text:
Interpreting Foreign Grades
by Guy Haug
Reprinted from World Education News & Reviews, Vol. 10, No. 2, Spring 1997.
Grading systems differ widely in philosophy and practice from one country to another, and the fair interpretation of foreign grades into national ones is a major issue, both for students returning after a study period abroad and for university staff required to assess the credentials of foreign applicants.
Credential evaluation, credit transfer and grade translation are among the most widely debated and highly sensitive issues in international education, and numerous approaches, solutions, models and formulas have been proposed over the years both in the United States and in Europe.
This article does
not intend to propose any particular technique to resolve the issue. It pays
more attention to the fundamental needs of interested stakeholders than to the
technical tools currently available from professional credit evaluators. Its
sole ambition is to recall a few basic rules and principles that tend to be
forgotten as the job of translating foreign grades turns into an exercise in
accounting or mathematics. The underlying idea in this article is that the first
function of grades is to convey a message, and the real challenge in interpreting
foreign grades is to render that same message in a different language.
My exposure to the issue of understanding/using foreign grades has been widespread and diversified, but mostly limited to Western Europe and North American systems. In this context, I would distinguish between three main approaches, each guided by a different underlying philosophy.
The Inter-university Cooperation Programs (ICPs) developed in the European Union under the ERASMUS program
Under these exchange schemes set up freely between individual university departments, students spend a study period at a host university abroad and their academic performance there would be fully recognized as part of the degree prepared at the home institution, even though courses abroad may differ substantially from those in the home curriculum.
The basic principle is that "mutual trust and confidence"; grades obtained abroad would be shown on the transcript of the home university. ICPs exchanging large numbers of students among partner universities in several EU countries have gone through an extensive learning process and developed empirical "grading scales" in the forms of charts of the "equivalent" grades at their partner universities. Their specific value is that they are often tailor-made and compare many (if not all) grading systems in use in the EU. Their main limitations are that they are applicable only to short periods of study abroad rather than to entire curricula and that they are negotiated between partner institutions (which entails that they differ substantially from each other: a German 2.3 or an Italian 27 are allocated widely differing foreign equivalents in, for example, the Spanish system, depending on the discipline, institution, and person in charge).
The European Credit Transfer System (ECTS)
ECTS was developed as a pilot scheme under the first phase of the ERASMUS program of the EU and will now be gradually generalized under the new SOCRATES scheme. ECTS has paid considerable attention to the issue of grading, and has introduced a very elaborate "ECTS Grading System" required for use by participating institutions in their ECTS student exchanges.
ECTS goes beyond ICPs, in that it is a whole organized system within which consistency has been sought. The underlying philosophy is that of the equivalence of end products: while the curricula in history, physics, business or engineering may differ in every respect among national systems, the graduates (the "end product") produced by these systems are not all that different. In order to facilitate the transfer of grades between institutions, "ECTS grades" were introduced with five levels of pass and two levels of fails. They serve as a buffer (or common currency) between different national grades: the host university provides its own national grade and shows the ECTS grade next to the local grade on the student's transcript; the home university in turn uses the ECTS grade and translates it into its national grade, which is used on the student's final transcript.
ECTS offers two distinct advantages: the system is open and can be adapted to all possible national systems (e.g., bridges with Central/Eastern European systems or U.S. grades can be added relatively easily) and it is an interpretative scale rather than a mathematical formula.
The U.S. Credit Transfer System for Study Abroad
While credit transfer
is widespread in the United States, it differs from its younger European counterparts
in several important ways: traditional Junior Year Abroad programs are under
the direct responsibility of the sending university, and grades are in the U.S.
system in order to facilitate the transfer of credits. There are, of course,
divergences from this model, especially in cases where students take regular
courses taught by the host university and a wide variety of ad hoc conversion
scales between national and U.S. grades are applied. In many cases, the difficulty
of dealing with foreign grades is circumvented as credits are simply given on
a pass/fail basis although this penalizes students in good standing by not showing
their true achievement. On the other hand, this model has the virtue of a certain
type of universality (it is independent of the educational environment in the
host country) and the United States has developed considerable professional
expertise in assessing credentials and translating grades from all over the
Mathematical Formulas Fail to Capture the Message
Both in Europe and in the United States, there have been numerous recent attempts to put together automatic, mathematical formulas that "calculate" foreign grades in the national grading system of the user. In my opinion, these formulas do not produce figures that are a reliable and fair reflection of the message conveyed by the original grade. Their main shortfall is that they cannot adequately deal with certain key characteristics of grading systems:
Grading systems are not linear and are often characterized by a strongly skewed distribution of grades actually given to students. While American or Italian teachers would use the upper part of their grading scales (albeit in different ways), others (e.g., French and British) in practice hardly ever use the top 20% of their scale. For this reason, proposals based on linear formulas can produce devastating results: I recently saw the case of a German student in France who achieved a 15 (quite a good grade) which was converted into a German 2.5 (a rather mediocre one); on the contrary, a British student who gets a 27/30 in Italy would have every reason to be pleased if that grade were linearly calculated to correspond to a British 90/100!
Many grading systems are not continuous, but divided into several "classes" or "categories" which correspond to broad levels of performance. This means that a small difference in numbers may conceal a substantial difference in meaning when a "class" limit is crossed: in the United Kingdom, a grade of 70 classified as "First Class" is very different from a 69 ("Second Class"), while the same small difference of 1 point is irrelevant between the grades of 54 and 55 (both "Lower Second Class").
differs not only between countries, but there are, as well, marked differences
in grading traditions and policies depending on the type and level of the grading
institution, the field of
study, or even the type of grade (final examination, mid-term, paper, or average computed from various grade items).
Taking France as an example, it is well known that grades at "classes préparatoires," which recruit among the best students on their way to "Grandes Ecoles," tend to be particularly low, with, for example, 11/20 seen as quite a strong grade, while the pass mark in France is usually an average of 10/20 calculated on all subjects. There may also be minimum pass grades per subject set at a lower level, for example, 8/20.
The distribution of grades tends to be different between certain quantitative fields (with grades distributed over the whole range) and the non-quantitative fields (where grades are more concentrated in the middle, and the upper part of the scale is seldom used). Thus, even within a given country, a grade may have a "normal," intuitive, abstract meaning which needs to be adjusted (up or downwards) depending on a whole series of factors relating both to who gave it and who interprets it.
From the above observations, my main conclusion is that foreign grades are not just numbers that can be calculated by applying a mathematical formula, but a message that needs first to be understood in the original system and in a second stage interpreted by users in their own system.
Simple mathematical formulas with their claim to universality are nothing but a fallacious over-simplification of a reality they fail to capture.
This, however,
does not mean that the process of foreign grade interpretation cannot be organized
in an efficient, expedient way based on a thorough effort to understand the
message that [foreign grades] carry. It is possible to draw up tables ("grade
equivalence chart," "grade concordance scale") that render a
grade's "normal" or "average" meaning in another grading
system, first on a bilateral basis and then in a more multi-lateral context.
But this exercise has more to do with the complexity of human language than
with mathematics. It takes more listening, modesty and flexibility rather than
a doctrinal attitude and a creed in universal formulas/answers. More specifically,
the drawing up of tables that can genuinely serve as a basis for interpreting
foreign grades is only possible if a certain number of key considerations are
observed. The remainder of the article presents six principles that could guide
future developments in the area of foreign grade handling.
1. Grade interpretation is no more objective than grading
This is a key consideration: it is a fact of academic life that grades vary, often quite significantly, between institutions, subject areas, and even individual examiners in a given department at a given university. Expectations vary from course to course and from teacher to teacher ... and even over time with the same teacher! Hence, grade conversion scales should not be expected to be more objective than the original grading, and international educators should not be overly sensitive about less-than-perfect conversion scales. Nor should we be overly disturbed that the diverging equivalence tables exist in various contexts of international mobility.
Grade interpretation
is no more an exact, objective, universal science than grading itself.
2. Fairness is more important than accuracy
The general attitude towards grade interpretation should be guided by the desire to be fair to students rather than by a vain search for accuracy. In an area marked by subjectivity and diversity, the choice is usually between approximately right and accurately wrong.
But how can fairness be measured and indeed achieved? It seems to me that the only indicator is that the conversion table must provide grades that are in line with the home grades. My experience is that discussions about grade equivalencies are often complicated by emotional reactions where each side insists upon the highest possible foreign grades corresponding to their own grades. This attitude appears to be related to a somewhat defensive, misguided conception of academic pride and leads to a devaluation of foreign grades. Where a dominant partner in an exchange network is able to impose a biased equivalence scheme upon partner institutions, the result is that students from the dominant partner studying elsewhere see their academic performance undervalued when they return home. This can be detected when the performance of students returning from abroad appears to be out of line with either their own previous grades or with those of their classmates who stayed at home.
Structural misinterpretation of foreign grades is unlikely to be detected or corrected easily in the case of one-way mobility. In the case of reciprocal flows, the inevitable effect of a biased conversion scale is that it provides a structural bonus for students moving in one direction while it disadvantages those moving in the opposite direction. These signals are more easily detected in reciprocal exchanges, especially if they involve high levels of student traffic.
3. Grade categories/classes convey core information
In many systems, the full scale of grades is divided not only between pass and fail, but into various "classes" or "categories" corresponding to broad "quality labels" assigned to a certain bracket of numerical grades. Thus, in the United Kingdom, there are "First Class," "Second Class" (divided between upper and lower sub-classes) and "Third Class" performers, while French, German or Spanish students may be labeled in a similar way as, for example, Passable (Average), Gut (Good) or Sobresaliente (Outstanding).
The meaning of these labels in their own context is tainted by culture and tradition. Thus, a British "Third Class" (a pass mark, but usually given only to a relatively small number of very borderline students) is very different from a French Passable (a widely-used label that normally applies to the vast majority of pass grades). However tempting it may be, equating passable with "Third Class" because they both correspond to the lowest label of "pass grades" would fail to take into account their real meaning.
As a consequence, conversion scales should pay considerable attention to categories/classes of grades. A first priority should be to make certain that this core piece of information is correctly rendered when converting foreign grades; fine-tuning within each particular class/category is only a subordinate exercise: what matters in Britain is whether the grade is a "First" or not, not whether it is a 71 or a 72. This observation is particularly relevant when converting grades from systems using a broad numerical scale into, for example, the U.S. system which usually has only three pass grades (or categories) corresponding to the letters A, B, and C. In the United States, a "D" may also be considered a passing grade, but not for transfer purposes.
The need to pay attention to grade classes reinforces the conclusion that linear methods, which ignore class boundaries, are nothing but fallacious and dangerous over-simplifications. They distort the original message in the same way as a word-for-word check in a bilingual dictionary: for each word there is a corresponding word in the other language, but the sequence of words thus obtained almost certainly means something different (or nothing at all) in the target language.
4. Average grades mean more than individual grades
This is very much related to the previous point: more comprehensive indicators of academic performance abroad convey a more valid message than each of their constituent grades, and should hence receive more attention in the process of interpreting foreign transcripts.
The problem is that in non-linear systems (i.e., in nearly all cases) the mechanical translation of an average grade (using an empirical equivalence chart) will not correspond to the average of the mechanically-translated individual grades from which the average grade was calculated. As a consequence, average grades should be computed in the original system before they are converted into another system. This simple mathematical reality seems confusing to many professionals in international circles. Every now and again, the vain search for a model without this bewildering characteristic brings about deceiving but reassuring proposals based on the simple but wrong assumption of linearity.
5. Reliable conversion scales are transitive
In most cases,
institutions need only bilateral conversion scales for incoming/ outgoing students
between their own country and one or several foreign countries (e.g., a scale
giving U.S. equivalencies for grades from France, Spain, Brazil, etc.). These
institutions do not need to convert grades between third countries (e.g., a
U.S. university does usually not need to convert Spanish into French grades).
Thus, there is no incentive for them to check whether their various bilateral
conversion scales are compatible and likely incompatibilities can go unnoticed
for a long time.
Yet, there are a few laboratories where grade equivalence needs to be ensured in a multilateral setting and equivalence charts must work simultaneously between all pairs of countries involved. This is the case for a handful of fully integrated, multinational double degree curricula developed under ERASMUS in the European Union, where students go in all directions (e.g. between four partner universities), and their grades must be converted in a compatible way among all systems involved. The same applies in the case of ECTS, although the situation is slightly different because the common use of "ECTS grades" means in effect that all countries apply only bilateral conversion grades between their own and ECTS grades; yet, a great deal of compatibility between these bilateral scales must exist in order to allow the system to function properly.
The ultimate test of the reliability of equivalence charts is when they are transitive. Transitivity means that the following two exercises produce the same converted grade: (1) a grade from country A is converted into a grade for country B and the grade obtained for country B is converted into a grade for country C; and (2) the same grade from country A is converted directly into a grade for country C.
If, after repeating the exercise various times and in various directions, grades obtained through both calculations are identical or nearly so, then the equivalence charts used for the exercise are unlikely to contain any major structural biases. Developers of all types of grade conversion proposals (be they equivalence tables or mathematical formulas) are invited to submit their proposals to the transitivity test. Usually the results of the test are an invitation to modesty, and sometimes a clear message that the proposed chart needs to be completely reconsidered. Transitivity is of course, all the more difficult to achieve as the number of countries involved grows.
6. Grade interpretation should be done by users
The final interpretation of grades from abroad should be left to the institution that uses them as input for decision making (e.g., to award credits or accept a foreign applicant). In the absence of a universal model for grade interpretation -- even for grades from a particular foreign country -- this is the only way in which the autonomy of each institution can be guaranteed.
What this means in practical terms is that each institution should award grades in its own system and leave the interpretation of those grades in another system to the receiving foreign institution. This basic dual principle is not respected when the grading institution awards grades directly in the system of the using institution (not uncommon in transcripts issued outside of the United States for U.S.-bound exchange students), which in effect imposes pre-translated grades on the using institution, or when the using institution finds its hands bound by an automatic, mechanical conversion model that fails to leave room for interpretation. While conversion should preferably be based on stable tables of equivalencies, these tables only reflect the "normal" or "average" meaning of foreign grades. When there is non-numerical information available (e.g. about "grade inflation" at a given institution), the using institution should have the possibility of adjusting (but not distorting) converted grades to ensure fairness to the student. This may, of course, be misused and open the door to "impressionistic" conversions, but it fundamentally distinguishes grade interpretation from simplistic grade calculation.
In order to safeguard the principle that grades should be interpreted by users and at the same time enhance chances for the correct interpretation of grades, the sending institution should provide information about itself and its grading system. Useful information includes not only maximum and minimum grades, but also grade distribution and class boundaries.
The ECTS grading system is based on a shared code ("ECTS grades") where the encoding is the responsibility of the grading institution and the decoding is left to the using institution. Thus, even in a system based on "mutual trust and confidence" like ECTS, there is some room for interpretation rather than just an automated, numerical exercise. It is also interesting that the network of national academic recognition centers in Europe (known as NARICS and ENICs) is developing a "diploma supplement" appended to transcripts in order to facilitate the interpretation of grades by foreign users. This welcome initiative is jointly supported by the European Union, the Council of Europe and CEPES/UNESCO and should contribute to the education of both graders and grade users and thus reduce the chances that simplistic formulas are used except as a last recourse when nothing else is available.
ECTS Grade
Percent of successful students normally achieving the grade
EXCELLENT - outstanding performance with only minor errors
VERY GOOD - above the average standard but with some errors
GOOD - generally sound work with a number of notable errors
SATISFACTORY - fair but with significant shortcomings
SUFFICIENT - performance meets the minimum criteria
FAIL - some more work required before the credit can be awarded
FAIL - considerable work is required


text:
Episode: Khalida Brohi: How I work to protect women from honor killings. Nearly 1000 "honor" killings are reported in Pakistan each year, murders by a family member for behavior deemed "shameful," such as a relationship outside of marriage. When Khalida Brohi lost a close friend to the practice, she resolved to campaign against it. http://goo.gl/a6zKNK #FullPodcastAvailable #Podcasts
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
MCMURDO SOUND, Antarctica — Suppose someone monitors your whole life, from the moment you were born through childhood, puberty, adolescence and your midlife crisis, all the way to your ultimate death — recording what you eat, where you go, who you make love to, when you raise children and how your body ages. Pretty scary, right?
But that's exactly what biologist David Ainley is doing. Not with humans, but with Adélie penguins in Antarctica. If he could put TV cameras in the birds' master bedrooms, he wouldn't hesitate.
Penguins' private lives recorded in Antarctica - Technology & science - Science - LiveScience | NBC News
Current Status: Published (4)
Seeded on Sun Jan 6, 2013 5:37 PM
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text:
Baseball bats were used in an early morning attack on three teenage boys in Farnborough, which left them with broken bones.
Detectives are appealing for information after a 15-year-old and two 17-year-olds from Surrey were assaulted by a group of as many as eight other teenage boys in the Farnborough Rugby Club and Shelley Rise area at around 1am on Friday.
It is believed the victims had met a group of girls at Farnborough railway station earlier that night, and were then confronted by the group of assailants near to the playing fields at the rugby club.
One boy also had cash and a bank card stolen and another had a bag containing a tablet device taken.
The victims sustained numerous injuries, including broken bones, and all received hospital treatment.
Detective Constable Sam Adcock said: "Were you in the area at the time? Did you see groups of teenage boys or any altercation?
"It is believed these boys are all known to each other, so I would like to reassure the local community that this is an isolated incident and there is no wider threat to their safety.
"I'd like to hear from anyone who has information which may assist this investigation."
A 15-year-old boy from Farnborough has been arrested.
Anyone with any information is asked to contact Aldershot CID on 101 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.


text:
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text:
VIENNA (Nov. 3)
A new translation Into Polish of Sholem Aleichem's famous "Tevya the Dairyman" will be published by a government publishing house in Poland, according to reports from Warsaw. The translator is Anna Dresner, who also rendered works by I. L. Peretz into Polish. The new edition will be issued next year as part of the Polish celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Sholem Aleichem.


text:
The Enchanted Forest
This spectatcular sound and light show has proved an incredible success for Perthshire as year on year the event is sold out.
It is easy to see why: Located in Faskally woods, just North of Pitlochry, The Enchanted Forest will light up the moonlit Autumn evenings and show the surrounding landscape as you have never seen before. Scotland and Perthshire are naturally dazzling at this time of year with an array of golden hues dominating the landscape. As night falls however the Enchanted Forest succeeds in allowing the visitor to see natural beauty in another dimension. The title of this year's show is 'flux illuminating nature' due to the extremely high demand in ticket sales the shows dates have been increased and will now run from 1st October - 1st November, but please still book your tickets early to avoid disappointment . If you are staying in Pitlochry, getting to the Enchanted Forest could not be easier: Shuttle buses will take ticket holders from the town to the start of the magical walk that awaits...
As in previous years, shuttle buses to the forest will depart from the centre of town, so the Pine Trees Hotel, only a few minute's walk from Atholl Road, is the perfect base for an autumn visit to Pitlochry to see the Enchanted Forest. Just remember to bring waterproof footwear and wrap up cosily!
2015 Ticket Prices
Monday - Thursday
Prices are subject to change subject to demand and may increase as the event dates draw closer.


text:
NYDUTCHE-L ArchivesArchiver > NYDUTCHE > 2009-09 > 1253117282
From: "W. David Samuelsen" <>
Subject: [NYDUTCHE] SAMPUBCO - new datasets added
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:08:02 -0600
More index datasets have been added.
Monroe co NY 1878-1880
Will Records
Putnam Co NY 1878-1886
Kings co NY 1830-1844
Dutchess co NY 1868-1874
Albany co NY 1873-1876
Census - free access to census images
Erie co NY 1905 - more of Town of Amherst
There are many new datasets of indexes added in last 2 months, too.
Please use FreeFind search engine for most current results.
Google search engine update average once every 90 days (they do not
index upon request.
W. David Samuelsen
This thread:
|[NYDUTCHE] SAMPUBCO - new datasets added by "W. David Samuelsen" <>


text:
Learn Speed Reading in 10 Easy Lessons.
|Share it:
|Updated at:
|6 Sep 2007
|Editor's review:
|Not yet reviewed
|Elite Minds | More...
Speed reader-x description
"Speed Reader-X® is an efficient and to-the-point training system that concentrates on speed techniques. It uses the latest software which is designed to help you practice speed reading exercises. The human brain is capable of taking in information much faster than the average person can read. Speed Reader-X teaches a new, visual method of taking in information. Speed Reading is not pushing harder. It is a new method of viewing words and sentences. Do you find yourself reaching the end of a paragraph and realize you have no idea what you just read? Your brain became bored and tuned out what you were reading. Speed Reader-X will retrain your brain to take in information as fast as it can. The Speed Reader-X Training System can be used by anyone with a third grade reading level or higher. It is for children, teens, college ages and adults. There are many speed reading systems that claim you can double your reading speed in five or ten minutes. The truth is anyone can double their reading speed anytime without any instruction. You simply push harder and read faster. There is no trick to that. The problem is that you cannot sustain this reading method long enough to read a book or magazine. Speed Reader-X gives you a new way to look at words and take in information without that little voice in your head slowing you down. Speed Reader-X is designed to make learning speed reading fast and easy. The system consists of 10 lessons. The lesson objective is explained before the lesson begins. You then practice the lesson using the software. As your eyes scan the text on the screen you are un-learning bad habits and learning new, good habits. You click the Next button, words flash and you begin to quickly overcome the roadblocks you were taught in school. The software helps you retrain your eyes to move smoothly over text without stumbling over words. After completing each lesson, you can see your results on the screen. It couldn't be easier."
Speed Reader-X is licensed as demo. Follow the link bellow and free download Speed Reader-X.
Speed Reader-X download notice »
It is not legal to make use of cracks, patches, pirate registration codes or serial numbers, key generators, and other similar tools that interfere with future developments of the software, while it is not safe nor allowed to obtain Speed Reader-X 5.0.1 from file sharing websites such as MegaUpload, Rapidshare or YouSendIt. Using these methods to eliminate the need to obtain a genuine license for Speed Reader-X 5.0.1 could put your computer and activity at risk by infecting the system with viruses, spyware, worms, Trojans, dialers and adware, distroying its stability and stealing your personal information, as well as propagating through the network to take control of other computers. In such cases, you won't be able to use your computer, not even Speed Reader-X, anymore.
You can find and use free legal download links for Speed Reader-X 5.0.1 on Download3000 and on the official website of the publisher.


text:
NCAA Tournament Games Make For Traffic Challenge
LEXINGTON, Ky. - The NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament is set to bring excitement – and more traffic – to downtown Lexington starting on Wednesday.
Lexington police are cautioning motorists to expect delays throughout the tournament.
"With thousands of extra people coming into downtown, there is going to be an impact," says Sherelle Roberts, spokesperson for the police department.
Police say drivers coming from out-of-town should follow electronic signs that will direct those coming from the north to use exit 115 and those from the south to use exit 113. Roberts says extra officers will also be on hand to patrol for scalpers and anyone selling food or other goods two hours before or one hour after ticketed events around the Lexington Center area.
"We'll have both plain clothes officers, that's undercover officers, as well as officers in uniform who will be looking out for that specific issue," Roberts says.
The tournament games Lexington will start on Thursday and wrap up on Saturday.


text:
by Staff Writers
Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico (AFP) June 04, 2014
A storm named Boris that is lingering off Mexico's west coast was downgraded to a tropical depression on Wednesday, but is still packing heavy rains that could cause deadly flash floods and mudslides.
The warning from the US National Hurricane Center said Boris could dump as much as 20 inches (50 cm) of rain in some parts of the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca.
Boris was expected to make landfall later Wednesday, according to the center's tracking map.
The storm was packing maximum sustained winds of almost 55 kilometres (35 miles) per hour, down slightly from Tuesday. It was still moving toward the north at seven kilometres (five miles) per hour.
As of 0900 GMT, the storm was 140 kilometres (85 miles) from the town of Salina Cruz, the center said.
But Boris is expected to weaken later Wednesday.
Tropical storm Boris to slam Mexico, Guatemala
The storm is expected to make landfall as a tropical depression on Wednesday between the southwestern Mexican states of Oaxaca and Chiapas, according to a US National Hurricane Center tracking map.
The Miami-based center said the storm would likely produce life-threatening flash floods and mudslides.
The storm was packing maximum sustained winds of almost 65 kilometers (40 miles) per hour. It was moving toward the north at seven kilometers (five miles) per hour.
Mexico's National Weather Service said the storm was 125 kilometers (77 miles) from the Chiapas town of Boca de Pijijiapan at 1800 GMT.
Boris was expected to dump as much as 10 to 20 inches (25 to 50 centimeters) of rain over a large part of southern Mexico through Saturday.
As many as 30 inches (75 centimeters) are likely in mountainous regions of Oaxaca and Chiapas, the NHC said, while Guatemala was expected to see five to 10 inches (12.5 to 25 centimeters).
In Guatemala, rough weather produced a landslide that killed five people near the Mexican border on Saturday.
The national disaster relief agency said as many as 100,000 people have been affected by the inclement weather that has caused damage to homes and roads. Schools have been closed in parts of Guatemala.
Last week, the remnants of Hurricane Amanda were blamed for three deaths in Guerrero and the neighboring state of Michoacan.
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With their arresting geometric forms and wide-open interiors, the homes John Lautner created expanded the boundaries of American residential architecture. Although he was strongly influenced by his mentor, Frank Lloyd Wright, Lautner's work bore the unmistakable stamp of his own innovative approach to design. "My father's homes are each an original and there's no duplication anywhere," says his daughter Karol Lautner Peterson. "One of his fellow Taliesin apprentices said to me that my father had gone beyond Wright and found a style distinctly his own."
Viewed as too radical during much of his lifetime, this prolific architect's work has recently begun to receive the recognition it deserves. Two books about him have been published over the past year; another has been reissued. And now, thanks to the efforts of his daughter and former associates, there's a foundation dedicated to preserving his legacy.
The idea for the John Lautner Foundation first took shape in Peterson's mind after her father's death in 1994. Some six years later, the foundation is up and running. Its immediate goal is to catalog the vast archives of Lautner's work, but its long-term mission is to "further educate the public on the understanding of his work and principles," Peterson says. To find out more about the organization, or to volunteer any information you may have about a Lautner house, call 323.951.1061 or visit www.johnlautner.org


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Irvington's Kelly O'Donnell battles Cazenovia's Reanne Clabeaux and Ellen Burr for the loose ball during the girls Class B state semi-final basketball game at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy today. Photo by Seth Harrison
Irvington will play Aquinas, which defeated Hoosic Valley in the second semi-final game, in tomorrow's state championship game. The game is scheduled for 4:00 p.m. Look for coverage at Lohud.com and in tomorrow's edition of The Journal News. View a gallery of photos from the game at Lohud.com.


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CWFC to broadcast free-to-air in Scandinavia with Viasat
Cage Warriors Fighting Championship is delighted to announce that it has penned an exciting new agreement with Nordic broadcaster Viasat.
The deal will see all CWFC events in 2014 carried by Viasat's free-to-air networks in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, including live transmission of the promotion's four events in Scandinavia.
Cage Warriors will make its first move into the region this spring, with details of the venue and date to be announced early next week.
"As I've said in the past, we have big plans for the growth of Cage Warriors in the Nordic region and this is another major step towards that," said Cage Warriors CEO Graham Boylan.
"We're extremely pleased to be partnering with a broadcaster of Viasat's stature, and I'm looking forward to working together with them in 2014 and beyond."
Eighteen events are planned for the CWFC schedule this year, beginning with CWFC 64 in London, England, on Saturday, February 15.
Nordic fighters feature prominently on the Cage Warriors roster, with several stars from across the region currently signed exclusively to the promotion, including Nicolas Dalby, Jack Hermansson and Mohsen Bahari.
CWFC events will be broadcast free of charge through Viasat's platforms in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, details of which will be confirmed at a later date.
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