paper reflects current scholarly interest in Shakespeare as a playwright who frequently collaborated with others — including, Mr. Vickers has controversially argued, on plays we think of as coming solely from his own pen.

 “Shakespeare wasn’t a solitary genius, flying above everyone else,” Mr. Vickers said. “He was a working man of the theater. If his company needed a new play, he’d get together with someone else and get it done.” ||||| Aug. 13, 2013

 AUSTIN, Texas — For centuries, scholars have been searching for answers to a literary mystery: Who wrote the five additional passages in Thomas Kyd’s “The Spanish Tragedy”?

 Mounting arguments point to William Shakespeare, but English professor Douglas Bruster has recently found evidence confirming that the 325 additional lines are indeed the work of the Bard.

 According to Bruster’s textual analysis, published in the July online issue of Notes and Queries, the proof lies in Shakespeare’s trademark misspellings and the bad handwriting behind them.

 “This is the clinching evidence we need to admit the additional passages into the Shakespeare canon,” says Bruster. “It’s not every day we get to identify new writing by Shakespeare, so this is an exciting moment.”

 Bruster examined Shakespeare’s spelling habits in the manuscript pages of the 16th-century play “Sir Thomas More.” Using Shakespeare’s contributions as a guide, he identified 24 points of similarity between “Sir Thomas More” and “The Spanish Tragedy,” a play republished, with new material, at about the time of “Hamlet.”

 The findings reveal that Shakespeare’s spelling was both old-fashioned and idiosyncratic. For example, with words like “spotless” and “darkness” Shakespeare would use a single “s.” Past-tense words like “wrapped” and “blessed” he ended with a “t” (i.e., “wrapt,” “blest”). Also telling is his habit of spelling the same word in two different ways (i.e., “alley” spelled “allie” and “allye” in the same line).

 Shakespeare’s contributions to the revised version of Kyd’s play were first suspected in 1833 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the noted poet, philosopher and literary critic. Yet the cold case has remained unsolved owing to a number of awkward lines in the additions. Like a game of telephone, Shakespeare’s words got lost in translation, resulting in phrases that barely resemble the original, Bruster says.

 “One line in particular literally kept me up at night wondering what Shakespeare was doing,” Bruster says. “Then I realized that the copyist or printer had misread his handwriting. It turns out that the worst line in the additional passages wasn’t what Shakespeare wrote. Once you recognize what the line originally said, the beauty of his verse rises to the surface.”

 Watch Professor Douglas Bruster explain how he knew that a short section of a Thomas Kyd play, “The Spanish Tragedy,” was actually written by William Shakespeare. The scholar also reads the “new” work.

 For more information, contact: Jessica Sinn, College of Liberal Arts, 512-471-2404; Douglas Bruster, Department of English, 512-471-3635, bruster@mail.utexas.edu |||||

– It's been a nearly 200-year-long debate: Did William Shakespeare add 325 lines to Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy nearly a decade after Kyd's death? None other than Samuel Taylor Coleridge raised the question in 1833, and a 2012 computer analysis seemed to lend credence to the theory. Now, a University of Texas professor says the proof may be in the handwriting—and bad handwriting at that. In a paper to be published next month, Douglas Bruster compares the play's 1602 "Additional Passages" with a three-page handwriting sample believed to be the Bard's held at the British Library. What he found, per the New York Times and UT at Austin News: about two dozen similar spelling patterns (for instance, "sorow for "sorrow"; past-tense words that ended in "t", like "wrapt"; and one word spelled two ways, like "allie" and "allye" for "alley") and nine textual "corruptions" that he believes resulted from the printer misreading Shakespeare's hand. He also thinks an awkward passage—so seemingly poorly written that it has been cited as evidence the lines couldn't have been crafted by Shakespeare—is the result of another bad handwriting/printer error goof. Says Bruster, "This is the clinching evidence we need to admit the additional passages into the Shakespeare canon." The Times notes this would mark the first such addition since passages from Edward III (also attributed to Kyd) were included in scholarly editions in the mid-'90s. (Another fascinating recent study paints Shakespeare as a food hoarder.)


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– The way to increase test scores is not to give bonuses to teachers, say researchers at Vanderbilt University. A three-year study found that offers of bonuses as high as $15,000 did little to change results. The report leaves open the question of what will increase test scores, but it casts doubt on the notion of merit pay, one of the solutions being pushed by the Obama administration. “I think most people agree today that the current way in which we compensate teachers is broken," says the lead researcher. "But we don’t know what the better way is yet.” The American Federation of Teachers agrees with the study and says training is one of the key factors that needs to be improved. Story here and from AP here.

Teacher Bonuses Don’t Increase Test Scores, Study Says

 Written By Daniel Adair on Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

 A new three-year study released on Tuesday reveals that even significant bonuses to teachers for raising student test scores fails to yield significant results.

 The discovery, conducted by Vanderbilt University’s National Center on Performance Incentives in the metropolitan Nashville school system, compromises the view that merit pay for teachers is a viable method of increasing student performance in the classroom. The study examined about three hundred teachers of fifth to eighth-grade math teachers and the results their students received on the Tennessee standardized exams.

 Matthew Springer, lead researcher on the study, discusses the results: “I think most people agree today that the current way in which we compensate teachers is broken. But we don’t know what the better way is yet.”

 The results are a blow against the Obama administration’s new focus on linking teacher salary and tenure to their students’ performance. The Department of Education was critical of the study, claiming it “only looked at the narrow question of whether more pay motivates teachers to try harder,” whereas the goal of the DoE is to “change the culture of teaching,” only one part of which is rewarding high-performing teachers in difficult to staff schools.

 The American Federation of Teachers, on the other hand, praised the study, using it to emphasize their points that teachers need better training and more support administrators to better do their jobs. Merit pay is currently effectively illegal in many states, with only a handful of districts currently employing such a system. Part of the Obama administration’s goal with its “Race to the Top” grant competition is to get more states to pass merit pay laws.

 Other stories that readers found helpful: ||||| Offering big bonuses to teachers failed to raise students' test scores in a three-year study released Tuesday that calls into question the Obama administration's push for merit pay to improve education.

 The study, conducted in the metropolitan Nashville school system by Vanderbilt University's National Center on Performance Incentives, was described by the researchers as the nation's first scientifically rigorous look at merit pay for teachers.

 It found that students whose teachers were offered bonuses of up to $15,000 a year for improved test scores registered the same gains on standardized exams as those whose teachers were given no such incentives.

 "I think most people agree today that the current way in which we compensate teachers is broken," said Matthew Springer, executive director of the Vanderbilt center and lead researcher on the study. "But we don't know what the better way is yet."

 The study comes as the Obama administration encourages school systems to link teacher pay and tenure to how students perform on tests and other measures of achievement.

 The researchers looked at fifth- through eighth-grade math teachers from 2007 to 2009. A group of about 300 teachers started out in the study; half were eligible for the bonuses, the other half were not.

 The bonuses were given out based on improvements in scores on Tennessee's standardized exam, which is used by the state as part of the federal No Child Left Behind requirements.

 Springer was quick to point out that his study looked only at individual bonuses, not extra pay doled out to teams of teachers or an entire school. He said more research is needed.

 "Some people were initially disappointed when they saw the results, but quickly turned around and said, 'Well, at least we finally have an answer,'" he said. "It means pay can't do it alone."

 The U.S. Education Department called the study too narrowly focused.

 "It only looked at the narrow question of whether more pay motivates teachers to try harder," said spokeswoman Sandra Abrevaya. "What we are trying to do is change the culture of teaching by giving all educators the feedback they need to get better while rewarding and incentivizing the best to teach in high-need schools, hard-to-staff subjects."

 The American Federation of Teachers praised the study and argued that teachers need other resources, including better training and more supportive administrators.

 "Merit pay is not the panacea that some would like it to be. There are no quick fixes in education," said union president Randi Weingarten. "Providing individual bonuses for teachers standing alone does not work."

 Teachers unions have historically opposed merit pay, arguing that test scores are not an accurate measure of student achievement, that financial rewards could pit teachers against each other, and that administrators could use bonuses to reward favorites and punish others.

 Jennifer Conboy, a high school social studies teacher in Miami, called merit pay a "baseless fad."

 "Merit pay is an excuse to resist the attempt of teachers to get fair pay in the first place," the 37-year-old Conboy said. "On a personal level, merit pay would do nothing to me. I took this job because I think education is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and if I cared about democracy _ which I do _ then I had a responsibility to do whatever I could to strengthen education."

 Only a few schools and districts across the country have merit pay, and in some states the idea is effectively illegal. The Obama White House hoped to encourage more states to pass merit pay laws with its $4.35 billion "Race to the Top" grant competition.

 Some states tried to enact merit bonuses for teachers, but most, like Georgia, were unable to get the necessary laws passed. Colorado passed a controversial law that ties teacher pay to student performance and allows the state to strip tenure from low-performing instructors, but the state did not win the Race to the Top grant money it was counting on to help carry out the law.

 Only about half of the 300 teachers originally in the Nashville study were left at the end of the three years because some retired, moved to other schools or stopped teaching math. About 40 teachers got bonuses each year. Overall, the researchers said, test scores rose modestly for both groups of students during the three-year study, suggesting that the financial incentives made no difference.

 "It's not enough to say, 'I'll pay you more if you do better.' You've got to help people know how to do better," said Amy Wilkins, vice president of the Education Trust, a Washington think tank. "Absolutely we should reward them once they do better, but to think merit pay alone will get them there is insane."

 (This version CORRECTS amount of Race to the Top program.) |||||


– A cool, spaceship-like catamaran dropped anchor in Monaco yesterday after completing the first-ever round-the-world trip by a solar-powered vessel, the LA Times reports. The MS Turanor PlanetSolar left Monaco in September of 2010 with the goal of showing "that we have the technologies as well as the knowledge to become sustainable and safeguard our blue planet," said Raphael Domjan, a Swiss engineer who dreamed up the project. Now, he might just rent it out as the world's biggest solar-powered battery. Other uses are being discussed: "We are considering renting out the boat for scientific or commercial uses or even selling it," says Immo Stroeher, Domjan's partner on the project. "We are open for ideas and in talks with interested parties," who might use the vessel "as a 'green' luxury yacht." No plans are brewing to mass-produce the PlanetSolar—it cost $12.5 million—but the project jibes with current thinking in the shipping industry, which is looking for ways to cut back on high fuel costs, notes the New York Times.

Expand this summary.

The solar-powered MS Turanor PlanetSolar crosses the finish line of its trip around the world at the Hercule Harbor in Monaco. (Laurent Gillieron / Associated Press / )

 In the spring of 2004 Raphael Domjan, a Swiss electrical engineer, conceived of a borderline insane idea -- to travel around the world aboard a ship powered entirely by solar energy.

 It would be an adventure and a statement. If he could do it, he would prove to the world that there are other alternatives to powering sea travel besides fossil fuels and wind. It would also demonstrate just what solar power is capable of.

 In 2008 he formed a partnership with German entrepreneur Immo Stroeher, who helped provide the funds to make this idea possible.

 And now, eight years later, Domjan's dream is a reality: On Friday, the solar-powered MS Turanor PlanetSolar catamaran pulled into port in Monaco after completing a 37,294-mile journey around the world.

 "We have shown that we have the technologies as well as the knowledge to become sustainable and safeguard our blue planet," Domjan said in a statement.

 The ship, designed by New Zealander Craig Loomes, is made of a durable lightweight carbon material and is covered with 38,000 solar cells that feed power to six blocks of lithium-ion batteries.

 "Each new sunrise provides the catamaran with the light needed to continue its journey," the PlanetSolar team wrote on its website.

 It took the 115-foot boat 584 days -- roughly 19 month -- to make it all around the world. That is admittedly not a super-fast pace.

 But there were stops along the way to promote solar power and even an encounter with pirates. There was also some waiting for the sun to come up to power those lithium batteries.

 Now that the Domjan has completed his mission, he and the team at PlanetSolar will have to figure out what do with the ship.

 "We are considering renting out the boat for scientific or commercial uses or even selling it," Stroeher told Wired. "We are open for ideas and in talks with interested parties -- from the use as a 'green' luxury yacht to scientific usages and the utilization as the world’s largest mobile solar power battery, everything is possible."

 Go green!

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 On Friday, if all goes well, a sleek spaceship-like catamaran will glide into Hercule Harbor in Monaco after a remarkable 19-month journey around the globe.

 Since it set sail from Monaco in September 2010, the Turanor PlanetSolar, the world’s largest solar-powered boat has crossed the Atlantic and the Pacific, passed through the Panama and Suez canals and stopped in Miami; Cancún, Mexico; Brisbane, Australia; Singapore; Abu Dhabi and many places in between.

 At 2.15 p.m. local time, it is expected to cross the official finish line, having proved that solar energy can power a boat all the way around the world.

 PlanetSolar is the brainchild of Raphaël Domjan, who is Swiss and a former ambulance driver and mountain guide. He enlisted enough sponsors to finance the creation of the surreal vessel. The goal, he said in a telephone interview this week from aboard the ship, was to spread the message that solar power can be harnessed for far more than it is doing now.

 As I wrote not long after the PlanetSolar stopped in Hong Kong, where I am based, the boat was conceived as a test concept rather than something to be replicated for wide commercial use. Still, the voyage dovetails with some rethinking in the shipping industry about hull and engine designs that improve fuel efficiency. And some operators are moving toward having their ships travel more slowly so that they guzzle less fuel.

 Once the arrival festivities are over, Mr. Domjan plans to take some time off at home in Switzerland.

 But then it’s back to work. The plan is to have a book and a film documentary ready by Sept. 27, two years to the day after the PlanetSolar set off from Monaco on its world trip.

 Note: the arrival ceremonies, which will include a light show powered by the energy stored in the craft’s batteries, will be viewable at the PlanetSolar Web site, which also has a wealth of detail about the ship and its journey. |||||


The mother of a Shelby County wife and mother who was found partially-nude and dead outside of her home one week ago today has launched an online fundraising campaign to help with a funeral for Kathleen Dawn "Kat"West.

 The body of the 42-year-old Calera woman, who had subscription-only website where she went by the name Kitty Kat West, was discovered about 5 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 13, in the 100 block of Green Wood Circle. Calera Police Chief Sean Lemley said the case is being treated as a homicide but has not revealed the cause of death, citing the ongoing investigation. No arrests have been made, and police have not indicated whether they believe her online activities may have played a role in her death.

 Family members have not responded to requests for interviews, and the words of her mother, Nancy Martin, are the first public statement from family. This is what she wrote on Saturday:

 "It seems so impossible for the extreme sadness and grief we feel as the loss of our beautiful daughter Kat to ever diminish or decease however, the Lord is our hope and our salvation, and he can turn our mourning into comfort. God wants to encourage us and relieve our suffering if we will just go to him at all times. And his word is powerful enough to bring healing and solace even during our darkest hours.

 My family asks for your prayers and support in our time of loss. My beautiful daughter Kat was not just my daughter but a cherished wife to Jeff, as well as a loving mother to their daughter. So much negativity is out there, but with God all I see and hear is the goodness of my Kat. My family and I ask for help in the services to lay our daughter to rest with the good Lord, to where she will be guiding her daughter and husband through this. If you're not able to make a donation we ask for prayers."

 West and her husband, an unsworn Birmingham Southern College campus police officer, kept to themselves, neighbors said. They lived at the home, which they built in 2015, with their 12-year-old daughter. Kat West was often seen mowing their lawn, neighbors said, and was known to have a fascination with Marilyn Monroe.

 Kat West touted herself on social media as a stay-at-home mom but also had a subscription-only website, where she went by the name Kitty Kat West. Her Twitter and Instagram accounts, also under the name of Kitty Kat West, featured revealing photos of West, and directed viewers to her paid adult website, which cost $15.99 per subscription.

 Neighbors said they didn't hear any commotion Friday night or Saturday morning at the West home. One man, who asked that his name not be used, said his daughter made the gruesome discovery Saturday morning when she was heading to work

 She saw the woman in the roadway and went back home to get her father. He said West was face down, partially in the street and partially in the grass of the across-the-street neighbor's yard. He touched her back to see if she was breathing, and she was not, he said.

 The witness said West was wearing only a sports bra, and that she was bleeding from the head. A cell phone was nearby and a green liquor bottle was on top of it, as if it had been placed there, he said. West's husband was briefly on the scene, and then neighbors called 911. Police have not confirmed that account.

 The slaying shocked the normally-tranquil neighborhood, the community and beyond. Calera is a city with few violent crimes, and averages only about one homicide a year.

 Friends and family have been tight-lipped on Kat West's death. She was a member of a Facebook group called The Cougar Club, which emphasized that it is not a dating site, but rather a place to "spread the word that a Cougar is a beautiful, intelligent, classy older woman who men of all ages find attractive."

 The administrator for that page declined a request for an interview but sent AL.com this statement: "We're heartbroken to hear that such a beautiful, sweet young woman had her life ended so suddenly. Although we never spoke with her, any correspondence with her was always pleasant and professional. We will miss her and pray for her family and friends." ||||| Kathleen Dawn West, a 42-year-old mom who lived in Calera, Alabama, was found dead in the street near her home last week. Police, who have classified her death as a homicide, are offering no further details at this time. But that hasn’t stopped swarms of amateur sleuths on Facebook from searching through her digital dirty laundry for clues—or major news outlets from following their lead, baselessly suggesting that her death might have something to do with “risque photos” she posted online.

 Two private Facebook groups created to examine West’s death, Murder of Kat West Discussion Group (Official) and Kat West Murder Discussion, have over 3,000 members combined. The discussions offer a litany of conspiracy theories about what happened to West, with posts featuring local hearsay, screenshots of her and her family’s social media accounts, and even a bloody photo of the street where she died.

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 The Facebook users’ initial interest in West was spurred by her apparent social media accounts, which linked to a subscription-only website promising adult modeling photos. Since then, topics in the Facebook groups have come to include a wide range of conjecture, clues and updates from both locals and out-of-state true crime fanatics. Much of this analysis, however, is ultimately spun from the few threads the late West left online when she died.

 Administrators encourage members to share their own guesses about what happened, with West’s online “lifestyle” figuring prominently in their conclusions. One popular (completely unsubstantiated) theory posits that a “deranged stalker” who subscribed to West’s website killed her. Other users point to her husband as a more likely culprit. And others still combine various existing theories to create their own.

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 One member suggested West’s (proposed) stalker murdered her because they knew her husband was out hunting. Another posted a photo from West’s husband’s Instagram account of a green liquor bottle—similar to one described by a witness as near the crime scene. Another user expressed skepticism about the hypothesis that West was murdered during a fight with her husband, noting that her body was found across the street from their home.

 The overriding tone of these discussions is a mixture of lurid interest and small-town hysteria, with users desperate for clues to inspire or reinforce their own unproven theories. As Sophie Kleeman wrote in recent story about local Facebook groups for The Outline, “while people may join these groups for ‘community’ or hyperlocal information, they often stay for the drama.”

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 “Our admins are a group of friends who’ve always been interested in true crime and an Alabama local posted the little blurb from her paper that did little more than ID her body,” Ashley, an admin of one of the Facebook groups and who asked to only be identified by her first name, told Gizmodo over Messenger. “As soon as we searched for her profile, we saw that she was gorgeous, young, and had this sort of salacious double life that she seemed to live pretty openly, and wondered if the fact that she didn’t separate the two could have been an aid or catalyst in her death. It was just odd to see so much out there wide open, yet the local reporters basically said nothing. We were all fascinated and we thought that others might be as well.”

 Melissa MacKinnon, also an admin for one of the Facebook groups, told Gizmodo over Messenger that the admins are involved in a larger group, True Crime Society, a private club for the “crime-obsessed” that has nearly 2,000 members. MacKinnon said that they create separate, dedicated pages for “something that looks like it could turn into something bigger,” noting that West’s case “struck us because of her line of side work, the fact that nobody seemed to hear anything that night and the fact that no news media or police were talking about it at all.”

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 But West’s case did receive the usual, non-lurid coverage by local outlets in the immediate aftermath of her death. After the fanatical Facebook groups were created, however, AL.com published a story covering the more salacious details of West’s online presence and the existence of the groups. And on Friday, the Associated Press ran an article with even more information about West’s online life and the Facebook groups, which was syndicated by The Washington Post and The New York Times.

 Bearing the headline “Killing of Small-Town Online Exhibitionist Shocks Community,” the AP story specifies the monthly subscription price for West’s “sexier images” site and claims police “are now faced with a question: Did West’s online activities play a role in her death?” But no publicly disclosed evidence or statements from authorities have connected West’s social media activities to her killing in any way. Asked for comment, the Calera Police Department provided Gizmodo with a public information form on West’s case, saying, “this is the only information we have to release at this time.” The report doesn’t include any information linking the her death to her internet presence, nor does it identify a suspect. At this point, attributing West’s homicide to provocative photos she shared online is pure conjecture at best, and victim shaming at worst.

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 “I think her lifestyle is part of who she is,” an admin of one of the groups who asked to speak anonymously said over Messenger. “You project to social media what you want known about yourself. As long as someone isn’t saying she deserved to die because of the lifestyle she led, or shaming her because of them, we don’t shy away from them.” The admin added that victim shaming isn’t permitted in the Facebook groups.

 It’s clear that these private Facebook groups offer members with similar interests a space to freely entertain their most ludicrous ideas. With West’s case, crime-obsessed users can feed off each other’s fanaticism, unimpeded by the scrutiny of outside observers. (For the most part, at least: Multiple posts by users questioning the substance of the “discussion” show their authors are no longer members.) Such groups make Facebook’s new focus on “building community” seem deeply misguided. In a bubble, any suggestive detail is easily mistaken for absolute proof.

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 As we know, internet investigations like these can lead to serious, even violent, consequences in real life. “Pizzagate,” the conspiracy theory that John Podesta and Hillary Clinton were running a child-trafficking ring out of a Washington DC pizzeria, was chiefly driven by “citizen investigators” on 4chan and other websites. In the end, it inspired a 28-year-old North Carolina man to travel to the pizza parlor and fire a rifle inside the restaurant. And after the Boston marathon bombing, internet sleuths tried to identify the bombers by inspecting photos of the crowd. They did—incorrectly—and innocent men unconnected to the attack were harassed, interrogated by reporters, and even ended up on the cover of The New York Post.

 In addition to the dangers posed by promoting rumors and misidentifying suspects, these amateur investigations can directly interfere with actual police inquiries. According to the Shelby County Reporter, police claimed on Friday that “much of the information and speculation” shared by media outlets and on social media “has hindered their investigation” into West’s death.

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 “Everything is a false theory until the case is solved,” MacKinnon assured Gizmodo. “We like to speculate and theorize and discuss those theories and speculations. We make it clear that they are only speculations and that they are not facts.”

 We have reached out to the Associated Press for comment and will update this story if and when they respond. ||||| This Thursday, Jan. 18, 2018 photo, shows the home of homicide victim Kathleen Dawn West in Calera, Ala. West identified herself as an exhibitionist on a website offering adult photos. She was found dead... (Associated Press)

 This Thursday, Jan. 18, 2018 photo, shows the home of homicide victim Kathleen Dawn West in Calera, Ala. West identified herself as an exhibitionist on a website offering adult photos. She was found dead outside the house, and no arrests have been made. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves) (Associated Press)

 This Thursday, Jan. 18, 2018 photo, shows the home of homicide victim Kathleen Dawn West in Calera, Ala. West identified herself as an exhibitionist on a website offering adult photos. She was found dead outside the house, and no arrests have been made. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves) (Associated Press) This Thursday, Jan. 18, 2018 photo, shows the home of homicide victim Kathleen Dawn West in Calera, Ala. West identified herself as an exhibitionist on a website offering adult photos. She was found dead... (Associated Press)

 CALERA, Ala. (AP) — Kathleen Dawn West described herself as a full-time wife and mom on Facebook but lived another life on other social media platforms, calling herself an exhibitionist and posting risque photos with a chance for subscribers to see sexier images for $15.99 a month.

 West, 42, was found dead outside her home near Birmingham, and authorities are now faced with a question: Did West's online activities play a role in her death?

 Police have classified West's death as a homicide, but they haven't said how she died. What appears to be the remainder of a blood stain darkens the asphalt across the street from the two-story brick home she shared with her husband and middle school-age daughter.

 No charges had been filed by Friday, six days after she died. But the mysterious nature of West's death — she was found dead early Saturday in the quiet bedroom community of Calera, a town of 14,000 people about 35 miles south of Birmingham — has people buzzing.

 At least two Facebook groups with more than 2,200 members total have been created to discuss the case, and neighbors are concerned in West's subdivision, where homes are still under construction.

 "It's shocking that it happened so close to home, so all you can do is worry and think about your family, and that's all I've been doing," Xavier Lee, who lives two door down, told WIAT-TV.

 Word of West's death was met with sadness at the gym where she worked out until dropping her membership a few months ago.

 "She'd come in, do her thing and leave. She kind of kept to herself," said Austin Lockhart, owner of Fit 24 Calera. "She'd wave and smile. She was a nice lady."

 On Facebook, West posted lots of selfies and commenters often mentioned her attractiveness. But there were also photos of her wedding to longtime husband William Jeffrey West and images of West and her daughter playing in the snow last month.

 But West, a Florida native with blonde hair and a resemblance to Marilyn Monroe, seemed like a different person on other online accounts.

 With a personal description that included "exhibitionist," West had a private Instagram account with nearly 52,000 followers that linked to a paid site that featured adult content and "naughty fun." Some of the images were included on a site for "mature hotties."

 Similar content was posted on Twitter, where West's presence began March 2016.

 Initially, West just tweeted links to a site where she sold clothing items, including dresses, coats, shoes and kid's clothing. The feed took a sharp turn Aug. 11, when she tweeted: "Happy Frisky Friday - Let's get this party started," with a link to the pay-per-view site. The description included a link to a "wish list" page where viewers could purchase lingerie for her.

 The posts continued until the morning before her death, when West tweeted a link to sell a women's wool jacket. A few days earlier, she had posted a lingerie photo showing her bare buttocks that linked to her adult site.

 In Calera, neighbors don't know what to think about West's slaying.

 "This child doesn't have their mother anymore. Don't know why, don't know what happened, that led up to the incident, but to wake up to that news, it makes you think," Lee said.

 Federal court records show West and her husband filed for bankruptcy in 2007 while living in Cartersville, Georgia, but the case appeared to be handled routinely and closed within months. Tax records indicate they moved into the home in Calera in 2015. It was valued at $169,000 last year. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Kathleen Dawn West described herself as a full-time wife and mom on Facebook but lived another life on other social media platforms, calling herself an exhibitionist and posting risque photos with a chance for subscribers to see sexier images for $15.99 a month. The 42-year-old's partially nude body was found dead outside her Alabama home, and authorities are now faced with a question: Did West's online activities play a role in her death? Police have classified West's death as a homicide, but they haven't said how she died. No charges had been filed by Friday, six days after she died. But the mysterious nature of West's death—she was found dead early Jan. 13 in the quiet bedroom community of Calera, a town of 14,000 people about 35 miles south of Birmingham—has people buzzing. At least two Facebook groups with more than 2,200 members total have been created to discuss the case (Gizmodo digs into their theories). West posted photos of her husband and daughter on her own Facebook account, but seemed like a different person on other online accounts, reports the AP. With a personal description that included "exhibitionist," West had a private Instagram account under the name Kitty Kat West, reports Al.com, with nearly 52,000 followers that linked to a paid site that featured adult content and "naughty fun." Some of the images were included on a site for "mature hotties." Initially, West just tweeted links to a site where she sold clothing items, including dresses, coats, shoes, and kid's clothing. The feed took a sharp turn Aug. 11, when she tweeted: "Happy Frisky Friday - Let's get this party started," with a link to the pay-per-view site. The posts continued until the morning before her death. The AP has more.