Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 2, 1995 TAG: 9503020074
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
NEWPORT NEWS - A telephoned bomb threat prompted authorities to close all five city high schools Wednesday, sending about 7,000 students home for the day.
Officials were tight-lipped about the threat, but school administrators decided it was serious enough to evacuate the schools about 10 a.m.
Dogs trained to sniff out explosives were brought to the schools. Police spokesman Bobby Kipper said the buildings were thoroughly searched.
The schools were expected to reopen today.
- Associated Press
Battlefield saved from development
WINCHESTER - More than 200 acres at the heart of one of the Shenandoah Valley's major Civil War battles will be saved from development by the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites.
The group will pay $2.5 million for 222 acres of the site of the 1864 Battle of Third Winchester, on which developers David B. Holliday and Ronald V. Shickle planned to build about 700 houses, association President Dennis E. Frye said Tuesday at a news conference.
If Sen. John Warner, R-Va., and Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Fairfax County, get their Shenandoah Valley National Battlefield Partnership Act passed, the association will donate the site to the federal government for the national battlefield park that the act would create, Frye said.
- Associated Press
Mouthwash-using student is cleared
LEESBURG - A high school student was not at fault when he used a mouthwash that contains alcohol despite a ban on any alcohol on school grounds, the Loudoun County School Board ruled.
Carter Loar, 17, was suspended from Park View High School last month after a teacher found him with a small bottle of Cool Mint Listerine mouthwash.
Loar and his parents said he was innocently trying to impress a girl in his English class. School officials said he was drinking the mouthwash and bragging to friends that it contained nearly 22 percent alcohol.
On Tuesday, the School Board cleared Loar of wrongdoing but also amended school policy to specifically ban alcoholic mouthwash from campus.
- Associated Press
Late mail delivery wreaks credit havoc
RICHMOND - Sylvia Lee went to the post office to pick up her business mail and found eight letters and bills in her box.
But a note in the box Tuesday said the Saunders Station branch had more mail for her business, Quisha's Manor adult home.
``They gave me a stack, and it looks like 100, 150 pieces of mail,'' she said, ``maybe 14, 15 inches high.''
The oldest bill dated to Jan. 4.
A postal clerk ``tried to tell me it wasn't any space'' in the box for her mail, Lee said.
Meanwhile, Lee's business life has been cascading downhill over the past two months.
``I have gotten threatening letters, cutoff notices and credit letters,'' she said. ``When I opened the water bill, I had the cutoff notice, and included in the stack is the previous bill.''
Andy Hall, the Saunders Station manager, said he was certain there was a logical explanation for the mail problem.
After hours of wading through the envelopes, Lee found a warning from Virginia Power telling her that the electricity for the adult home was going to be disconnected that day.
Ten aged or mentally or physically disabled people live at Quisha's Manor.
The notification said she owed $512.32 - $246.26 of which was past due - plus $43 in additional deposit because of earlier past-due bills, caused by not having received the bills in the first place, Lee said.
Virginia Power told her the lights will continue to burn at Quisha's Manor if she pays the bill today.
- Associated Press
by CNB