Florida education officials discuss SAT alternative focused on ‘Western tradition’
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — As Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republican leaders explore alternatives to the College Board’s AP classes and tests, top state officials have been meeting with the founder of an education testing company supporters say is focused on the “great classical and Christian tradition.”
The Classic Learning Test, founded in 2015, is used primarily by private schools and home-schooling families and is rooted in the classical education model, which focuses on the “centrality of the Western tradition.”
The founder of the company, Jeremy Tate, said the test is meant to be an alternative to the College Board-administered SAT exam, which he says has become “increasingly ideological” in part because it has “censored the entire Christian-Catholic intellectual tradition” and other “thinkers in the history of Western thought.”
As DeSantis’ feud with the College Board intensified this week, Tate had several meetings in Tallahassee with Ray Rodrigues, the state university system’s chancellor, and legislators to see if the state can more broadly offer the Classic Learning Test to college-bound Florida high school students.
—Miami Herald
Hobby group wonders if F-22 shot down its missing balloon
An Illinois hobby group is wondering if one of the unidentified flying objects shot out of the sky by a jet fighter’s sidewinder missile might have been their humble radio-equipped balloon. The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade declared one of its exploratory “pico balloons” missing Wednesday, according to Aviation Week.
The balloon’s last transmission reportedly came from 38,910 feet above the Alaskan coast on Feb. 10, headed toward the Yukon Territory. The next day, U.S. officials said an F-22 downed an object floating over that area at 40,000 feet.
Pico balloons seemingly bear a resemblance to the objects shot down over Alaska, Canada and the South Carolina coast in recent days. They can be as cheap as $12, Aviation Week said. The AIM-9x missiles being used to shoot down unmanned balloons in recent days are 10-feet long and cost upward of $450,000.
Pico balloons are reportedly exempt from most Federal Aviation Administration airspace restrictions because they weigh fewer than six pounds.
—New York Daily News
California lawmakers take aim at social media role in youth fentanyl use and sex trafficking
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — How much responsibility do social media platforms bear when people use them to sell kids a deadly dose of fentanyl, pay teenagers to livestream strip teases or recruit minors who are sold for sex?
Those are questions California lawmakers will try to answer this year in their latest effort to regulate social media, a debate that will play out amid deliberation at the Supreme Court over whether federal law shields platforms from liability for manipulating what users see.
After a failed effort last year to pass a sweeping measure to allow more lawsuits against social networks for harm caused to children, lawmakers have come back this year with bills that take a more targeted approach.
They’re focusing on some of the most frightening uses of apps many teens report using “almost constantly.” One bill would hold social media companies liable for promoting the illegal sale of fentanyl to youth and targeting them with content that could result in eating disorders or suicide. Another would require that sites permanently delete photos and videos of minors upon their request, and also allow lawsuits against social media platforms for features that facilitate commercial sexual exploitation of minors.
—Los Angeles Times
European, US leaders send message to Putin: 'You will not get away with this'
MUNICH — Leading politicians from Europe and the United States have called for Russian President Vladimir Putin to face criminal charges over Russia's war in Ukraine.
Putin must be held accountable for the crime of aggression, "otherwise history will repeat itself again and again," Estonia's Prime Minister Kaja Kallas demanded at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, according to an official translation.
Senior U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham took the same line, arguing that if Putin got away with his actions in Ukraine, then the same thing would happen again in the future.
Kallas said that Putin could be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes, but not for the crime of aggression against Ukraine. A separate court would be needed for that, she said. One of the reasons why it is currently not possible for the International Criminal Court to take action against Putin is that neither Russia nor Ukraine are parties to the Rome Statute which is the legal basis for this court.
—dpa
