Explore Business Standard
Virginia
The US government has scrapped its litigation against the company that owns the salvage rights to the Titanic, noting that the firm no longer has expedition plans to the shipwreck that could break federal law. The scuttling of the government's latest legal battle isn't necessarily the end of RMS Titanic Inc.'s attempts to enter the rapidly deteriorating ocean liner or to fetch more historic objects. The company said last month that it's still considering the implications of future expeditions. But the US on Friday withdrew its motion to intervene in a federal admiralty court in Virginia, which oversees salvage matters for the world's most famous shipwreck. The withdrawal concluded the second of two legal battles in five years that the US has waged against RMS Titanic Inc, the company that has retrieved and exhibited the ship's artifacts. The US filed its latest legal challenge in 2023 when RMST was planning to take images inside the ship's hull and pluck items from the surrounding .
A shooting injured four people at Virginia State University early Wednesday, police said. Two men taken into custody at the shooting scene were charged with brandishing firearms, but they have not been charged in the shooting, police announced Wednesday afternoon. Officers responded to a report of a shooting that occurred in a large crowd at the university south of Richmond around 12:30 am and found two men and two women who had been shot, Chesterfield County Police said in a news release. All four were taken to hospitals with injuries not considered life-threatening, police said. The campus was placed on lockdown until it was deemed safe, the university said in a statement. None of the victims is enrolled for the fall semester, according to university spokesperson Gwen Williams Dandridge. Classes start next week, but freshmen and student leaders are already on campus this week, she said. The two 21-year-old men taken into custody were charged with brandishing a firearm, and one o
Only minutes into a doomed journey that ended on a remote Virginia mountain, the pilot of a business jet was not responding to air traffic control instructions and the situation was soon reported to a network that includes military, security and law enforcement agencies, according to federal aviation officials. Despite being out of contact on its ascent Sunday afternoon, the jet that had just taken off from a Tennessee airport continued toward its intended destination on New York's Long Island, then turned to fly back to Virginia where it slammed into a mountain, killing the four people aboard. Family and friends identified two of the victims as an entrepreneur known in New York real-estate circles and her 2-year-old daughter. Outside aviation experts speculated the pilot likely lost consciousness from a lack of oxygen inside the jet when it climbed above 10,000 feet (3,048 meters), the altitude that typically requires cabin pressurization. The most likely scenario right now is a .
A federal judge in Virginia has ruled that a law banning licensed federal firearms dealers from selling handguns to young adults under 21 violates the Second Amendment and is unconstitutional. The ruling Wednesday by US District Court Judge Robert Payne in Richmond, if not overturned, would prevent dealers from selling handguns to 18- to 20-year-olds. In his 71-page ruling, Payne wrote that many of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship are granted at the age of 18, including the right to vote, enlist in the military without parental permission and serve on a federal jury. If the Court were to exclude 18-to-20-year-olds from the Second Amendment's protection, it would impose limitations on the Second Amendment that do not exist with other constitutional guarantees, Payne wrote. Because the statutes and regulations in question are not consistent with our Nation's history and tradition, they, therefore, cannot stand. Payne's ruling is the latest decision striking down gun law
Indian pharmaceutical company Granules has opened a packaging facility in the Virginia State of the US to expand the packaging capacity of essential drugs in the state, thus strengthening the biopharma supply chain. The facility was inaugurated by India's Ambassador to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu. Granules, which was one of the first Indian pharmaceutical companies that received FDA authorization to export to the United States, has invested more than USD 100 million in the country, said Dr Krishna Prasad Chigurupati, the founder, chairman and managing director of the firm. "We have nearly 200 employees in Virginia with a large majority of them first-generation Indians," he said, adding the company also has a team of 30 scientists for research and development. Granules India Ltd produces some of the most widely used drugs, including Paracetamol, that have been very useful to billions across the world, Chigurupati said. "Happy to see Made in India' medicines value added in the US b
Two people were killed and five others were injured in a shooting in Norfolk, Virginia, police said Sunday. Officers responded to a report of gunfire around midnight. When they arrived, they found four women and three men with gunshot wounds, police said. Zabre Miller, 25, and Angela McKnight, 19, later died at a hospital, police said. Several Norfolk State University students were victims of the shooting at an off-campus location, the university said on its Facebook page. Initial indications are that our students were innocent bystanders of a shooting at an evening house party, the university wrote in the post. NSU also said police secured the campus, and there was no present danger. Detectives were continuing to investigate Sunday, police said.