Education workshop

Education workshop

Parents and guardians of children with disabilities who are attending schools are invited to attend the one day workshop on Inclusive Education. Educators are also invited. Jill England, Ph.D., Inclusive Education Specialist under the Council’s Inclusive Education Project will conduct the training. She has extensive training on inclusive education throughout the mainland. It is scheduled this Saturday at Aqua Resort Club, from 8 AM to 4 PM.

Waste treatment

A public notice has been issued by the U.S. Army’s hazardous waste treatment and storage facility on Johnston Island that seeks authority to conduct new chemical weapons disposal incineration tests. Specifically, the Army wants to use its chemical agent disposal system to increase the rate and temperature at which it destroys 155 millimeter projectiles, and then use a lower afterburner temperature. The Army says the changes, if approved after the test, will make the incineration of remaining weapons more efficient and will speed up the incineration pace. A public meeting regarding the proposal will be held in Honolulu on April 13. Since JACADS, the Johnson Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System, began operation on the tiny island some 825 miles southwest of Honolulu in 1990, significant quantities of World War Two nerve agents GB and VX, blister agent HD and associated weapons have been destroyed. Planning for closure of the facility — and restoring it as a wildlife preserve — now is under way.

Tinian bird

The once endangered Tinian monarch, a six-inch bird found only on the island of Tinian in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, is about to be removed from a U.S. government list of threatened species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the current population of the small flycatcher now is approximately 57-thousand. Ann Badgley, the service’s Pacific region director, says only an estimated 50 of the birds survived extensive land clearing before and during World War Two. Tinian was the location of a major air base. Badgley has invited public comment about the plan to no longer consider the Tinian monarch endangered. She says a final decision to remove the bird from the threatened list will be made later this year.