Word: forte
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Their worries will multiply when Christopher, an MP who served in Afghanistan for six months, ships out for Iraq in March. So will Billie's concerns. She has told Christopher, who is based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and has a wife, Jacque, and a 15-month-old daughter, Stacia, that she would rather he not come to Iraq. Christopher has been well briefed on conditions there by his sister. A fan of fellow Indianan David Letterman, Billie sends home Top 10 lists like "Top 10 Reasons Prison Is Better than Serving in Iraq." Among them: better gyms, showers...
Temper tantrums are nothing new in kindergarten and first grade, but the behavior of a 6-year-old girl this fall at a school in Fort Worth, Texas, had even the most experienced staff members wanting to run for cover. Asked to put a toy away, the youngster began to scream. Told to calm down, she knocked over her desk and crawled under the teacher's desk, kicking it and dumping out the contents of the drawers. Then things really began to deteriorate. Still shrieking, the child stood up and began hurling books at her terrified classmates...
Just a bad day at school? More like a bad season. The desk-dumping incident followed scores of other outrageous acts by some of the youngest Fort Worth students at schools across the district. Among them: a 6-year-old who told his teacher to "shut up, bitch," a first-grader whose fits of anger ended with his peeling off his clothes and throwing them at the school psychologist, and hysterical kindergartners who bit teachers so hard they left tooth marks...
...clearly seeing an increasing number of kindergartners and first-graders coming to our attention for aggressive behavior," says Michael Parker, program director of psychological services at the Fort Worth Independent School District, which serves 80,000 students. The incidents have occurred not only in low-income urban schools but in middle-class areas as well. Says Parker: "We're talking about serious talking back to teachers, profanity, even biting, kicking and hitting adults, and we're seeing it in 5year-olds." And these are not the kids who have been formally labeled emotionally disturbed, says Nekedria Clark, who works...
...York Times reported last weekend that U.S. officers had gone to Israel to study its experiences of urban warfare and counterinsurgency in the West Bank and Gaza before invading Iraq. The British Guardian quotes unnamed U.S. officials confirming that Israeli officers are helping to train U.S. Special Forces at Fort Bragg for counterinsurgency operations in Iraq, and also claims that Israeli officers have been in Iraq discreetly serving as consultants to U.S. operations there. The New Yorker quotes unnamed U.S. and Israeli officials to the same effect, stressing that the sensitivity of such contacts precludes their public acknowledgment...