The Montgomery County panel is asking for a pay increase and money for new positions.

CHRISTIANSBURG — Undaunted by warnings of a record real estate tax increase — and spurred by Occupy movement supporters' urgings not to cut education — the Montgomery County School Board voted Tuesday to add a pay increase and 16 positions to its budget request.

George Huguely pleaded not guilty in the death of his former girlfriend, Yeardley Love, found at her apartment.

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- One by one, potential jurors in the case against George W. Huguely V, who is accused of beating his former girlfriend to death when they were both University of Virginia students, took the witness stand Monday and revealed how hard it could be to seat an impartial jury.

A patrol officer whose alert observations solved multiple theft cases and led to the return of stolen items is Salem's 2011 Police Officer of the Year.

Demands and cuts in state funding suggest a 21-cent real estate tax rate increase. Supervisors balked.

Montgomery County supervisors braced themselves Monday for the possibility of a record increase in the county's real estate tax rate.

There is still more than a month, with more meetings and two public hearings, before Montgomery officials expect to approve a new tax rate and a spending plan for the fiscal year that starts July1. But at a work session Monday, supervisors heard from county staff that it would take a 21-cent increase in the tax rate -- three times more than any of the officials present could recall -- to meet the budget requests from an array of departments and agencies and to also pay the new debt resulting from Montgomery's simultaneous construction of two new high schools and renovation of a middle school.

The walls will be part of the larger project to expand the Valley View Mall interchange.

Noise-buffering walls standing between 13 and 16 feet high will be built along most of Interstate 581 in Roanoke between Hershberger Road and Liberty Road as part of a bigger construction project to expand the Valley View Boulevard interchange.

A Roanoke school official gave no explanation for why Babette Cribbs had been moved to the central office.

Roanoke school officials confirmed Monday that an elementary school principal has been transferred to an unspecified central administration post.

A Hidden Valley High School basketball player had reported an incident at a party in January.

Three Salem teenagers, including two Salem High School basketball players, are charged with assaulting a Hidden Valley High School basketball player at a party last month, Salem Commonwealth's Attorney Tom Bowers said Monday.

The 38-year-old woman struck by a train in Christiansburg on Sunday mistook the direction it was traveling, a Norfolk Southern Corp. spokesman said.

Shortly before 6 p.m. Sunday, the woman was walking her dog on railroad tracks near Railroad Street when she was struck by a train, according to town spokeswoman Becky Wilburn.

The animal control unit of the Bedford County Sheriff's Office responded Jan. 28 to Goose Creek Valley Road in the Montvale area in response to an owner who had discovered three horses with severe cuts on their necks.

The man who ran the private bus company that operates Roanoke City Schools' fleet has been charged with driving while intoxicated and refusing a blood or breath test.

Andre Harris is no longer employed by Mountain Valley Transportation, his attorney Ray Ferris said.