APRIL 17, 2014

News Clips For The Day


Three Shot Dead as Pro-Russian Separatists Storm Ukraine Base
- Alexander Smith
First published April 17 2014


Three pro-Russian separatists were shot dead after 300 colleagues attempted to attack a national guard base in eastern Ukraine, the country's interior minister said.
Arsen Avakov said in a Facebook post that 63 of the 300 separatists were detained after attempting to seize the base in Mariupol, according to a translation by Interfax Ukraine.

According to Avakov, the protesters hurled Molotov cocktails and opened fire on Ukrainian personnel, who fired warning shots in response. After further warnings the Ukrainian troops used deadly force, he said.

People surround a man who was injured during pro-Russian protests near a Ukrainian military base in Mariupol on Wednesday.

The translation of Facebook post was confirmed by Reuters.
"No casualties have been reported among the Interior Ministry servicemen," Avakov said, according to Interfax Ukraine. "The preliminary information available suggests that three of the militants were killed, 13 were injured and 63 were detained. Weapons, communication equipment and mobile phones were confiscated. The identities of the detained persons are being established."

In response to the raid, the national guard conducted an overnight operation to "contain the gang," Interfax Ukraine reported.

Tensions in eastern Ukraine have been on a high since Pro-Russian separatists occupied buildings across at least 10 towns and cities last week.

Heavily armed and dressed in unmarked battle fatigues, the militiamen say they want to emulate Crimea and have a referendum to join Russia. They say the new Western-backed Kiev regime will not represent their views. The U.S. and Kiev governments, as well as the majority of Western analysts, say the movement is being backed by the Russian secret service.

On Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry is due to meet with his counterparts from Russia, Ukraine and the European Union. It will be the first time that the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers have met since Russia took Crimea.




According to Arsen Avakov's facebook account, 63 pro-Russian separatists were captured while 13 were wounded and three were killed when they attacked the national guard base at Mariupol. There was a total of 300 raiders. No injuries were reported among the Ukrainians. The separatists are quoted as saying they want to “emulate Crimea.” They were “heavily armed” presumably with small arms and with Molotov cocktails. The national guard is searching for the remainder of the attacking group. The US, Russia, Ukraine and the EU will be represented in talks on Thursday. This was a highly successful action on the part of the Kiev forces. Hopefully they will continue in like fashion.




Edward Snowden Asks Vladimir Putin About Russian Surveillance – NBC
Alexander Smith
First published April 17 2014

NSA leaker Edward Snowden put a direct question to Vladimir Putin during a live televised question-and-answer session Thursday, asking Russia's president about Moscow's use of mass surveillance on its citizens.

Speaking via a video link, Snowden asked: "I've seen little public discussion of Russia's own involvement in the policies of mass surveillance, so I'd like to ask you: Does Russia intercept, store or analyze, in any way, the communications of millions of individuals?"

Edward Snowden putting a question to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a question and answer session on Thursday.

Putin replied by stating Russia did not carry out mass surveillance on its population, and that its intelligence operations were strictly regulated by court orders.

"Mr Snowden, you are a former agent, a spy, I used to work for the intelligence service, we are going to talk one professional language," Putin said, according to translation by state-run broadcaster Russia Today.

"Our intelligence efforts are strictly regulated by our law so...you have to get a court permission to stalk that particular person.

"We don't have as much money as they have in the States and we don't have these technical devices that they have in the States. Our special services, thank God, are strictly controlled by society and the law and regulated by the law."

He added: "Of course, we know that terrorists and criminals use technology so we have to use means to respond to these, but we don't have uncontrollable efforts like [in America]."

Snowden has been charged with three offenses in the U.S., including one count under the Espionage Act, after leaking thousands of documents last year.

He now lives in Russia having been granted a year’s asylum after making his way there from Hong Kong following his release of the files. Reporting on the documents he leaked led to a shared Pulitzer Prize by the Guardian and Washington Post.




It's impressive that Vladimir Putin has any live televised question and answer sessions. Of course when he answered Snowden's question his answer was to deny that Russia had any massive data collection activities like the NSA nor even the technology and money to do it, saying that they had to have a court order to spy on anybody. The businessman who was quoted in last weeks article of comments from Moscow citizens, seems to fear that the mere fact he was criticizing the government might cause him to lose his business, so not everybody in Russia trusts the government. Putin has finally acknowledged that he did have Russian troops in Crimea before the referendum, which he had denied up to this point, so he has been known to lie.




Shared Space at Heart of New York's Heated Charter School Debate – NBC
By Nona Willis Aronowitz
First published April 17 2014

NEW YORK — When Ginette Hernandez’s five-year-old son switched schools in November, she felt a palpable sense of relief. Her son, who has speech, behavior and developmental issues, had been struggling in his public school in East Harlem. Not quite potty-trained, the boy had accidents, and teachers didn’t have the time or training to clean him up. It seemed like every time her son had a meltdown, Hernandez got a panicked call at work.

Things started looking up when the boy switched to the nearby Mickey Mantle School (P.S. M811), a special education public school that provides more individual attention. But a New York state budget deal struck in Albany two weeks ago has her afraid that her son will have to move yet again.

The deal requires the city to provide rent-free space in public school buildings for charter schools — independently run public schools that receive less public funding than district schools and are subsidized by private donations. If the city can’t find room for charters inside public schools — an arrangement known as colocation — they must pay to house them elsewhere. The new law will also allot $500 more per charter school student by 2017.

The decision grants unprecedented protections to charters, and stokes the often vitriolic debate over whether they offer a refuge for underprivileged kids from failing schools — or provide opportunities for a few at the expense of the larger public school system.

In New York, where school space is at a premium, colocation of charters and district schools can exacerbate tensions in a particularly intense way. Colocation among district schools is common in the city, but when charter schools rub right up against traditional public schools, the differences — both financial and cultural — are hard to ignore. Nearly half of city schools face overcrowding, and according to many parents and activists, new protections for charters will only squeeze resources further.

At the epicenter of the debate is the school building where Hernandez’s child attends class. It houses three schools: Mickey Mantle, P.S. 149, and the Harlem 1 branch of Success Academy, part of a network of 22 charter schools that is endowed with millions of private dollars. The budget deal reversed a decision from Mayor Bill de Blasio to revoke the placement of Success Academy’s middle school in the building (along with several other proposals citywide).

“I’m anxious, angry, and confused,” said Hernandez. “Just to think that now or in a year we will be made to move schools because a big superpower wants to take over? It’s disgusting.”

Charter advocates, meanwhile, say the budget deal simply reinforces that charters are public schools, too.

“Our parents are paying taxes,” said Danique Loving, principal of Success Academy Harlem 1. “Now they are being protected the same way traditional public school parents are.”

“The anger among parents is already at incendiary levels. I think it’ll create even more of an explosive attitude.”

Success Academy is still negotiating with the city. But if plans stay as they are, they won’t affect the enrollment of current students at Mickey Mantle, including Hernandez’s son, and won’t take space from P.S. 149. The plan calls for three classrooms from Mickey Mantle to be phased to Success Academy over five years and for fewer new students to be enrolled at the special ed school (prospective students would be directed to a different school.)

Still, it’s not the inch so much as the mile that concerns Hernandez and others. Anti-charter activists are calling the new deal an affront to the 94 percent of kids who don’t attend charters and yet another example of a privileged few benefiting while so many others remain underserved.

“The anger among parents is already at incendiary levels,” said Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters and a vocal anti-charter activist. When parents realize that charters are getting “preferential treatment,” she said, “I think it’ll create even more of an explosive attitude.”

The demographics of the three schools housed at 41 West 117 Street are virtually identical: nearly all black and Hispanic, with a majority of students eligible for free and reduced lunch. But when the classrooms of P.S. 149 and Mickey Mantle give way to Success Academy on the third floor and part of the second, one notices the aesthetic differences immediately. The public school hallways are cheerful but basic, with a ragtag assortment of colors and student art on the walls. A few fluorescent lights flicker; the bathrooms are standard cinderblock.

In Success Academy’s bright hallways, signs are stenciled in the same font and bear inspirational quotes like “Actions speak louder than words.” Classrooms are outfitted in splashy blues, reds and greens, with the same multi-colored, polka-dotted carpets. Success Academy students wear orange and blue uniforms: jumpers for the girls, shirts and ties for the boys.

According to Barbara Darrigo, principal of P.S. 149, there’s an unmistakable discomfort in the building.

“It’s this underlying tension,” she said. “There’s almost an air of elitism. When they’re not making eye contact with you [in the hallways] and they’re not acknowledging your existence, you kinda start thinking, ‘I guess I’m less than.’ I know my kids must feel that.”

In response, Success Academy principal Loving said, “Our kids are from the same neighborhood, so it couldn’t possibly be that our kids are better.” But she admits she feels the tension, too.

“People are on edge,” she said. “I’m going out of my way to make sure we’re not violating our shared space agreement, that the kids are staying in line, that they’re being quiet, so there won’t be any excuse to make it ugly.”

Darrigo knows P.S. 149’s space won’t be affected by the current plan, but she worries about what precedent it sets, especially because she already feels the pinch of space and scheduling.

“I find it really hard to accept that my kids have to have lunch at 10:40 in the morning,” she said, while Success Academy eats lunch later. “I can’t open up another pre-K class.” Even if Darrigo had enough phys-ed teachers to meet compliance, she said, she wouldn’t have enough time in the gym.

“They’re upset about how their school is being run compared to our school, because they have nowhere near what we have.”

Fancy carpets and lunch times aren’t the only way to distinguish the two schools. Although they serve roughly the same population, Success Academy’s test scores far surpass those of regular district schools, including P.S. 149. They may have their innovative teaching style to thank, but some anti-charter advocates have suggested another possible explanation.

“They don’t have to take the special needs students…with test scores that are most likely going to be low,” Darrigo said. “[Traditional public schools] do.” Darrigo said a handful of former Success Academy students with “very intensive learning needs” and “behavioral issues” have been transferred to her school.

A representative from Success Academy said 14 percent of Harlem 1 students have disabilities. Still, experts say charter schools generally serve a smaller proportion of these children than regular public schools, and that charters sometimes steer kids to different schools if they find them difficult to manage.

“There’s anecdotal evidence to suggest that this happens with some frequency,” said Thomas Toch, senior partner at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. “Charter schools are not designed to serve all students…It means that traditional public schools sometimes have to, in the middle of the school year, try to educate kids with a lot of challenges coming from charter schools.”

And even though the charters serve the same communities as the regular schools, charter school parents are often savvier and more involved. A parent needs to be plugged-in to navigate the admissions process in the first place, and once his or her child is accepted, charters have high standards for community involvement.
“[Charters] can demand things of their parents that I cannot,” Darrigo said. “My parents are heads of single-parent families, they live in public housing, shelters.” Darrigo said the majority of P.S. 149’s parents probably have very little idea of the budget’s implications.

Loving maintained that parents at Success Academy “deal with the same struggles as 149” and that “it’s more about how you choose to design your school and manage your school.” But it’s undeniable that Success Academy has more resources for that designing and managing—a fact that stirs up parent resentment.

Several Success Academy parents chalked up this animus to plain old jealousy.
“They’re upset about how their school is being run compared to our school, because they have nowhere near what we have,” said Tashena Elliott, whose daughter attends Success Academy Harlem 1. “I don’t blame them. We’re in your space, and now you feel threatened.”

Craig Parker, another Success Academy parent, sends his daughter there because “I went to public school, and I didn’t have as much offered to me as the charter schools.” He said if anyone has to move, “it should be [the other schools.] They should prioritize the school that’s getting better test results.”

“Public education has basically been chopped up into pieces.”
Last week, public school parents staged two rallies protesting the New York budget decision. On a rainy Tuesday, several dozen parents, teachers, and activists gathered at the steps of the Department of Education to protest on behalf of Mickey Mantle’s special needs students. And on Thursday, several hundred marched to the governor’s New York City office in midtown.

At both demonstrations, emotions ran high. Parents made comparisons to Occupy Wall Street, holding signs that said “Who protects the 94%?” People screamed, “Get your own damn schools!” and “Separate but not equal!”

Kemala Karmen, a parent of two public school students, said she would be expressing her disapproval at the voting booth.

“I will never vote for [Gov. Andrew] Cuomo again,” she said. “Clearly he only has corporate interests in mind.” Cuomo’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Amid the protests, there was a general sense of foreboding that public schools were seriously in danger.

“Public education has basically been chopped up into pieces,” said Noah Gotbaum, vice president of Community Education Council District 3 and a public school parent who spoke at both rallies. “If there were space wars under [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg, that’s going to be child’s play compared to what’s going to happen now.”
Not every charter school colocation has the high-wattage tension of the building in Harlem. The Ethical Community Charter School in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, for example, co-exists peacefully with P.S. 297.

“We’d like to not only share space but also learn from each other in terms of best practices,” said Annette Keane, the charter school’s principal. She plans to host the P.S. 297 principal, James Brown, at her school to observe classrooms together.
Compared to Success Academy, The Ethical Community Charter School seems to create less of a divide—it’s smaller, less standardized, and, according to Keane, far less flush with cash than Success Academy. TECCS’ culture is certainly distinctive—more touchy-feely, less authoritarian—but aside from the uniforms, the difference between the two schools is not immediately apparent. And the schools are on different floors.
Principal Brown declined to comment for this story, but several parents attested that the relationship was harmonious.

Yahaira Rosario, who has a second grader at P.S. 297, said the presence of a charter school “didn’t bother me as long as it doesn’t interrupt my son’s education. They’re all the same kids, it seems to me.”

LaMeesha, a TECCS parent, said “it seems like our school has a very good rapport with the school that we’re housed in.” She added that a shared afterschool program “seems to go pretty smoothly.”

The level of cooperation appears to make all the difference when it comes to colocation. Many charter schools, like Achievement First network in New Haven or KIPP collaborations in Spring Branch, Texas, have explicitly made it a goal to wield influence on traditional public schools, rather than remain in a bubble.

“One of the early arguments for charter schools is that they would become labs for educational experimentation and then they would share what they’ve learned with the larger school system,” said Toch. “You do see some instances where mutually beneficial relationships do exist, and it’s a whole lot better than squaring off in the same building.”

Unfortunately, said Toch, “there hasn’t been a lot of this.” Colocation is often “a very fraught relationship, a lot of animosity, and very little sharing of ideas,” which is partly why other cities have been hesitant to colocate.

It remains to be seen whether increased colocation in New York will encourage osmosis or ratchet up tensions even further. Loving said “there are lots of things that we could be doing” to promote a “spirit of generosity.” Darrigo also “knows [cooperation] is happening” elsewhere.

“That’s beautiful,” she said. “That’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Education coverage for NBCNews.com is supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. NBC News retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage.




A parent Ginette Hernandez has moved her five year old son to a new school. “Her son, who has speech, behavior and developmental issues, had been struggling in his public school in East Harlem. Not quite potty-trained, the boy had accidents, and teachers didn’t have the time or training to clean him up. It seemed like every time her son had a meltdown, Hernandez got a panicked call at work.” It is possible to have a child who is “not ready” to be put in a classroom. Some have difficulties that require a special living environment or other professional intervention. It sounds to me like this child is one of those. His new school is a “special education” school, and more capable of handling his problems. A new NYC budget deal threatens his new location.

The new deal “grants unprecedented protections to charters,” causing dissatisfaction among some. “Colocation among district schools is common in the city, but when charter schools rub right up against traditional public schools, the differences — both financial and cultural — are hard to ignore.... The budget deal reversed a decision from Mayor Bill de Blasio to revoke the placement of Success Academy’s middle school in the building (along with several other proposals citywide). Charter advocates, meanwhile, say the budget deal simply reinforces that charters are public schools, too.”

Conjoined and unequal – “In Success Academy’s bright hallways, signs are stenciled in the same font and bear inspirational quotes like “Actions speak louder than words.” Classrooms are outfitted in splashy blues, reds and greens, with the same multi-colored, polka-dotted carpets. Success Academy students wear orange and blue uniforms: jumpers for the girls, shirts and ties for the boys.... When they’re not making eye contact with you [in the hallways] and they’re not acknowledging your existence, you kinda start thinking, ‘I guess I’m less than.’ I know my kids must feel that.” I think the requirement that students wear uniforms would be a help in all public schools, as the financial differences between students are made obvious to all the students, reflecting the class system in our society.

There is also the fact that Success Academy has much higher test scores than the public school 149. Derrigo of PS 149 claims this is less about “innovative teaching methods,” than the fact that students with behavioral disorders and other special needs are transferred out of the Success Academy and into the public school, thus dragging their test scores down. According to Thomas Toch “Charter schools are not designed to serve all students,” while public schools have to. The principal of the public school says that the parents of his kids are from single parent homes, which implies that the Success Academy are more well placed financially. The academy principal said in defense of the academy, “it’s more about how you choose to design your school and manage your school.” The academy does have a larger budget to work with, however.

Public school parents have staged two rallies and marches to protest the NY budget decision. “Parents made comparisons to Occupy Wall Street, holding signs that said “Who protects the 94%?” People screamed, “Get your own damn schools!” and “Separate but not equal!” In comparison, another charter school, the Ethical Community Charter School on the other hand, “coexists peacefully” with the public school whose space they share. That charter school is less wealthy, smaller, and less standardized than the Success Academy, and “more touchy feely” and less authoritarian than the public school. The students do wear uniforms, and the schools are located on different floors. There is less crowding and inevitable comparison between the two schools. There is a shared afterschool program. One main idea behind the charter schools is that they will be educationally experimental and share their ideas with the public school, but according to Toch, there hasn't been very much sharing. If the charter schools are going to get more money for their budget, maybe that money should be revoked in the charter school doesn't share and minimize friction.

Of course, there is an ongoing problem with public school students in this country that they tend not to score as well on standardized testing as students in many poorer nations around the world. Maybe in order to get their money, the public schools should have to use the “experimental” teaching methods on their students. I think they should also require uniforms to balance out the economic differences and to focus the students on the important fact that they are in school to learn, and must put out more effort. And maybe their truly intellectually disabled students should all be sent to a “a special education public school that provides more individual attention,” like the Mickey Mantle school mentioned at the top of this article.

I think it's an obvious fact that in a large, mixed class if the teachers aim their efforts toward the top and middle of the class, there will inevitably be students who can't keep up. They should be taught, of course, but maybe not at the same school. Either that or hire more special ed teachers to work individually with those who are having trouble on a daily basis. Those kids could be taught in a separate classroom to minimize the stigma that might be attached to their situation. The public schools need to keep innovating and making a strong effort to upgrade the learning in their classrooms. 99% of students can learn on some level, and one of the main things that makes the difference is the enthusiasm and ability to impart knowledge of the teacher. If a teacher can fire up the interest in the students, that will be most of the battle. I can remember from my grammar school and high school years that some teachers are noticeably better than others at doing that. Even if they were strict about discipline I preferred those teachers.





No apologies from college head for asking how to be "not as white"
CBS News April 17, 2014

A controversial questionnaire is making the rounds on a university campus north of Seattle. It comes from the school's president. He is making no apologies, despite the backlash.

Western Washington University President Bruce Shepard said, "My role as a leader is to ask questions that take people outside of their zones of comfort."

There's one uncomfortable message about WWU that its president has been giving to incoming students ever since he took office six years ago. He said at the school's opening convocation in 2012, "If in the decades ahead we are as white as we are today, we will have failed as a university."

Three-quarters of the university's students is white. And, now, the school is putting the question directly to students in a questionnaire: "How do we make sure that in future years we are not as white as we are today?"

Shepard said, "I needed to provoke attention to the changing demography of our state, and when you use words like 'white,' that does get people's attention."
Not all the attention has been positive.

Lars Larson, a conservative talk radio host, said, "I'm not surprised when liberal universities take these kind of ridiculous, bigoted, racist positions."
Campus police are providing enhanced security to Shepard after he received threats. But university students see their president's point.

WWU student Alexis Burton said, "One of the first weeks that I was here on campus, I was just walking through Red Square, and I was kind of just noticing that it felt white. Like, there were people missing."

Shepard said his university does not use race as a factor in admissions but it's still an issue that higher education must face. He said, "How do we respond to the changing character and nature of our nation, the enormous potential that's there that we have not tapped? That's really the issue we face."

Only about 20 percent of WWU's enrollment is students of color. And Shepard faces the challenge of not only increasing that percentage but increasing minority graduation rates - often lower than the rates for whites.

Matthew Chingos, a fellow in the Brookings Institution's Brown Center on Education Policy, said, "So it's not just about getting people who look a certain way to show up on campus. It's serving them well once they're there and ensuring they have a successful experience."




President Bruce Shepard said to the student body in 2012, “If in the decades ahead we are as white as we are today, we will have failed as a university." Over three quarters of the student population are white. The minority graduation rates are also lower than those of white students. WWU doesn't use race as a factor in admitting students. Schools like UNC where I went admit students who are a cross-section of the population rather than “the cream.” I wonder what WWU does about standardized test scores and high school GPA. Or perhaps they don't have very many scholarships and student aid compared to a state school like UNC.

Western Washington University is indeed not a state school, but a private college run by the Seventh Day Adventists. They probably charge a higher tuition than state schools, and if they don't have lots of scholarships, then they would not attract people from the ranks of the “working poor” or the lower middle class. See this website – https://www.wallawalla.edu/. I think if they want more non-white students they should advertise on television and develop some better student aid. Also, don't eliminate students of color on the basis that they "may not be able to compete.” UNC accepts people with C averages, but doesn't teach on an academically limited basis, so if you don't study while you're there you may fail a course. Compared with top name schools like Duke University, Harvard, etc. they are undoubtedly not as demanding, of course. It is still possible to get a high quality education there, however.

I don't know how Western Washington University is rated academically. I agree with President Shepard that a varied ethnicity among the students adds to the overall education that they will derive from the college experience and trains them to get along better with people who are not just like them. Changing the way we think is a large part of the college degree. That's one of the secret reasons why some businesses will hire on the basis of a college degree even though the work they are doing is not particularly advanced. When everything works as it should, the students when they get out will be better citizens, more cooperative and more socially trained.




Police In Canada Make Arrest Related To 'Heartbleed' Bug – NPR
by Scott Neuman
April 17, 2014

A 19-year-old alleged hacker has been arrested and his computer equipment seized by Canadian police after he purportedly exploited the "Heartbleed" bug vulnerability to steal confidential information from the country's tax collection agency.

"Heartbleed," which exploits a security gap in a popular open-source encryption program, was discovered last week, forcing companies to shore up their security and millions to update passwords. NPR's All Tech Considered did a very thorough explainer last week, which you can read here, as well as a 'What Now?' story, here.

The Globe and Mail says Stephen Arthuro Solis-Reyes, a computer science student, was arrested at his home in London, Ontario, and charged with one count of mischief in relation to data.

Solis-Reyes is accused of exploiting the Heartbleed vulnerability to steal sensitive information, such as social security numbers, from servers of the Canada Revenue Agency, which is that country's equivalent of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
The Globe and Mail describes Solis-Reyes as "a second-year student at the University of Western Ontario. In 2012, he graduated from a London high school, Mother Teresa Catholic Secondary."

It adds: "He was part of a team from his secondary school that came first in a programming competition at the London District Catholic School Board. He is also the creator of a BlackBerry phone app that solves Sudoku puzzles, which was released while he was still in high school."

In a statement, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said it treated the security breach "as a high priority case and mobilized the necessary resources to resolve the matter as quickly as possible."

"Investigators from National Division, along with our counterparts in 'O' Division, have been working tirelessly over the last four days analyzing data, following leads, conducting interviews, obtaining and executing legal authorizations and liaising with our partners," RCMP Assistant Commissioner Gilles Michaud said.

The Washington Post says:
"The Heartbleed bug put many consumers' user names and passwords at risk. Undetected for two years, the bug quietly undermined the basic security of the Internet by leaving a gap in OpenSSL, an encryption technology used widely by businesses to protect sensitive data. By some estimates, the bug affected as much as two-thirds of the Internet; the flaw prompted thousands of Web users to change their passwords on Google, Yahoo, Facebook and other major services."




Stephen Arthuro Solis-Reyes, computer science student has been charged with one count of “mischief in relation to data” when he hacked the Canada Revenue Agency and stole social security numbers and other personal information on tax payers. This is the first case I have seen so far of anyone actually exploiting the gap in the encryption program. The Aljazeera website said that he is the first to do it.

Another site on the Internet mentions another case, though – http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/14/parenting-website-mumsnet-hit-heartbleed-hacker-bug, a parenting website called Mumsnet. They have a 1.5 million members whose data may have been compromised. Forbes and PwndList give lists of which sites have reported been hacked. Probably everybody has patched their programs by now, hopefully.




Rescuers Deliver Most, But Not All, Nigerian Schoolgirls To Safety – NPR
by Ofeibea Quist-Arcton
April 16, 2014

According to the Nigerian military, all but eight of the girls kidnapped from a Nigerian boarding school have been rescued. As many as 100 girls had been abducted by militants earlier in the week.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
In Nigeria, all but eight girls kidnapped from a boarding school earlier this week have been rescued, according to the Nigerian military. As many as 100 girls have been missing after heavily-armed militants from the Islamist group known as Boko Haram raided their dorm. Boko Haram, whose name in the local Hausa language translates roughly as Western education is sinful, has been waging a campaign of violence in northern Nigeria. The students' kidnapping comes on the heels of a bus bombing out the outskirts of Nigeria's capital that killed some 70 people early Monday.

We're joined now by NPR's Africa correspondent, Ofeibea Quist-Arcton. And Ofeibea, let's start with the rescue. What details have you learned about it and what's known about how the kidnapping happened in the first place?

OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Audie, it's a very short statement from Nigeria's military quoting the school principal, saying that eight girls remain unaccounted for and it has rescued the others, but very few details. How the girls became free, whether they were rescued by soldiers, and what condition they're in. Now, we're told that late overnight, on Monday, the girls had gone back to school because they are taking their final exams. Schools have been closed in Borno state. But from the descriptions of some of the girls who were able to escape from their abductors, gunmen burst into their rooms. Told them not to panic. And then the girls were piled into an open truck. And it was when the truck had problems that some girls were able to jump down and run into the bush. So it's not clear that the military is talking about the girls who managed to escape themselves, or whether the latest lot of schoolgirls were rescued by the military themselves, who are doing a search-and-rescue operation we're told.

CORNISH: And Boko Haram has waged similar attacks on schools in the past, correct?
QUIST-ARCTON: Absolutely. And in the past, boys have been killed. They have had their throats slit like sacrificial lambs. And that sort of ties in with the name of Boko Haram, Western education is sinful. They say that they want to Islamize northern Nigeria, that they want to impose strict Shariah, Islamic law and true Islamic law, that Nigerian Muslims are not practicing proper laws. But in the past, girls have been spared but with the warning, Audie: Go home. Get married and stop school. So Western education is sinful seems to go through their ideology, although Boko Haram - and they haven't yet claimed responsibility for this attack on the school or the raid on the bus park on Abuja, the capital, they are being blamed by the authorities and President Goodluck Jonathan in particular.

CORNISH: Tell us more about the response from Nigeria's president, Goodluck Jonathan. What does he have to say this week?

QUIST-ARCTON: He went to the site of the bus park bombing on Monday, but very little has been said by the authorities about this attack on the school, which is in northeastern Nigeria, which has become the zone of operations of Boko Haram. That is where they were set up years ago. So people are saying that government has got to stop this insurgency. They have promised. They have imposed emergency rule in three northeastern states, and yet the bombers and the terrorists, as they're called, are able to attack at will. This must stop.

CORNISH: That's NPR's Africa correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton. Ofeibea, thank you.
QUIST-ARCTON: Always a pleasure.




“They say that they want to Islamize northern Nigeria, that they want to impose strict Shariah, Islamic law and true Islamic law, that Nigerian Muslims are not practicing proper laws. But in the past, girls have been spared but with the warning, Go home. Get married and stop school.” The President of Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan has opposed the sect. Quist-Arcton states of the government, “They have imposed emergency rule in three northeastern states, and yet the bombers and the terrorists, as they're called, are able to attack at will. This must stop.”

Whether the girls escaped on their own or were rescued by Nigerian military forces is apparently not known. Looking through websites listed under the Google search “Boko Haram” shows that military forces in both Nigeria and Cameroon are opposing the Islamists. They go into the border region of Cameroon to hide and reappear to make attacks in Nigeria, according to one article. Like all guerrilla fighters they can be very hard to root out. It's good to see that they haven't totally infiltrated the societies of the two African nations as the Taliban has in Afghanistan and Pakistan.