Good morning, Washington, and welcome back to work after a nice long holiday away. We hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving vacation as much as we did ours. That is if you can take a long enough break from all the online shopping you’ll supposedly be doing from your desk today to tell us about it. Stay tuned until the week before Christmas for your next update on the holiday shopping habits of Americans — we predict last-minute sales in an attempt to lure procrastinators!

Study Calls D.C.’s HIV Rate a ‘Modern Epidemic’: In a startling new report released today on D.C.’s most recent HIV infections, African Americans are shown to be being hugely disproportionately affected by the disease, with nearly 80 percent of new cases attributed between 2001 and 2006. HIV was also spread through heterosexual contact in more than 37 percent of these recent cases. Mayor Fenty will announce an overview of the District’s HIV/AIDS prevention strategy in a press conference this morning.

Decades of Tax Records Investigated: The Examiner says that investigators are now looking closely at decades of city tax records in an attempt to determine just how far back the Harriette Walters corruption scandal really goes. Walters has been working in the tax office since 1981, though she wasn’t in a position of any power until later.

Briefly Noted: Two fires on same block in Woodbridge … Two area deaths from hit-and-runs … Disabled man staying in garage killed in Northeast house fire.

Photo by andertho