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Yancey: Shenandoah County set to vote on whether to restore Confederate names
The Shenandoah County School Board is set to vote Thursday on whether to restore Confederate names to two schools. What used to be Stonewall Jackson High School is now Mountain View High School. What used to be Ashby Lee Elementary is now Honey Run Elementary. The 2020 name changes have not sat well with some in the county. Those who opposed the name changes in the first place remain on the school board; those who favored them are now gone and a new school board might well take the unusual step of returning Confederate names to public buildings.
Rozell: Youngkin, Dems wasted months on political theater. Can they pass a budget?
During the one-day reconvened General Assembly session in which legislators consider gubernatorial amendments and vetoes, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Democratic legislative leaders said out loud the part we knew all along — it was finally time to compromise. Perhaps we should rejoice that the realization sank in late instead of too late to meet the June 30 deadline for finalizing a new budget to direct state government spending for the next two fiscal years.
Coyner: Hospitals backstop our mental health. We must keep them open
Most people tend to think of hospitals as a place you go to seek treatment for serious or life-threatening physical injuries. We think of the emergency departments whose doors are open 24/7, every day of the year, ready to provide acute and comprehensive care. But in addition, hospitals are also increasingly providing a different kind of crucial safety net: backstopping our mental health services.
Interior Department defends Va. offshore wind farm in court
The Biden administration and the developer of a $9.8 billion wind farm off of Virginia Beach, Virginia, assured a federal court Friday that the project has all necessary approvals, amid claims that construction would harm the endangered North Atlantic right whale. The joint court filing from the Interior Department and Dominion Energy comes in response to a request to halt work on the massive Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, which is slated to include 176 turbines and is the largest project of its kind currently under development in the United States.
Otieno’s mother to Department of Justice: ‘Where are you?’
The family of Irvo Otieno pleaded for the intervention of the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday afternoon, minutes after a judge approved the dismissal of five charges of second-degree murder in Otieno’s death in March 2023. The request comes despite the possibility that charges may still be refiled by Dinwiddie County Commonwealth’s Attorney Amanda Mann, who has suggested to the family that the cases are only being dropped as part of her legal strategy to reorder the cases.
‘Virginia is not New York’: Attorney general says arrests at U.Va. necessary, as protesters express outrage
The state’s attorney general said the move to arrest and remove pro-Palestinian protesters from the University of Virginia campus was necessary after weeks of lawless acts that some students dispute. Twenty-five people were arrested Saturday at the Charlottesville campus after police clashed with protesters. On Sunday morning, Attorney General Jason Miyares spoke in support of the state police action, calling student claims that the police response was disproportionate as “good PR spin by those on the other side.”
Where is Jim Ryan?
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan would like you to know that he found the entire episode on Grounds this past Saturday “upsetting, frightening, and sad.” Only imagine how he might have felt if he had been there. But no one saw hide nor hair of Mr. Ryan Saturday, even though his official residence at Carr’s Hill is steps away from the epicenter of the violence that unfolded as state police encircled and then raided a quiet and, frankly, meager attempt at a protest on a soggy patch of grass by the University Chapel.
Bristow data center corridor looks to expand to 8 buildings
While some see the proliferation of data centers stretching from Loudoun into Prince William County as one big “data center alley,” a closer look shows they are popping up in clusters. One such cluster near the southern end of Hornbaker Road in Bristow is owned and operated by Stack Infrastructure of Denver. Stack hopes to make it bigger. A land-use firm that represents Stack held open houses at the Sweeney Barn in Manassas last week to introduce residents to its latest additions — two new data center buildings dubbed “Bristow Campus.” They would be built on land north of Nokesville Road, about a half-mile west of the Hornbaker Road site.
Energy Developers Want Reforms to Va.’s Process for Connecting Renewables to Grid
As Virginia solar developers and Dominion Energy continue to clash over requirements for tying new small and mid-sized renewables into the electric grid, some environmental groups and grid experts say changing how the state approaches interconnection costs could ease long-standing issues. “It’s a solution to a big problem that’s been stifling a lot of solar projects,” said Josephus Allmond, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. Virginia, like other states that have adopted ambitious renewables goals, has seen increasing tension in recent years over interconnection, the process of connecting new power sources to the electric grid.
U.S. company fined $650,000 for illegally hiring children to clean meat processing plants
A Tennessee-based sanitation company has agreed to pay more than half a million dollars after a federal investigation found it illegally hired at least two dozen children to clean dangerous meat processing facilities in Iowa and Virginia. The U.S. Department of Labor announced Monday that Fayette Janitorial Service LLC entered into a consent judgment, in which the company agrees to nearly $650,000 in civil penalties and the court-ordered mandate that it no longer employs minors. The February filing indicated federal investigators believed at least four children had still been working at one Iowa slaughterhouse as of Dec. 12.