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Continuing his administration’s four-year effort to make college more affordable and accessible for Virginia students, Gov, Bob McDonnell announced today that his FY 2015/2016 budget will include $183.1 million over the biennium in new support of Virginia’s colleges and universities.
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In August, fast food workers walked off the job in 50 U.S. cities, demanding a raise to $15 an hour. The strikes touched off a national debate about raising wage floors. People who are working full-time should earn enough to be able to make ends meet. A living wage is a basic American value.
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The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. That sounds high compared to the $1.60 an hour that was the minimum wage in 1968. But that $1.60-an-hour wage in 1968 had the buying power of $10.56 an hour in 2013 dollars. So this push by fast-food workers across the country to raise attention to the wage floor is valid on that count.
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The National Retail Federation predicts that approximately 97 million shoppers nationwide will take advantage of Black Friday deals today. In total, 140 million are expected to join the shopping frenzy this weekend, numbers which are sure to result in parking lots which are overflowing with often frantic shoppers.
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One perspective on Mickey Matthews is that he should have been able to decide the day that he left JMU and even had a hand in picking the guy who would sculpt the statue to his tenure. You win a national championship and take a football program at a school that didn’t play football until 1972 to the precipice of FBS, and they eventually name the field after you.
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Lt. Gov.-elect Ralph Northam announced on Monday two senior staff hires for his administration and the Co-Chairs of his transition team. Clark Mercer has been named as chief of staff and Michael Matthews as director of constituent services and scheduling.
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Hydraulic fracturing (known as “fracking”) is a method of causing fissures in underground shale rock formations to facilitate the extraction of otherwise inaccessible natural gas and oil. In a typical fracking operation, drillers inject a mixture of pressurized water and chemicals underground to fracture the rock and free up the gas and oil.
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The first of the new public transit services resulting from the historic transportation funding bill, HB2313 and the 2013 General Assembly session’s Senate Bill 1140 kicked off Nov. 4 in Central Virginia. JAUNT, a public transportation provider based in Charlottesville, covers six jurisdictions and is providing new services in each of them.
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The Virginia Board of Education today unanimously approved an A-F grading system that will assign letter grades to schools based on the percentages of students demonstrating proficiency, academic growth and college and career readiness. Initial letter grades will be announced at the beginning of the 2014-2015 school year.
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A high-tech project to turn an ordinary smart phone into an artificial pancreas that could transform the lives of people with type 1 diabetes has received a $3.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. The money will fund a new network approach to artificial pancreas design using distributed computing between local and Cloud systems.
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