Week in review

Feathered stars

Three eaglets at the Wildlife Center of Virginia are Internet celebrities. Thousands of viewers are watching the Center's online Eagle Cam to see the 10-week-old eaglets. Wildlife center president Ed Clark tells The News Leader that the Center's website crashed on the eaglets' first day at the facility when they attracted about 30,000 online visitors. The center received about 175,000 emails. The eaglets were brought to the Staunton Center from Norfolk Botanical Garden four weeks ago after their mother was killed by an airplane.

Documents released

The University of Virginia agreed Wednesday to hand over documents related to Michael Mann's hockey-stick graph and the global warming scandal termed "Climategate."

The American Tradition Institute (ATI) and Delegate Bob Marshall requested emails and documents that they say may reveal scientists' attempts to cover up and manipulate data.

The Washington Post says the school agreed to release the documents by August 22, but quotes the university's president as saying she will seek "all available exemptions" under the law to shield some of the documents. The request is separate from the civil subpoena Attorney General Cuccinelli filed against the school, which is now headed to the Virginia Supreme Court.

Smallpox scare

The Centers for Disease Control surprised staff at the Virginia Historical Society last week when federal health inspectors confiscated a 135-year-old piece of human skin they thought could have been infected with a deadly strain of smallpox.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the fleck of skin was fastened to an 1876 letter stored in the Richmond museum. A Maryland scientist was concerned that the scab could transmit infection; however, after the scab was confiscated, tests confirmed it contained the smallpox vaccine, not a live strain of the disease.

No noise here

You can tell people they're going to hell, but you can't do it loudly in Virginia Beach. The city set volume limits Tuesday designed to quiet street preaching and other public activities. The changes adopted Tuesday allow street preaching and similar public activities at the oceanfront. But they place restrictions on amplifiers and allow police to take noise measurements inside houses and other residences with the windows closed.

The Virginian Pilot reported that the city council's ordinance limits the use of amplifiers to about 80 decibels during most of the day. The newspaper estimates that's about the same volume as a garbage disposal. Virginia Beach has changed its noise rules since a 2009 state Supreme Court ruling that the city's noise ordinance was unconstitutional.

Pirates' plea

A tenth Somali man pleaded guilty to piracy Thursday in Norfolk for his role in the February hijacking of a yacht off Africa that ended with the deaths of four Americans. None of the men who have pleaded guilty are believed to have been the ones who fired the fatal shots.

The pirates pleaded guilty last week as part of a plea deal that could result in them serving less than life in prison, the mandatory sentence. Two of them said they tried to stop the shooting once it started aboard the sailing vessel Quest.

All ten men, who are between 20 and 35 years old, face sentencing this fall. Five others still face charges.

Growing up

Virginians are getting older on average, according to new U.S. Census figures. The state's median age in 2010 was 37.5, compared with 35.7 in 2000. Despite a healthy increase in Virginia's population, the percentage of residents in two key working-age groups dropped. The figures released Thursday show the percentage of residents ages 25 to 34 was 13.6 percent in 2010, down from 14.6 percent in 2000. And those ages 35 to 44 totaled 13.9 percent of the population, down from 17 percent in 2000. The 45 to 54 age group made up about 15.2 percent, the highest percentage among age groups. Overall, Virginia's population grew 13 percent over the past decade to 8 million last year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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