Friday, October 5, 2007

Johan Boyden is running for the Communist Party in the Ontario provincial election, in the Toronto Centre riding. Wikinews interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

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.”

Saturday, June 24, 2006

After 6 months of development, the Inkscape project released today a new version of their SVG-based GPLed vector drawing program. It features improved performance and many new features, such as a Layers dialog, better PDF export, configurable keyboard shortcuts and support for clipping and masking. Inkscape runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

Inkscape started in 2003 as a fork of the vector drawing editor Sodipodi. Inkscape does not yet have as many features as the best commercial vector editors, but it is currently suitable for a wide range of applications. Inkscape’s implementation of SVG and CSS standards is incomplete; most notably, it has not yet fully implemented SVG filter effects, animation, and SVG fonts. Inkscape is currently under active development, which is indicated by the version number below one; new features were being added regularly.

Saturday, January 8, 2005

U.S. citizens donating in 2005 to help tsunami victims may write off their donations on their 2004 tax returns, thanks to a bill quickly passed in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate on a voice vote, and signed into law by president George W. Bush.

Without the new law, contributors would have waited until 2006 and their 2005 tax returns to be able to write off their charitable donations. The law is intended to promote donating towards the tsunami relief effort.

CBS News reports Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy is estimating approximately 322 million U.S. dollars in goods and cash have been donated by private U.S. citizens and corporations, in addition to the 350 million that was promised by the government.

An AP/ISOS poll has found three in ten U.S. citizens have donated to Tsunami Aid organizations.

Thursday, March 2, 2006

Buffalo, New York —In an unanimous vote, the City of Buffalo‘s Planning Board voted to table the Elmwood Village hotel Proposal, postponing voting on legislation for up to 30 days.

The Board said its decision was due to the lack of public involvement, saying that there have not been enough meetings.

The Elmwood Village Hotel is a proposed project by Savarino Construction Services Corporation and was designed by Karl Frizlen of The Frizlen Group. The hotel would be placed on Elmwood and Forest Avenues in Buffalo, New York. In order for the hotel to be built, at least five buildings, that include both businesses and residents, must be demolished.

The Forever Elmwood Corp. is a Buffalo-based non-profit organization founded in 1994. Justin Azzarella, the Executive Director for the organization voiced support for the proposal, stating: “I am here today to lend Forever Elmwood’s support the hotel project. Particularly, Forever Elmwood is encouraged by the fact that this building follows the more stringent Elmwood Village Design Guidelines. We have been speaking with Savarino Construction, and they have promised us [Forever Elmwood] that they will engage the community further, including the surrounding Block Clubs and businesses. For that reason, while Forever Elmwood is in support of this project and the type of project that it is, we are asking also that the project be tabled so that the community can be further engaged. Specifically the surrounding Block clubs which include the Granger, Claremont, Asland and The Lincoln Parkway Block Clubs.”

“Because of the excellent work that Karl does and the game plan that they have, I think its an ideal use of this particular location. I think that this particular type of development needs to be encouraged and promoted as opposed to roadblocked,” said a man who owns five properties near the proposal site.

However, Evelyn Bencinich, a resident of Granger Place and whose house would be located directly behind the hotel said, “My property value will be depreciated or non-existent because no one is going to want to live behind a multi-story hotel. We are facing up to a year of noisy and dangerous demolition and construction. Children, pets and even drunk rebellers could wander on site and get hurt. Traffic tie-ups caused by large machinery and garbage bins is inevitable. Where will pedestrians walk? We could experience increased unsanitary flooding in our yards and basements due to the digging and cementing for the underground parking garage. Rats will be displaced into the immediate neighborhoods and be in great abundance. Once we get past the year of nightmare construction, what if you build it and they don’t come? We could ultimately have a seven million dollar rooming house on our corner.”

Patty Morris, co-owner of Don Apparel with Nancy Pollina at 1119 Elmwood also asked that the project be tabled saying, “this has only been public knowledge for less than two weeks and the public never saw the redesign. How can you vote on anything that no one has seen yet? The Board cut off Morris saying, “so specifically you don’t have any problem with it [the design] you just…” Morris then said, “Oh I am totally against this project, but thats besides the point isn’t it.”

The planning board is also concerned that the current design may still be too big.

At one point Board member Susan Curran Hoyt said, “we know you’ve cut down your number of rooms on this project, but we still see it doesn’t seem to fit the description of a ‘botique’ hotel,” and asked Eva Hassett, Vice President of Savarino Construction, “we wonder if you could reduce the rooms further.”

“One thing I didn’t talk about was the price levels of these rooms and that will be important to know. The room rate will be somewhere between US$120 and $160 a night, which is about the same price of the Hampton Inn down town and the smaller you make the hotel, the more expensive the rooms will get. We believe that we’ve made a good compromise in terms of the size of the hotel and perhaps botique means different things to different people,” said Hassett.

The board was also concerned that there is not enough parking asking, “are there alternative plans for valet parking off-site, in the event that you have a full hotel or a large event going on?”

“We are exploring several possibilities with respect to additional parking for valet and parking near-by,” replied Hassett. “We are also exploring the possibility of using the rear of 1105 Elmwood for additional parking, which would give us an additional ten or eleven spaces.”

The new design has a total of 55 parking spaces for 72 rooms, with 39 of them underground and the rest on ground level.

Hassett also said that a “parking study” will be done on the area.

Concerns that the second floor of the hotel will be too close to the property of 605 Forest were also brought up. The board asked how far the hotel would be from the property and Karl Frizlen replied saying it would “be approximately five feet from the property line,” but he also admitted that, “I do not know exactly how close the house next door” will be from the hotel, but did say “I think the house is about four or five feet away from the property line and we [the hotel] sit right on the property line.”

The board is concerned the setback from the property is not enough saying the space between the building and the hotel is “pretty narrow.”

The City’s Common Council also agreed to table the proposal also citing the need for more public engagement and the need for more organizations to respond including the Buffalo Preservation Board and the Office of Historic Preservation.

During that meeting, Hassett also said the proposal to try and get a variance to obtain the properties of 605 and 607 Forest were “now off the agenda.”

The Common Council is expected to meet and hold a public hearing about the project and the rezoning of the properties to be demolished (1119-1121 Elmwood) on Tuesday March 7, 2006 at 2:00 p.m. in Council Chambers at City Hall. At the moment the properties are not zoned for a hotel.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Toyota announced on Friday that it will recall around 17,000 Lexus vehicles in response to risks of the fuel tank in the cars leaking after a collision.

The Lexus HS 250h model was subjected to the recall following a US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigation. Despite previously passing Toyota safety inspections, the conclusions of an NHTSA sub-contracted investigator were that; when the vehicles in question collided with an object at more than fifty-miles-per hour, more than 142 grams of fuel, the maximum allowed by US law, leaked from the crashed car.

According to Toyota, further tests did not show any additional failure of the fuel tank.

In response to the findings, Toyota issued a recall of all affected vehicles, since the company had no solution immediately available. The recall includes 13,000 cars already sold, as well as another 4,000 still at dealerships.

Toyota says it plans to conduct further tests to determine the cause of the leak. A Toyota spokesman, Brian Lyons, said that the company was “still working to determine what the root cause of the condition is.” It’s still unclear when exactly the recall will take place, or when dealerships will be allowed to sell this model again. Lyons said that Toyota is “working feverishly to get this resolved as soon as possible.”

Toyota isn’t aware of any accidents stemming from the leaking fuel tank in the affected vehicles, first introduced in the summer of 2009.

See the discussion page for instructions on adding schools to this list and for an alphabetically arranged listing of schools.

Due to the damage by Hurricane Katrina and subsequent flooding, a number of colleges and universities in the New Orleans metropolitan area will not be able to hold classes for the fall 2005 semester. It is estimated that 75,000 to 100,000 students have been displaced. [1]. In response, institutions across the United States and Canada are offering late registration for displaced students so that their academic progress is not unduly delayed. Some are offering free or reduced admission to displaced students. At some universities, especially state universities, this offer is limited to residents of the area.

Sunday, February 4, 2007

Fourteen houses have been destroyed and another 3 damaged by a bush fire burning in Jarrah forests and farmland near the historical timber town of Dwellingup 70km south east of Perth, Western Australia.

The fire has also destroyed approximately 100 power poles, leading to a loss of telecommunication services to the town and affecting water supplies. Mobile generators have been installed for emergency power.

Steve Slavin, spokesman for Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC), said that 250 fire-fighters are containing the fire with crews concentrating on the southern front, which is now within 3 km of the town.

Mr Slavin said “Our concern is that winds this afternoon will be swinging around to the south and increasing in intensity.” “It’s making us nervous. The advice we’re giving to people in Dwellingup is if they’ve decided that they will leave, this would be a good time to do it”

In separate fires near North Yunderup, Greenfields and Parkland have affected transmission lines supplying power to approximately 56,000 properties.

Additional fires are burning near Toodyay 85km north east of Perth, Another fire is burning near Williams approximately 160 south east of Perth and 90Km east of Dwellingup. And in the southern rural suburb of Forrestdale. These fires are reported to be under control.

Western Australian Police Arson squad are investigating these fires as some appear to be deliberately lit. The Police are also investigating the death of a women in her mid 20’s who died on Saturday after her car rolled while fleeing the fire near Toodyay.