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Massachusetts School District Investigated Over Alleged Secret 'Gender Transition'
Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,
The Department of Education has announced that it is investigating a Massachusetts school district over allegedly enabling a minor girl student's "gender transition" without the knowledge of parents or securing their consent.
The probe was launched by the department's Student Privacy Policy Office (SPPO) against the Public Schools of Northborough and Southborough school district, the department said in a Sept. 17 statement.
The girl was enrolled at Algonquin Regional High School, where school personnel allegedly facilitated the student's "social transition to a boy" while keeping her parents in the dark.
"The parents claim that their daughter participated in counseling sessions after school to support the transition while they were under the impression she was receiving academic assistance for her math class," the department said.
The school personnel also allegedly began referring to the child by a male name and using male pronouns without the parents' knowledge.
According to the Education Department, a school counselor is accused of reporting the parents to the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) for countering the school's actions.
In December 2024, DCF removed the child from her family home. The parents are still engaged in custody litigation over their daughter.
The Education Department said the allegations raise serious questions about the school district's compliance with federal laws protecting parental rights, specifically the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA).
FERPA grants parents the right to access their children's education records for inspection and review. Parents also have certain control over the disclosure of personal information from these records.
Under PPRA, parents have rights regarding surveys, analyses, or evaluations of their children in certain areas, including sex behavior or attitudes and mental or psychological problems.
The law also covers the administration of physical examinations of minors. Parents have the right to review instructional materials used in the educational curriculum.
The Education Department said that under FERPA, parents can request changes to their child's education records. If the school rejects the requested changes, parents can seek a hearing on the issue at the institution.
According to the department, it is currently unclear whether the school district and the school complied with FERPA and PPRA. The SPPO probe will determine whether these regulations were violated.
"Parents have a right to know what is happening with their children at school, particularly when it concerns deeply personal matters involving their health and well-being," Frank Miller, director of SPPO, said in the statement.
"These egregious allegations are not an isolated problem. Families deserve answers, and SPPO will thoroughly investigate reports like this and hold any educational institution that violates federal law accountable."
The Epoch Times reached out to the Public Schools of Northborough and Southborough and Algonquin Regional High School for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
Another school district from Massachusetts was previously identified by the Education Department as violating parental rights. In that case, the district was found to have asked students to take part in a survey containing sexually explicit questions despite parents having expressly requested that their children be exempted.
The survey of students as young as seventh grade included questions regarding sexual encounters, alcohol and drug use, and gender identity, the department said, alleging the school district violated PPRA and parents' rights to shape their children's moral education.
Meanwhile, the department announced last month that it had sent letters to schools across the United States, reminding them of educators' obligations under FERPA and PPRA and warning that noncompliance could result in the loss of federal funding.
The letters were sent while the 2026-2027 academic year was underway and were prompted by reports of educational institutions withholding crucial information from parents and issuing surveys containing sexually explicit material even after parents had opted their children out of such activities.
Miller said that in certain cases, state education departments had pressured school districts to violate FERPA.
"The department is committed to putting parents back in the driver's seat. We will fully enforce FERPA and PPRA and ensure parents have the information and authority they need to make decisions for their children," Miller said.
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Saudi Arabia Reroutes Oil Exports As Houthi Strikes Target Yanbu
Satellite images gathered by Bloomberg show supertankers with capacity for 14 million barrels at Saudi Arabia's Gulf export terminals over the weekend, the highest tanker count observed since at least June, according to data compiled from the European Union's Sentinel-2 satellite.
Source: Javier BlasHowever, as OilPrice notes, overall Hormuz traffic kept falling over the same weekend, nonetheless. Just a dozen commodity vessels crossed the strait, down from 35 a week earlier, and Thursday's crossings totaled four tankers against a 10-day moving average of 16, Kpler data cited by Reuters showed.
Saudi Arabia moved crude through the strait at 2.9 million barrels a day over the past six days, JPMorgan said in a Friday note, calling the kingdom's shift "the most notable pivot" among Gulf producers.
On September 11, drone strikes launched from Iraq shut down Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, also known as Petroline, which normally carries as much as 7 million barrels a day across 1,200 kilometers from Eastern Province fields to the Yanbu terminal on the Red Sea. The attack took 4-5 million barrels a day of that capacity offline, with total Saudi crude loadings falling from 7.5 million bpd in January and February to about 2.1 million barrels a day by mid-September, a decline of more than 70%.
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said September 15 the pipeline would restart within days, but an industry analyst told Al-Monitor pump stations were destroyed in the strike and full restoration could take six weeks or more.
Yemen's Houthi movement claimed cruise missile, ballistic missile and drone strikes on Riyadh and on Aramco facilities at Yanbu overnight September 18-19, and Saudi Arabia confirmed the Houthis targeted civilian infrastructure at the port where the East-West pipeline terminates. The Riyadh missile was intercepted and Saudi authorities reported no casualties or damage from either strike, but the attempt puts Yanbu, the kingdom's primary outlet since the Hormuz freeze, under renewed threat.
Aramco pipes crude to its Ras Tanura terminal on the Persian Gulf, ships it on smaller vessels to the Gulf of Oman, and transfers it to larger tankers there, a routing it is using to move about 60 million barrels loaded at Ras Tanura for September and October delivery, mainly to Chinese and South Korean refiners. Gulf exports have rebounded to an average of 1 million to 1.5 million barrels a day, roughly in line with August levels.
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Nvidia CEO Says "Zero Percent" Chance Of AI Making Humans Extinct
Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times,
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has rejected the claims of some artificial intelligence researchers that the technology could wipe out humanity, calling the arguments "doomsday narratives."
Huang said in a Sept. 17 interview with CBS News that predictions made by former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon and Anthropic's alignment science lead, Evan Hubinger, were not grounded in science.
Coxon said in a Sept. 9 post on X that the "people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade."
Hubinger said he agreed it could end humanity.
"Jacob is correct here - We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade," he wrote.
Huang told CBS's senior business and technology correspondent Jo Ling Kent on Thursday that 2030 won't be the end of the world.
"There is zero percent chance that's going to be the end of the world," he said. "Scaring people is unnecessary. It is irresponsible."
U.S. President Donald Trump said in a Sept. 14 post on Truth Social that the United States needed no AI guardrails and that it already had significant criminal and regulatory power over Big Tech companies.
"There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China," Trump wrote.
Nvidia CEO Agrees With TrumpHuang said on Thursday that he agreed with the U.S. president's view on legislation and regulation.
"Before we come up with new laws and new regulations, let's apply the current laws and current regulations," Huang said.
"There are all kinds of laws and regulations. ... You have cybersecurity unauthorized entry, you have damage liabilities, all kinds of liabilities associated with cybersecurity. All kinds of liabilities associated with products. ... My point is apply those first, don't let this doomsday narrative cause someone to relieve them of the laws that currently exist."
Huang has been invited to a dinner at the White House on Sept. 24, when Trump will host Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Trump has said AI will be on the agenda during his meeting with Xi.
ChinaHuang told CBS that Xi wanted China to benefit from AI.
"They want China to prosper, just as we want America to prosper," Huang said.
Nvidia manufactures specialized H200 chips that power large language models (LLMs) used by AI agents to synthesize information.
Trump said in a Dec. 8 post on Truth Social that he had told Xi the United States would allow exports of Nvidia H200 chips to approved customers in China "under conditions that allow for continued strong National Security."
In July 2025, Nvidia restarted exports of H20 graphics processing units (GPUs) to China after U.S. regulators approved it.
Nvidia is now worth more than $5 trillion, making it the most valuable company on the planet. The company manufactures many of its chips in Taiwan, but last year, it opened a semiconductor fabrication plant in Phoenix, Ariz.
Last month, Taiwanese authorities indicted nine people, including a senior partner manager at Nvidia's Taiwan unit, for allegedly taking part in a scheme to export servers with advanced Nvidia chips to China.
In June, Taiwan-born Huang told Nvidia shareholders that attempts to build artificial intelligence data centers with smuggled chips were a "dead end," because the company provides no support or repairs for such products.
"National security is first and foremost," Huang said. "Where commercial opportunities conflict with U.S. national security, national security comes first."
Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 18:25