Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Digest

VA. Tech panel recommends reforms

By Times Wires
Published August 23, 2007

BLACKSBURG, VA.

Virginia Tech recommended monitoring troubled students and increasing security Wednesday in an internal report that didn't address one of the most troubling questions about the massacre: Should administrators have locked down the campus after the first two deaths?

The university has said it wants an outside panel to examine that issue and the other actions school staff took in the two hours between the killings of two people in a dorm and the deaths of 31 more in a classroom building April 16. The report by that panel, established by Gov. Timothy Kaine, is due next week.

The school reviewed counseling services, security and communication after the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

ST. PAUL, MINN.

Pigeon droppings may have weakened bridge

Pounded and strained by heavy traffic and weakened by missing bolts and cracking steel, the failed interstate bridge over the Mississippi River also faced a less obvious enemy: birds, specifically pigeons.

Experts say the corrosive guano deposited all over the Interstate 35W span's framework helped the steel beams rust faster.

Pigeon droppings contain ammonia and acids, said chemist Neal Langerman of the American Chemical Society. If the dung isn't washed away, it dries out and turns into a concentrated salt. When water combines with the salt and ammonia, it creates small electrochemical reactions that rust the steel.

Investigators have yet to identify the cause of the bridge's Aug. 1 collapse, which killed at least 13 people and injured about 100.

Elsewhere

DOG TREATS TESTED: The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it was checking Chinese-made dog treats for chemical or biological contamination. Wal-Mart said this week it had stopped selling Chicken Jerky Strips from Import-Pingyang Pet Product Co. and Chicken Jerky from Shanghai Bestro Trading in July, after customers said the products sickened their pets.

PSYCHIATRIC DRUG: The FDA on Wednesday approved Risperdal for the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in children and adolescents. Risperdal, manufactured by Janssen, was approved for adults in 1993.

[Last modified August 23, 2007, 00:00:45]