4 BETTER OR WORSE- The week in review
Most hung jury: A mistrial is declared March 6 in the murder trial of William Franklin "Billy" Marshall, accused of strangling Azlee Hickman, 18, March 13, 2004. Marshall claimed Hickman's boyfriend and father of her child, Ronald Powell, 38, was responsible for her death, and both men were present at the Carlton Avenue trailer the night she died. The jury split 7-5.
Latest School Board candidates: Leah Puryear, director of UVA's Upward Bound program, and Juandiego Wade, an Albemarle transportation planner (who served as jury foreman in the murder trial of former UVA student Andrew Alston) toss their hats into the race for two of three open seats on the soon-to-be-elected Charlottesville School Board.
Boldest educational proposition: City Councilor Kendra Hamilton suggests same-sex middle schools and uniforms as a way to improve student performance, Sarah Barry reports in the Daily Progress.
Hottest seat: Region Ten's new executive director, Philip Campbell, gets slammed by anonymous employees complaining about his management style in a John Yellig DP story.
Newest Cav offensive coach: Coach Al Groh hires son Mike Groh.
Best UVA musical get: Hometown boys the Dave Matthews Band perform for the John Paul Jones Arena's grand opening September 22 and 23.
Best UVA political get: Senator Ted Kennedy speaks at the Law School and then at the Miller Center March 18.
Best local link to Oscar: One of Coran Capshaw's musical clients, Vusi Mahlasela, performs a third of the tracks on the soundtrack of Tsotsi, the South African winner of Best Foreign Film.
Second Best: UVA is the location of several scenes in an Italian nominee, La Bestia nel cuore aka Don't Tell, in that same Academy Award category.
Most risen from ashes: The Virginia Quarterly Review wins the Phoenix Award from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals, which praised the VQR for arriving at the "boundary between an academic and a high-brow trade publication" and reinventing itself "with imaginative panache."
Best life jacket: UVA mechanical engineering student Adam Malcom wins a flotation device competition with his inflatable belt design, eliminating the need for hot, uncomfortable, "dorky-looking" life vests, according to a UVA release.
Worst camphor threat: UVA issues a warning about Vicks VapoRub and Ben Gay, products for external use about which the Blue Ridge Poison Center got 118 calls last year.
Cooking-est chief: Charlottesville police chief Tim Longo dons a chef's apron for a cooking lesson from Bizou/Bang founder Vincent Derquenne March 5 at a pre-event for MACAA's Men Who Cook.
First stoplight: Nelson County's first light– at the Food Lion on U.S. 29– starts stopping traffic February 27, according to the Nelson County Times.
Best airport to get caught with pot: Officials at Richmond International confiscate and destroy three joints but don't charge the possessor February 28 when he goes through a security checkpoint en route to a conference on charter schools in Sacramento. School Board member Stephen B. Johnson, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, says he will resign.
Worst flashback: South Dakota bans most abortions in hopes of having Roe v. Wade overturned by the Supreme Court.
Happiest week for UVA profs on the Today Show: Bradford Wilcox and Stephen Nock appear March 2 to talk about their study of marital happiness for women, and Jonathan Haidt is on the show February 28 chatting up his book, The Happiness Hypothesis.
Best name change: The huge development south of town on the former Breeden property has dropped "Fox Ridge" for "Biscuit Run."
Last hurrah: UHall hosts its final men's basketball game March 5, with UVA falling to Maryland, 71-70.
Correction: Adam Malcom's name was misspelled in the original version of 4Better.
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