Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Section A • Saturday, February 7, 2015 •
Putin, Ukraine leader to talk peace plan By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV The Associated Press MOSCOW – Talks among the leaders of Russia, France and Germany on a peace initiative for Ukraine ended early Saturday with an announcement that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart would discuss a proposal to end the fighting in a four-way telephone call this weekend. The planned discussions Sunday involving Putin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the leaders of France and Germany came amid urgent shuttle diplomacy to halt the recent intensification of fighting in Ukraine and suggested that a cease-fire
proposal was still on the table, although there was no firm announcement of progress. Even getting the arms to fall silent would be a significant diplomatic breakthrough. The resurgent fighting has fueled fears the conflict is threatening Europe’s overall security and has prompted the U.S. to consider giving lethal weapons to Ukraine, an option opposed by European nations. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande came to Moscow on Friday on the second leg of a hastily arranged trip to try to halt the spiraling conflict. They had met with Ukraine’s president the previous day in Kiev. The contents of their propos-
al have not been revealed, but it is aimed at salvaging a peace plan agreed to in September in Minsk, Belarus. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said efforts were moving forward. “Work is currently under way on drafting the text of a possible joint document on the implementation of the Minsk agreement, which would include the proposals made by the president of Ukraine and President Putin,” Peskov said after the talks in the Kremlin ended. He said Merkel, Putin, Hollande and Poroshenko would hold discussions by telephone on Sunday. A similar four-party conversation took place in mid-December, before the recent upsurge in fighting.
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Continued from page A1 in pencil and paper form. The test also is calibrated toward individual students, meaning schools don’t need to separate students with different needs as much as they did before. Some districts might struggle with internet bandwith, but that’s not a problem in Genoa, Burgess said. Students will spend time in March and much of May testing, he said. “Students are going to spend a lot more time testing,” Burgess said. “That’s fine, but don’t add things on top of it.” Sycamore School District 427 Superintendent Kathy Countryman said her district
Select school mandates that went into effect in the past year: • New school construction must include storm shelters. • School districts must post, on the school district’s website, a mechanism for members of the public to electronically communicate with school board members. • Health education class must include training on automated external defibrillators.
will administer the PARCC on computers, taking them out of circulation for regular classes. She said the biggest problem with state mandates is
Continued from page A1 dangerous complications that include pneumonia, deafness, permanent brain damage and death. Dr. Saad Omer, an Emory University vaccine specialist, offers this advice to parents with children in day care: “Unless there is an ongoing outbreak in the specific day care, I don’t see any reason for keeping your child at home. But make sure when they become eligible for vaccines, they get the vaccine on time, on schedule.” Illinois authorities were seeking the source of the day care outbreak but said there was no evidence it’s linked with the Disneyland cases. Possible sources include unvaccinated older children or adults who recently traveled overseas. Most U.S. measles cases in recent years stem from contact with someone who has been abroad, since the disease is still
common in many countries. The highly contagious virus was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, but U.S. cases have been reported every year since then, including more than 600 last year. The government recommends the first dose of measles vaccine for children aged 12 months to 15 months, with a second dose before the start of kindergarten. The shots are not advised for younger children, mainly because the vaccine is less effective for them. But it can offer partial protection, and the outbreak has led some experts including Tan to suggest that concerned parents discuss possible infant immunization with their pediatricians. Most parents choose to vaccinate their older children, but health authorities and ethicists are concerned about clusters of families who reject vaccines for personal or religious beliefs, and the risk they pose to those who cannot be vaccinated. “There is clearly a very
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that the implementation often is not considered. A fresh example is the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey, an assessment tool that was scheduled to roll out next school year. State education officials announced the program would be delayed after teachers expressed concerns over the amount of work it required, Countryman said. She hopes through other initiatives, district leaders will be able to form a united voice so they can decrease negative effects of mandates that could come in the future. “We need to really look at those mandates,” Countryman said. “And how they align to a district goal and a legislative goal.”
weak link in the system or else we wouldn’t be having these outbreaks,” said Lawrence Gostin, an ethicist and public law specialist at Georgetown University.
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Siblings differ in their adjustments to life in U.S. • CHILDREN Continued from page A1 in 2002, Pooja had never seen snow. She couldn’t speak English and never used an escalator. Life was more “free” in India, she said. “There’s a lot of laws here, rules,” she said. “In India, people can jump on a train any time they want, but here you can’t do that, you can’t run up to the train and catch it.” The cultural differences are stark between Pooja and Keerti, who was adopted at age 2. Unlike her brother, Pooja prefers traditional Indian cuisine to American fast food and likes to watch Indian movies that help her to keep up with her native language. “He is an American, for sure,” she said. “I still have Indian in me.” Keerti, who is now 21, said he has been living “like a regular American” in his day-today life, traveling, going to school and working. Over the past 13 years, Pooja has come a long way learning the language and adjusting to the academic etiquette,
although the process was more difficult because of her learning disability, DeMers said. Laughing off the differences between her two children, DeMers said Pooja still has one foot in the U.S. and another one in India. “I think our family has much greater appreciation for different cultures,” DeMers said. “A lot of people in America have just lived in maybe only their own state or only their own community and having been exposed to different religions, I think I wish everybody had the chance to travel abroad and not just to rich countries, but to countries that have a different value system.” Recalling the poverty she had witnessed on one of her recent trips to India, DeMers said it made her value more what she has, her children echoed. “When you see that so many people don’t have access to medical care or medical food or whatever,” she said, “[it] makes you more appreciative of what you have in this country.”
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