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October 02, 2009 - In Maryland, a beverage mogul is teaming up with Montgomery County, to help make more businesses environmentally-friendly. Seth Goldman, the CEO of organic iced-tea maker Honest Tea, employs more than a hundred people at his headquarters in Bethesda. Coca-Cola recently purchased a share of his company.
But Goldman recalls when Honest Tea was just a small, eco-friendly start-up operating from his home. "My office was a bedroom," he says, "So it was really challenging to interview potential job candidates because you come into a bedroom, you're not sure you're dealing with a real company."
Goldman wants green entrepreneurs to avoid the pitfalls he faced. So, helped by a $150,000 grant from Montgomery County government, he's opened a Green Business Incubator in Bethesda. It will bring together entrepreneurs by offering them free space, supplies, advice and more. "The chance for them to be collaborating and talking to each other, and sometimes commiserating, is really important," Goldman says.
He launched the Green Business Incubator yesterday by cutting a biodegradable vine, instead of a disposable ribbon.
David Schultz reports...
October 02, 2009 - They gave college scholarships to more than 1,000 D.C. public school students. This week, the Hoop Dreams Scholarship Fund closed its doors. The 13-year old organization refused to go quietly and instead invited nearly 300 friends to celebrate the end of the Hoop Dreams Scholarship Fund.
"We wanted to preserve the dignity of it, the integrity of it, and the quality of it," said HDSF founder and president Susie Kay. She adds although the Fund is ending operations, due to reduced donations and the sluggish economy, students currently enrolled in the fund and attending college will be supported by the United Negro college Fund.
Laquinta Carrol attended college on an HDSF scholarship. she grew up in southeast and these days makes her living as a graphics artist. "It was Ms. Kay who transformed me into a better person, made me look at things differently, and she was able to take us out of the environment we were in."
Since 1996 the Hoop Dreams Scholarship Fund has awarded 1800 scholarships to public school students in the Washington region.
Elliott Francis reports...
October 02, 2009 - The first frost may be on the way...but it's not too late for planting. David Furst speaks with Kathy Jentz, editor and publisher of Washington Gardener Magazine. She brings her 'to do' list for early October.
October 02, 2009 - Amidst the talks of health care reform, the partisan divide is growing over whether and how much to overhaul the nation's capital markets.
Elizabeth Wynne Johnson reports...
October 02, 2009 - (October 2) THINKING TOO MUCH The latest in a series of Philosophy lectures at Catholic University explores the mind in Over-Intellectualizing the Intellect this afternoon at 2 p.m. Professor of Philosophy Alva Noë from the University of California, Berkeley focuses the lecture through the lens of his work on perception and consciousness.
(October 4) A WIDER CIRCLE
The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center presents Bartok, Bertali and Dvorak in The Spirit of Folk Music in College Park, Maryland, Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m. Musicians with the [University of Maryland School of Music]( ) explore the influence folk music has had on classical forms with selections for violin and piano, ending with a rare performance of the 13-instrument arrangement of Copland's Appalachian Spring. (October 3-December 13) EDWARD'S OIL
Petroleum plays a part in The Corcoran Gallery of Art's newest exhibit, presenting Edward Burtynsky: Oil, on display through December 13th. These photographs of pipelines and crude production survey a decade of work by this respected and celebrated photographer from Canada.
October 02, 2009 - In the news this week, a bribery scandal continues to roil the D.C. council. Meanwhile, the district seems poised to vote on same-sex marriage, and in Virginia, there's about a month to go before election day.
Washington Post columnist Robert McCartney joins WAMU's Morning Edition Host Matt McCleskey to talk about some of the region's top stories...
October 02, 2009 - The first shipments of the H1N1 swine flu vaccine will be arriving in the area as early as Tuesday.
Maryland is slated to receive a first batch of approximately 32,000 doses, while Virginia will receive close to 44,000 doses of the nasal-mist vaccine. The first vaccinations will be offered mainly to health care workers.
Maryland expects nearly a million doses to arrive this month, enough to immunize a third or less of the priority population of about 2.9 million. The vaccines are being distributed based on state's populations.
Children under 10 will need two doses of the vaccine to be fully protected, with 21 days between doses.
The Washington Post reports some public school students in the district could get in-school vaccinations as early as October 19th.
Natalie Neumann reports...
Maryland is slated to receive a first batch of approximately 32,000 doses, while Virginia will receive close to 44,000 doses of the nasal-mist vaccine.
Courtesy of: James Gathany, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
October 02, 2009 - Businesses in Maryland will see their unemployment insurance tax rates more than triple next year.
The Baltimore Daily Record reports minimum rates for 2010 will be $187 per employee, that's up from $51 in 2009. About 60 percent of employers in the state pay the minimum, but rates vary depending on the number of unemployment claims filed against the business.
The secretary of the state department of labor, licensing and regulation says Maryland is raising the amount employers pay to the highest level allowed because of a drastic drop in the state's unemployment fund.
The fund's balance fell from nearly $900 million a year ago to $341 million last month, while the unemployment rate grew from 4.5 percent a year ago to 7.2 percent in August.
Matt McCleskey reports...
October 02, 2009 - Nine men who died fighting a wildfire in northern California are being remembered this weekend at the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Maryland. The annual ceremony in Emmittsburg honors firefighters who died in the line of duty.
A plaque with the names of 103 firefighters who lost their lives in 2008 will be added to the memorial. They include eight firefighters from Oregon and a U.S. Forest Service worker from California who died in a helicopter crash in the Trinity Alps Wilderness Area on August 5, 2008. It was the deadliest firefighting air disaster in U.S. history. The cause of that crash remains under investigation.
Also to be added to the memorial during this year's service are the names of 19 other firefighters who died in years past.
Matt McCleskey reports...
October 02, 2009 - This week in Congress, senators log a milestone in the energy and climate debate, and snow falls in October, on the road to a new health care system.
Elizabeth Wynne Johnson reports...
October 02, 2009 - Washington D.C. is taking steps to make bike riding a more viable form of transportation.
Mayor Adrian Fenty, an avid biker, is in his element. Outside Union Station, he stands in front of a steel and glass structure shaped liked a bike helmet.
Fenty is inaugurating the D.C. Bikestation. It's a 1,600 square foot covered space which can house over 130 bikes and allows paying users secure access with a pass key. Fenty says the Bikestation sets a new national standard in making bikes an important element in urban public transit.
Gabe Klein heads D.C.'s department of transportation. According to Klein, the city will eventually want to make biking a primary mode of transportation, like in many European cities. "I'm envisioning that bike sharing could be its own transit system and that's how we're going to treat it," says Klein.
George Mino of Columbia, Maryland has waited a year to park his bike in one of the Bikestations' modern racks. Each day, Mino bikes from Union Station to his job at Crystal City but he's struggled with problems like theft and safe places to park. "There's nothing as peaceful as riding my bicycle here at sunrise across the Mall and seeing the sun rise over the tidal basin. It's good for the soul I guess," says Mino.
Klein says his department will soon announce major plans to further expand the city's bike sharing program in 2010.
Mana Rabiee reports...
October 02, 2009 - About 400 D.C. Public School employees will lose their jobs because of budget pressures and what administrators call the need to right-size the schools.
Kavitha Cardoza reports...
October 02, 2009 - Fairfax Virginia's County Executive says tax increases are back on the table as Fairfax struggles to balance its budget for 2011.
County Executive Anthony Griffin says Fairfax faces a $315 million budget shortfall for the fiscal year beginning in July.
That's a little less than last years shortfall, but that's before you consider that $150 million cut in state funding to county schools.
"We're approaching a half-billion-dollar problem that he school board and the board of supervisors is going to have to solve," Griffin says.
Griffin says he may have to recommend tax increases and cuts to the countys education contribution but he says it shouldnt come as a surprise to county leaders. "I have been warning the board that the choices they did not make last year, they may have to make this year," he says.
Fairfax raised property tax rates this year, but because of declining property values, it didn't mean more revenue for the county. The board of supervisors has until April to decide on the 2011 budget.
Jonathan Wilson reports...
Tax increases are back on the table as Fairfax struggles to balance its budget for 2011, says Fairfax Virginia's County Executive.
Courtesy of: Morgue File
October 02, 2009 - The Washington Convention and Sports Authority says D.C. will become a hotbed of high profile sporting events.
The organization was created from the merger of the old Convention Center Authority and the Sports and Entertainment Commission. Spokesman Erik Moses says D.C.'s tourism industry will get a boost in promoting D.C. as a sports town. The Convention and Sports Authority is currently promoting December's Eagle Bank Bowl at RFK stadium.
Jamila Bey reports...
October 02, 2009 - WASHINGTON (AP) Thirty-nine people connected with the Washington taxicab industry have been indicted on bribery charges.
An indictment unsealed Friday charges Yitbarek Syume, 51, of Silver Spring, Md.; Berhane Leghese, 47, of Arlington, Va.; and Amanuel Ghirmazion, 53, of Hyattsville, Md. of paying bribes totaling $220,0000 to the chairperson of the D.C. Taxicab Commission to obtain licenses for multi-vehicle cab companies.
Syume and another 36 people were charged in a separate indictment with paying bribes totaling $110,000 to get individual cab licenses. Federal authorities say the indictments came after a two-year investigation.
Last week, Ted G. Loza, the chief of staff for D.C. Council Member Jim Graham, was arrested on charges that he promoted taxicab legislation in exchange for cash.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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