WASHINGTON - Dozens of students at the University of the District of Columbia are gathered overnight on campus to protest sweeping proposals from UDC President, Allen Sessoms.
The open-door policy for four-year students would end and their tuition would rise from the current $3,800 annually to $7,000.
President Sessoms wants to create a community college for students interested in obtaining a certificate or Associate Degree. The community college would be open to all students and would cost about $800 less than the current UDC annual tuition.
Jackie Boynton, UDC Associate Vice President for Marketing and Communications, told FOX 5 the changes are designed to give the school more prestige. “We have improvements to our physical plant that need to be made, we need state of the art technology, we need better labs, we need a robust research faculty. All of those things take time as well as money,” Boynton said.
Protesters have built a tent city on campus where many students will sleep overnight. An 11am rally is scheduled before students march to the Board of Trustees Committee meeting in the UDC auditorium at noon.
The Committee is scheduled to make an initial decision Wednesday afternoon. A full Board vote will be set the following
President Barack Obama greets well wishers upon arriving at MacDill Air Force Base in Fort Myers, Fla., Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2009. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
By JENNIFER LOVEN, AP White House Correspondent
FORT MYERS, Fla. - Pressing for urgency, President Barack Obama ventured into another hard-hit, Republican-leaning area on Tuesday to prod Congress to stop debating an emergency economic deal and just get it done.
Coming off a prime-time news conference, Obama was holding his second town hall event in as many days. The tenor of his remarks was to be much the same as Monday’s in another economically staggering area, Elkhart, Ind., which is also a Republican stronghold.
En route to Florida, Obama said “The American people don’t need to be convinced” about the need for action. He spoke as an $838 billion stimulus bill was headed for expected Senate approval on Tuesday. If and when that happens, difficult Senate-House negotiations on a final plan still loom.
“We just wanted to shine a spotlight on how severe this downturn is all across the country, and to make sure that members of Congress understand the sense of urgency that I feel in getting something done,” Obama said in explaining his travels to reporters aboard Air Force One.
Back in Washington, on a day loaded with economic news, the Treasury Department announced a sweeping plan to rescue the nation’s banking sector.
Obama will travel the country to talk to the public about that bailout plan, just as he has with the stimulus, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
“The American people should know directly from the president what’s involved and how he intends to do things differently,” Gibbs told reporters.
The Fort Myers unemployment rate, at 10 percent in December, is more than triple the rate of only two years ago.
Nearly 12,000 jobs have been lost in the past year in the area, and Florida overall lost 255,000 jobs last year. The Cape Coral-Fort Myers area also had the highest home foreclosure rate in the nation last year. The White House, eager to put a real-people and real-communities face on the president’s argument for action, e-mailed statistics around Tuesday to key reporters before dawn.
Obama was to be introduced by Republican Gov. Charlie Crist; he is one of several Republican governors who want their brethren in Congress to stop fighting the stimulus and pass it.
Obama’s overt message is that the pain being felt in American homes demands Washington’s quick and bold attention. But his more subtle message, delivered through his choice of hard-hit but GOP-leaning locales and in the kind of sarcastic barbs he lobbed at Republicans in his prime-time news conference Monday night, was a nakedly political one: Republicans may well pay in voting booths for ignoring the president’s call to pass the stimulus.
WASHINGTON - D.C.’s official tourism agency, Destination DC, says hotels in the Washington region collected nearly $95 million in room revenue from Jan. 17 through Jan. 20, the days leading up to and including President Barack Obama’s inauguration.
More than half of that revenue came from the 110 hotels within the District.
With hotel rooms in big demand, visitors paid an average $605 for a room on the night of the inauguration. That’s more than three times the average room rate from January 2008.
Destination DC says the numbers come from Smith Travel Research, a Tennessee company that tracks hotel occupancy and revenue nationwide.
D.C.’s chief financial officer, Natwar Gandhi, sales a report on sales tax receipts for the inauguration weekend should be ready by Feb. 20.
President Barack Obama rests his hand on President Lincoln’s Inaugural Bible as his wife Michelle Obama holds it as he takes the oath of office at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
WASHINGTON - The small, red Bible used to swear in Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama will go on rare public display to mark the 200th anniversary of the 16th president’s birth.
Beginning Thursday, the national Lincoln Bicentennial exhibit at the Library of Congress, “With Malice Toward None,” will showcase the Bible, along with the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, what may be the original Gettysburg Address and even the grammar book Lincoln used to master English.
The three-month display is among dozens of events and exhibits in the nation’s capital celebrating Lincoln’s Feb. 12 birthday.
Many of the most precious Lincoln artifacts are being shown for the first time in years, and it’s been at least 50 years since so many of them have been shown together
President Barack Obama visits the press cabin on Air Force One during a flight en route to a town hall style meeting about the economy in Elkhart, Ind., Monday, Feb. 9, 2009. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
By The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama has given the Camp David mountaintop retreat rave reviews after his first visit there.
Obama called the hideaway in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains “beautiful” as he talked Monday about his weekend visit to the presidential retreat with his wife, Michelle, and daughters Sasha and Malia.
“It was beautiful. The girls just had a great time. They had a lot of fun,” Obama told reporters as he flew from the nation’s capital to Indiana for a town hall-style meeting on the economic stimulus bill pending in the Senate. “You can see during the summer it’s going to be a nice place to spend a lot of time.”
Obama said he hit a few golf balls and played a little basketball while there.
Accompanying the first family were a friend of Sasha’s, and a friend of Michelle Obama’s who brought her two kids.
After dominating WKYS 93.9 for four quarters the Fox 5 All-Stars made it official with just two seconds left in the game after a shot by Mike Wilson. Wilson (husband of Fox 5 reporter Allyson Wilson) cemented his Myvoicedc.com player of the game status by making that game winning shot after grabbing a rebound and putting it back up immediately before WKYS had a chance to react.
The lead may have changed several times but Fox 5 was never really out of control during the entire ball game. Led by the coaching trio of Fox 5 anchor Shawn Yancy, Washington Wizard Mike James and Sean Snow of Fox 5 TOC fame the team kept it together down the stretch. Despite a hostile environment which included Anacostia SHS cheerleaders, cheeering against them and referees who kept putting time back on the clock to give WKYS a chance to score Fox 5 kept knocking down the big shots.
After the game fans could be heard discussing Wisdom Martin’s pull up jump shot in the fourth quarter and Dave Feldman’s long range three-pointer that silenced the standing room only crowd. After the game WKYS coach Antonio “The Cuban Cigar Smoker” was seen saying something in Spanish with a disgusted look on his face.
Besides giving the winning team bragging rights the game also served as a charity event for the Whitman Walker Clinic on National Black HIV/AIDS awareness day. For more info on the Whitman Walker Clinic you can go here.
Video of Demont “Peekaso” Pinder painting a Myvoicedc.com original
Design Studio Art Gallery, a new gallery in the Hyattsville Arts District, is announcing its new exhibit by Demont “Peekaso” Pinder “Thousands of Words” to open Feb. 1-28th. Demont is a local artist and is recognized for the work he does on-stage painting alongside of Grammy-nominated R & B artist Raheem DeVaughn.
Peekaso will hold a reception on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 from 7-11pm.
The gallery is located at 5702 Baltimore Avenue, Hyattsville, MD 20781. Free parking is available directly across the street from the gallery.
For more information contact: Erica Riggio 202-466-7373
HOLLYWOOD - Fans of this month’s Academy Awards — and nominees themselves — are in for something new at Hollywood’s biggest party, the show’s overseers said Monday.
Sid Ganis, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, told the 112 contenders gathered at the annual nominees luncheon to expect a lot of new things at the Feb. 22 ceremony.
“Your categories are being presented in a completely different way. Heads up,” Ganis told actors. “Cinematographers, editors, composers. All of you guys. You’re in for a big surprise.”
Ganis did not elaborate, in keeping with Oscar organizers’ efforts to maintain secrecy about the show, including the names of awards presenters.
While academy officials kept mum, nominees had plenty to say as a mix of first-time contenders and old hands turned up at a news conference before the luncheon.
Going zero-for-five on her previous Oscar nominations, best-actress contender Kate Winslet said the experience has given her a “good losing face.” Yet considering her competition this time — including Meryl Streep with a record 15 nominations — Winslet said she felt the honor and intensity even more this time.
“I get very emotional about these things, I discover. I think I’m not cut out for this. I’m too emotional to lose, and I’m too emotional to win,” said Winslet, nominated for her role as a former concentration-camp guard in “The Reader.”
“I sort of wish there was some lessons in how to cope with awards seasons, even though I’ve gone through it so many times before. It always feels like the first time.”
While Winslet has become a perpetual nominee, Robert Downey Jr. has not been up for an Oscar in 16 years, since he earned a best-actor slot for the title role in “Chaplin.”
Downey found irony in his supporting-actor nomination for “Tropic Thunder,” in which he’s cast as an obsessed actor who undergoes a medical procedure to darken his skin to play a black soldier.
“The funny thing is, I was playing an Oscar-crazed weirdo whose every motivation was somehow geared toward accolades,” Downey said.
Downey is back on top in Hollywood after years of substance-abuse problems. Another Hollywood reclamation project, Mickey Rourke, has a best-actor nomination for “The Wrestler,” playing a former ring star with a fresh shot at glory.
The story mirrors the real life of Rourke, who squandered his early promise with bad behavior off-screen.
“I was out of work for about 14 years,” Rourke said, adding that his biggest surprise this awards season was “the fact that so many years went by and I got a second chance.”
Penelope Cruz — earning her second Oscar nomination, this one for supporting actress as a volatile artist in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” — said winning would be great, but she simply wants to cherish the whole Oscar ride.
“I am so happy to be part of a group of people that can work, that can make a living out of this profession that I’ve loved so much since I was a little girl, that I really don’t want to obsess about winning,” Cruz said.
Oscar newcomer Melissa Leo, a best-actress nominee for her role as a destitute mom who turns to crime in the border-smuggling drama “Frozen River,” said she never gave a thought about competing for an Academy Award.
“I’m an actor. I think about what the next job is. I think about what my character is. I think about what my director’s needs are. I don’t dream about this. So it’s a dream I have not yet dared to dream,” Leo said. “Win, lose or draw come the 22nd, I’ve gotten more than I ever dreamt of.”
Frank Langella, a first-time nominee with an acclaimed stage background, said his Oscar nomination as Richard Nixon in “Frost/Nixon” was a career high-point but that it would not alter his career.
“I don’t really think that I’m suddenly going to turn into one of those actors who makes millions and millions of dollars and stars in films holding a gun,” said Langella, who reprised the role he originated on stage alongside co-star Michael Sheen. “I’m very lucky that I can continue to work on the stage almost any time I want. I think I’ll just continue along apace.”
Supporting-actress contender Viola Davis summed up what it feels like to be a first-time nominee having lunch with such Oscar veterans as Winslet, Downey, Cruz and Sean Penn.
“This is probably a morbid metaphor. People say if you’re in a major accident and your whole life flashes before you, and of course, it’s always all the important moments,” said Davis, nominated for playing a mother whose son may have been abused by a priest in “Doubt.” “This would be one of the moments that would flash.”
A D.C. firefighter who allegedly shot three adults in a domestic dispute before killing himself had been banned from fire department property after apparently threatening his co-workers.
CAPITOL HEIGHTS, Md. - Dante Paire, the DC firefighter who shot his girlfriend and her parents then killed himself, was no stranger to trouble.
FOX 5 has learned he was on enforced leave, accused of theft in firehouses and of making threats against some of his co-workers.
Sources say he was transferred from Engine Company 25 in Southeast to Engine Company 20 in Tenleytown. They say after the threats he was banned from the firehouse, his picture posted and a note that advised firefighters to call police if he turned up.
Paire’s girlfriend, Jessica Wimbish, remains hospitalized in critical condition. Her parents, Aubrey and Jennifer Wimbish, were also shot and hospitalized. Jessica’s 2-year-old daughter escaped injury.
FOX 5 has also obtained 911 audio of frantic calls made to police about a public fight between Paire and his girlfriend, just hours before the shooting.
Restaurant workers and customers called to report that the two had a verbal altercation, then a physical fight in the parking lot. They thought Paire was a police officer because he flashed a badge and told people who observed the fight to mind their own business.
A pregnant American tourist was killed Wednesday after she was abducted during a morning jog. Stuffed into the trunk of a car, she made a desperate call for help. About an hour later, she was found dead with her throat slashed.
Based on Sara Kuszak’s description of her kidnapper’s car, police arrested a local man whose clothing was covered with blood. He was not immediately charged.
“He saw the woman and kidnapped her,” said Lt. Angel Ocasio. “He didn’t take anything. He stole her life.”
The man was located because the FBI picked up a signal from the victim’s cell phone, which he was carrying, investigating officer Arsenio Rodriguez said. Kuszak’s fiance had called the FBI, but the department turned the case over to local police.
The suspect told police that he was covered with blood because his brother owns horses and one of them had been cut, Rodriguez said.
Kuszak, who moved to Savannah, Georgia, from San Francisco about five years ago, arrived Tuesday night in Puerto Rico, where she met up with her fiance and several friends.
“She was looking forward to the rest of her life with her fiance and her unborn baby,” her friend Matt Daniel said in a phone interview from Georgia. “I’m just devastated. I don’t know who would do something like that.”
Kuszak, who worked on sailboats and part-time in real-estate and catering, was five months pregnant, friends said.
She and her fiance, Cheshire McIntosh, met several years ago on a South Pacific island where she was vacationing and he was sailing a yacht, said another friend in Georgia, John Everette.
“That’s how two young, attractive people met,” he said. “She dropped her life in San Francisco … to be with Cheshire and live this free life of sailing on the seas. She was a rolling stone.”
Kuszak apparently was going to visit some friends whose yacht was at a marina in Fajardo, in eastern Puerto Rico, marina spokeswoman Frances Rios said. After she was kidnapped, Kuszak called a marina employee on her cell phone from the trunk of the car, Ocasio said. The employee then called 911.
It was unclear why Kuszak did not call 911 directly, but she may not have known that the same emergency number used on the mainland is also used on this U.S. Caribbean territory.
Police would not release a transcript of the employee’s 911 call because the case is under investigation.
About an hour after receiving the call, police found Kuszak’s partially clothed body in a field.
