Photo by Brandon Kopp

>> The D.C. Council voted yesterday to toughen requirements for residents on welfare, reports the Post. Under the bill passed on an 11-2 vote, welfare recipients will have to get individualized job counseling within the five-year timeframe that they can receive the benefits; if they don’t, they face an escalating scale of sanctions that included a one-month suspension of benefits. A proposal supported by Mayor Vince Gray for a top sanction of a three-month loss of benefits was removed from the bill, though. Some 17,000 D.C. families receive welfare benefits; starting this year they will see a 20 percent cut in benefits if they remain in the program longer than five years.

>> Sharpshooters in Chevy Chase, Md. will be deployed in February and March to help cull the population of white-tailed deer in a 200-acre segment of Rock Creek Park, writes NBC4. After the deer are shot, their meat will be offered to local food banks. A similar plan by the National Park Service to shoot deer in the D.C. portion of Rock Creek was put on hold last year after five residents and an environmental group sued; they claimed that other options to thin the herd of deer existed.

>> Imagine getting locked in a cab with a rapist. Well, that’s exactly what happened with three women between 2005 and 2008, all of whom were raped after a man posing as a cab driver picked them up and locked them in his car. WTOP reports that Emero Tornero was found guilty yesterday of 16 charges relating to the rapes, and could face life in prison when sentenced in March. Tornero has already been sentenced to 24 years in a separate case where he attacked cab drivers.

>> A man was arrested yesterday evening after threatening to throw himself off of the Key Bridge, writes the Post. He was seen outside the railing on the eastern side of the bridge just before 5 p.m.; traffic along the span was closed off until police talked him off of the ledge some two hours later.

Briefly Noted: D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson rejects allegations of cheating on standardized tests … Proposed D.C. law would stop third-graders from moving up until they can read at a third-grade level … Montgomery County votes to increases security at elementary schools … Maryland legislative session begins, and vote on repealing death penalty could be very close … Metro asks people to stop throwing rocks at buses.

This Day in DCist: On this day in 2012, the director of the D.C. Department of Health compared the Occupy D.C. encampment to a refugee camp and Harry Thomas, Jr. made it on Saturday Night Live. In 2011, a D.C. police officer flashed his gun in a New England bar.