“Newtown Elementary’s Ted Qualli Wins Janitor of the Year”

Ted Qualli, the janitor at Newtown Elementary School, has been selected the 2017 Janitor of the Year and Newtown declared Monday Ted Qualli Day in his honor. In a contest run by the Cintas Corporation, Qualli was nominated by his school and beat out over 1,200 nominees nationwide. He received over 379,000 votes. "What a surprise. I'm so overwhelmed and I just can't believe that it happened," Qualli told a packed auditorium Monday. But those at Newtown Elementary can believe it happened. "Mr. Qualli is so awesome. He's our best janitor; he does everything for our school," student AJ Levin said. Qualli, an Air Force veteran brings his old uniform on Veterans Day and talks to kids about his service. Each year, he gives plants he's grown to the entire staff and student body. And believe it or not, he knows the names of every one of Newtown's 850 students. "He's the guy that's unsung. He's the guy that everybody knows is the go-to person. He's the guy that keeps the ship afloat," principal Kevin King said. "I just can't believe that people think that much of me.”

In Other News It was a cliffhanger ending, but the Writers Guild of America and the studios have reached a new deal that will keep the scripts coming and Hollywood at work. The threat of the first strike in a decade was averted after a marathon negotiating session that went past the midnight deadline, leaving much of Hollywood staying up late and checking social media, looking for hints as to whether there would be picket lines on Tuesday. The parties issued a joint statement confirming the three-year agreement. In a memo to its membership, guild negotiators cited several key concessions, including increased studio contributions to their health plan, and a new definition for short-order TV series that will earn writers more pay for episodes that take longer than 2.4 weeks to produce. A crippling writers' strike in 2007 brought scripted production to a screeching halt and dealt a significant blow to California's economy. The FBI translator who went rogue and married an ISIS terrorist http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/01/politics/investigates-fbi-syria-greene/index.html