NEWS OF THE DAY
From Across the Nation
1 DNA tests: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will begin voluntary DNA testing in cases where officials suspect that adults are fraudulently claiming to be parents of children as they cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The decision comes as Homeland Security officials are increasingly concerned about instances of child trafficking as a growing number of Central American families cross the border, straining resources to the breaking point. Border authorities also recently started to increase the biometric data they take from children 13 and younger, including fingerprints, despite privacy concerns and government policy that restricts what can be collected.
2 Guns on campus: More Florida classroom teachers could carry guns in school under a bill passed Wednesday by state lawmakers, the latest response to last year’s mass shooting at a Parkland high school. The Republican-led House voted 65-47 in Tallahassee on Wednesday to send the bill to GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to sign it. The measure expands an existing school “guardian” program to allow any teacher to volunteer to carry a weapon if their local school district approves. Teachers who want to carry guns in districts that choose to join the program would have to undergo police-style training, psychiatric evaluation and drug screening.
3 Teachers protest: A fatal shooting at a college campus was on protesters’ minds Wednesday at a North Carolina teacher rally, adding a somber note to a demonstration in support of overhauling the state’s education priorities. Chanting “Whose schools? Our schools! Whose voice? Our voice,” public school teachers and their supporters rallied in Raleigh for the second year in a row. They want more money for student support staff, such as counselors and nurses.
4 Free calls: New York is now providing free phone calls from jails, making it the first major U.S. city to eliminate fees for inmate calls. Inmates were previously charged 50 cents for the first minute of a phone call and 5 cents per additional minute. The majority of people in the city’s jails are awaiting trial and have not been convicted of a crime. 5 Looted painting: A federal judge in Los Angeles ruled Tuesday that a Spanish museum that acquired a priceless, Nazi-looted painting in 1992 is the work’s rightful owner, and not the survivors of the Jewish woman who surrendered it 80 years ago to escape the Holocaust. Although U.S. District Judge John Walter criticized Baron Hans-Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, the German industrialist whose name now graces the Madrid museum where the painting by Camille Pissarro hangs, for not doing all of the due diligence he could have when he acquired it in 1976, he found no evidence the museum knew it was looted art when it took possession in 1993. Lilly Cassirer traded it in 1939 for passage out of Germany when she and her family fled the Holocaust.