There’s a new kind of power in the nation’s capital: Every time a toilet flushes in the District, or a garbage disposal runs, it’s helping power DC Water’s Blue Plains Treatment Plant. The utility’s new digester facility is creating roughly enough renewable energy from solid waste and microbes to power 10,000 homes.
Nick Balenger was a star high school athlete in Northern Virginia until a swimming accident about two and a half years ago put an end to his athletics and left him temporarily paralyzed.
Friend and colleague, the legendary bluegrass broadcaster Ray Davis, died December 3 of leukemia at the age of 81. Ray was a one-of-a-kind storyteller with a voice made for radio. Most of his stories were about the people and music he played on the air.
For decades he introduced and hung out with country music stars at concerts and festivals, including people like Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, and The Stanley Brothers.
The D.C. region is home to the hottest market for cybersecurity jobs in the nation. Cybersecurity deals with keeping information safe — everything from your recent Target purchase to the most sensitive of intelligence at the NSA. There were 23,000 postings for cybersecurity jobs here last year. That’s the largest concentration anywhere in the country, roughly double Silicon Valley and San Francisco combined.
The D.C. region is among the worst in the nation when it comes to foreclosure rescue fraud. That’s when desperate homeowners seek help from a company promising to save them from foreclosure. These companies are often fake, or part of a larger fraud.
In the latest installment of DC Gigs we meet Marine Corps Captain Charlene Thoreen based in Quantico, Virginia. If you live around the Washington region you’ve probably seen her before, flying overhead in the black and white helicopters used to carry the President. Marines call the helicopters “white tops.” The rest of us call them Marine One.
Thoreen says her job is never the same, and that’s part of the appeal. The HMX1 squadron is the largest in the Marine Corps, with about eighty pilots. That’s because they support the President wherever he is in the world, and as Thoreen explains, there’s more to that than you might think. For example, HMX has to disassemble the helicopters to transport them overseas, and it takes several days to get them back together again.
Somali-American women at a fundraiser in Falls Church, Virginia. The proceeds will be sent to Somalia via a money transfer service, as the other option is to fly there with cash. There are no banks in Somalia.
A remittance may be the most common financial transaction you’ve never heard of. That’s what it’s called when an immigrant sends money to someone living in another country. More than a million immigrants call the D.C. region home, and the Inter-American Development Bank estimates 90% have made one of these money transfers. Last year, global remittances were valued at $530 billion.
While using a money transfer service is just as legal as using an ATM, because it involves cross border transactions to places like Somalia, there’s a perception of risk. That’s led some banks in the US and Europe to close the accounts of remittance companies, which in effect shuts them down.
Jennifer L. Strong 