Latest news with #NCPR
NDTV
05-06-2025
- NDTV
Woman Loses Rs 2.89 Crore To Cyber Criminals, Cops Recover Rs 1.29 Crore
Mumbai: A woman was duped of Rs 2.89 crore by cyber criminals posing as important government authorities, though prompt action by Mumbai police managed to retrieve Rs 1.29 crore, an official said on Thursday. Between Monday and Wednesday, cyber criminals posing as Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) officials, police personnel as well as a judge, duped the 73-year-old woman, a resident of Vile Parle here, he said. "In his WhatsApp call, the man posing as a TRAI official told the woman there were irregular financial transactions from her account. Another accused who posed as a policeman threatened that she was linked to a businessman being probed for fraud and said she would be put under digital arrest," he informed. "The accused again made a video call saying a judge would help her avoid arrest. In this way, the accused made her transfer Rs 2.89 crore between Monday and Wednesday in order to avoid digital arrest. Soon, she realised she had been duped and intimated 1930 cyber helpline set up to help victims," he said. After a case was lodged on the NCPR portal, the cyber helpline cell managed to retrieve Rs 1.29 crore from the Rs 2.89 crore that was transferred, the official said.
Daily Maverick
14-05-2025
- Daily Maverick
Teacher vetting crisis: over 81% of educators remain unchecked amidst child safety concerns
The figures were revealed following a parliamentary question about vetting teachers against the National Register for Sex Offenders, which began in 2023. The figures were revealed following a parliamentary question by Liezl van der Merwe (IFP) to Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube about the vetting of teachers against the National Register for Sex Offenders (NSRO), following a case of rape involving a seven-year-old pupil from Matatiele in the Eastern Cape. The department revealed that only 19% of the country's teachers have been vetted to date. This means that, out of 405,738 teachers, just more than 78,000 clearance certificates have been issued – leaving a staggering 81% of teachers unchecked. Department spokesperson Lukhanyo Vangqa told Daily Maverick: 'Provincial education departments reported on 7 March 2025 that their NRSO vetting has revealed that 49 employees have records of past sexual offences.' The provincial breakdown of teachers found to be past sexual offenders is: Eastern Cape: 3; Free State: 21; Gauteng: 17; KwaZulu-Natal: 0; Limpopo: 0; Mpumalanga: 0; Northern Cape: 1; North West: 0; and Western Cape: 7. In its answer to Parliament the department said KwaZulu-Natal had the most teachers (91,508), only 7% of whom had been vetted. It was followed by Gauteng (77,225) where 28% had been vetted. In Limpopo no teachers had been vetted, while the Northern Cape had 10,687 teachers, with 20% having been vetted. The department said the mandatory vetting of current employees against the NRSO began in 2023 and is ongoing. In terms of the The National Child Protection Register (NCPR), training was provided to human resources practitioners in provincial education departments (PEDs) in October and November 2022. Established in 2009, the NRSO includes the records of people found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment for sexual offences against children and the vulnerable. The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development maintains the database. The NCPR records vulnerable children under the age of 18 who need care and protection. It is maintained by the Department of Social Development and designated child protection organisations. The Basic Education Department said PEDs have been advised to take steps to ensure the 49 teachers do not have any access to children. Delays in vetting In the minister's answer to the parliamentary question she revealed that there were delays in vetting teachers because of constraints at police stations and the Department of Justice. Daily Maverick asked the department whether it blamed the Department of Police and Department of Justice for the slow vetting pace. 'The success of the process to ensure that all educators and public service staff in schools are vetted against the NRSO requires that all stakeholders in the value chain are sufficiently resourced and equipped. No stakeholder has a greater or lesser role to play. Constraints in any of the steps along the value chain create bottlenecks in a system that is trying to vet close to 500,000 individuals,' Vangqa said. However, the national police spokesperson, Brigadier Athlenda Mathe, told Daily Maverick there are no capacity constraint problems in the police service. 'The SAPS do not have any capacity constraints regarding taking fingerprints nor issuing of a police clearance report.' Independent schools The minister said independent schools are employers in their own right and the Basic Education Department does not monitor the vetting of those teachers. However, there have been a number of cases of sexual offences at independent schools, including the recent alleged rape of the seven-year-old in Matatiele. 'Following reports of incidents at independent schools, the Department of Basic Education will review its oversight mechanisms in respect of provincial education departments that are directly responsible for the registration and monitoring of independent schools in the interest of ensuring the safety of learners placed in the care of those independent school,' Vangqa said. In recent reports, the Education Labour Relations Council confirmed that 111 cases of sexual harassment and abuse of pupils by teachers had been referred to them in the 2024/25 financial year. In 2024, 22 teachers in the Eastern Cape were suspended for serious misconduct involving pupils. Five of those cases involved sexual assault, three involved raping a pupil and three involved inappropriate relationships with pupils. One has been dismissed while the rest are still in disciplinary hearings. In her response to Van der Merwe's questions the minister said the Basic Education Department is committed to ensuring that no person deemed unsuitable to work with children is employed in the basic education sector. She added that preventing sexual offenders and individuals listed on the NRSO or NCPR from accessing the education system is a shared responsibility involving all stakeholders. DM
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump takes aim at PBS, NPR funding -- WPBS, NCPR managers say impact could hit local programming
May 7—President Donald J. Trump has taken aim at NPR and PBS, seeking to cut off Congress-approved funding for the radio and television networks with an executive order issued last week and removing funding for the groups in his executive budget plan. Arguing that it's inappropriate for taxpayer money to flow to news organizations, and contending that both NPR and PBS are biased organizations that aren't committed to fairness and fact in their work, Trump said in his executive order that his office maintains the power to cut off the flow of federal dollars, through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to the networks either directly or indirectly. In the north country, executives for regional PBS affiliate WPBS and the regional NPR member station NCPR said the order, and the push to end federal support for both organizations, could pose dramatic challenges to the work they do locally. Both WPBS and NCPR are independent nonprofits who affiliate with the national PBS and NPR networks. WPBS is a standalone nonprofit organization with headquarters in Watertown, a network of repeaters and a presence in Canada as well. NCPR is an independent department of St. Lawrence University that maintains a network of stations and repeaters in the north country. Both stations rely on thousands of dollars from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a company established by Congress, each year. That money is used for their own internal production and to support their relationships and content purchases from the national networks. WPBS received $993,265 for their main CPB funding package this year. WSLU, the main station callsign for NCPR's network, got $287,276 for their main CBP funding this year. Both stations also got a few hundred thousand dollars for upgrades to their emergency alert systems. Being a member of a national network like NPR and PBS comes with direct costs — money the stations owe to the national networks to get access to their content. Both stations use some of that CPB funding to pay those costs to the networks. "We are a member station of NPR, and for us to be a member station and carry NPR programming, we have to pay a variety of different fees to NPR," said NCPR general manager Mitch Teich. "The biggest one is our core fee, which basically creates the affiliation with NPR, and allows us to carry the big flagship programs like Morning Edition and All Things Considered." The NPR affiliation also gives NCPR access to music licenses for the radio network, helping to support their music broadcasts. Teich said that CBP and NPR negotiate streaming rights for commercial music, similar to what national commercial radio networks like IHeartRadio do. If that is somehow undone by the Trump order, Teich said that would pose a real danger to NCPR's music lineup, which is a relatively unique offering the station provides. "Music is a huge part of what we do here, and I think that distinguishes us from a lot of public radio stations in the areas we cover," he said. "Anything that threatens our ability to do that is a real concern." At WPBS, the situation is similar but not identical. As a TV station affiliated with PBS, WPBS has to pay an annual affiliate fee, which gives the station access to the PBS catalog of content and web services including the PBS streaming service. The CBP funding also goes to paying for local operations at both stations; WPBS uses it to maintain their four-person local production team, to pay for content creation and community events, educational investments and other projects. NCPR also uses the money to pay for their team of reporters across the north country, equipment maintenance and community events. "The money goes in a lot of direction," Prasuhn said. If the Trump EO is upheld, and the stations are permanently blocked from using CBP funding to pay for PBS or NPR content or fees, both managers said they would seek to adjust their budgets and use unrestricted funds to cover the gap left by the CBP funding restriction. "In a best case scenario, we would essentially just be rearranging our budget," Teich said. Prasuhn noted that WPBS and other nonprofits are used to working with restricted funding — grants and donations are sometimes directed to specific projects. But the CBP funding, for both NCPR and WPBS, is much larger than most individual donations or smaller grants. If the CBP money stops flowing altogether, Teich said it would be much harder to manage the fallout. "We do rely on the CPB money, it amounted to about 12% of our current fiscal year budget," he said. That could endanger programming and jobs — a possibility Teich said he isn't looking at right now, with the ongoing uncertainty over what will happen with the Trump order or his efforts to cut funding in his budget. At WPBS, Prasuhn said the impact would be devastating — and an abrupt cutoff would be particularly damaging. "The way this was set up in the 70's, Congress set it up so the money was set aside on a two-year cycle," he said. "In principle, we already have not just next year's funding, but also the following year's funding promised to CPB by Congress." He said if the decision was made to cut those funds off after local stations have already planned out how to use them, there would be an almost immediate cut off for local content. "We'd have to pull back on a lot of the activities we do, the education, some of local presence, events, education, content, and there would be staff reductions," Prasuhn said. Both Prasuhn and Teich rejected the argument that they or the national networks their organizations are a part of are biased. Prasuhn noted that PBS, although it does produce a news program, spends more time and energy on educational content for children, which is also true of WPBS. "For our part, news and current affairs, including talk shows, is under 10% of our local schedule," he said. "It is an important, and we are pleased to bring people the nightly PBS news, and we think it's balanced." Teich at NCPR noted that NPR and his stations have come under attack from Republicans frequently in recent years. Just a two years ago, NCPR ended up in the crosshairs of Congresswoman Elise M. Stefanik after a former NCPR employee and candidate for local office accidentally sent an appeal for support for local Democrats from her NCPR email address. Stefanik, conflating NCPR and the national NPR network, started calling for the full defunding of all NPR stations, a call she's maintained and infrequently repeated over the years. "The truth of it is that, for everybody out there complains that NPR specifically is biased one way or another, what they tend to forget is that stations like ours provide a full range of service and it doesn't matter if we're serving Democrats or Republicans." He said NCPR's local coverage of town and village meetings, flood and severe weather alerts, musical programs and more are delivered freely and consumed by people of all political stripes. "I hope when people talk about this subject, and they think about what defunding would actually do, they think about the whole range of services a station like NCPR provides a community," Teich said. The Trump executive order was met with nearly immediate legal action from CPB. The organization contends that it is not under Presidential jurisdiction, as it was established as a private nonprofit corporation by Congress. They argue the money they send to local stations and to both NPR and PBS directly is designated by Congress, and only Congress can set restrictions on that funding. As for the budget cuts themselves — the Trump budget plan is only an opening offer in a long negotiation process with Congress. The President has tried to cut all CPB money out before, in his last term in office, but Congress rejected those cuts and continued to fund CPB anyway. It's not clear if this Congress, controlled by Republicans, will do the same. That uncertainty over the future is having its own effects too. Prasuhn said that WPBS pivoted after the pandemic to focus more on educational programs, out in the community and on the airwaves. To produce those educational programs, WPBS has to do nearly a year of preplanning and prep work, workshopping the program, vetting the educational aspects with teachers and experts, and securing national distribution. "It's all a balancing act, but we are being conservative," he said. "In my mind, I'm thinking about the things we're starting now with bills that will come in six, nine months. And I'm wondering if the money will be there. But what we're not doing, what I am reluctant to take the step to do right now, is cut back on what we've been doing for the north country."
