The week in review
Biggest primary: Dems elect City Council candidates Satyendra Huja, Kathy Galvin, and Dede Smith August 20 to run for three open Council seats. Llezelle Dugger gets the nomination for clerk of court, unseating 30-year incumbent Paul Garrett.
Least daunted: Despite coming in third for clerk with a paltry 294 votes, Pam Melampy files to run as an independent in November.
Most complicated? NAACP president Rick Turner calls a press conference to denounce the ballot for the August 20 Democratic firehouse primary as so complicated that it's unfair to elderly, disabled, and uneducated voters, Graham Moomaw reports in the Daily Progress. One elderly voter compares the voting process to the poll tax.
Biggest fundraisers– city: Council candidate Brevy Cannon pulls in $12,019, including $2,000 from Henry Cannon III of Alabama, Charlottesville Tomorrow reports. James Halfady is second in bringing in the bucks with $11,329 total, including 10 donations of $499 from relatives in Illinois, which is what Halfaday says he wanted for his birthday. Halfaday came in last in the field of seven candidates, and Cannon came in sixth.
Biggest fundraisers– county: Board of Supervisors candidate Cynthia Neff receives $22,685 for the most recent reporting period, including a $5,000 check from author John Grisham. She's challenging incumbent Ken Boyd for the Rivanna District seat, and Boyd reports $21,396.74, with embattled ACAC president Phil Wendel's $3,000 as his biggest donation. Overall, Boyd has the larger war chest at $40,226.64.
Biggest dreadlocks settlement: Waynesboro Rastafarian Christopher Woodson will receive $30,000 from a Roanoke moving company that he claims denied him a job because of his hair, an alleged religious expression, the Roanoke Times reports. The president of Lawrence Transportation, Ron Spangler, calls the case heavy-handed government regulation.
Biggest scam: Albemarle police warn of fraudsters posing as FBI agents who offer to take potential marks to the bank to cash bogus $10,000 checks.
Worst soccer news: Orange County High's former girls' coach Steven M. Bowers Jr., 32, is indicted on 10 felony charges for allegedly raping two female minors in Spotsylvania County in 2007 and 2008.
Highest risk to children: Cohabitation, according to a study co-sponsored by the National Marriage Project at UVA. Sociologist and family guru Brad Wilcox says cohabitating couples now exceed divorce as the biggest threat to children's stability and well-being.
What about measles? Amtrak says the August 17 Northeast Regional train from Boston to Lynchburg that came through Charlottesville exposed passengers to an infected rider.
Angriest: Leroy Jasper is sentenced to four years August 18 for attempting to run over a young woman with her own car, according to the DP. He has taken anger management courses, but Judge Edward Hogshire says he still has work to do and orders Jasper to stay away from booze after his arrest.
Longest dog-shooting sentence: Justin Riggs enters a guilty plea that includes a mandatory two-year sentence for the January slaying of Mattie, a 10-month-old Siberian husky, the Newsplex reports.
Latest alleged school censorship: An editorial in Madison County High's The Mountaineer is pulled in May because it describes the school's decrepit condition, the Newsplex reports. Madison Superintendent Matthew Eberhard says the op-ed was axed because of inaccuracies.
Best catch: Two Gordon Avenue housemates are arrested for a recent spate of muggings in the area by box cutter-wielding bandits. Anthony Glenn Quarles and Vinson William Vetrone are being held without bond on three counts of robbery, according to the Progress.
Best rebound: Former UVA track and field star Stephanie Marie Garcia heads to the 2011 IAAF World Championship in Daegu, Korea, on the USA team despite a heartbreaking fall in the water pit in June at the USATF championships. Garcia, special sections editor for the Hook, runs the 3000-meter steeplechase August 27.
Worst territory marking: French actor Gerard Depardieu, whose films blanketed Vinegar Hill during the 1990s, urinates aboard a Paris-to-Dublin fllight August 16 and is escorted off the plane.