Category Archives: Virginia

What a boob: Texas school district bans Virginia state flag and seal over naked breast

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Students in Lamar can no longer learn about the state of Virginia on their online research database due to the ban

Virginia’s state flag and seal, depicting the Roman goddess Virtus standing over a slain tyrant, her drooping toga exposing her left breast, has been banned from younger students in a Texas school district.

The district, Lamar consolidated independent school district, near Houston, took action against the image late last year when it removed a section about Virginia from its online learning platform used by third through fifth graders, typically encompassing ages eight to 11, sparking a row, Axios reported on Thursday.

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The great Mississippi tops list of most endangered rivers amid fears over Trump rollbacks

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Cuts to disaster agency and deregulation of fossil fuels, plus rise of water-guzzling datacentres, highlighted in new report

The Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal climate disaster agency – and the full-throttle deregulation of fossil fuels and water-guzzling datacentres – could prove catastrophic for America’s endangered rivers, threatening the food, water and livelihoods of millions of people, according to a new report.

American Rivers’ annual most-endangered rivers list lays bare a myriad of human-made threats including floods, drought and other extreme weather events driven by the climate crisis, as well as industrial pollution and poor river management – all of which Trump’s regulatory rollbacks will almost inevitably make worse.

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‘It’s very much relevant today’: the one-woman show on Charlottesville

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Priyanka Shetty combines personal and political in #Charlottesville, a play that explores the deadly 2017 white supremacist rally

She had moved from India to live the American dream. Priyanka Shetty came to study acting at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, a liberal place of clipped lawns and classical architecture rated in one survey as the happiest city in America.

But what she found was isolation and discomfort because of her race and, as the era of Donald Trump dawned, a nation on the cusp of hostility towards immigrants like her. Then came a white supremacist march through Charlottesville and an explosion of racist violence that left one woman dead.

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Major winter storm in US threatens millions with snow, ice and brutal cold

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State of emergencies issues in several states and cities as eastern two-thirds of country to experience dangerous cold

A major winter storm was sweeping across the central US on Sunday, forecasters said, bringing with it a dreaded combination of snow, ice and plunging temperatures.

The National Weather Service (NWS) issued winter storm warnings from Kansas and Missouri – where blizzard conditions are expected – to New Jersey.

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Inmates burn themselves in protest at ‘inhumane’ Virginia prison conditions

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Officials acknowledge prisoners have harmed themselves but say they did not set themselves on fire or self-immolate

Several incarcerated people in Virginia’s high-security Red Onion state prison have intentionally burned themselves in a protest against harsh conditions at the facility.

A written statement from Virginia’s department of corrections acknowledged that men imprisoned there had harmed themselves, although the authorities confirmed six incidents while others reported that 12 men were injured.

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Cloned black-footed ferret gives birth in ‘major milestone’ for conservationists

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Antonia the ferret becomes first cloned animal of an endangered species to successfully produce offspring in US

A cloned black-footed ferret has given birth, becoming the first-ever cloned animal of an endangered species in the US to successfully produce offspring in what officials recently hailed as a “major milestone”.

In an announcement at the beginning of November, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) said that a cloned black-footed ferret named Antonia had given birth to three kits in June after mating with a three-year-old male black-footed ferret at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) in Front Royal, Virginia.

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US south-east reels from ‘catastrophic’ devastation from Hurricane Helene

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Communities are stranded, over 200 people have died with more expected, and more than 700,000 are without power

Rescue crews in parts of the south-eastern US were still searching on Friday for those missing as they entered the eighth day since Hurricane Helene roared ashore in Florida and became the deadliest mainland hurricane in the US since Katrina in 2005.

The death toll could grow higher, having surpassed 200 on Thursday, while the sheer scale of the devastation from wind and floods has slowed efforts to find many people’s loved ones and also get supplies to stranded communities and restore power to more than 700,000 people.

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Firefly species may blink out as US seeks to list it as endangered for first time

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Bethany Beach firefly, found in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, faces dangers to habitat because of climate change

The US government is seeking to consider a firefly species as endangered for the first time, according to a proposal from the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

The Bethany Beach firefly, found in coastal Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, is facing increasing dangers to its natural habitat because of climate change-related events. They include sea level rise, which is predicted to affect all sites within the known distribution by the end of the century, and the lowering of groundwater aquifers.

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At least 64 dead and millions without power after Helene devastates south-eastern US

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Flooding and landslides strike southern Appalachians after hurricane pummeled region and wreaked havoc

At least 64 people have been confirmed dead and almost 3.5 million were without power on Saturday, after strong winds and torrential rain from Hurricane Helene wreaked unprecedented havoc across large swathes of the south-eastern United States.

Historic flooding continued over parts of the southern Appalachians on Saturday, as first responders worked to reach stranded communities in trying conditions while local authorities began to assess the scale of the damage and displacement.

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Kamala Harris says Trump ‘disrespected sacred ground’ on cemetery visit

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Vice-president accuses Republican rival of ‘political stunt’ as Democrats call for inquiry into apparent altercation

Kamala Harris – the Democratic nominee for November’s White House race – has accused Donald Trump of “disrespecting sacred ground” on his recent visit to Arlington national cemetery, as the controversy over an apparent altercation between workers of his campaign and cemetery staff continued to build.

The vice-president on Saturday accused the former president and Republican nominee of staging a “political stunt” after the US army accused the Trump campaign of turning a wreath-laying ceremony on Monday to mark the deaths of US soldiers in Afghanistan into a photo opportunity. The army also accused two campaign workers representing Trump – who said he was invited to the ceremony by the family of one of the honored soldiers – of pushing aside an official who told them it was forbidden to take pictures at the graves of military members who had recently died.

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FBI raids US home of Russian-born analyst who advised Trump in 2016

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Dimitri Simes, whose name appeared prominently in Mueller report, ‘puzzled and concerned’ by raid in Virginia

FBI agents have raided and searched the Virginia home of Dimitri Simes, an author and policy analyst, who advised Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign and who currently hosts a current affairs program on Russia’s state-run Channel One.

The raid began on 13 August, the FBI told the local Rappahannock News, which first reported the story.

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Third person dies in listeria outbreak linked to Boar’s Head deli meats

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Overall number of people sickened rises to 43 as CDC says additional death happened in Virginia

Three people have now died in a listeria food poisoning outbreak linked to Boar’s Head deli meats, federal food safety officials announced on Thursday, and the overall number of people sickened rose to 43.

The additional death happened in Virginia, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a news release on Thursday. The other two deaths were in New Jersey and Illinois. The CDC also said nine more cases were reported since a 31 July release about the outbreak, which started in late May.

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Trump claims ‘big victory’ over Biden despite lying in debate

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Former president claims ‘no amount of rest or rigging could help’ Biden during victory lap at Virginia rally

Donald Trump wasted no time bringing up Thursday’s debate at a rally in Virginia on Friday.

“Hello, Virginia,” he opened to a crowd in Chesapeake. “Did anybody last night watch a thing called the debate?”

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Tense wait in tight Virginia primary for House Republican who crossed Trump

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Incumbent Bob Good, chair of far-right Freedom Caucus, appeals for patience as votes counted in congressional race

The conservative US representative Bob Good is asking for “patience from the people of Virginia’s fifth district over the coming weeks” as he hopes the final ballot count from Tuesday’s primary will allow him to fend off a fellow Republican challenger endorsed by former president Donald Trump.

Good, who chairs the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, currently trails state senator John McGuire by a little more than 300 votes as elections officials finalize their vote counts and mail-in ballots continue to trickle in.

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Federal authorities investigate near-collision of two planes at Virginia airport

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American Airlines plane forced to abort takeoff at Ronald Reagan Washington national airport as another flight cleared for landing

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating an incident at Ronald Reagan Washington national airport in which a plane was forced to brake to narrowly avoid a collision with another plane, the second near-collision at the airport in less than two months.

At around 10.20am on Wednesday, Boston-bound American Airlines flight 2134, carrying approximately 100 passengers and crew, was cleared for takeoff and began to accelerate.

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Virginia governor allows Confederate groups to keep tax exemptions

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Republican Glenn Youngkin also vetoed bills related to maintaining access to contraception, saying they were ‘not ready’

Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin has vetoed two bills that would have stripped tax exemptions for the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization that has opposed the removal of statues of southern state generals during the US civil war and other markers of the southern states’ attempt to secede from the Union in defense of slavery.

The Republican governor vetoed several measures, including those related to maintaining access to contraception, saying in a statement they were “not ready to become law”.

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Virginia school board votes to restore Confederate names to two public schools

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Schools changed their names after 2020 George Floyd protests, but will now revert to old names celebrating slave-state leaders

An all-white school board in Virginia has voted to restore the names of Robert E Lee and other Confederate military leaders to two public schools in a backlash to the racial reckoning that followed the police murder of George Floyd.

The decision to restore the names of Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Turner Ashby was taken on Friday morning by the six-member school board in Shenandoah county. Only one of the members voted against the resolution.

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Liberty University fined $14m over ‘culture of silence’ around sexual assault

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Christian evangelical institution punished victims ‘for violating the student code of conduct’ as ‘assailants were left unpunished’

Liberty University has been hit with a $14m Department of Education federal fine for creating “a culture of silence” around sexual assault, failing to support victims of violence and then failing to properly report them correctly under the law.

Announcing the fine on Tuesday, the department said in a statement that the Christian evangelical institution had punished sexual assault victims “for violating the student code of conduct”, while “their assailants were left unpunished” – a violation of federal law.

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Super Tuesday 2024 live: millions of voters head to polls in the US as Haley suggests she could stay in the race

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Donald Trump looks all but certain of Republican presidential nomination as Nikki Haley rejects suggestions of third-party bid and says she may keep fighting

Over at CNN, Ronald Brownstein has an analysis piece which looks a little at the potential weakness of Donald Trump support away from his core base. Brownstein writes:

[Trump’s] performance so far reflects his success at transforming the Republican Party in his image. He’s reshaped the Republicans into a more blue-collar, populist and pugnacious party, focused more on his volatile blend of resentments against elites and cultural and racial change than the Ronald Reagan-era priorities of smaller government and active global leadership that former South Carolina Gov Nikki Haley has stressed.

But while the primaries have underscored Trump’s grip on the GOP, they have also demonstrated continued vulnerability for him in the areas where he has labored since he first announced his candidacy in 2015 – particularly among the white-collar suburban voters who mostly leaned toward the GOP before his emergence. The early 2024 nominating contests have shown that a substantial minority of Republican-leaning voters remain resistant to Trump’s vision.

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Home explosion near Washington DC kills one firefighter and injures 11

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Firefighters were called to home in Sterling, Virginia, by report of gas smell, and explosion took place 30 minutes later, officials said

One firefighter was killed and nine others were injured on Friday when an explosion in a Washington DC suburb leveled a home where they were investigating a gas leak. Two other people were also injured.

The firefighters were called to the home in Sterling, Virginia, by a report of a gas smell shortly after 7.30pm and a fiery explosion took place about 30 minutes later, officials said.

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