In The News

There's a different feeling around the Virginia swim team this season. "It’s just being around the new staff and the excitement of UVA swimming," said senior swimmer Luke Georgiadis, "and the new program is ... it’s just made things a lot more fun and its made the hard things a lot easier."

One prisoner who maintains her innocence is Trudy Munoz, a legal immigrant from Peru. Gov. Terry McAuliffe took no action on this case, so her only hope rests with the newly elected governor, Ralph Northam. The Innocence Project at the University of Virginia is asking him to pardon Munoz, allowing her to begin a new life here.  

Let’s talk about the presidents’ health – not only the one we’ve got now, but all of them. "There's a huge gulf between how we look at medicine now and in, say, the 1950s," UVA history professor William Hitchcock said. "Then, when a doctor, a figure of authority, said the president's going to be all right, it was the end of discussion." 

A former senior government official shares the view that Birnbaum’s editorial probably didn’t constitute lobbying. The Anti-Lobbying Act “is really aimed at Congress” and preventing advocacy for specific pieces of legislation, says attorney Chris Lu, who served as deputy secretary of labor under former President Barack Obama and is now at UVA’s Miller Center. The committee’s letter “in my mind is more broadly an attack on science and evidence,” he says.

MSNBC national correspondent Joy Reid is interviewed by Douglas Blackmon, director of public programs at UVA’s Miller Center and executive producer of “American Forum” during an event commemorating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Paramount Theater.

Two neighboring states have parts of the Alabama cocktail but lack all the ingredients. Former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, who was the last statewide Democratic officeholder, is a formidable candidate. “There’s no reason to think Tennessee can’t be at least competitive,” says Geoffrey Skelley of UVA’s Center for Politics. But he still rates it as a likely Republican hold. Tennessee has a smaller proportion of black voters, and the GOP front-runner is Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a solid candidate – though she has not been through the crucible of a statewide race.

A new discovery about how the body makes red blood cells could lead to improved treatments for anemia. Researchers at the UVA School of Medicine made the discovery while investigating why the body fails to make enough red blood cells in iron-restricted anemias.

The first professor at VA’s Darden School of Business died Friday at the age of 107. John D. Forbes was invited to help form Darden in 1954, and he taught at the school from its first semester in fall 1955 until his retirement in 1980. He then taught an art history class through the Division of Continuing Education until 2003, retiring with more than 60 years of university teaching.

Former Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy J. Longo will moderate a panel of experts on community policing and police reform on Feb. 6, according to officials with the UVA School of Continuing and Professional Studies.

Bishop Knestout is now the first leader of the Richmond Catholic diocese to celebrate mass at the UVA Chapel. Hundreds of Catholic faithful filled the chapel's pews Tuesday to hear from Knestout on his first visit to Charlottesville since being installed as the 13th bishop earlier in January.

Lawrie Balfour, a UVA political theorist working on a manuscript about reparations for slavery and Jim Crow, said reparations can take many forms, from reexamining the place of Confederate statues to putting in place strong affordable housing policies.

Juan Jones is a Virginia teen who last month found out he needed a heart transplant to survive. "It was very severe," said Dr. Thomas L'Ecuyer, a pediatric cardiologist at the UVA Medical Center, which has the only pediatric heart transplant program in the state.

Overtraining syndrome mostly happens to elite athletes, said Joe Park, an orthopedic surgeon with the UVA Health System. But it can also strike dedicated amateur athletes, such as long-distance runners.

Now, a student at the University of Alabama has been expelled after she posted videos to Instagram rife with racial slurs, also earning her national condemnation. The same arguments arise again; did the university, a public institution operating as a government representative, break the law? Robert O’Neil, a First Amendment expert, former president of the University of Virginia and senior fellow with the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, offered a dissenting opinion. He said that given the intensity of Barber’s offense, he could see justification for her expulsion. ...

Ibad Pathan is a fourth-year student at UVA studying computer science. With help from the protections DACA offers, he paid his way through community college and later transferred to UVA with the dream of a career in computer science. But now he's beginning to feel uncertain about his future again now that DACA's fate is unknown. 

“Ask Me Another” goes to the Virginia Arts Festival with former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove. This episode originally aired Aug. 25.

New recommendations have been developed for the prevention, detection, evaluation, and management of high blood pressure (BP). The recommendations are summarized in an article published online January 23 in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Dr. Robert M. Carey from the University of Virginia Health System and Dr. Paul K. Whelton from the Tulane University School of Public Health in New Orleans, summarized the major recommendations of the new American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association clinical practice guidelines relating to high BP in adults. 

“Who’s getting money from the hotel industry can probably tell you who is doing the most on behalf of the hotel industry to make it more cumbersome for Airbnb to operate,” said Geoff Skelley at UVA’s Center for Politics. “For example, (Senate Majority Leader) Tommy Norment has gotten a lot of money from the hotel industry.”

Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the newsletter Sabato’s Crystal Ball at UVA’s Center for Politics, believes Kasich might well have a plan. “As somebody who ran for president, and as governor of a prominent state and someone who has been very critical of Trump, he continues to be in demand” among the TV pundits, Kondik said.

Any legislation to protect Dreamers, even if it makes it through the Senate, could easily stall in the more conservative House of Representatives, unless Democrats manage to win back seats in the 2018 elections and exert more pressure, UVA political analyst Larry Sabato said.