At least 60 people have been killed in a suspected US air raid in northern Afghanistan, government sources say.

Two petrol lorries were hit by the air attack in Kunduz province, Al Jazeera learnt on Friday.

James Bays, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Kabul, said members of the Taliban reportedly hijacked the lorries, travelling from Tajikistan and took them to the village of Aliabad.

“The Taliban there said ‘Help yourself’ to the village. A large crowd appeared and shortly [afterwards] there was an air strike,” Bays said.

“Afghan government and intelligence sources said that a large number of people had been killed,” he said.

An Al Jazeera cameraman in Kunduz province said that he had seen at least 15 injured people in a local hospital, some with extreme burns.

“If these reports are confirmed, this will be a definite blow to General [Stanley] McChrystal, the US army commander in Afghanistan, who has urged US forces to avoid civilian causalities where at all possible,” Bays said.

Source: Aljazeera

what

job title, keywords

where

city, state, zip

jobs by

The confrontation came a day after thousands of Han Chinese took to the streets in Urumqi, regional capital of Xinjiang province, protesting that they were the targets of mysterious attacks with syringes and that authorities had been too slow in punishing Uighur rioters involved in violence on July 5.

The flare-up showed the region remains volatile despite a security crackdown.

“They have no right to block off the road like this. These Uighurs have been stabbing us with needles,” one of the men trying to push through the barriers, sealing off a Uighur neighborhood, told Reuters.

“We need to take care of the problem.”

Hundreds of police then moved in to disperse the crowd, which scattered into nearby streets.

Uighurs are a Muslim Turkic people who have long formed the area’s majority.

(Reporting by Lucy Hornby; Writing by Chris Buckley; Editing by Robert Birsel)

what

job title, keywords

where

city, state, zip

jobs by

MEAD GRUVER, Associated Press Writer

As for the other half, no one knows.

District-by-district and school-by-school results from this year’s Proficiency Assessments for Wyoming Students, or PAWS test, have been out for nearly a month. But state and local officials have yet to compile a complete set of scores for the Wyoming Virtual School.

Wyoming Virtual School students essentially are home-schooled with some guidance from public school teachers. The partly online curriculum is provided by a private company, Herndon, Va.-based K12 Inc.

Campbell County School District 1 in Gillette launched the K-6 school in 2006 and enrolled 76 students last year.

This was the first year more than a handful of students in the virtual school took the assessment test, an annual, statewide exam for students in grades 3-8 and 11. The virtual school students took the test in classrooms, not at home.

The available results — the combined scores of about 30 students in Campbell County — show less-than-stellar performance:

— Fifty percent of Wyoming Virtual School students in grades 3-6 scored in either the “proficient” range or “advanced” range in math. The statewide average for grades 3-6 was 76 percent.

— In reading, 41 percent of Wyoming Virtual School students tested in the proficient range or above. The statewide average was 64 percent.

— In writing, 22 percent of Wyoming Virtual School students scored in the proficient range or higher. The statewide average in writing was 53 percent.

“We’re not where we want to be. We’ll continue to work to improve and to raise those numbers in the future,” said Alex Ayers, the district’s assistant superintendent of curriculum and assessment.

K12 Inc. said it didn’t have enough information about the test scores to comment.

While the Campbell County School District compiled test scores for virtual school students who live in Campbell County, the district has yet to obtain scores from students elsewhere in the state.

About half of the virtual school’s students last school year lived in 10 other counties. The reason the Campbell County district doesn’t have those scores is the state Department of Education combined them with scores at brick-and-mortar elementary schools — the schools those students would be attending if they weren’t enrolled at the virtual school.

The principal of the virtual school, Roger Larsen, said he’s been trying to collect the rest of his students’ scores from other districts. He called the situation frustrating.

“The scores get scattered around the state, and just trying to gather them up we’ve found much more difficult than anticipated,” Larsen said.

The department eventually should be able to compile a complete set of scores for the Wyoming Virtual School, said Mary Kay Hill, the department’s director of administration.

“As we move along, you bet. We will be building a system that will allow us to pull up that data and be able to report, statewide, how those kids are doing,” she said.

(© 2009 The Associated Press.

what

job title, keywords

where

city, state, zip

jobs by