Rep. Robert Hurt talks on shutdown following Capitol Hill shooting

It was a dramatic day in the middle of a dramatic week on Capitol Hill. Republican Fifth District Representative Robert Hurt, who represents Charlottesville and Albemarle, was about to take the mic in the House to speak on day three of the Congressional shutdown standoff when security officers started barring the doors of the chamber, […]

City hires former attorney to head human rights office

Charlottesville’s Office of Human Rights is open for business. Four months after the City Council ended a two-year fight over whether to tackle discrimination complaints with its own local rules and enforcement, administrators hired Zan Tewksbury, an Albemarle High School graduate who has worked as a civil rights attorney in Portland for 16 years, to […]

Tomtoberfest pushes town-gown innovation with a light heart

The Tom Tom Founder’s Festival is headed back to school. Paul Beyer is getting ready to launch the second annual Tomtoberfest, the smaller autumn sister of the spring music and innovation showcase he created in 2012 in the image of Austin’s SXSW. This year’s fall fest runs Wednesday through Saturday, and doubles down on a concept Beyer, a developer and […]

Going strong? A local lens on Livestrong’s legacy post-Armstrong

When former cycling champion Lance Armstrong finally admitted to doping on Oprah in January, Darden professor Erika Hayes James saw a teachable moment. “I was watching the interview, and I kept thinking about this organization he founded, and the implications for it being so connected to Lance Armstrong,” said James, whose academic focus is on […]

Wildlife officials bracing for spread of fatal deer disease

The symptoms of Chronic Wasting Disease in deer read like something out of a horror movie: emaciation, a lolling head, an odor of rotting meat, and—invisible until autopsy—a spongy degeneration of the brain. CWD is a prion disease affecting cervids—elk, moose, and our own white-tailed deer. Like mad cow in cattle and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in […]