Thousands of teachers are preparing to go on strike and stage a protest in Whitehall in March over real-terms cuts to funding for sixth-form colleges. The National Union of Teachers (NUT) has sent an indicative strike ballot to its 4,000 members at 93 sixth-form colleges in England and Wales which are estimated to have lost about £100m since 2010. Should ...

 A heavily pregnant Labour MP was allegedly accused of “bringing down the whole of womankind” and “playing the pregnancy card” after she broke the rules of the Commons by leaving a debate to eat. According to the Evening Standard Tulip Siddiq was allegedly told by Eleanor Laing, the Deputy Speaker of the Commons, that she had “made women look bad” ...

The meeting comes after Barack Obama’s call in his address on December 6 for government and technology community to work together to combat terrorism and counter violent extremism online. (AFP Photo) Washington:  Top officials of the Obama administration have met leading Internet companies in Silicon Valley in an effort to build cooperation with them in combating online radicalisation and recruitment ...

The front-runners for the 2016 US presidential elections from the Democratic and Republican parties, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, would be neck-to-neck if it came to a hypothetical battle for the White House between the two, a new survey says. Friday’s survey conducted by Reuters and Ipsos, looked at a hypothetical situation where these two candidates lock horns in the ...

The Israeli military says two Palestinians were shot dead after trying to stab soldiers at a West Bank checkpoint. Saturday’s incident is the latest in more than three months of near-daily Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers that have killed 21 people, mostly in stabbings, shootings and car-ramming assaults. At least 137 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire. ...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Pathankot on Saturday morning to take stock of the situation in the aftermath of the terror attack at the air base last Saturday. He is likely to conduct an aerial survey of Punjab’s border areas and address the soldiers at the air force base. Security had been tightened ahead of the PM’s visit in ...

Taking turns to respond to each other is a key part of conversation and babies learn the technique at around six months of age, long before infants know much about language, says a new study. The speed of response white taking turns – about 200 milliseconds on average, about the same time as it takes to blink — is astonishing ...

People with asthma may be at increased risk of shingles, a common form of painful skin rash caused by the varicella zoster virus, says a new study. “The effect of asthma on the risk of infection or immune dysfunction might very well go beyond the airways,” said lead author Young Juhn, general academic pediatrician and asthma epidemiologist at the Mayo ...

Guinea is to be declared free of Ebola by the World Health Organization (WHO), two years after the epidemic began there. Guineans are expected to celebrate the landmark with concerts and fireworks. The disease killed more than 2,500 people in the country and a further 9,000 in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Sierra Leone was declared free of Ebola in November, ...

Previous studies have found that magnesium is inversely associated with the risk of diabetes, which is a risk factor of pancreatic cancer. “But few studies have explored the direct association of magnesium with pancreatic cancer. Of those that did, their findings were inconclusive,” said Daniel Dibaba, PhD student at the School of Public Health-Bloomington, who led the IU study. Dibaba ...