News in review

Tuesday, March 14

To sleep, perchance to dream of a big sale

Speaking to Coy Barefoot today on WINA’s "Charlottesville Right Now," Beth Duffy, former morning anchor on NBC 29 explained her jump to the rival local TV stations known collectively as the Charlottesville Newsplex. After seven years at Channel 29, Duffy joined Gray TV’s operation, which has brought CBS, ABC and Fox stations to Charlottesville, as both an opportunity to learn a new side of the business—sales (reportedly her non-compete contract with WVIR prevented her from taking an on-camera position locally)—and a chance to rejoin most of the rest of the human race in getting a full night’s sleep. As an on-air personality, Duffy said, she used to rise at 2am to be at work by 3am to prepare for the 6am broadcast.

 

Wednesday, March 15

Aside from that, it’s definitely all him

Celeb/media-happy blog Gawker.com today nominated The New York Times Magazine for "correction of the week." On Sunday, March 12, Mark Warner’s mask-like visage flooded the magazine’s cover, for a story heralding him as the Democrats’ 2008 "anti-Hillary."

"The cover photograph in the Times Magazine on Sunday," the correction states, "rendered colors incorrectly for the jacket, shirt and tie worn by Mark Warner, the former Virginia governorÉ The jacket was charcoal, not maroon; the shirt was light blue, not pink; the tie was dark blue with stripes, not maroon.

"The Times’s policy rules out alteration of photographs that depict actual news scenes and, even in a contrived illustration, requires acknowledgment in a credit. In this case, the film that was used can cause colors to shift, and the processing altered them further; the change escaped notice because of a misunderstanding by the editors."

To which Gawker adds, "Also, Warner’s teeth have not been capped and whitened, his lower lip isn’t doing that weird thing, and he doesn’t actually give off that smarmy politician vibe that made you turn over the magazine on your coffee table so you didn’t have to keep looking at him. It’s all just a misunderstanding."

 

Thursday, March 16

The envelope, please

WAHU reports today on that vaunted medical tradition when students find out which university hospital will offer them the opportunity to work 36-hour shifts and catheterize street people. About 150 UVA med students got their letters today, following interviews and cutthroat competition for high grades. "It’s just like four years of work, all in one day, it’s just so exciting," one over-caffeinated student told the station.

 

Friday, March 17

Wave of cliches drowns support for Semester at Sea

Stanford University senior Emanuel Pleitez writes to The Cavalier Daily today to defend Semester at Sea, the floating college classroom program that UVA recently joined to much faculty consternation. "Semester at Sea is in a league of its own," Pleitez writes of his experience sailing the world with 675 college students. Urging UVA to "realize the tremendous opportunity of this partnership to continue pushing the envelope," he invokes SaS breakthroughs such as a 1994 trip to Vietnam, as well as trips to Cuba, China and Burma.

 

Saturday, March 18

Hungry people now hungrier than ever

Martin L. White writes to The Daily Progress today with disturbing news about area hunger stats. White, CEO of the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank Network, notes a 10 percent increase over the past four years in people who have needed emergency food handouts nationwide. In our region, the increase equals 50,000 new hungry people. White reports that 129,700 people sought emergency food assistance in 2005 from food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters in the Charlottesville, Lynchburg, Winchester and Verona region.

 

Sunday, March 19

County fire claims two

Shortly after midnight this morning a fire on Zion Hill Road erupted in a single-family home killing an elderly couple, Albemarle spokeswoman Lee Catlin informed news media. Though four County fire squads, City fire personnel and the rescue squad responded to the call, they could not save the house or the man and woman inside, according to later news reports.

 

Monday, March 20

The ABCs on the MZM scandal

Mitchell Wade, the owner of defunct defense contractor MZM, Inc., who has been a very close pal of the Charlottesville’s Congressman Virgil Goode, landed front and center in the business section of today’s Washington Post. For those still not up to speed on the story, the Post provides a play-by-play of exactly how, starting in 2001, the crooked businessman bribed a former California Congressman to score prime federal contracts, eventually totaling $172 million. Wade, who pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges in February, also admitted that MZM gave Goode $46,000 in illegal campaign contributions. Goode paved the way for an MZM facility in Martinsville, and has claimed that he didn’t know the MZM campaign money was illegal.

 

 

UVA profs predict new life for cities
Local changes reflect national trends, pedestrian preferences

Last week, new census figures showed that three Virginia counties—Loudoun, King George and Caroline—ranked among the Top 10 fastest-growing counties in America. According to The Washington Post, commuters who work in Washington D.C. wake up at 4am and drive 70 miles just so they can enjoy the cheap homes and spacious lawns.

Sound crazy? Two local scholars say people are getting fed up with mind-numbing commutes and boring cul-de-sacs. In a new book called Tomorrow’s Cities, Tomorrow’s Suburbs, UVA planning profs William Lucy and David Phillips describe how affluent home-buyers are seeking out older urban neighborhoods, while low-income Americans are flocking to the suburbs. A version of that transformation is at work in Charlottesville, says Lucy, who also sits on the City’s Planning Commission. Last week C-VILLE asked him to explain what it all means to you.—John Borgmeyer

C-VILLE: Why are cities like Charlottesville the new cool place to be?

William Lucy: Demographics are changing. The percentage of people without children at home has grown, and the image of what makes a good neighborhood has changed. It used to be that a good neighborhood was quiet, peaceful, safe. By definition, those things were inconvenient. Now more people want to walk to things, which has led to a much bigger demand for neighborhoods like those in Charlottesville.

What about those of us who can’t afford a $375,000 house in Belmont?

It’s not clear that the low-income population will be hurt, but they will be moving.

 

 

UVA leads in black graduation rate
86 percent graduate—more than double the national average

Last week, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reported that UVA graduates a higher percentage of African-American students than any other state "flagship" university.

The report measures the six-year graduation rate for black students who entered UVA in the fall of 1998. UVA is 16 percentage points ahead of the runner-up, the University of Califorinia-Berkely. According to a UVA press release, UVA has posted the highest African-American graduation rate for 12 consecutive years.

Because large state universities educate three-fourths of all black college students, their success at flagship schools "gives us a good indicator of the graduation rate for the Ôaverage’ black student,’ according to the report, written by JBHE Managing Editor Bruce Slater. He offers one caveat to UVA’s success, however. Schools like UVA recruit high-achieving blacks from other states, so the data "does not always present an accurate assessment of black students’ success in graduating from a college in a given state."—Amy Kniss

 

 

New bio-med building breaks ground
$71 million lab will give 240 scientists a place to park their beakers

The University of Virginia Medical Center will begin construction this month on the Carter-Harrison Research Building, a 102,000 square-foot medical science facility devoted to research on vaccine therapy, immunology, infectious diseases, cancer and other areas of bio-medicine. The $70.7 million building will house 240 scientists, and is financed with donor support, University funding ($20 million) and a State bond approved by Virginia voters in 2002 ($24.3 million).

According to Dr. Arthur Garson Jr., dean of the UVA’s School of Medicine, a lack of sufficient research space is the single greatest obstacle facing UVA scientists. One program to be housed in the new building is the Human Immune Therapy Center that has received international recognition for its work to stimulate the human immune system to destroy cancer cells.

Construction will disrupt traffic during the next several months along Crispell Drive and near the South Parking Garage. In addition, local developer Jim Stultz of CBS Rentals will be constructing a 50-unit condominium and two-tier parking garage nearby.—Jay Neelley

 

 

UVA ROTC numbers remain strong
The Iraq War is 3 years old and folks still want to be soldiers

March 20 marked the third anniversary of the war in Iraq, and an average of 133,000 U.S. troops are stationed there on any given day. Nearly 60 percent of Americans think it was a mistake to invade Iraq, but UVA’s Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) isn’t experiencing a slowdown.

"There’s a general feeling out there that the Army can’t meet its recruitment goals," says Capt. John Warnecke, the Commanding Officer of UVA’s ROTC program. "I don’t know if that’s true or not, but [at UVA] we have seen no decrease in the number of students. No decline whatsoever as a result of the Global War on Terror."

In fact, ROTC numbers on campus are looking quite healthy. According to Warnecke, the program is graduating 15 students in May (13 Navy and two Marine Corps); there are 32 ROTC students in the class of 2007, 21 in the class of 2008 and 15 in the class of 2009. Warnecke anticipates, however, that the numbers for the classes of 2008 and 2009 will increase come May 1, when they get news of transfer students. Accepted students for the class of 2010 are not notified until May 1.

Anticipating next year, Warnecke says 34 students who have listed UVA as their top choice have received national ROTC scholarships. Warnecke’s ideal number is 22, but if more are admitted there’s no definitive cap on who gets the scholarships and who doesn’t. Acceptance itself is entirely up to the admissions office, and entails a completely separate process from the doling out of scholarships.—Nell Boeschenstein

 

 

A Pacemaker for your gut
New invention will really make your stomach turn

Each year UVA researchers patent hundreds of new, potentially lucrative technologies through the UVA Patent Foundation. Here’s a recent patent, this one aimed at the morbidly obese.

Robert Ross, president of two companies and a former electrical engineering research scientist at UVA, has patented a pacemaker for the stomach. Although Ross’ Implantable Gastrointestinal Pacemaker still awaits approval from the Food and Drug Administration, one potential use for it would be to treat morbid obesity as an alternative to gastric bypass surgery, says Alan Bentley, associate director of the UVA Patent Foundation. Each year, about 45,000 grossly overweight people turn to surgery to help them lose weight.

The device "uses multiple points of stimulation to treat gastrointestinal motility disorders, which are basically problems of movement in the stomach," says Ross. When an individual suffers from a gastrointestinal motility disorder, Ross says, his stomach doesn’t generate the coordinated contractions of a normally functioning stomach. As a result, he can’t digest food or absorb nutrients properly. The hope, Ross says, is that electrical pacing will be just as effective in the regulation and coordination of stomach contractions as it has been in regulating the beating of the heart.—Esther Brown

 

 

snl files lawsuit against s&p
Local financial database firm wants to protect its use of oddball numbers and credit ratings

On March 6, SNL Financial, the Downtown-based financial database company that employs nearly 300 people in town and hundreds more overseas, filed a complaint against Standard & Poor’s in federal court maintaining SNL’s right to use identifying numbers, as well as credit ratings, in SNL’s reports and analyses.

According to the lawsuit, since 2003, S&P, a much larger financial information company, has repeatedly threatened SNL with legal action, claiming SNL is illegally using S&P’s CUSIP database. CUSIP numbers are nine-digit numbers that identify most securities, including stocks and bonds. Credit ratings assess credit-risk factors for individuals, corporations and countries. S&P has allegedly also demanded that SNL pay a fee to reprint S&P credit ratings. Both claims, according to SNL’s complaint, are baseless. To date, S&P has only threatened SNL with litigation; it has not filed anything. Thus, SNL’s current filing is pre-emptive.

SNL defends itself against S&P’s allegations, saying individual CUSIP numbers are not copyrighted because the numbers, like telephone numbers, are given "without judgment or skill." Moreover, SNL argues that S&P’s copyright applies only to the entire CUSIP database to which SNL does not have access. So, for SNL to have violated the copyright of the database, it would have had to copy all, or at least a significant portion, of the more than 7,000,000 CUSIP numbers in S&P’s database. According to SNL, it has only used about 15,000 CUSIP numbers since 1987, when the company began, and obtained those numbers through public sources. As for the credit ratings, SNL says that these, too, are public information; thus S&P can’t charge a fee for use.

SNL is not seeking any money in the suit. However, the company wants judgments that put it in the clear and protect it from any future litigation on these matters from S&P.

SNL chairman Reid Nagle did not re-turn calls for comment by press time.— Nell Boeschenstein

 

 

No murder charge in first killing of 2006
Man says he killed teenager in self-defense

On Tuesday, March 14, a 27-year-old Charlottesville man shot and killed a teenager in an apparent case of self-defense. The shooter, whom police did not name, called 911 to report the incident himself. At about 11:30am, police found 18-year-old Gerald Washington lying on the 300 block of Sixth Street SW. City officials say he was shot between five and seven times, and Washington was pronounced dead about an hour later at UVA Medical Center. The killer surrendered. He was released Wednesday, and at press time had not been charged.—John Borgmeyer

 

 

Judge warns teen drivers against themselves
Speech is a rite of passage for local 16 year olds

For most 16 year olds, finally getting that driver’s license means one thing: freedom! However, with great horsepower comes great responsibility. According to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, car crashes are the leading cause of death for 16- to 19-year olds. In 2003 alone, there were 144 crashes involving teens that resulted in 163 teen deaths statewide. The leading causes? Inexperience, risky behavior, alcohol and drug use, and disregard for safety belts.

These stats are the stuff that Judge Dwight Johnson warns teens about every first Monday and third Thursday of the month in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court as he hands out licenses. Here’s a paraphrase of what local teens hear from the judge just before they’re handed their freedom.—Nell Boeschenstein

"I’m going to make a quick speech. As I learned in a college speech class, people forget 70 percent of what they hear. I’m going to spare you that 70 percent and just give you the 30 percent you’re able to retain.

"Let me tell you a story I heard in which a state trooper came across a gruesome highway accident. Four people—two children, two parents—were laid out on the pavement. No one had witnessed the accident except a monkey who was sitting on the trunk of the car with his arms crossed.

"ÔWhat happened?’ the trooper asked the monkey.

"The monkey pointed at the children and indicated that they had been busy fighting.

"ÔWhat happened to them?’ the trooper asked, pointing to the parents.

"The monkey indicated that they had been busy yabbering on.

"ÔWhat were you doing?’ the trooper asked.

"The monkey motioned to show that he had been driving.

"Kids, driving is not monkey business. It’s your business. And parents, it’s your responsibility to be the first line of defense. Now, I’m going to hand out these licenses to the parents because the parent giveth and the parent can taketh away."

 

 

Alleged Teen Bombers back in court
Prosecution rests after second full day

On Friday, March 17, the prosecution rested its case against three area teens accused of plotting to blow up either or both Albemarle and Western Albemarle high schools by June. The next court date for the two 13-year-old and one 15-year-old defendants was set for March 28, when the defense will present its case. A fourth defendant, a 16-year-old boy, pleaded guilty to charges against him on March 8. The trial is, and will remain, closed to the public to protect the privacy of the juveniles.—Nell Boeschenstein