Under a new law, state officials will publish online the employment rates and average salaries for graduates from each institution of higher education in Virginia. Prospective students and their parents will be able to see the statistics for each program and type of degree at each school.

Gov. Bob McDonnell on Tuesday recommended changing some of the requirements in legislation requiring voters to show identification on Election Day. His suggestions would make it slightly easier for people who don’t have proper IDs to have their ballots counted. McDonnell announced that he was recommending changes to 130 laws approved by the General Assembly and that he was vetoing seven bills.

Twenty people have been arrested in Virginia and 20 others elsewhere in an undercover investigation targeting online child predators and child pornographers, officials announced today.

The General Assembly has decided to postpone until next year consideration of a bill that would grant personhood rights to a human embryo from the moment of conception. The Senate last week sent the measure, House Bill 1, back to a committee after Democrats and some Republicans said it could have unforeseen consequences. Democratic officials and abortion rights groups saw the move as a victory.

Democratic leaders and women’s right advocates sounded the alarm Thursday about three bills they said would limit a woman’s reproductive freedom in Virginia. They said House Bill 1, which would grant individual rights to an embryo from the moment of conception, would be a step toward making all abortions illegal. On Tuesday, the House of Delegates passed the measure on a 66-32 vote.

Facing a torrent of what they consider “bad bills,” Democrats in the General Assembly acknowledge that they do not have enough votes to stop socially conservative legislation on issues like abortion, gay rights, voter identification requirements and drug testing of welfare recipients. House and Senate Democrats gathered Thursday to criticize the wave of “divisive social-issue legislative overreach” they say Republicans are perpetrating in Richmond.

In remarks that raised some eyebrows in the audience, the nation’s top transportation official said this week that there is an “unlimited supply of oil” in parts of the world. U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood made that statement Wednesday at Virginia Commonwealth University at the end of a town hall meeting attended by about 75 students, staff and faculty members.

Gov. Bob McDonnell is asking the 2012 General Assembly to delay any action on lifting Virginia’s 30-year moratorium on mining uranium. He said legislators should keep the ban in place while a newly created group of officials from various state agencies studies the proposal to allow a company to mine and mill uranium in Southside Virginia.

Virginia Democratic leaders are speaking out against Republican legislation that they said seeks to make abortion illegal and even might restrict access to some forms of legal birth control.