The Post reports on Virginia's move to ban the sale of dishwasher detergents that contain phosphates. Phosphorus has been found to be a major source of pollution in the struggling Chesapeake Bay. The ban won't go into effect until 2010, however. The Soap and Detergent Association successfully lobbied several states, including Virginia and Maryland, the latter of which which already passed a similar ban, to wait two more years to put their bans in place......

Flying food? Perhaps you've noticed the odd little vehicle with wings near 8th and H, NW selling empanadas and other Mexican fare. It's On the Fly, a new food business started by one of the founders of Zip Car, Gabe Klein, L'Enfant cafe owner Christopher Lynch, and architectural designer Michel Heitstuman. The car is one of the first in a planned series of food carts and small stands that will swarm the city. This......

Are you ready, D.C.?! That's right: it's the first snowfall of the season. We talked about it yesterday, and the outlook remains pretty much the same. Both Capital Weather and our local TV weatherpeople agree that we'll get about an inch of unusually fluffy snow, with most of it falling by early afternoon. City Starts Looking For More Theft: Watch out, D.C. government ne'er-do-wells: Dan Tangherlini is on your trail. NBC4 reports that the......

A happy Friday to you, Washington. Hopefully you all made it in to work on time despite Metro having reduced the speed of their rail cars in several areas this morning. Speed restrictions were in place until 8:10 a.m. along portions of the Orange line in Maryland and Virginia, the Red line from Union Station to Silver Spring and from Shady Grove to Grosvenor, and the Green line from Branch Avenue to Congress Heights......

Many of you have already visited the "Solar Village" since it opened its gates last Friday on the National Mall. Last weekend the long lines literally wrapped around each house entered into the 2007 Solar Decathlon, with people eager to get a tour from the students, alumni and faculty from each university competitor. The ten competitions have been judged all week, from Architecture last week to Engineering today, with individual winners announced for each leg......

>> Despite well-publicized problems at D.C. Schools, reading and math scores at 8th and 4th grade levels are both up in the District. [WaPo] >> Tonight is the second public meeting for the Fourteenth Street Transportation and Streetscape. 7-9 p.m. at the National City Christian Church at 5 Thomas Circle NW. [Logan Circle News] >> Westbound traffic on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge is closed while an ambulance takes an injured worker to the hospital. [AP......

>> "Florida's top police agency said Wednesday its investigation into former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley's lurid Internet communications with teenage boys has been hindered because neither Foley nor the House will let investigators examine his congressional computers." [AP via TPM] >> "A New Carrollton mother accused of leaving her five young children in filth pleaded guilty in the case on Thursday." [NBC4] >> "A D.C. Superior Court judge today sentenced a former D.C. police......

>> The commission charged with deciding whether to fire Administrative Law Judge Roy Pearson has voted to formally notify Pearson that he may not be reappointed to the bench. Can't they just notify him he's actually fired already? [WaPo] >> Metro trains carried more passengers in July than in any other month in the transit agency’s 31-year history. [Examiner] >> Aaaaand a coalition of the shrill against a hypothetical D.C. congestion tax is born.......

>> CNN White House Correspondent Ed Henry spotted Dave Chappelle hanging out outside the White House this morning. He's reportedly feeling good despite his recent hospital visit, and joked about going after Tony Snow's job. [CNN Political Ticker] >> The former mayor of the town of Dumfries, VA has been charged with running a brothel out of a sports therapy clinic he owns in a Prince William County strip mall. Melvin Bray lost his......

Good morning, D.C. There's no denying it's hot enough to cause real discomfort, but is it too hot to reasonably believe that two young girls willingly got inside the closed trunk of their father's car to play? That is one of the questions before a Massachusetts judge in the case of a D.C. man who pleaded not guilty yesterday to reckless endangerment and assault charges after police responded to a neighbor who spotted the two......

By DCist Contributor Matt Pelkey On the Fourth of July you light fireworks, on Memorial Day you grill hunks of meat, and on Labor Day you grill more hunks of meat. But how should you celebrate Emancipation Day this Monday? The voting rights march leaves little excuse for perverting another holiday into reason for a meaningless leisure activity. But if for some reason you can't be at the march, make up for it by heading......

Okay Washington, so the news from this weekend isn't so cheerful. Maybe it was the thousands of war protestors on the Mall, or the hundreds of disgruntled Sufjan fans denied tickets at the Kennedy Center Saturday morning. Or maybe it was that crazy wind last night. In any case, we're really reaching for the good news this morning. Cause Sugar's Not Enough: In another entry to the "Why Most of the World Thinks We're......

Good morning to you, D.C. It may be raining, but temperatures will hover somewhere between the upper 50s and the lower 60s today, if you can believe that, so no need for a heavy coat. The rain will be gone by tomorrow, in plenty of time for all of us to safely head over to Mayor Adrian Fenty's Inaugural Ball. DCist will be there, and not just for a chance to snap some hilarious photos......

Well, D.C. How's your Emergency Tuesday shaping up so far? It looks like there's some more exciting Emergency Legislation on the table for the D.C. City Council this morning. Apart from the pay raises we mentioned yesterday, the council's agenda for the day includes a total of, yes really, 40 emergency bills, including another that would provide for exemptions to the liquor license law that currently prohibits anyone from selling liquor within 400 feet of......

By DCist contributor Spencer Ackerman It's pretty appropriate for a cooking expo so near the Chesapeake Bay that the first olfactory experience greeting a visitor to the Metropolitan Cooking & Entertaining Show is a powerful blast of salty, baking fish. No one is going to mistake D.C.'s answer to the New York Fancy Food Expo -- a 100-stall extravaganza of middlebrow-to-high-end cooking, oenophilia, celebrity chefs and cheap wares -- for the food-porn original. But with......

Storms in the city may be annoying, but outside of the cramped streets with some room to stretch out over the skyline, they can be quite beautiful. Flickr user LaTur caught these ominous clouds over the still, waiting water at Chesapeake Bay this weekend. Find the EXIF data here.......

And a happy Friday morning to you, Washington. Heads up: Metro's Yellow Line from King Street to Mt. Vernon Square will not be running this weekend due to track maintenance starting tonight at 10 p.m. Folks will be forced off at King Street, and those going between Mt. Vernon Square and L'Enfant Plaza will be forced to ride the Green Line. Things are expected to be running back on schedule by Monday morning. Large Part......

Good morning, Washington. WaPo relays that the debate over D.C.'s cab fares is getting feisty, while WJLA tells us that the film industry is bringing some bucks to Virginia. On that note, for all of you documentary film buffs out there, today is the start of the fourth-annual SilverDocs film festival over in Silver Spring. From today until June 18, you can revel in the glory of the documentary. From one that follows the inspiring......

Word to the wise -- if you're skimming some company money off the top for personal expenses, spread some of the love around. If not, well, it's going to come back and bite you in the ass. That's exactly what happened with former American University president Ben Ladner, who was fired from his $875,000-a-year job last October after news emerged that he had been too liberally spending university funds on personal expenses and opulent parties......

If businesses seem a little slower than usual today, there's a good explanation -- today is the day that millions of immigrants across the United States will boycott work, part of a protest the demonstrate their economic weight and push for sensible immigration reform. The boycott has sparked divisions within the immigrant rights movement, though, with some groups and advocates in the area arguing that the action could turn public opinion against them. Locally,......

The owners of Rehoboth Beach, Del. restaurant Nage are following Horace Greeley's advice by opening a western outpost of their high-end bistro next Tuesday in the Courtyard by Marriott at 1600 Rhode Island Avenue NW. According to the News Journal, longtime friends and co-owners Kevin Reading and Josh Grapski are behind the endeavor -- with Reading taking the reins as executive chef of the two-restaurant outfit and Grapski managing this new D.C. branch. Before opening......

On Sundays, DCist publishes opinion pieces about life in D.C. Today's column comes to us from reader John Heaton. If you have an opinion to share, please email us. Almost every city has it; some local delicacy that represents the roots or fabric of the area. NYC has cheesecake and pizza, Philly has cheesesteaks, and, going out to the left coast, the Seattle area has coffee and smoked salmon. What does D.C. have? Nothing. Some......

District political types and local journalists long waited for today -- the day the D.C. City Council would finally vote on the contentious stadium lease, the day on which D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams was to prove once and for all if he could round up key votes at key moments. Alas, it was not to be. As we reported late yesterday afternoon, Williams asked Council-chair Linda Cropp to postpone the vote on the stadium lease......

A snippet of news from Maryland today is the stuff that dream Morning Roundup's are made up. Funny and off-kilter, but real. It seems that some Maryland residents are a little peeved at what has come to be known as the state's "flush tax," writes WTOP. In order to raise money to upgrade the state's sewage treatment plants to protect the vulnerable Chesapeake Bay from pollutants, Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich this year endorsed a new......

Of. course. And on the very day that we don't ride the bus. Yesterday some lucky commuters received undated bus transfers when Metrobus ran out of their standard transfers due to an equipment problem at the company that prints them. The passes can theoretically be used over and over again, so expect a black market in these "emergency transfers" to emerge on craigslist.org in approximately 5 seconds. Warner Grants Clemency to Death Row Inmate: Virginia......

The Anacostia River is known as the capital's forgotten river. To many residents, they may have never seen it as it is way over younder in Southeast. But it is there, people live and work on its banks and the city, with its full attention on transforming the Anacostia waterfront, must deal with one sobering fact: the Anacostia is really, really polluted. WTOP reminds us how dirty, toxic and nasty the river is. That runoff......

In Hinduism, Ardhanarishvara is the "Half-female Lord," essentially Shiva in an androgynous form. Well fisherman pulled out a very rare gender-confused crab, or a "bilateral gynandromorph," from the lower Chesapeake Bay, the Post reports. (Well, it's almost like Ardhanarishvara, except for the crab's male section was on the left and female section on the right. The Hindu deity's gender orientation is swapped.) While this could be just a random fluke (we're by no means an......

Just when we think we can't get enough news on invasive species (snakeheads and gender-confused bass), the W.Times reports that we could be dealing with alligators in the near future. Alligators have been discovered upriver from Washington and in waters closer to the Chesapeake Bay, despite the fact that "alligators don't belong up here," an Agriculture Department wildlife services spokesman tells the W.Times, which based its report in part from wire services. Two West Virginia......

Good news D.C. Unlike last weekend, we'll only have to suffer through this rain today; Saturday will be dry and Sunday will be beautiful. Awesome. FRIDAY: >> We hear some big movie opened this week, with "lazer swords" and some dude wearing a black hat. What was it called again? Eh, who cares -- especially when you can watch "Napoleon Dynamite" again on the big screen. The Landmark E St.'s Midnight Movies bring pretty much......

Appealing to people’s sense of environmental outrage didn’t seem to be doing much for the famed Chesapeake Bay crabs, whose sizes and availability has been decreasing due to years of run-off from local storm drains. But appealing to people’s appetite, well, that just may be the key. The Post reports today that the federally funded Chesapeake Bay Program, which aims to protect what is the largest of the country’s 130 estuaries, launched a $600,000 advertising......