Photo by caroline.angelo

Good morning, Washington. It’s not local news, per se, but it seems like a safe bet that some of you will be interested in the news that the College of William & Mary has chosen a new mascot. What do you think? It’s supposed to be a griffin, but I think it mostly looks like the Philadelphia Eagle’s kid is wearing khakis for his internship.

City, Teachers Union Strike a Tentative Deal: The morning’s most important story is certainly the news that Michelle Rhee and the Washington Teachers’ Union have finally managed to reach a tentative agreement, as first reported by the Washington City Paper, followed by everyone else. Rhee, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, WTU President George Parker, and AFT President Randi Weingarten are set to make their big announcement at 11 a.m. at Elliot-Hine Middle School. Look for DCist’s take on this story shortly.

Power Back On After Widespread Blackouts: WTOP updates that power has been restored to the 25,000 Dominion Virginia Power customers who lost service on Tuesday. A busted transformer at a Woodbridge substation was to blame for the majority of outages in Northern Virginia. Pepco outages in Northwest D.C. had also been restored as of Tuesday evening.

Virginia Extends VITA Contract: The Associated Press reports on yesterday’s announcement by Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, in which he explained that the commonwealth is extending and revising its agreement with Northrop Grumman to implement its massively integrated, massively expensive and deeply troubled VITA computer system.

Briefly Noted: Four people shot in two separate incidents in Laurel… Ludacris spotted at Ben’s… Arlington’s Washington-Lee High School shut down over unspecified security threat… Shaw residents concerned about leaning building… Montgomery County bond rating may be downgraded… Hagerstown makes national list of most obese cities…

This Day In DCist: One year ago, Marion Barry was protesting same-sex marriage and Kal Penn announced he was moving to D.C.