Kenney Picks New School Board
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On Wednesday Mayor Kenney named the new-nine member board of education to lead the Philadelphia School District starting on July 1.
“A major step forward toward establishing local control of our schools,” said Mayor Kenney.
The mayor chose educators and those with social services backgrounds, choosing six women and three men from a pool. Named to the board were Julia Danzy, Leticia Egea-Hinton, Mallory Fix Lopez, Lee Huang, Maria McColgan, Christopher McGinley, Angela McIver, Wayne Walker, and Joyce Wilkerson.
“The only way we’re going to achieve economic justice and equality and fairness is education,” Kenney said. “This is the most critically important task that we face. This is the most difficult thing we have to do.”
Trump Orders National Guard Troops To The US-Mexico Border
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President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Wednesday to deploy the National Guard to the southwest border. This is a move that followed days of him calling for further border security.
Details that are still being finalized are the number of troops, costs and how long they will be deployed.
In the memo he signed Wednesday evening, Trump declared the defense secretary “shall request use of National Guard personnel” to secure the border and that the homeland security secretary will work with him to train and direct the troops in that mission.
“During the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the National Guard provided support for efforts to secure our southern border,” the memo says. “The crisis at our southern border once again calls for the National Guard to help secure our border and protect our homeland.”
Bill Cosby Jury Selected: 7 Men, 5 Women
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Philly.com- The panel that will be charged with deciding Bill Cosby’s fate was finalized Wednesday, as lawyers completed a three-day search for 12 Montgomery County residents who hadn’t already made up their minds about the case.
In the end, all but one member of the new panel said that they were at least somewhat familiar with the sexual assault allegations against Cosby. Some even said they had heard that a previous set of 12 jurors deadlocked in June, prompting a mistrial.
Cosby’s new defense team accused prosecutors of attempting to deliberately exclude both older white men and African Americans from the panel during the selection process. Seven men and five women, including one African American man and one African American woman, were ultimately chosen.
The jurors, plus six alternates, will be sequestered starting Sunday evening for the duration of what is expected to be a monthlong trial, scheduled to begin Monday.
