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There’s a Shortage of OB-GYNS Locally, Statewide, and Nationally
In mid-February, Dakota Richardson went to the emergency room at Stafford Hospital for abdominal pain. Ultrasound imaging revealed a large cyst on one of her ovaries. “They told me they were not going to remove it right away because it wasn’t an emergency yet,” Richardson told the Advance. “But they said, we want you to go to your gynecologist.” She did, and a follow-up ultrasound showed that the cyst was still there. She and her doctor decided to move forward with surgery at Mary Washington Hospital to remove it.
D.C.-area parents worry about learning loss and teacher shortages, poll finds
Nearly half of Washington-area parents say learning loss from the pandemic and teacher shortages are major issues for local schools, a Washington Post-Schar School poll found, as districts continue to look for ways to boost student performance. When asked to rate how serious certain issues were in their communities’ schools, 46 percent of parents of schoolchildren across the region say learning loss from covid disruptions and not having enough teachers are major problems. More than half of parents in D.C. name each as major problems, along with roughly half in suburban Maryland and just over 4 in 10 in Northern Virginia.
Tobacco commission announces more than $5 million in grants for Southwest, Southside
Eleven projects in Southwest Virginia totaling $3.71 million and eight projects in Southside totaling $1.33 million — focusing on site development, agribusiness, tourism and business development — were approved by the Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission during the first meeting the panel has held in Lee County. Among the awards is a grant of $656,416 that will go toward constructing a shell building for a potential data center at a developing Wise County industrial park called Project Intersection. In recent months, county and economic development officials have said repeatedly that they hope to land data centers for Southwest Virginia.
Trump endorses Cao for GOP Senate nomination
Former President Donald Trump has endorsed Hung Cao for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in Virginia to oppose Democratic incumbent Tim Kaine. In a Sunday post on the social media site Truth Social, Trump announced his “complete and total endorsement” of Cao, a retired military officer from Loudon County, over four other Republicans.
How Florida’s abortion law is affecting East Coast abortion clinics
Clinics up the East Coast have seen a surge in patient traffic since a law banning most abortions in Florida went into effect on May 1 — but so far they have not experienced the collapse in care that many providers had feared before the new restrictions began in the country’s third most populous state, according to new data collected by a research team at Middlebury College. Wait times for abortion appointments have increased at approximately 30 percent of clinics across North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., the areas closest to Florida where abortion remains legal after six weeks of pregnancy, according to the data, which is based on a survey of clinics before and after the law went into effect.
New Va. budget allocates $3.75M toward cleaning up contaminated ‘Money Point’ section of Elizabeth River
With the newly signed Virginia state budget, $3.75 million will now go toward cleaning up a historically contaminated and polluted section of the Elizabeth River watershed. In the southern branch of the Elizabeth River, sitting below the waters just above the Gilmerton Bridge, lies a layer of tar runoff and creosote leftover from an industrial lumber yard in the early 1900s.
100 years after Charlottesville’s Lee statue went up, work starts to find a replacement
A hundred years ago, a bronze statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee astride his horse Traveller was erected in what was then known as Lee Park in downtown Charlottesville, where it stood until … eight years ago, when Zyahna Bryant, a Black student at Charlottesville High School, wrote a petition to City Council calling on the city’s leaders to remove the “offensive” statue … The statue would remain up throughout this until … three years ago, when Lee was removed and the park renamed.
Private meeting spurs new collaboration involving Virginia Tech and surrounding towns
Virginia Tech is signaling its intentions to take a more active role in infrastructure planning for the New River Valley. University representatives, as well as those from Blacksburg, Montgomery County, Christiansburg and the New River Valley Regional Commission, came together in a recent private meeting, and it was then announced that a new initiative to jointly plan for the future of the region is starting. … The announcement comes after Blacksburg Mayor Leslie Hager-Smith said in January that the Virginia Tech needs to take more accountability for the pressure its growth is putting on the town.
‘Your quiet community could be destroyed’: Gum Springs residents in Fairfax fight to preserve local history
In 1833, West Ford — a freed slave — bought 214 acres of land in Northern Virginia and founded the oldest free-sustained African American community in Fairfax County known as Gum Springs. “A Black man in Northern Virginia, buying property in 1833? That just didn’t happen,” said Ronald L. Chase, president of the Gum Springs Historical Society and Museum.
Virginia’s new gambling agency, skill game monitor considered
The failure of Virginia lawmakers to legalize skill games in the 2024 session has raised questions about a special summer session to address the issue. But with record profits coming in, some want the state to remake its gambling oversight system first. “If you look on the right, that one-billion-dollar figure is really net revenue and we think that figure will change significantly as well,” said Collin Hood, a director at the Virginia-based consulting firm Guidehouse, explaining how much Virginia made from gambling in 2023 alone.