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Officials say drawing by teen ‘absolutely considered a threat’

A 13-year-old boy has been suspended for three days by an Arizona public school because he sketched a picture that resembled a gun, something school officials said they “absolutely” believed could pose a threat.

“My son is a very good boy,” Paul Mosteller told the television station. “He doesn’t get into trouble. There was nothing on the paper that would signify that it was a threat of any form.”

The principal at Payne Junior High School kept the actual drawing, and officials with the Chandler Unified School District declined to release any information about the situation.

Mosteller said her son was just idly drawing pictures, and ended up with a fake laser.

“He was just basically doodling and not thinking a lot about it,” she said. “We’re not advocates for guns. We don’t have guns in our home. We don’t promote the use of guns. My son was just basically doodling on a piece of paper.”

School officials who initially banned the student for five days lowered the penalty to three days after discussing the situation with the boy’s father.

“I just can’t believe that there wasn’t another way to resolve this,” Mosteller told the Associated Press. “He’s so upset. The school made him feel like he committed a crime. They are doing more damage than good.”

The drawing did not show blood or bullets. Nor did it show injuries or target anyone, the Mostellers said. It just resembled a gun.

Terry Locke, a spokesman for the district, told the AP the sketch was “absolutely considered a threat,” and threatening words or pictures are punishable.

However, the school failed to contact police, and failed to provide counseling or an evaluation for the student to determine if he intended it as a threat, officials said.

The student’s father, Ben Mosteller, said school officials told him how serious they considered the situation, and discussed the 1999 massacre at Colorado’s Columbine High School, where two teens shot and killed 12 students and a teacher, and injured dozens more.

That, he said, was extreme and offensive. The family already has contacted the district’s governing board about the incident.

The station said it checked the rules students must follow at school, and found there’s nothing in a portion of the student handbook that addresses conduct to indicate the drawing of a weapon poses threat.
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

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“U.S. family tries living without China”

By Cynthia Osterman

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Lamps, birthday candles, mouse traps and flip-flops. Such is the stuff that binds the modern American family to the global economy, author Sara Bongiorni discovers during a year of boycotting anything made in China.

In “A Year Without ‘Made in China,’” (Wiley, $24.95) Bongiorni tells how she and her family found that such formerly simple acts as finding new shoes, buying a birthday toy and fixing a drawer became ordeals without the Asian giant.

Bongiorni takes pains to say she does not have a protectionist agenda and, despite the occasional worry about the loss of U.S. jobs to overseas factories, she has nothing against China. Her goal was simply to make Americans aware of how deeply tied they are to the international trading system.

“I wanted our story to be a friendly, nonjudgmental look at the ways ordinary people are connected to the global economy,” she said in an interview before the book appears in July.

As a business journalist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Bongiorni wrote about international trade for a decade. “I used to see the Commerce Department trade statistics, the billions of dollars, and think it had nothing to do with me,” she said.

The reality was far different.

As the year unfolded, “the boycott made me rethink the distance between China and me. In pushing China out of our lives, I got an eye-popping view of how far China had pushed in,” she wrote.

About 15 percent of the $1.7 trillion in goods the United States imported in 2006 came from China, economist Joel Naroff writes in the foreword. Much of that is the manufactured stuff that fills Wal-Mart and other retailers — the necessities and frivolities sought by lower- and middle-income Americans.

Lower prices have been one benefit of Beijing’s rise and make it very hard for consumers to forswear Chinese imports.

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“I always listen to ‘NSYNC’s Tearin’ Up My Heart. It reminds me to wear a bra.”

“Marry Prince William? I’d love that. Who wouldn’t want to be a princess?”

“I like to poo.”

“I’m rich, freakin’ rich. It’s crazy.”

“I did not have implants, I just had a growth spurt.”

“I always call my cousin because we’re so close. We’re almost like sisters, and we’re also close because our moms are sisters.”

“I’m famous, but I’m not famous like freaking Brad Pitt or Jennifer Aniston.”

“I performed at Mom and Dad’s party when I was four. Oh my gosh, I was singing a Madonna song and I peed myself.”

“I get to go to alot over overseas places, like Canada.”

“Where the hell is Australia anyway?”

“I like most of the places I’ve been to, but I’ve never really wanted to go to Japan, simply because I don’t like eating fish, and I know that’s very popular out there in Africa.”