education

Ah, back-to-school season in America: That means it's time for the annoyingly aggressive marketing of clothes, and for the annual warnings of a national teacher shortage.

But this year the cyclical problem is more real and less of a media creation. There are serious shortages of teachers in California, Oklahoma, Kentucky and places in between.

A University of Cincinnati officer who was charged in the murder of an unarmed black man during a routine traffic stop has pleaded not guilty.

Officer Ray Tensing was escorted into a Hamilton County courthouse on Thursday handcuffed and in a prison uniform.

Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Megan Shanahan said because Tensing is facing a potential life-in-prison sentence, she was setting his bail at $1 million.

It's an old and controversial question: Should federal Pell grants be used to help prisoners pay for college?

Tomorrow, at a prison in Jessup, Md., Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Loretta Lynch are expected to unveil a program to do just that. The new plan would create a limited pilot program allowing some students in prison to use Pell grants to pay for college classes.

The key word there is "limited" — because there's only so much the administration can do. To understand why, we have to go back to November 1993.

If you had chickenpox as a child, then you're at risk for shingles. As you age, the risk increases, probably because the immune system weakens over time.

The varicella zoster virus can hide in the body over a lifetime and suddenly activate, causing a painful, blistery rash. Even when the rash disappears, pain can linger and worsen, causing a burning, shooting, stabbing pain so severe it can leave people unable to sleep, work or carry on other activities.

I recently learned about a decision to ban eggs in school lunches — the main meal of the day — in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The state's chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, has vetoed a proposal to include eggs in children's school lunches in government schools. Even though eggs are an excellent source of nutrition, he said eggs would not be served because they are not a vegetarian food, and that milk and bananas would be offered instead. Like many Hindus, Chouhan is a vegetarian and reportedly vetoed eggs in school lunches because vegetarians often will not eat them.

In 2000 the world's leaders agreed on an ambitious plan to drastically reduce global poverty by 2015. Called the Millennium Development Goals, the targets spurred an unprecedented aid effort that brought lifesaving medicines and vaccines to millions of people and helped slash the share of people in the developing world who live in extreme poverty from 47 percent in 1990 to 14 percent today.