About Smart Devices in our homes. Bob barnard has the story. Weather whiplash from thewho 70s to a chance for snow over or the weekend. March living up to its lionn reputation, and tucker iske i tracking all the details. And later, you may not be nb able to play like tom brady butb soon enough youll be able to t eat like the super bowl champioo any time you want. Wan good day at 9a starts now. All right. Rht. Little independent women by destinys child celebratingin International Womens day. M day good day dc. 9 01 on this wednesda march 8th im maureen umeh, along holly, wisdom and steve. T. Its National Women days. Lady liberty is standing in solidare are the. He the statue of liberty is of lty darkness. Lights on the monument went outu last night what a spokesperson called an unplanned outage. E they came back o midnight. I do think maureen and ind said electrical circuit as the washington monument. I think the park service didid come out and say that it was they still had power to thewt base. Base didnt have power to the statueu itself. 9 02. Much more on the day without women in just a minute. M first we want to talk about theo forecast. Early morning rain is over. Rain. Maybe that wind woke you up up overnight. Over my goodness. My gdness. Temperatures now have the go. The green light to just soar on up. Up. Well talk about and that maybee change this weekend tucker havee we moved on from that . Just saying about the statue of liberty, i mentioned earlierr at my house that happens when i dont pay the bill on time. E [ laughter ] heart. Are you trying to say the parknt service didnt pay the bill in n may they got a late due due notice. Notice unlike your house they remedd the situation within hours. I remedy win hours. Y win. Pay day is day an haver a i dont know was said to me about weather but its all trueu its going to be mild day todayy mid to upper 60s this afternoon. Winds are going to pick up outk of the north and west but bright sunshine and dry day. Day. Should be Beautiful Day for youy if you want to get out enjoy springtime day and tomorrow looo fantastic. You can see the back end of thaa front pulling out of heret. E well be in for nice couple offu days. This weekend it is definitelynie going to chill wintertimertim temperatures will be backl be b saturday, sunday, monday and and even tuesday and a couple a cpl different chances for somet ch Winter Weather and well talktha more about that coming up butngb for this afternoon, its all ita about springtime. Gt 66 for your wednesday with again windy conditions at times butim otherwise a great looking day. D be back with that seven dayay momentarily and plenty more onee liners. Oh, boy, cant wait. Ait. Cant get enough. Ct g thanks, tucker. Ker our big story at 9 00 new 9e details on the story that fox5 has been on top of since it first broke late last nightt ni talking about the day without aa womens strike which is turnedi into a day of no schoolwh realla for tens of thousands o students in our region. Ougion thousands of teachers and and school staff requested and weree granted a personal day off. Dayf Prince Georges County alone 1700 teachers quested to be off. Melanie alnwick live in uppeu marlboro with the latest lat developments on this story. Ons o mel . Mel . Reporter good morning. Mor you know Prince Georges Countyc Public Schools said in an a statement they were not taking a position on the purpose of thefe day or the reason for the very large request for personal leave. But certainly theyve had to react to it and reactnly in a g way. One of the things we just recently found out a questionst weve been asking all morningni about the students who perhaps s were depending on those freese meals and so here is what the t schools put out to us. Os. They have designated seven sen schools now that will be open from 10 00 this morning untilngt 12 30 this afternoon for lunch. So including. Those schools so will be providing hot meals students who show up there. The Prince Georges County by far by the Largest School system affected by this call out want n became so problematic the timing of it. Schools not sending out that t notification not making theing t decision until 7 30 last night. T and now you have about 127,00020 students without a classroom tot go to today. Tay in a note that was sent out by email to the School Community i and also posted on the schools web side superintendenttend dr. Kevin maxwell did apologizei for the inconvenience and said s that the call out was an action urged by the organizers of theot womens march on washington. Hito so we have a approximately 1700 teachers and 30 of the transportation staff that choses to call out and say they wantedn to take a personal leave day for this day without a woman. The reason that the school hadlh to react in the way that it didd by closing schools to studentssd was literally without being able to fill those absences re students as they needed to and d as they said not able to have productive Safe Learning environments. Ro parents we talked to had mixed reactions about the decision. Its good thing to allow theo teachers to go and express theie opinion. Op so im okay with that. I just wish we had known aad little bit earlier that the kide wouldnt have school. t havhool i think, you know, sometimess leadership issues you have tou t make a hard decision, andion,nd obviously they did that. Ha and now here live at prince n georges county schooly hool headquarters, a lot of people pe showing up to work here today. Men and women as well. Wl heard from not only from princee georges county schools but froo alexandria city Public Schools o when teachers make these requests for personal leave thaa they are granted. Granted were trying to get little morer information hopefully fromro dr. Kevin maxwell little bittle later this morning in terms off what exactly are the policy guidelines and employees werelow told that they needed to work today and if they wereer going to take the day off, theyt needed to go ahead and request that. That personal leave through the the regular procedures. Live in upper marlboro, mel Melanie Alnwick fox5 local newsw melanie i got a tweet from fo one staff member there who hadhh the question, she felt like thaa if she didnt request the day off, she was still now forced to take her leave. Leave is that true . Reporter no. O. Thats not the understanding. Er. Thats not the way that thehat t notice was written. Wtt the way its written is essentially if you are school sh employee, schools are open today as if it were sort of like a teacher work day. Day the schools are closed too students. So that if you want to come toom work today, come to work. Work. And if you want to take the dayy off, you need to request a a personal day. Al day. Very good. Ill be sure and message her back. Thanks for clearing it up. Cing appreciate it weve been askingb you what you think about thehe sudden shut down, and we want tw you keep tweeting us what youou think. In responses weve gotten from whah about the children who depend on school for having a hot meal hoa report parents who now have tooa take off work because they donn have anyone to help care for f their children . Selfish peoplee this is paula pain stokes. E sigh i stand in solidarity toity these women. En. Ill happy my kids not in pg pg however based on the wagen discrimination so prevalent in n education this is something that has to happen. Appe and then this is what lindan cecil had to say. I sure hope these people arentt getting quote for their paid dad off. Off. Kids are the ones that this hurts. It look like thats the lasth one well share righatt now. Ghtw keep them coming in. Epmi we want to hear what you have to say. Make sure you use the gooddaydc. Definitely a divisive issue. Ly a di up. Tter pol 5347 right now. Now right down the middle. Ht dow almost right down the middleo well keep this going. Ll nine cot z keeero eight is the. For on the abrupt closure welll turn to Prince Georges County schools student wan. N. Thank you for talking with usits this morning. Ni. We appreciate your time. Te. Look, how much are you actuallyt involved in the are you at yt every Single School board brd meeting are you in on all thelle decisions they make and thes thk conversations that they have . He . Yes, sir. , sir first, thanks for having me. M as you stated i am the student e member of the prince georgesthn county board of educaticeon. So i represent 130,000 princerie georges county Public School students. And i am i have the same sam rules and responsibilities thatt each and every other boarder bod member on the board o education. Okay. We appreciate you telling us that. Ate now, explain this to me. Your reaction from a studenttudt perspective to the last minuteness of this because somes of the other School Districts closed a day or so ago and thiss was really late for princeor pnc georges to make this decision. Was there never a consideratione that this could happen. T a hhis eads up to parents yestes morning. Thats definitely a greatdety question. Ti i was also shocked to hear latet on yesterday evening that th School System was going to close. Ose. I wish that, you know, parents and students would have had the opportunity to be informed abouu School Closings a lot earlier. But i definitely understanderstn their concerns with schoolsch closing, um, and again i just wish that we would would have hv earlier notion that our parentsp could be better prepared as well our students to take care of thc kids the next day since wene werent going to have school scl today. Let me ask you anothernother another question. What do you think about this. Anb aou Massive School board boa members were in here earlier ani they were saying that at one at point they hadnt had lot ofot f call outs and then all of an sudden there was a massive calll out at the last minute. Min umhmm. Your reaction to this thi happening at the last minute byb the teachers who did call out ii the county. Right. Right. Well, i definitely stand as ann independent person as citizensit of Prince Georges County is cu stand in solidarity with theh t womens march so i definitely l the womens strike i definitely, you know, in supprt and i think if teachers decidedd to take leave, um, then theyhenh have the right to do that and take part in this demonstration. Apart from taking part in ptn this particular demonstrationonn lets talk about this leave. Hisa were you and the other membersem of the board aware that at any point a Massive Group of teachers could just say we wantn our leave right now and within a short amount of time shut the t whole School System down . No. We werent at least i can speake for myself. I wasnt notified that we weree going to have at least 1700 170 Staff Members gone but again asa stated earlier, i am, you know, i wear of the fact if a teacher quests leave, paid leave, thenee they are able then the request is granted buy but again i didnt know im pretty surerer there are on the Board Members e as stated earlier that werentht informed that we would have tot close the schweool system and ta about 1700 teachers would quest lee. E. Now, i know youre a studentt but you are in on the board anda the con umhmm. I dont know if you guys hado a chance to talk abow utif y ths i know this is a union thing ass well because theres a Union Contract involved. But is there any talk amongstont the Board Members at this pointt about possibly trying to get tot this to where you can give theet lead but this massive, you knowo shut down the whole schooll system thing thats a big deal. Right. Right. No, it is definitely a big deala i cant really speak to future r discussions. D all i can say again we will have future discussions, you know, once we all meet again colonelel ask a exactly happened and the t procedures and again why had tod shut down school but i look lk forward to having thoseho discussions at a later date. S a all right. Hopefully soon. Efly s okay. Thank you very much for talkinga with us this morning. Is m we appreciate your time. Re thank you so much. Ha you all right. And coming u ap later on, Prince Georges County ceo dr. Kevinevn maxwell will join us live andved participate in this conversation as well because it is an interesting conversationonrsat because, upping, it was very v last minute and i know a lot oft people are saying, were note t talking about their right toigho protest. Pr they have the right to protest. But the fact that you can at the last minute which was 7 30 when0 that call went out in princeprin georges county. Count at the last minute a massive call out for these teachers and schoolbus drivers and leave the parents hanging dry pretty muchc now they got to scrapple. Crappl thats a concern. Ill bet when this was first drafted they never matched nine the teachers would do this. Im quite sure that after thisft is now happened there will beile some move to am this policy viaa the school unions. Im sorry the Teachers Union et cetera but i cant fathom anyony would imagine this would happene and thats why the policy stayee as it was. I see the School Officials getting a tough rap on this. Ths i dont think its necessarilyei justified. I dont think anyone wanted towards mal intention this isis the fallout of a policy that was not thought all the way throught and now were seeing it in rhete spro inspect fix it. Ro i dont think the School System should be getting the full blame like some people have been putting on im not blaming the school to district theyre following therg policy. I would be interested to hearers from the union as to why thitess was put in place. Ce. Why would you have a policy inoy place that would allow massiveai groups of teachers to just calll out at the last minute . Atute . T least if youll have to policy,l you got to give them notice. You go the to give them fiveve days. Days. A whole week. Eek. One other thing to think t about we can talk about. We were the teacher cs that did itt the last minute was there thatrt theyre intention to wait tillil the last minute so they couldeyu prove the point, you know, hey,h this is what a woman a day d without women is like and, yes,y it causes inconvenience. Nience or was it a domino effect they e saw alexandria city public plic schools do it and then they hopped on the band wagon and it became a late thing . Hing well discuss much more inism detail but other story were following this hour big brotherr is everywhere. Bob barnard with more on the nen accusations the cia is usingsi tvs and other devices to spy. Os all right. Then later, journey to the topht of the earth in honor of his dad sitting down with man on a mission to using the climb to fight a a deadly disease. Se its 9 14 right now. Nw much much more to come today ony good day d. C. C lots of important topics were s talking about. In be back after this. My sweethearts gone sayonara. This scarf all thats left to remem. What she washed this like a month ago the long lasting scent of gain flings gasp just head shoulders . I thought it was just for, like, dandruff new head shoulders. Cleans, protects and moisturizes to. Get up to 100 flakefree and unbelievably beautiful hair its not head shoulders, its the new head shoulders the other big story theer massive intelligence leak raising new concerns this morning about Smart Devices in oue rinteg homesne. W t sm h. Our phones, our tvs i pads eve your car. Ur car not in your home i know butw smart device. Agencies like cia may be able to listen on private conversationss if the documents released b wikileaks are legit. Cia has been using smart phones, samsung tvs with built in n microphones and other high techt devices that many of us use u every day as a convenience to be fair to spy on terrorists ands d others outside the u. S. Bob barnard with details and and look at the leak that brought bt this to light. Lht reporter wikileaks claimsla the cia worked with britishsh intelligence officials to turn n smart phones and tvs even selfdriving cars into listening devices. Experts say the release of o documents came from the cias center for cyber intelligence. Theyre tapping into cars. Theyre tapping into home tvs. Theyre tapping into everytappi device that you would carry thal im not going to comment on n that. That repor. Ter White House Press second sean spicer didnt wante to touch the new allegations. Eg. Others are saying plenty aboutut what these disclose insures mean for the cia. When you lose thosee th capability which you will when your anniversaries discover whar youre doing, its a real compromise, and its reallys rey damaging. Reportedar leaks also show the cia has t ahelso ability toa and then ship the blame to otheh governments including russia. Usa for the rest of us, realeal questions about what we can doo to stop either intelligenceligee agencies or other hackers from listening in. Stening in the case of new smart samsung tvs with built in microphones, the abilities described in the n wikileaks documents are pro found. They can turn it on remotely. But it wouldnt put the powerhew light on. T on. So anybody in that room would then be discussing or talking tl and being monitored without wit their knowledge or consent. Sent its a great spy utility. Tility if thats what theyre doing, di which theres no reason why we e wouldnt believe that. Dn reporter in the districttrt bob barn we talked with an expert eert about this last hour. Basically said, you know, itw,t comes to the point you have to e accept the trade off if you wanw the Smart Devices and things that make your life easier as thats true. Hate. That has to be level ofs to e understanding and trust that, t, you know, the company that ishas run it will find a patch and pad block people from listening. Nin the risk is always there. She always is. S i all right. International guard major shotos down in afghanistan but her real battle began when she returneder em. Now shes te