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Friday Read 280,000 eggs disappeared from America’s top producer. Then came a ransom note.

By JENN ABELSON AND JESSICA CONTRERA, Washington Post (Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)

“I’d like to report a crime,” said the man who called a Maryland sheriff’s office on April 16. There was a theft, he explained, involving a freight truck. “So they stole the whole freight?” a dispatcher asked. “Only took the cargo,” the man answered. It was valued, he said, at about $100,000. The dispatcher asked what was stolen. The caller hesitated. “They took … basically … they took a whole trailer full of eggs.”

VaNews June 20, 2025


The surrendered sword that gave birth to America returns to Virginia

By MICHAEL E. RUANE, Washington Post (Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)

Paul Morando lifted the lid on the wooden crate that had been shipped to the National Museum of the U.S. Army from England the night before. He paused, took a pair of blue gloves from a coat pocket, and put them on. He and an assistant, Lisa Noll, removed the crate’s two inner covers. They pulled out the white packing paper. And Morando, the museum’s chief curator, lifted out the 275-year-old sword.

VaNews June 20, 2025


Part 2: Straightforward reporting on protests set a paper apart — and caused problems for its publisher

By GRACE MAMON, Cardinal News

The group of Danville City Council members, all white and all men, gathered in the municipal building meeting room, with its high ceilings and dark wooden columns and pew-like bench seating. Mayor Julian Stinson, a middle-aged man who wore a suit and had his dark, short hair slicked back, presided over the June 10, 1963, meeting, which began ordinarily enough. The council approved a budget appropriation for a capital improvement project and OK’d the continued operation of city kindergarten classes. It approved another project to acquire property that would allow for the widening of North Ridge Street, and deferred a few other items to a later date.

VaNews June 20, 2025


Part 3: He saw his dad ostracized for reporting on civil rights. She grew up to be the Register’s first Black reporter.

By GRACE MAMON, Cardinal News

David Womack was told to avoid downtown Danville during the summer of 1963. His parents instructed him to stay away, he recalls, though countless other kids his age were there daily — and the only difference between them and David was the color of their skin. He knew they were participating in civil rights demonstrations, but he was 14 years old and it was summertime. “I knew there were things going on that were impactful, but at first, I had other priorities in my life at the time,” David said, looking back on that summer 62 years ago. But the demonstrations began to feel very real to David when he saw how much his father cared about them — and how their family was treated as a result.

VaNews June 20, 2025


VPAP Visual House Primary Turnout: 2025

The Virginia Public Access Project

See which House of Delegates primary elections had the highest voter turnout on June 17. Select a district to see the candidates in the race and the other local or statewide primaries on the ballot that may have influenced turnout.

VaNews June 20, 2025


Part 1: Civil rights protesters trusted one Danville paper — and it wasn’t the daily

By GRACE MAMON, Cardinal News

There was a routine to Sundays in the Moore household. A big breakfast and the morning paper, followed by church service. It was June 1963, and the cool mornings warmed up quickly into long, sticky days. Eighteen-year-old Dorothy Moore sat with her parents and her sister at the kitchen table of their home in Camp Grove, a historically Black neighborhood in Danville. Like usual, Dorothy’s father passed around different parts of the daily local newspaper, the big Sunday edition of the Danville Register.

VaNews June 20, 2025