radioNOVO News WV News Roundup for June 25, 2026

Good morning. I’m Codi Gaboff with your West Virginia State morning roundup.We begin with an update on severe weather recovery. Displaced residents across southern West Virginia are beginning the arduous task of cleaning up after Pond Fork jumped its banks, sparking major flash flooding along Route eighty-five. The community of Bim saw multiple homes heavily damaged, while floodwaters completely washed out a residential bridge in Wharton. First responders were not spared either; the Van-Wharton Volunteer Fire Department took on eighteen inches of water inside its engine bays while its crews were actively deployed on swift-water rescue operations.In a historic policy shift, the West Virginia School Building Authority has, for the first time ever, awarded state funds for public charter school construction. The authority approved five million dollars to back five separate charter school projects across Kanawha, Jefferson, Monongalia, and Harrison counties. The agency received a permanent budget boost from the legislature, giving them sixty-one million dollars to distribute to school infrastructure upgrades statewide this year.In federal judicial news, a Huntington couple has been arrested and charged in a massive healthcare fraud conspiracy. Federal prosecutors allege Raymond Meadows and his wife, Helen Crutcher Meadows, systematically falsified timesheets submitted to a drug testing laboratory through their roles at Lifehouse Incorporated, a faith-based substance abuse recovery program. The arrests are part of the Justice Department's twenty-twenty-six National Health Care Fraud Takedown, which targeted over six billion dollars in false claims nationwide.In Mingo County, state police have arrested a Lenore woman following a complex financial investigation. Troopers secured a warrant charging Ashley Newsome with one-hundred-and-twenty-seven counts of fraudulent use of an access device, computer fraud, and grand larceny. Newsome is accused of stealing a victim's bank details to drain eighteen-thousand dollars.In local infrastructure, public safety officials in Weirton have issued an emergency boil water alert following a major water main disruption. The order impacts all residents and businesses along the thirty-nine-hundred block of Bright Way, the twelve-hundred block of Hanlin Way, and Claremont Place.And finally, South Charleston is celebrating a business milestone with the grand opening of West Virginia’s very first Kroger Marketplace, a forty-million-dollar mega-store at the Park Place Plaza.For more news, download the radioNOVO app. radioNOVO News is a service of Seven Mountains Media.