The Supreme Court of Virginia quashed Walmart’s effort to buy energy from companies other than state utilities Dominion and Appalachian Power Company Thursday when it upheld an earlier decision by the State Corporation Commission blocking such an attempt.

Dr. Sterling Ransone is a family physician in Deltaville and a current member of Virginia’s testing task force, a workgroup assembled in late April to boost the state’s once-sluggish COVID-19 test rates.

Virginia is refusing to release information on COVID-19 outbreaks at poultry processing plants on the grounds of privacy concerns, despite a June decision to provide such data for long-term care facilities.

The companies had poured billions into the effort, which was only about 6 percent complete.

In Virginia, though, hospitals can release patients to nursing homes without COVID-19 testing as long as the patient isn’t displaying any symptoms of the disease, despite repeated pleas from industry groups over the past two months to change course.

District courts docketed more than 1,600 eviction lawsuits last week, with judges awarding $1.4 million in cash judgments to landlords, according to online docket information compiled by open government groups.

This year, the Democratic-led General Assembly passed legislation creating the Virginia Voluntary Do Not Sell Firearms List, making Virginia one of the first states to put Vars’s concept into practice.

Confederate Naval Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury was lionized as the “Pathfinder of the Seas” for his work in oceanography along Richmond’s Monument Avenue for decades until his statue came down Thursday.

Since mid-June, residents have also been able to file complaints through an online form, which allows VDH employees — including staff at local health departments — to report on behalf of the public.

The unannounced plan to begin removing the statue and three other Confederate memorials along the city’s Monument Avenue drew a crowd in the thousands to celebrate.