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By LUKE WEIR,
Roanoke Times
(Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)
Pro-Palestinian protesters linked arms to protect Muslim participants during late afternoon prayers at Virginia Tech, minutes after student organizers warned of a potential police crackdown during a third day of demonstrations on Sunday. Hundreds participated and more people watched as chants continued outside the Graduate Life Center on campus in Blacksburg. Around 10:30 p.m. Sunday, police were setting up a perimeter and warning anyone inside it to leave or be arrested, including media. Buses with police officers were arriving.
VaNews April 29, 2024
By NOUR HABIB,
Virginian-Pilot
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One day, Judith Burkett of Portsmouth received a call from her grandson’s school: Did she know where Jakob was? He hadn’t attended in months. Months before, the boy — his mother, her partner and three younger brothers — had been living with Burkett. But Burkett’s daughter and her partner had a drug problem and the family suddenly left in fall 2022, a couple of months into Jakob’s third grade year. Burkett started asking friends and family to help look. She found out where they were living and alerted the school. The school attendance liaison became “a godsend.” “She was like a pit bull until she got him back in school.”
VaNews April 29, 2024
By SEAN JONES,
Richmond Times-Dispatch
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Henrico County leaders are considering a plan to make roughly 100 to 150 new homes more affordable each year. There’s a national home affordability crisis that’s showing its effects locally with average homebuyers being priced out of the market. Staple jobs — police officers, teachers, dental assistants and paralegals — often make less than half the yearly salary needed to afford the median home price in the county.
VaNews April 29, 2024
By KATHERINE SCHULTE,
Virginia Business
Google is investing $1 billion in expanding its Virginia data center campuses this year and is launching a $75 million Google.org AI Opportunity Fund, one of Google’s top executives and Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Friday at Google’s Reston office. “Today is a great day. We’ve got a $1 billion investment in the commonwealth that we’re announcing. There’s an establishment of a new AI Opportunity Fund. And we’re creating new and opportunistic ways and pathways for people to upskill and find a new pathway to an amazing career,” Youngkin said. “That is worth celebrating.”
VaNews April 29, 2024
By ROBERT ARCHER,
published in
Roanoke Times
(Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)
The efforts in the recent legislative session to make the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority more independent of the executive branch give me pause and concern. I have been involved in the alcohol business at Blue Ridge Beverage Company Inc. for more than 50 years. Our family business has always taken seriously the responsible marketing and consumption of alcoholic beverages and the issues surrounding them. Also, in my travels over the years as a member of our national trade association leadership, I learned that Virginia’s ABC has always served as a model for the control and regulation of a product that can cause harm if abused.
Archer is chairman and CEO of Blue Ridge Beverage Inc. based in Salem.
VaNews April 29, 2024
By KEITH EPPS,
Free Lance-Star
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About a year and a half ago, Fredericksburg police responded to an accident at one of the city’s apartment complexes in which an 8-year-old boy ran in front of a car and was struck. City police chief Brian Layton said the first responding officer spoke Spanish and was able to communicate with the boy. But he couldn’t save the child, who died in the officer’s arms. “It was a horrific scene,” Layton said. “That’s the kind of thing that stays with you for a lifetime.”
VaNews April 29, 2024
By STAFF REPORT,
Loudoun Now
Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat on Friday announced a $1 billion investment to expand Google’s Virginia data center campuses this year including two Loudoun County sites.
The $1 billion investment brings Google’s total investment in the state to more than $4.2 billion. Google calculates its Loudoun County investment at more than $1 billion.
VaNews April 29, 2024
By CHARLIE PAULLIN,
Virginia Mercury
Those puddles of water along highways and property that seem like swamps are wetlands, a natural resource with numerous environmental benefits ranging from wildlife habitat and protection from flooding.
How those wetlands are sited and how they are protected is determined by wetland delineators, who are professionally certified after rigorous training and years of experience.
But Virginia legislators this year rolled back one requirement for the job and are attempting further changes through a less public regulatory process. Current professional wetland delineators say those efforts could undermine the integrity of the state’s certification and efforts to preserve a natural resource that is already under threat.
VaNews April 29, 2024
By SAM SCHAFFER,
Virginian-Pilot
(Metered Paywall - 2 articles a month)
William & Mary will increase tuition for the second year in a row after years of the price remaining the same.
Tuition will increase by 2.5% for in-state undergraduate students and by 3.3% for out-of-state undergraduate students for fiscal years 2025 and 2026, according to a resolution passed by the W&M Board of Visitors on Friday.
VaNews April 29, 2024
By JONATHAN HUNLEY,
Fredericksburg Free Press
It was about a year and a half ago, right before Christmas, when a Fredericksburg police officer had a life-changing moment.
He was responding to a call for service at an apartment complex, and he was first on the scene.
An 8-year-old boy had been walking back from a playground with a family member when he saw that his parents had just gotten back home. The boy ran over to see his mother and father, but he was struck by a car coming through the parking lot.
VaNews April 29, 2024
