The Night Note: 8/12/09

News you need to know

By BRENDAN WILLIAMS-KIEF

Updated 8:30 PM EDT, Wed, Aug 12, 2009

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The following stories are brought to you by the fine folks on the News4 assignment desk.

CAMPUS CHEMICAL AGENTS
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers halted its search for World War I-era chemical weapons in Washington's Spring Valley neighborhood after workers successfully found the chemical agent mustard. The Army Corps discovered an open glass flask containing traces of the mustard just two feet underground at a vacant home behind American University last week. Workers found the flask in a test pit dug behind the home. AU was used as an experiment station to develop and test chemical weapons during World War I. Workers disposed of munitions and laboratory glassware by burying them behind the campus. (NBC Washington)

BAH-STON ENGULFED BY FAWG
If you’re superstitious - or you’ve seen the 1980 John Carpenter film or its 2005 remake too many times - you may have looked warily out the window yesterday around 5:30 p.m. as a soupy fog gathered over Boston. Unlike in the horror movie “The Fog,’’ no ships were scuttled or sailors murdered, but yesterday’s fog did result in delays of over three hours at Logan Airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The major landmarks and tall buildings of Boston were nearly hidden. And if you felt like you were driving through a cloud, you were, literally. (Boston Globe)

WHEN OTTERS ATTACK
An Austrian woman on vacation in Wisconsin is getting rabies shots after she said she was bitten by otters while swimming in a lake. Brigitte France, 51, told the Duluth News Tribune that she was swimming on Lake Owen near Drummond last Wednesday when three otters suddenly appeared. Feeling concerned, she swam to shore. Just as she got there, she said, "there they were — one on the right leg and one on the left leg." (MSNBC)

BAR-GOERS IGNORE RESTROOM SIGNS
When Omar Miskinyar opened 14th Street NW nightlife spot Policy earlier this year, he invested in the unexpected. Inside the sprawling restaurant, bar, and lounge, ornate chandeliers hang below exposed pipes and ducts. Graffiti by artist Andrew Funk blazes across the tasteful taupe walls. Cherry-red patent-leather booths ring a bar with a wall of flat-screen televisions. And rather than pants vs. triangle, “ladies” vs. “gents,” or “Barbie” vs. “Ken,” the doors to the restrooms are marked with a pair of swirled Plexiglas exclamation points. One is blue, the other is pink. They’re the size of human beings. Human beings, however, do not always fit the color scheme. That raises something of a grammatical problem for Miskinyar: Policy’s subtly gendered punctuation may be inconsistent with a little-known provision of D.C. human rights law. (Washington City Paper)