taking advantage of
the evening cool after the heat of the day. Such
indiscriminate
attacks against Shia areas have been a feature of the recent violence apparently aimed at
provoking
a sectarian reaction against Sunnis.
The education board in the US state of Texas is due to vote on proposed changes to the school curriculum which critics say will politicize teaching. Religious Republicans on the board had been accused of trying to force their right-wing views into textbooks. But they say they are trying to correct an existing liberal bias. James Read reports.
The Texas Education Board has become the latest battleground in the ideological struggle between liberals and conservatives.
The proposals being debated include teaching that the United Nations could be a threat to American freedom and that the Founding Fathers may not have intended a complete separation of church and state.
They could also
revise
the way slavery and the civil rights movement that covered. The board's decisions won't just affect how nearly five million students in Texas are taught, they'll also set a
template
for textbooks that could be used across the entire United States.
The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has arrived in China where she is expected to try to persuade the government to take a more critical approach to North Korea for the sinking of a South Korean warship. Earlier, she said the evidence that the ship had been struck by a North Korean torpedo was