WASHINGTON-With gas prices hovering above $4 per gallon across the state, three Virginia House Republicans Thursday repeated calls for Congress to lift the ban on oil drilling off Virginia’s coast.

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — Mill Mountain Zoo in Roanoke is considering an expansion project that would give it enough space for an exhibit of native Virginia animals.

JARRATT, Va. (AP) — A killer who unsuccessfully argued that Virginia’s procedures for lethal injection were unconstitutional was executed Thursday after a federal appeals court upheld the primary method of capital punishment in the nation’s second-busiest death chamber.

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — Authorities closed a portion of U.S. 220 in Roanoke County for several hours after a truck carrying explosives overturned and spilled acetic acid.

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — Virginia Tech should release all of its records in the April 2007 campus shootings that left 33 people dead so that others can learn from the events, family members of victims said Thursday.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A man who beat a co-worker to death with a lamp and then claimed Virginia’s method of executing prisoners by lethal injection was inhumane was scheduled to die Thursday unless a federal appeals court or the governor give him more time to make his argument.

MORGANTON - More than 13 and a half hours after Burke EMS launched a rescue effort on Tuesday, a hunting dog was freed from a drainage pipe, Maj. Ken Anthony said.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP)—Appalachian Power Co. has permission to begin recovering higher coal prices from customers before the State Corporation Commission hears the request, the agency announced Tuesday.

LONDON (AP) — Batman star Christian Bale was to be questioned by police over allegations he assaulted his mother and sister the night before the European premiere of his film, ``The Dark Knight,’’ British media reported Tuesday.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — For the first time Monday, statues of black children and civil rights leaders were placed alongside statues of some men who had worked to deny racial equality on the lawn of what was once the Confederate Capitol.

WASHINGTON – John McCain and Barack Obama agree that the country’s health care system is broken, and 47 million Americans lack health insurance.

BLACKSBURG — Some of the deepest secrets about Seung-Hui Cho’s killing rampage at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, may never be made public.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — Virginia drinkers have something new to try.

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Virginia is seeing a surge in voter registration among 18- to 25-year-olds.

“Business as usual” will continue the rest of this year at Barr Laboratories’ operation in Forest, company officials said Friday after announcing the drug maker was being sold to a larger company based in Israel.

PARIS (AP)—Uranium-bearing liquid has leaked from a broken underground pipe at a nuclear site in southeastern France, the national nuclear safety authority said Friday. It was the second leak discovered at a French site this month.

WASHINGTON (AP)—FDA declares it’s OK to eat tomatoes again, lifting its salmonella warning as outbreak slows.

A Roanoke soldier stationed in Iraq has been killed in a vehicle accident.

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — Authorities are investigating the death of a man who was struck by a Norfolk Southern train that was being used for a railroad safety program.

Barack Obama’s presidential campaign will open an office in downtown Lynchburg on Saturday as part of a voter registration drive to increase Democratic support in localities that usually vote Republican.

SIOUX CENTER, Iowa - Stirring her morning coffee, lifelong Republican Grace Droog voiced her doubts — and those of many evangelical voters — about what she isn’t hearing from John McCain in this year’s presidential election.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — More state government workers could be giving up their commutes under an initiative promoted by Governor Tim Kaine.

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — Need a job? Have you checked at church?

State environmental officials continue to clean up the Staunton River.

Former Gov. Mark R. Warner continued to raise far more money than did former Gov. Jim Gilmore in the U.S. Senate race in Virginia, reports filed today with the Federal Election Commission showed.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A Richmond woman and a Miami man have been charged with defrauding investors of $132 million in a scheme in which they misappropriated money they were supposed to be holding for the owners of investment property.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The economy showed the depth of its twin problems on Tuesday, slow growth and rising inflation, as the nation wrestled with a teetering financial system, a slumping dollar and rising prices for food and fuel.

Slade Allen Woodson, charged in the Interstate 64 shootings, pleaded guilty in Waynesboro Circuit Court on Monday to six felony counts in connection with shots fired in Waynesboro during the overnight shooting spree.

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) — The earliest existing images of Virginia are being displayed in the state for the first time.

So you’d really like to go out of state for college but can only afford in-state tuition. There’s a way, if you know about the Academic Common Market. Or perhaps you hit the wrong Web site and you’re being asked to pay to submit the all-important FAFSA form for federal aid.