Today's News

INDEPENDENCE — Nearly 90 percent of all building framing is complete at Grayson Highlands School, under construction in the western end of the county.

Grayson County Schools' Director of Personnel Chad Newman updated the school board on the progress during the board's regular meeting July 13 and said that work continues to go "really well."

There are more than 50 people working busily on the site, trying to make up days lost during the bad parts of winter and ensuring the building is ready to open by January 2010.

The Results Galax call center transitioned its services, which will allow the company to hire about 140 employees.

Employment at the customer service call center for XM Satellite Radio company has increased to 236, including 168 product agents, 44 in training and the rest in management and administration. All but six are full-time workers.

For the past couple of years, the call center set up for customer trial subscriptions to XM radio and took customer support calls.

They are as different as, say, the next five or six people you’d meet on the street. And yet they have joined forces — and stayed joined for seven years — to promote a common goal.

That goal is to support and encourage each other in their creative work, and to share the labor and rewards of marketing it.

They are songwriters and potters, calligraphers and artists; they produce cut-paper art and unique lampshades, turned wooden bowls, and woolen rugs and mats.

FANCY GAP — A 2007 Subaru hydroplaned on Interstate 77 near the 9 mile marker on July 11, tumbled down a ravine and burst in flames — but the three occupants inside walked away almost unscathed.

Alana Louise Gibson, 16, of Riegelsville, Pa., was heading north on the interstate with her two sisters in the vehicle, according to Virginia State Police Trooper J.A. Vaughan.

"They came up on a real heavy thunderstorm," the trooper said. "Their vehicle hydroplaned and went off the road to the left, striking the guardrail."