Gunman Reported Near Virginia Tech; Washington's Employment Bubble May Be Bursting: Morning Links

This isn't exactly weather, but today NASA is predicting a "moderate to strong" solar storm to hit the Earth today. It should reach the Eastern time zone at 9:55 AM—plus or minus seven minutes.

Gunman Reported Near Virginia Tech: Reports surfaced yesterday morning that a person with a gun was seen near the campus of Virginia Tech University, the site of a school massacre in 2007. When police couldn't find anyone matching the gunman's description, the alert was lifted. But, as NBC4 points out, even if the description was correct, the man carrying the gun wouldn't have been breaking any laws, since Virginia cannot prohibit openly carried guns on university campuses.

Washington's Employment Bubble Bursts?: Washington's jobless numbers spiked in the two months by nearly an entire percentage point, Liz Farmer at the Washington Examiner reports. Nearly 30,000 Washington-area workers filed new unemployment claims in that period. The area's unemployment rate is now 6.2 percent; in April, it was 5.4 percent. The jobless increase is likely related to cuts in government spending in an area that is heavily dependent on federal employment and government contracts.

Virginia Vets Look to Get Into Politics: Veterans on both sides of the aisle in Virginia are looking to unseat sitting congressmen in the state. Army Colonel Chris Perkins, a Republican, said he will challenge Representative Gerald Connolly of Fairfax. Air Force General John Douglass, a Democrat, wants to unseat Representative Frank Wolf in Virginia's tenth district.

Briefly Noted: Rapper/entrepreneur Jay-Z passed through DC and told a radio station host that he dined with former DC Mayor Adrian Fenty. . . . Two flights in the DC area were listed as "chronically" late—an American Airlines flight out of BWI to Dallas and a JetBlue flight out of Dulles to Boston.

Programming Note: Your morning links writer will be taking a brief vacation Monday and Tuesday next week. Morning links will return on Wednesday.

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