Good morning, Washington. Today will be cloudy and cool with a 60 percent chance of rain in the afternoon. Today the National Zoo is releasing the first tickets to the general public to catch a glimpse of the baby panda – go to their website and get yours, if you can. If you work on the hill the AP is reporting the smoke which caused an evacuation of the Rayburn House Office Building this morning was caused by overheated cables.

Smell Anything Unusual? You’ve seen the flower parodied in countless movies: a group of eccentric plant lovers gathers to witness the rare and brief bloom of an extraordinarily pungent flower. Far from being fiction, this scene replayed itself at the U.S. Botanic Gardens as one of their titan arum, or “corpse flower,” burst into bloom yesterday for the first time in 12 years. The flower is expected to last 24 to 48 hours before closing up. The Post stopped by yesterday but found some visitors underwhelmed by the smell, which they describe as “long-dead rat with just a hint of brie.” To share the news the Botanic Garden has set up a webcam accessible on their website, as well as photos from 2003, the last time one of garden’s titan arum bloomed. This photo of the flower was posted to DCist photos by Flickr user Pattista.

Metro Crime Stats Questioned: A Post investigation published yesterday is causing a minor stir. In the article, the reporters find that WMATA only counts crimes that are handled by transit police in their statistics, leaving out a number of serious crimes that were ultimately handled by another agency. The Post reported that after being interviewed for the story Transit Police Chief Polly Hanson asked police in the region to send her statistics about crime on WMATA property and pledged to make the results public.

Briefly Noted: GWU nearing $12 million deal for D.C. Public Schools land … D.C. slips to US’s 12th most dangerous city … District residents speak at summit …