The following stories have been hand-selected by the Assignment Desk at News4:
TEACHER'S NUDE PHOTOS VIEWED BY COPS
A former middle school teacher and his girlfriend have filed federal lawsuits accusing Culpeper police officers of viewing and distributing nude photos of the woman that were on the teacher's cell phone. The suits claim that, following the teacher's DUI arrest in March 2008, officers not only viewed the photos, but sent out calls on the police radio inviting other officers to come in and look at the pictures. (Free Lance-Star)
MONTGOMERY COUNTY SCHOOL SECURITY
After a parent was charged with kidnapping a 6-year-old boy from Lakewood Elementary School in Rockville last week, school officials have begun implementing changes they hope will increase security and prevent similar incidents from happening again. Some of the immediate changes include students being required to use the buddy system when leaving the classroom for any reason and guests being required to show identification when signing in at the main office, school officials said. (Gazette)
WORKERS STRANDED IN MANASSAS
Life in the Manassas area hasn’t worked out for a bunch of out-of-town construction guys who came to help build the Super Wal-Mart at the Manassas Mall. Kyle Addison of Atlanta said he and a dozen or so others came to the area to work for Crossroads Concrete Construction, an Atlanta-based subcontractor to the Richmond-based KBS, which is building the store. The men say they haven’t been paid in six weeks. Addison said representatives of both companies kept promising the men they would get paid. “Two weeks were up and they were like ‘Just keep working, we’re going to get you paid,’” Addison said. Time passed. The men kept working on the promise of forthcoming paychecks. But in the end, they never saw the money. (Insidenova.com)
LATINO TEENS YOUTH TASK FORCE
Community leaders are warning of a crisis among Latino teens in Montgomery County and calling for a broad effort to improve the odds for those at risk of joining gangs, dropping out of high school and other troubles. Leaders of a newly formed Latino Youth Task Force have met in recent weeks with county and school district officials to present the findings of a recent teen survey and to draw attention to the county and state's "very troubling" statistics on Latino youth. (Washington Post)
SOCIAL NETWORKING IDENTITY THEFT?
The headache of tax day is gone, but your returns could still be floating somewhere online if you use file-sharing programs to download music and movies, security analysts say. Identity thieves are exploiting the programs to reach into people's computers and pluck documents containing social security numbers, bank account information or credit card numbers. As the economy has spiraled, there's been an uptick in the number of searches for personal information in peer-to-peer file networks such as LimeWire, identity theft experts say. (The Capital)
ICC AND CRIME?
Residents of the Silver Spring neighborhood of Tanglewood know the Intercounty Connector is coming, but a proposed ICC bike tunnel near Briggs Chaney Road is something they're willing to fight. A bike tunnel will likely bring more crime, said Bob McFadden, president of the Tanglewood Homeowner's Recreation Association, the body that oversees the 820 homes in the neighborhood. (Gazette)
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Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia local news, events and information
SWEET TIMES FOR HERSHEY
The long runup to Easter and a recent price increase helped Hershey, the nation's second-largest candymaker, post a 20 percent increase in its first-quarter profit. The Hershey Co. said today it earned $75.9 million, or 33 cents a share, in the three months ended April 5. A year earlier, it earned $63.2 million, or 28 cents a share. (Richmond Times Dispatch)
