Lawmakers are set to consider Gov. Glenn Youngkin's proposal to invest another $290 million for school construction needs during the upcoming legislative session which begins in January. (Charlotte Rene Woods/Virginia Mercury) Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Tuesday announced that he is asking the legislature for an additional $290 million to support school construction and modernization efforts across Virginia. This latest investment would bring the total funding for the current biennium to $700 million and raise the state’s overall contribution under Youngkin’s administration to nearly $2 billion. Youngkin’s funding request is included in his proposed budget amendments, which he plans to present next week at a joint meeting of the General Assembly’s money committees. According to the governor’s office, the state’s financial commitments have spurred an estimated $3.4 billion in total funding for school construction. The additional support would be made possible through a combination of local government contributions and federal matching funds. “Over the last three years, we have invested historic amounts in our education system, including our public school facilities,” Youngkin said in a statement. “Our record economic growth and the resulting surplus allows us to make this critical investment to ensure every Virginia student has access to high-quality school facilities that support academic success.” Youngkin plans to use the newly announced $290 million in non-general funds to expand competitive grant opportunities for school divisions, particularly in high-need areas. The money would also address critical infrastructure issues, supporting the construction and renovation of schools in urgent need of repair. State officials say the increased funding will provide K-12 students with safer, more conducive learning spaces, a move that has been welcomed by educators and community leaders alike. Local school divisions will be able to apply for grant support to fast-track modernization projects that may have been delayed due to funding shortfalls. The Youngkin administration has framed the initiative as part of a broader effort to support Virginia’s educational system and improve outcomes for students. As schools across the state face aging infrastructure and capacity challenges, this investment aims to reduce disparities in facility quality, especially in underserved areas. “One of our guiding principles since day one of the Youngkin Administration has been to provide safe, vibrant, and healthy learning environments for all of our students,” said Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera. “This investment in supporting new and refurbished school buildings makes it possible for every community in the commonwealth to have the means to provide a best-in-class education that prepares every student for success in our increasingly demanding knowledge- and skills-based economy.” Del. Candi Mundon King, D-Prince William, a member of the Commission on School Construction and Modernization, said that while she welcomed Youngkin’s proposal, she needed more information. “We have been screaming from the rooftops about more money for school construction and ensuring that localities have what they need, so I’m glad to see that he’s trying to get on board,” Mundon King said. “It is clear that we need to put more money into school construction, but I can’t say more without seeing a fully fleshed out plan. So I’m looking forward to his presentation next week with the joint money committees so we can fully evaluate what this proposal actually is, and not just some slick press release that doesn’t go into detail.” In 2022, Youngkin’s first year in office, the General Assembly in a bipartisan effort approved a historic $1.2 billion investment in school construction, aiming to modernize aging facilities and reduce funding disparities among school divisions. The sweeping plan combined grants and loans to support renovations, new construction, and capacity expansion for K-12 schools across the commonwealth. Of the $1.2 billion, about $850 million was allocated for grants. This included $400 million in formula-based grants, which provided each of Virginia’s 134 school divisions with a $1 million base allocation. The remaining $266 million was distributed based on the Local Composite Index (LCI) — a state funding formula that considers factors like property values, taxable sales and population data to assess a locality’s financial ability to support its schools. Another $450 million was funneled into the newly created School Construction Fund and Program, a competitive grant program designed to assist divisions with the most critical infrastructure needs. School systems with poor building conditions and limited financial capacity could apply for these funds to support construction, renovation, or expansion projects. This program is primarily funded by 98% of gaming revenue from Virginia’s four new casinos in Bristol, Danville, Portsmouth, and Norfolk. The fund is administered by the Virginia Board of Education. Virginia faces a mounting crisis with school infrastructure. Data released by the Virginia Department of Education in 2022 revealed that nearly 1,000 school buildings across the state are at least 50 years old. Replacing these facilities would cost more than $25 billion — a figure far beyond the capacity of most localities. Traditionally, local governments have shouldered the financial burden of school construction, relying on local tax revenue. But for economically distressed areas, particularly in Southwest Virginia and Southside, this has become an increasingly difficult challenge due to population decline and economic hardship. But in April, Youngkin vetoed a bill lawmakers sent to his desk that would have allowed localities to implement a 1% sales tax to help cover the costs of school construction and modernization. The proposal required voter approval through a referendum before the tax could be enacted by local governments. Youngkin acknowledged that school construction is a “worthy cause” but argued that Virginia has already taken substantial steps to address those costs. He contended that citizens should not face additional taxes, particularly the $1.5 billion annually that would have been raised by the 1% sales tax. “The commonwealth should pursue a tax policy that unleashes economic development and prioritizes job and wage growth through innovative reforms,” Youngkin said in his veto . “These reforms must allow hardworking Virginians to keep more of their money, not less; any proposal that increases the cost of living and the cost of business is not a policy we should pursue.” Prior to 2022, state assistance for school construction was limited, with much of it coming from the Literary Fund, a state-managed pool of money established in Virginia’s Constitution. Funded by sources such as unclaimed lottery winnings, criminal fines, and unclaimed property, the Literary Fund historically provided low-interest loans to support school construction and debt service for technology. However, in recent years, much of the fund’s revenue was redirected to cover teacher retirement costs, leaving fewer resources for school building projects. The 2022 legislative session retooled the Literary Fund’s loan program, significantly increasing its impact. Lawmakers raised the maximum loan amount from $7.5 million to $25 million and capped the interest rate at 2%. These changes made it more feasible for school divisions to finance major construction projects at a lower cost. With the state’s total contribution now approaching $2 billion, education advocates are hopeful the increased funding will lead to long-term improvements in school facilities and better learning conditions for students throughout the commonwealth. Virginia Board of Education President Grace Creasey said Tuesday that the panel will prioritize “those school divisions in greatest need that have missed out on prior grant opportunities,” especially rural divisions. “We also know that school divisions are eager to adopt seat time flexibility and competency-based models which requires us to design learning environments and spaces differently. This new investment will make this possible,” Creasey said. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLEAP Business SummaryBrief at 4:56 p.m. EST
One of the key highlights of version 2.5 is the enhanced language model, which has been further optimized for accuracy and performance. By leveraging advanced deep learning algorithms and neural networks, Yuelingxi AI is able to achieve unprecedented levels of precision in processing and understanding human language. This breakthrough not only improves the accuracy of the AI system but also enhances its ability to generate contextually relevant responses in real-time.Despite the interest from these top clubs, Bellingham remains committed to Dortmund and has repeatedly expressed his happiness at the club. In a recent interview, he stated, "I'm enjoying my time at Dortmund, and I believe I still have a lot to learn and develop here. The club has shown faith in me, and I want to repay that faith by giving my all on the pitch."
Villagers Discover Injured Cow on the Ground Suspected of Tiger AttackThe day was filled with excitement and anticipation as the son prepared to exchange vows with the love of his life. Friends and family gathered, smiles on their faces, ready to witness the union of two souls. But amongst the joyous celebrations, there was a bittersweet presence that could not be ignored - the absence of the son's beloved mother, who had passed away too soon.
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Investors have bought 131K homes in Las Vegas Valley since 2000Title: Aliyun Supports the Global Multi-Platform Launch of New Game "Endless Warmth"After a week of rest, the Morningside University and Northwestern College football teams will now gear up for its respective second round matchups in the NAIA Football Championship Series. The No. 6 seeded Mustangs (10-1) are set to host No. 12 MidAmerica Nazarene (9-1), noon Saturday at Elwood Olsen Stadium. The No. 11 Red Raiders will travel to Butte, Montana, to take on No. 8 Montana Tech (9-2). Morningside, the reigning Great Plains Athletic Conference champions, enter its matchup with the Pioneers on a 10-game winning streak led by its explosive offense and dominant defense. Morningside's Max Hough (middle) tries to evade Dordt's Dan Jungling (right) during a GPAC game at Open Space Park in Sioux Center on Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024. Ryan Timmerman, Sioux City Journal The Pioneers had an impressive regular season, headlined by a 48-47 victory over at the time No. 7 Benedictine, who defeated Morningside 48-45 in its season opener. The Mustangs went undefeated in conference play to pick up their 14th GPAC title under conference coach of the year Steve Ryan. Their high-flying offense is led by conference offensive player of the year, quarterback Zack Chevalier, who led the NAIA in passing yards and passing touchdowns in the regular season. Northwestern is led by its stifling defense, stonewalled by conference defensive player of the year, linebacker Parker Fryar. The Red Raiders will have their toughest matchup of the season, going up against a team that opened the season with a 29-22 win against at the time No. 3 Georgetown. Montana Tech also picked up a 42-35 win over at the time No. 7 Southern Oregon in its fifth game of the season and notched another top 25 win against Carroll at the end of the regular season. The Journal’s Jared McNett shows how to download and browse the Sioux City Journal's app. Jesse Brothers
Moreover, Google's success with Willow highlights the importance of continued research and development in quantum computing and error correction techniques. As quantum computers become more powerful and sophisticated, the need for robust and efficient error correction methods becomes paramount. By investing in the advancement of quantum error correction algorithms like Willow, researchers can pave the way for the widespread adoption of quantum computing technologies and unlock a new era of innovation and discovery.As the defending champions face a tough opponent in Manchester City, the stage is set for a thrilling and intense encounter that is bound to captivate football fans worldwide. With so much at stake, both teams will be giving their all to come out on top in this high-stakes battle for supremacy in European football.
For Huang Xiaoming, the journey into the world of charity began with a simple realization – the power of his influence. As a celebrity with a massive following, he understood the impact he could have in bringing attention to important causes and mobilizing support for those in need. With this in mind, Huang Xiaoming started leveraging his popularity to support a wide range of charitable initiatives, from disaster relief efforts to educational programs for underprivileged children.
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In the 13 months of Western-backed Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip, ongoing, more than 44,000 Gazan civilians have been recorded killed while more than another 100,000 are considered “missing presumed dead”. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) had already officially ruled this continuous massacre of humans as “plausible genocide”. This ‘kill ratio’ by the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza compares favourably (if one is comfortable with such inane idiom describing mass murder) with the far more intensive pace of killing of about 245,000 killed per month on average in the half-year of genocide in Rwanda in 1994. But Nazi Germany bettered Rwanda’s racist murder rampage in the 1941-45 period with an estimated rate of ‘extermination’ that peaked at 400,000 per month in just three of the six ‘death camps’ run so industriously by the Nazi forces. Some six million European Jews were ultimately killed in this five-year massacre, as well as around two million others designated as unsuitable to live. They were differently-abled people and also homosexuals and, people of the minority ethnic group Roma. Secretive An interesting difference between the handling of the victims of the Nazi human extermination in those infamous ‘death camps’ and the way the victims of Rwanda and Gaza were treated was that the Nazis attempted to be very secretive in their ‘Final Solution’ operation. The secrecy was also ensured by the non-existence of audio-visual recording technology (except expensive film cameras) and, the easy accessibility of media systems, that we enjoy today. Thus, the tens of thousands of Jews and others rounded up in the ghettos of Eastern Europe and herded into trains and transported to the Nazi death camps, did not realise their terrible fate even as they were hurried directly from the trains into the gas chambers. They were told that they were to undergo ‘disinfection’ showers. It was only in the final few seconds of their lives that the bulk of these millions of victims realised that it was toxic gas that poured out of what they thought were overhead shower spouts. Children, women and men died in this way after spending days travelling in trains under the pretence of being ‘transferred’ to new camps or to work sites. Only a smaller number – still totalling at least an estimated million victims – died in more traumatic circumstances under fire by Nazi shooting squads, the infamous Einsatzgruppen. Those victims, herded into large dug trenches, thousands at a time, would certainly have had to anticipate their imminent death as they saw the waiting machine guns and watched them open fire. The ethnic Tutsi victims in Rwanda also did not have the luxury of that orderly pretence and ghoulish charade in the Nazi death camps with their toxic ‘showers’ followed by the incinerator ovens that then burned the massed corpses. As in any violent ethnic riot (as in South Asia), the Tutsis knew what was coming as they fled the mobs or were cornered and mutilated. Certainly, those efficient Nazi mass murderers met their own fates at the hands of the victors of World War 2. Justice Then, too, the world experienced the justice of the victors when the defeated nations were subjected to punishment (including spontaneous punishments) ranging from imprisonment to death sentences. However, the victors did not undergo any judgment of the crimes of war perpetrated by them. The perpetrators of nuclear bombing of Japan were not subjected to prosecution although the defeated Japanese military were punished. Likewise, the perpetrators of the ‘strategic bombing’ campaigns that saw the ‘carpet bombing’ of German and Japanese cities that deliberately targeted civilians, enjoyed hero-worship instead of war crimes tribunals. In the much earlier colonial era, the Western powers of today were the perpetrators of genocide of whole indigenous populations. In that world, free of any form of news media, the colonial massacres were possibly even more bloody and on a larger scale. Instead of carpet bombing or gas chambers, the colonial methods of ethnic cleansing were forced starvation and the deliberate spread of European diseases unfamiliar to the indigenous peoples. The 20th and 21st century victims of genocide and war crimes must suffer very public, and, indeed, formally announced, massacres. The IDF kindly sends phone calls and air-drops leaflets minutes before to enable Palestinian families “escape” missile bombardment and shelling. Those who survive are few. A single medium calibre bomb’s blast radius is at least 50 metres or even 100 metres. Thus, many have neither the time nor the human ability to run that far. Only a very few are sprinters, no? Such experiences of forewarned bombardment are now many – in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon – and, thanks to social media and professional journalism (by the victim nations themselves), the world is learning about such macabre military ‘courtesies’ of postmodern inhumanity. Pious The globalised human society of these postmodern times enables an emotionally acrid juxtaposition of violently conflicting human experiences. We learn about devastating bombardment and massacres in virtually the same instance as we learn about the pious ‘self-defence’ of the perpetrators and their warm enjoyment of safe lives. After all, on that fateful October 7, young Israelis were ‘raving’ in musical ecstasy barely kilometres distant from the besieged, suffering, deprived, traumatised Gazans in the veritable concentration camp that is their Strip home. Are we not reminded of a military-sponsored ‘moto-cross’ tamasha being conducted just kilometres away from the bitterly contested Northern frontlines of our own war zone? What a brutal military debacle did that moto-cross suffer when the enemy used the festive distraction to inflict costly damage to our airforce! This bizarre intimacy between two differently violent worlds – one an internalised, self-borne violence (Gaza) and the other, an externalised violence inflicted on others (Israel, West), is the emotive political foreground for last week’s long overdue, miserably symbolic, issuing of arrest warrants against possibly the two most, directly destructive, politicians currently doing their sick bit. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are now internationally “wanted” criminals and must hide from arrest in much of the world even as their regime in Occupied Jerusalem continues to wreak mass murder and war in West Asia. The evidence for the International Criminal Court’s indictments is there for all to see, as most of world humanity, traumatised by 13 months of televised unspeakable carnage, might point out. With over 44,000 dead, most of them women and children in the devastated Gaza Strip, and the rest of the Palestinians literally starving inside that tiny enclave already under military siege for nearly two decades, Premier Netanyahu (75) and former Minister Gallant (66) who have jointly executed the current Israeli military campaign, have much to answer for. Last Thursday, November 21, Pre-Trial Chamber No. I of the International Criminal Court (ICC), in its decision on the ‘Situation in the State of Palestine’, unanimously issued two rulings in relation to Israel’s role in West Asia. The ICC first rejected legal challenges by Israel brought under articles 18 and 19 of the Rome Statute. Arrest Warrants of arrest of Netanyahu and Gallant, are for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least October 8, 2023 until at least 20 May 2024, the day the prosecution filed the applications for warrants of arrest.The Court also issued warrants of arrest for three Hamas militant leaders, all of whom have already been killed in action. Gallant had been Israeli Defence Minister serving 2022-2024 until he departed the post earlier this month. The ICC has so far publicly indicted 67 people since its establishment. Proceedings against 35 are ongoing: 30 are at large as fugitives, four are on trial, and one is in the appeals stage. Proceedings against 32 have been completed: two are serving sentences, seven have finished sentences, four have been acquitted, seven have had the charges against them dismissed, four have had the charges against them withdrawn, and eight have died before the conclusion of the proceedings against them. The ICC’s arrest warrants are classified as ‘secret’, in order to protect witnesses and to safeguard the conduct of the investigations. The Court’s media release said that, however, the ICC decided to release the information about the investigations since criminal conduct similar to that addressed in the warrant of arrest “appears to be ongoing”. In short, the International Criminal Court finds itself initiating a prosecution of crimes previously committed but also of crimes ongoing. The two indicted criminal suspects, both Israeli citizens, are safely immune from arrest while they remain within their country’s borders as Israel is not a party to the ICC’s jurisdiction. Neither is the USA, Israel’s main backer and, in a real sense – as many justice activists argue – a state complicit in Israel’s “ongoing” crimes. However, some 124 States are party to the ICC and are now legally bound to immediately arrest Netanyahu and Gallant if they set foot on their soil. They include nearly all European Union states which are also major allies of the Israel and are supporting it in its current many wars. Already, legal circles are poised to see how many countries will now cease providing military supplies to Israel for fear of being implicated in those same “crimes against humanity” and “war crimes”. But most justice activists point out that it took the ICC nearly a year before it issued arrest warrants during which tens of thousands of people have died, and whole territories laid waste. They said that the same ICC was far quicker to respond to the Russo-Ukraine war and indict Russian President Vladimir Putin.