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Personality: Monica L. Darden
Spotlight on honorary chair of the AKA Sorority’s 15th Annual Sauté and Sizzle
Things are getting a bit spicy as Monica L. Darden nears the end of the first year of her term as president of the Rho Eta Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.
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Gang demands $17M ransom for 17 missionaries kidnapped in Haiti
A gang that kidnapped 17 members of a U.S.-based missionary group has demanded a $17 million ransom for them, according to Haiti’s justice minister, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
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Former President Obama, First Lady Jill Biden, other big-name Dems to stump for McAuliffe
Former President Obama and other prominent Democrats are headed to Virginia in a bid to rally voters for the party’s candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe.
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Grandparents may hold key to overcoming COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy
Black seniors who themselves are vaccinated could be the trusted messengers the community needs to push the COVID-19 vaccination, public health experts said at a recent news briefing.
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Former City Councilman Chuck Richardson tells all in new book, ‘Cease Fire! Cease Fire!’
He was the man called Chuck when he served on Richmond City Council.
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$22.3M: The amount the city expects the surplus to be from 2020-21 fiscal year
A $22.3 million surplus, equal to $96 for every man, woman and child in Richmond.
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Remedies for years of neglect, by Marc H. Morial
Filibuster. Cloture. Reconciliation. The chatter surrounding President Biden’s landmark infrastructure investment and Build Back Better agenda seems endlessly focused on the legislative process, on political maneuvering, on faceless numbers taken out of context.
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Cold meals another hot topic at School Board meeting; new vendor sought
Most students in Richmond elementary schools started receiving hot meals on Monday, just hours before the Richmond School Board met and voted unanimously to rescind the $12.9 million food contract awarded during the summer to Illinois-based Preferred Meals to provide breakfast and lunch.
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Doubling down
Alfred C. Liggins III and Urban One go all in to win voter approval of the $565M casino project proposed for South Side. The referendum is Nov. 2, with early voting going on now.
Do you want a gambling casino built on a 100-acre commercial property in the South Side?
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’Surviving COVID: Local author details battle her husband endured and she waged against the virus
He survived. This is the detail that Charlene Warner Coleman wants Richmond — and the world, really — to know about her husband, Ed Coleman, and his near-death battle with COVID-19 during the pandemic’s early stages in 2020 when the hope of a vaccine was moving into a national reality.
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City Council signals support for plans for American Rescue Plan money
As Mayor Levar M. Stoney proposed, four community recreation centers will get a major chunk of the $155 million flowing into Richmond’s treasury from the federal American Rescue Plan Act.
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Registrar issues reminder about witness signature for mail-in ballots
Richmond Voter Registrar Keith G. Balmer on Wednesday warned that voters using mail-in ballots to vote in the Nov. 2 election must have the return envelope countersigned by a witness — a requirement that was suspended before the governor ended the pandemic emergency during the summer.
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Fewer Black youths in Richmond getting vaccinated, officials find
Richmond health officials are working to address the latest disparity in COVID-19 vaccinations, a racial difference among children.
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U.S. asylum policy needs to be clear, by Jesse L. Jackson Sr.
Today, the makeshift migrant border camp in Del Rio, Texas, is virtually empty, cleared of thousands of Haitian refugees who went there seeking asylum in America. State troopers now line the border area to discourage others from gathering.
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RPS Chromebooks missing?
A major share of the estimated 20,000 Chromebooks that were distributed to Richmond students last year to help them connect to virtual classes have yet to be recovered or accounted for, the Free Press has been told.
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VSU hopes bad news will fall to good in Saturday’s match against St. Aug’s
Bad and good news are sprinkled together for Virginia State University’s beleaguered football team.
