Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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STATE Legislators dispute certifying teachers COLUMBIA - Christina Hunter believes she is a better teacher having earned national certification and is frustrated with legislators who question whether the program is worth funding during the state budget crisis. Hunter is among the more than 2,300 teachers across the state who expect to collect a $7,500 bonus next year even though many school districts might eliminate student pro grams or staff and increase class size to balance their budgets. Some legislators say the state cannot afford the $36.8 million earmarked tor the program in the House budget plan because the state has $500 million less to spend than a year ago. There also is debate about whether the national certifica tion is worth funding because there have been no solid studies on whether the certification pro duces better teachers. About 2,100 teachers are go ing through the process right now, said Ann Byrd, executive director of the South Carolina Center for Teacher Recruitment. Although the state often ranks near the bottom among states on education performance measures, it now ranks third in the nation for the number of teachers who hold the profes sion’s top credential. Company linked to child-abuse charges GREENVILLE — The company that owns a Rock Hill group home where workers were dis ciplined for using excessive force on children also owns a home for troubled children where three workers were charged with homicide by child abuse. Department of Social Services records also show the Rock Hill facility called police 200 times since 1995, reporting incidents ranging from runaway children to sex between youth and sexual misconduct by staff, according to a story Sunday by The Greenville News. O TVI • r- 1; i _ . r ; wain jl unci , UllCV/lUi UX W1XJI1 cal services for New Hope Carolinas in Rock Hill, said state officials did not conclude the fa cility or its workers abused or neglected any child. “We certainly don’t have rou tine incidents of staff striking patients or doing improper re straints,” he said. “These chil dren here are mentally ill. There will be times when they are out of control and require a staff to physically control them.” DSS officials said New Hope has a clean regulatory record and enjoys a good reputation among children’s facilities in South Carolina. New Hope operates four chil dren’s facilities in South Carolina, including a facility for older children at Rock Hill. NATION Yahoo working to overcome Google SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Yahoo! Inc. is rolling out a souped-up search engine Monday in a bid to supplant its business partner, Google, as the most popular place to find things on the Internet. With the revisions, Yahoo believes its search engine will provide more useful informa tion than Google’s and be sim pler to use. The rebuilt version will combine Google’s index with Yahoo’s customized ser vices spanning sports, driving directions and weather re ports. “We think this is going to change the game a bit,” said Jeff Weiner, Yahoo’s senior vice president of search and marketplace. “This is the first of many steps toward reinforc ing our leadership in the mar ketplace.” Google declined to comment on Yahoo’s new search engine. Battle lines clearly are be ing drawn between the compa nies, said Danny Sullivan, ed itor of the industry newsletter Search Engine Watch. “They are going to be duk ing it out,” Sullivan predicted. “Clearly, Yahoo would like to keep more people from going over to Google to search and maybe even bring back some of the people that have previ ously left.” Inmate population tops 2 million WASHINGTON - The num ber of people in U.S. prisons and jails last year topped 2 mil lion for the first time, driven by get-tough sentencing poli cies that mandate long terms for drug offenders and other criminals, the government re ported Sunday. The federal government ac counted for more inmates than any state, with almost 162,000, according to a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, part of the Justice Department. That number includes the transfer of about 8,900 District of Columbia prisoners to the federal system. cantornia, l exas, t lorida and New York were the four biggest state prison systems, mirroring their status as the most populous states. But Texas, California, New York, Illinois and five other states saw their inmate popu lations drop compared with the year before as prison releases outpaced admissions. Malcolm Young, executive director of The Sentencing Project, said the increase con tinues a prison growth trend stemming from tough penal ties meted out to drug abusers and traffickers as well as “three strikes” laws that can mandate life sentences for re peat offenders. WORLD Search for fugitives ends after riot LA CEIBA, HONDURAS ^ A search for fugitives was called off Sunday, a day after a prison riot in northern Honduras that left 69 people dead, including three visitors, and 31 others in jured. Authorities said all inmates had been accounted for and were back in their cells at the El Porvenir prison in the town of La Ceiba, 220 miles north of the capital, Tegucigalpa. The prison remained locked down. Authorities originally thought an unknown number of inmates had escaped and sol diers and police searched near by streets and fields through the night. a uioouy piciure emergea oi the battle between members of one of Central America’s toughest street gangs, who were armed with guns, clubs and even hand grenades, and other inmates, including some from rival gangs. ~ Eighty-six inmates had been reported killed on Saturday, but a recount of the bodies prompted officials to lower the death toll to 69. Some of the corpses were so badly burned emergency officials originally counted them twice, Deputy Security Minister Armando Calidono told The Associated Press. Attacks in Congo villages kill 966 NAIROBI, KENYA-At least 966 people were killed in at tacks on more than a dozen vil lages in northeastern Congo last week, U.N. officials said Sunday after a preliminary in vestigation. It is not clear who carried out the attacks, which oc curred in Ituri province, the scene of some of the most vi ' cious battles in Congo’s 41/2 year-old civil war. Rival tribal fighters, rebel factions.and Ugandan troops all have been involved in the fighting in the mineral-rich province. Witnesses told the U.N. in vestigators that the attackers included women and chil dren while others were men in military uniforms, said Manodje Mounoubai, a spokesman for the U.N. mis sion in Congo. “This is the worst single atrocity since the start of the civil war,” Mounoubai told The Associated Press by tele phone from Kinshasa, Congo’s capital. The killing spree occurred over a period of just a few hours Thursday in the Roman Catholic parish of Drodro and 14 surrounding villages in Ituri. Lecture CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 she said. McDonald was not eager to share any specific memories — though she said she has many — because she didn’t want to give away her speech and her book, “Sharing the Dream,” which will be released this summer. McDonald’s lecture was coordi nated largely by John McFadden, who holds the Benjamin E. Mays Professorship in the educational psychology department. He said he chose McDonald as this year’s speaker because she worked close ly with the three leaders, is a na tive of Sumter, and is a member of national civic organizations Moles Inc. and LINKS Inc. “Dr. Mays was a mentor to Dr. King, who promoted peace, broth erhood, sisterhood, the whole no tion of nonviolence. Dr. Mays taught King the essence of non-vi olence,” McFadden said. Cleveland Sellers Jr., USC’s African-American studies direc tor, will be a respondent to McDonald’s lecture. “I think McDonald speaks from a kind of cat-bird’s nest. She was the person sitting in the office with Dr. King for years. She brings an insider’s view to get to know Dr. King from a different perspec tive,” he said. Sellers said McDonald was one of the many ordinary folks behind the motion of the leaders. “She’s a part of those unsung heroes and heroines. They are not written about, even though they made the movement go,” he said. Lynette Allston, a civic leader and former chairperson of United Way in the Midlands, will serve as a respondent to the lecture. “It’s good to just go and listen and react; there’s a lot going on in the world,” Allston said. Past lectures have featured pas tors, professors, civic leaders and even Mays’ niece. “We’ve had both black and white, men and women. It’s got a lot of signifi cance to it,” McFadden said. McFadden said the series is try ing to get former President Jimmy Carter to speak next year. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockudesk@hotmail.com 1 Making a difference. Carolina Dining invites you to join us on Tuesday, April 8th from 5-8 pm on the Patio outside of Pandinis (facing Greene St.) for our Third Annual Servathon Canned Food Drive! We will feature a Buffet and Live Entertainment, Admission is three cans. All goods collected will be donated to Harvest Hope Food Bank. The Department of Justice, Office of Legal Education Is seeking 50 Volunteers to be Jurors in Criminal Mock Trials at the National Advocacy Center, 1620 Pendleton Street For more information, call Annemarie Sullivan at 803-544-5152 (Monday - Friday between 8:30 am - 5:30 pm) _