In collaboration with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, Mountain View Elementary students will present inventions on Tuesday, March 15 in the school gym at 6:30 p.m. Invention challenges suggested by mentors from the Patent Office include wearable functional clothing, snow removal, pet hygiene, and kids’ refrigerator.

Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) will accept applications from groups until April 14, 2016 for United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service Specialty Crop Block Grant funding up to $60,000 per project

With the number of air travelers growing significantly each year, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) says it is prepared to effectively screen the more than 65.1 million travelers expected to travel over the Spring Break travel season. TSA normally screens nearly 2 million passengers daily. With passenger volumes up more than 7 percent over the same time period in 2015, TSA expects passenger volumes to drastically increase throughout in March as spring breakers take to the skies and throughout the summer.

Longtime Northern Virginia Community College professor William Woodard has returned to the area after spending the fall 2015 semester teaching English in the applied linguistics master’s degree program at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago through a grant from the Fulbright program, the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government.

Congresswoman Barbara Comstock (R-VA) joined as an original cosponsor to House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul’s (R-TX) bipartisan Digital Security Commission Act, according to a news release from her office on Feb. 29.

George Liffert of Woodbridge a national park manager with 28 years’ experience and a former manager at Prince William Forest Park, has been tapped to lead Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, where he has been acting superintendent since June 2015. He will assume his role as superintendent immediately.

Virginia has joined the amicus brief urging the US Supreme Court to protect women's access to contraception under the Affordable Care Act, according to an announcement from Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring.

U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA) joined Sens. Tom Udall (D-NM), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) to introduce the Fairness and Independence in Redistricting (FAIR) Act to take partisanship out of the congressional redistricting process by requiring states to establish independent, bipartisan redistricting commissions.