Edu Watch

A Nobel prize-winning physicist was uninvited from a forthcoming conference at the Towler Institute in Italy because of his interest in the paranormal. David Peat didn't see it coming when his invite was withdrawn because his books on Jungian synchronicity and "connections between Native American thought and modern physics" were considered "tainted".

Speaking at a business education conference at a Higher Education Academy in the UK, David Muskett, head of undergraduate programmes at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, said that the 'amoral' teaching methods of UK business schools were partly responsible for the global financial crisis Middlesex University is closing its philosophy programmes due to funding issues - despite the subject earning the institution its highest research ranking. The decision has been condemned by academic philosophers as well as by Middlesex students.

The University of California in the US is investigating whether Peter Duesberg, professor of molecular and cell biology, violated university policies when he submitted an article denying the link between HIV and AIDS to the journal Medical Hypotheses.

Seton Hall University, a Roman Catholic institution in New Jersey in the US, is debating whether to cancel a course on gay marriage after the archbishop of Newark, John Myers, said it would conflict with church teachings.

The Great Lakes University of Kisumu in Kenya conferred US President Barack Obama's 87-year-old grandmother an honorary Doctorate of Letters for her charity work in feeding and educating the less fortunate.

The Ethiopian Academy of Sciences, now the world's youngest science academy and Ethiopia's first, was launched at Addis Ababa University in April.

South African Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande said that corruption and mismanagement in the sectoral education and training authorities (SETA) would not be tolerated, and his department would shortly announce measures to be taken against corrupt SETA managers and those guilty of mismanagement.

A convoy of buses transporting university students, most of them Christians, back to the University of Mosul in Iraq last week was devastated by a double bomb blast that wounded dozens of people and killed at least one bystander.

The National Institutes of Health Organisation in the US has added 13 lines of human embryonic stem cells to the list of those eligible for federal financing, including two of the lines most widely used by researchers.