The Roanoke Times

BLACKSBURG -- Blacksburg developer Bob Pack and the Virginia Tech Foundation are negotiating a deal that could lead to a large parking garage and mixed-use retail and residential development on the edge of campus.

A 14-year-old male student has been charged in connection with a minor fire at Christiansburg Middle School on Monday.

The student, whose name is not being released because of his age, had threatened that he was going to burn down the school, said Lt. Brian Wright of the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department. The student was charged with threats to burn a building. Because he is younger than 15, the charge is a Class 1 misdemeanor.

Joshua Jonathan Hairston

FLOYD -- Joshua Jonathan Hairston said he emptied his pistol into Sean Michael Neumann because Neumann came after him, a sheriff's investigator testified Thursday.

BLACKSBURG -- When high school students are deciding where they would like to go to college, some factors might be the reputation of the school, its location, majors offered or the football program.

The caller at the other end of the cellphone was annoyed.

"Where the heck are you?" he asked. "I can't hear anything you're saying because of all that yelling."

If he thought that was loud, he should have been courtside as Radford High School's boys drilled basketball a few days ago. Or any day during hoops season.

It's a pretty reliable formula: When state support for higher education goes down, tuition goes up.

RADFORD -- Grab a pen for a pop quiz.

Which crops or natural resources are richest where you live? And where exactly are you anyway?

A retired Salem teacher has created a lesson plan on mapping designed to answer those questions and keep students fresh on our "Valley and Ridge" region and the four other parts in the state -- Appalachian Plateau, Blue Ridge, Piedmont and Tidewater -- all while introducing them to map technologies. On Wednesday, a group of Radford students tried it out.

CHRISTIANSBURG -- Montgomery County school employees have requested pay raises and new benefits in the next fiscal year, even though money is likely to be tight in the upcoming budget cycle.

Montgomery County School Board members had their first public hearing Tuesday for the 2009-10 operating budget, and representatives from teachers, staff and administrators' associations asked for a mix of extra sick and "wellness" days, pay increases and boosts in starting pay. The next fiscal year begins July 1.

CHRISTIANSBURG -- The group of residents working to bring a referendum to move Christiansburg's elections from May to November of odd-numbered years has turned in its petition with more than double the number of signatures volunteers aimed to collect.

Someone is interested.

Radford received one proposal to take over Radnet, the city's wireless internet system.

Launched in 2006, the system hasn't made enough money to pay back the city's initial investment. In July, city council voted to withhold the last $50,000 of the $1 million it had allocated to the project.

BLACKSBURG -- Some tapped their feet. Others swayed with the music. Some sat with their eyes closed, taking in the recording of "When the Saints Go Marching In."

"They're wanting to dance," noted one onlooker.

It won't fall out of a helicopter.

But organizers of the First & Main retail center grand opening in Blacksburg will still give away $10,000 in cash next week.

Representatives of Ohio-based MACS advertising firm had earlier planned to drop 10,000 $1 bills from a helicopter over the shopping center at 10 a.m. on Nov. 28 to celebrate the center's grand opening.

BLACKSBURG -- Students from Virginia Tech's distinguished "Class of '69" aren't too far from turning 65.

And for a university that has often looked inward for leadership, the Monday gathering at the Inn at Virginia Tech of 21 employees Tech has tabbed as up-and-comers was significant.

Pulaski County has grossly inflated real estate reassessments and something needs to be done about it, a gathering of property owners agreed Tuesday.

While county officials have called the reassessment a routine step taken every five years to align tax assessments with fair market value, landowners have reacted in numbers to what they see as excessive increases.

The blaze that destroyed the historic Pulaski Railway Station and the Raymond F. Ratcliffe Memorial Museum was determined Tuesday to be an accidental electrical fire.

It wasn't supposed to happen this way, so no one was on watch overnight.

On Thursday, the public will get a chance to weigh in on proposed plans that could get more children to walk to school.

Virginia Tech students working on a solar house for the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon competition are raffling off an electric car to raise money for their project.

The two-seat GEM e2 by Daimler-Chrysler is street legal, produces no emissions and can be charged on any regular household outlet.

PULASKI -- The Peak Creek granite walls that were built by master Italian stonemasons in 1888 were nearly all that remained Monday of one of the town's most historic and well-known places.

The Pulaski Railway Station, which housed the Raymond F. Ratcliffe Memorial Museum and played host to farmers markets and other events, caught fire sometime Sunday night and burned well into the morning Monday.

The shooting of a Christiansburg man Saturday appears to have been an accident, police said Monday.

Curt Roberts, 28, was shot once with a rifle inside a home on Wayside Drive just after 3 p.m., Christiansburg police Maj. Dalton Reid said.