Today's News

Last month, Little Town Players (LTP) gave 27 local youth a chance to learn about theater by doing.

Every summer LTP holds a theater camp. According to Mickey VanDerwerker, who along with Margie Skalka, runs the day camp, they can only take 20 campers. The problem is the camp is so popular that they hate turning youth away and often fudge that number. There are limits, however. VanDerwerker said that if they get too many youth, it diminishes the learning experience.

A Hardy man will spend the next eight years in jail after being sentenced Friday for fracturing the skull of a 17-month-old child.

In sentencing Robert Lewis Evans, 24, for child abuse and malicious wounding, Bedford County Circuit Court Judge James Updike said the case was one of the most reprehensible he had seen while serving in the court, and sentenced Evans above the guidelines in the case.

State dignitaries, local residents and members of the late Delegate Vic Thomas, turned out on a hot Friday afternoon to dedicate the recreation area at Smith Mountain Lake State Park in Thomas's honor. The recreation area is the finger of land extending into the lake and includes the beach.

"This was very near and dear to his heart," commented his wife, Dot Thomas.

She said that Delegate Thomas had a vision for the park, the beach and the cabins. The couple frequently came to the park while the beach was under construction, checking out the progress.

On his recent trip abroad, Sen. Barack Obama saw evidence of the fact that our European allies, like most Americans, want our next president to offer a change of direction.

After touring Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama spoke to a crowd of tens of thousands of people, many of them young, in Berlin, Germany. He reminded his audience of the long ties between the U.S. and Europe. He knew he was speaking before a crowd that has recently seen the U.S. as a swaggering, arrogant power that, under Bush and Cheney, thumbs its nose at the world.