News Briefs

Local and VCU

Va. Military Institute faces sexism accusations

Virginia Military Institute is defending itself against a lengthy investigation into accusations that the school’s policies are sexist and hostile toward female cadets, a dozen years after women won the right to enroll.

The federal Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has an ongoing investigation of a sex discrimination complaint at the small, state-supported school that so far has taken nearly a year and a half, three times longer than usual.

Defenders say VMI has worked hard to recruit women and make them comfortable since the U.S. Supreme Court ordered co-education in 1997, but women remain a small minority. Of the 1,500 cadets on the Shenandoah Valley campus this fall, 126 are women.
Brief by The Associated Press

Officials seek ways to deal with budget shortfall

Public schools might not look the same next fall, two months after Virginia begins a new budget year.
Class sizes could grow as large as state law the allows. Music, art and physical education could shrink to the minimum.

Teaching assistants and other support staff could disappear.
“I believe it would reflect a level of quality that would shock virtually every community in Virginia,” Hanover County

Superintendent Stewart W. Roberson said in an interview Friday.
Roberson painted a similarly grim picture for the Senate Finance Committee Thursday, as state legislators and local officials grappled with a projected $3.5 billion budget shortfall over the next two years.
Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch

Henrico ZIP code changes cause revenue losses in Richmond

Richmond’s budget woes extend beyond the national recession and are being compounded by permanent revenue losses from Henrico County’s decision to change some ZIP code addresses from Richmond to Henrico, the city’s top finance official said.

Marcus D. Jones, deputy chief administrative officer for finance and administration, told the City Council’s Finance Committee Thursday that the ZIP code change is partly responsible for a projected $10.3 million budget shortfall for the current fiscal year, but he said an amount has not been determined.
Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch

National and International

Health care legislation advances in Senate
Democrats united to push health care legislation past a key Senate hurdle over the opposition of Republicans who were eager to inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama. There was not a vote to spare.

The 60-39 vote Saturday night cleared the way for a bruising, full-scale debate on the bill after lawmakers return from their break for Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday.

The legislation is designed to extend coverage to roughly 31 million of the nearly 50 million Americans who lack it, crack down on insurance company practices that deny or dilute benefits and curtail the growth of spending on medical care nationally.
Brief by The Associated Press

Fort Hood suspect ordered held until court-martial

The Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood will be confined until his military trial, initially staying in a hospital where he is recovering from gunshot wounds, his attorney said Saturday.

During a hearing in Maj. Nidal Hasan’s hospital room in San Antonio on Saturday, a magistrate ruled that there was probable cause that Hasan committed the Nov. 5 shooting spree at Fort Hood, said his civilian attorney, John Galligan. Hasan has been at Brooke Army Medical Center since the shooting, and his attorney said Hasan has been told he has permanent paralysis.

Galligan told The Associated Press in a telephone interview the judge also ordered Hasan to pretrial confinement, which usually means jail, until his court-martial. The military justice system does not have bail for defendants.
The magistrate ruled that Hasan will initially remain in the hospital, where he is in intensive care, Galligan said.
Brief by The Associated Press

Iran begins war games to protect nuclear sites

Iran on Sunday began large-scale air defense war games aimed at protecting its nuclear facilities from attack, state TV reported, as an air force commander boasted the country could deter any military strike by Israel.

It said the five-day drill will cover an area a third of the size of Iran and spread across the central, western and southern parts of the country.
Gen. Ahmad Mighani, head of an air force unit in charge of responding to threats to Iran’s air space, said Saturday the war games would cover regions where Iran’s nuclear facilities are located.

The drill involves Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard, the paramilitary Basij forces affiliated with the Guard as well as army units.

The United States and its European allies accused Iran of embarking on a nuclear weapons program. Iran denied the charge and insisted the program is only for peaceful purposes.
Israel has not ruled out military action to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Brief by The Associated Press