Chicago
University admissions scandal: The chairman of the University of Illinois board of trustees has resigned, following reports that he helped well-connected but unqualified applicants win admission to the university. Niranjan Shah, an engineering executive, stepped down after the Chicago Tribune reported that political leaders, wealthy businesspeople, and university officials, including Shah, had pulled strings for applicants who didn’t meet admissions standards. Shah denied any wrongdoing, but suggested that the ethical climate had changed since he took the post, in 2003. “When I became a trustee of U. of I.,” he said, officials “operated under a set of rules and norms that seemed appropriate at the time. Today, I recognize that those rules are changing.”
Birmingham, Ala.
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County may go bust: Local authorities say they’ll turn to the National Guard to maintain order in Jefferson County, after a court denied an emergency request to stop the county from slashing $4.1 million from the sheriff’s budget. Jefferson County, home to Alabama’s biggest city, Birmingham, is nearly bankrupt after a state court invalidated the tax that supplies most of the county’s revenue. About 1,000 county workers have already been furloughed, and Sheriff Mike Hale may now have to lay off 188 deputies and 300 civilian workers, leaving only enough employees to operate two county jails. A bankruptcy filing by Jefferson County would be a record-breaker for a local government, dwarfing the $1.7 billion bankruptcy of Orange County, Calif., in 1994.
Bridgeville, Pa.
Exercise-class rampage: A gunman with a grudge against women opened fire on an exercise class in a Pittsburgh suburb this week, killing three women and wounding nine others before turning the gun on himself. George Sodini, 48, entered the LA Fitness gym in Bridgeville, headed straight for an aerobics class, turned off the lights, and opened fire. “He walked right into the room where the shootings occurred as if he knew exactly where he was going,” said Allegheny County Police Superintendent Charles Moffatt. Sodini, a systems analyst at a Pittsburgh law firm, had earlier posted a rambling diatribe on a website, venting his hatred of women and complaining that he had not had a girlfriend since 1984.
The Russians are coming: Two Russian nuclear attack submarines have been spotted patrolling the eastern U.S. coast, sparking Cold War memories and raising concern at the Pentagon. The subs are in international waters about 200 miles offshore; one of the vessels was tracked heading toward Cuba, according to Pentagon officials. The submarines’ presence offshore surprised military analysts. “I don’t think they’ve put two first-line nuclear subs off the coast in about 15 years,” said submarine warfare expert Norman Polmar. Some analysts speculated that the Russian navy is attempting to prove its relevance to domestic critics, following the embarrassing failure of a missile launched from a Russian sub last month.
New Bedford, Mass.
Mystery vapors sicken scores: More than 100 people have been sickened, some critically, by mysterious fumes at a garbage plant. The incident occurred at a privately owned disposal facility in New Bedford, shortly after a truck emptied the contents of a Dumpster on the plant’s sorting floor. “Immediately after that dump, two of the employees went down with some form of respiratory distress,” said town Fire Chief Paul Leger. Within minutes, about 120 people became sick, including workers, firefighters, police officers, and emergency medical technicians. The Dumpster was traced back to a nearby construction site, and authorities are conducting tests to determine what toxins might have been released.
Washington, D.C.
Gitmo transfer talk: The Obama administration is considering
sending the remaining 229 prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to a facility on the U.S. mainland, according to press accounts quoting unnamed White House sources. It was unclear, though, if the prisoners would face trial. The Pentagon has not chosen a location for the new facility, to be run jointly by the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, but Fort Leavenworth in Kansas and Camp Pendleton in California are reportedly under consideration. Civil-liberties groups vowed to contest any plan to hold suspects without trial. “Closing Guantánamo will be an empty gesture if we just reopen it on shore under a different name,” said Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union. Congress is withholding funds needed for any prisoner transfer until the Obama administration comes up with a detailed plan for how it would work.
