Briefs

LOCAL & VCU

GRTC gets funds for downtown center

GRTC Transit System expects to receive about $11 million from the federal stimulus package to complete the design of a downtown transfer center and to buy new paratransit vans.

About $9 million of the funds are planned to complete design and engineering work for the transfer center in the train shed behind Main Street Station in Shockoe Bottom. Construction is expected to begin Spring 2010. The remaining $2 million is to be used to buy 38 replacement paratransit vans.

Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch

Prison plotter gets 8

A career con man who allegedly plotted from a federal prison in Petersburg to loot the bank accounts of Holocaust victims was sentenced Wednesday morning to eight-and-a-half years in prison.

John Kenneth Leighnor, 49, pleaded guilty in October to one count of mail fraud and three counts of aggravated identity theft that were not related to the Holocaust allegations. Both he and his lawyers strongly denied he ever intended or attempted such fraud.

Nevertheless, U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer went above the sentencing guidelines in imposing the term against Leighnor whose career spans more than 25 years and includes escapes.

Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch

UR celebrates opening of downtown campus

The University of Richmond was welcomed back to the heart of the city yesterday as it celebrated the opening of its new downtown campus.

UR Downtown, which offers legal and other social services to Richmond residents, will meet an acute community need, Mayor Dwight C. Jones said at the open house.

Jones said he hopes the center will be the first of many collaborative opportunities as the University of Richmond reintroduces itself to the city of Richmond.

Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch

NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL

Court issues war crimes warrant for Sudan’s Bashir

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant Wednesday for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. He is the first sitting head of state the court has ordered arrested.

The three-judge panel said there was insufficient evidence to support charges of genocide in a war in which up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have fled their homes.

Al-Bashir’s government denounced the warrant as part of a Western conspiracy aimed at destabilizing the vast oil-rich nation south of Egypt.

African and Arab nations fear the warrant will destabilize the whole region, bring even more conflict in Darfur and threaten the fragile peace deal that ended decades of civil war between northern and southern Sudan.

Brief by The Associated Press

OMG! Italy Catholics asked not to text during Lent

Roman Catholic bishops in Italy are urging the faithful to go on a high-tech fast for Lent, switching off modern appliances from cars to iPods and abstaining from surfing the Web or text messaging until Easter.

The suggestion goes far beyond no-meat Fridays, giving a modern twist to traditional forms of abstinence in the five-week period Christians set aside for fasting and prayer ahead of Easter.

And it shows the Church’s increasing focus on technology’s uses-with many of the Lenten appeals posted on various dioceses’ Web sites.

Dioceses and Catholic groups in Modena, southern Bari and other cities have called for a ban on text messaging every Friday in Lent, which began last week with Ash Wednesday.

Brief by The Associated Press

Bad altimeter in Netherlands plane crash

A faulty flight instrument aboard a Turkish jetliner lowered the plane’s airspeed, setting off warning signals in the cockpit and prompting the pilots to try and accelerate before it crashed in the Netherlands, officials said Wednesday.

The Turkish Airlines plane carrying 135 passengers and crew crashed less than a mile from the runway at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport shortly before it was due to land on Feb. 25. Nine people were killed.

The pilots, who died in the crash, were landing on automatic pilot when the altimeter, a device that measures altitude, registered that the plane was flying lower than it actually was and instructed the plane to decelerate, officials said.

The Boeing 737-800 had twice before experienced problems with its altimeter, said Dutch Safety Authority Chief Investigator Pieter van Vollenhoven at a news conference at The Hague.

Brief by The Associated Press