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SANTA FE, Texas – When students return to school at Santa Fe High on Monday, they’ll notice a bevy of security upgrades, including new metal detectors, more armed officers roaming the halls and panic buttons in every classroom.

But some parents and security analysts say those efforts fall short and are calling for outside security experts to advise the school board and an independent review of the mass shooting May 18 that left eight students and two teachers dead.

“I have lots of concerns,” said Donna Hayes, whose son, Scott, 15, will be a sophomore at the high school. “Basically, we have a failed system that needs to be fixed.”

A Galveston County grand jury  indicted Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, this month on charges of capital murder and aggravated assault on a peace officer in the attack that killed 10 and wounded 13.  Pagourtzis, a junior at the high school, allegedly opened fire in art classes using his father’s sawed-off Remington shotgun and a .38 pistol, according to court documents. Police say he admitted to the mass shooting after his arrest. 

School district officials spent the summer hiring more resource officers, outfitting the school’s front vestibule with bulletproof glass and installing nine metal detectors at entrances. At a school board informational meeting Thursday, authorities detailed other steps they’ve taken, including installing more security cameras, beefing up anti-bullying measures and monitoring social media for signs of planned attacks.

“Obviously there has been a tremendous amount of work that has taken place to prepare for starting school next week,” school board president Rusty Norman said. “There is a tremendous amount of things still to be done.”

But the district has focused too heavily on what it will do to respond to shootings rather than on how to prevent them, said Paul Luker, a Texas-based energy security consultant who has worked with some Santa Fe parents to assess security at the school.

The school still lacks a reliable system of processing and acting on cases of bullying and hasn’t released where exactly the system failed as Pagourtzis’ violent intentions  went unnoticed, he said. Luker said he has offered to work with the school to help them meet national guidelines for threat assessments but hasn’t gotten a reply.

School district officials did not respond to multiple requests for interviews for this story.

“Until they make a paradigm shift away from response and focus on prevention, they’re not going to stop these,” Luker said. “They’re just not.”

Jennifer Cooper, 45, whose two sons, ages 14 and 17, will be attending Santa Fe High, said she has been frustrated with how little district officials have shared about lessons learned from the shooting and by the lack of federal oversight on securing the school.  

Cooper and other parents have called for an independent review of the incident. School board officials have said they are conducting their own internal investigation, and federal investigators and researchers from Texas A&M University also are examining the incident.

But a true independent study is key, Cooper said. Similar studies were done after school shootings in Parkland, Florida; Littleton, Colorado; and at Virginia Tech, as well as the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Colorado. 

More: There were nearly 1,300 more threats made at U.S. schools this past year, report finds

“You would think a federal agency would swoop in and make sure everything is as secure as possible or tell you what it should be to make it that,” Cooper said. “Instead, we’re placing that burden on school board members.”

Sarah Goodrum, chairwoman of the criminology and criminal justice department at the University of Northern Colorado, co-wrote an independent study of the 2013 Arapahoe High School shooting in Littleton, where a senior at the school shot and killed a classmate before taking his own life.

Goodrum and her team of researchers pored over thousands of pages of school documents and interviewed nine school staffers. The report found a failure to share information about the student’s troubled past, a lack of threat assessments at the school and a failure for the school as a whole to pick up on the suspect’s many warning signs of trouble.

Goodrum, however, said she has mixed feelings about independent studies after every school shooting because the lessons tend to be precisely the same incident after incident: improve threat assessments, create a school climate where students are comfortable reporting on bullying, and make sure those reports are acted upon.  

“We’ve already learned the lessons,” she said. “We’re not doing a great job in taking those lessons and using them to improve our process.”

One reason is lack of federal oversight, she said. The federal government should create a “red flag” program, akin to the federal Individualized Education Program where schools are required to report students with learning disabilities and tailor a program that meets their needs, Goodrum said. The new program would flag students with mental health needs or showing a propensity toward violence.

“We don’t yet have a federal mandate in place,” she said. “That will be one piece of the larger puzzle.”

The shooting at Santa Fe High has sparked an increase in parent participation, with parents filling up school board meetings, volunteering for school activities in unprecedented numbers and creating Facebook pages monitoring school improvements.

More: At Santa Fe High School, police had an active-shooter plan. Did it work?

More: Texas high school student: ‘You hear boom, boom, boom, and I just ran as fast as I could’

John Conard, whose nephew Jared Black was killed in the attack, is creating a newsletter called SOS (Secure Our Schools) that will invite different viewpoints about how to improve school security. He said he realizes ideas will range from arming teachers to enforcing the dress code – but all are important.

“No matter your politics, everyone wants their kids to come home from school,” Conard said. “We could all agree on that.”

At the campus on Friday, the Santa Fe football team hosted Clear Falls High for an early-evening scrimmage game. As the marching band practiced in the parking lot, families and students streamed into Joe Raitano Field to enjoy some Friday night football before next week’s emotional return to classes.

Kera Oliver arrived to watch her 15-year-old son, Eagan, who plays center on the team. She said she has mostly steered clear from the politics unfolding at school board meetings and trusts that school officials have made campus safer for her son.

Eagan, she said, is eager to return.

“He’s chomping at the bit,” Oliver said. “He’s ready.”

Follow Jervis on Twitter: @MrRJervis.

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2L8alFC

If you were scrolling on Twitter this weekend, chances are your TL was bursting with emotional tweets about To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. 

Netflix dropped the charming new rom-com, based on the best-selling novel by Jenny Han, on 17 August.

Since then, Twitter has been awash with outpourings of love for what fans are hailing “the best rom-com of this generation”.

Some were taken aback by the movie’s emotional effect on them. 

A lot of people were in tears both during and after watching. 

One fan hailed it “the best rom-com movie of this generation and that’s THAT.” Agreed.

The verdict was unanimous after watching: everyone wants to be in love after watching this film. 

And, some want Peter Kavinsky specifically to be the object of their affection. 

I think it’s safe to say we all have a new favourite film. 

Iraq’s Sairoon Alliance led by Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr is in talks to form a coalition with the Nasr alliance led by outgoing Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, along with two other parliamentary groups.

The parliamentary blocs of Sadr-backed Sairoon and Abadi’s Nasr met on Sunday with the Hikma bloc led by Shia cleric Ammar al-Hakim and the Wataniyya bloc led by former prime minister Iyad Allawi, in Baghdad to discuss forming the largest alliance that would form a government for the next four years.

After the meeting, the four blocks announced late on Sunday a preliminary agreement to form a coalition.

“We agreed today to form a core for an alliance, seeking to form a parliamentary bloc that can form the government. We have decided at this meeting to open up to our other partners to contribute together in the formation of this (largest) alliance,” said the blocs in a statement on Sunday.

The announcement also confirmed the blocs’ commitment to taking an anti-sectarian approach to the process of forming a new government.

“The coalition is determined to work hard to build a state of citizenship, justice, equality and the provision of a decent life for all our people,” the statement said.

Confirming the progress of the talks, Kadhim al-Shimmary, a leading figure in the Wataniyya bloc told Al Jazeera: “We had a successful meeting and agreed to form a coalition among us.

“We are now waiting to see if we will be able to form the largest bloc,” he added.

The announcement came as Iraq’s Supreme Court ratified the final results of the May 12 parliamentary elections, setting in motion a 90-day constitutional deadline for the top parties to form a coalition government.

Many Iraqis disputed the results of the vote, alleging widespread electoral misconduct but a nationwide recount of votes on August 10 did not change the number of seats Sadr’s bloc won.

According to the commission, only one seat from Iraq’s Baghdad Coalition had moved to the second-placed Al-Fatih bloc, giving it 48 instead of 47 assembly seats.

But while Sadr retained his lead, his potential alliance with Abadi’s bloc and the others does not grant him the 50 percent plus one – or at least 165 seats – needed to form a majority bloc.

The Sairoon alliance won the largest number of parliamentary seats at 54, while the Nasr alliance, which came in third place, won 42 seats. 

Together with the Hikma bloc, which won only 19 seats, and Allawi’s Wataniyya bloc, which won 21 seats, the potential alliance has 137 seats – 28 seats short of a majority bloc.

Commenting on the coalition forming, Iraqi analyst Jassim Moussavi said despite this shortcoming, the alliance was likely to form a strong bloc that could place it in a position to gain support from other groups in order to form the new government.

“These blocs have a lot in common including their anti-sectarian approach and inclination towards garnering strong relations with all regional powers,” Moussavi told Al Jazeera.

“It is quite likely that they will be able to form the largest bloc and hence the new government,” he added, saying that if this group was to remain allied, it would likely announce Abadi – an ally of both the United States and Iran – as its candidate for prime minister.

In a televised speech earlier on Sunday, al-Abadi called on the political blocs to accelerate their negotiations, and on Iraqi President Fuad Masoum to invite the new parliament to hold its first session soon.

Following the Supreme Court’s ratification of final results, incoming MPs are now expected to hold a first session to elect a new assembly speaker. 

Within 30 days of that first session, a two-thirds majority of the assembly will elect the country’s next president, who will then task the largest bloc in parliament with drawing up a government.

The new government will have to be referred back to parliament for approval.

Four Japanese basketball players have been sent home from the Asian Games for allegedly paying women for sex.

The players went out for dinner in Jakarta wearing their team uniforms and were solicited by touts to go to a hotel with women, according to Japanese news agency Kyodo News.

The Asian Games opened in the Indonesian capital on Saturday and run until 2 September.

“I feel a sense of shame,” Japan’s chef de mission Yasuhiro Yamashita said.

“We deeply apologise and intend to give the athletes thorough guidance from now on.”

The basketball competition began before Saturday’s opening ceremony, and the alleged incident happened following victory over Qatar on Thursday, Yamashita told a news conference.

He said the four players met a Japanese-speaking local, who told them about a bar where they could meet women.

They spent a couple of hours at the bar before checking into a hotel with four women and staying there until Friday morning, he added.

Officials named the players as Takuya Hashimoto, Keita Imamura, Yuya Nagayoshi and Takuma Sato.

“The players flew back home at their own expense,” Yamashita said, adding that the remaining eight squad members would continue in the competition.

“The athletes should be role models of society, not only in the sporting venues but also on other occasions,” said the chef de mission.

Organisers say about 18,000 athletes and officials are visiting Jakarta and co-host city Palembang for the Asian Games, a regional competition featuring 40 events.

Editors, USA TODAY
Published 1:40 a.m. ET Aug. 20, 2018

Image: ADE JOHNSON/AFP/Getty Images

Apple Store in Leidseplein square in Amsterdam has been evacuated after an iPad exploded, Dutch outlet AT5 reported Sunday. 

The incident was confirmed by the city’s fire brigade, which tweeted that three people had respiratory problems following the incident. 

The incident was probably caused by a leaking battery pack, the tweet said. 

AT5 posted a short video showing the empty Apple Store at Leidseplein with some of the evacuated customers standing in front. 

We’ve contacted Apple for comment and will update this article when we hear from them. 

Exploding iPads are rare but not unheard of. In fact, in 2013, a Vodafone store in Canberra, Australia, was evacuated after an iPad Air exploded there, and there have been several instances of iPhones bursting into flames as well. 

Indian health authorities have started preparing defences against the spread of disease in flood-hit Kerala state, as water receded and a huge clean-up gathered pace.

By Monday, the death toll in the southern state had reached 370 and the number of people displaced was upwards of a million.

Incessant rain since August 8 has caused the worst floods the region has experienced in a century and triggered landslides. 

Dozens of people are missing and hundreds of thousands are sheltering in thousands of makeshift relief camps, state officials said.

“The biggest challenges immediately ahead are cleaning of the flood-hit houses, rehabilitation, and prevention of water-borne diseases,” said Mahesh P, a village-level officer from Rayamangalam, some 45km from Kerala’s financial capital of Kochi.

Al Jazeera’s Andrew Thomas, reporting from a relief camp in Kayamkulam, said the huge number of people gathered in the shelters increased the risk of disease spreading.

“When you have more than three quarters of a million people in temporary camps like this one, disease is always a risk,” he said.

“You have lots of people in a small space, and without the things they would normally have at home, like clean water and regular food.”

Light to moderate rain was expected across Kerala on Monday, bringing some respite to rescue workers, who have been battling rising waters and mudslides to reach tens of thousands of stranded villagers.

Rainfall in the state during the June-September monsoon season has been more than 40 percent higher than normal, with torrential rain in the last 10 days forcing authorities to release water from dozens of dangerously full dams, sending surges into rivers that then overflowed their banks.

Disease control

Anil Vasudevan, who handles disaster management at Kerala’s health department, said the state was preparing to battle any outbreak of diseases in the relief camps and preventive medicines were being distributed.

Mahesh said villagers had all pulled together to rescue people and prevent an even bigger disaster.

“The bulk of the credit for the rescue goes to the ordinary citizens. The army, the navy, the local authorities assisted them,” Mahesh said.

“The flood has bonded the people like never before, with people sharing whatever they had.”

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said there was no shortage of food in the state as traders had stocked up ahead of Onam, the state’s biggest festival which falls on August 25.

The state has cancelled all official celebrations in connection with the Hindu harvest festival.

SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies

Premier League reaction: Are Manchester United in crisis? – Live – BBC Sport

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AP
Published 12:29 a.m. ET Aug. 20, 2018 | Updated 2:43 a.m. ET Aug. 20, 2018