Latest human rights
• One Alabama teacher, already fired and awaiting trial on a charge of raping a student, has not only received his regular paychecks for nearly two years, and will continue to until the trial is over, but has also been awarded two routine raises, based on a 2004 state law boosting teachers' rights (according to an August Associated Press review of records). • The largest school district in Montreal, Quebec, was ordered by an arbitrator to rehire a teacher whom it had fired in 2004 for illegally failing to disclose a conviction for killing his wife. The arbitrator ruled the firing improper, in that homicide is unrelated to the teacher's classroom work. • Britain's chief inspector of prisons, Anne Owers, included in a recent inspection report of facilities her advice that prison wardens try to improve respect for inmates by having guards address prisoners by their preferred names and knock on cell doors before entering. A guards' association spokesman said the suggestion lacked even a "modicum" of sense.