Latest news with #SaySomething
Irish Times
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Bossa nova puts an end to unease created by an innocent relationship question
The event was not due to start until 8pm, but Shuhao was so worried about finding a seat that it was only 6.30pm when we walked down the steps into a basement near the Longfu Temple. For the next hour we were alone apart from the barman, the owner and two women who moved to and fro taking pictures of one another. For almost a decade, this small space hosted film screenings, exhibitions, DJs and live bands, with an emphasis on improvisation. At Say Something, one of the most popular weekly events, those present were invited to 'read something aloud, tell a story, say something' – with no restrictions on their choice of material. 'You could read anything. Some people just read something like the phone book,' Shuhao said. 'There was no judgment. But you were supposed to think about the feelings of the others there too.' The last time he was there, the place was so full he had to go up to the street for air from time to time. But now the management had announced that 'due to the contract expiring + economic downturn + limited energy' it was closing down. READ MORE Shuhao and I were there for what was due to be the closing event, another regular feature called Open Decks, where everyone was invited to play the music of their choice for 30 minutes. In keeping with the venue's spirit, which one regular visitor described as 'free but not unbridled', the choices tended to be individual but at least tolerable for most of the others present. While we waited for the show to begin, Shuhao brought me up to date about his life as a student of English literature at one of Beijing's top universities. He was planning to move for his master's degree to Peking University, the most prestigious of all, and was preparing for an entrance examination. 'The teachers aren't better there but the students are,' he said. Some of his friends were thinking about going abroad for their master's degree but he felt that, since he had chosen to study something that would never make him rich, he should not ask his parents to pay too much for it. He was hoping to go abroad for his PhD, aiming for one of the leading American universities where funding for doctoral students can be generous. I was surprised that he would consider going to the United States in the current climate, particularly after the threats to revoke Chinese students' visas made as part of Donald Trump's trade war. The last time we met he had mentioned a girlfriend and I asked, gently I thought, if she was still in the picture. He said she was, but then he looked troubled and a few minutes later he returned to the subject 'It's better than a real war. And he'll be gone by then,' Shuhao said. As they head into their final year as undergraduates, his friends and classmates are also thinking about their future. Some have ambitions for high political office and are planning a route through the system, while others want to make money and are enrolling in MBA courses. Shuhao's passion is for writing songs and singing in a band, but he has no plan to make a career out of it – and neither do most of his creative friends. 'Most of them want to get a job in the civil service, where they finish work at the same time every day and they have the rest of the time for music or writing or whatever they want,' he said. 'I prefer the approach of Wallace Stevens or TS Eliot to Byron or Shelley.' Shuhao is not planning to work in an insurance company like Stevens or in a bank like Eliot, but he is becoming more modest and restrained in his manner and appearance in recent months. His once shoulder-length hair has become a short crop and he has swapped the black metalhead T-shirts and jeans for a white shirt and black trousers. The last time we met he had mentioned a girlfriend and I asked, gently I thought, if she was still in the picture. He said she was, but then he looked troubled and a few minutes later he returned to the subject. 'I'm sorry, I'm really shocked by that question,' he said. 'We don't post pictures of ourselves on WeChat all the time. We take pictures but we don't post them. We are in a committed relationship and we have plans for the future.' I felt old suddenly and poisoned by experience. An unease fell between us as I tried to assure him that I wasn't casting doubt on anything. I was babbling about the couples I knew who had met in college and remained happily together in old age, when the first DJ put a stop to the conversation. His gentle mix of bossa nova and French pop songs from the 1960s gave Shuhao and me something to smile about together and I stayed for another two sessions. He stayed behind but we exchanged a few messages on my way home as he updated me on the music and the crowd, with a final text an hour later. 'Everyone's standing up and grooving,' he said.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Yahoo
Pamlico County Schools release statement on a potential incident
PAMLICO COUNTY, N.C. (WNCT) — Pamlico County Schools released a statement Wednesday regarding an incident that occurred at Pamlico County Middle School the day prior. The school received a report through the anonymous app, Say Something, on Tuesday evening. The report allegedly a concern for Pamlico County Middle School. Officers were notified by the school and they investigated the issue. The school system says that the issue has been addresses and was concluded by Tuesday night. They added that 'appropriate disciplinary action has been taken'. There is no current threat to the school. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Boston Globe
31-03-2025
- Boston Globe
Their kids died at Sandy Hook. Their tip line prevents school shootings.
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Trinity Shockley was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder and threatening to commit terrorism. It was the 18th credible school shooting threat interrupted by a tip to the Say Something phone line or app since 2018, and the second so far this year. Shockley's lawyer did not return a request for comment. Advertisement The push to stop murders in classrooms by families who've experienced them continues to yield success stories even as the federal government is dismantling some tools aimed at preventing school shootings. The United States saw a sharp rise in such events starting in 2018, a Washington Post database shows, when the number of school shootings soared to 30 after annually averaging about half that. The grim figure increased to more than 40 in 2021 and 2022. But the number has dropped to 33 and 34 in the past two years, as Sandy Hook Promise pushes to spread word of the program through annual trainings and encourages students to report warning signs that could preface something worse. Advertisement Police and school officials around the country say they are happy to have the help. In Prince William County, Virginia, police receive tips 'almost daily, sometimes multiple times a day,' said Lt. Kimberly M. Mercer of the police youth services bureau. In December, when a Prince William student allegedly shared detailed plans about carrying out a school shooting, the Sandy Hook tip line was notified. Prince William police responded that night, Mercer said, followed by involvement with the school's threat assessment team and an increased police presence at the school. 'Situations like these happen more often than people realize,' Mercer said, 'and having a structured response process, starting with students speaking up, Sandy Hook Promise filtering critical tips, and law enforcement stepping in when needed, is essential for preventing violence before it happens.' In Largo, Florida, police in January responded after the Say Something line received more than 40 tips when a teen allegedly threatened to shoot up his high school in a social media post, and the teen was arrested. 'Countless lives were saved, thanks to your quick thinking and for taking it seriously,' Sandy Hook Promise co-founder Mark Barden, whose son Daniel Barden was slain in 2012, said in a video thanking the students at Largo High School and the first responders who intervened. In addition to the 18 school shootings stopped since 2018, tips to the Say Something line have prevented more than 700 teen suicides nationwide, using in-school training sessions to teach students how to recognize a threat and report it, the group says. Nicole Hockley, also a co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise and parent of Newtown victim Dylan Hockley, told of a recent case in which a tipster called to report a suicidal friend and spoke to a crisis counselor for several hours. Eventually, Hockley said the student told the counselor, ''I'm not calling you about my friend, it's me and I just overdosed,' so we were able to get to school to get to that child.' Advertisement Sandy Hook Promise opened a 24-hour crisis center in Miami to handle phone and online tips, established relationships with law enforcement agencies and school districts around the country, and helped coordinate the training of more than 31 million participants, Hockley said. Last year, the program trained 5.7 million students, estimated to be about 10 percent of the K-12 universe, and they hope to double that to 11 million per year. 'We're just everywhere that we can possibly be,' Hockley said, 'so that people realize that this isn't a hopeless issue, that there are actions that everyone can take. And if you're not an activist, that's okay. But everyone can learn warning signs and everyone can have conversations with each other.' The Post has compiled a database of school shootings since the Columbine, Colorado, shootings in 1999, when two teens killed 13 students and one teacher. Since then, there have been 428 school shootings involving gunfire at a primary or secondary school during school hours. In those shootings, 216 children, educators and other people have been killed, and another 487 have been injured. Advertisement Hockley said Sandy Hook Promise uses 'a very strict set of data criteria for us to be able to say this was a validated, credible, planned school shooting attack that was stopped as a result of our program.' 'I come from a marketing background,' Hockley said. 'I didn't know anything about gun violence prevention or school safety when my son was killed at Sandy Hook. But I wanted to make a difference.' She said, 'So many people were focusing on the policy end of gun violence. We decided that we would do more than that.' The group's anonymous reporting system, which also has a phone app, has received 328,803 tips since 2018, said Aimee Thunberg, head of communications for Sandy Hook Promise. The tips range beyond school shootings, Hockley said, to include substance abuse, bullying and self-harm. 'We've had the entire spectrum of violence against young people and self-harm that come into our crisis center,' Hockley said, 'as a result of training that we did for kids in terms of how to recognize signs of someone who needs help and tell a trusted adult or to use our anonymous reporting system.' Chase Ferrell, the auxiliary services and safety officer for Johnston County, North Carolina, public schools, said the district of about 37,500 students receives up to 250 referrals a year from the reporting system. He said the call takers at the crisis center in Miami are trained to handle teenagers in crisis, while his staff works quickly with police and school officials. 'It's one of the most proactive tools out there, in my opinion. It allows us to curb incidents before they become crisis situations,' Ferrell said. 'There have been a couple of occasions where we have made a save, if you will, and that was a student that was in the throes of wanting to do self-harm. And we were able to stop it. And if it weren't for that tip line, we may be without a student.' Advertisement Ferrell said his school district requires training of all students from grades six through 12 in recognizing, and reporting, situations where a student appears ready to harm others or themselves. 'The first two or three weeks after that training, we get some bogus tips and some things that drive us crazy,' Ferrell said. 'But after that, you really get pertinent information that can be very, very helpful.' Hockley said Sandy Hook Promise chose education and awareness programs 'because we know that kind of violence prevention has a long historical base of evidence to prove that it works.' One way the group spreads the word is through public service announcements, including a new one featuring a child holding a beloved teddy bear, juxtaposed with the many teddy bears left at the mourning sites of school shootings. 'We had over 60,000 teddy bears that came into Newtown after the tragedy,' Hockley said. 'We don't want teddy bears to be a memorial. We want them to be companions to people. We want to let kids be kids and not have fear of going to school, or fear that they could end up in a school shooting.'
Yahoo
11-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
A New Survey Finds 80 Percent of Parents Think Gun Violence Changes What It Means To Be a Kid in America
Stories like Nicole Hockley's should never have to be told. When Hockley sent her first-grader to school on December 14th, 2012, she had no idea that their morning goodbye would be their last. But 6-year-old Dylan — along with 19 other children and 6 faculty members — would never come home to their families, instead falling victim to the unimaginable tragedy of the Sandy Hook school shooting. More from SheKnows I Lost My Son in the Sandy Hook Shooting 12 Years Ago Today - & Here's What I Need You to Know 'As a parent, you never think it could be you,' Hockley wrote for SheKnows on the 12th anniversary of the day she lost her son. Letting grief compel her forward, Hockley co-founded Sandy Hook Promise to honor her son and all the others killed in the senseless act: a nonprofit group dedicated to protecting children from gun violence in the places they should feel most safe. Recently, the organization polled around 1,000 parents of children 17 and under. Of those, 4 in 10 parents said they feel 'uncertain, frustrated or hopeless' about preventing violence in schools. Nearly half of the parents said they worried about gun violence at their child's school on a monthly basis, while 40 percent reported having those fears weekly or even daily. But that isn't all; parents also overwhelmingly feel that this issue is literally changing the carefree nature of childhood as we know it — and Sandy Hook Promise's gut-wrenching new PSA highlights this. The new PSA shines a spotlight on a sad reality: Gun violence truly has changed our kids' childhood experience, and the teddy bear is a perfect symbol of this. 'Following the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, more than 60,000 bears were sent to Newtown, Connecticut — so many that a storage facility was required,' says a press release from Sandy Hook Promise. 'These comfort objects, meant for playtime and companionship, have since become a go-to object placed at memorials.' For Hockley and the other founders of Sandy Hook Promise, whose children didn't get a fraction of the childhood they deserved, this is simply unacceptable. 'From our research, we know that 80% of parents feel that the threat of violence in schools has affected childhood in America today. At Sandy Hook Promise, we also know that school shootings are preventable when you know the signs, and that we all have a role to play in preventing this cycle from continuing,' Hockley tells SheKnows. 'With this PSA, we want to drive home the message that childhood doesn't have to be this way and encourage parents, educators, students and caring adults to learn the signs, so we can help ensure the innocent, carefree childhood our kids deserve.' According to the most recent data, released late last year, guns killed more children and teens (age 1 through 17) than any other cause — including car crashes and cancer. It's a daunting statistic, to be sure, but there's reason to be hopeful: Sandy Hook Promise's Know the Signs programs and Say Something anonymous reporting system have helped stop at least 18 planned school shootings — most recently at Mooresville High School in Indiana — and many other acts of suicide and self-harm. To confirm a prevented attack, they use a strict review process that checks for a clear threat, a plan, access to a weapon, and where the information came from. As Hockley says, childhood doesn't have to be this way. Parents, let's make sure it isn't. Learn more about how to make a change here. Best of SheKnows Chelsea Handler & Other Celebs Who Are Doing Just Fine Without Biological Children 'Mario Day' Is Today — & All the Can't-Miss Mario Bros. Deals Are Here! Wicked-Inspired Names Are Spiking — Here Are the Most 'Popular' Names from the Trend
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Yahoo
East Wichita neighborhood a hotspot for vehicle thefts
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — The Wichita Police Department is warning residents in an east Wichita neighborhood that it is a hotspot for crime. The department's Patrol East bureau says the 500 block of S. Rock Road, Kellogg and Rock Road, has seen increased crimes against vehicles. The crimes include stolen vehicles, theft from vehicles, and vandalism from attempted thefts. It is occurring primarily on Sundays from 5 p.m. to midnight. The majority of the crime involves pickups. Wind reports: Crashes, trees down, power outages due to high wind The department says if you notice suspicious behavior, call the See Something Say Something hotline at 316-519-2282 or Crime Stoppers at 316-267-2111. For more Kansas news, click here. Keep up with the latest breaking news by downloading our mobile app and signing up for our news email alerts. Sign up for our Storm Track 3 Weather app by clicking here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
