News Briefs
• Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announced April 12 that a new plan to increase teacher pay by 20 percent will be implemented by the beginning of the 2020 school year, according to CBS News. In 2018, teacher pay would initially increase 9 percent then an additional 5 percent for the following two years. The increase is said to boost the current $48,372 salary to $58,130. Many educators who have been protesting are skeptical if the plan will bring systemic change to the education system.
• David Buckel, gay rights lawyer and environmental advocate, died over the weekend after he burned himself to death to protest fossil fuels, according to CNN. He was the lead attorney in a lawsuit involving Brandon Teena, a transgender man who was raped and murdered in Nebraska. His body was found Saturday in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Police said they found the suicide note at the scene. Buckel helped fight against poverty and discrimination.
• Mohammed Jabbateh, “Jungle Jabbah”, was brought in by a woman who revealed and was convicted for lying to investigators in the U.S. about his violent past and defrauding the U.S. immigration system in the process, according the AP. A woman revealed that Jabbateh was in her village and killed her husband and told her to cook his organs in 1991. Jabbeth fled to the U.S. in 1998, started a family and launched a shipping business, winning asylum from U.S. government and permanent residence. Jabbateh’s hearing is on Thursday.
• Toddler dies after storm toppled a tree and it fell through the house, according to the Fayetteville Observer. The large tree fell around 12:30 a.m. April 14 in the Hill Crest Mobile Home and RV Park. There were no additional injuries reported.
• According to a new survey conducted by Julius Berman, president of the Claims Conference, two-thirds of millenials and four out of ten Americans don’t know what Auschwitz is. The survey also found that over half of Americans believe Hitler “came to power by force” when he was in fact elected.
• Rap artist Kendrick Lamar has become the first non-classical or jazz artist to receive a Pulitzer Prize for an album. The Pulitzer board called the double-platinum ‘DAMN’ album “a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African American life,” according to Reuters.
