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Former Fox 5 reporter Beth Parker dies after battling cancer

Former Fox 5 reporter Beth Parker, a familiar face on local D.C. news for nearly two decades, died Monday morning after a battle with cancer. She was 51. Parker spent 17 years as a reporter and storyteller at Fox 5, during which she worked alongside Paul Wagner, a former WTOP reporter who worked for Fox 5.

Wagner recalls Parker had a big heart, and he won’t forget what she did for him and his wife when they took a trip to Bermuda. “Before you know it, we were upstairs on the top floor of the hotel and given the keys to this incredible suite overlooking the harbor in Hamilton, Bermuda, and the breeze was beautiful,” Wagner said. “I knew immediately that Beth had done that, she had pulled that off — she’d told her friend that we were coming to Bermuda.” After leaving Fox 5 in 2015, Parker relocated to San Francisco and served as chief communications officer for LeanIn.org, a nonprofit founded by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to help women “pursue their dreams without bias or other barriers holding them back.” WTOP’s Alejandro Alvarez contributed to this report.

Completing the FAFSA: Everything you should know

Filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, which opens by Dec. 31, is one of the most important steps students and their families can take to pay for college. Some states now make completing the FAFSA a high school graduation requirement. The U.S. Department of Education awarded about $111.6 billion in federal grants, loans and work-study funds in fiscal year 2022, according to the most recent Federal Student Aid annual report. Those federal funds will assist roughly 9.8 million students in completing their education.
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