New Haven, CT, United States (AHN) – The man who admitted to killing a gradaute student in 2009 while working as a Yale University lab technician was set to be sentenced on Friday.

Raymond Clark, 26, was facing 44 years in prison under a plea agreement he accepted last March. He was convicted of murdering Annie Le, a pharmacology doctoral student at the university.

Under the plea deal, Clark also admitted to sexual assault under the Alford Doctrine, which meant he agreed that there was sufficient evidence for him to be convicted of the charge. He admitted guilt as prosecutors released evidence indicating Le may have been sexually assaulted.

Family members of Le, who was a San Jose, CA native of Vietnamese descent, were to speak at the sentencing.

Le was last seen on surveillance video in the morning of Sept. 8, 2009, entering the university’s Animal Research Center in the medical school complex, where Clark took care of animals. Her body was found in a wall in the basement of the laboratory five days later, on the day of her wedding.

Clark, who worked at the lab for five years, was later arrested at a motel in Cromwell, CT and held on $3 million bond.

Le’s death received national attention and left the New Haven university deeply shaken. Yale later updated its workplace violence prevention policy and established a fellowship in Le’s honor.

Investigators said the 24-year-old Le died of strangulation. They found several items in the lab that led them to arrest Clark, who had nothing in his employment history at the campus that “gave an indication that his involvement in such a crime might be possible,” Yale University President Richard Levin had said in message to the campus community after the tragedy.

The evidence included blood stains on a white sock found inside a drop ceiling located in a secure area of the lab that contained both Clark and Le’s DNA. The single sock matched a sock found in the crevice where Le’s body’s was stuffed.

In addition, there was a pair of Vikings work boots with blood-like stains and “Ray-C” written on them. Police found a green pen under Le’s body which contained DNA from both Clark and the victim. The pen is believed to be the same one Clark used to sign task sheets, using the initials “RC,” while working.

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New Haven, CT, United States (AHN) – Amid a federal probe on sexual misconduct charges, Yale University has decided to sanction the Delta Kappa Epsilon chapter on its campus for pro-rape chants that were videotaped and widely distributed online last year.

In an email to faculty and students, Yale College Dean Mary Miller announced that DKE would be banned from recruiting or undertaking any activities on campus for five years.

The suspension includes restrictions on using university bulletin boards or the Yale email to communicate with students, and using the name of the university in connection with the fraternity as an organization.

Delta Kappa Epsilon was founded in 1844 at the university. It counts among its alumni five former presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt, Gerald Ford and George W. Bush.

The fraternity came under fire last October when it conducted a pledge ritual that involved shouting, “No means yes, yes means anal,” and,” “My name is Jack, I’m a necrophiliac, I f— dead women.” Footage of the chants was posted online, sparking outcry beyond the New Haven campus.

In the wake of the controversy, DKE met with university officials and apologized to the Yale Women’s Center.

The sanctions were meted following a probe by the university executive committee on a complaint from the dean of student affairs, Marichal Gentry, of “sexual harassment” and “imperiling the integrity and values of the University community.”

The panel’s investigation included interviews of fraternity members involved in the incident.

The committee found that the chapter had threatened and intimidated others, in violation of undergraduate rules on “harassment, coercion or intimidation” and “imperiling the integrity and values of the University community.”

Several fraternity members were also found to have violated the same rules. Their names were not released due to federal privacy laws.

“Every member of our community has a legal and moral right to an educational environment free from harassment and intimidation,” Miller said.

Although the national organization has yet to receive a formal request for suspension from the university, the executive director of Delta Kappa Epsilon International, Douglas Lanpher, told the Yale Daily News that the sanctions were “excessive”and that the organization would appeal.

Yale is currently being investigated by the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Education Department about violations of Title IX.

A group of 16 former and current students is accusing the university of failing to address allegations of sexual assault and harassment.

The law, one of several educational reforms passed in 1972, amends the Civil Rights Act to prohibit the exclusion of anyone on the basis of sex from educational programs directly funded by the federal government.

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Three people, including the alleged gunman, died Tuesday night in a shooting at San Jose State University.

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San Marcos, TX, United States (AHN) – A Texas State University student died Tuesday after jumping out a window with two other students, one of whom remains in a hospital.

According to the Austin American Statesman, sophomore Eirin Ann Hicks died from head injuries at the Brackenridge University Medical Center. The 24-year-old is believed to have jumped from a first-floor window of a dormitory hours before her death, along with a female and a male student.

The female student, a freshman, remains in the hospital. The male student was not injured.

Authorities are investigating the reason the students jumped out the window.

KXAN television reported that Hicks was a resident assistant at the dorm, Laurel Hall, and that there was a gathering inside the room from which she jumped.

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Stanford University became the latest Ivy League school on Friday to reinastate the Reserve Officers Training Corps. 

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Having Botox injections to smooth facial wrinkles dulls people’s ability to read emotions in others, said two US psychologists in a study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science recently. Lead author David Neal, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and his co-author Tanya Chartrand, marketing and psychology professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in Durham, North Carolina, carried out the study…

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Athens, GA, United States (AHN) – Researchers at the University of Georgia and Yale University have discovered a compound that could treat blisters known as shingles better than anything currently available.

Shingles is a condition that affects up to 30 percent of Americans, mostly elderly, and for which no specific treatment exists.

The varicella-zoster virus or VZV virus from childhood chickenpox hides in the nerves, emerging most frequently in adults over the age of 60 as a blistering rash on one side of the body. The outbreak can cause nerve pain that can persist for months or years after the shingles attack is gone, also increases with age.

The new effective anti-shingles agent called L-BHDA may change that according to researchers.

“We need new options for medications with increased potency and specificity that can treat VZV, including strains that may be resistant to existing drugs,” said medicinal chemist Chung (David) Chu, Distinguished Research Professor of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences at UGA, one of the inventors of L-BHDA.

A research collaboration between Chu and co-inventor Yung-Chi (Tommy) Cheng, from the Henry Bronson Professor of Pharmacology at Yale, have yielded an extensive portfolio of antiviral compounds that target such diseases as HIV, shingles, hepatitis and cancers.

“L-BHDA has the potential to be more effective than existing agents,” said Chu.

A vaccine to prevent shingles has been available to older adults since 2006, however according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, only a small percentage of older people receive the shot, principally because of cost, lack of insurance reimbursement and shortage of supply.

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A Chinese student of a Toronto, Canada university was murdered in her dorm room while she was chatting with her boyfriend in Beijing, China.

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New Haven, MA, United States (AHN) – Yale University announced on Wednesday that a student who was to graduate next month died following an accident in a laboratory.

Michele Dufault died after an accident invovling a piece of equipment in the Sterling Chemistry Laboratory, according to a message to the campus community from Vice President Linda Koch Lorimer.

The incident occurred Tuesday night. The parents of Dufault, an astronomy and physics major, have been informed and were on the way to the university.

No details of the accident were released but the campus paper cited an official confirming that Dufault died after her hair was caught in the equipment.

The laboratory was closed for the day and classes were cancelled.

Dufault was a member of the university’s Precision Marching Band and served as co-president of the university’s organization for physics students. Last year, she was one of about a dozen members of the Yale Drop Team, a group of students who build and conduct experiments aboard NASA’s specialized Boeing 727 under a competitive federal program.

“Michele was an exceptional young woman, an outstanding student and young scientist, a dear friend and a vibrant member of this community,” Lorimer said. “We will find ways in the next day to gather to celebrate her life and grieve this loss.”

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Prosecutors on Thursday dropped charges against teammates of a Pace University football player fatally shot by police responding to a bar brawl last year.

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