The Virginia Department of Forestry is urging landowners to order tree seedlings from the agency's annual sale while supplies are still in stock.

Some pregnant women who are inmates in Virginia's jails have been forced to go through labor and even delivery in handcuffs and shackles.

A Virginia Senate subcommittee is poised today to begin making decisions about health-care reform that the House of Delegates decided not to tackle.

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A measure intended to make it easier for home-schooled students to play sports on public school teams was given preliminary approval on Tuesday.

Legislation requiring Amazon.com Inc. to collect and remit sales taxes in Virginia passed a Senate committee Tuesday.

It would extend probation periods, change contracts for those who switch school systems.

Smoking would be banned in all state government buildings and in the buildings and grounds of all K-12 public schools in the commonwealth under two measures passed Tuesday by the Senate Local Government Committee. The sponsor of both proposals Sen. Ralph Northam, D-Norfolk, said he was following up on an executive order issued by Gov. Tim Kaine to ban smoking in all of the state's executive offices and trying to keep children from "taking that first puff." Under the measure to prohibit smoking in state-owned buildings, local governments would have the option of banning smoking in their offices and buildings. The ban in goverment buldings passed the committee on a vote of 11-4; the ban on school grounds passed 12-3. While Northam scored a victory...

Gov. Bob McDonnell neither confirmed nor denied whether he will sign either version of the voter ID bills passed by the House of Delegates and Senate, but did say he felt protecting the integrity of the voting process was important. McDonnell said Tuesday that before he signed a bill requiring voters to present valid identifications at the polls or cast a provisional ballot he would vet it to make sure it was "legally sound" and would pass muster under the federal 1965 Voting Rights Act. The Senate passed a voter ID bill Monday and the House passed one last week that would differ over how provisional ballots cast by voters without ID would be counted. The Senate measure would give the voter six days to...

Virginia's oyster harvest has increased 10-fold over the past decade, Gov. Bob McDonnell said today.