Current Events Quiz 2

1. What is the name of the Travis County District Attorney who was recently arrested for DWI (spelling does NOT count)?
A women who's name I don't know and it has something to do with Rick Perry.

2. What happened to Ariel Castro, the man who was convicted of kidnapping, raping and beating three women he kept imprisoned for more than 10 years?
He hung himself after a month in jail.

3. Which Texas high school had a major fight where one student was killed and three others were injured in a stabbing? 
A high school in Houston, Texas.

4. What new technology item is Samsung set to release, beating Apple to the punch?
A smart phone watch.

5. What art medium does local artist Eleanor "Niz" Heraslmchuk use in her street art culture?


Answer BOTH of the questions below, please write at least a paragraph (3-5 sentences):

1. What, if anything, should Bowie High School do to help prevent a serious crime from taking place on campus?

2. Are you worried about your safety on this campus and WHY?

      I am not  worried about my safety at Bowie. I have not heard of anything like a knife fight happening before. I have also seen multiple police officers on campus and I'm sure that one of them, or a teacher, would step in if a confrontation of any kind occurred.  

News Values

Conflict

There is a conflict against the Policemen and the horses.

HORSES STAMPEDE THROUGH CAPITAL

   Authorities in Mexico City say 30 police horses have stampeded down one of the capital’s busiest avenues, injuring one person and damaging 11 cars. Police say the horses were scared by sound of car engines as they were being taken out of their trailers near Congress, where they helped control protesters. Some of the animals had cuts on their muzzles and legs.

Found on the Austin American Statesmen

News Values

Prominence

It think this news is very important because if it continued spreading, and they didn't mention anything, it could spread to places without people being able to prepare.

Wildfire crews make gains; blaze further contained

ASSOCIATED PRESS

   YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, CALIf. — Crews working to corral the massive wildfire searing the edge of Yosemite National Park made major gains on the blaze overnight and were anticipating additional advances on Tuesday with the help of cooler temperatures and higher humidity, officials said.

   The fire was 60 percent contained as of Monday, up from 45 percent Sunday night, according to California fire officials. The blaze also grew about 9 square miles and now covers more than 357 square miles. It has now consumed 231,000 acres.

   Full containment is not expected until Sept. 20.

   Mandatory evacuations remain in effect for some south of Highway 120 and Tioga Road west of Yosemite Creek Picnic Area is closed.

   Crews will continue building fire lines and burning away potential fuel sources.

   “We do have a nice window here of more cooperative weather,” state fire spokesman Daniel Berlant said.

   Gusty winds and dryer conditions are expected midweek, however, again raising the fire danger, Berlant said.

   Wind shifts on Friday dumped smoke into the Yosemite Valley, which appeared hazy with decreased visibility on video streaming from webcams in the park. Another shift in the wind is expected Monday or Tuesday, which should help clear the smoke out of the area, park ranger Kari Cobb said.

   There has been a noticeable decline in visitors to the park, she said, partly because of the fire’s smoke but also because of road closures in the park.

Found in the Austin American Statesman

News Values

Impact 

This is an emotional topic. It deals with the very touchy subject of sexual abuse. This article has an affect on people that were involved and even some that just have read about it.

 Female vigilante may be killing bus drivers
            
 CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — Mexican prosecutors said Monday they are investigating           claims that a woman who killed two bus drivers last week in this northern border city was seeking revenge for alleged sexual abuse of female passengers.

The claims made in an e-mail from the self-styled "bus driver hunter" echoed deeply in Ciudad Juarez, which has a grim history of sexual violence against women aboard buses.

A woman wearing a blond wig — or dyed hair — boarded one of the school bus-style vehicles that serve as transport in Ciudad Juarez on Wednesday morning. She approached the driver, took out a pistol, shot him in the head and left the bus. The next day, apparently the same woman did exactly the same thing to another driver on the same route.

Over the weekend, media outlets began receiving e-mails from the address "Diana the hunter of bus drivers."

"I myself and other women have suffered in silence but we can't stay quiet anymore," the e-mail said. "We were victims of sexual violence by the drivers on the night shift on the routes to the maquilas," a reference to the border assembly plants that employ many residents in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. "I am the instrument of vengeance for several women."

The newspaper Diario de Juarez reported that a witness quoted the killer as telling the second victim, "You guys think you're real bad, don't you?" before shooting him.

Authorities have not verified the authenticity of the e-mail, or of a Facebook page set up under a similar name Aug. 31.

But Arturo Sandoval, the spokesman for the Chihuahua state prosecutors' office said the vigilante claim is considered one of the working hypotheses in the crimes. There was no apparent robbery involved in the killings.

"Now that we have the e-mail in the case file, it indicates that this could have been someone who had had a run-in with a driver of one of his relatives," Sandoval said.

The government announced it will put undercover police aboard some buses and conduct weapons searches to prevent further killings, and said a citywide search for the suspect is already on.

"We have a police sketch of the suspect and we are looking for her," municipal police spokesman Adrian Sanchez said.

Many of the women murdered during a string of more than 100 eerily similar women's killings in Ciudad Juarez in the 1990s and early 2000s disappeared after boarding buses. Their bodies were often found weeks or months later, raped, strangled and dumped in the desert or vacant lots.

Several bus drivers were arrested in connection with those killings, but the cases against them always appeared weak, or their confessions coerced. One driver had his conviction overturned, and his co-defendant, another bus driver, died in prison before sentencing.

The head of the Chihuahua Women's Human Rights Center, Lucha Castro, said that perhaps the killer "or someone close to her suffered some abuse by one of these guys."

"It's a fact that there are sexual abuse cases on the bus routes, but it's no greater than women disappearing from the streets in downtown, in human trafficking rings," Castro said.

But, she added, like the still-unresolved identities of most of the 1990s killers, "The most tragic thing is that the public may never know what the truth is."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/09/02/mexico-vengeance-killer/2756235/

News Values

Novelty
People were, and still are, talking about Miley Cryrus' performance at the 2013 VMA's.  People are shocked by her performance and it has been big news since it happened.  I would consider it an unusual event.

Miley Cyrus breaks silence on MTV VMA fallout

Miley did it to get tongues wagging, other than her own.

Yes, she tells MTV, she planned the whole thing from the foam finger to the awkward twerking. Her strategy worked. Her performance has become an MTV VMA "moment," like Britney Spears and Madonna before her. She also told Robin Thicke that they're going to "make history." And they did. Her performance has surpassed Beyonce's Super Bowl performance on Twitter for most tweets per minute.

A few highlights:

On the fallout: "What's amazing is I think now, we're three days later and people are still talking about it. They're overthinking it," she says. "You're thinking about it more than I thought about it when I did it. Like, I didn't even think about it 'cause that's just me."

On the haters: "I don't pay attention to the negative because I've seen this play out so many times. How many times have we seen this play out in pop music?"

On her predecessors: "Madonna's done it. Britney's done it. Every VMA performance, that's what you're looking for; you're wanting to make history."

You'll get to hear her talk about it again in her documentary this fall.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2013/09/03/miley-cyrus-breaks-silence-on-mtv-vma-fallout/2757023/

News Values

Proximity

Blackshear, the school the article is about, is in the Austin Area and the Austin       American Statesman is too.  So, the AAT wrote about something that is reverent to where most of their readers live.

Systematic focus key to Blackshear’s success

School one of 7 in Austin thriving under new approach

By Benjamin Wermund BWERMUND@STATESMAN.COM  

   There are 1,000 words on Blackshear Elementary School’s cafeteria wall. They’re the 1,000 most frequently occurring words in the English language — which 40 percent of the school’s students are still learning to speak.

   Each week, every student in the second through fifth grades takes a spelling test with a sampling of those words.

   The spelling tests, and other weekly assessments like them, help staff — from the teachers to Principal Betty Jenkins — determine which students need more help.

   That systematic, daily focus on each student is one of the secrets of Blackshear’s success, and the success of a half-dozen other elementary schools in the Austin school district.    Nearly 100 percent of the students at Blacks-hear, on East 11th Street, come from low-income families. Fewer than 1 percent of the school’s students are white. Nearly 60 percent are considered at-risk students. Conventional wisdom would suggest the school shouldn’t be one of Austin’s — and the state’s — top-performing elementary schools.

   But it is.

   A year after Jenkins took over at Blackshear and put in place a tight schedule and a strict cur riculum, Blackshear had its best showing yet in state ratings released this month. Those gains came despite a new state accountability system that saw more Texas elementary schools fail to meet standards than ever before.

   “We are in a challenging setting here. Usually students with our demographics come significantly below their level,” Jenkins said. “We do things differently from other schools.”

   The ‘New Three R’s’

   The seven Austin school district elementary schools that performed best under the state’s new accountability system have adopted simple, focused approaches that have everyone at the school on the same page, officials said

   Last year, Jenkins put in place a program that she calls the “New Three R’s:” the right systems, the right resources and the right people.

   At Blackshear, students at all grade levels are frequently doing the same things — from reading time after breakfast, to five-minute math lessons that start each day and a 90-minute “enrichment” period every Friday with lessons on topics from yoga to songwriting.

   Teachers must test students once a week, and they push that assessment data up the chain to Jenkins, who carries spreadsheets with students’ grades and tries to know which of them need help.

   During the school year, students at Blackshear stop Jenkins in the hall to tell her about their improving reading levels. When she stops by a classroom, students inside offer to spell one of the 1,000 words.

   The school’s goal is to have 90 percent passing rates on the state’s standardized tests. That’s a high bar, and everyone in the school talks frequently with students about their progress.

   “You may notice a student was doing really well for four weeks, and suddenly he dropped,” Jenkins said. “We know where they are, we know what they need.”

   The school also has a focus on time — Jenkins wants her teachers using every minute of every school day, so the students get everything they can in school, and so the teachers don’t have to spend time working with students after school. That way the teachers don’t burn out.

   “I’m really a stickler for educational minutes during the day,” she said. “I want to protect a teacher’s time.”

   To do that, the school has a tight schedule that includes the morning reading time, the five minutes of math and mandatory testing. The Friday enrichment period is held during the school day — it’s not an after-school option like it is in some other schools.

   A focus on community involvement is a key part of the Blackshear model. Jenkins plans to encourage parents — many of whom are also still learning English — to learn the 1,000 words on the cafeteria wall when they sit with their children during breakfast time at the school. Other parents help teach during the Friday enrichment periods.

   Jenkins touts Black-shear’s rating as the cleanest campus in Austin, a recognition she says underscores the important work custodians do to make sure students have an optimal learning environment. The school also supports those workers. One custodian, who recently earned her teaching assistant certificate, will be a teaching assistant this year.

   Blackshear’s model was adapted from Graham Elementary, another campus that regularly aces state ratings. Jenkins spent the 2010 and 2011 school years refining the systems at Becker Elementary and brought them to Blackshear.

   It was a big shift, fourth-grade teacher April Tabor said. It required everyone at the school to work together more, and it was a more precise, rigid program than some at the school were used to.

   “It was something we were ready for and really needing. It turned out to be great,” Tabor said. “We didn’t have to work as hard to find what kids needed.”

   A finely grained look

   Blackshear was one of seven Austin elementary schools to earn the top honors under the new system that has seen elementary schools fail to meet state standards at a higher rate than middle and high schools. Ten percent of elementary schools in the state failed to meet standards, while just 7 percent of both middle and high schools missed the mark.

   “We have some schools that have really knocked it out of the park,” said Maria Hohenstein, an associate superintendent for Austin elementary schools.

   Those schools are the ones that have systems in place that are very clear and simple, and where everyone is on board — as is the case at Blackshear, Hohenstein said.

   “They’re master implementers,” she said of the principals at those schools.

   School officials in the district share the systems that they find work the best. Jenkins presented the Blackshear model to colleagues in the school district in a training session this summer

   Under the state’s new accountability system, elementary schools received essentially a pass or fail rating based on three components: overall student achievement, student progress, and elevating the performance of low-income and minority students.

   Maria Whitsett, an accountability expert with Moak, Casey and Associates, a school consulting firm, said the new standards have changed the dynamic for elementary schools. It takes into account more information than the old system, and that — combined with the components intended to measure student progress and gauge whether a school is closing performance gaps — presents a different, more finely grained look at what is happening, she said.

   Blackshear is a small campus — with just more than 200 students — where teachers and administrators can zero in on students to tailor instruction for each learner, Whitsett said. Because of that small sample size, Whitsett said the school might not see the same sort of stability in ratings from one year to the next that other schools do.

   Still, she said, the school’s success is remarkable.

   “You don’t come out that consistently strong without the teachers paying great attention to the curriculum and to the individual needs of the students,” Whitsett said.

   Jenkins acknowledged having a smaller school makes it easier to focus on each student, but she said the model can be applied to larger schools, because those schools also typically have larger staffs. Jenkins also pointed out that a smaller sample size means the stakes are higher for each student to pass the tests.

   “At a small school, every student counts,” she said.

Found on the Austin American Statesman

  

News Values

Timeliness

This information is very recent, especially considering recently we even started thinking about it and now we are gaining backing for the attack.

Obama gains backing for attack

U.S. Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham favor a limited response.

By Jackie Calmes, Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt NEW YORK TIMES

   WASHINGTON — The White House’s aggressive push for congressional approval of an attack on Syria appeared to have won the tentative support of one of President Barack Obama’s most hawkish Republican critics, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who said Monday that he supported a “limited” strike if the president did more to arm the Syrian opposition.

   In an hourlong meeting at the White House, McCain said Obama gave general support to doing more for the Syrian rebels, although no specifics were discussed. In the same conversation, which also included Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, officials said that Obama indicated that a covert effort by the United States to train the Syrian rebels was beginning to yield results: the first 50-man cell of fighters, which has been trained by the CIA, was beginning to sneak into Syria.

   There appeared to be broad agreement with the president, McCain and Graham said, that any attack on Syria should be to “degrade” the Syrian government’s delivery systems — which could include aircraft, artillery and the kind of rockets that the Obama administration says were used by the forces of President Bashar Assad to carry out an Aug. 21 sarin attack in the Damascus suburbs that killed more than 1,400 people.

   The senators, who both toned down past criticism that the president’s plan was too weak to change the course of Syria, now said they plan to meet with Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, to discuss the strategy in greater depth.

   “It is all in the details, but I left the meeting feeling better than I felt before about what happens the day after and that the purpose of the attack is going to be a little more robust than I thought,” Graham said.

   But McCain said that the Obama did not say specifically what weapons might be provided to the opposition or discuss in detail what Syrian targets might be attacked.

   “There was no concrete agreement, ‘OK, we got a deal,’ ” McCain said. “Like a lot of things, the devil is in the details.”

   In remarks to reporters outside the West Wing, McCain called the meeting “encouraging,” urged lawmakers to support Obama in his plan for military action in Syria and said a no vote in Congress would be “catastrophic” for the United States and its credibility in the world. McCain said he believed after his conversation with the president that any strikes would be “very serious” and not “cosmetic.”

   Although the words from McCain and Graham were a positive development for Obama and a critical part of the administration’s lobbying blitz on Syria on Monday, the White House still faces a tough fight in Congress.

   Many lawmakers entirely oppose a strike, and others favor a resolution that provides for more limited military action than what is in a draft resolution that the White House has sent to Capitol Hill.

   The conflict of opinion underscores Obama’s challenge in winning a vote in the House and Senate next week and avoiding personal defeat.

   A Labor Day confer ence call with five of Obama’s highest-ranking security advisers drew 127 House Democrats, nearly two-thirds their total number, after 83 lawmakers of both parties attended a classified briefing on Sunday.

   Pertinent committees are returning to Washington early from congressional recess for hearings this week, starting Tuesday with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which will hear from Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

   “The debate is shifting away from ‘Did he use chemical weapons?’ to ‘What should be done about it?’ ” said Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, in an interview after the Monday conference call.

   In Washington, the White House’s “flood the zone” effort, as one official called it, will continue. Classified briefings will be held for all House members and senators Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

   Obama has invited the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate defense, foreign affairs and intelligence committees to the White House today.

   But Tuesday night, he departs on a long-planned foreign trip, first to Sweden and then to Russia for the annual G-20 summit meeting of major industrialized and developing nations, a forum that is sure to be dominated by talk of Syria, and bring Obama face-to-face with Assad’s chief ally and arms supplier, President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

   House Democrats on the conference call with administration officials, which lasted 70 minutes, said Kerry, who has been the most aggressive and public prosecutor for military action, took the lead.

   Democrats said he portrayed not only the horrors of chemical weapons inflicted on Syrian civilians in the Aug. 21 attacks outside Damascus, but also the potential threat, if left unanswered, that such weapons posed to regional allies like Israel, Jordan and Turkey.

   Kerry argued that inaction could embolden Iran or non-state terrorists to strike those Middle East allies, and further encourage Iran and North Korea to press ahead with their nuclear programs.

   “The United States will not go it alone,” he said at one point, according to a senior Democrat who declined to be identified. Offers of “military assets” have come from France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, he said, without identifying the assets, and more are expected.

DEVELOPMENTS

   United States: A Marine Corps spokesman says the Marines’ recruiting website was tampered with and redirected temporarily, but no information was put at risk. Capt. Eric Flanagan wouldn’t say who was responsible for the hacking, but the site was redirected to a message from the Syrian Electronic Army, a hacker group that’s claimed responsibility for disrupting the New York Times website, Twitter and other media sites the group sees as sympathetic to Syria’s rebels.

   Syria: President Bashar Assad said military strikes against his country would risk triggering a regional war. He said the Middle East is a “powder keg” and no one can say what will transpire if the West takes military action against Syria.

   France: A French intelligence report estimated that the Syrian regime launched the alleged Aug. 21 attack involving a “massive use of chemical agents” and could carry out similar strikes in the future.

   Russia: The Russian news agency Interfax said President Vladimir Putin hopes to send a delegation of lawmakers to the U.S. to discuss the situation with members of Congress. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said “there was nothing specific” in the evidence the U.S. showed Moscow to blame the Syrian regime for the alleged chemical weapons attack.

   United Nations: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon planned to brief the Security Council’s 10 non-permanent members on the Syria crisis Tuesday morning. Angela Kane, high representative for disarmament affairs, planned a briefing Tuesday for member states that requested the investigation of alleged chemical weapons attacks.

Found on the Austin American Statesman