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VCU senior Brad Burgess grabs his head in dejection as the final buzzer sounds in the Indiana Hoosiers’ defeat of the Rams Saturday.

Local & VCU National & International

Huguely may seek retrial for girlfrend’s death

Lawyers for a former University of Virginia lacrosse player convicted in the beating death of his ex-girlfriend have asked a judge for a hearing on a motion to have the case retried.

George Huguely and his lawyers appeared in Charlottesville Circuit Court on Friday on a separate motion filed on behalf of several media outlets seeking to have the trial’s evidence made public. Judge Edward Hogshire gave media attorney Robert Yates two weeks to come up with a proposal on the best way to make the evidence available.

The Daily Progress reports Huguely lawyer Francis McQ. Lawrence also asked for a hearing on a “motion for retrial.” No details were given.

Huguely faces 26 years in prison in the 2010 death of U.Va. women’s lacrosse player Yeardley Love.

Brief by the Associated Press

Richmond sheriff still employs 8 relatives

Nearly six months after the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that Richmond Sheriff C.T. Woody Jr. had hired 12 family members since he was elected in 2005, eight relatives remain on the payroll.

In an interview last year, Woody said he planned to dismiss all of his relatives by the end of this year but declined to say in what order they would leave.

Earlier this month, Woody still employed a son, two sisters, a brother-in-law, a nephew, a nephew’s wife and two granddaughters, according to the office’s response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Woody was out of the office and did not respond to a request for an interview made by email and through his spokesman.

His daughter, Carla Woody, left the department in December after working for the office for a year, earning $44,000 as a payroll technician. A granddaughter and the daughter of the sheriff’s nephew’s wife also left their positions last year. A niece departed in 2008.

The 11 relatives who worked at the office in 2011 earned more than $442,000 in annual salaries, or 2.4 percent of the office's annual $18.3 million in salary expenditures.

Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch

Three former students sue John Tyler Community College

Three former students are suing John Tyler Community College because the surgical technology program they took there did not obtain accreditation, which they say left them unable to find jobs.

“The certificate I have doesn’t mean anything,” said F. Eileen Macleay of Midlothian.

Macleay, Patricia E. Brown of Ettrick and Donella G. Crist of Sussex filed separate suits last month in Chesterfield County Circuit Court, each seeking a total of $150,000 for breach of contract and compensatory and punitive damages.

JTCC President Marshall Smith said certification is not required for work as a surgical technologist in Virginia.

He said the college would not have begun the career studies certificate program without accreditation if that had been a prerequisite for obtaining a job.

Certification in Virginia may be “extra, but the accreditation is mandatory to get a job,” Crist said.

Some states require certification for surgical technologists through a national examination, but Virginia does not. A bill requiring certification was referred to committee during this session of the General Assembly.

Brief by the Richmond Times-Disaptch

Family: Man didn’t kill teen in self-defense

Calls made to police show that a black teenager was terrified as he tried to get away from the white neighborhood watch volunteer who shot him, and that the volunteer was not defending himself as he has claimed, the teen’s family said Saturday.

Sanford police released eight 911 calls late Friday. The neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, tells a dispatcher in the first call that he is following 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. He says Martin is running, but the dispatcher tells him not to follow the teen.

Zimmerman had called police to report a suspicious person walking through the gated community. He has said he shot the teen in self-defense. Zimmerman’s father said in a letter to the Orlando Sentinel that his son, who is Hispanic, has been cruelly and unfairly portrayed in the media as a racist.

The case has been turned over to the State Attorney’s Office, which can decide whether to file charges or present evidence to a grand jury.

Brief by the Associated Press

Twin suicide blasts kill dozens in Syrian capital

Two suicide bombers detonated cars packed with explosives in near-simultaneous attacks on heavily guarded intelligence and security buildings in the Syrian capital Damascus on Saturday, killing at least 27 people.

The early-morning explosions struck the heavily fortified air force intelligence building and the criminal security department, several miles apart in Damascus, at approximately the same time, the Interior Ministry said. Much of the facade of the intelligence building appeared to have been ripped away.

State-run news agency SANA said a third blast went off near a military bus at the Palestinian refugee camp Yarmouk in Damascus, killing the two suicide bombers.

The first explosion about 7 a.m. targeted the air force intelligence building in the residential district of al-Qassaa, a predominantly Christian area. It caused destruction in a 100-yard radius, shattering windows, blowing doors off their hinges and throwing chairs and other furniture off balconies.

A string of previous blasts that struck the capital, also suicide bombings, have killed dozens of people since December.

Brief by the Associated Press Somalia

Famine Aid Went Astray

A large amount of food sent by the United Nations to the Somali capital during last year’s famine never reached the starving people it was intended for, an investigation has found.

Some of the World Food Program supplies went to the black market, some to feed livestock. One warehouse full of rations was looted in its entirety by a Somali government official. And across the city, feeding sites handed out far less food than records indicate they should have.

The British government estimates between 50,000 and 100,000 people died in Somalia’s famine, and the U.N. has requested $1.5 billion for Somalia this year, partly to prevent a return of famine.

The World Food Program provides much of Somalia’s food aid, and the U.N. says donations of food and cash saved half a million lives in the second half of last year. In the chaos of a war, with the aid effort’s own personnel at mortal risk merely for being associated with the West, orderly, corruption-free food distribution could never be guaranteed.

But a three-month investigation into sites providing hot meals to families in government-controlled Mogadishu reveals various shortcomings, some of which the WFP says it is already addressing by changing procedures.

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Brief by the Associated Press