More than 75 people, including county officials, volunteers and children, attended Friday afternoon's ribbon-cutting to officially open the new two-story Southern Virginia Child Advocacy Center on South Main Street in Rocky Mount.

Joyce Moran, the executive officer of the center that she started, waited for more than three years to see the construction project completed.

During the ceremony, Moran recalled that the work to get the center first started June 14, 2005 but there were many delays, including the lack of needed funding. Construction finally began earlier this year and the building was occupied in May.

Moran established the center's corporation in 2001, although she began operating the SW Child Advocacy Center in the summer of 1994.

Fifth District Congressman Virgil H. Goode Jr. (R-Rocky Mount) voted "no" again Friday on a $700 billion bailout package for the financial industry.

"Provisions were added to the bill, but it still left taxpayers vulnerable," Goode said shortly after the vote on the bill, which passed 263 to 171 in the House of Representatives and was quickly signed by the president.

"This one action increased our national debt limit by $1.3 trillion," Goode said. "This will have a tremendous impact on taxpayers. Taxpayers will have to pay it back with interest."

"This legislation may have some temporary positives, but in the long term, it will adversely impact the value of the dollar," Goode added.

Superintendent Charles Lackey and other top school administrators in Franklin County read to students in the county's elementary schools Thursday as part of a a national campaign to bring attention to the importance of early education.

They participated in Jumpstart's Read for the Record, which was held nationwide Thursday.

By encouraging hundreds of thousands of children and adults to read the same book on the same day, Jumpstart aims to break a world record and to make early education a national priority.