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Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Guns in schools: Arkansas district will arm 20 teachers and staff
A small school district in Arkansas will arm 20 volunteer teachers and staff with handguns starting in the fall, reigniting debate about the best way to protect children in schools.
The district will be the first in the state to arm teachers and is doing so under a state law that allows licensed, armed security guards on campus. The school?s participants in the program, whose identities will be kept secret, will be considered security guards after undergoing 53 hours of training.
"The plan we've been given in the past is, 'Well, lock your doors, turn off your lights and hope for the best,' " Superintendent David Hopkins told the Associated Press. "That's not a plan.?
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Mr. Hopkins said a wave of parent calls after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings last December caused him to reevaluate their procedures, even though the town of 9,200 people about 100 miles northwest of Little Rock isn't known for being dangerous.
State officials have not blocked the plan, even though Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell has said that he opposes arming teachers and staff. Instead, he supports hiring law enforcement officers as school resource officers.
Participating staff in Clarksville?s schools will be given a one-time $1,100 stipend to purchase a handgun and holster. The district will pay about $50,000 for ammunition and for training by Nighthawk Custom Training Academy, a private training facility in northwest Arkansas.
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?That teacher is going to respond to one thing and one thing alone, and that's someone is in the building either actively or attempting to kill people," Jon Hodoway, director of training for Nighthawk said. "That's it. They're not going to enforce the law. They're not going to make traffic stops. If somebody is outside acting the fool, they're going to call the police."
At a recent training session teachers and administrators practiced using airsoft pellet guns to shoot a student pretending to hold another at gunpoint.
One of the student simulators, Sydney Whitkanack, said she?s not concerned about having teachers or staff armed.
"If they're concealed, then it's no big deal," she said. ?It's not like someone's going to know, 'Oh, they have a firearm.' "
Others, like former president of the Arkansas Education Association Donna Morey, strongly opposed the plan, citing concerns over a student accidentally getting shot or taking a gun.
"We just think educators should be in the business of educating students, not carrying a weapon," she said.
The Clarksville school district is the latest example of localities trying to form responses to the Sandy Hook shooting last December that killed 20 children and six teachers.
Like Clarksville, some districts have decided to beef up armed security, in line with the National Rifle Association?s recommendation for every school to have an armed security guard, police officer, or staff.
In May, a rural Colorado school district voted to allow two top administrators to carry guns. They were able to circumvent Colorado?s gun laws by changing the job title of the superintendent to security officer. In Arizona's Maricopa County, Sheriff Joe Arpaio organized a posse of armed volunteers to patrol local schools, although he drew criticism for hiring a former child-sex offender.
In 2013, seven states passed legislation permitting teachers or administrators to carry guns in schools and more than 30 state legislatures introduced bills that would permit staff members to carry guns in public or private schools, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
But most proposals to arm teachers or staff have failed, even in conservative states more likely to support an expanded role for guns, according to The New York Times.
A key reason for fewer districts arming teachers is the potential cost, according to the Times report. Some insurance companies are declining coverage to schools that allow employees to carry handguns, or are raising their premiums.
In Kansas, for instance, the liability insurance provider for about 90 percent of Kansas school districts said it would not cover schools that permit employees to carry concealed handguns. A dozen Kansas school districts that were considering arming their staff changed their minds after the decision, the state employee who oversees insurance programs at the Kansas Association of School boards told the Times.
?Some [insurance providers] are saying this is so high risk we?re not going to touch it,? Kenneth Trump, the president of National School Safety and Security Services, which discourages districts from implementing concealed carry policies told the Times. ?Others may say this is so high risk that you?re going to pay through the nose.?
? Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/guns-schools-arkansas-district-arm-20-teachers-staff-190939220.html
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Monday, July 29, 2013
Rome bus crash kills at least 37
ROME (AP) ? A tour bus filled with Italians returning home after an excursion plunged off a highway into a ravine in southern Italy on Sunday night after it had smashed into several cars that were slowed by heavy traffic, killing at least 37 people, said police and rescuers.
Flashing signs near Avellino, outside Naples, had warned of slowed traffic ahead along a stretch of the A116 autostrada, a major highway crossing southern Italy, before the crash occurred, said highway police and officials, speaking on state radio early Monday. They said the bus driver, for reasons not yet determined, appeared to have lost control of his vehicle.
Hours after the crash, firefighters said that they had extracted 37 bodies ? most of the dead were found inside the mangled bus, which lay on its side , while a few of the victims were pulled out from underneath the wreckage, state radio and the Italian news agency ANSA reported..
The radio report said 11 people were hospitalized with injuries, two of them in very critical condition. It was not immediately known if there were other survivors or any missing.
Rescuers wielding electric saws cut through the twisted metal to better probe the interior of the bus, stopping occasionally in silence to listen for any cries for help, even as the bodies were put into coffins to be taken to a morgue.
Reports said as many as 49 people had been aboard the bus when it ripped through a guardrail after slamming into several cars, then plunged some 30 meters (100 feet) off the highway and into a ravine near a wooded area. In its plunge, the bus tore away whole sections of concrete barriers as well as guardrail. The concrete lay in large chunks in a clearing in a wooded area where the bus landed.
State radio quoted Avellino police as saying the bus driver was among the dead.
Occupants of cars which were hit by the bus stood on the highway near their vehicles. One car's rear was completely crumpled, while another was smashed on its side. It was not immediately known if anyone in those cars had been injured.
The highway links western and eastern Italy across the south.
Early reports said the passengers had spent the day in Puglia, an area near the Adriatic on the east coast famed for religious shrines. But on Monday, a state radio reporter at the scene said authorities told him that the bus had been bringing the passengers home after an outing to a thermal spa area near Benevento, a town not far from Avellino. Others at the scene said the passengers might have visited a town near Benevento that was the early home of Padre Pio, a late mystic monk highly popular among Catholics in Italy.
Passengers came from small towns near Naples, and relatives streamed to the crash site.
The bus dove off the highway near the town of Monteforte Irpino in Irpinia, a largely agricultural area about 40 miles (60 kilometers) inland from Naples and about 250 kilometers (160 miles) south of Rome.
A reporter for Naples daily Il Mattino, Giuseppe Crimaldi, told Sky TG24 TV from the scene that some witnesses told him the bus had been going at a "normal" speed on the downhill stretch of the highway when it suddenly veered and started hitting cars. He said some witnesses thought they heard a noise as if the bus had blown a tire.
A local prosecutor arrived at the crash scene to begin an investigation into the cause of the crash.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sunjournaltopheadlines/~3/kB-GD6pXh0M/1400028
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To catch a thief: Masked man hunted after $53M Cannes jewel heist
In a brazen heist, a masked man allegedly armed with a pistol walked into the legendary Carlton Hotel in Cannes, France, and stole about $53 million of jewels that were being set up for display. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports.
By Michelle Kosinski and Alastair Jamieson, NBC News
CANNES, France ? The estimated value of diamonds and jewels stolen from a glamorous French Riviera hotel more than doubled on Monday to $136 million, making it one of the world?s biggest heists.
Police previously estimated the worth of the stolen collection to be around $53 million, but a more complete inventory conducted by the Dubai-based organizer of the diamond show resulted in the value of the stolen goods to sky rocket even higher, a French state prosecutor told the Associated Press.
The audacious raid prompted one security expert to speculate that the notorious "Pink Panther" jewel thief gang was "on the warpath again."
The lone robber walked into the Carlton Intercontinental Hotel in Cannes late morning Sunday and demanded to be handed several bags containing jewels and diamond-encrusted watches.
"Everything happened very quickly," a judicial source told Reuters, adding that there was no violence.
Philippe Vique, an assistant prosecutor in the Riviera town of Grasse, said Monday that the man covered his face with a scarf, cap and wore gloves while pulling off the logistically simple crime.
Vique told the Associated Press that the man broke in through French doors, held up participants of the show with a handgun and fled on foot.
The robbery took only about one minute, and three private security guards were on hand, along with two vendors and a manager of the sale exhibit, according to the AP.
No customers were present during the crime.
The hotel, a haunt of the rich and famous, was where Alfred Hitchcock filmed scenes from the 1955 film "To Catch a Thief", starring Cary Grant as burglar alongside Grace Kelly.
It was hosting a temporary jewelry exhibit over the summer from the prestigious Leviev diamond house, which is owned by Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev.
The heist came two months after two smaller jewelry robberies hit the annual Cannes film festival, where many of the world's top movie stars are lent gowns and gems to parade on the red carpets and at glamorous parties.
The crime follows recent jail escapes by Pink Panther gang members.
Jonathan Sazonoff, U.S. editor for the Museum Security Network website and an authority on high-value crime, told The Associated Press that police would likely probe whether the heist is linked to the escapes.
On Thursday, gang member Milan Poparic escaped his Swiss prison after accomplices rammed a gate and overpowered guards with bursts from their AK-47s.
"The brazen drama of it is their style... The possibility of the reemergence of the Pink Panther gang is very troubling and taken seriously by law enforcement worldwide," Sazonoff said. "The theft of high value diamonds is exactly what they do, so it's not a great leap to assume they are on the warpath again. They are a crime wave waiting to happen."
The heist would appear to top a raid of a store in Paris in 2008 that netted more than $100 million worth of gems and jewelry.
"It's a huge theft,? Sazonoff told The AP. ?Anytime you talk about a heist with many millions of dollars it turns heads and feeds the imagination.?
In a statement seen by Reuters, Leviev said: "Company officials are cooperating with local authorities investigating the loss and are relieved that no one was injured in the robbery."
?There are three types of jewel thieves,? said financial crime author Jeffrey Robinson. ?There?s the idiot who walks into a jewelry store with a shotgun smashes and grabs and gets caught, then there?s the people who break into your home and try to steal a wedding ring.
?But then this third type - and this is the important one - he is the professional businessman. And his business is jewel thievery.?
NBC News' Andrew Rafferty, the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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California Inmate Dies In Solitary Confinement During Hunger Strike
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation maintain that Sell?s death is being investigated as a suicide, unrelated to the hunger strike. Inmates rejected this explanation, saying a suicide would be ?completely out of character for him.? According to a letter from hunger strikers, several men said, ?No one believes he killed himself.?
The hunger strike began with 30,000 individuals on July 8 and has dwindled to about 1,000 participants in 11 prisons. Prison infirmaries have been swamped with fasting inmates in critical condition.
Prison officials have undercounted hunger strikers by not including inmates who are still drinking electrolytes like Kool-Aid or tea. Additionally, leaders of the movement have been rounded up and put in more severe solitary confinement. Lawyers and relatives of the strikers say they have received multiple letters from different inmates reporting that prisons are blasting their cells with cold air in an attempt to weaken their resolve.
At Pelican Bay, California?s maximum security prison, many inmates are kept in solitary confinement for 10 to 28 years ? even though the psychological trauma of being locked in a windowless room for 23 hours a day begins to kick in after just ten days.. Officials often justify this ?living death,? by using race or political reading materials as evidence the confined inmate may have a ?gang affiliation.? Mentally ill prisoners also make up a substantial proportion of solitary cells in several states. In their third hunger strike since 2011, inmates are calling for an end to solitary confinement, a more humane review process for inmate punishment, as well as access to health care and education.
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Sunday, July 28, 2013
Austrian flap over bell dedicated to Hitler
VIENNA (AP) ? Like many others in Austria's countryside, a tower bell above the red-tiled rooftops of Wolfpassing village marks the passing of each hour with an unspectacular "bong." But this bell is unique: It is embossed with a swastika and praise to Adolf Hitler.
And unlike more visible remnants of the Nazi era, the bell was apparently overlooked by official Austria up to now.
Ensconced in the belfry of an ancient castle where it was mounted by fans of the Nazi dictator in 1939, the bell has tolled on for nearly 80 years. It survived the defeat of Hitler's Germany, a decade of post-war Soviet occupation that saw Red Army soldiers lodge in the castle and more recent efforts by Austria's government to acknowledge the country's complicity in crimes of that era and make amends.
Some of those efforts have focused on identifying relics of that time and ensuring they're either removed or put in historical context. As an example, officials often cite government moral and material support for the restoration of the Mauthausen concentration camp, where a museum documents atrocities for school children and other visitors.
The Wolfpassing bell pays homage to Hitler for his 1938 annexation of Austria ? a move supported back then by the vast majority of the nation's citizens. It describes Hitler as "the unifier and Fuehrer of all Germans" and says he freed the "Ostmark" ? Nazi jargon for Austria ? "from the yoke of suppression by foreign elements and brought it home into the Great-German Reich."
Local historian Johannes Kammerstaetter says most villagers would have known about it. But village mayor Josef Sonnleitner asserts even the villagers had no clue until the first media reports last month on the "Fuehrerglocke," or "Fuehrer Bell."
"Nobody cared until all this publicity," he said on the telephone. He refused a request for a longer interview, saying he was busy for the next two weeks with haying.
In any case, the government's recent sale of the castle ? with all its historical trappings ? has suddenly made the bell an issue beyond the sleepy village of 1,500 people about 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Vienna.
In a country particularly sensitive about suggestions it has not fully faced its Nazi past, officials are scrambling for explanations of why the bell apparently evaded notice for so long. They also are under pressure to justify a ruling by the government agency in charge of historic monuments that it must remain part of the castle as part of its heritage? despite the refusal of the new owner to say what he plans to do with it.
Propagating Nazi values or praising the era is illegal in Austria. Kammerstaetter, the historian, has formally asked state prosecutors to examine whether the government's sale of the bell is a criminal offence. He says the change of ownership could constitute a case of "spreading National Socialist ideology" on the part of the government agency in charge of state-owned property
Raimund Fastenbauer, a senior official of Vienna's Jewish community, invokes other concerns, noting that other Hitler-era relics like the dictator's house of birth in the western town of Braunau have become a magnet for neo-Nazis.
"I think the best thing would be if the bell disappeared and was buried somewhere," he says.
For its part, the government says that the sale was legal, along with the decision to keep the bell in the belfry as an integral component of the castle.
Economics Minister Reinhold Mitterlehner says the agency overseeing the sale was not aware of the inscription.
He notes in a letter to Kammerstaetter that "the bell up to now was neither publicly displayed nor generally accessible," adding that he does not see the sale as constituting a criminal offense.
Ernst Eichinger, a spokesman for the agency responsible for government real-estate, says that with a portfolio of more than 28,000 buildings ? many of them huge ? "we cannot search every centimeter" before a sale.
Concerns are heightened by the lack of clarity about what the new owner, Tobias Hufnagl, plans to do with the relict. Two web domains linked to him or his holding company, hufnagel.cc and thinvestments.com, did not open.
Sonnleitner, the Wolfpassing mayor, says has not been able to directly contact Hufnagl, despite weeks of trying.
In a terse email this week responding to numerous Associated Press queries seeking permission to film the bell and asking about its fate, Hufnagl said he had "no interest" in exchanges with the AP.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/austrian-flap-over-bell-dedicated-hitler-091140297.html
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Scientists implant false memories in mice
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found a way to fool mice into remembering an electric shock where none actually existed.
Researchers have created fake memories in mice indistinguishable from the mice's true recollections, an accomplishment that has bearings on much confidence we should have in our own memories.
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Enlarge?Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today?s events,? said Albert Einstein. ?It is also deceptive because it is frequently wrong, sometimes dangerously so.
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Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed the ability to implant mice with false memories. The memories can be easily induced and are just as strong as real memories, physiological proof of something psychologists and lawyers have known for years.
The findings are a serious matter. According to the?Innocence Project, eyewitness testimony played a role in 75 percent of guilty verdicts eventually overturned by DNA testing after people spent years in prison. Some prisoners may even have been executed due to false eyewitness testimony. It was not because the witnesses were lying. They were just wrong, said Susumu Tonegawa, a molecular biologist and the lead author in the MIT study.
In the longest criminal trial in American history, the McMartin family, who operated a preschool in California, was charged with multiple incidents of child abuse. After seven years and $15 million in prosecution expenses, some charges were dropped and the defendants were acquitted of others when it became clear some of the accusations were based on false memories, some possibly planted by childrens? therapists.
There is now a False Memory Syndrome in scientific literature and a False Memory Syndrome Foundation.
Last year, Tonegawa and his team published a study in?Nature?showing how false memories could be implanted in mice. They first put mice in a chamber -- the scientists called it the Red Room -- and let the animals roam around exploring so they could build up a contextual memory of it.
After a while, they gave the mice mild electric shocks to their feet and a blue light flashed in their brains delivered by a fiber-optic cable, implanting the memory that the Red Room was a dangerous place.
The next day researchers put the mice in an entirely different chamber ? the Black Room ? and let them explore peacefully. The mice were not afraid until the light flashed. The mice froze again although they were not in the chamber where they had received a shock. Why?
Memory is largely in the hippocampus, Tonegawa said, in a section called the dentate gyrus. Tonegawa, Steve Ramirez, a graduate student, and their colleagues identified the neurons there that were associated with experiential learning.
Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/AvCd7xcGXdg/Scientists-implant-false-memories-in-mice
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