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Riley Gaines says Roanoke’s trans athlete is ‘another mediocre male athlete identifying as a woman’ Roanoke College recently joined the list of schools allowing men to compete with the women after a transgender student requested to join the women’s swim team. However, the student who wanted an opportunity to compete with the women changed his mind before the rule was passed. The male student is reportedly no longer pursuing his request, even after the school rushed to figure out a way to accommodate him. The process played out as some members of the women’s swim team held a press conference...

August 18 marks the anniversary of one of the greatest enduring mysteries of US colonial history: the Lost Colony of Roanoke. While the bizarre incident is often dubbed "America's oldest unsolved mystery," we now have a pretty good idea of what occurred (it just took 400 or so years to get a clear idea). In 1587, colonizers from England, ...led by John White, landed on Roanoke Island just off the eastern coast of North America, in what is now Dare County, North Carolina. It was the second attempt to set up a permanent colony, the first having failed two years...

Andy Parker has tried seemingly everything to get videos of his daughter Alison Parker's murder wiped off social media platforms, where they spread after she was fatally shot while taping a live local news segment in 2015. He has enlisted allies to find and report the clips to Facebook and YouTube, filed complaints with federal regulators against the companies and recently launched a congressional campaign focused in part on holding social media platforms accountable. Yet despite those efforts, copies of the footage remain online, some with tens of thousands of views. Over the years, Andy Parker has run into a...

VIDEOIf you ever think one person can't make a difference then I urge you to watch this stunning speech by Gabrielle Powell, a high school student, who helped convince the Roanoke County School Board to vote to lift the mask mandate on January 27, 2022.

It's one of the nation's great mysteries: The first permanent colony of English settlers in what would become the U.S., founded in North Carolina in 1587 by Sir Walter Raleigh, disappeared three years later with virtually no trace. Now, archaeologists hope a new search for the Lost Colony will unearth clues about what happened to 117 men, women and children who vanished and were never seen again. The First Colony Foundation, a group of archaeologists, is partnering with the National Park Service for a series of digs beginning this week at the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site. "This dig includes...

A Virginia attorney says police destroyed her unlocked front door and ransacked her house based on a bogus search warrant, all as an act of retaliation... Three days prior to the raid, Reynolds' stepson was acquitted of murder charges. Reynolds represented her stepson in the case. The lawsuit says the acquittal "sparked outrage in the Roanoke law enforcement community."

Roanoke has banned guns from city-owned parks, libraries and offices as well as from municipal recreation centers and events in public spaces. Gun shows eventually will be prohibited at the city-owned Berglund Center, though an event already under contract can go forward, specifically Saturday’s Roanoke Valley Gun Show, City Attorney Tim Spencer said. In addition, the gun prohibition will cover parades, political marches and similar gatherings that require an assembly permit to be held on city property or public rights-of-way, officials said. Some exceptions will apply. The Roanoke City Council approved the guns ban in a 6-1 vote Monday, with...

Hundreds of pro-gun political activists showed up to an NRA town hall in Roanoke, Virginia, on Friday night as the backlash continues to grow over the plans by Virginia Democrats to enact their far-left agenda aimed at decimating Second Amendment rights. Sources told The Daily Wire that up to 400 people attended the event, many of whom were women and first time political activists. The event comes as Virginia Democrats attempt to confiscate legally-owned firearms from law abiding citizens in a move that resembles what communist China has called on the U.S. to do in recent days. China has millions...

A Virginia doctor on vacation with his wife and three children was reportedly murdered on Sunday while fly fishing in Belize. Dr. Gary Swank, a cardiologist from Roanoke, Va., and his tour guide were shot and killed while fly-fishing in a lagoon west of San Pedro Town, according to local media reports. Both men were reportedly shot multiple times in the body and head. San Pedro police believe the tour guide, Mario Graniel, 53, was the intended target of the gunmen, according to The Reporter. Graniel had previously called the authorities to his home on Saturday after an unknown gunman...

Virginia Dare was born on August 18, 1587 at Roanoke Island in colonial Virginia (present-day North Carolina). Virginia Dare was the first English-born child in the Americas. She was the daughter of Ananias Dare and Eleanor Dare and the granddaughter of Governor John White. Ananias Dare served on the twelve-member board of directors for the Roanoke Colony. Virginia’s mother Eleanor was the daughter of Governor John White. The name Virginia was chosen to signify that she was the first English child born in Virginia. She was baptized into the Church of England on August 24, 1587 and was the first...

Search for Lost Colony goes high-tech By CATHERINE KOZAK, The Virginian-Pilot MANTEO, N.C. - An innocuous-looking golf course tractor pushing a platform on wheels could help illustrate the nation's oldest mystery. In the quest for the Lost Colony, the vanished 1587 English settlement on Roanoke Island, archaeologists have conducted numerous explorations in Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, digging and surveying and scanning and scoping. But they've never used high-tech radar tomography that can produce 3-D images out of data collected from 6 feet, more or less, under ground. The refined technology, which can also use sound and light waves, gained...

At 12:35 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 11, a Villa Dunes resident spotted a fire across the sound on Roanoke Island and called 911. Part of The Lost Colony’s Waterside Theatre was in flames. All fire departments north of Oregon Inlet responded. Fire crews worked swiftly and efficiently to control the blaze and take necessary precautions to save the nearby men’s dressing room structure. Despite of the efforts, the maintenance shed, thought to be at or near the source of the fire, was completely destroyed. Charred pieces of framing in a flimsy skeleton, pointing irregularly toward the star-lighted sky, appear to...

Luccketti's presentation in late January at the Isle of Wight County Museum in Smithfield focused on the "possible relocation" of some of the Roanoke Island colonists to a site in eastern North Carolina named Site X. But he said others from the Lost Colony, maybe even a large group, might have migrated to somewhere near Site X. "Now we have things pointing us in the right direction," he said. "We have Site X. We've got the map (Virginea Pars). We have a published article by a very prominent, deceased North Carolina historian Tom Parramore." Explorers, historians and archaeologists have been...

Reporter’s innocent comments deemed racist by on-air killer By Marisa Schultz and Frank Rosario ROANOKE, Va. — The words are a part of everyday conversation — “swinging” by an address and going out in the “field.” But in the twisted mind of Virginia gunman Vester Lee Flanagan II, they were pure racism — and saying them became a death sentence for Alison Parker. The 24-year-old white reporter, who was murdered on live TV along with her cameraman, used the phrases as an intern at ­WDBJ TV in Roanoke in 2012, according to an internal complaint filed by Flanagan, who was...

<p>A brawl involving 200 people erupted at a Virginia roller skating rink around 12:30 a.m. Sunday, WDBJ reported.</p> <p>Witnesses told WFXR that a song ignited local gang tensions that led to the fight involving both teens and adults at the Star City Skate Center in Roanoke.</p>

WINCHESTER — The Frederick County Transportation Committee on Monday expressed concerns that the county may not get the Interstate 81 improvements it needs to reduce traffic congestion and accidents. The Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment, the Virginia Department of Transportation and the Department of Rail and Public Transportation are studying the entire length of the I-81 corridor in the Virginia, as directed by the General Assembly, to identify changes that will reduce traffic backups and crashes as well as find the funding to make those changes. The I-81 study team identified 105 projects — valued at $4.25 billion —...

<p>LEXINGTON, Va. — A small town in Virginia is trying to recover its image after The Red Hen restaurant famously refused to serve President Donald Trump’s spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.</p> <p>The Roanoke Times reported Sunday that a regional tourism board is pulling together emergency funds to boost its digital marketing campaign.</p>

LEXINGTON — Rockbridge Regional Tourism approved a recovery plan to boost its marketing after The Red Hen restaurant controversy brought a slew of negative national media coverage this summer. The regional tourism board, with members from Lexington, Buena Vista and Rockbridge County, met with the Lexington City Council on Thursday for an update on tourism initiatives and numbers. The board had initially approved the recovery plan soon after news of The Red Hen controversy was spreading across the country. At the end of June, the restaurant’s owner declined to serve presidential press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders when she visited the...

MARTINSVILLE-How do you build Interstate 73? How would you expand U.S. 220 in either direction? The Virginia Department of Transportation is open for suggestions, for these or any other road projects in the commonwealth. To do that, the department is holding a series of “hack-a-thon” events throughout the commonwealth, setting up one in each region. For Martinsville and Henry County, the regional meeting will be this Friday and Saturday at CoLab Roanoke, 1327 Grandin Road SW. “Data and technology are changing how we do business,” saidVDOT Chief Deputy Commissioner Rob Cary in a statement. “These hackathons are opportunities for innovators...

Virginia police are investigating what appears to be an attack on Sen. Mark Warner’s (D-VA) regional office in Roanoke after a brick was reportedly thrown through the office’s front window before it opened Monday morning. "This morning prior to 8 a.m., an individual threw a brick through the front office window of Sen. Warner's Roanoke office," Warner's communications director Rachel Cohen said in a statement to CNN. "Thankfully due to the early hour no one was in the office at the time. Local police were reportedly called to the office after being notified of an individual carrying bricks walking around...