Free Republic

As of 5 p.m. Tuesday, Mohammad N. Akhter will no longer be the District’s health director. Officials said Dr. Akhter officially requested a yearlong leave of absence from Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s Cabinet so he can serve on a board charged with carrying out a key portion of President Obama’s health care reforms within the District. By law, Dr. Akhter had to step aside from his job as director of the D.C. Department of Health so he could serve on the city’s Health Benefit Exchange Board. He followed through on those plans before his swearing-in Tuesday alongside six other appointees...

An Irving mother accused of strangling her two children with an antenna wire told a 911 operator that she killed them because they were "not normal." "Both are autistic," she said. "I don’t want my kids to be like that. I want normal kids." Saiqa Akhter, 30, was arraigned this morning on a single charge of capital murder in the death of her 5-year-old son Zain, who died Monday. Family members have said the boy was autistic and had a speech impediment.

WASHINGTON - At midday on Fridays, Muslims gather to pray in a basement room of the U.S. Capitol. Kneeling on sheets they've spread over the floor and facing east toward Mecca, they are members of the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association, about two dozen congressional aides who are part of a small but growing minority in America and in the halls of government. At first just a prayer group, later a Muslim support group, the association is now looking outward to change what many see as woeful ignorance about Islam on Capitol Hill and beyond, said Jameel Aalim-Johnson, a black Muslim...