Legislation requires federal criminal checks for new school employees.

Think submitting to a drug test during a job interview is bad? Then you probably don’t want to get a job in Pennsylvania’s schools.

Last year, the Pennsylvania legislature added fingerprinting and federal background checks to the list of requirements prospective school employees and student teachers must pass. The law took effect on April 1, and its ramifications are now hitting schools and colleges throughout the state.

Rep. Peter King is trying to build support for a bill that would get more money to fight elder abuse, a problem he describes as “underground” because it’s generally known about but rarely discussed.

King (R-Seaford), who has a strong reputation for outspokenness, is working with House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) to push through a law that would set aside around $650 million a year for detecting, prosecuting and researching abuse.

Teenager Amanda Barnett of Portland is the state’s youngest certified death investigator.

The 18-year-old high school senior serves as a deputy for her father, Jay County Coroner Mark Barnett.

Amanda Barnett will graduate soon from Jay County High School. She began her work in March as one of four deputy coroners in the eastern Indiana county, and became certified on April 12th.

Nearly one of every four Americans says it’s OK to defraud insurers, according to a 2003 survey by the consulting firm Accenture Ltd.

“Most people who commit fraud think of it as a victimless crime. It’s just the insurance industry, and they have plenty of money,” said Frank Dunton, director of investigations for Virginia Farm Bureau. “But it comes back to hurting each one of us who pays insurance premiums.”

Fraud is ranked second behind tax evasion as the most common and costly white-collar crime in the United States. It’s estimated to add between $200 and $1,000 per household per year in additional premiums due to fraudulent insurance claims.

The Beaverton School District is re-evaluating its hiring practices after the arrest of a cheerleading coach.

ChatmanDavid Chatman was the head cheerleading coach at Beaverton’s Southridge High School and also a coach the West Coast Extreme All-Star Cheerleaders, a private company based in Tigard.

The 32-year-old was escorting a group of 20 cheerleaders back from a competition in Florida when the alleged abuse took place. He was reportedly seated between two of the girls and abused one of them while she slept on the airplane. The 16-year-old woke up during the alleged abuse and told her parents when she got home.

Mysteriously, cabdrivers in Houston seem not to have noticed the drama the rest of us have been going through the last five plus years about hassles at the airport. It’s a mystery because why else would Houston cabdrivers be out in protest over a simple — and by the way, long overdue — order that cabdrivers entering the airport to pick up fares will have to submit to a background check and they will have to obtain and display a photo ID?

Considering you have to have a background check and a photo ID to get a cup of coffee or go to the bathroom in the airport, why would anybody think that people who drive into the airport several times a day to do business should not submit to a background check and have their ID posted in the cab with a picture and a name and a Houston airport identification number?

I ride in cabs in New York all the time. Every one of them has a picture ID visible to the passenger. What could possibly be the harm?

Caregivers in the thousands refuse background check

Thousands of Coloradans who get state aid for providing in-home day care to the children of relatives or friends are refusing to undergo the criminal background checks required by a new state law.

As a result, 70 percent of the people caring for 7,662 children and getting payments under the state’s Child Care Assistance Program in 2006 are expected to be ineligible for additional money, state human-services officials said.

The remaining providers who agree to the background checks will get the payments if they pass.

This tip is part of SearchSecurity.com’s Data Protection Security School lesson on enterprise strategies for protecting data at rest. Visit the Enterprise strategies for protecting data at rest lesson page for additional learning resources.

Chances are that you’ve recently been hearing quite a lot of buzz about e-discovery. That’s because amendments to sections of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure took effect as of Dec. 1, 2006. Sections of these amendments set forth rules governing how companies prepare for litigation in regard to the collection of electronic evidence/information.

The rule changes are intended to recognize that companies manage and maintain electronically stored information (ESI) in fundamentally different ways than physical documents. The new e-discovery rules formally codify much of the preexisting case law related to e-discovery.

With the steady prevelance of Medicare abuse and fraud, one local organization is going to area seniors and educating them on how to keep their information safe.

In 2006, more than $19 billion in Medicare fraud was reported.

“That’s a lot of money,” said Ellie Donnelly, a referral specialist from ServiceLink Resource Center. “Just like anything else, the cost of Medicare goes up because of this loss of money.”

Jon Peters gets served

Jon Peters was the star when he got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Monday - but his ex-wife, Christine, stole the show when she had a process server hand him court papers the second he got out of his limo. Jon and Christine are in a bitter legal battle. She claims Jon owes her child support for their two daughters. Jon claims that Christine has been living rent free in a mansion he owns and that the daughters are grown and not legally his. A pal of Jon’s said, “I found the fact that she did it [have the papers served] in front of their children very classless.”

• Group for Private Investigators
• Group for Process Servers