Today's News

Deadlines for columns being what they are, it wasn’t possible to comment this week on the results of the presidential election. The verdict wasn’t known before your favorite liberal needed to submit his, uhee.“latest screed.”

I’ll be glad to weigh in on that next week. I hope, though, that however things came out, we can learn some lessons from this incredibly long marathon that we call a presidential election.

There really shouldn't be any surprise at this: Teens who watch Sex in the City, and similar type shows, are more likely to get pregnant.

That headline hit the national newspapers this week to some fanfare but, unfortunately, no call to arms. Television programming will certainly not be affected by such a revelation. We're way beyond that. The best we can hope for is that parents will once again be reminded about their roles in monitoring just what it is that their children are taking in — whether it's from the TV, their Ipods or the Internet.

A former Staunton River High School teacher, arrested in January for having a sexual relationship with a student at the school in 2005, is now facing three more charges of taking indecent liberties with a child.

Last month, a Bedford Grand Jury indicted David Allen Cherry, 39, of Forest on those additional charges. He had been indicted in April on four charges of taking indecent liberties with a minor while in a custodial relationship.

Bedford Memorial's radiology department's switch to digital X-rays is providing a number of advantages, according to hospital officials.

Don Updike, the hospital's director of imaging services, said that a major advantage is that a digital image can be enhanced for interpretation.

“That's a huge plus for our radiologists,” he said.