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Saturday, March 20, 2010
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November 02, 2009 - WASHINGTON (AP) Michelle Obama is launching a mentoring program for D.C. area high school girls seeking help from women at the White House. Thirteen girls joined the first lady and 18 White House staffers today to kick off the program, and a mentoring plan for boys is expected later.
WASHINGTON (AP) The Metro system says commuters should be patient and expect delays on weeknights after 9:30 p.m. because of repairs this month. The transit agency says it needs to replace concrete slabs under rail lines in D.C. and make other fixes at some suburban stations.
WASHINGTON (AP) More than 100 people jammed a D.C. Council hearing recently to voice their views on a bill to allow same-sex marriage in the nation's capital. Today more than 150 people lined up to testify at the second of two sessions on the controversial measure.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
November 02, 2009 - BALTIMORE (AP) Hundreds of people turned out at Baltimore's Inner Harbor to sing "Happy Birthday" to former Gov. William Donal Schaefer, who turned 88 today. Schaefer says he was amazed by the turnout for the dedication of a statue in his honor at harborside.
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) Maryland natural resources officials are retiring more than 500 crabbing licenses. The state says many of the 6,000 Maryland crabbing licenses aren't in active use and retiring them makes good sense given the dwindling crab harvest.
BALTIMORE (AP) The Baltimore Ravens say they've gained new momentum after routing the Denver Broncos 30-to-7 on Sunday. After dropping three in a row, the Ravens say the victory gives them a much-needed shot of confidence as Denver drops out of the ranks of the unbeaten.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
November 02, 2009 - RICHMOND, Va. (AP) Republican Bob McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds are blitzing the state today in the final campaign push for Virginia governor. The two rivals planned several quick stops in cities around Virginia in the last hours leading up to Tuesday's balloting.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) Election officials are urging voters Tuesday to take some precautions at the polls Tuesday against swine flu. Some localities will provide hand sanitizer and even cotton swabs so voters don't have to make contact with touch screens as they vote.
ROANOKE, Va. (AP) The parents of a missing Virginia Tech student has set up a fund for contributions to aid in the search for the 20-year-old woman. Authorities still have not located Morgan Dana Harrington, who disappeared Oct. 17 after a Metallica concert in Charlottesville.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
November 02, 2009 - WASHINGTON (AP) Authorities say they are investigating a suspicious package at the World Bank headquarters.
D.C. fire department spokesman Pete Piringer says an unidentified substance was found in a letter or package in a mail room at about noon Monday. The building, located on H Street in northwest Washington, was partially evacuated.
Piringer says there are no reports of illnesses. He says crews are at the scene looking to identify the susbstance.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
November 02, 2009 - Later this week, Maryland Senator Ben Cardin will hold a hearing on Capitol Hill on efforts to turn convicts back into citizens when they leave prison.
Montgomery County's pre-release center, located near the White Flint metro station, houses more than 150 convicts who are nearing the end of their sentences. Art Wallenstein, the county's director of corrections and rehabilitation, says they try to turn convicts away from anti-social behaviors many will engage in when they're released.
Matt Bush reports...
Maryland Senator Ben Cardin tours Montgomery County's Pre-Release Center in Rockville.
Courtesy of: Matt Bush
November 02, 2009 - As Congress debates health care reform, interest groups, including insurance companies, are using their influence to make their voices heard.
As commentator Walter Smith notes, the debate has provided the District of Columbia an opportunity to compel the region's largest health insurer to reduce its premiums. Smith is the Executive Director of DC Appleseed.
The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the opinions of WAMU 88.5 or American University. What do you think? Go to The Conversation.
November 02, 2009 - The Chesapeake Bay and many of its species still face problems of pollution, overfishing, and ecological imbalance. Watermen who depend on the bay have been beleaguered by shrinking catches, and tighter control over fishing. Now oyster growers have discovered they have another challenge: an unwanted visitor to the Bay that keeps preying on their shellfish. The State of Virginia is trying out a unique idea that might help everyone - the oyster growers, the fisherman, and the bay.
Sabri Ben-Achour has the story...
November 02, 2009 - On Election Day, Democrats are expected to maintain their dominance in Northern Virginia. But that doesn't mean they won't face opposition. One of those Republicans is Vicki Vasques, who is running against a two-term incumbent in the House of Delegates. Her opponent, David Englin, won with more than 60 percent of the vote in the last two elections, and he's raised more than six times as much money as Vasques during this campaign.
Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, says Republicans in Arlington and Alexandria are facing odds that are all-but-impossible. To win a statewide election, Sabato says, Democrats need at least 70 percent of the vote in Arlington and Alexandria.
Michael Pope reports...
November 02, 2009 -
(October 30) AMERICAN CASINO A new film imagines Wall Street as a gambling hall in American Casino during a one-week run at the AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. Filmed throughout 2008, the movie critically examines the foreclosure crisis and stars insiders from Wall Street, embattled homeowners from the heart of Baltimore and the man who made $500 million as a result of the crisis. The filmmakers will be on hand for tonight's 7 o'clock screening.
(Through November 6) CAPITOL HILL ART LEAGUE It's ladies-only at the Capitol Hill Art League during the All Media Show on display through Friday. This art co-op brings together the creators and the public to sample and discuss a new and wide variety of works.
(November 2) NAME THAT TUNE You've heard the names Mozart, Beethoven and Bach, but can you identify their music from a radio line-up? If not, The Music Center at Strathmore will teach you how to identify the different periods of classical music during Mondays in the Mansion this morning at 11. From "Opera in an Hour"" to "Name that Tune," music teacher and New Zealand native Aniko Debreceny helps strike a chord between what you hear and who you know.
November 02, 2009 - Some within the local Autism community say the organization that's supposed to be leading the charge for Autism awareness and advocacy needs to make some changes of its own.
Ari Ne'eman is 21 years old, autistic, and sick of being portrayed as little more than a burden on society. That's how he says the nation's largest autism science and advocacy organization, Autism Speaks, makes him feel.
"Many of their public service announcements and fundraising videos compare having an autistic child to having a child in a fatal car accident, and generally make the equation that being autistic is a fate worse than death," Ne'eman says.
This weekend Ne'eman led protest of the annual Autism Speaks D.C. Walk for Autism on the National Mall.
Peter Bell, talking from the Autism Speaks headquarters in New York says Autism Speaks wants to work out its differences with the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, the group Ne'eman founded.
"We're at a juncture now where it's very important that we come together," Bell says, "because we probably actually have more in common than we have in differences."
One of Ne'eman's major criticisms is that Autism Speaks excludes the people it represents there are currently no Autistic people on its board of directors or leadership. Bell says its something Autism Speaks is looking to correct.
Jonathan Wilson reports...
Ari Ne'eman is 21 years old, autistic, and sick of being portrayed as little more than a burden on society.
Courtesy of: Jonathan Wilson
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November 02, 2009 - Halloween may be over but a new report has some folks seeing dead people -- on the nation's voter registration lists.
The annual non-partisan report by Aristotle International checks to see how many registered voters who have moved or died are still on the electoral rolls -- what election experts call 'deadwood'.
John Aristotle Phillips is CEO.
"In some jurisdictions where the number of deadwood is one in seven, a candidate might as well spend one day a week campaigning in the cemetery," says Aristotle.
Aristotle says deadwood voters make it appear as if there are more eligible voters than actually exist. So voter turnout appears lower lower than it is -- and voters seem more apathetic than they actually are.
"Bottom line is dead voters make the rest of us look bad."
Paul Stenbjorn is a spokesman for the Virginia State Board of Elections.
"There's never going to be a perfect snap shot of voters in the Commonwealth of Virginia."
Stenbjorn says with five million eligible voters in the state the true number will always be in 'flux'.
"Somebody may be deceased, somebody may have been convicted of a felony. This status is always changing and these numbers are always changing," says Stenbjorn.
Virginia is cleaning up its voter databases but Stenbjorn wants to avoid something even worse
"Where we want to ensure is that people who are lawfully eligible to vote are not wrongfully disenfranchised becasue of a data management process."
Virginia has over 340,000 deadwood voters but in terms of percentage it's below the national average.
Mana Rabiee reports...
November 02, 2009 - The National Park Service is set to hold an online lottery for tickets to the National Christmas Tree lighting ceremony in December.
The lottery opens this week at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday and runs through 11:59 p.m. on Friday. Nearly 10,000 free tickets will be distributed, including, for the first time 7,000 standing-room tickets.
A park service spokesman says this is the first time an online lottery has been used for the ticket distribution. In the past, ticket seekers had to line up on a Saturday morning and tickets were given out on a first-come, first-serve basis. In addition, the new system will be open to visitors from outside the Washington area.
The tree lighting is scheduled for Dec. 3 at 5 p.m. on the Ellipse near the White House.
Elliott Francis reports...
November 02, 2009 - Tamiflu is an anti-viral drug that treats symptoms of the flu and also can prevent onset of the illness. These days, with the ongoing swine flu outbreak, Tamiflu is hard to come by - especially in its liquid form, the kind given to children too young to swallow pills.
So in the back room of his independent pharmacy in Bethesda, Md., David Posner is making his own through a process called compounding. He's mixing the contents of Tamiflu capsules with fluids using a mortar and pestle, a tool pharmacists have used for centuries.
"Then we'll go ahead and actually run it through a mixture," Posner says, as he takes the milky liquid to his blender.
For Posner, this is what pharmacy is all about. "This is what I went to pharmacy school ... to do, not just to open up a bottle and pour it," he says. "This is the fun part of pharmacy."
Tamiflu's manufacturer is primarily making the drug in pill form, which has led to shortages of the liquid version across the country and in the Washington region.
WAMU contacted a dozen pharmacies in D.C., Maryland and Virginia yesterday. Only one had supplies of liquid Tamiflu in stock, but seven others said they could compound it within in a few hours.
David Schultz reports...
David Posner, an independent pharmacist in Bethesda, compounds a liquid version of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu. Pharmacists across the country are seeing shortages of this drug due to the swine flu outbreak.
Courtesy of: David Schultz
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November 02, 2009 - Barbara Smith is in the basement of the Fairfax County Republican Party headquarters with a dozen other volunteers. She's calling complete strangers and asking them to vote for her candidate, gubernatorial hopeful Bob McDonnell.
This is an important election for Republicans in Fairfax. With McDonnell leading in the polls, they see this as their best opportunity in years to make gains in a county that's been trending Democratic.
Democrats realize this too, and they're also working feverishly in the campaign's final days. Peter Clerkin is managing the campaign of a House of Delegates candidate in Fairfax, and he's struggling to find time to sleep.
"I'll get a couple hours here and there," he says. "It's a lot of work."
Polls open throughout Virginia at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning.
David Schultz reports...
November 02, 2009 - Jason Chaffetz is asking the federal government to prove it's not hiring convicted criminals to help conduct the upcoming Census. Utah's freshman Republican serves on the subcommittee that oversees the nationwide population count.
Elizabeth Wynne Johnson reports...
November 02, 2009 - Voters in the D.C. suburb of Greenbelt Maryland will decide tomorrow, Tuesday November 3, whether to elect the first African American city council member in the community's 70-year history.
Greenbelt was a suburb built from scratch to provide affordable housing to federal workers. All the first residents were white.
Nowadays, "you might find every nationality you can think of in this melting pot," says Niecie Gary-Lowndes.
She runs community programs for a huge apartment complex in West Greenbelt. Gary-Lowndes likes her town. But she says she would like it more if representation was drawn from across the entire town.
"If you have ties to a specific part of the community you can relate more to that part of the community and bring forth more the particular needs of that community. I feel that's a necessary thing," says Gary-Lowndes.
The City Council agreed to expand the number of council seats on tomorrow's ballot from five to seven. But Greenbelt still elects officials at-large. The NAACP and ACLU say minority voters will have to turn out in force to give two African American candidates shots at city council seats.
Cathy Duchamp reports...
Greenbelt resident and community relations coordinator Niecie Gary-Lowndes Gary-Lowndes likes her town. But she says she'd like it more if there was a person of color on the city council.
Courtesy of: Cathy Duchamp
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November 02, 2009 - Montgomery County Maryland Health officials are out of the H1N1 swine flu vaccine, for all but one group of people. That group is pregnant women. The county's health department is holding a special clinic this Wednesday -- by appointment only -- to distribute a limited number of the injectible form of the vaccine to expectant mothers.
But, those appointments can only be made today between 3 and 5pm by calling the Montgomery County H1N1 appointment line at 240-777-4040. The county says they currently are out of all other forms of the vaccine, including the nasal spray.
Health officials have also canceled the clinics originally scheduled for November 4th, 11th and 18th. Those clinics will be rescheduled as soon as more vaccine becomes available.
Jeanine Herbst reports...
November 02, 2009 - Election Day is tomorrow, and voters in Virginia may see hand sanitizer and cotton swabs at the polls. It's part of an effort to prevent the spread of H1N1 swine flu.
Earlier this month, the federal Election Assistance Commission asked states to come up with plans to minimize the risk of infection among poll workers and voters. The idea is to make sure concerns about the flu won't keep people from voting.
The Virginian-Pilot reports that under Virginia's plan, more than 2,000 bottles of sanitizing gel have been shipped to cities and counties around the state. Some jurisdictions will also have cotton swabs or disposable coffee stirrers on hand so people can avoid direct contact with touch-screen voting machines. In some areas, backup poll workers will be on standby in case someone gets sick and can't complete their shift.
Matt McCleskey reports...
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