He plans to propose a doubling of the tobacco tax — from 30 cents to 60 cents per pack.

Attorney General Bob McDonnell is proposing a broad range of election reforms in his legislative package for the upcoming General Assembly session. His suggestions range from lowering the number of registered voters needed to create an additional precinct so voters have a shorter wait, to allowing emergency first responders to vote absentee.

A 15-year-old Thomas Dale High School student was charged yesterday with threatening to shoot several staff members and students after police found a so-called “hit list” among his school papers. The boy, whose name was being withheld because of his age, had a razor blade and a marijuana cigarette in his possession after he was arrested yesterday morning at the school, police said.

November’s passenger traffic at Richmond International Airport was 12.2 percent lower than the passenger volume for the same month last year, airport staff reported today. The decrease was the largest monthly decline in traffic since April, when passenger volume began to decline with the economy. Still, the month was the third-best November the airport has ever seen.

WASHINGTON (AP)—Consumer prices in November plunged by the largest amount on records going back 61 years as energy costs posted nearly double the decline of the previous month. The Labor Department reported today that consumer prices fell 1.7 percent in November, surpassing the previous record decline of 1 percent set in October. Both drops were the largest one-month declines on records dating to February 1947.

Vice President Dick Cheney is calling President-elect Barack Obama’s national security lineup “a pretty good team.“

A group demanding that France withdraw its troops from Afghanistan claimed it planted dynamite found Tuesday at a major Paris department store, officials said.

BEAUMONT, Texas—Police responding to a store’s burglar alarm found a less-than-hardened criminal inside: He was 4, and playing with the toys. Detective Randy Stevens says the child apparently unlocked a door at his nearby home, got out, then crossed a street to reach the discount store. Store surveillance video shows the unidentified boy trying one of the front doors to a Family Dollar store about 3 a.m. Monday, only to find it locked. But the second door was unlocked and the child went inside.

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP)—A Fairfax County judge is expected to rule today on a defense motion to dismiss charges against a Loudoun County man accused of causing the death of his recently adopted son in a hot vehicle. Forty-nine-year-old Miles Harrison of Purcellville is charged with involuntary manslaughter in the July death of his 21-month-old son Chase.

GREELEY, Colo. (AP)—A Colorado man has pleaded guilty in connection with the death of his girlfriend’s half-sister during an apparent imitation of the “Mortal Kombat” video game. The Weld County prosecutor’s office says 18-year-old Lamar Roberts pleaded guilty yesterday to knowingly causing a death through child abuse. Prosecutors say Roberts and 17-year-old Heather Trujillo were baby-sitting Zoe Garcia a year ago. They say they kicked, hit and slammed the girl to the floor.

Petersburg police continue their search today for a man who abducted a 14-year-old girl Sunday from her home on County Drive and attempted to rape her. Authorities said a man grabbed the girl after she answered the door about 11:30 p.m. The girl fought with the man and escaped, hiding in a storage shed until he left. The man is described as white, 40 to 50 years old and about 6 feet tall with a heavy build. He had a 3-inch-long gray beard and wore a gray sweatshirt and blue jeans.

About 100 people were evacuated from the 3600 Centre on West Broad Street this evening after a fire in an escalator motor sent smoke billowing through the upper floors. No one was hurt in the two-alarm blaze, which was reported at 6:42 p.m. A second alarm was sounded eight minutes later because of the size of the building and amount of smoke.

AUBURN, Ala.—Charles Barkley was pulling for Auburn to hire Turner Gill as football coach long before Gene Chizik emerged publicly as a candidate for the job. Barkley’s take on why his alma mater hired Chizik instead: Gill is a black coach, Chizik is white. “I believe race had a factor. Of course I do,“ Barkley, a former Auburn and NBA star, said Monday in a phone interview with The Associated Press hours after Chizik was introduced. “First of all you can’t compare these two, their records. That’s not even close to being fair.

Petersburg residents dissatisfied with City Council’s leadership are taking a cue from Richmond and circulating a petition they hope will lead to an elected-mayor form of government. “We need serious changes. We need some sophisticated leadership, some 20th-century leadership,“ said Gloria Brown, with Concerned Citizens of Petersburg.

Richmond Police Chief Bryan T. Norwood has named a former colleague from Connecticut as his chief of staff. Sydney Collier of the New Haven Police Department will serve as a major under Norwood effective Jan. 5. Collier has 17 years of law enforcement experience. Norwood started working for the New Haven Police Department in 1989, rising to the rank of assistant chief by the time he left in 2006 to be chief in Bridgeport, Conn.