The Daily Populous

Oklahoma Senate passes $447 million revenue package to fund teacher pay raise

Authored by kfor.com

OKLAHOMA CITY - In what initially seemed to be a repeat of previous votes on revenue raising measures, the senate narrowly approved a funding package to help pay for teacher pay raises in the state Wednesday evening.

The $447 million revenue package, passed by a 36-10, vote now goes to the governor's desk for signing.

A House floor amendment, HB1012XX, filed Wednesday afternoon would repeal sections of the revenue package relating to the hotel/motel tax.

The hotel/motel tax is estimated to generate $50.4 million annually and provide $46.2 million for appropriations in the FY19 budget.

On schedule for the evening: HB1010XX (teacher pay funding bill), HB1011XX (itemized deduction caps) and HB1023XX (teacher pay scale).

This pay raise propels Oklahoma to second in the region for average teacher pay.

The Oklahoma Public Employees Association, along with the Oklahoma Education Association, still plan on walking out Monday, calling for pay raises for state workers. »

Indian brothel owners get first life sentence for trafficking children

Authored by reuters.com

The court in Gaya heard testimonies from four of nine girls who were rescued from the brothel during a police raid in 2015.

“In most cases, once the girls are rescued, they go home and never come back to testify,” Kumar told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview.

“But here, some of the girls came back and described in detail the horrors they had been through. »

The Death Row Book Club

Authored by longreads.com

The very first book club meeting consisted of Jesse Morrison, Victor Kennedy, Larry Heath, Brian Baldwin, Ed Horsley, Henry, and myself.

We were ourselves, but we were different, and the book occupied our days and our nights in a new way.

It was a vacation from the row — and everyone was a part of book club, even before the seven of us had our first official meeting. »

Meet Profile Engine, the “spammy” Facebook crawler hated by people who want to be forgotten

Authored by qz.com

Profile Engine is a fairly low-budget-looking search engine, started in 2007 in New Zealand and partly owned by the Auckland University of Technology.

In 2008, Profile Engine acquired the rights to crawl through the back-end of Facebook and go through its user data.

If you google “Profile Engine,” the majority of the results are instructions on how to delete yourself from the site. »

TIL Comedy Central originally wanted to remove Timmy from South Park due to the potential controversy over the inclusion of a mentally handicapped character. Matt Stone and Trey Parker pushed to keep the character on the basis that other children in the series treat him equally.

Authored by southpark.wikia.com

When addressing Jimmy Valmer, the other major handicapped South Park character, he is able to say "Jimmy", and in "Helen Keller!

In the South Park opening theme song for Season 6, he sings "Timmy timmy timmy timmy, timmy timmy livin' a lie timmy!

Comedy Central originally wanted to remove him from the episode, in fear of potential controversy over the inclusion of a mentally handicapped character. »