Two men convicted decades ago of serious crimes in Norfolk have received pardons thanks to the University of Virginia School of Law’s Innocence Project. According to two law school news releases, the cases were unrelated but both carried hefty sentences.
A Reedville man who served three decades in prison for an abduction and murder in Lancaster County for which he always maintained he was innocent has been pardoned by Gov. Ralph Northam. Emerson Eugene Stevens, paroled in 2017, was granted an absolute pardon on Friday by the governor who cited an April 2020 opinion from a judge on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who wrote that the evidence overwhelmingly showed no reasonable juror would have convicted him. It was the third absolute pardon won by the The Innocence Project at the University of Virginia School of Law since July.
Rangina Hamidi is the first female minister of education for Afghanistan in 30 years. Born in Afghanistan, she fled to Pakistan during the Soviet occupation and immigrated to the U.S., where she attended high school and received a degree in religion and gender studies at the University of Virginia. In 2003, she returned to her home country to help rebuild Afghanistan and champion the rights of girls and women.
Dr. Taison Bell, whose expertise is in pulmonary and critical care at UVA Health, reiterates the new social norms the virus and vaccines have created. “It adds to just how awkward social interaction can be in general,” Bell said. “Do we hug, do we shake hands? I’ve learned to just ask ahead of time, ‘What are the rules of engagement?’ so to speak.”
Shooting on a Noah system is nothing new for many of these prospects – they’ve already been doing it for years. Per team and conference sources, the service is in more than 100 NCAA practice gyms, including some of the top basketball programs in the country. “Some of the best shooters I’ve ever coached who are now playing in the NBA have used it and still use it because they think it’s valuable,” said Tony Bennett, University of Virginia men’s basketball head coach.
Four women from the University of Virginia appeared with their coach Thursday to talk about winning three silver medals and one bronze in Tokyo.
They’ve come from all corners of Connor Jones’ life: friends, his parents’ friends, people from his old neighborhood, former coaches and children he’s instructed in the finer points of pitching. Coming home has its advantages, and not just at the ballpark. Jones, a former Great Bridge High and University of Virginia star now pitching for the Memphis Redbirds, has spent the week staying at his Virginia Beach home and welcoming familiar faces to Harbor Park as his team has faced the Norfolk Tides.
(Commentary by Elyse Sheppard, Class of 2020) My father has given me tons of advice over the years, but one message will always stand out. On the Greek island of Poros, my father stopped me and, trying to signify the importance of his message, gave me what he called his “one piece of advice”: don’t be so high-strung that you miss the serendipitous moments of life.
[UVA alumnus] Scott MacLeod was never an Apollo astronaut, but he did play one on TV. If you were among the millions who tuned in for CBS’s live coverage of NASA’s moon missions from 1969 through 1972, you no doubt saw MacLeod, clad in a spacesuit and standing inside a lunar module simulator to provide Walter Cronkite with play-by-play descriptions of every move the real astronauts were making.
[UVA Darden School of Business alumnus] Mark McLaughlin and Arch Watkins are both naval aviation veterans. McLaughlin has a background in business and finance, while Watkins is a trained engineer. Separately, those are valuable skills in today’s workforce. Together, it meant a booming distilling business.
What the Boston Celtics saw in Sam Hauser was pretty apparent Thursday night. In a blowout win over the Orlando Magic, the rookie was on fire from deep, leading Boston with 21 points, seven assists and six 3-pointers in 26 minutes on the court. The performance made it easy to see why the team signed the University of Virginia product to a two-way deal, officially announced Friday, amid questions about his defense and upside. But because Hauser went undrafted, there was some competition.
The Los Angeles Rams lost their preseason debut to the Los Angeles Chargers 13-6 but there were a ton of bright spots to take from the game. One such highlight was second-year quarterback Bryce Perkins out of the University of Virginia and it will be interesting to see how the Rams handle his development and whether or not they’ll be able to keep him through final cuts and waiver pickups.
University of Virginia students are coming back and looking for some sense of normalcy. Students living on the Lawn started their move-in process Friday.
Today, Jaykumar Vaidya is a scientist pursuing his Ph.D. at University of Virginia. However, his journey began from an 8X10 in the Kurla slum of Mumbai.
To sort through all the political implications of the new census data, Yahoo News spoke to Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan election forecasting newsletter published by the UVA Center for Politics, and author of the forthcoming book “The Long Red Thread: How Democratic Dominance Gave Way to Republican Advantage in US House Elections.” Kondik’s big-picture read of the results? “They were different [from expectations] in ways that you could argue were a little bit better for Democrats than Republicans,” he explained. “But the Republicans do still have some sig...
Because of the explosive growth of metro areas in states such as Texas and Georgia, suburban congressional districts that Republicans can win in the near term might not remain winnable for long. “One of the things that map drawers in places like Texas or Georgia have to be wary of is spreading themselves too thin in an effort to grab a maximal number of seats in 2022,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “Maybe you win some extra seats in 2022, but you can’t hold them in the future, and the maps unravel.”
“In a state like Virginia, the places that are growing are generally more Democratic or toss-ups, and those shrinking lean toward the GOP. That explains what has happened politically in Virginia over the last several decades,” said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the UVA Center for Politics.
“I don’t think these various infrastructure bills have animated the electorate the way that, for instance, recent battles over health care have,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of election forecaster Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the UVA Center for Politics. “It’s possible that none of this will really have a major impact on the campaign next year,” he said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the man described by UVA political analyst Larry Sabato as “smarter than Trump, and a bit more careful and coldly calculating,” seems unwilling to change course. If his tough-sounding declarations are more than a little reminiscent of former president Donald Trump’s aggressive rhetoric from the White House, it is no coincidence.
First impressions are critical in job applications. Requesting special role privileges, including a remote work setup, right out of the gate can make you look selfish, said Jim Detert, a professor at UVA’s Darden School of Business. “When you’re early in the hiring process, you’re still a pretty indistinguishable applicant,” Detert said. “But the more you interact with a potential employer, the warmer their perception of you will become, and the more open they’ll be to your requests.”