Latest news with #Appo
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The results are in: Meet Delaware's newly elected school board members
More than 15,500 Delawareans turned out to vote in school board elections on May 13, according to the unofficial results from the Delaware Department of Elections. Even with rough totals, that's a nearly 176% increase in turnout compared to 2024, which also saw nine fewer contested races. This year, 11 school districts drew voters to the polls, totaling 16 contested elections for open seats. Only Colonial, Milford, Delmar, Laurel and Seaford had no elections. In Delaware code, any uncontested race won't reach the ballot. New Castle saw the highest turnout, with over 7,900 voters. Overall it was a comfortable night for many incumbents seeking re-election, but several new faces will also join Delaware school boards. Here are the preliminary results posted by the Delaware Department of Elections: Appo's open at-large seat saw a three-way contest. By a difference of just 45 votes, Tim Higgins bested both Sandhya Celestin-Brown and Chuck Boyce. While the Middletown businessman claimed 667 votes Tuesday, Celestin-Brown trailed with 622 and Boyce, 435. Higgins is a business owner of over 30 years and has served on several boards in the community such as the Canal Little League, Saint Margaret's Church, youth ministry groups and a former religion teacher. Incumbent Alexander Najemy won his re-election to fill the District A seat, by just 69 votes. The 46-year-old of Wilmington secured roughly 51% of 3,081 votes cast in this election, edging out his competition in Kenyon Wilson. The former U.S. Army captain works as an attorney in the global capital markets office for M&T Bank, after his military service. Now, he'll look to continue his work on the Brandywine board. In District B, Brian Jordan had a much more comfortable win with about 81% of the vote. The Wilmington attorney and father of two Brandywine students beat former New Castle County Council President Karen Hartley-Nagle by nearly 2,000 votes. Frank Livoy will fill the board's District E seat, beating his opponent Tracy Todd Woodson. The Wilmington-area resident secured nearly 63% of some 3,321 Brandywine voters on May 13. Today, Livoy coaches new teachers at the University of Delaware and Delaware State, while also teaching writing courses at Wilmington University. Shannon Troncoso secured the District A seat on Christina's school board. Incumbent and Vice President Alethea Smith-Tucker – a board member who has often joined a deciding four-person bloc – did not run for re-election. The Philadelphia criminal defense lawyer just about doubled votes over Janiene Campbell, at 876 to 414, in unofficial results. The Delaware mom of two BlueHens doesn't have any children in the school district, but she saw running for the Christina school board as a public service. Devon Hynson saw a deciding win over his competition for Red Clay's District B seat, with nearly 73% of the vote. He beat Martin Wilson to secure a four-year term. The 53-year-old of Wilmington has stated publicly that the top priorities for his campaign include increasing engagement between parents, community members and staff about decisions that are made for the district. Incumbent Joyce Denman won re-election for the at-large seat, 687-527, over challenger Amy Spampinato. A former teacher and director of special education, Denman, 72, received nearly 57% of the votes to fill this four-year term. Capital had two contests for at-large seats, one for a three-year term and another for a four-year term. One incumbent who's served since 2020, Anthony De Prima, didn't run for re-election. The other incumbent, Vickie Pendleton, took office in February to fill an open seat for the rest of the term, which ends this year. For the three-year term, Pendleton won 471-331 over her 18-year-old challenger Jordan Davis. A math teacher with over 40 years of experience, Pendleton, 65, received nearly 59% of the votes. For the four-year term, Donna Johnson Geist won 494-308 over Mozella Richardson Kamara. Geist, 54, is the vice president for policy and advocacy at Cognia, an education nonprofit. She was a nationally board-certified high school math teacher, district administrator, director of accountability and assessment at the Office of the State Superintendent of Education in Washington D.C. and executive director of the Delaware State Board of Education. She received just over 61% of the votes. Incumbent James L. Rau won 177-64 to keep his at-large seat in Lake Forest. He received just over 73% of the votes against challenger Darrell Hughes for a four-year term. Rau, 49, has been a legal administrator for 25 years and is a lifelong member of the Felton Fire Company. He has also coached 18 combined seasons of fall and spring soccer through Harrington Parks and Recreation. In a three-way race for an open at-large seat, Aaron Weisenberger won the four-year term with just over 49% of the votes. Incumbent Christine Malec did not run for re-election. Here are the totals: Weisenberger with 406 votes, Charlotte Middleton with 214 and Justine L. Flint with 202. Weisenberger, 50, retired in December 2024 as assistant chief of the Dover Air Force Base Fire Department, where he worked for 24 years after serving in the military. In the Cape Henlopen School District, incumbent Bill Collick kept his at-large seat, while Patty Maull was elected to the District C seat. Collick received 3,208 votes to opponent Chris Lovenguth's 830. Maull received 2,011 votes compared to Laura Parsons' 1,458 and Andy Lewis' 575. The winners will each serve four-year terms. Collick, 73, is a former Delaware State University football coach and educator. Maull, 42, is a cosmetologist. Both told the ACLU they support 'inclusive' education. Incumbents Lisa Hudson Briggs and Kelly Kline beat out Dereck Booth to keep their District 1 seats in the Indian River School District. Briggs received 87 votes and Kline 64, while Booth garnered 31. Briggs, a 61-year-old state retiree, and Kline, a 42-year-old library director, were both appointed to the board in 2024. They will now serve four-year terms. In the Woodbridge School District, Timothy Banks defeated Latoya Harris for the at-large seat, 192 to 56 votes, respectively. Banks, 60, is the senior pastor of The Life Center and co-owner of the Helping Hands Learning Center in Bridgeville. He will serve a four-year term. Looking at Delaware's uncontested races, some winners didn't have to join a ballot. Christine L. Smith, Phila Breeding and Christopher Piecuch Sr. will join Colonial's board in District B, C and D, respectively. Jason Bradley will fill Cape Henlopen's District B seat, while Ray Vincent fills Delmar's District B seat. Jerry Peden Jr. will serve on Indian River's school board for District 2, while Michelle Parsons represents District 4. Yanelle Powell is Milford's next at-large board member, while Jeffrey T. Benson Jr. will now fill the same role in Seaford and Moraima Reardon in Woodbridge. Got an education story? Contact Kelly Powers at kepowers@ This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: How Delaware's 2025 school board elections shook out
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Kurdish leader Ocalan told the PKK to disband, it did: Here's what to know
The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) says it is disbanding after more than 40 years of armed struggle against the Turkish state. The announcement came after the PKK held its congress in northern Iraq on Friday, about two months after its imprisoned founder, Abdullah Ocalan, also known as 'Appo', called on the group to disarm in February. For most of its history, the PKK has been labelled a terrorist group by Turkiye, the European Union and the United States. It fought for Kurdish autonomy for years, a fight that has been declared over now. This is all you need to know about why Ocalan and the PKK have given up their armed struggle. Ocalan was born to a poor Kurdish farming family on April 4, 1948, in Omerli, Sanliurfa, a Kurdish-majority part of Turkiye. He moved to Ankara to study political science at the university there, where he became politically active; driven, biographers say, by the sense of marginalisation that many Kurds in Turkiye felt. By the mid-1970s, he was advocating for Kurdish nationalism and went on to found the PKK in 1978. Six years later, the group launched a separatist rebellion against Turkiye under his had absolute rule over the PKK and worked to stamp out rival Kurdish groups, monopolising the struggle for Kurdish liberation, according to Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence, by Aliza Marcus. At the time, Kurds were denied the right to speak their language, give their children Kurdish names or show any expression of nationalism. Despite Ocalan's authoritarian rule, his charisma and positioning as a champion of Kurdish rights led most Kurds across Turkiye to love and respect him, calling him 'Appo', which means Uncle. Violent. More than 40,000 people died between 1984 and 2024, with thousands of Kurds fleeing the violence in southeastern Turkiye into cities further north. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Ocalan led operations from neighbouring Syria, which was a source of tensions between the then-Assad regime and Turkiye. The PKK resorted to brutal tactics beginning in the late 1980s and early 90s. According to a report by the European Council on Foreign Relations from 2007, the group, under Ocalan, kidnapped foreign tourists, adopted suicide bombing operations and attacked Turkish diplomatic offices in Europe. Perhaps even worse, the PKK would repress Kurdish civilians who did not assist the group in its guerrilla warfare. Eventually, more than a decade after he was caught. In 1998, Ocalan was forced to flee Syria due to the threat of a Turkish incursion to capture him. A year later, Turkish agents arrested him on a plane in Nairobi, Kenya, thanks to intel received from the US. He was brought back to Turkiye and handed the death penalty, yet his sentence was changed to life in prison after Turkiye abolished capital punishment in 2004 in a bid to become a member of the EU. By 2013, Ocalan changed his stance on separatism and began lobbying for comprehensive Kurdish rights and greater regional autonomy in Turkiye, saying he no longer believed in the effectiveness of armed rebellion. This radical shift led to the start of a shaky peace process between the PKK and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), headed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The peace process led to some freedoms for Kurds, yet fighting erupted between the government and the PKK in 2015 due in part to fears that the party was trying to create a Kurdish statelet in neighbouring Syria during its civil war. At the time, many Kurds from southern Turkiye had left for Syria to help the Kurds there fight against ISIL (ISIS). In 2015, the AK Party had also formed a new alliance with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which was staunchly opposed to any peace process involving the announcing its disarmament, the PKK said it has 'completed its historical mission' by 'breaking the policy of denial and annihilation of our people and bringing the Kurdish issue to a point where solving it can occur through democratic politics'. However, analysts argue that there are other reasons behind the decision. The PKK and its Kurdish allies in the region are more vulnerable than before due to recent developments, according to Sinan Ulgen, an expert on Turkiye and senior fellow at Carnegie Europe in Brussels. 'The reason the PKK gave up its armed struggle has to do with the change in the international context,' Ulgen explained. US President Donald Trump does not see Syria as a 'strategic focal point' for foreign policy and is, therefore, unlikely to keep supporting Kurdish armed groups in the country as it had during the fight against ISIL, he explained. In addition, the new government in Syria is on good terms with Turkiye, unlike under the now-overthrown Assad regime. This new relationship could significantly hurt the ability of the PKK and its Syrian offshoot, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), to operate along the Syria-Turkiye border. The political climate seems ripe for that. Main political parties, such as the AK Party and its rival Republican People's Party (CHP), have vocally or tacitly supported a new peace process. But it was the MHP, long opposed to any overtures to the Kurds, that created the window for a new peace process. In April 2024, MHP leader Devlet Bahceli invited Ocalan to renounce 'terrorism' in front of Turkiye's parliament in exchange for possible parole. 'The fact it was Bahceli … was kind of unbelievable,' said Sinem Adar, an expert on Turkiye with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWB). Bahceli's change of heart is probably to help his coalition partner, Erdogan, run in and win the next national election, experts told Al Jazeera. Under the constitution, Erdogan cannot run for another term unless an early election is called, which needs 360 out of 600 votes in parliament. To add the votes of Kurdish delegates from the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) to the MHP-AK Party alliance's votes, '[Erdogan] needs to broaden his political support base in parliament over and above the current ruling alliance', Carnegie's Ulgen told Al Jazeera. It is unclear if he will be released, but his prison conditions could significantly improve, said Ulgen. He said the government would prefer to gradually increase Ocalan's freedoms, so it can gauge the reactions of his support base and the broader public. Many people in Turkiye still view Ocalan as a 'terrorist' and blame him for a conflict that has taken the lives of so many. 'I think the government wants to test the waters before allowing Ocalan to go free,' Ulgen told Al Jazeera.
