FXBG Advance Tuesday, June 23, 2026
UMW's Artificial Intelligence Masters—By the Numbers. Local Artist Moves Up in National Contest. Alleged Terrorists Allegedly Planned Rendezvous Here. Spotsy Mall/Carfaro Co. and Reflecting Pool Snafu
BY THE NUMBERS: UMW’s New Master’s of Science in Artificial Intelligence in Business
By Steve Watkins, Advance Editor
$400,000: Amount requested from the General Assembly to cover first-year start-up costs for new Master’s of Science in AI in Business at UMW (“new faculty to be hired and new faculty and existing faculty to develop the curriculum”).
$140,000: Salary for a new assistant professor of Business/AI to be hired for the 2027-28 academic year.
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Local Artist Reaches Quarter-Finals in National Arts Contest
By Steve Watkins, Advance Editor
Local artist Sue Willis has reached the quarterfinals of The People’s Artist arts competition, a national program sponsored in part by actor Johnny Depp to raise money for art opportunities, education, and training. The winner’s work will be exhibited at a gallery show in Los Angeles and featured in ArtForum Magazine. Willis, who has focused most recently on the art of protest, works in what she calls Multimedia Pareidolia.
Webster’s defines pareidolia as “the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern.”
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FBI: Would-Be White House/UFC Event Terrorists Planned to Rendezvous in Fredericksburg
By Steve Watkins, Advance Editor
The FBI says at least five men from around the country, one of them a teenager, conspired through an encrypted chat app to launch an assault during the recent Ultimate Fighting Championship held in a massive, temporary Octagon erected last weekend on the White House grounds. Their plan, according to the FBI, was to meet up in Fredericksburg before heading to D.C. to carry out the attack.
One of the principal hold ups may have been the men’s difficulty raising $1,300 to buy drones and explosives, though the FBI said they’d been able to stockpile numerous firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition, tactical gear, a two-way radio, and an infrared laser target pointer.
The teenager’s mom caught wind of the conspiracy, according to the FBI, and turned her son in to authorities in Ohio.
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Spotsy Mall Owner Cafaro Has Family Connection to Reflecting-Pool Fiasco
By Steve Watkins, Advance Editor
John “JJ” Cafaro, whose company Greenwater Services landed a no-bid $1.7 million contract to install a supposedly algae-proof “nannobubble” water purification system for the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial, is a member of the same Cafaro family that built and owns Spotsylvania Town Centre, which most locals still refer to as the Spotsy Mall—not to be confused with the National Mall, where the Reflecting Pool, now algae-green with an alarmingly peeling, newly painted, blue bottom, is located.
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