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Friday, September 10, 2010
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June 03, 2010 - GLEN ECHO, Md. (AP) Searchers have found two bodies downstream from the spot along the Potomac River where a 13-year-old girl and her mother disappeared on Memorial Day. Rescue teams had been searching since Monday for 35-year-old Olga Arotinco Gaspar of Herndon, Virginia, and her 13-year-old daughter, Emily Escalante Arotinco.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Two bodies have been found in the Potomac River, downstream from the place along the river where a 13-year-old girl and her mother disappeared on Memorial Day.
Courtesy of: NBC4
June 03, 2010 - WASHINGTON (AP) A crash involving a school bus in Washington may send five patients to the hospital.
D.C. fire department spokesman Pete Piringer says the bus was carrying special needs students. It happened about 3:45 p.m. at 51st Street and Southern Avenue in southeast Washington.
It wasn't immediately clear how serious the injuries were or how many cars were involved in the collision.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
June 03, 2010 - WASHINGTON (AP) Members of the Washington Teachers Union have approved a new contract after more than two years of negotiations. The contract approved yesterday would go through 2012. Teachers would also receive raises retroactive to 2007.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
June 03, 2010 - GLEN ECHO, Md. (AP) Rescue workers have found a body downstream from the spot along the Potomac River where a 13-year-old girl and her mother disappeared. Officials say it's not clear if the body is one of the two family members from Herndon, Va., who disappeared from a Memorial Day picnic along the river.
BALTIMORE (AP) The governors of Maryland and Virginia are scheduled to meet in Baltimore today with EPA Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepi on Chesapeake Bay restoration. The meeting follows the EPA's release last month of a restoration strategy in response to a presidential order.
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) Maryland's Board of Elections will decide whether political candidates in the state need to clearly identify their campaign when using social media outlets like Facebook. The board is scheduled to vote on proposed campaign social media regulations during a Thursday meeting.
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) Maryland's juvenile justice watchdog group says a facility for troubled youth that reopened last year has a "high" failure rate so far. The Maryland Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit made the findings in a report released yesterday covering a period from January to March.
BALTIMORE (AP) A three-year, $3 million program aims to reduce Baltimore's infant mortality rate. Called B'More for Healthy Babies, the program will use education, community outreach and a media campaign.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
June 03, 2010 - NORFOLK, Va. (AP) Virginia has lost its bid to exempt uniformed active-duty military members from high-occupancy vehicle lane restrictions in Hampton Roads. The Federal Highway Administration says specific criteria must be met before a vehicle transporting only a driver may travel in the HOV lanes.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
June 03, 2010 - D.C.'s Dupont Circle is poised to become World Cup central for the District. Fans will be able to watch the United States' first game on giant video screens.
ESPN, which holds the broadcasting rights for the game, says it has granted a permit for two local fans to show the U.S.-England match on June 12th.
The fans are the same men who organized the widely-attended snowball fight in Dupont Circle this past winter.
They're calling next weekend's event, "Soccer in the Circle." ESPN says the broadcast begins at 1:30 p.m. Saturday and is scheduled to end around 4:30 p.m. That's just two hours before 10,000 people are expected to flock to the circle for the annual Capital Pride parade.
June 03, 2010 - BALTIMORE (AP) Attorney and Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos is doubling his donation to the University of Baltimore's law center project to $10 million.
University officials say the gift from Angelos, a law school alumnus, paves the way for construction to start on the $107 million project. An Aug. 26 groundbreaking has been scheduled for the project at the corner of Charles Street and Mount Royal Avenue.
Officials say Angelos' pledge is a record for giving to the public campus and private donations will be combined with state funds to build the John and Frances Angelos Law Center.
The law school's alumni account for 30 percent of the state's circuit court judges, 34 percent of its district court judges and more than a third of its elected state's attorneys.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
June 03, 2010 - By Rebecca Sheir
More than 150 photographs shot by Andy Warhol are making their home at a college in Salem, Virginia. Roanoake College is among 183 institutions of higher learning to receive works by the pop artist, who died in 1987.
The Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program is donating more than 28,000 works to colleges and universities nationwide.
Roanoke College is receiving 103 Polaroid photographs, and 51 black-and-white photographs. They include pictures of President Jimmy Carter, William Burroughs, Cheryl Tiegs, Truman Capote, Liza Minnelli and Martha Graham.
The college says some photos will be on display this fall, and a larger exhibit is in the works, once the photographs are documented and framed.
June 03, 2010 - By Matt Bush
The National Park Service is underscoring the fact that it's illegal to swim in the Potomac River in the C & O Canal National Historical Park.
It comes after a mother and daughter are believed to have drowned after falling into the river Monday.
Kevin Brandt is the superintendent of the park. He says while the Potomac may look inviting on a hot day, don't go in it.
"If you slip into the river, you will be sucked under its roiling waves," he says. "In one minute underwater, you will suffer irreversible brain damage. In less than three minutes, you will be dead."
The U.S. Park Police says it will step up enforcement of the no swimming rule. Those caught will not receive a warning. Instead they will be cited, and face a fine as high as $500.
June 03, 2010 - By Matt Bush
Authorities in Montgomery County, Maryland will give an update shortly on the discovery of a body in the Potomac River. They are not saying yet whether it's one of two people, a mother and daughter, who went missing Monday after falling into the river.
A U.S. Park Police helicopter spotted the body yesterday afternoon near the Little Falls Dam, about 5 miles downstream from where the two went in the river. It took crews three hours to recover the body because of the speedy currents in the water in that area.
It was during a holiday picnic on Monday that a 35-year-old woman fell into the river. When her 13-year-old daughter tried to help, she lost her footing and fell in as well.
The stretch of the Potomac that splits Montgomery and Fairfax counties is very dangerous. Six people drowned there last year, and authorities are reminding everyone that it is not only dangerous to swim in the river here, it's also illegal.
June 03, 2010 - By Patrick Madden
Advocates for D.C. voting rights are ramping up lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill. The group D.C. Vote is now taking on a bill to weaken city gun laws.
The group's surprise protest at the office of Mississippi Democrat Travis Childers certainly caught the congressman's staff off-guard. Childers is sponsoring a bill that would wipe away many of the city's gun laws. And one by one, supporters filed into Childers office yesterday to deliver letters and voice complaints.
It's been a frustrating year for D.C. Vote. The group supported an effort by D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton to pass a voting rights bill that contained an amendment to weaken District gun laws. That move backfired. The mayor and the city council protested, saying the price was too high. The bill was pulled by House leadership.
D.C Vote director Ilir Zherhka says moving forward, D.C. Vote will be much more aggressive in its lobbying efforts and steadfast in its opposition to watering down D.C.'s gun laws.
June 03, 2010 - There’s been some progress recently in the long struggle to clean up the region’s waterways, but as commentator Walter Smith notes, it’s been tempered by some not so encouraging developments.
Smith is the Executive Director of D.C. Appleseed.
What do you think? Tell us at conversation.wamu.org
Click on “Commentary Forum”.
SCRIPT:
The good news is that the federal government has just made major new commitments to restoring our region’s waterways. For example, Federal agencies have recently agreed to enforce strict new rules for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay and have crafted an ambitious recovery plan for the Anacostia River.
Yet, carrying this out won’t be easy. One challenging part of the plan involves a $2.4 billion infrastructure project to dramatically alter the way the District handles storm water.
Right now, storm water that runs off roofs, roads, and parking lots carries trash and chemicals into the city’s sewers. But during heavy storms, parts of the District’s sewer system get overwhelmed. Street runoff mixes with raw sewage and pours directly into the Anacostia, the Potomac, and Rock Creek.
This serious problem can be fixed. In fact, it must be fixed in order for the District to meet Federal Clean Water Act requirements. And to its credit, the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority has developed an equitable fee to help cover the costs of federally-mandated sewer upgrades.
As a result, all D.C. residents, businesses, and landholders, including the federal government, are now being charged a storm sewer fee based on how much water runs off of their property and into the storm sewer system. All of this is the good news.
Now for the bad news: the same federal government that ordered the District to drastically cut water pollution is refusing to pay its fair share to help reduce the harmful impact of its own storm water.
This may be just a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, but last month The Government Accountability Office told federal agencies to ignore D.C. WASA’s new storm sewer fee. GAO’s determination took no account of the federal government’s commitment to cleaning up our waterways. It ignored Clean Water Act language authorizing the federal government to pay “reasonable service charges” for activities resulting in the discharge of runoff pollutants. Worse, GAO seemed oblivious to the fact that the federal government is the largest single user of the District’s storm water system. This refusal by the government to pay its fair share will create a $500 million shortfall in the clean-up effort.
GAO’s action, if upheld, means funding the improvements required to meet federal Clean Water Act standards will fall squarely on the backs of D.C. businesses and residents. It is difficult to see how D.C.’s non-federal ratepayers could possibly carry that burden alone. The fee would have to increase 13-fold over the next decade in order to meet federally-mandated deadlines.
We think GAO’s decision needs to be reversed. The federal government should not ignore its responsibility to help clean up the waterways it played a role in degrading. Right now, District businesses and residents are doing their part to fix the problem. It is time the biggest user of the storm sewer system, the federal government, stepped up and paid its fair share.
June 03, 2010 - (June 4) DRIVE YOUR CHEVY TO SEE LEVY You can drive your Chevy to see Levy - Howard Levy, that is - the founding member of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones tomorrow night at 8 at the Montpelier Arts Center in Laurel, Maryland. The mouth harp master and multi-instrumentalist performs a diverse set, busting tricks out of his bag of blues, jazz, and world music.
(June 4-June 12) SWINGTIME Springtime may be over, but Swingtime is just getting started at the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Northeast D.C. This period piece about the 1940s examines the tumultuous decade's sweeping cultural changes with a proclivity for song and dance this weekend and next on the H Street Corridor.
(June 4) LIVING IN EMERGENCY The vital work of Doctors without Borders gets the documentary treatment starting tomorrow night at the E Street Cinemain downtown D.C. Living in Emergency follows four volunteers as they struggle to provide medical care and retain their ideals on the frontlines of humanitarian crises in the Congo and Liberia.
June 03, 2010 - By Natalie Neumann
Leaders of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and D.C. will meet with the Environmental Protection Agency Deputy Administrator today in Baltimore to discuss the ongoing plans to restore the Chesapeake Bay. Some advocates are recommending 25 measures for the states along the bay to adopt.
They include reducing or eliminating fertilizers and stricter discharge limits for nitrogen and phosphorus. Former Maryland state senator Gerald Winegrad helped develop the recommendations.
"We need to take much bolder actions on non-point source pollution coming from agriculture fields, from animal manure and from urban runoff," says Winegrad.
Chuck Fox is an EPA senior advisor. He says the agency is not satisfied with the clean-up efforts of the Bay and says the group who developed the recommendations is impacting the federal strategy.
"It is our hope that later this year we will receive new implementation strategies from the states that will be enforceable and binding and improve the performance and accountability of the Chesapeake Bay program," says Fox.
The Chesapeake Executive Council plans to unveil a new accountability system later today.
June 03, 2010 - By Kavitha Cardoza
More than 14,000 teachers voted in favor of a tentative labor agreement in D.C., while approximately 400 voted against it. The D.C. Council still needs to sign off on the proposal. The union's leader says how the contract is implemented will be critical.
George Parker, the president of the Washington Teachers union says he gets to rest for a day, then the real work of implementing the contract as it's written, begins.
"The challenge for both the union and the Chancellor now is to not make this a paper tiger," says Parker.
The agreement which includes a more than 20 percent salary increase for teachers, also focuses on student discipline and professional development.
But there are still aspects that need to be decided, such as details of a pay for performance plan teachers can opt into, which would allow them to earn between $20,000 to $30,000 more.
"The what, when, how, who. How do you qualify in? How do we make it fair to teachers who are in testing grades and those who are not," he says.
Parker says he will meet with teachers to get their input. He says there will be an independent look at the new teacher evaluation system which determines whether teachers keep their jobs, regardless of seniority.
And teachers may soon have to cast their votes again, in upcoming union elections. Parker will run against Nathan Saunders, who has been opposed to the union agreement.
"What does this mean in terms of your relection?"
"Oh I don't know. I haven't really given it a thought," says Parker.
"Really?"
But the contract is something union members are likely to think about when they go to the ballot box.
WTU President George Parker, after the union overwhelmingly ratified the contract.
Courtesy of: Kavitha Cardoza
June 03, 2010 - By Rebecca Blatt
Police in Montgomery County, Maryland say they have recovered a body from the Potomac, days after a mother and daughter went missing in the River.
A spokesman for Montgomery County's Fire and Rescue Department says the body was spotted by a U.S. Park Police helicopter in the Little Falls Dam area Wednesday. It was 5 to 7 miles south of where a mother and her 13-year-old daughter were reportedly swept away by the current during a Memorial Day picnic.
Rescuers worked for three hours to retrieve the body from treacherous waters.
Crews from Maryland's Montgomery County, Virginia's Fairfax County and the U.S. Park police have been conducting searches since the mother-daughter pair was reported missing Monday.
Police say the mother lost her footing while entering the water during a family picnic. The daughter stepped into the water to try to help, but lost her footing as well. Rescuers are waiting for the medical examiner to identify the body. Meanwhile, they're continuing their search.
June 03, 2010 - By David Schultz
Part of Metro's $700 million infrastructure plan, currently under consideration, is the purchase of a new series of rail cars to replace Metro's oldest cars, the ones that were involved in the fatal crash on the Red Line last year.
Peter Benjamin, chairman of Metro's Board, says this is going to be Metro's new M.O. moving forward.
"We are going to focus first in our priorities on 'state of good repair,' to make sure that what we've got, works right," says Benjamin.
But the number of people who ride Metro is expected to grow. Penny Everline, with Metro's Riders Advisory Council, says its infrastructure plan shouldn't just hold the line, it needs to grow as well.
"This version definitely maintains a state of good repair," says Everline, "But does not allow for much in the way of increased efficiency, quality or capacity that would mean so much to the riders."
Benjamin says Metro simply can't do this without more money flowing in from the federal government.
June 03, 2010 - Recently, government investigators have been going undercover to look for examples of fraud and abuse at Head Start Centers. This, following a string of allegations that some centers were manipulating data to enroll kids whose families were above the income ceiling for the government-subsidized early education program.
June 03, 2010 - By Matt Bush
In Maryland, Montgomery County authorities will be giving an update later this morning on the search for two people who went missing in the Potomac River on Monday. Rescue workers say they have recovered a body from the river.
A spokesman for Montgomery County Fire and Rescue would not say whether the body was one of the two people, a mother and her 13-year-old daughter, who went missing after falling into the river.
A U.S. Park Police helicopter spotted the body yesterday afternoon. Crews then spent three hours recovering it from a dangerous area of the river.
The body was found near the Little Falls Dam, which is about five miles downstream from where the pair had fallen in. Police say the mother lost her footing while entering the water during a family picnic. The daughter stepped into the water to try to help, but lost her footing as well. The girl's father grabbed her, but lost his grip in the strong currents.
Last year, six people drowned in the stretch of the Potomac between Montgomery and Fairfax Counties and authorities are emphasizing that it's unsafe, and illegal, to swim in the river.
June 03, 2010 - From the Maryland Reporter website:
BAY RESTORATION Governors from Maryland and Virginia will be meeting with representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency today to discuss Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts, while Pennsylvania's governor will miss the meeting, according to the Associated Press.
A flotilla of bay advocates arrived in Annapolis Wednesday with a list of restoration strategies, writes Alex Dominguez for the Associated Press.
WBAL-TV reporter David Collins has video of the event from Annapolis. Maryland officials say Bay cleanup is on track, while activists disagree, write Tim Wheeler for The Sun.
EHRLICH & BUSINESS Ex-Gov. Robert Ehrlich will be announcing "major initiatives" to aid the state’s small businesses, writes Julie Bykowicz for The Baltimore Sun’s Maryland Politics blog.
SLOTS CASINO Opponents wrapped up their defense Wednesday in court, attempting to prove that the Anne Arundel County elections board made a mistake by allowing the fate of the gaming parlor to be placed in the hands of a countywide vote. Liz Farmer has the story for The Daily Record.
ARUNDEL EXECUTIVE Janet Owens will start polling next week to make up her mind about running against her successor John Leopold for a third term as county executive, writes MarylandReporter.com's Len Lazarick writes for The Business Monthly.
GIFT CARDS The University System of Maryland is investigating how it distributed $40,000 worth of gift cards that were meant for needy families, writes Kathleen Miller for the Associated Press.
SOCIAL MEDIA REGS The state elections board is poised to begin regulating candidates’ Facebook and Twitter pages in an attempt to bolster transparency, writes Annie Linskey for The Sun.
STATE GOP The state Republican party seems to have "turned a corner" based on where the party stood a year ago. Sun reporter Julie Bykowicz credits the Republican upshift on money raising efforts, and high-profile members in key places.
BASE REALIGNMENT Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, who chairs the Governor's Subcabinet on Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), announced the state will spend $200,000 for a "guaranteed ride home" for Fort Meade transit users as an emergency backup plan. Michael Dresser has the story in his transportation blog Getting There, in The Sun.
RACE TO THE TOP Maryland and D.C. joined 34 states in competing for a share of $3.4 billion in federal aid for schools, writes Nick Anderson for The Washington Post.
STUDENT REGENT The newly-appointed student member for the University System of Maryland Board of Regents says he wants to use his new position to enhance academia at historically black colleges, according to Nick DiMarco for MarylandReporter.com.
GANSLER Attorney General Doug Gansler is using his campaign to express his opinion on gay marriage, writes Julie Bykowicz.
INDY RACEWAY Gov. Martin O’Malley and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake Sheila Dixon announced Wednesday that the city will play host to an Indy-style raceway, writes Julie Scharper for The Sun.
STATE DEMS The Maryland Democratic party is well-positioned in money, organization and message, according to Hagerstown chairwoman Susan Turnball. Andrew Schotz, (Hagerstown) Herald-Mail reporter, has the recap from the county’s annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner.
ANTI-LITTER CAMPAIGN WBAL Radio reporter John Patti spoke with Baltimore City Del. Jill Carter regarding a campaign to reduce trash in the city.
DISTRICT COURT VACANCY Eight lawyers will be interviewing with O’Mallley to fill a vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Edward Murphy, according to Bryan Sears in his Strange Bedfellows blog.
PROGRESS In the Frederick News-Post, Marta Mossburg is critical of the Genuine Progress Indicator O'Malley launched earlier this year.
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