The Pentagon said Thursday that it would ease some restrictions on women serving in combat roles, a step that in part codifies the reality on the ground in Afghanistan, where commanders have stretched rules to allow women to support ground combat units. Read full article > >

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Pentagon to ease restrictions on women in some combat roles

The Occupy movement took hold at some campuses, and students are still holding their ground. But how strong is their will?

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Education Life Preview: The New Student Activism

Serbia and Kosovo reach an agreement to jointly manage their border crossings, after a series of clashes on the ground, the European Union says.

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Serbia agrees Kosovo border deal

Twenty games into the 2011-12 NHL season, “accountability” is still the Washington Capitals ’ chief buzzword. The mantra that has been trumpeted by the organization’s ownership, management, coaches and players since mid-summer has been tested early, but Coach Bruce Boudreau has stood his ground as the Capitals close out the second month of the regular season. Read full article > >

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Capitals still stressing accountability, but have the stars accepted it?

It looks like he’s spraying weeds in the garden or coating the oven with caustic cleanser. It’s not just the casual, dispassionate manner in which the University of California at Davis police officer pepper sprays a line of passive students sitting on the ground. It’s the way the can becomes merely a tool, an implement that diminishes the humanity of the students and widens a terrifying gulf between the police and the people whom they are entrusted to protect. Read full article > >

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UC Davis pepper-spraying raises questions about role of police

SAN FRANCISCO — Protesters sitting on the ground supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement on the campus of the University of California, Davis, took a face full of pepper spray at close range from an officer in riot gear in an incident that was captured on cellphone video and spread virally across the Internet Saturday. Read full article > >

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UC Davis launches investigation after pepper spray video; chancellor calls video ‘chilling’

If there’s a reason Fairfax County Supervisor John C. Cook won by a gnat’s eyelash in Tuesday’s election, it might have to do with a big hole in the ground. Democrats and Republicans both say that Cook, a Republican who eked out victory over Democratic challenger Janet S. Oleszek by 372 votes in the closely watched Braddock District , had a record of dealing with hyper-local problems. Read full article > >

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Fairfax County vote shows power of incumbency

Some £500m of public money is being made available to private developers in England to help them get housing and commercial projects off the ground.

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£500m to boost building projects

The weather for Peter Belin’s flight home from Europe was largely serene. It was early in May 1937, and as touchdown in New Jersey approached, the recent Yale graduate snapped photos of the airport’s three-story hangar, the ground crew and the stark oval shadow of his mode of transportation, the Hindenburg zeppelin. Read full article > >

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A family’s hidden history is revealed after sale of their grand Georgetown estate

A complex system of weather fronts combined Thursday afternoon to produce violent storms in the Washington area that caused at least one confirmed tornado, heavy rains, high winds and funnel clouds. But no injuries were immediately reported. A senior forecaster at the National Weather Service said a tornado touched down two miles southwest of Quantico, said Kevin Witt, a meteorologist. The forecaster examined a video of a funnel cloud and determined about 10 p.m. that a tornado was on the ground, due to swirling debris on the recording, Witt said. Read full article > >

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Tornado confirmed as storms bring heavy rains, funnel clouds

Late on this misty morning in Dinosaur Park , Steve Jabo of the Smithsonian Institution kneels on an embankment and begins scraping around a piece of prehistory with his thumb and forefinger. He carefully pushes dirt and debris clear of a just-larger-than-fist-size fossil, roughly triangular, poking out of the ground. Read full article > >

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Dinosaur hunters make curious find in Prince George’s County

Last week, at a large developers’ event, Microsoft formally introduced its next operating system to the world, and it’s nothing like the Windows you’re used to. It’s clear the company has watched and learned as Apple stormed into the marketplace with the iPhone and iPad. Microsoft’s new Windows 8 looks and feels like it’s built from the ground up to do away with the noisy, dated interfaces of the desktop computer, replacing them with a touch-friendly experience that’s focused on a new way of computing. Read full article > >

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Microsoft breaks with PC world, reinvents itself with Windows 8

Last week, at a large developers’ event, Microsoft formally introduced its next operating system to the world, and it’s nothing like the Windows you’re used to. It’s clear the company has watched and learned as Apple stormed into the marketplace with the iPhone and iPad. Microsoft’s new Windows 8 looks and feels like it’s built from the ground up to do away with the noisy, dated interfaces of the desktop computer, replacing them with a touch-friendly experience that’s focused on a new way of computing. Read full article > >

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Microsoft breaks with PC world, reinvents itself with Windows 8

One afternoon last fall at Fort Benning, Ga., two model-size planes took off, climbed to 800 and 1,000 feet, and began criss-crossing the military base in search of an orange, green and blue tarp. The automated, unpiloted planes worked on their own, with no human guidance, no hand on any control. After 20 minutes, one of the aircraft, carrying a computer that processed images from an onboard camera, zeroed in on the tarp and contacted the second plane, which flew nearby and used its own sensors to examine the colorful object. Then one of the aircraft signaled to an unmanned car on the ground so it could take a final, close-up look. Read full article > >

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A future for drones: Automated killing

When the dancers of Pearson Widrig Dance Theater fall to the ground, it’s rarely with a soft, sensible landing. Rather, their risky balances, flailing leaps and floor-grazing slides all seem to come crashing down in a glorious, bone-rattling thud. This propensity for big, sweeping movement that ultimately ends in a heap on the floor exemplifies what choreographers Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig are all about — taking chances and testing the human body’s limits. Read full article > >

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Pearson Widrig Dance Theater at Dance Place