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Best Places To Live, Autism App, Fittest City: VA, DC Good News

Good news stories in VA, DC include Senior Olympics return, app to help autistic students, best places to live, Washington Monument reopens.

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The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond houses more than 33,000 works of art spanning 5,000 years of world history. Richmond is one of two Virginia cities on the U.S. News Best Places To Live list.
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond houses more than 33,000 works of art spanning 5,000 years of world history. Richmond is one of two Virginia cities on the U.S. News Best Places To Live list. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

VIRGINIA — Good news stories from the past week include: the planned return of the Senior Olympics to northern Virginia in September; the Commonwealth again is named the top state in which to do business; a 13-year-old has developed an app to help teachers communicate in online schooling with students on the autism spectrum; and the Washington Monument is again open to visitors.

Plus, two cities in Virginia are named to the Best Places To Live list by U.S. News; a NoVA community is named the fittest city in the country; new businesses include an &Pizza location, an Iraqi chocolate and coffee shop, Slice & Pie adds to the pizza offerings and a new bubble tea venue; adorable pets need homes; and more in our roundup of good news stories from Maryland's Patch sites this week.

Here are some of this week's good news headlines:

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Two Virginia Cities Named Among Best Places To Live: U.S. News

Two cities in Virginia were listed as the best places to live in the United States, according to a new ranking released this week by U.S. News & World Report.

App To Help Autism Educators Earns Accolades For Fairfax Student

Veda Murthy, a 13-year-old Fairfax City resident, recognized some teachers were having difficulty communicating with their autism spectrum disorder students while they were remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. She developed a Cognitive Emotion Interpretation Application to share that information with educators.

Find out what's happening in Old Town Alexandriafor free with the latest updates from Patch.

Washington Monument To Reopen To Public After Six-Month Closure

The Washington Monument reopened to the public on Wednesday after a six-month closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Park Service said.

Virginia Named Best Place To Do Business A Record 5th Time: CNBC

CNBC named Virginia as the nation's "Top State for Business" in 2021, giving the state five first-place finishes since CNBC debuted the rankings in 2007.

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