https://www.axios.com/local/washington-dc/2023/01/24/george-washington-parkway-repairs-cut-traffic-lanes-2025

Details: The $161 million rehabilitation project along 7.6 miles will lay fresh asphalt, rebuild stone walls, fix erosion and safety barriers and upgrade scenic overlooks along the route.

The Route 123 Interchange — connecting motorists between McLean and western D.C. — will also be redesigned.
Speed limits have been reduced from 50 mph to 40 mph during construction.

What’s happening: Crews are currently building a temporary reversible lane on the northbound side of the parkway, so that the southbound side can be closed for construction.

What it means: There will be one lane of traffic in each direction, plus a reversible lane tied to rush hour.

That setup will take effect between Route 123 and I-495 in late March, lasting until the project’s completion at the end of 2025, according to National Park Service spokesperson Mark Maloy.

The same reversible lane setup will begin next winter on the southern portion of the project from Route 123 to Spout Run Parkway.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/24/business/washington-post-begins-layoffs



CNN
—
The Washington Post on Tuesday became the latest media company to conduct layoffs, cutting 20 roles in a move that publisher Fred Ryan had indicated last month the newspaper would take in early 2023.

Sally Buzbee, executive editor of The Post, described the decision to cut the jobs as “difficult” in a memo to employees and disclosed that the newspaper had identified 30 open roles that it will no longer fill.

“While such changes are not easy, evolution is necessary for us to stay competitive, and the economic climate has guided our decision to act now,” Buzbee said. “We believe these steps will ultimately help us to fulfill our mission to scrutinize power and empower readers.”

The layoffs hit multiple departments at The Post, and included pulling the plug on Launcher, the newspaper’s gaming vertical that launched in 2019, a spokesperson for The Post said.

Spokespeople for The Post have stressed that the newspaper will not reduce headcount in 2023 as it will reallocate resources and invest in other areas.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2023/01/18/biden-ghostburger-order/

Gift link: https://wapo.st/3kkg2aJ



Brittany Spaddy has never seen “The American President,” the 1995 rom-com written by Aaron Sorkin, but she basically lived out one of the film’s most memorable scenes, the one in which a flower shop employee collapses when the president of the United States walks in and tries to order roses.

Spaddy was called into work at Ghostburger on Tuesday, her day off, ostensibly because a VIP was coming to the D.C. burger joint and the place would need extra employees to handle the crowd. But the real agenda, said Josh Phillips, co-founder of Ghostburger, was that the owners wanted Spaddy to be there when President Biden called to place an order. The White House had made the arrangements the day before with Phillips and his wife and co-founder, Kelly.

“She earned that call,” Phillips said about Spaddy, who handles practically everything in the front of the house at Ghostburger, one of the few feel-good stories of the pandemic.

Ghostburger, that pandemic pop-up, is now ready for its close-up

Neither of Ghostburger’s owners told Spaddy who was calling. They just said an “important phone call was coming in today,” Spaddy said. She thought it might be D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser or some pop-culture figure. She was not expecting the president.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/17/economy/household-spending-expectations-december

Minneapolis
CNN
—
Americans have already started to rein in their spending — and expect to pull back some more this year, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey released Tuesday morning.

Monthly household spending growth, after hitting a series high of 9% in August, fell to 7.7% in December, according to the New York Fed’s latest household spending survey.

However, that’s still well above December 2021 and pre-pandemic levels of 5.1% and 2.5%, respectively, according to the survey, which is released every four months.

Still, the survey showed a slight pullback in large purchases: The number of respondents who bought a vehicle fell to the lowest level since August 2020, when car sales dipped during the pandemic.

The drop in spending activity is expected to continue through this year, the survey showed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/14/authorities-seize-several-luxury-cars-from-andrew-tates-bucharest-house

Romania’s crime agency searched properties as part of investigations into human trafficking charges against the social media influencer



Romanian authorities have confiscated several luxury cars, including a Rolls-Royce, a BMW and a Mercedes-Benz from Andrew Tate’s property in Bucharest.

The luxury vehicles were taken from the compound of the former kickboxer, influencer and self-professed misogynist on Saturday and transported to a storage facility, according to Reuters.

Earlier this week, prosecutors revealed they had seized 15 luxury vehicles and more than 10 properties as part of investigations into the charges against Tate, 36.

He is being detained, along with his brother Tristan and two Romanian women, on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organised criminal gang to sexually exploit women. Both men have denied wrongdoing.

The country’s organised crime agency, Diicot, previously stated Tate’s belongings were being confiscated to prevent them being concealed, to help pay for the investigation and to pay damages to victims if the suspects are convicted.

https://dcist.com/story/23/01/13/black-owned-strip-mall-spice-suite-dc/




When Angel Gregorio opened a new location for her specialty spice shop called the Spice Suite, she invited several other Black women business owners to join her. She thought big.

Instead of just opening her own brick-and-mortar, she transformed a 7,500 square foot lot in D.C.’s Langdon neighborhood into a retail community for local Black-owned businesses. She dubbed the space, which is located at 2201 Channing Street Northeast and had its soft launch on Friday, Black And Forth.

“It was just this catchy, cool name that I created for how I describe my process of going back-and-forth with Black business owners,” Gregorio tells DCist/WAMU. “And now it is the name of a shopping center — a strip mall — that I own in D.C. So I feel good about that and I’m grateful to be in the space.”

Gregorio felt ready and was excited to deliver on her novel concept. Her own spice shop opened in the lot on Friday and will be joined by four other salon businesses in the next three to four weeks. The hair, nail, waxing, and braid salons will lease commercial space from Gregorio and are going to set up shop inside renovated shipping containers. The owner of the nail salon business, Nail’d it, had been operating inside her apartment in Southeast for the last six years, according to NBC4.

“We have a lot of conversation about affordable housing, but we don’t talk enough about making commercial space affordable for Black women. And so since no one is talking about it, I’m just going to do it and let people talk about it,” says Gregorio.

https://dcist.com/story/23/01/12/congressional-gop-want-overturn-dc-bill-allowing-non-citizens-vote/



A pair of congressional Republicans say they will push to overturn a bill passed last year by the D.C. Council that would allow non-citizens — including undocumented immigrants — to vote in local elections starting in 2024.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) said Thursday that they will introduce a resolution to disapprove the bill, employing a mechanism that Congress has to weigh in on or toss out any bill passed by the council.

“Allowing illegal immigrants to vote is an insult to every voter in America,” said Cotton in a statement.

The moves comes the same week that Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) introduced a separate measure that would do much the same. That follows a similar bill he pushed last year, when Republicans were in the minority.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/01/10/dc-metro-twitter-account-suspended/

The social media app suspended the @metrobusinfo account on Tuesday and gave Metro transit officials no explanation why.



Twitter suspended the account Tuesday that the D.C.-area’s largest transit system uses to inform bus riders of delays, scheduling changes and other information without explanation to the transit agency.

Metro officials said they weren’t told why the social media company suspended the account, @metrobusinfo. Before the suspension, Metro officials said, the account had not posted anything other than standard content, which includes route scheduling information, delay and detour updates, customer service-related tips and replies to customer complaints or concerns.

The suspension mirrors some of the irregularities and policy inconsistencies that have arisen since the social media company was taken over in late October by billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk. In a few months, Musk — the Tesla and SpaceX CEO who has long been critical of Twitter policies limiting what the social media app has allowed or restricted — has cut more than half of Twitter’s employees, suspended journalists who covered a ban on an account tracking his private jet and launched new features such as a verification check mark for anyone willing to pay $8.

It was unclear if other transit or governmental agencies were similarly affected Tuesday. Some largely automated accounts or those repeatedly posting links, even those not engaged in spam or harassment, appear to have been previously caught up in sweeps of bots on the site. Musk, whose replies are often littered with crypto scams, said cleaning up spam has been a key priority for him as owner.