Rising fuel costs have forced the Wythe County school system to develop exacting guidelines regulating the number and nature of field trips for each school.
The updated guidelines set to be implemented for the 2008-09 school year were presented to the School Board during its meeting Thursday morning.

In legal math, a charge doesn’t equal a conviction.
It’s a proof that Guardian Ambulance Services is hoping a jury will accept as it seeks to fight a $12 million lawsuit.
Guardian filed a response Monday to the lawsuit submitted last month seeking the hefty sum from the combined assets of it and two other defendants, former Guardian Ambulance Services driver Alton Kenney Davis and LogistiCare, a medical transportation company that sub-contracted work to the Wytheville business.
As of Thursday afternoon, neither Davis nor LogistiCare had submitted an answer to the suit.

As a young boy in Havaco, W.Va., Carl H. Tolley respected the men he knew in the Lions Club there. Today, he is among the admired members of the Rural Retreat Lions Club and serves as district governor of Virginia Lions District 24-F for 2008-09.
Also, Tolley recently received the Melvin Jones Fellowship, named for the founder of Lions Clubs International and the highest recognition bestowed on a club member. A member of the Rural Retreat Lions Club since 1994, Tolley is on the organization’s board of directors.

Former governor now running for U.S. Senate

Two Fort Chiswell High School graduates with family roots in Wytheville’s Division Four State Police Office are taking their new law enforcement skills to Brunswick County.
D. Duane Dunford, 26, and Adam Charles Svard, 22, both of Max Meadows, graduated Thursday from the Virginia State Police’s 114th Trooper Basic Session – a 35-week training program for prospective state troopers.

They met at the Chautauqua Festival.
He was 18; she was 13. According to court records, they smoked marijuana, drank some beers and had sex that June day in 1998.
The encounter left Stephen L. Crockett III with a felony conviction and a spot on the Virginia State Police sex offender registry.

St. John’s Episcopal Church members always knew they had a historic building.
Now they’ve got the designation to prove it.

A local fugitive was apprehended Saturday morning and charged with additional crimes while saying good-bye to his father, according to the Wythe County Sheriff’s Office. Charles Franklin Lawson, 34, was being sought on possession of drug charges from 2007.

Classes are back in session at the old Rock Dale School after a long absence. One-on-One Literacy Program of Wythe and Grayson Counties Inc. is now housed in the historic building at 280 S. 5th St. in Wytheville.

Amidst delays and speculation, Starbucks will open its Wytheville store next month, according to a company spokesman. The specialty coffee retailer will bring its products to 198 Commonwealth Drive in the Wytheville Commons shopping center on Aug. 12.