Metro
In Brief
Monday, May 12, 2003; Page B03
About 150 people in wheelchairs gathered outside the White House yesterday to demand an apology from President Bush and Congress for what they said were decades of forced institutionalization caused by rigid Medicare rules that favor nursing homes and other institutions over at-home care for the disabled.
About two dozen protesters, chanting "free our people," handcuffed themselves to the fence in front of the White House, but D.C. police officers quickly unlocked and confiscated the handcuffs.
Organizers said the protest was the start of five days of action to push for passage of the Medicaid Community-Based Attendant Services and Supports Act, which would allow people with disabilities to receive Medicaid to cover care in their homes rather than forcing them to go to nursing homes and other facilities.
Police are promising more stringent Preakness Stakes security after a melee in the infield of Pimlico Race Course last year.
Baltimore police and the Maryland Jockey Club are at odds over how to handle security at Saturday's event because race officials rejected some police recommendations on alcohol rules. Police have decided not to put uniformed officers inside what is considered a private event, forcing the Jockey Club to hire additional security guards.
Some plainclothes officers will be inside, while about 500 officers will patrol the streets outside the race course.
More than 100,000 fans attended last year's Preakness, which was accompanied by sporadic fighting; 192 fans were kicked out of the race course, and six were arrested.
A philanthropic foundation has given the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine a four-year, $24 million grant to establish a cardiac research center.
The grant, from the Las Vegas-based Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, will allow Hopkins to study the use of stem cells to prevent sudden deaths and modern imaging techniques to identify the abnormalities that put people at risk.
Queen Noor of Jordan told graduates of the College of William and Mary yesterday that coalitions between governments should go beyond politics "to establish a new kind of security built on mutual benefits, not better bombs."
Noor said at the college's commencement that countries should work together to build peace by connecting people on every level.
"It certainly is a critically important moment for building coalitions, but on very different terms," said Noor, the U.S.-born widow of King Hussein. "Not an axis of self-interest between states for political ends, but true partnerships between people based on respect for our shared values, needs and fundamental human rights, and also on respect for our differences."
Virginia Military Institute's governing body approved a 23 percent increase in in-state tuition for the 2003-04 school year, bringing the cost to nearly $3,900.
VMI's Board of Visitors also voted to raise annual student fees, including room and board, to nearly $9,000 per year. This brings the total cost for an in-state student to attend the university to $12,850, a 10 percent increase.
Tuition for out-of-state students will go up from about $14,940 to $16,570, an increase of 11 percent. Total cost for non-Virginia students will rise 9 percent, from about $23,500 to $25,560.
Officials said the cost increases came in response to state budget cuts of about $2.6 million.
D.C. firefighters rescued four people last night from the top floor of an apartment building after they were trapped there by a fire on the second floor.
A fifth person was carried out by a firefighter who charged up the stairwell of the four-story apartment building, at 450 Condon Terrace SE, fire department spokesman Alan Etter said. The three children and two adults who were rescued and a woman who left the building on her own were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation, he said.
The fire, which started about 7 p.m. in the second-floor apartment's bedroom, destroyed the second-floor apartment. An investigation into the fire's cause was underway, Etter said.
"Every time I'd go downstate, I'd see what we didn't have. And we were laughed at, which always teed me off."
-- Casper R. Taylor Jr., former speaker of the House of Delegates, who was first elected to represent his Western Maryland district in 1974. -- Page B1
Compiled from reports by staff writers Jacqueline L. Salmon and David Snyder and the Associated Press.
