Briefs
Local & VCU
City Council criticizes city’s response during Irene
Several members of Richmond City Council blasted the city’s response to Hurricane Irene, saying officials should have anticipated widespread power outages and prepared to deliver ice and information to residents.
Frustrations overflowed Tuesday as the council voted 9-0 to confirm a local emergency declaration that had been made for the storm.
Councilman E. Martin Jewell praised the city’s police and fire response and its removal of downed trees, but he said it failed to deliver social services.
Jewell said the city waited too long to open its emergency operations center and failed to issue appropriate warnings before the massive storm barreled through Virginia, knocking out power and disrupting communications for many residents. He noted that New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had appeared regularly on TV newscasts before the storm warning that city’s residents of potential flooding.
Jewell described receiving a call on behalf of 11 homeless people who had struggled to find a place to stay during the storm. He also questioned the city’s decision to open an emergency shelter far from downtown at Huguenot High School, particularly when it lost power and didn’t have a backup generator.
Several council members offered gentler critiques and focused on making improvements for future storms.
Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch
Obama plans to visit Richmond this Friday
President Barack Obama will visit the University of Richmond on Friday, a day after he makes his job-creation speech to a joint session of Congress. The event is free and open to the public. Tickets are required and will be available from 3 to 6 p.m. on Thursday on a first-come, first-served basis at the University of Richmond’s Modlin Center, 28 Westhampton Way.
Doors open at 8:30 a.m. Friday for ticketed members of the public through the north entrance to the Robins Center.
The president was last in Richmond a year ago this month, appearing at a community center in South Richmond.
Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch
VCU journalism professor resigns
VCU Associate Professor of Journalism, Bonnie Davis, abruptly resigned last Thursday after 17 years of being a professor.
Davis was named Journalism Educator of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists last April.
Davis, who gave little public notice of her resignation beyond an email to her Mass Communications 303 class, could not be reached for comment.
The School of Mass Communications has yet to release an official announcement of Davis’s resignation and could not be reached for comment.
Mechelle Hankerson
National & International
Indian analysts fear regrouping of Mujahedeen after courthouse attack
A bomb hidden in a briefcase exploded today outside a crowded entrance to a New Delhi courthouse, killing 11 people and wounding scores more in the deadliest attack in India’s capital in nearly three years.
The blast near a gate at the High Court, the second at the building in five months, came despite a high alert in the city. It renewed doubts about India’s ability to protect even its most important institutions despite a security overhaul that followed the 2008 Mumbai siege.
A Muslim militant group claimed responsibility for the blast in an email, but investigators said it was too early to name any group as suspects. The government rallied Indians to remain defiant in the face of such attacks.
The bomb exploded about 10:14 a.m. near a line of more than 100 people waiting at a reception counter for passes to enter the court building to have their cases heard.
Some analysts feared these attacks, culminating in the July attack in Mumbai, signaled an effort to regroup by the Indian Mujahedeen – a domestic militant group blamed for many of the 2008 attacks.
Brief by The Associated Press
Texas wildfires continue as Perry continues campaign
One of the most devastating wildfire outbreaks in Texas history left more than 1,000 homes in ruins Tuesday and stretched the state’s firefighting ranks to the limit, confronting Gov. Rick Perry with a major disaster at home just as the GOP presidential contest heats up.
More than 180 fires have erupted in the past week across the rain-starved state, and nearly 600 of the homes destroyed were lost in one catastrophic blaze in and around Bastrop, near Austin, that raged out of control Tuesday for a third day.
Whipped into an inferno by Tropical Storm Lee’s winds over the weekend, the blaze burned more than 45 square miles, forced the evacuation of thousands and killed at least two people, bringing the overall death toll from the outbreak to at least four.
Perry cut short a presidential campaign trip to South Carolina to deal with the crisis. On Tuesday, he toured a blackened area near Bastrop.
Campaign spokesman Mark Miner said in an email that Perry planned to take part in tonight’s Republican presidential debate in California.
Brief by The Associated Press
Mexican tutor in jail over false tweets
A former teacher turned radio commentator and a math tutor who lives with his mother sit in a prison in southern Mexico, is facing possible 30-year sentences for terrorism and sabotage in what may be the most serious charges ever brought against anyone using a Twitter social network account.
Prosecutors say the defendants helped cause a chaos of car crashes and panic as parents in the Gulf Coast city of Veracruz rushed to save their children because of false reports that gunmen were attacking schools.
On Aug. 25, residents saw convoys of marines circulating on the streets, making some think a confrontation with gangs was imminent.
That is when authorities say Gilberto Martinez Vera, who works as a low-paid tutor at several private schools, opened the floodgates of fear with repeated messages that gunmen were taking children from schools.
No such kidnappings occurred that day. Defense attorney Claribel Guevara said the rumors already had started and that Martinez Vera was just relaying what others told him. She said he never claimed to have firsthand knowledge of the incident.
Brief by The Associated Press
