VIRGINIA BRIEFING

GATES FOUNDATION

$28.5 Million Gift Targets HIV

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has donated $28.5 million to Eastern Virginia Medical School to develop a substance that will help prevent HIV infection.

The donation will go to the medical school's Contraceptive Research and Development (CONRAD) program, which works closely with the federal government to help people in foreign countries prevent the spread of AIDS. CONRAD is based in Arlington County but also has a laboratory and clinical research center in Norfolk.

For 20 years, CONRAD has been researching and testing microbicides, which are often produced as a cream or gel that women use to prevent the transmission of HIV. The World Health Organization has urged development of microbicides as an alternative to condoms in poor countries.

-- Associated Press

U.S. DISTRICT COURT

Head of Gambling Ring Sentenced

The head of a sports gambling and loan shark ring in Northern Virginia was sentenced yesterday to more than eight years in prison and ordered to forfeit $2.5 million in proceeds.

Raj Kumar Bansal, 63, of Annandale pleaded guilty in September to a federal racketeering conspiracy in which he oversaw a long-running sports bookmaking operation out of a butcher shop in Springfield and threatened violence to gamblers who did not pay their debts. U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton sentenced Bansal to 100 months in prison. He also found that Bansal had tried to tamper with witnesses after his arrest in 2006.

Nine other participants pleaded guilty, including Bansal's two sons, Nicholas Bansal, 35, and Steven Bansal, 32, and two more people were convicted at trial. Nicholas Bansal was sentenced to 51 months, and Steven Bansal received a 37-month term. Both were ordered to pay $2.5 million after they pleaded guilty in June and agreed to testify against their father.