Issue 6 Volume Five KING’S EYE ON THE WORLD 00 16th January 2015 Editors: Jack Dobson Alex Forrester Journalists: Harry Smith Thomas Wilson Kris Bennett Adam Bartlett Rhys Schofield Áron Varbiro CURRENT AFFAIRS ENRICHMENT………………READ ALL ABOUT IT! Michael S J Murphy This is the first issue of Lent Term for the King’s Eye on the Michael Politsos World . We are very excited to be able to invite a new group Gregor Montgomery of journalists and editors to the team. Most of our participants are new to this Enrichment activity, but every journalist is raring to go. To preview the range of articles in this issue, we have stories from Wilfried Bony’s transfer to Manchester City, to the “Lizard Squad” hack on Microsoft and Sony, to the spread of olive disease in Europe. We hope that you enjoy this publication! Terror plan to kill Belgian police Michael Murphy SHCI The police stopped suspected terrorists in the city of Verviers on Thursday night. The officers killed two terrorists and wounded and arrested a third. Like the killers in Paris a week ago, the three suspects were clothed all in black and they were carrying duffel bags outside a former bakery which might have been their hideout. Information to the police was given by a Western intelligence source. The whole town of Verviers heard the explosions and the gunfight between the police and the terrorists as they immediately opened fire once the raid had started. With 56,000 citizens the small town lies in Eastern Belgium, the last stop before open fields and forest. Like many European towns, Verviers is densely populated and people live close together. The police raid turned up four Kalashnikovs, handguns, bomb-making materials and police uniforms. A Kalashnikov is a rifle that can be likened to a stereotypical AK-47. Due to this increased terror level, as of 7:55 AM, Belgium is stationing 150 troops on standby for deployment across the country. On Friday a Western intelligence official warned of Islamic sleeper cells that may be activating across Europe. A sleeper cell is a person or a group of people that remain dormant in a community until activated, normally by some kind of signal. After this tip off, police were sent to twelve locations to raid them. All twelve suspects on their list were arrested in various cities including the capital; Brussels. Officer Van der Sypt said “There does not appear to be any connection between the shootings in Paris and the terror plans in Belgium.” The current potential of new attacks could involve up to 20 more sleeper cells of between 120 and 180 people ready to strike in European countries such as “Germany, Belgium, France and the Netherlands” said an intelligence source on condition of anonymity. Overall, in Belgium, the police are in danger of terrorist attacks and due to the terror level across the country, 150 troops are on standby for deployment in case the situation develops. Also, an anonymous intelligence official warned Europe of Islamic sleeper cells that could be activated, as a result, in Belgium police raided twelve locations and arrested twelve people in various cities. Crop disease heavily damages yields Adam Bartlett 3RA A rapidly developing disease affecting several crops including citrus, almond, peach and principally olives has been reported in the European Union. It was first spotted in southern Italy, a prominent olive producing area, but more recently cases have been seen in North and South America. If the disease infects plants, it quickly kills them, and this has already had an effect on olive production in the Puglia region. Many would at first assume that this is a minor and inconsequential pathogen, yet it could hugely reduce yields of fruit. Once the disease is ingrained it would also be very expensive to stop it from spreading any further. We can already see that this disease is being taken very seriously as in some areas bio security measures were taken; infected plants were contained and completely separated from any other crops. This pathogen is very difficult to deal with due to two key factors. The first being that it spreads extremely quickly and can easily cross countries; the second being that plants show no symptoms of being infected for a while after they first acquire the disease. The first issue is clearly shown in the fact that after five years, Brazil, which at the start of this period had only a couple of infected plants, had developed 2 million hosts of the pathogen. The reason for this rapid advancement is the multitude of insects that this disease uses as vectors, a way for a disease to be transmitted through a non-host source. Any insect which feeds off of the xylem tubes in a plant is thought to be able to be a vector, making for literally thousands of different methods for this infection to spread huge distances, even across seas. The second issue makes it very hard to diagnose the illness in plants, and whole fields of crops are likely to be infected before anyone even realises that one has an ailment. Of course, we must keep this disease in perspective; the likelihood of awful economic trouble or any deaths being caused by the reduction of these crops is very slim, but what I think is very interesting about this particular pathogen is its implications if it could infect humans. Imagine if the Ebola virus was spread through any blood feeding insect, could not be detected for weeks after people first acquire it and killed most victims. Bearing in mind how quickly diseases can evolve, I honestly do not think that my scenario is too far from possible. Overall I would say on this matter that the world is too complacent Right: A relatively small olive tree plantation situated in southern Europe. about how disease could bring the human race to its knees, and considering the recent information on “superbugs” I believe we are far from perfect in our handling of infection. Schools could face double inspections to ensure reliability Gregor Montgomery ShC A senior Ofsted official admitted that most Ofsted inspectors were relying on the performance data too much and weren’t really using their own judgement. Some schools could now be visited twice by different Ofsted inspectors to test the reliability of findings so that Ofsted have a better understanding of whether what the first inspector finds is the same as the second. If this new method is proven to bring more accurate results than the previous it could be in use completely by September so that all schools have more accurate test results. This is a method which, if it is helpful and more accurate, could be introduced in a new framework for “good schools” in September Teaching unions are suggesting that the reliability of tests by the inspectors at Ofsted had always been “dogged” by questions and that this test may stop some questions about Ofsted’s reliability. A week ago Sean Harford, Ofsted’s national director for schools, admitted that not enough had been done to prove the reliability of findings. In response to a critical blog by Tom Sherrington, a Headmaster, Mr Harford admitted that at the moment Ofsted does not currently ensure “directly that different inspectors in the school on the same day would give the same judgement”. In his response Mr Harford also said that some inspectors were using data as a “safety net” rather than making a professional judgement. This term, pilot inspections will be made for the new framework which will include the new methods of testing the reliability of findings. Ofsted now say that this could include two different inspections on the same day which then compare judgements to come up with a group judgement. "There will be a small number of pilots this term to investigate whether two inspectors come up with the same conclusions," a spokeswoman told BBC News. The same spokeswoman also said that the new tests, even if they proved helpful, probably wouldn’t be used in the shorter inspections from September but may instead be an occasional feature as part of the quality assurance process". Kevin Courtney, Deputy General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, called for "root and branch reform" of school accountability in England, including the abolition of Ofsted. He said, ”The suggestion that inspecting schools twice will resolve the flaws in the current system is nonsense... In effect, this is merely punishing schools for Ofsted's failings." Mary Bousted, General Secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said that questions about its reliability had “dogged” Ofsted since it was set up in 1992. She also said "It is incomprehensible that Ofsted has waited 23 years to investigate whether or not its judgements are reliable when the consequences for schools are so devastating if they are judged to be poor.” Furthermore, “We note that Ofsted, however, is not opening itself up to external evaluation of the reliability trials” she even said” If Ofsted has robust quality assurance, why is it not opening itself up to external scrutiny?” Mr Harford responded to this by saying that the quality of its inspection judgements was of utmost importance to Ofsted. He also said that “We go to great lengths, through our existing quality assurance process to ensure that inspectors make judgements which are rigorously based on the evidence gathered.” Equally, “It is frustrating that our attempts to enter a genuine debate about how we might improve still further in our approach are being used to score cheap points about Ofsted's work." The Ofsted spokeswoman said that the quality of their inspection assurance measures included site visits by senior inspectors to test evidence, data analysis and the reading of all inspection reports to ensure the text matched the overall grade.