Subscribers to the Arlington Alert email list received a message earlier with the news that some event in Northern Virginia this afternoon registered on the richter scale.The National Earthquake Information Center, via FEMA Operations, is reporting that Northern VA has experienced rumblings equivalent to an earthquake of magnitude 2 to 3. It remains unclear if this was an actual earthquake, or due to another cause. Arlington OEM will continue to monitor.Did you feel the rumble?......

Late breaking news in the Times Square Armed Forces recruiting center bombing early this morning: eight House Democrats reportedly received mailed letters today from someone claiming responsibility for the bombing. The letters also included photographs of the Manhattan recruiting center before it was bombed, along with the words, "We did it." The Associated Press has published an email that was sent to members of Congress today from Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) office that reads:A few......

WJLA reported this morning on a big explosion at a Northeast apartment complex due to a natural gas leak. Witnesses said they heard a boom and then saw the explosion about 1:25 a.m. in the 4300 block of Dix Street, NE. Amazingly, no one was injured, but the explosion blew out windows and doors in the building, as you can see to the left. The Post also reported on this story, adding another incident from......

We've reached another Friday, D.C., but if those light flurries that accompanied you on your way into work this morning gave you visions of a leisurely Saturday snowball fight, you'll likely end up disappointed. Very little accumulation is expected from these flakes, and the weekend will see temperatures back in the upper 40s, with a possibility of some light rain on Saturday morning, according to CapitalWeather.com. If this update doesn't satisfy your weather nerd urges,......

Howard Kurtz's WaPo column today concerns the kerfuffle over Tim Page's angry email to Ward 8 Council Member Marion Barry's office that we told you about yesterday. As you'll recall, Page, who writes about classical music for the Post, received an unsolicited press release from Barry's office about the city's deal with Specialty Hospitals of America to purchase the Greater Southeast Community Hospital. Page then fired off an angry email in which he called the......

The Associated Press is reporting that seven cars of a freight train have derailed over the Anacostia River. No injuries have been reported. Six of the seven cars are in the river, and another is hanging off the trestle. Coal and some hydraulic fluid and oil ended up in the river, but the fire department says it's been contained. We'll update again when we learn more. UPDATE 4:45 p.m. Thanks to an anonymous reader......

UPDATE: NBC4 has their videos stupidly set to play automatically every time you refresh the page, so we moved the embedded video as a courtesy to our readers. If you'd like to see the video, you can follow this link or see it embedded below the fold. Photo above is by Bullneck. DCist has a long and well documented irrational fear of manhole mishaps, so we thought we'd better share the glorious terror of......

MONDAY >> Do you like screamo? How about metalcore? Us neither, but if you do, get yourself to the 9:30 Club, for Underoath and similarly sinisterly-named Every Time I Die, Poison the Well, Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, and Belle and Sebastian. Just kidding about the last one. 6 p.m., $18. TUESDAY >> Stevie Wonder needs no introduction. He's coming to the Verizon Center today. Tickets start at $68, so get your wallet ready.......

Editor's note: The DAM! Fest concludes tonight with Cat Power at 9:30 Club. One of our critics headed out to the Historic Sixth and I Synagogue on Saturday and her thoughts on the show are below. Let us know which DAM! shows you caught and what you thought of them in the comments. Exit Clov: What can we say about Exit Clov that we haven't already said? The overwhelming beauty and austerity of the Sixth......

While no major event on the schedule this week trumps all others, there are several concerts that will merit your attention. Three of them are scheduled for Thursday night. If contemporary music was the headliner last week, this week it is early music. >> Opera Lafayette's bread and butter is in presenting obscure Baroque operas, usually French, sung by exceptional voices and with the help of their fine instrumental ensemble. The group opens its season......

Good morning, Washington. More news today on the Virginia abusive driver's fees front, this time even closer to home. Arlington residents will be cheered to hear that an Arlington County General District Court judge has ruled that Virginia's abusive-driver fees are unconstitutional. Judge Dorothy H. Clarke is the fourth District Court judge in Virginia to make such a ruling, but the first one in Northern Virginia. Naturally, the state will appeal the decision, and this......

View Larger MapView Larger Map We've long been concerned with the dangers of exploding manholes, and this morning one such explosion has disrupted electricity to businesses and residences in an area of downtown just north of Sherman Circle, in the 900 block of Farragut St. NW. The Associated Press says that Pepco has been notified and crews should already be on the scene. Thankfully, no injuries have been reported. Anyone seen anything down there?......

Good morning, Washington. Have you recovered from yesterday's local sports emotional rollercoaster yet? The Nationals bid farewell to RFK, and managed to close out their time there with a 5-3 victory over the Phillies. The Redskins, on the other hand, well ... we might still not be ready to talk about that last drive. Yet despite the despondent football fans across the region this morning, we get the sense that no one is sadder than......

Written by DCist contributor Eric Denman The strip of 18th Street between Kalorama and Columbia is notorious for bars serving cheap beer, takeout joints serving huge slices of pizza, and the resulting explosion of drunken sloppy pizza inhalation. A few places on this strip break the mold, though, and Bourbon is one of them. An outpost of the popular spot in Glover Park, Bourbon is a haven for those seeking to escape the monotony that......

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too – two of them in -Ist cities. Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the......

Good morning, Washington. We've just been catching up on the rather scary looking but thankfully not terror-related explosion in Manhattan yesterday. Naturally, our parent site Gothamist has complete coverage of the steam explosion that occurred on East 41st and Lexington Avenue (41st between Lex and Third) just before 6 p.m. yesterday. Unsurprisingly, the explosion, which killed one person and injured 30, had New Yorkers worried for a while, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said......

Good morning, Washington. If you haven't already, make sure to take the time to read one of the stories that ran over the weekend about one of the important legacies Lady Bird Johnson left behind for our city: the work of her Committee for a More Beautiful Capital, which created more park space and added D.C.'s signature tulips, daffodils and cherry trees to existing triangles throughout the city. The Post has an excellent overview......

Once upon a time, in a dirty and slightly sticky corner of the motion picture industry, there were films produced purely for the sake of feeding audiences' seemingly endless appetite for gaudy sex and near pornographic violence, often slathered with buckets of unnaturally red viscera and always with a splashy title and equally eye-catching poster. The rise of independent cinema in the 1970s made for an explosion of these low-budget features, and audiences hungry for......

MONDAY You know, kids. If you are, for whatever reason, uncomfortable saying the Pledge of Allegiance in class, just cross your fingers or something, or say “the Sun God Ra” instead of “The United States of America.” Or just suck it up and deal, it’s not like the Pledge really has binding legal power. Or just take Joel Westheimer’s advice. He wrote a book about this stuff: Pledging Allegiance: The Politics of Patriotism in America's......

Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood and development issues. "Has a second core emerged?" asked a Bureau of Labor Statistics report this week, drawing the metropolitan area's attention to the remarkable growth in business and professional employment in Virginia's Fairfax County. Headline after headline emphasized the county's new status as second pole in a newly bipolar metropolis, after we learned that Fairfax had pulled to within 100,000 jobs of the District......

Hey D.C., watch where you step. It's still icy out there, but today's temps should reach the 40's, melting the remaining ice for at least a while. Some kids are still in luck with a few school delays this morning, mostly in the Virginia suburbs. Here's hoping the warmer conditions mean drivers can stop acting like it's locusts, not snow, crunching under the tires. Chief Inspector Also Convict: Clearly D.C. doesn't have any problem with......

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

I've somehow been assigned the slot of taking over DCist Heather's POTD duties this week as she leaves for a long trip to India, despite the fact that I know next-to-nothing about photography. But nevertheless, here I am, and this shot by Flickr user calcitrate caught my eye. EXIF data is here. Other notable shots included a classic sunset, and this explosion of Christmas lights.......

We considered giving in to the late west coast start time and going to bed last night with the Wizards leading the Lakers by ten after three quarters during which they'd generally stayed firmly in control. We're glad we persevered. First, the Lakers staged a major rally late in the fourth quarter driven by stellar three-point shooting and several botched clutch free throws for D.C., forcing overtime. Then, Agent Zero turned the hibachi to high......

As we speak, there is a highly concentrated mass of ions hurtling towards Earth from the Sun. It may wreak havoc with our communications satellites and other space-based equipment, but that's part of the danger with a solar flare, which are—essentially—sun farts. The upside of Apollo's flatulence is that it and the Earth's magnetosphere are the only ingredients needed for aurora borealis, or the Northern Lights. According to spaceweather.com, "an M2 explosion near sunspot 898......

FRIDAY: >> Seattle singer-songwriter Rosie Thomas is recording a new album with Sufjan Stevens, has toured with both James Mercer and Sam Bean, and we wouldn't be shocked if she had "Sub Pop" tatooed on her butt. There's no arguing she's got the street cred to draw a crowd tonight at Jammin' Java in Vienna. But Thomas also has a penchant for exploring topics (and melodies) that seem to place her more in the "sometimes......

Damn it. Baseball doesn't make it easy on the Nats. Last year, the team opened their season with an extra long road trip to allow time for final RFK upgrades. This year RFK is in good shape (relatively), but Washington will still kick things off with six games on the road, beginning with three against the spend-happy Mets. In yesterday's afternoon opener at Shea, the Nats avoided Pedro and played well, but one more elbow......

Good morning, Washington! We hope you're as groggy and headachey as we are this morning: it'd mean that you did your patriotic duty as a DCist reader and came out to our happy hour last night. It was great to see old friends, meet new interweb luminaries, and generally hang out with folks who like this town as much as we do. Thanks for coming out. We'll have to do this again. Soon. Oh,......

In the Washington Capitals first game in 550 days, the city's hockey team defeated the Columbus Blue Jackets before a near capacity crowd long thirsting for the team's return. DCist can't help but be excited for this turn of events -- a full season gone, we finally have one more thing to carry our attention through the soon-to-come winter months. Mayor Offers Barry Support: Upon learning that former mayor and current Ward 8 Council-member Marion......

>> New York artist Faith Ringgold's latest series, Jazz Stories 2004: Mama Can Sing, Papa Can Blow, will be at the University of Maryland's The Art Gallery starting Wed. through Dec. 10. If you were inspired by last weekend's Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, try to make it there by 5 p.m. tomorrow for the artist talk, then stick around for the opening reception from 7 to 9 p.m. >> Hemphill Fine Arts is hosting a......