A Virginia National Guard soldier wounded in an accidental blast at Fort Pickett is in stable condition at VCU Medical Center and is expected to make a full recovery, a spokesman said yesterday. Thirteen soldiers taken to Southside Regional Medical Center in Petersburg on Wednesday night were treated and released and have returned to duty, said Maj. Cotton Puryear.

Six crewmen suffered minor injuries when a Navy helicopter crashed during a training exercise late Tuesday at Fort Pickett in Nottoway County, a spokesman said yesterday. The Sea Hawk helicopter crashed just after 10 p.m. at the Castles Combat Landing Strip, used by all branches of the military for training at the base, which is home to the Virginia Army National Guard.

Six crewmen suffered minor injuries when a Navy helicopter crashed during a training exercise last night at Fort Pickett in Nottoway County.

A new report finds that problems at the Virginia Center for Behavioral Rehabilitation didn’t improve much in 2008, despite the center’s having moved to its new $62 million facility in Nottoway County. The program is the maximum-security home for 130 of the most dangerous sex offenders in Virginia. They are being held indefinitely—at $131,000 apiece each year—under civil-court orders for treatment after their prison sentences ended.

Nottoway County leaders are trying to mobilize opposition to a proposal to move Virginia Army National Guard headquarters to Sandston and cosolidate it with Air National Guard headquarters there. Nottoway officials oppose the consolidation, scheduled to be completed by 2014, because it would mean the loss of some of the operations and employees at Army Guard headquarters at Fort Pickett, just outside the Nottoway town of Blackstone.