We don't want to minimize the seriousness of the threat Tropical Storm/Maybe Category 1 Hurricane Hanna potentially poses to the D.C. Metro area. As of mid-day on Friday, our favorite weather guys are saying 2-4 inches of rain and winds that could reach sustained speeds of 30 mph and occasional gusts to 50 mph. Should the storm intensify, we could easily see 3-7 inches of rain. That's a real storm, folks. It could even be......

AlertDC is warning D.C. metro area residents that Tropical Storm Hanna, which could become a full-fledged hurricane before it hits the U.S. shore, may dump some severe weather on the Mid-Atlantic region as early as late Friday night/Saturday morning. Right now the National Weather Service is more simply predicting a 70 percent chance of rain and thunderstorms starting Friday night and through Saturday. Over at the Capital Weather Gang, the local weather bloggers only have......

"It pissed me off." That is how R.E.M.'s Mike Mills described his reaction to seeing firsthand the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina and the stagnated recovery effort since. Though his band has a history of political involvement, Mills himself has shied away from activism until now. Having seen the suffering of New Orleanians in the aftermath of Katrina, he declared, "No one can appreciate the destruction without seeing it and I was very aware that......

Good morning, Washington, and welcome to September. After what was quite possibly the most beautiful weekend in the history of late summer weather in this city, we've finally arrived at the date many of us still associate with "back-to-school" -- the Tuesday after Labor Day. So sharpen your pencils, polish your lunchbox and make sure you have the right Trapper Keeper as we check out today's headlines. At Least Four Weekend Killings: The Examiner......

>> D.C.'s first elected Ward 7 Council member, Willie Hardy, has passed away at the age of 85. [WJLA] >> Shuttle Endeavour landed safely this afternoon in Florida, a day early due to fears Hurricane Dean would close the Kennedy Space Center tomorrow. The shuttle traveled about 5.3 million miles, suffered from heat shield tile damage that was eventually deemed not hazardous, and was the first flight for Mission Specialist Barbara R. Morgan, an......

This month marks the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's assault upon the city of New Orleans. The suffering and hardship of that city's citizens no longer makes headlines, but the havoc caused by the storm is something many people still live with on a daily basis. Jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard is one of those people. A son of the Crescent City and musical descendant of fellow New Orleanians Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong, and......

MONDAY: Freelance journalist and award-winning author Kieran Doherty will be at Olsson's in Old Town Alexandria to discuss her latest book, Sea Venture: Shipwreck, Survival, and the Salvation of the First English Colony in the New World, which chronicles the ship that went on to rescue Jamestown, even after most of the crew almost died in a hurricane. 7 p.m. Chasing Che author Patrick Symmes decided to go chasing Fidel Castro's former classmates when he......

>> Two quality offerings from the Black Cat tonight: Japan's uber-weird noise outfit Melt-Banana take the mainstage with Hex Machine at 8:30 p.m., $13. Plus Falls Church native and now Richmond-based newgrass singer Josh Small is in the Backstage tonight, with Tim Barry and The Wading Girl, for a paltry $8 at 8 p.m. >> Campus Progress is calling all summer interns and other young folks to head over to Science Club tonight for......

MONDAY: Leftover anger from last week's G8 Summit? Check out John Perkins at Politics and Prose tonight. He'll be discussing his newest book The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption, which details the shady deals behind U.S. foreign aid to developing countries. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Hurricane season is upon us yet again, and this August will mark the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's devastating impact......

If you see emergency response vehicles zipping around town laden with folks shouting into walkie-talkies about evacuations and floods, don't be alarmed. Today Washington area officials are running their first ever joint hurricane response exercise. Federal workers, along with their counterparts from D.C., Maryland and Virginia are gauging the region's ability to deal with a watery disaster. While most associate hurricane-strength storms with the Gulf Coast and tropical climes, many vividly remember the destruction wrought......

>> Welcome to March and another First Friday in Dupont Circle from 6 to 8 p.m. Find the gallery locations here. >> We've all got our old movie favorites. If you pop in Gone with the Wind everytime you're home sick, or channel surf for old episodes of I Dream of Jeanie on a Sunday afternoon, you're just the person Mark Bennett is drawing for. His India ink draftings of the fictional homes used in......

Akron, Ohio's very own Joseph Arthur is having a busy year. First, Michael Stipe and a bunch of other big-name artists released an EP with different versions of his song "In the Sun" to raise money for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Then, he showed up on The Twilight Singers' excellent album Powder Burns, adding that sweet falsetto to several of the songs. And last night the now-New York-based artist was out at Jammin' Java promoting......

Written by DCist contributor Abby Lavin. Last year’s rioting in response to Danish drawings of the prophet Muhammad showed that, in some cases, cartoons are no laughing matter. They don’t just lampoon the political landscape; they have the power to shape it as well. Provisions Library’s current exhibit, Drawing Back: Cartoon Critiques of America, examines the power of cartoons as a means of social protest. Culled from twenty-five different countries, the 80 editorial cartoons are......

Armageddon is once again upon us. America is on-edge, what with the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina this week, and it seems we can't wait for the next tragedy. Well, if you don't get an actual one, you might as well make one up. If you watch cable news, you'd think that Tropical Storm Ernesto was threatening the East Cost like a modern-day Krushchev. Here in the real world, Ernesto strolled through Florida, barely managing......

A couple years ago, D.C. had two Kwame Browns in the news, a local politico and a mediocre hoopster, which might have caused a few people to comment how it was great that a pro athlete was getting involved in local politics. Thankfully for the Wizards, one of those Kwame Browns moved on. However, D.C. now has two Michael Browns in local politics. The other day we saw this poster on the street, which confused......

Although District residents may be seguing into fall's business-as-usual pace, we're reminded today that, one year after Hurricane Katrina, those who call New Orleans home are still caught up in loose ends and mired in disarray caused by Katrina's aftermath. Area food folks remind us that people still need our help. As Metrocurean reported last week, local restaurants participating in Share our Strength's Restaurants for Relief today, which include Evening Star, Tallula and Capitol Grille,......

Good morning, D.C. How are you feeling this morning? Tired? Did you stay up late to watch the old Wilson Bridge be demolished? Yeah, us too. After waiting for what seemed like forever (due to, it turns out, some real geniuses who broke through the fence to get closer to the action) , the Bridge was finally blown, though we have to admit to being somewhat disappointed with the spectacle. Sure, the explosions were loud......

The Labor Day weekend is just around the corner, and with summer vacation heaving its last gasp, we've got slim pickings as far as area author events go. MONDAY Jennifer Egan's latest novel, The Keep, blends meta-fiction, intimations of revenge, high-tech weirdness and claustrophobic creeps in a story of two cousins who reunite in Eastern Europe to refurbish an ancient castle. One of the characters in the book can apparently detect the presence of Wi-Fi......

Share Our Strength Benefit For Katrina Victims August 29 will mark the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall, but clean-up, rebuilding, and resettling are still taking place. Charity group Share Our Strength will observe the date by holding Restaurants for Relief, an event in which restaurants will donate a portion of their proceeds to help recovery efforts and to end childhood hunger along the Gulf Coast. Almost 90 restaurants in the metro area plan to......

TUESDAY Tired of running into the virtual junta of returned Peace Corps volunteers living in our fair city and being forced to listen to story upon story about how working in an office every day will just never be as fulfilling as digging that well in Cameroon? Then this event is not for you. Former Peace Corps volunteers read from and sign A Life Inspired: Tales of Peace Corps Service. Peace Corps, 111 20th......

Even as the stores sport back to school sales (which depress us, even now), summer lingers on your friends the -ists. This week's collection of links provides some of the best, worst, and oddest bits of summer fun. So, bring your laptop up onto the roof, make yourself an umbrella drink or ten, and enjoy this week's choice posts from across the Gothamist network. Torontoist (where it's 75 degrees F as of this writing)......

The District has changed dramatically over the last few years, spurred in part by policies implemented by D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams. But what was once considered a trend that would help lift all boats is now seen as doing just the opposite, writes the Post. According to a poll they conducted, some 61 percent of voters see the city's many development projects as "mainly bad" for the poor, a dramatic shift from a similar poll......

Mr. T, famous for his days as part of the A-Team and the enormous amount of gold chains that he wears around his neck, has decided to give gold a break. After the devastation left behind by Hurricane Katrina, Mr. T said he doesn't feel it would be right spiritually to wear such ostentatious objects. One has to wonder what he's done with the gold frying pan he had around his neck in the AP......

Part of DCist's very nearly award-winning Deluge '06 coverage If you get on Rock Creek Parkway at Calvert and Connecticut in Northwest to drive through gorgeous Rock Creek Park on your daily commute, then you, too, have been experiencing a series of headaches and u-turns the past few days. Though local radio has been reporting that parts of the RCP have been reopened, a significant portion of it is still closed. We found a press......

The months since Hurricane Katrina have been filled with the fervor of apocalyptic millennialism for many weather geeks. The Weather Channel has been endlessly running a feature on how dreadful things would be if a Category Five storm trundled up the Hudson, leaving me, as a good Washingtonian, to mutter how Katrina on the Potomac wouldn't exactly be a bag of cupcakes. Newspapers carry, as the Post did yesterday, breathless stories on how the earth......

Back in April we noted that the National Museum of American History will be closing at the end of the summer for a two-year renovation project. Today we're hearing a little more about what the museum plans to feature — aside from the Star-Spangled Banner Project — when it opens back up in 2008. Evacuation signs, lace valances stained at the high-water mark, and personal rosaries are among the artifacts that curators and historians......

DCist is screwed in the event of an oil crisis. Not that we're not all screwed in the event of an oil crisis, just D.C. is more screwed. Don't sell your car yet, District resident, a cabbie can kick you to the curb if he doesn't like your address. Not even Metro can save you now. Londonist experiences the London of the future through the wonders of 3D modeling, but while the 3D guys are......

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,......

If you couldn’t get down to New Orleans to celebrate Mardi Gras properly, look no further than Warehouse. The gallery is currently hosting Arty Gras, an exhibition to celebrate artists displaced by Hurricane Katrina and raise funds for the Habitat for Humanity Gulf Coast recovery efforts. The exhibition was organized by independent curator Beth Baldwin, who grabbed onto the idea after seeing offers of gallery space for artists whose shows were canceled after the storm.......

Tuesday: Tonight, Iota hosts one prong of the WAMA Crosstown Jam for Flood Relief trident, a concert series taking place Tuesday and Wednesday to benefit the victims of Hurricane Katrina. While Jammin' Java and Chick Hall's Surf Club in Bladensburg are featuring buckets of bands, your buck goes furthest at Iota, where Laura Burhenn (pictured) and Gist stand out in the noteworthy crowd. $10. For those less charitably inclined, dirty speed-punk act The Twats take......