Egyptian teacher is tried for student’s death. The Egyptian teacher who allegedly beat a student to death for not doing his homework, recently appeared in court to face charges, reports the BBC. The 23-year-old teacher, Haitham Nabeel Abdelhamid, allegedly took the 11-year-old boy outside of the classroom and hit him hard in the stomach. The boy, Islam Amr Badr (shown above), died at the hospital later after suffering heart failure as result of the injury to his stomach that dropped his blood pressure, according to testimony from the medical staff who examined him. He also had two broken ribs. The court also heard from classmates, who said Badr was hit as punishment for not doing his math homework. The teacher says he didn’t mean to hurt his student and that he only wanted to discipline him. The incident, at Alexandria’s Saad Othman Primary School happened back in October and shined a spotlight on the nation’s struggling state education system. The nation’s education minister will be called to the stand. And Islam’s father, Amr Badr Ibrahim, feels the whole system should be held accountable for his son’s death. “The minister of education should be the first person to be accused – how can he agree to let such a young man teach children?” he asked. “The problem is the teaching and the teachers because they cannot find good teachers,” he said. Young and inexperienced teachers in the state education system have a hard time in the classroom, many often trying to get control of 60 to100 students, reports the BBC. The government says it’s introducing reforms such as new teacher tests and banning corporal punishment.

Trinidad’s Prime Minister is doing well after surgery. Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Patrick Manning reportedly is doing well after his cancer surgery at the Cimeq hospital in Havana, reports Caribbean Net. Manning underwent the surgery last Wednesday to remove a malignant tumor from his kidney. He called his office Friday, telling employees that he was doing well and was supposed to be removed from the Intensive Care Unit soon, reports the Trinidad Express. He also told his secretary that he was up and walking a day after his surgery. Manning will stay in the hospital for at least one more week for care.

Truck crash in Jamaica leaves 14 dead. A truck crash this weekend killed 14 people in Portland, Jamaica, reports the Jamaican Gleaner. The truck, which was transporting merchants, along with produce, to Kingston’s Coronation market, overturned and fell into a precipice, trapping several who were on board under the heavy vehicle. A 10-year-old boy is among the deceased. The truck reportedly had been trying to back up on a narrow round to let a car pass. Rescue teams from the police, Ministry of Health, Port Antonio Hospital, Pihl Construction Company and some residents worked together for 15 hours to remove bodies from the wreckage. Seven of the truck’s passengers were rescued. Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding flew to the accident scene by helicopter along with a local Portland official. “This is a major catastrophe,” Golding said. “My condolence goes out to the bereaved families, and I have to thank the brave citizens who used bottle torches so as to see access to the pathway down to the precipice to render assistance to their fellow men,” he continued. The government will make arrangements to help the families of the deceased. Police are still looking for the truck’s driver.

Five students are charged with attacking a teacher. Five students were arrested and charged Tuesday with attacking two teachers at Forest Park High School in Baltimore, school officials told The Baltimore Sun. The attack was apparent retaliation against one of the teachers, who alleged he was the victim of an unarmed robbery by two other students at the school the day before. City police came to the school on Tuesday to arrest those two students. Then, later that morning, the brother of one of the robbery suspects attacked the teacher, and other students joined in, school sources said. Another teacher tried to come to his colleague’s rescue, and took the brunt of the beating. City police were called to assist school police. City school system spokeswoman Edie House told the Sun that no one was hospitalized or seriously injured. The five students were charged with assault and disorderly conduct.

A former school teacher gifts $500,000 to UNCF. Former school teacher Winifred Davenport Barnes gave the United Negro College Fund, the nation’s oldest and most successful minority education assistance organization, a $500,000 gift.  Proceeds from Barnes’ estate will benefit the 55,000 students who attend the 39 historically Black colleges and universities that are members of UNCF, officials say. Barnes was an avid believer in higher education. A native of South Carolina, she moved to New York, married Dr. Lloyd T. Barnes, and returned to school to complete the education she had been deprived of in her youth due to her gender and race.  She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in early childhood education from New York University and studied finance and investments at Temple University, the Bank of New York and the New School for Social Research. “Our students are Mrs. Barnes’ beneficiaries twice over,” said UNCF President and CEO Michael L. Lomax, Ph.D.  “Her determination to get an education, and the full and active life that her education opened to her, set an example for today’s young people.  And her generous bequest will enable many young men and women to enjoy the benefits of the education that meant so much to her.”

7^th-Grade teacher to students: Obama is a ‘N’-word. Angry parents in the northwest Florida community of Marianna want a middle school teacher fired after he put the “N”-word on the board to describe Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama. The Marianna Middle School teacher, Greg Howard, is now serving a 10-day suspension after writing an acronym on the dry-erase board on Sept. 26: “C.H.A.N.G.E. – Come Help A N*gg*r Get Elected.” But many parents want the 17-year teacher fired. The seventh-grade social studies teacher’s class has 17 White students, six Black students and one Asian student. Initially he was suspended for the day without pay, but that was elevated to the 10-day punishment. He must also write a letter of apology to students. “We feel like the punishment is sufficient,” Larry Moore, superintendent of the Jackson County School District, told The Detroit Free Press. “We did not feel he had to be fired.” NAACP officials say they will reserve their actions in the case until their investigation is complete. Audrey Wad, who has nieces and nephews at the school, didn’t need any more information before expressing her outrage. “To me, it’s hurtful,” she told the Free Press. “The idea that he would impose his political opinion on the children is wrong to me. That’s where he crossed the line.”

Philly’s Black teacher pool is drying up

The already shallow pool of Black teachers in Philadelphia schools is evaporating at an alarming rate. District officials, who understand that increasing the number of African Americans in the classroom is one – perhaps the only – surefire method of closing the achievement gap between Black and White students, are scrambling for solutions. When school began this year, The Philadelphia Daily News reports, the percentage of Black teachers in the city was the lowest it has been in decades. And some argue that the dearth of African American teachers has put the district in violation of an agreement it made with the federal Office of Civil Rights three decades ago to achieve a racially balanced teaching force, the News reports. In 1978, more than a third (36 percent) of the teachers were Black. Fast-forward to now, and the number has dropped to 29 percent. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the Black student body has remained 60 percent. While other school districts nationwide also have a paucity of Black teachers, Philly’s Black-teacher pool has shrunk by 739 over the past half-decade; the percentage of White teachers has grown from 62.5 percent to 65.4 percent over the same period. “Clearly, more must be done to recruit and retain African-American teachers,” said Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT), told the News. Reg Weaver, who heads the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teacher union, with about 3 million members, said that, “While race doesn’t determine anyone’s ability to master and teach a subject, research does show that teachers of color have higher performance expectations for minority kids, which in turn can impact student achievement.”

Racists terrorize a girl in Idaho. Federal investigators want to know what would motivate two grown men would go through lengths to terrorize a Black girl in the Idaho town of Post Falls. On Monday, 15-year-old Rai Franklin said she woke up to dogs barking outside her family home. They had been aroused by two White men who allegedly threw eggs at her parents’ car and left fliers in the neighborhood telling Black people that they didn’t belong in the neighborhood. Rai said that one of the men grabbed her, punched her in the face and fled while yelling racial slurs. Post Falls is apparently a short distance from Hayden Lake, the home of a compound where members of the Aryan Nations, a violent militant White supremacist organization, used to meet. FBI officials say that if the me are caught, they could face federal hate-crime charges.

Texas university isn’t cheering this student on. It doesn’t matter that Jamie Burns has let the campus off the hook, that her doctors have cleared her medically, and that her mom has said to let her daughter do what she was recruited for, officials at Southern Methodist University say that she won’t be cheerleading. Find out why at BET.com/News.