How schools will treat sexual misconduct is changing, R. Kelly convicted again: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: How schools will treat sexual misconduct is changing

Education reporter Kayla Jimenez explains. Plus, Amtrak cancels some service ahead of a potential rail strike, prosecutors ask a Baltimore judge to vacate Adnan Syed's 1999 murder conviction, R. Kelly is convicted of more sex crimes and travel reporter Kathleen Wong looks at whether third party booking sites are worth it.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Thursday, the 15th of September, 2022. Today, changes to how schools treat sexual misconduct, plus a potential rail strike is looming and more.

Here are some of the top headlines:

1. Queen Elizabeth II's coffin has now left Buckingham Palace and is in Westminster Hall where it'll lie in state for four days. Her state funeral is scheduled for Monday.

2. The Mosquito Fire has become California's largest wildfire this year. It's been burning for more than a week and grew past 63,000 acres yesterday.

3. And new polling shows that President Joe Biden is more popular right now than a low point earlier this summer. The latest Associated Press-NORC poll found that support for Biden rose from a low of 36% in July to 45%. The economy though continues to be a weakness for him in the public forum with just 38% approving of his economic leadership.

♦

The Biden administration is set to change rules for how schools and colleges handle sexual misconduct allegations and gender-based discrimination. Producer PJ Elliott spoke with education reporter Kayla Jimenez who explains the details on the changes.

Kayla Jimenez:

The Department of Education under Betsy DeVos really led the charge in creating new regulations about how the law is applied at K12 schools and colleges and universities. So in 2020, the most contentious changes made to Obama era guidance were added protections for those accused of sexual assaults that had gotten a lot of backlash by advocates of student survivors. And the rule that's currently in place now narrows the type of sexual assault or harassment allegations that schools can investigate, require schools to allow use of cross examination of both parties to investigate those claims. And it allows using a higher evidentiary standard to determine fault. Critics have argued that that really favors the accused of those allegations.

Since the Biden administration has introduced a whole slew of changes including granting schools the ability to again investigate sexual harassment or assault cases that happen off campus and really extending what schools can now investigate, also asking requirements of live hearings and cross examination in those hearings, those have been things that advocates have been pushing for for a while, and the Biden administration has really responded. And then it has also gotten a lot of pushback from those who are supportive of the DeVos ruling under the Department of Education to protect those accused with further due process.

PJ Elliott:

So when would all this take place? When would all these changes be made?

Kayla Jimenez:

Yeah, so the Biden administration has to review those 200,000 plus comments over the next few months. It could take months at a minimum for them to review that. There are a lot from both sides I'd say, from groups that are strongly opposed and attacking LGBTQ youth, from survivor advocates who are in support of some of the laws but also have concerns about some of them as well and want changes that way. So I think it's going to take some time for them to review it. And it could happen as soon as this year or as late as next year, but we'll be following how that goes.

Taylor Wilson:

For Kayla's full story, check out the link in today's episode description.

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Amtrak has canceled all long distance passenger trains scheduled for today ahead of a potential freight rail shut down. Though Amtrak's heavily used Northeast Corridor will mostly be spared of cancellations and its high speed Acela service is set to remain on schedule. Rail workers and freight companies remain at a stalemate in contract negotiations with a negotiating deadline set for tomorrow. Amtrak is not part of the labor dispute and does not carry freight, but the move is full out from lingering disagreements between freight rail unions and railroad companies. At midnight, Thursday night into Friday, a federally mandated cooling off period ends that would open the door for about 115,000 freight rail workers in unions to walk off the job or for companies to shut out employees. A coalition representing six of the largest freight rail companies has reached agreement with at least eight of 12 rail worker unions. Holdouts have concerns about working conditions and strict attendance policies. Josh Funk from the Associated Press has more.

Josh Funk:

All the major freight railroads are negotiating with their 12 unions right now trying to hammer out a deal. They've been at this for about three years and have been unable to come to any sort of agreement. And there's a deadline coming up on Friday that will allow the unions to go on strike if they can't come to any sort of agreement. So this includes Union Pacific, BNSF, Norfolk Southern, CSX, Kansas City Southern, and a number of other railroads that all bargain together with their unions. Those railroads are based all across the country, but they have tracks in every single state, and they serve businesses in every industry delivering raw materials that factories use and refineries need to make gasoline. They also deliver a lot of consumer product.

The railroads themselves have said they support making deals based on those recommendations, and they've actually been able to reach agreements with nine of their unions so far. But there are two key unions that are still holding out. Those are the ones that represent engineers and conductors. The folks that drive the trains, they have some of the most concerns about scheduling issues and working conditions at the railroads.

The Labor Secretary, Marty Walsh, is participating directly and trying to put pressure on the railroads and unions to reach a deal. He's been directly involved in the talks several times in the past week. He and other officials in the administration and Biden himself have been making calls to the unions in the railroads trying to get him to agree to a deal and avoid a strike hopefully.

Taylor Wilson:

A national strike from rail workers could jeopardize the shipment of retail products, critical goods and raw materials while inflation is already high.

♦

Prosecutors in Baltimore asked a judge yesterday to vacate Adnan Syed's conviction for the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee. The case gained international attention on the hit podcast Serial in 2014. Baltimore's State Attorney filed a motion in Circuit Court saying that an investigation made with the defense had uncovered new evidence that could undermine Syed's conviction. State Attorney Marilyn Mosby's office said in a news release that they're pushing for a new trial based on a nearly year long investigation that revealed new information about two other potential suspects and unreliable cell phone tower data. Prosecutors said they were not arguing that Syed was innocent, but that they lack confidence in the integrity of his original conviction. They recommended he be released while waiting for a new trial.

The investigation found that one suspect was convicted of attacking a woman in her vehicle, and that one suspect was convicted of serial rape and sexual assault. Syed has served more than 20 years behind bars for the strangling of Hae Min Lee who was 18 at the time while he was 17. Her body was found weeks later in a Baltimore park. More than a decade later, the popular Serial podcast brought his case back out to the light revealing little known evidence and breaking podcast listening records on the way. Later in 2016, a lower court ordered a retrial for Syed. It did so on grounds that his attorney did not contact an alibi witness and generally gave ineffective counsel. But after a series of appeals, Maryland's highest court in 2019 denied a new trial. The Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court that his legal counsel was deficient, but decided the deficiency did not prejudice the case. The US Supreme Court declined to review Syed's case in 2019.

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R. Kelly was convicted yesterday by a federal jury in Chicago of another set of sex crimes. This time, the former R&B star was found guilty on three counts of child pornography and three charges of child enticement. The decision comes after a federal judge in New York sentenced Kelly to 30 years in prison in June for sex trafficking and racketeering. And two other trials are still pending. With his New York sentence alone, Kelly won't be eligible for release until he is at least 80 years old, though he could now face decades more. Chicago-based US attorney John Lausch was satisfied with the verdict.

John Lausch:

The evidence at the trial in this case revealed reprehensible conduct that Mr. Kelly engaged in sex acts with multiple girls under the age of 18 and he recorded some of those sex acts on video. We are pleased with the fact that Robert Kelly is finally being held accountable for that reprehensible conduct.

Taylor Wilson:

Kelly's lead attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, said the case was overcharged.

Jennifer Bonjean:

Well, as this case was overcharged, the government wanted to, as I said during my closing arguments, be greedy and they charged counts they couldn't win. I begged the jury to remember that he's a human being and I think they did.

Taylor Wilson:

A sentencing date has not yet been set. Kelly's two co-defendants were found not guilty on all charges. One had been accused of conspiring with Kelly to rig a 2008 trial relating to child porn, and another associate was acquitted of receiving child pornography.

♦

As the pandemic upended travel plans, people struggled to get customer service support from third party booking sites. PJ Elliott spoke with travel reporter Kathleen Wong about using those sites and if it's worth it.

Kathleen Wong:

Yeah, so they're kind of online travel agencies in that they'll work with travel suppliers like hotels and airlines and be able to put together package deals for customers, make exclusive offers that someone may want to be able to just book and have their trip planned a little easier. But most of the time, they say that they use the hotel or airline's brands refund policy. So they're kind of just like a middle man I guess you can say, but don't really hold the power, they say, to make changes in real time or be able to offer rooms in real time if something goes wrong.

PJ Elliott:

So if there are issues, how can they help the customers?

Kathleen Wong:

Yeah, a word that came up with most of the companies I spoke to like Expedia, Priceline, they all use the word advocate. I think that they offer communication. They have chat, text. They're like, "You can tweet us and we'll try to work with the airline or hotel or whatever to fix your stay," but they don't have the power to fix it the way customers probably want it to be fixed, especially in the moment when things are urgent. You can't get on your flight, you're freaking out, you're panicking, and you just kind of go through these agents that are trying to communicate with the airline. They can't do much. So it's not a lot of help but communication.

PJ Elliott:

Right. So you wrote about what the future of third party sites look like. Can you talk about that?

Kathleen Wong:

One thing that kind of came up was, at least with the professor I spoke to from Purdue University, is in the hospitality industry there's like a care element she said. And basically that's a big part of travel, knowing like you're taking care of, you feel welcomed. And so she suggested that these companies should put more emphasis on that, make better systems that are more transparent so the customer knows who's responsible, who they can turn to during what kind of issue, and also just for these companies to have more power to help these people when issues come up in real time.

Taylor Wilson:

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us seven mornings a week right here wherever you get your audio. Thanks to PJ Elliott for his great work on the show. And I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden set to make Title IX changes, new R. Kelly conviction: 5 Things podcast