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Monday, October 22, 2007

An Associated Press investigation published Sunday revealed findings of more than 2,500 cases of sexual misconduct by educators in the American educational system over a five year period.

The cases reported in the investigation ranged from the merely strange, with cases involving verbal abuse, to the barbarous, with cases involving molestation and rape.

Investigations suggest that many cases of sexual abuse are never reported, and those that are reported often do not lead to punishment for the offender. The cases do not always include enough evidence, and for this as well as other reasons the schools, courts, state governments, and federal governments cannot be sure that they are keeping sexual deviants out of teaching.

Certain academic studies estimate that only about ten percent of victimized children report sexual abuse of any kind to a person who can take action to help them. When sexual misconduct is reported, teachers, administrators and some parents frequently cannot, either subconsciously or consciously, recognize the warning signs of a crime.

After examining records in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the AP found that 2,570 educators had their teaching licenses taken away, denied, surrendered voluntarily or restricted from the period of 2001 through 2005, all as a result of sexual misconduct allegations.

Minors were the victims in at least 1,801 of the cases, and more than 80 percent of those minors were students of the accused criminals. More than half of the educators who were disciplined by their state governments were consequently convicted of crimes related to the allegations of misconduct.

The cases that the AP found were those of all types of educators — teachers, school psychologists, and even principals and superintendents. The accused are often popular with students and parents, and are widely perceived as good teachers. In nearly 90 percent if the cases, the offenders are male. While certain educators were accused of sexual misconduct in school, others were cited for abuse that occurred after hours and did not always involve one of their own students. At least 446 of the cases uncovered by the AP involved educators with multiple victims.

A preponderance of cases involved teachers in public schools since many private schools do not require their teachers to be licensed and most private schools do not allow their disciplinary records to be publicly viewed.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), two large teaching unions, each decried sexual abuse while pinpointing the importance of considering educators’ rights.

“If there’s one incident of sexual misconduct between a teacher and a student that’s one too many,” Kathy Buzad of the AFT told the Associated Press.

“Students must be protected from sexual predators and abuse, and teachers must be protected from false accusations,” said NEA President Reg Weaver in a press release.

However, while the AP found attempts to stop particular offenders, it also discovered a firm resistance towards identifying and preventing abuse. In schools, fellow teachers often ignore the abuse or feel they cannot help. School administrators cut backdoor deals to sidestep lawsuits or bad press. And in state governments and Congress, lawmakers are weary to impose harsher punishments or any national policy in fear of harming an important profession.

For example, in the state of California some of the most sadistic sex abuse is flagged, but state law allows a multitude of offenses to remain confidential in disciplinary records, even when teachers are sentenced to imprisonment and become registered sex offenders.

The dearth of information is evidence of a system of disciplining teachers that, nationwide, is often cloaked in secrecy. It is difficult for states to share necessary information about those accused of misconduct and allows some to find classroom jobs in other states.

An additional problem is that while the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification maintains a listing of educators who’ve been disciplined for any reason, it only shares this information with other state agencies. Also, many teachers do not appear on the list because they resign before losing their licenses.

“(Schools) might deal with it internally, suspending the person or having the person move on. So their license is never investigated,” says Charol Shakeshaft, an expert in educational sexual abuse who leads Virginia Commonwealth University‘s educational leadership department.

“There is the possibility that one of these people could move to another jurisdiction, most likely another state, and you wouldn’t be able to find out their history,” says Todd Spitzer, a Californian assemblyman, former prosecutor, and former high school English teacher.

Another disturbing trend is that cases of misconduct seem to be on the rise in many places. According to a New York State Education Department report, the number of “moral misconduct” accusations against educators in New York has doubled in five years. In 2005, 134 cases of “moral misconduct” were reported involving teachers and other school employees, as compared to just 70 cases in 2001. According to an overview of the cases, almost 75 percent of the “moral conduct” cases involved sexual acts or an improper relationship. In all, 485 misconduct cases occurred over the five year period in New York state.

The AP’s national analysis shows Texas and California with the most sexual misconduct cases, each with two to three times as many cases as New York. Florida proved about the same as New York.

Mary Green, a parent in Washington County who rallied against a teacher she suspected of misconduct, says the key to stopping the abuse is listening.

“If a child says such-and-such a person, teacher, coach or neighbor is `weird,’ the parent should not simply dismiss this comment, but have the child explain why the person is weird,” she said. “Often we simply shush them without finding out why the child feels that way. People tend to think it won’t happen to them.”

Thursday, October 18, 2007

It can be difficult to be John Reed.

Christopher Hitchens called him a “Bin Ladenist” and Cathy Young editorialized in The Boston Globe that he “blames the victims of terrorism” when he puts out a novel like Snowball’s Chance, a biting send-up of George Orwell‘s Animal Farm which he was inspired to write after the terrorist attacks on September 11. “The clear references to 9/11 in the apocalyptic ending can only bring Orwell’s name into disrepute in the U.S.,” wrote William Hamilton, the British literary executor of the Orwell estate. That process had already begun: it was revealed Orwell gave the British Foreign Office a list of people he suspected of being “crypto-Communists and fellow travelers,” labeling some of them as Jews and homosexuals. “I really wanted to explode that book,” Reed told The New York Times. “I wanted to completely undermine it.”

Is this man who wants to blow up the classic literary canon taught to children in schools a menace, or a messiah? David Shankbone went to interview him for Wikinews and found that, as often is the case, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Reed is electrified by the changes that surround him that channel through a lens of inspiration wrought by his children. “The kids have made me a better writer,” Reed said. In his new untitled work, which he calls a “new play by William Shakespeare,” he takes lines from The Bard‘s classics to form an original tragedy. He began it in 2003, but only with the birth of his children could he finish it. “I didn’t understand the characters who had children. I didn’t really understand them. And once I had had kids, I could approach them differently.”

Taking the old to make it new is a theme in his work and in his world view. Reed foresees new narrative forms being born, Biblical epics that will be played out across print and electronic mediums. He is pulled forward by revolutions of the past, a search for a spiritual sensibility, and a desire to locate himself in the process.

Below is David Shankbone’s conversation with novelist John Reed.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

In appearances before Congress on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and a top military official are expected to underscore decreased violence in Iraq. But they are likely to face strong questioning from lawmakers about ongoing war costs.

When President George W. Bush‘s budget for the 2009 fiscal year was sent to Congress this week, Secretary Gates defended the $515 billion request from the Pentagon.

In the overall figure, he noted, are billions of dollars to support U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the administration’s global war on terrorism. “A $70 billion emergency bridge fund that would cover war costs into the next calendar year,” he said.

The story behind that figure is the ongoing struggle between President Bush and the Democratic-controlled United States Congress over war funding.

Last year, the president asked for about $190 billion in a supplemental request outside the regular defense budget for war costs in the current 2008 fiscal year. The amount approved by Congress, just over $86 billion, left a large gap.

When Gates and military Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen appear before the House and Senate armed services committees, they will be pressed for harder cost projections, as Congress continues to assess the impact for the U.S. economy of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

White House Budget Director Jim Nussle was asked this week if the Bush administration has a realistic hope it can obtain its Pentagon regular budget and supplemental war funding requests from an opposition Congress. “It’s worth whatever we need to spend and we have made, I think, a very careful determination of what that is. So, I don’t believe it is just a negotiation point. I think it is what it takes for us to be safe, and to be the kind of super power that can maintain that safety,” he said.

Asked why budget figures do not appear to reflect a reduction in costs because of the eventual withdrawal of about 30,000 troops from Iraq to pre-military surge levels, expected to be complete later this year, Nussle would only refer reporters to the Pentagon.

And while the question of troop levels will be a key topic for lawmakers, in the context of questioning on the overall Pentagon budget, Gates may not provide much in the way of enlightenment.

Media reports quoting testimony prepared for the House and Senate hearings say he will point to what he calls significant variables weighing against making any realistic estimate of how much Congress may be asked for in the final year of the Bush administration.

Based on numerous supplemental requests for Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, members of Congress expect the $70 billion bridge fund to be followed by additional requests to sustain U.S. forces.

As for the $100 billion or so in 2008 supplemental funds that has been held up by bickering between Capitol Hill and the White House, congressional Democrats are looking to testimony in April from the U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus.

That will provide Congress with an update on progress by Iraqi forces toward shouldering more of the security burden, what that means for U.S. troop numbers, and what Americans can expect to be paying as President Bush leaves office and a new administration takes over in 2009.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

US stock markets dropped to twelve-year lows on Thursday, amidst falling confidence in the financial sector and worries over whether the US automobile manufacturer General Motors will be able to keep operating.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 4.08%, or 280.52 points, at the closing bell, reaching a level of 6595.32, a new 12-year low. The Nasdaq Composite lost 54.15 points, or 4%, to 1299.59, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 plunged by 30.27 points, or 4.25%, closing at 682.60.

Every stock in the Dow Jones, other than Wal-Mart, either lost ground or remained even, and all stocks in the S&P 500 index lost ground.

General Motors’ shares lost 15.5% after the auto firm announced that its auditors had “substantial doubt” over whether it would be able to keep operating.

Shares of financial companies were lower by nine percent, with Bank of America losing 11.7% and Citigroup falling by 9.7%.

“What’s most worrisome is that we haven’t hit the crescendo yet,” said Bill Groeneveld, the head trader for vFinance Investments. “Asset-management divisions are getting calls to just liquidate everything, and we haven’t seen the big players come back in at all.”

“This is one of the worst bear markets in the last 100 years; it started out with the credit crisis and the subprime [loans], but it is like a forest fire that has raced across the clearing and ignited other parts: Autos, auto parts, the insurance companies have been hit very hard. The credit crisis is causing an unraveling of industry after industry because the banks don’t lend,” said David Dreman, the chief investment officer of Dreman Value Management.

European markets were also lower today, with the London’s FTSE index losing 3.2% and the DAX index of Germany falling by five percent.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Investors are rushing to fund new ventures in renewable energy as Americans continue to see rising gasoline prices at the pump. The price for crude oil continues to rise to new record highs ($75 per barrel of crude oil on NYMEX as of Friday’s close). According to the results of a survey reported by the San Francisco Gate, in the 1st Quarter of 2006 investments in the clean technology sector has increased by 13% to $3.36 Billion in the US. In addition to attracting venture capital, clean technology companies are receiving a buzz from high profile investors.

Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft, announced last week that his venture group (Cascade Investments) initiated the purchase of 25.5% ownership in Pacific Ethanol Inc. Pacific Ethanol is an ethanol production company that plans to expand operations by opening a new facility in California. Gates is not alone in high profile investments into the clean energy market, Bob Metcalfe (Founder of 3COM and Inventor of Ethernet), who acts as the managing partner of Polaris Ventures, announced the VC’s first investment into the energy market. Polaris, which manages over $3 Billion in funds, invested $6.8 million into GreenFuel Technologies Corporation of Cambridge, MA. GreenFuel Technologies is an emissions to biofuels company, that utilizes natural algae in their patented bioreactors to turn greenhouse gas emissions from power plants into rich bio fuel. Polaris’s investment into GreenFuel was part of the company’s $18 Million Series B financing round that also included a high profile venture capital investor: Draper Fisher Jurvetson. When asked about the new industry venture, Bob Metcalfe said, “Energy has got to be one of the top five problems the world faces, and it’s been frustrating to watch activists and politicians fail to solve the problem,…Now it’s time for the entrepreneurs and scientists to give it a try.”

According to the International Energy Association, demand for renewable energy fuels will more than quadruple in the next decade. The current jump in oil prices is fueling investment into this relatively new market as investors view clean technology as an emerging opportunity rather than a public relations campaign. As gasoline prices continue to rise, alternative fuels become respectively cheaper and more attractive. In his latest State of the Union Address, President Bush outlined a plan to direct new investment into ethanol production and other clean technologies. According to a poll conducted by CBS News, Americans now see gas prices as one of their top three main concerns. With pressure coming from constituents, politicians are beginning to exert pressure on new spending on renewable technology to promote energy independence. Yet another front in this debate is that of environmental concern. With global warming on the rise, and many European governments eagerly searching for a Carbon Dioxide solution, the promise of reducing these emissions by 46% (as claimed by GreenFuel’s bio reactor system) begins to resonate as a promising environmental and business opportunity.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

On Sunday, Team Penske driver Joey Logano claimed his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series win of the 2016 season in the FireKeepers Casino 400 at the Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Michigan. The 200-lap race began with Logano starting from the pole position, and featured nine cautions and fourteen lead changes between eight different drivers.

Despite starting first, Logano was quickly overtaken on the first lap by Furniture Row Racing driver Martin Truex Jr. Truex led the race until Logano reclaimed the first position on lap ten, a position he would keep until the the first cycle of green flag pit stops around lap 40. Logano’s teammate Brad Keselowski took the lead during the pit stop cycle by staying out on the track. Keselowski, low on gasoline, led until a caution came out for a spin by Truex around lap 46. During the caution, Keselowski pitted and returned the lead back to his teammate, who led the race until lap 93.

Two other cautions slowed the race between the first caution and lap 93. The first occurred when Kyle Busch’s engine failed around lap 53, forcing the driver to a last-place finish in the race. The other caution was caused by contact between the cars of Chris Buescher, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and A. J. Allmendinger ten laps later. Between laps 93 and 103, Kyle Larson, Ryan Newman, Keselowski, Jimmie Johnson, and Paul Menard led at least one lap. Logano returned to the lead on lap 104, a few laps before a caution when Jeffrey Earnhardt’s car caught fire. After the caution, Logano remained in first until Hendrick Motorsports driver Chase Elliott passed him on lap 117.

Elliott kept the lead until lap 149, when he was briefly passed by Logano. Elliott retook the lead for three more laps on lap 150 before returning the lead back to Logano, who led until the seventh caution was called around lap 156 for of a collision between Danica Patrick, Brian Scott, and Casey Mears. Logano held the lead on the ensuing restart and led through two more caution periods that were called in the final 50 laps. The first began around lap 164 because of a collision involving Johnson, Trevor Bayne, and Ryan Blaney, while the final caution of the race was called with about ten laps remaining after Denny Hamlin suffered a tire puncture on the front straightaway and collided into the SAFER barrier. On the final restart, Logano retained the first position and led the remainder of the race to capture the fifteenth win of his career.

After the race, Logano, who led a race-high of 138 laps, praised his team, saying “Team Penske gave me a great race car. Everyone did a great job figuring out exactly what this car was going to do. This is Ford’s backyard, Roger [Penske]’s backyard; this is a great win”. Elliott, who finished second in the race, expressed disappointment with his result, claiming he “messed up” by not using the correct gear. Larson, Keselowski, and Kevin Harvick completed the top-five finishers, while Carl Edwards finished in the sixth position. Tony Stewart finished seventh ahead of Austin Dillon and Jamie McMurray, who finished eighth and ninth. Kurt Busch completed the first ten positions with a tenth-place finish. In post-race inspection, Larson’s car did not pass laser inspection, prompting NASCAR to impound his car so it can be further evaluated. Any possible penalties are to be announced in the next week.

In the drivers’ championship, Harvick led Kurt Busch and Keselowski with 526 points. Edwards and Logano were fourth and fifth with 472 and 455 points. Elliott was sixth with 453, followed by Johnson with 441. Truex was scored eighth ahead of Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth, who completed the top-ten. The 2016 season is scheduled to continue on June 26 with the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

A week-long choking smog-like haze over Malaysia has prompted crisis talks with Indonesia. Lingering smoke from forest fires on the Indonesian island of Sumatra are the primary cause. Farmers regularly burn scrub and forest to clear land during the dry season, but this is the worst haze since 1997.

Air quality in the Malaysian capital city of Kuala Lumpur is so poor, health officials are advising citizens to stay at home with doors closed. Some schools have been closed to keep children from being exposed to the haze. Schools that chose to remain open are keeping children indoors and require them to wear protective masks when they are forced to venture outdoors.

Kuala Lumpur International Airport was unaffected but smaller flights from Subang airport were suspended.

Malaysia’s Environment Minister, Adenan Satem, and Commodities Minister, Peter Chin, will meet with Indonesia’s forestry minister and officials from its environment ministry in Medan, according to Malaysian media. Malaysia has offered to send firefighters to fight the forest and scrub fires estimated at numbering more than 300.