This chilly April weather appears to have frozen more than just flowers overnight here in Washington — local news coverage has turned cold and stopped moving as well. It’s a bit of a slow news Friday so far, so we’ll take this as an opportunity to give a shoutout to the hard working copy editors on the WaPo’s Metro desk. We couldn’t easily skim through all of the days’ stories if you didn’t write such fantastic headlines, and the fact that one of you went there this morning by referring to the Wilson Bridge bald eagles as Brangelina is awesome. We’re frankly a little jealous we didn’t think of it first. Well done.

Are the Park Police Seriously Understaffed? So says the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, who say that the current number of U.S. Park Police officers is the lowest total since 1988 and more than 200 officers below the level recommended by the National Park Service in 2001.

Wilson High Graduated Ineligible Students: A report from the D.C. Inspector General has found that 17 ineligible students were allowed to graduate from Wilson Senior High School last year. The students had not met all academic requirements. The report comes about seven months after initial allegations were laid against the school’s administration by teacher Erich Martel

Briefly Noted: Woman raped at knifepoint in Northeast … Rerouting Hazmat trains through Maryland proposed … School takeover would launch financial probe … Car crashes into Waterside Mall storefront in southwest.

This Day in DCist: In 2006 we recommended visiting two Virginia wineries as a way to avoid the D.C. tourism high season.

Photo by erin m