Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 7, 1995 TAG: 9503070129
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
NORFOLK - A researcher has concluded that there was less than a 1-in-100,000 chance that work assignments and pay plans could have happened randomly in a Norfolk Naval Shipyard shop whose workers filed a racial discrimination lawsuit.
The study by an Emory University psychology professor was cited in arguments before a federal magistrate, who will determine whether the case brought last October by members of the government-owned shipyard's Shop 71 can proceed.
Attorneys for the Navy and the union that represents the workers, the Metal Trades Council, have asked U.S. Magistrate Tommy E. Miller to dismiss the case for lack of evidence.
``Specific factual allegations that support claims of discrimination are a must,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney Larry Leonard, representing the shipyard, said at a hearing. ``I suggest to the court they are sorely lacking in this case.''
But Thomas F. Hennessy, an attorney for the approximately 30 Shop 71 workers who turned out for the hearing, said the discrimination has been an ongoing practice that is condoned by both management and the union.
The workers, seeking $58 million in damages, contend they have been denied training and have been relegated to low-level jobs because of their race.
- Associated Press
Lottery is stopping its newspaper ads
RICHMOND - The Virginia Lottery no longer will advertise in newspapers, saying radio and television promotions are more effective.
The lottery, with an advertising budget of $17.5 million, said a July 1994 survey showed that only 4 percent of players got information about the game from newspapers.
In contrast, 57 percent relied on television, which carries live drawings of the big-money Lotto game. Nineteen percent listened to the radio for lottery updates.
The lottery's retreat from print advertising is part of a national pattern, according to the 1994 edition of World Lottery Almanac.
Only one state, Texas, spent as much as Virginia on print promotion - $3 million - with four others budgeting between $1.25 million and $1.54 million.
- Associated Press
Ms. Senior Virginia crowned in Fairfax
FAIRFAX - The third time was the charm for a 75-year-old Fredericksburg woman competing in the 1995 Ms. Senior Virginia Pageant.
Virginia Ann Freeman won the pageant Saturday in Fairfax.
She was the runner-up in a Ms. Virginia Senior Citizen Pageant in Roanoke in 1993 and was Ms. Congeniality in that pageant's 1994 competition.
She'll represent Virginia in the Ms. Senior America Pageant in May in Biloxi, Miss.
Freeman takes Jazzercise and dance classes to keep fit and often models for Leggett and Carlton Ltd.
- Associated Press
Wanted: Farmers to raise bay scallops
GLOUCESTER POINT - After five years of tinkering and testing, researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science think they've perfected the farm-raised bay scallop.
They've taste-tested their product at selected raw bars and restaurants. They've shown how it can be marketed - as scallops to be served in the shell - to compete with frozen scallops now brought to local seafood counters mostly from China and Mexico.
Now they need some scallop farmers.
``We're building a whole base of information so that if somebody wants to do this, we have the information,'' said William DuPaul, the institute's associate director for advisory services.
Bay scallops are the smaller cousins of sea scallops - the white, half-dollar-size meat most people get when they order scallops in a restaurant.
Though native to the lower Chesapeake and the Eastern Shore, bay scallops all but disappeared from Virginia waters in the late 1930s, as the result of a blight that killed off the eel grass beds where they lived, said Mike Oesterling, a commercial fisheries specialist at VIMS.
- Associated Press
by CNB