| Contractor loses La. scholarship account data dating back to 1998
BATON ROUGE, La. -- A Boston-based contractor hired to store and safeguard state scholarship and college savings account data lost most of those records _ including bank account numbers and student and parent Social Security numbers _ during a move, officials say. "We certainly don't want to create any panic. But people should be aware and take the necessary steps," said Melanie Amrhein, executive director of the Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance. "This is backup data off of a mainframe that contains sensitive personal information." Special equipment and software and "sophisticated computer skills" would be needed to get the compressed records from the TOPS scholarship program, START Saving Program, and Free Application for Federal Student Aid, according to a notice posted on the Internet.
IT'S A CHORE: But farmers have to fill out forms or possibly face ...
Last year, Tom Dancer farmed approximately 500 acres, all but a few rented, in Freehold, Manalapan and Millstone townships, growing field corn, soybeans, rye straw and wheat.
That quick profile of Dancer, a 49-year-old lifelong farmer who lives in Millstone, is the kind of information the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeks in its five-year census of farmers in the 50 states and Puerto Rico.
The census is important in drawing up farming legislation, determining how federal agriculture money is distributed and positioning farming support services, according to state Secretary of Agriculture Charles M. Kuperus and Troy Joshua, director of New Jersey farming statistics for the USDA.
Also, the census will provide financial figures for a state industry that is under-recognized in terms of dollars, said Peter J.
Fault Lines on Accreditation
Only proposals on which every negotiator agrees get forwarded to the education secretary for possible action, which means that any individual negotiator can sink any particular proposal. But if the negotiators fail to reach agreement, the Education Department has the latitude to propose its own rules. (The education secretary can also change regulatory language that the negotiators have agreed on, with a "written explanation" for doing so.) That dynamic has the tendency to put pressure on negotiators — fearful of what the department might do if left to its own devices — to compromise on a proposal that they can live with. That dynamic was clearly in play on Wednesday, as accrediting officials who were clearly uncomfortable with several of the department’s proposed agenda items threatened to withhold their support for keeping those items on the committee’s plate.
|
