Thread for obviously newsworthy stuff

[Broken_Erika]

'Meth. We're on it' – South Dakota's new public health ads raise eyebrows


State launches series of ads to help tackle methamphetamine addiction – but tagline causes amusement on social media

South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, was hoping a new ad campaign would draw attention to methamphetamine addiction in her state. It worked, but perhaps not in the way she intended.

The campaign’s slogan, unveiled this week, bluntly, if not quite clearly, lays out the issue: “Meth. We’re on it.” The words are laid over the outline of the state in one poster, and appear on pictures of people from various walks of life in others.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ction-campaign

[-Jrabbit]

Unblvbl.

I thought for sure this had to be a fake meme.

[rah]

I'm seeing this on multiple forum sites.
When's the last time the country was talking about South Dakota and it not being about a serial killer or domestic terrorist?
People see it and then read about the program.
I say big PR victory.

[BeBMan]

Maybe they meant meds?

[-Jrabbit]

The SD governor has doubled down. "Meth. I'm On It." will continue to run!

[giblets]

The Quiet Rooms
Children are being locked away, alone and terrified, in schools across Illinois. Often, it’s against the law.

The spaces have gentle names: The reflection room. The cool-down room. The calming room. The quiet room.

But shut inside them, in public schools across the state, children as young as 5 wail for their parents, scream in anger and beg to be let out.

The students, most of them with disabilities, scratch the windows or tear at the padded walls. They throw their bodies against locked doors. They wet their pants. Some children spend hours inside these rooms, missing class time. Through it all, adults stay outside the door, writing down what happens.

In Illinois, it’s legal for school employees to seclude students in a separate space — to put them in “isolated timeout” — if the students pose a safety threat to themselves or others. Yet every school day, workers isolate children for reasons that violate the law, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois has found.

Children were sent to isolation after refusing to do classwork, for swearing, for spilling milk, for throwing Legos. School employees use isolated timeout for convenience, out of frustration or as punishment, sometimes referring to it as “serving time.”


. . .


About 20 minutes after he was put in one of his school’s Quiet Rooms — a 5-foot-square space made of plywood and cinder block — 9-year-old Jace Gill wet his pants.

An aide, watching from the doorway, wrote that down in a log, noting it was 10:53 a.m. on Feb. 1, 2018.

School aides had already taken away Jace’s shoes and both of his shirts. Jace then stripped off his wet pants, wiped them in the urine on the floor and sat down in the corner.

“I’m naked!” Jace yelled at 10:56 a.m.

Staff did not respond, the log shows, except to close the door “for privacy.”

By 11 a.m., Jace had also defecated and was smearing feces on the wall. No adults intervened, according to the log. They watched and took notes.

“Dancing in feces. Doing the twist,” staff wrote at 11:14 a.m., noting that the boy then started pacing back and forth.

“I need more clothes,” he called out.

“We know,” an aide answered.

Jace banged on the walls and tried to pry open the door. He sat against the wall, crying for his mom.

11:42 a.m.: “Let me out of here. I’m crying alone.”

The incident began that morning when Jace ripped up a math worksheet and went into the hallway, trying to leave school.

https://graphics.chicagotribune.com/illinois-seclusion/

What the hell, Illinois

[-Jrabbit]

Finally, some SERIOUS solar power... This looks amazing.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/19/business/heliogen-solar-energy-bill-gates/index.html

[giblets]

ICE arrests 90 more foreign students at fake university created by DHS in Michigan

DETROIT – About 90 additional foreign students at a fake university in metro Detroit created by the Department of Homeland Security have been arrested in recent months.

A total of about 250 students have now been arrested since January on immigration violations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of a sting operation by federal agents who enticed foreign-born students, mostly from India, to attend the school that marketed itself as offering graduate programs in technology and computer studies, according to ICE officials.

Many of those arrested have been deported, while others are contesting their removals. One has been allowed to stay after being granted lawful permanent resident status by an immigration judge.

The students had arrived legally in the U.S. on student visas, but since the University of Farmington was later revealed to be a creation of federal agents, they lost their immigration status after it was shut down in January. The school was staffed with undercover agents posing as university officials.

Out of the approximately 250 students arrested on administrative charges, "nearly 80% were granted voluntary departure and departed the United States," the Detroit office of ICE's Homeland Security Investigations told the Free Press in a statement Tuesday.

Of the remaining 20%, about half have received a final order of removal; some were ordered removed by an immigration judge, and others "were given an expedited removal by U.S. Customs and Border Protection," HSI Detroit said.

The remaining 10% "have either filed for some sort of relief or are contesting their removals with Executive Office for Immigration Review," HSI Detroit said.

ICE said in March that 161 students had been arrested, a number that has now grown to about 250.

Meanwhile, seven of the eight recruiters who were criminally charged with trying to recruit students have pleaded guilty and been sentenced in Detroit. The remaining defendant will be sentenced in January.

Attorneys for the students arrested said that they were unfairly trapped by the U.S. government since the Department of Homeland Security had said on its website that the university was legitimate. An accreditation agency that was working with the U.S. on its sting operation also listed the university as legitimate.

There were more than 600 students enrolled at the university, which was created a few years ago by federal law enforcement officials with ICE. Records filed with the state Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs show that the University of Farmington was incorporated in January 2016.

Many of the students had enrolled with the university through a program known as Curricular Practical Training, which allows students to work in the U.S through a F-1 visa program for foreign students. Some had transferred to the University of Farmington from other schools that had lost accreditation, which means they would no longer be allowed to remain in the U.S.

Emails obtained by the Free Press this year showed how the fake university attracted students to the school, which cost about $12,000 on average in tuition and fees per year.

The U.S. "trapped the vulnerable people who just wanted to maintain (legal immigration) status," Rahul Reddy, a Texas attorney who represented or advised some of the students arrested, told the Free Press this week. "They preyed upon on them."

The fake university is believed to have collected millions of dollars from the unsuspecting students. An email from the university's president, Ali Milani, told students that graduate programs' tuition is $2,500 per quarter and that the average cost is $1,000 per month.

"They made a lot of money," Reddy said of the U.S. government.

No one has filed a lawsuit or claim against the U.S. government for collecting the money or for allegedly entrapping the students.

Attorneys for ICE and the Department of Justice maintain that the students should have known it was not a legitimate university because it did not have classes in a physical location. Some CPT programs have classes combined with work programs at companies.

"Their true intent could not be clearer," Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Helms wrote in a sentencing memo this month for one of the eight recruiters, of the hundreds of students enrolled. "While 'enrolled' at the University, one hundred percent of the foreign citizen students never spent a single second in a classroom. If it were truly about obtaining an education, the University would not have been able to attract anyone, because it had no teachers, classes, or educational services."

In the memo, federal prosecutor Baker said the case raises questions about the U.S. "foreign-student visa program."

Baker wrote that "immigration and visa programs have been hot-button topics in the United States for years and national scrutiny has only been increasing."

Reddy said, though, that in some cases, students who transferred from the University of Farmington after realizing they didn't have classes on-site, were still arrested.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/11/27/university-farmington-ice-arrests-more-fake-michigan-college/4317788002/

Trump putting his experience in setting up fake universities to good use.

[Proteus_MST]

Wait, what?
Do I understand this correctly?

The DHS created a fake iuniversity in order to attract foreign students to the USA just in order to have some victims which thwey could deport?

This is crazy on so many levels

[giblets]

Allegedly it was supposed to catch people who intentionally enroll in fake colleges in order to get visas but given that the government labeled the university as legitimate there is no proof that the students were attempting fraud.

[giblets]

The US government seems to have a history of poorly thought out sting operations like Operation Fast and Furious. This particular incident might also have an element of institutional racism.

[Dinner]

Wait, what?
Do I understand this correctly?

The DHS created a fake iuniversity in order to attract foreign students to the USA just in order to have some victims which thwey could deport?

This is crazy on so many levels

There are hundreds if not thousands of fake universities out there and each usually specializes on students from one country. None of them have any staff (other than one guy who makes fake paper responses to immigration), there are no classes, no home work, no grades, and no instruction. They exist only on paper and their sole reason for existence is to cheat the immigration system. “Students” sign up knowing it is a fake university but they still get a student visa and so pay $1000 or so to the fake university for setting up the scam. They then fly to the US, never attend any school, and just work illegally under the table.

[Uncle Sparky]

Are all of them Trump Universities? Or, is someone cutting in on his scam?

[Proteus_MST]

There are hundreds if not thousands of fake universities out there and each usually specializes on students from one country. None of them have any staff (other than one guy who makes fake paper responses to immigration), there are no classes, no home work, no grades, and no instruction. They exist only on paper and their sole reason for existence is to cheat the immigration system. “Students” sign up knowing it is a fake university but they still get a student visa and so pay $1000 or so to the fake university for setting up the scam. They then fly to the US, never attend any school, and just work illegally under the table.

Interesting ... never suspected that fake universities are "quite normal" in the USA.
I always thought that Trump University would have been the only fake university out there

[Dinner]

They are not normal, they are created illegally just to get around immigration laws, and there are tens of millions of 3rd worlders who want to come here but who know they never will get a green card doing it the legal way. So they lie, cheat, and steal to get a fraudulent student visa then become illegal after that. Visa fraud is the main way illegal aliens get into the country.

[giblets]

The bastards are trying to sneak into a country that consumes the world's resources instead of staying in a country that America periodically drops bombs on or stages a coup in

[Dinner]

Mostly India and China seem to do this but many others, each fake university (they are all non-accredited and exist only on paper mostly with just a P.O. Box); I don’t believe the US has attacked either India or China in the last 75 years or so... So please stuff that nonsense where the sun does not shine.