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Amtrak train derailment near Union Station to impact VRE service through Wednesday

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:23 GMT

An occupied train derailed in D.C. on Tuesday morning, causing delays for travelers and commuters along Virginia Railway Express (VRE) and Amtrak that will not ease until early Wednesday morning.A spokesperson for Amtrak told WTOP that Amtrak Northeast Regional Train 86 derailed while traveling at low speed inside of a tunnel south of Union Station around 8:47 a.m. Tuesday. The train remained upright, and one Amtrak employee was transported for evaluation.“We anticipate resuming Amtrak service south of Washington, D.C. tomorrow morning,” the rail service said in response to an inquiry from WTOP.  No passengers or crew members were injured.D.C. Fire and EMS said passengers were moved to unaffected cars and transported to the Virginia Railway Express station at L’Enfant Plaza. However, the derailment and schedule changes continued to impact VRE service times throughout the evening.“Due to this morning’s incident involving an Amtrak train just south of Union Station, ...

Prince William Co. supervisors kill measure that could have delayed Digital Gateway vote

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:23 GMT

The Coalition to Protect Prince William County held a press conference July 11 outside the board chambers to generate enthusiasm for Lawson’s resolution. (Ben Peters) The Coalition to Protect Prince William County held a press conference July 11 outside the board chambers to generate enthusiasm for Lawson’s resolution. (Ben Peters) This article was written by WTOP’s news partner InsideNoVa.com and republished with permission. Sign up for InsideNoVa.com’s free email subscription today.The Prince William Board of County Supervisors on Tuesday rejected along partisan lines a measure calling for the delay of major land-use decisions, including the contentious PW Digital Gateway plan, until a new board is sworn in next...

With Wembanyama, other top picks out, NBA Summer League spotlight is for the taking

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:23 GMT

Rookie phenom Victor Wembanyama and many of the highest 2023 draft picks are out for the rest of the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, but several other players are worth watching.Utah Jazz guard Keyonte George, this year’s No. 16 overall pick from Baylor, is second in the league with 29.5 points and third with 8.5 assists per game. He opened with 33 points and 10 assists Saturday in a victory over the Los Angeles Clippers. On Monday in a win over Minnesota, he scored 26 points on 9-for-15 shooting and had seven assists. Others who are off to hot starts:— Houston Rockets forward Jabari Smith Jr. is leading the league with 35.5 ppg, although he did not play in the Rockets’ game with Oklahoma City on Tuesday.— Sam Merrill, who turned a 10-day contract into a multiyear deal with Cleveland last season, is averaging 18.7 points and shooting 48% from three for the Cavaliers (3-0).— Orlando Robinson has averaged 25.5 points and 10 rebounds in his first two games for the Miami Hea...

Community rallies to save fired principal's job

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:23 GMT

DENVER (KDVR) — Students and parents gathered Tuesday evening outside McAuliffe International School to show support for their principal, who was fired for allegedly sharing confidential student information during an interview with reporters. Kurt Dennis has been principal at McAuliffe since the school opened 12 years ago. He believes he was fired after giving an interview criticizing Denver Public Schools’ policy to have administrators pat down students who need extra security screenings. The interview was with a local news outlet in response to a student shooting involving two deans during a screening at East High School.  Former head of public safety department reacts to East High shooting “Frustration. Anger. Truly a sense of disappointment in the district,” parent John Lacy said. “It’s very frustrating to know that now they can’t have a voice because DPS is going to impose something like this.”DPS Superintendent Alex Marrero insists the decision to terminate Dennis was not du...

Refreshing cold soups to beat the summer heat

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:23 GMT

When it comes to humble, ho-hum vegetables, cucumbers often find their way to the top of the list.Available in every grocery store produce aisle, no matter what the season, the long, green members of the gourd, or Cucurbitaceae, family of plants is so ubiquitous that the average American will eat more than 8 pounds of cucumbers each year, either raw in salads or bathed in brine as pickles.Yet to dismiss the fruit as nothing more than a reliable, crunchy base for a salad or sandwich, or a crisp green garnish on a bowl of noodles, is to deny yourself of one of the most versatile culinary ingredients.For instance, cucumbers can be blended into smoothies, thinly sliced and filled with cream cheese and salmon as a roll-up finger food, or stirred together with yogurt, garlic and lemon into the Greek dressing tzatziki.This time of year, with temperatures rising, they also make a good base for a cool, fresh-tasting soup.Cucumbers have the highest water content of any food — more even than t...

AL loss does little to damper Orioles’ first All-Star experience: ‘We get to share it together’

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:23 GMT

Adley Rutschman lowered himself into a squat, just as he would within a handful of hours to catch his Baltimore teammates. But he wore no catcher’s gear. In his left hand, he did not don a mitt but instead held a pen.Before taking batting practice ahead of Tuesday night’s All-Star Game at Seattle’s T-Mobile Park, the Orioles’ catcher took a moment to speak with a pair of young fans, dropping down as he would in a game to meet them at eye level before signing autographs. In the nearest major league city to his hometown of Sherwood, Oregon, Rutschman was a popular figure throughout two days of events in which he and three teammates, outfielder Austin Hays and relievers Félix Bautista and Yennier Cano, savored their first All-Star experience as the National League topped the American League, 3-2.“One of those moments where result doesn’t really matter,” Rutschman said. “It’s just kind of the fact that you’re out there, th...

Jessica Ward mines Mass. childhood for ‘The St. Ambrose School for Girls’

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:23 GMT

While “The St. Ambrose School for Girls” is hardly autobiographical, Boson-born author Jessica Ward has it rooted in a reality she knows intimately.It’s 1991 and “St. Ambrose” follows 15-year-old Sarah M. Taylor, a scholarship student at the titular upper-class, all girls’ boarding school.  Here micro-aggressions by popular mean girl Greta are among Sarah’s troubles.  Before too long there is a corpse, forbidden affairs, a murder investigation and Sarah’s continuing struggle to deal with her bipolarity and lithium medication.Ward’s boarding school, Northfield Mount Hermon in Gill, bears a slight resemblance to her fictional setting which vividly came to her, she said in a phone interview, in a dream.“I literally woke up from a dream after having seen this teenage girl standing in the midst of a prep school setting and I thought, ‘Oh. My. Gosh.  It was so vivid, almost disturbingly vivid.“These pictures came,” Ward, 54, explained, “and I saw her doing things. I realized I was back wh...

Graham: IRS caught red-handed (again) as public trust plummets

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:23 GMT

“In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes,” Benjamin Franklin said. But for the IRS, you can add a third item to the list. Scandal.Since the agency was caught red-handed targeting tea party activists over their politics — for which the IRS has repeatedly apologized — there have been a series of stories revealing questionable behavior by the branch of government most feared by the average taxpayers.The news isn’t good.During the 2016 presidential campaign, the private tax documents of one candidate — Donald Trump — were leaked to The New York Times.Last year, five current or former IRS employees were caught defrauding the Paycheck Protection Program, improperly collecting nearly half a million dollars.“The IRS employees charged in these cases allegedly abused the trust placed in them by the public,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr.But how much trust do the American people have in the IRS? And why should Americans trust it with whistleblowers...

Editorial: U.S. hostages may get rude awakening upon return

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:23 GMT

The Biden administration is working behind the scenes to secure the release of Americans held in Iran, NBC News reported last month. The White House also insists it is “working every day” to free Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested in Russia on trumped-up charges in March.Let’s hope that American citizens who have become prisoners of authoritarian regimes acting outside the norms of international diplomacy will eventually be released to the United States, where they will again enjoy the sweet taste of freedom. And it’s well past time that Congress took steps to ensure that those who are wrongly imprisoned abroad aren’t subjected to a host of additional wrongs when they return to American soil.There are few things that Republicans and Democrats can agree on these days, but the Stop Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act should be one of them. The bipartisan legislation, introduced in May by Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, and Sen. Mike Rounds, a Sou...

Lowry: The timeless joy of minor league baseball

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:23 GMT

The Portland Sea Dogs won, but that’s not why, fundamentally, the fans went home happy.The Double-A minor league affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, the Sea Dogs play in a cozy ballpark in Portland, Maine, and are having a pretty good year — their 2-1 victory over the Binghamton Rumble Ponies was their fourth in a row and they’re in first place in the Northeast Division of the Eastern League.I attended the Sunday afternoon ballgame during a summer stay in Maine, and I, too, went home satisfied, even though I have no rooting interest in the Sea Dogs, the Rumble Ponies, or any other Eastern League team, not even the Akron RubberDucks.No, I was content to bask in the glow of minor league baseball, one of the glories of an American summer. The mascots loom large, the between-innings entertainment is amusingly inventive, the scores don’t matter (much), and everything is geared to creating warm memories around the game that still occupies an outsized place in the nati...