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By DAN CASEY,
Roanoke Times
(Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)
There’s a popular saying about the war in Ukraine that goes something like this: “If the Russians stop fighting, the war ends. If the Ukrainians stop fighting, Ukraine ends.” More than anything else, that simple aphorism highlights the nature of the most damaging conflict in Europe since World War II: Unprovoked military aggression by the authoritarian Russian Federation against a European democracy.
VaNews April 29, 2024
By PATRICIA MAZZEI,
New York Times
(Metered Paywall - 1 to 2 articles a month)
Amid a dizzying array of standoffs involving pro-Palestinian demonstrations and encampments at colleges, schools that cracked down on protesters over the weekend have given varying justifications for their actions, while others sent mixed signals with their inaction.
Behind it all was a central question confronting university leaders across the country: When does a demonstration cross the line?
Colleges have cited property damage, outside provocateurs, antisemitic expressions or just failures to heed warnings as reasons to clear encampments and arrest students. Student groups have strongly denied or questioned many of those claims.
VaNews April 29, 2024
By LISA ROWAN,
Cardinal News
Three of seven Bedford County School Board members have spoken up in a Facebook group about a lawsuit filed last month against a parent, with two saying the school board didn’t sign off on the suit bearing its name as plaintiff.
The suit seeks $600,000 in damages from Moneta resident David Rife, alleging he used crude language and threatened police and legal action during repeated calls to the school district about his son.
VaNews April 29, 2024
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 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 SEAN JONES,
Richmond Times-Dispatch
(Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)
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 GABBY ALLEN,
WDVM-TV
IAFF Local 3756, the union that represents about 650 officials throughout the Loudoun County Fire and Rescue Department, ratified their first-ever Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) on Sunday night.
The Loudoun Career Fire Fighters Association (LCFFA) said the members of Local 3756 are the first public sector employees to ratify a CBA in the history of Loudoun County. The association described it as a “blowout and historic victory.”
VaNews April 29, 2024
By DAVE RESS,
Richmond Times-Dispatch
(Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)
Google plans a $1 billion investment in Northern Virginia data centers, and in welcoming the move, Gov. Glenn Youngkin said it underscores the need for his “all of the above” energy plan, citing a controversial proposal for a gas-fired power plant in Chesterfield County as an example. Google’s investment will include expanding its two Loudoun County data centers and building a third facility in Prince William County, said Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer of Google and its parent firm Alphabet.
VaNews April 29, 2024
By STEVEN T. CORNELIUSSEN,
published in
Virginian-Pilot
(Metered Paywall - 2 articles a month)
Virginia is considering a great idea: restoring the original name of the place where the arc of the moral universe bent toward emancipation. In 1619 as “Point Comfort,” that historic landscape saw the dawn of British North America’s slavery. In 1861 as “Fort Monroe,” it saw the dawn of U.S. slavery’s demise. True, dropping the military name could offend people such as me — a former Navyman, son of a Navyman, married in Fort Monroe’s chapel to a soldier’s daughter. But way more importantly, that Chesapeake Bay landscape uniquely commemorates the struggles of the planet’s first nation to found itself on freedom.
Corneliussen of Poquoson publishes the free-subscription Substack newsletter The Self-Emancipator, named in the spirit of the antebellum abolitionist publication The Emancipator.
VaNews April 29, 2024
