LOCAL

Restaurant inspections across Metro Detroit
Last month, county health inspectors swept across the area. Their inspections include local restaurants, churches, schools, senior living facilities and other businesses using commercial kitchen to ensure they follow food safety regulations.
Results were recently published in newspapers across the area. Many businesses have been cited for “priority violations,” the most serious citation a business can receive, which cover issues which lead to foodborne illness. Eighteen businesses in Northville and Northville Township have been cited, along with 8 in Plymouth and Plymouth Township, 17 in Canton, 25 in Wayne and Westland and 46 in Livonia.

STATE

Long-term substitute teachers outnumber certified teachers. Badly.
Around 2,500 classrooms in Michigan are led by long-term substitute teachers. These teachers preside over 50,000 students across the state, a tenfold increase over the number of long-term subs from 2012.
This is part of an ongoing struggle for state schools to find quality teachers for classrooms, in order to make up for the shortage of certified full-time teachers. This disproportionately affects low-income, urban and rural families.
In an interview with Bridge Magazine, University of Michigan School of Education dean Elizabeth Birr Moje states, “Only when all school districts can give teachers the respect, compensation and support they deserve will all school districts be able to recruit and retain teachers successfully.”

GLOBAL

Anti-Government protests in Lebanon; Students take to the streets
The protests – the biggest in many years broke out in mid-October over the cash-strapped government’s plans to impose new taxes and austerity measures to close the country’s massive debt. The Lebanese government has levied taxes on items such as bread, fuel and even some social media platforms, according to AlJazeera News. Other grievances include wasteful spending, water shortages, blackouts and the failure of infrastructure despite additional taxes and budget cuts.
Furthermore, both students and teachers have taken to the streets. “We are victims of systematic oppression by our own government,” said Dima ElAyache, a student and a member of the American University of Beirut Secular Club in a report to Newsweek. “Today we are revolting because we are students that want to live in a country that does not oppress us, a country that is secular. We will stay in the streets until our demands are met.” Demands by the Secular Club include the resignation of the government, cancellation of new taxes, the immediate release of all detained activists and the end of abuses by local security forces.