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    Competition is fierce at the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, where pitmasters are sweating and smoking to see who will be crowned best in pork. Considered one of the premiere cooking contests in the U.S., teams from around the country and internationally spend days working on huge whole hogs, massive slabs of shoulder and cuts of ribs in the heat and sometimes rain of Memphis, Tennessee. Brad Orrison and Brooke Lewis, a brother and sister-led team from Mississippi, have won the grand championship twice and say the competition is friendly, but fierce at the same time. Orrison says that at “the Super Bowl of Swine,” this is the trophy that everybody wants.

      The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling and desegregation orders were only the first steps toward the elusive goal of equitable education. For many Black families, school choice has been critical to finding at least the option that works best for them. And that has not necessarily meant the school with the highest levels of racial integration. Some families describe being torn between schools where their children will feel more included on one hand or schools where they might have better academic opportunities on the other hand.

        A decisive vote against the United Auto Workers at two Mercedes factories in Alabama sidetracked the union's grand plan to sign up workers at nonunion plants mainly in the South. But President Shawn Fain said the UAW will return to Mercedes and will press on with efforts to organize about 150,000 workers at more than a dozen auto factories across the nation. Employees at Mercedes plants near Tuscaloosa voted 56% against the union. The Friday vote count handed the UAW a serious setback a month after the union scored a breakthrough victory at Volkswagen’s 4,300-worker assembly factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

          Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has taken final action on a last batch of bills from the year’s regular legislative session. In a statement late Friday, Youngkin said he was signing seven measures but vetoing 48. Among those he vetoed were closely watched bills that would have ended a tax break for a Confederate heritage organization and allowed small businesses to host slots-like gambling machines. He also vetoed a measure intended to protect access to contraception, which was a top Democratic priority. The governor said he's open to continuing to work with the Democratic-controlled General Assembly on the issues but that the bills weren't ready for primetime.

            Perspective was even harder to come by than birdies through all the raindrops, bourbon and cigar smoke that streamed across golf’s biggest stage during one of the sport’s most bizarre mornings ever. By the time the world’s best player, Scottie Scheffler, had been booked into jail, had his mug shot taken, his police statement recorded, his release secured, entrepreneurs near Valhalla Golf Club were already selling “Free Scottie” T-shirts outside. Fans were already wearing them inside. Amid all that, Scheffler shot a 5-under 66 and left the course tied for third in the PGA Championship. He called it one of the better rounds of his life, considering the circumstances.

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            A Wise County man has been charged with malicious wounding and other charges after shooting an individual on Dan Hall Mountain Hall Road.

            A Bristol Tennessee man was arrested Thursday and charged with vehicular homicide and several other charges in connection to a fatal vehicle crash on Highway 394 on Feb. 16, 2024.

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