Word: war
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...French psychologist Alfred Binet began developing a standardized test of intelligence, work that would eventually be incorporated into a version of the modern IQ test, dubbed the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test. By World War I, standardized testing was standard practice: aptitude quizzes called Army Mental Tests were conducted to assign U.S. servicemen jobs during the war effort. But grading was at first done manually, an arduous task that undermined standardized testing's goal of speedy mass assessment. It would take until 1936 to develop the first automatic test scanner, a rudimentary computer called the IBM 805. It used electrical current...
...questions testing knowledge of vocabulary and basic math and even including an early iteration of the famed fill-in-the-blank analogies (e.g., blue:sky::____:grass). The test grew and by 1930 assumed its now familiar form, with separate verbal and math tests. By the end of World War II, the test was accepted by enough universities that it became a standard rite of passage for college-bound high school seniors. It remained largely unchanged (save the occasional tweak) until 2005, when the analogies were done away with and a writing section was added. (That section is graded separately from...
...that's unlikely to stop people trying. For 25-year-old Adam Khamise, who fled the war-torn Sudanese province of Darfur and arrived in Israel in July 2007, the choice was clear. "In Egypt I was always being harassed by the police and I wasn't allowed to work. So how could I make money to buy food?" In Israel, Rozen says, asylum seekers may be turned down for work permits, but a majority finds work, because "officials turn a blind eye." Khamise says there was another reason for his journey. He decided to head for Israel after learning...
...Tension between the government and West Bank settlers has been rising since November, when Netanyahu's cabinet called for a 10-month pause in construction, in response to pressure from the U.S. and Europe to stop expanding its grip on territories captured in the war of 1967. Obama had hoped a settlement freeze would enable a resumption of peace talks, because the West Bank and East Jerusalem (together with Gaza) are seen by the Palestinians as the basis of a future state. But the settlers' concept of Israel's boundaries derives from the Bible, and they fear that the government...
...absolute freeze with no exceptions. Now, with settlers staging demonstrations, their leaders muttering about civil disobedience and radical rabbis urging young soldiers to disobey orders that might conflict with their religious obligations to inhabit biblical lands, the Israeli leader can tell the West that he would face a civil war if he moved to dismantle settlements...