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Four Slovenian ski officials were suspended Friday for allegedly rigging the results of pop violinist Vanessa-Mae to help her qualify for the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Competing in Sochi for Thailand as Vanessa Vanakorn, using the surname of her Thai father, she finished a distant last among the 67 racers who completed the two runs in the Olympic giant slalom. To earn enough points to be eligible for the games in February, she had to compete in official races in Sweden, Norway, Slovenia and Switzerland. The Slovenian Ski Association said Friday it found evidence indicating that the races it hosted...

Every professor knows that you can’t prevent students from cheating. Every safeguard can be overcome. Only the ethical makeup of a student will prevent him from cheating. The same is true of a university. Unfortunately UCLA had its own sense of ethics which not only made cheating ethical and mandatory, but also made covering up that cheating equally ethical and mandatory.Tim Groseclose’s “Cheating: An Insider’s Report on the Use of Race in Admissions at UCLA” exposes how the school dodged California’s ban on racial preferences. Groseclose, a professor of American Politics, saw the abuses up close while on the admissions...

Update: The principal and four teachers at Cayuga Elementary School in Philadelphia's Hunting Park section have been charged with fostering a culture of cheating on standardized state tests there over a 5-year period, Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced Thursday. Kane said the educators changed student answers, provided test answers to students and improperly reviewed Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) test questions before giving the tests. After the cheating stopped in 2012, the schools test scored dropped dramatically, Kane noted. In 2008-09 state proficiency tests, Cayuga's fourth graders excelled: 88.8% pass math and 83.9% pass reading. By 2012-13, the most...

Critics of tough voter ID laws are running out of time and options in their efforts to knock down those barriers ahead of this year’s midterm elections. Opponents got good news last week, when a state judge struck down Arkansas’s law, and another jolt Tuesday, when a federal judge ruled Wisconsin’s law, which wasn’t yet in effect, was unconstitutional. But their enthusiasm could be short-lived. At least eight states are still slated to have strict photo ID requirements in place in November, leading voting rights advocates to send dire warnings about potential disenfranchisement at the polls this year. Yet on...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Air Force took the extraordinary step Thursday of firing nine midlevel nuclear commanders and announcing it will discipline dozens of junior officers at a nuclear missile base, responding firmly to an exam-cheating scandal that spanned a far longer period than originally reported. A 10th commander, the senior officer at the base, resigned and will retire from the Air Force. Air Force officials called the discipline unprecedented in the history of America's intercontinental ballistic missile force. The Associated Press last year revealed a series of security and other problems in the ICBM force, including a failed safety...

Cheating scandals have recently rocked the Air Force and Navy and the resulting press coverage has, unfortunately, stained the honor and the integrity of the entire military. The majority of Americans have faith and pride in the men and women who selflessly serve this nation. The negative press doesn’t represent the overwhelming majority of service members. Recent scandals may be an indication of a systemic problem within the forces. Service members are expected to have honor and integrity and are the only individuals associated with the government who have the trust and respect of the American people. But reports of...

A worrisome culture of fear that made launch officers believe they had to get perfect test scores to be promoted fueled a widening cheating scandal within the military's nuclear missile corps, according to Air Force officials. (snip) Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said the scandal hasn't affected the safety or reliability of the military's nuclear mission. (snip) All 92 officers — nearly 17 percent of the force — have been decertified and taken off the job while the scandal is being investigated. That means other launch officers and staff must fill in, performing 10 24-hour shifts per month, instead...

A Dallas-based company that writes research papers, essays and other classroom assignments -- so students don't have to -- says it is doing so well that it has expanded its staff from just a few writers to more than 100 in the past year. The company bills itself as the one "students trust to write professional, in-depth and plagiarism-free essays that receive the highest grades for all levels of coursework...so they no longer have to face the burden of academic coursework." It says the writing is done for an "affordable" fee; and it has foreign writers on staff for non-American...

Francois Hollande’s trysts with his French actress mistress took place in a Paris flat, registered to a convicted criminal with mafia links, it has been revealed. The 59-year-old president has reportedly been seeing Julie Gayet, a 41-year-old actress who has been conducting a secret affair with the Socialist head of state since last year. The revelations come as France's first lady Valerie Trierweiler is expected to leave hospital today, where she was admitted after collapsing with 'shock and exhaustion' upon discovering the affair.

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – The NFL is reviewing whether Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin tried to interfere with a kick return in Baltimore. The play is being discussed among Steelers fans across Pittsburgh and the entire country. KDKA has another angle of the play shot exclusively by KDKA-TV photographer Michael Challik. You can see Tomlin actually take a side-step toward the field, where his foot ends up on the field of play. He then jumps out of the way when he realized the Ravens’ kickoff return was heading his way. Tomlin says he was watching the play on the jumbotron and...

the NFL has performed 'an aggressive review' of the play in question, where Tomiln appeared to intentionally get in the path of Baltimore kick returner Jacoby Jones on a could-be touchdown, forcing Jones to alter his route and run towards a Pittsburgh defender. Steelers coach Mike Tomlin was caught by television cameras Thursday night with a big smile on his face after his positioning on a third-quarter kick return from Ravens receiver Jacoby Jones — in which Tomlin had part of his right foot on the field as he watched the return on the video board with his back to...

Apparently lazy and dishonest people aspire to work for the government. Also stray hobos are likely to steal pies from your windowsill. College students who cheated on a simple task were more likely to want government jobs, researchers from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania found in a study of hundreds of students in Bangalore, India. Note the “simple task” part. We’re not just talking dishonest here, but lazy. Like go off to play golf after using a teleprompter to deliver a speech lazy.

College students who cheated on a simple task were more likely to want government jobs, researchers from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania found in a study of hundreds of students in Bangalore, India. Their results, recently released as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, suggest that one of the contributing forces behind government corruption could be who gets into government work in the first place. For instance, “if people have the view that jobs in government are corrupt, people who are honest might not want to get into that system,” said Rema Hanna, an...

t was the story he had denied. The story Emma O'Reilly went some way to telling when she exposed Lance Armstrong as a drug cheat. But when the conversation moved to the subject of that positive test in 1999, he not only agreed with her that she had been right but went a stage further. O'Reilly always believed there was a bigger conspiracy and with her sitting before him he finally revealed the full scale of the cover-up, naming Hein Verbruggen as a central figure in his escape from punishment. Certainly, Armstrong used this opportunity to his full advantage. He...

Hard work and smarts do get you ahead. But not everybody plays fair. People frequently bend or break the rules to their advantage and don't get caught. A recent Reddit thread asked for the best unethical life hacks people use to save money or get ahead. We've picked some of the most fascinating and devious examples. These hacks are uniformly unethical. Some veer into fraud. They should be regarded as informational and for entertainment purposes rather than as actual suggestions. You shouldn't do them. Via Reddit user the_girl: "Whenever I go to a big chain movie theater, I get my...

Pete Rose says he should have picked Alcohol , drugs or beating his wife.

THE second week of the federal campaign is under way, with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd facing accusations that he cheated in last night's debate by referring to notes. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott goes into the second week of the campaign in a promising position, with most commentators declaring him the stronger performer in the debate and the latest Newspoll, published in The Australian today, showing he has narrowed Mr Rudd's lead as preferred Prime Minister from 14 points to nine points.

California education officials have identified 242 schools statewide where students posted standardized test-related images on social-networking sites — 16 of which included exam questions or answers that could be deemed as cheating violations. Hundreds of photos turned up online this year during the administration of the Standardized Testing and Reporting exams, which make up most of the school’s state rating on the Academic Performance Index. Test scores were released Thursday. The majority of images depicted students posing with closed test booklets or illegible materials, the California Department of Education said in a release. Students are not allowed to use electronic...

Major League Baseball has suspended Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun for the remainder of the 2013 season in what could be the first of a long list of suspensions arising from the league’s investigation into its players’ links to Biogenesis. Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that Braun will accept the ban and will not appeal. The Brewers have 65 games left in their season in which they are 41-56 and in last place in the National League Central Division.... ...Biogenesis is a now-closed anti-aging clinic that is alleged to have provided major-league players with performance-enhancing drugs. The clinic’s...

A second aide to Rep. Joe Garcia, D-Fla., resigned last week as part of an ongoing election fraud investigation that continues to fester in the freshman’s office. Garcia’s communications director, Giancarlo Sopo, submitted his resignation only weeks after Garcia’s chief of staff, Jeffrey Garcia (no relation to the congressman) resigned at the end of May. “Giancarlo informed me on Friday that he was resigning,” Rep. Garcia said in a written statement to CQ Roll Call. ”I thanked him for his service to our office. I understand that he is cooperating with investigators and hope that this will give him an...