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Hundreds turned out at the grand opening of a gun shop just a few miles from the Washington, D.C. city limits on Saturday. The Arlington storefront was packed with people handling a wide variety of firearms, eating breakfast pastries, and talking to the staff of NOVA Armory. The small boutique, which specializes in high-end firearms, opened despite fierce resistance from local anti-gun activists and politicians. The resistance included a protest targeting the gun shop’s opening. The protest was held several blocks away from the store in a local park, and most protestors did not come over to the actual location...

(Updated at 10:35 a.m.) Arlington County medics, firefighters and the hazmat team are on the scene of a Clarendon apartment building for a potential case of Ebola. The call came in just after 9:30 this morning, for a possible Ebola patient in the new Beacon at Clarendon apartment building at 1128 N. Irving Street. According to ACFD spokeswoman Lt. Sarah Marchegiani, the department dispatches an Ebola response out of an abundance of caution when a sick person has a travel history and symptoms consistent with a case of the deadly virus. “While it’s unlikely it’s Ebola, the fire department...

Virginia Congressman Jim Moran (D) readily admits that the residents of his congressional district in Arlington and Alexandria don't agree with his support for an air strike on Syria. "The vast majority of my constituents are opposed," Moran admitted in an interview Thursday with WMAL's Mornings on the Mall. "You have to make a call in terms of whether you're going to be fully representative of your constituents, or you're going to try to show some leadership on an issue like this, and this is one where I feel strongly enough," he added. Moran says the U.S. has no choice...

More than a dozen people spread throughout north and south Arlington woke up Monday morning with slashed car tires, and the vandal had a pretty specific target. Someone punctured the tires of Priuses parked overnight on driveways, apartment parking lots and the street. Police found 15 Prius cars flat. They also got a Smart car. Police say they found fingerprints consistent with someone leaning on the car while cutting the tires.

It expects to build 23 more at over $900,000 a piece The city of Arlington just recently opened an impressive bus stop with a not-so-impressive price tag of $1 million. The “super stop” in Arlington, Virginia is unlike any other bus stop. It has a custom designed roof made of glass and steel; a wall of etched glass; heaters in the floor; gorgeous landscaping, and concrete/stainless steel benches. The bus stop has 10-inch high curbs, 90 feet of concrete and can shelter 15 people at a time while waiting for buses to arrive – all at a cost of $1...

Washington (CNN) -- The Pentagon has begun laying off 46,000 contract and temporary civilian employees in an effort to cut back on military spending, the No. 2 Pentagon official said on Friday. Full time civilian employees, which number in the hundreds of thousands, also will be furloughed for one day a week for 22 weeks, Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in an interview with wire service reporters. His comments were confirmed by a Pentagon spokesman.

A towering high school basketball star dominating the court in the nation's capital has much more than a height advantage, a startling new report has revealed. Junior Etou, who is originally from the Congo, is the talk of the town in Washington, DC, where he plays power forward for the Bishop O'Connell High School Knights. But the 6'7" high school senior, who has drawn interest from several colleges with storied basketball programs, is almost legally allowed to drink. An investigation by Deadspin.com found several different birthdays listed for Etou, both in 1992, which means he is just months away from...

Legislators will be dueling over guns this year at the Capitol, with gun-rights advocates set to oppose efforts to close Virginia’s gun-show loophole. Alexandria state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-30) and Arlington Del. Patrick Hope (D-47) have introduced legislation that would require a background check for every gun purchase. That includes the 40 percent of current gun sales that take place in a private transaction, which do not require any kind of background check to be conducted on the individual purchasing the weapon. “The current laws are like Swiss cheese,” said Hope, who sits on the Militia, Police and Public Safety...

A new undercover video from James O’Keefe and Project Veritas shows Pat Moran, son of longtime incumbent congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) and field director for his father’s re-election campaign, instructing a supporter in how to use fraudulent documents to cast a hundred illegal votes: Note that Project Veritas prominently includes the unedited raw footage of this encounter, to counter the usual whines about false editing. There’s not much question about what happens here. An undercover operative posing as a very enthusiastic supporter says he’s got a hundred names of people who probably aren’t going to vote, and he wants to...

Police and federal agents are searching for a man who threw a Molotov cocktail-like incendiary device inside the Ballston Common Mall. [Now found and arrested.] The man threw what was described as a “flaming bottle” from an upper level of the mall down to the food court. The device, said to be 40 ounce beer bottle, possibly containing gasoline or a similar substance, shattered on impact but did not explode, according to Arlington County Police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck. No one was injured.

Roads are closed in front of the county office building at 2100 Clarendon Boulevard, in Courthouse, while authorities investigate a suspicious envelope. Police were unable to provide any additional information about the investigation, but a photo of the scene shows the county’s Bomb Squad truck and a Bomb Squad member in full blast gear. ART bus routes 41, 62 and 77 are delayed due to the closures.

ARLINGTON, Va. -- Authorities found al Qaeda-related statements, a backpack containing ammonium nitrate, and spent 9mm shells Friday after stopping a suspicious vehicle close to the Pentagon and arresting a man, ABC's "Good Morning America" reported. Pentagon Police arrested one person Friday and closed several roads around the US Department of Defense headquarters after officers stopped a suspicious vehicle and discovered a backpack believed to contain ammonium nitrate, FOX News Channel reported. The vehicle was stopped about 6:00am local time Friday. Police were searching for one, or possibly two, other people who fled the vehicle when it was stopped by...

ARLINGTON, Va. — Authorities took one person into custody and closed roads around the Pentagon Friday after a "suspicious device" was found in a car, NBC News reported. One or two other suspects who "fled the scene" on foot were being hunted by police, according to NBC News' Jim Miklaszewski. Although it was not immediately clear what the device was, one official told NBC News that "it looks like a bomb." The incident brought traffic to a standstill in the area. NBCWashington.com reported that the suspicious vehicle was discovered on Washington Boulevard.

WASHINGTON - The D.C. area makes plenty of Top 10 lists, and this one shows its residents make the big bucks. According to a new report from Newsweek, seven of the nation's 10 richest counties are in this region.

1. Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood 2. Austin-Round Rock 3. Huntsville, Ala. 4. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission 5. Kennewick-Richland-Pasco, Wash. 6. Washington, D.C.,-Arlington, Va.,-Alexandria, Va. 7. Raleigh-Cary, N.C. 8. Anchorage, Alaska 9. El Paso 10. Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown Source: www.milkeninstitute.org/newsroom/newsroom.taf?cat=press&function=detail&level1=new&ID=186

The Arlington County Board has unanimously passed a resolution to opt out of the federal Secure Communities program, which uses the fingerprints of people in custody for other reasons to identify illegal immigrants. "It is not the role of Arlington County law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws," the resolution states. Last spring, Virginia officials signed up for the program, which shares any arrested individuals' fingerprints with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, without asking Arlington law enforcement's opinion, said board member Walter Tejada, the resolution's sponsor. "We are not defending criminals," Tejada said at Tuesday's board meeting. However, he...

Hello Yupette, Thank you for your blog. You should know that many Arlingtonians have expressed unhappiness about the noise and bad behavior from 'Rolling Thunder' We recently suggested that 'Rolling Thunder' move to a resort area like Virginia Beach and that 'Rolling Thunder' be replaced by bicycle and pedestrian events. We were ignored. Thanks for trying to improve our quality of life, not cater to every special interest that wants to do its thing in Arlington. Susan

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - U.S. Rep. John Murtha, an influential critic of the Iraq War whose congressional career was shadowed by questions about his ethics, died Monday. He was 77. The Pennsylvania Democrat had been suffering complications from gallbladder surgery. He died at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va., spokesman Matthew Mazonkey said. In 1974 Murtha, then an officer in the Marine Reserves, became the first Vietnam War combat veteran elected to Congress. One of Congress' most hawkish Democrats, he wielded considerable clout for two decades as the ranking Democrat on the House subcommittee that oversees Pentagon spending. Murtha voted...

Arlington police said William R. Bumbrey III, who was suspected of stealing from a nearby pharmacy, was on the platform at the Pentagon City Metro station when an officer approached him. Police said the officer used his Taser, which administers an electric jolt and is designed to be safer than using a firearm, after Bumbrey became aggressive and refused to respond to spoken orders. . . . "He was still struggling," Nosal said. She said that because Bumbrey apparently did not react to the Taser shot, police question whether the Taser made contact with him. . . . Bumbrey was...

He prayed every day at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Md., a devout Muslim who, despite asking to be discharged from the U.S. Army, according to his aunt, was on the eve of his first deployment to war. On Thursday, authorities said Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a 39-year-old Arlington, Va.-born psychiatrist, shot and killed at least 12 people at Fort Hood.*** Nidal Hasan spent much of his professional career at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., caring for the victims of trauma, yet he spoke openly of his deep opposition to the wars in Iraq and...