To “further reduce risk along our area roadways, rail, and maritime pathways.”

DCist Flickr photo pool contributor Karon spotted this interesting looking advertisement inside the Court House Metro station recently. “The WMATA “see something, say something” ads are getting strange,” Karon noted.

About six months ago, I downloaded an iPhone app that allowed me to listen in on police radio communications. I rarely caught much of interest, but if you listened for long enough, something newsworthy could come in over the airwaves. But over the last two weeks, it’s been radio silence, as a D.C. policy encrypting police radio finally took effect.

It’s about as predictable as death, taxes and traffic jams — an emergency hits the District, and within minutes phone networks are so clogged with calls, text messages and data usage that they collapse altogether.

In recent years, the District has been hit by record snowfalls, torrential rains, a hurricane and an earthquake. Fortunately, none of them have been particularly catastrophic — but that doesn’t mean that District officials aren’t constantly preparing for one that could be.

UPDATE: According to D.C. Fire and EMS, all agencies investigating have given the all clear after determining that the package presented “no hazard.” According to a report from ABC7, the Metropolitan Police Department is investigating a suspicious package of some kind at the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, located at 2720 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE. There’s no word on whether any connection has been made to the packages sent to Maryland…

Did you know it’s National Preparedness Month? (Yeah, neither did I, but so it is!) As a result, there’s going to be plenty of emergency workers out and about in the D.C. area this weekend, running drills to make sure that in the event something awful happens, they’ll be ready. WTOP’s Adam Tuss notes that there will be numerous spots in Northern Virginia where scenario training will occur. The District has not officially announced where…

Good morning, Washington. Think good thoughts for Tian Tian, the National Zoo’s male giant panda and the biological father of Tai Shan/Butterstick. Tian Tian underwent eye surgery yesterday to remove inflamed tissue from one of his third eyelids. He’s expected to make a full recovery, but in the meantime he’ll have to live with the shame of being the one to expose this whole pandas having third eyelids monstrosity. DCist has always held a…

The Associated Press is reporting, via the Examiner, that a Department of Homeland Security employee has been placed on leave after wearing a Halloween costume that was racially insensitive – even though it won “most original” in the agency costume contest. Deciding what costume to wear for Halloween can be tricky enough, but deciding what to wear to an office Halloween costume party in D.C. is tough business. You certainly wouldn’t want to wear the…

Morning, Washington. We hope you were out enjoying the fantastic weather, especially since the environment has been front and center in the news this weekend. As you must have heard, our former Vice President turned Global Warming Guru had to shove over the Oscar on his mantle to make space for half of a Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe after the news you were inspired to go check out the 20 amazing houses built on the…