Briefs
Local and VCU
Dog walk raises $20,000 for VCU unit
The inaugural Hounds for Healing Dog Walk on Saturday raised more than $20,000 for the Center for Human-Animal Interaction at Virginia Commonwealth University, according to Sandra Barker, the center director and dog walk co-chair.
The benefit attracted about 500 people to Richmond’s Monroe Park, Barker said. There were nearly 250 registered walkers for the 1-kilometer walk.
Other events included face painting, dog-bowl decorating, a silent auction and a mock search and rescue demonstration. Richmond’s police K-9 unit also staged a demonstration drug search on volunteers who agreed to hide drugs in their clothes.
The Center for Human-Animal Interaction studies the relationship between humans and animals, and research shows that therapy dogs provide significant benefits to patients, helping to reduce their stress.
Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch
Mayoral order aims to turn Richmond green
Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones on Thursday issued a mayoral order establishing a green government and launched the city’s first sustainability plan, RVA Green: A Roadmap to Sustainability.
Jones’s announcement, made a day before Earth Day, comes a year after he launched his Green Richmond Initiative, which he says has led to great strides in becoming a more sustainable, energy-efficient city.
The mayoral order promotes a telework and alternative work schedule initiative. He said he wants at least 20 percent of eligible city employees on such plans by the end of the year. It calls on city government to create an energy-management plan that will reduce electricity and fuel use, and a green procurement policy to produce environmentally friendly products and services.
“This is an exciting process, and I believe that we are pioneering in this regard,” Jones said, referring to the sustainability plan.
Over the past year, the city has built its first green roof at one city facility and has launched the Richmond Rose Gardens, a community garden program that allows community members to create gardens on city parcels. Richmond became the first city in Virginia to build a compressed natural gas fueling station. It will serve its new trash trucks, he said.
The city has created a bicycle and pedestrian trail commission to recommend ways the administration can support cycling and work to reduce the number of vehicles on the road, Jones said. In his proposed budget for fiscal 2012, Jones includes funding for the creation of a bicycle and pedestrian coordinator.
Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch
ACLU asks for waiver of police escort fee
The ACLU of Virginia is asking a federal court to allow an activist group to hold a May Day parade in Richmond without paying $294 for off-duty police officers to serve as escorts.
“Nowhere in the city code does it say that Richmond police have the authority to assess fees on parade organizers,” said Rebecca Glenberg, legal director for the ACLU of Virginia.
A spokesman said Wednesday that the police department has not had a chance to review the ACLU request and could not comment.
The ACLU filed an eight-page complaint in U.S. District Court on Wednesday against several police officials seeking a restraining order or preliminary injunction allowing the parade to go forward without paying for the off-duty police help.
Glenberg said organizers with the Richmond May Day Coalition/Organizing Committee submitted a parade-permit application on March 21 but did not receive a response until April 11.
According to the complaint, the coalition consists of some loosely organized groups that want to “hold a march of a political, noncommercial nature celebrating workers and their families.”
Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch
National and International
Victim in Md. McDonald’s attack alleges hate crime
A transgender woman whose brutal attack at a McDonald’s restaurant in Maryland was captured on video that later went viral said Saturday she was the victim of a hate crime.
Twenty-two-year-old Chrissy Lee Polis told The Baltimore Sun that since the attack last Monday, “I’m just afraid to go outside now because of stuff like this.”
The video posted online shows a woman being attacked and apparently having a seizure. Baltimore County police say a 14-year-old girl has been charged as a juvenile and an 18-year-old woman faces an assault charge in the case.
Polis told the newspaper that after she used the restroom, “They said, ‘That’s a dude, that’s a dude and she’s in the female bathroom.'”
Polis said she was confronted by a girl who spat in her face and accused Polis of talking to “my man.” Polis said another girl then also spat on her face, and that they then beat and kicked her, pulled her by the hair and tore off her earrings.
“They really hurt me really bad,” Polis said in a videotaped interview that was posted on the newspaper’s website.
All the while, she said, a McDonald’s employees recorded the attack on his cell phone even though she told him to stop. She said her injuries would certainly have been worse had an older female customer not assisted her.
Brief by The Associated Press
Scientists fret over BP funds for Gulf research
Scientists say it is taking far too long to dole out millions of dollars in BP funds for badly needed Gulf oil spill research, and it could be too late to assess the crude’s impact on pelicans, shrimp and other species by the time studies begin.
The spring nesting and spawning season is a crucial time to get out and sample the reproduction rates, behavior and abundance of species, all factors that could be altered by last year’s massive spill. Yet no money has been made available for this year, and it could take months to determine which projects will be funded.
“It’s like a murder scene,” said Dana Wetzel, an ecotoxicologist at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida. “You have to pick up the evidence now.”
BP PLC had pledged $500 million — $50 million a year over 10 years — to help scientists study the spill’s impact and forge a better understanding of how to deal with future spills. The first $50 million was handed out in May 2010 to four Gulf-based research institutes and to the National Institutes of Health.
Rita Colwell, a University of Maryland scientist who chairs the board overseeing the money, said the protocol for distributing the remaining $450 million would be announced Monday at the National Press Club Washington. After that, scientists will be allowed to submit proposals, but it could take months for research to be chosen.
Brief by The Associated Press
Deal on Yemeni president fails to end protests
Thousands of anti-government protesters held their ground Sunday in the Yemeni capital’s Change Square despite the president’s acceptance of an Arab proposal to leave office under certain conditions after 32 years in power.
More than two months of protests pressing for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to immediately step down have left him clinging to power and brought down intense international pressure for him to leave office. A bloc of Gulf nations has been trying to broker an end to the crisis, fearing the potential impact of more instability in the fragile country, which is home to al-Qaida’s most active branch.
Saleh agreed Saturday to the proposal for him to hand power to his vice president within 30 days of a deal being signed in exchange for immunity from prosecution for him and his sons.
A coalition of seven opposition political parties also agreed to the proposal with several reservations. But they do not control the street, where key figures among a diverse range of other government opponents rejected the proposal and said they doubted Saleh had any intention to leave.
Thousands of protesters held onto their camp in Change Square in the capital, Sanaa, where they are ringed by military units that defected to join and protect them. Men in desert camouflage military uniforms mixed with the crowds, pumping their arms into the air and flashing victory signs.
“The proposals are not acceptable at all and the opposition parties don’t represent us,” said Khaled al-Ansi, a leader of the youth movement that is one of the main organizers of the street protests.
Brief by The Associated Press
