Hillary Clinton returned to Washington, D.C., Wednesday to take a breather from the campaign trail and enjoy a convincing victory in West Virginia before re-launching her longshot bid to defeat front-runner Barack Obama for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
Clinton rallied supporters with her decisive win Tuesday, but she will have to shout to be heard in the final three weeks of the Democratic contest as Obama increasingly turns his attention toward the general election.
The Illinois senator was campaigning and meeting with newspaper editorial boards in Michigan Wednesday, a state in which he refused to appear on the ballot to support the Democratic National Committee’s decision to penalize the state for holding its primary ahead of Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.
With Clinton vowing to stay in the race until every vote is counted — and the party likely to find a mechanism to seat Michigan as well as the also-penalized state of Florida at the Democratic National Convention in August — Obama may be trying to sew up some loose ends.
But the Illinois senator is talking like he is already the nominee, and heading to Michigan could be his attempt to signal that he has moved on to the general election and is preparing to fight for the potential battleground state against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. Obama headed to Michigan Tuesday night from Missouri, another expected battleground, where he delivered a speech at an economic forum without ever mentioning Clinton’s name.
With his wide lead in total delegates and much of the political talking class in Washington ready to designate Obama the Democratic nominee, Clinton has quite a mountain to climb to convince Democrats she’s the best candidate. But she tried her best to signal that her 40-point margin of victory in West Virginia proves the race is far from over.

elections.foxnews.com

Published May 05, 2008 11:03 pm - Make no mistake about it — early voting is popular in West Virginia.
Early voting popular in West Virginia
THE REGISTER-HERALD (BECKLEY, W.V.)
Make no mistake about it — early voting is popular in West Virginia.
As of Saturday night, when the last courthouse shut down, voters taking advantage of the pre-election balloting had numbered 28,187.
Broken down, that meant 20,103 Democrats paid an early visit to the polls, while 6,340 Republicans did so, according to figures released by the secretary of state’s office.
The number also included 10 members of the Mountain Party, and 1,734 that included no affiliated parties and “all others.”
From a regional perspective, Raleigh County led the way with 1,164 voters, followed by Fayette, 701; Mercer, 688; Summers, 633; Nicholas, 476; Greenbrier, 402; Clay, 352; Boone, 300; Monroe, 265; Webster, 254; Pocahontas, 242; Wyoming, 310; and McDowell, 22.
“We’ve had little issues come up,” said Sarah Bailey, chief of staff in the secretary of state’s office.
Independents for the first time are allowed to vote for Democratic candidates but must ask for a party ballot to do so. Republicans have allowed the non-affiliated voters to participate in their primary elections for years.
“We had a couple of complaints that independents were not aware they had to request a ballot,” Bailey said.
“That’s the only thing I would identify as a problem. But I really don’t think it’s a significant problem.”
Meantime, Secretary of State Betty Ireland disclosed an upgrade in her campaign finance reporting system that allows residents to merely plug in a donor’s name and learn which candidates received money, starting at the mandatory level of $250 and up.
“This upgrade will go a long way to ensuring transparency and accountability in elections, which have been top priorities for my office,” she said.

alliednews.com

(Updates with National Weather Service)
WASHINGTON, April 28 (Reuters) - Three tornadoes swept through central and southeastern Virginia on Monday, injuring about 200 people and damaging dozens of homes and businesses, officials said.
The city of Suffolk in the southeastern part of the state was hardest hit by the late afternoon storms, said Virginia Department of Emergency Management spokeswoman Laura Southard. She said earlier reports of a fatality in linked to the severe weather were incorrect.
Injuries and damage were also reported in Colonial Heights in central Virginia, Southard said.
The National Weather Service (NWS) said three confirmed tornadoes plowed through the region.
"One of the tornadoes hit the Lawrenceville area in Brunswick County," said NWS meteorologist Brian Hurley. "The second tornado developed to the north of Colonial Heights … The other more significant tornado occurred in the city of Suffolk."
Television pictures showed extensive property damage — flattened homes, and lawns and streets covered in piles of debris and toppled trees.
"There are trees down everywhere and I’ve seen a half-dozen vehicles flipped over," Richard Hicks of Suffolk told the Virginian-Pilot newspaper.
Another witness in Suffolk, Robert Brinkley, told the newspaper: "There are tops blown off the roofs of many, many houses."
More than 3,000 Dominion Virginia Power customers were without service, most in scattered outages throughout the southeastern part of the state, the newspaper said.
Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine declared a statewide emergency to coordinate the state’s response to what his office said was widespread damage in the wake of storms.

reuters.com

March 19, 2008 11:11 AM EDT
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va., March 19, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) — Gateway Financial Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: GBTS), the holding company for Gateway Bank & Trust Co., has announced the opening of its second financial center in Emporia, Virginia.
The newest financial center, which opened on February 7, 2008, is located at 100 Dominion Drive. D. Ben Berry, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Gateway Bank, stated, “As a regional community bank we are excited about all the opportunities available in this market. With our experienced team of employees, we look forward to serving both the retail and commercial financial needs in this area.”
About the Company:
Gateway Financial Holdings, Inc. is the parent company of Gateway Bank & Trust Co., a regional community bank with a total of thirty-five full-service financial centers — twenty in Virginia: Virginia Beach (7), Richmond (6), Chesapeake (3), Emporia (2), Suffolk and Norfolk; and fifteen in North Carolina: Elizabeth City (3), Edenton, Kitty Hawk (2), Raleigh (4), Moyock, Nags Head, Plymouth, Roper, and Wilmington. The Bank provides insurance through its Gateway Insurance Services, Inc. subsidiary, brokerage services through its Gateway Investment Services, Inc. subsidiary, and mortgage banking services through its Gateway Bank Mortgage, Inc. subsidiary. The common stock of the Corporation is traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol GBTS. For further information, visit the Corporation’s web site at www.gwfh.com.
CONTACT: Gateway Bank D. Ben Berry, Chairman, President andChief Executive Officer 757-422-8000

streetinsider.com

WHEELING — The city of Wheeling encompasses 14 square miles and has 29,330 residents. The city of Morgantown covers 10 square miles and has 28,654 residents, which doesn’t include the more than 25,000 college students who live there nine months each year.
Wheeling is located along a river, the Ohio; Morgantown also is situated along a river, the Monongahela.
These similarities aside, the one area where Wheeling and Morgantown appear to be very different is in their approach to city government. For fiscal 2008-09, the city of Wheeling has a proposed $27.77 million budget; Morgantown, $22.33 million.
Wheeling has 415 city employee positions budgeted for the coming year; Morgantown, 220.
A key difference in the employment figures is that Morgantown has privatized some non-essential city services such as sanitation and emergency medical services, while Wheeling continues to provide them as city functions. Wheeling’s sanitation department alone has 10 employees.
Former Wheeling City Manager Will Turani offered City Council a proposal to privatize the city’s sanitation department in the late 1990s. The proposal never gained traction with council, however.
Also, Morgantown does not provide emergency medical services through its fire department — Morgantown City Manager Dan Boroff said a local nonprofit agency handles that service — but Wheeling does, which leads to Wheeling budgeting 45 more fire department positions than Morgantown. Wheeling’s fire budget is $7.03 million while Morgantown’s is only $3.82 million, for a difference of about $3.21 million.

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If there is one thing I hate about conference championship week, it is the halftime shows that come with it.
Some people love them. Listening to talking heads from different networks adamantly argue about which bubble teams will be announced as part of the NCAA tournament field during today’s Selection Show, and which squads will be headed to the less-prestigious NIT, or even the dreaded CBI, is what they live for.
Not while every major-conference team that is on ”the bubble” is so mediocre, anyway.
Seriously, is there one halfway-decent bubble team from a big conference out there this year?
”Virginia Tech, because it played No. 1 North Carolina to a close loss, is definitely deserving of a spot in the field.”
Ugh. Where’s the mute button.
Funny how none of these highly paid experts mentions that Arizona finished the season with a losing conference record, Kentucky struggled through a string of embarrassing nonconference losses not much different than Idaho State and Virginia Tech hasn’t beaten a ranked team all season.
None of these teams deserves to go to the NCAA tournament. But all three could find their names on bracket lines today. If they don’t, a coach somewhere in America will follow Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim’s lead and complain that the Big Dance is too small.

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