Northern Virginia

A cocaine trafficking ring that for years distributed "vast amounts" of Honduran cocaine throughout the mid-Atlantic region has been busted, and three Maryland residents and 25 Virginia residents involved have been arrested, according to federal prosecutors. The drug ring, based in Northern Virginia, routinely paid couriers to fly into the United States from Honduras with cocaine stashed in shoes, decorative wooden frames and other "innocuous items" that would blend in with their luggage, according to a statement on the bust released Thursday by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

A cocaine trafficking ring that for years distributed "vast amounts" of Honduran cocaine throughout the mid-Atlantic region has been busted, and three Maryland residents and 25 Virginia residents involved have been arrested, according to federal prosecutors. The drug ring, based in Northern Virginia, routinely paid couriers to fly into the United States from Honduras with cocaine stashed in shoes, decorative wooden frames and other "innocuous items" that would blend in with their luggage, according to a statement on the bust released Thursday by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

General Kinetics Inc. of Rockville said it will move its headquarters to Northern Virginia, and added that a long-delayed audit of the company's fiscal 1992 results is likely to result in an expansion of the $3.55 million loss the company reported for that year.Chief Executive David Shaw said General Kinetics, which makes high-end secure facsimile machines and cabinets for electronic equipment, will move its headquarters to the Herndon area. The company must first settle on the location.The 1992 audit was delayed because the company did not have the money to pay its auditors, Mr. Shaw said.

You get two battles for the price of one at Manassas National Battlefield Park, about 25 miles southwest of Washington. These rolling fields and woodlots in northern Virginia were the scene of the first major clash between Union and Confederate armies. And the railroad junction here was of such strategic importance that the two armies staged a rematch a little over a year later. Many Americans on both sides had thought that this feud over slavery and states' rights would be quickly resolved.

HAYMARKET, Va. -- It's been years, maybe about 132 of them, since there's been so much cross-fire in the rolling hills and cornfields of the Northern Virginia countryside.But this is not another battle between the Blue and the Gray. This battle has been raging in hot, Fantasia-like Technicolor, ever since last winter, when the Walt Disney Co whisked the veil off its plans to build its fifth theme park near this quiet town.Josie Gough, a retired nurse, half-jokes that she's afraid her neighbors are liable to pull a gun on her if she admits she likes the idea of Disney coming to town.

The Maryland Scholastic Football Coaches Association has reached a tentative agreement with the Northern Virginia high school coaches association to hold a summer senior all-star game, to be called the Chesapeake Classic, at the University of Maryland's Byrd Stadium on July 24 or July 31."There's still a few logistical problems, but we should be able to iron those details out," Wilde Lake coach Doug DuVall said. "I think with our experience in the Big 33 the past eight years, we have a strong toehold on how to successfully run such an event."

The long, slow march toward finding a new home for the Montreal Expos returned to Washington yesterday for the first of two days of meetings with groups hoping to persuade Major League Baseball to move the team to the region. MLB officials, including president and chief operating officer Bob DuPuy, the man in charge of the search, and Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, a member of the relocation committee, yesterday met with representatives of Washington's bid. Today they are scheduled to talk with the group that wants to build a stadium in Loudoun County, Va., near Washington Dulles International Airport, for the Expos.

The Maryland Mania staged a coming-out party at UMBC Stadium last night, winning an exhibition game with the lower-rated Northern Virginia Royals, 3-1.Play was ragged at times, but the Mania, with only a couple of scrimmages played, revealed a pair of quick forwards and a midfield that at times was suffocating."

It's no longer a pipe dream. The day when major league baseball is played in the state of Virginia may not be far off.If it does happen, we say welcome! The Baltimore-Washington region remains two distinct entities, both large and prosperous enough to support their own baseball and football teams. It would be a sound rivalry.A confluence of factors makes major league baseball more likely in Virginia. League owners would dearly love to punish the Orioles' Peter Angelos for his outspoken opposition to the league's hardline anti-union position in the long baseball strike.

YES, NORTHERN Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. The dithering D.C. Council has left an opening that may be wide enough for the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority to drive a team bus carrying the Washington Nationals all the way into the suburbs, and I can't wait to see how this latest twist in the District stadium drama plays out. The Anacostia waterfront ballpark may still get built, but the hopes of baseball fans in Northern Virginia and even Las...

The "Toy Story" trilogy is a primal suburban growing-up story. The movie's screenwriter, Michael Arndt, whose father was in the foreign service, grew up in the suburbs of Northern Virginia. "We moved there when I was 4 or 5 years old, then went to Sri Lanka for two years; then I went to junior high and high school in McLean, right near the Potomac River. To paraphrase Sarah Palin, 'We could see Maryland from our front porch!' " Now Arndt may become the first screenwriter to go two for two at the Oscars.

The Hampton Roads communities of Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Williamsburg may not be the first thing that comes to mind at the mention of an annual international arts festival in the Old South. For more than three decades, the Spoleto Festival USA held in Charleston, S.C., has taken up a lot of the spotlight, but another enterprise has steadily gained attention and admiration over the past 13 years — the Virginia Arts Festival. It's no wonder that nearly 25 percent of the attendance at this enterprise comes from beyond the Hampton Roads area.

The big dig-out that will send the snowbound Washington region back to work and school will take several days, and a nuisance snowstorm forecast for Tuesday could keep some suburban areas paralyzed even longer, officials said Saturday. "Right now, we think it will be Tuesday or Wednesday before people can think about getting to work," said Sean T. Connaughton, Virginia's secretary of transportation. It might be almost as long before power is restored to thousands of homes and businesses after the heavy snow and high winds conspired to topple trees across power lines throughout the region.

The nonprofit group that promotes Baltimore living isn't just hoping that relocating BRAC workers will move to the city. It's busing them in for a weekend tour. Live Baltimore will pick up a busload of Fort Monmouth personnel and contractors in New Jersey and bring them to Baltimore Sept. 12 and 13, the first overnight stay the group has organized. Workers will go to the "Buying Into Baltimore" home-buying fair on the first day, which is open to anyone, and will get a BRAC-only tour the following day. Nearly 40 people have signed up. "We thought it would be a great way to show more of the city," said Anna Custer, executive director of Live Baltimore.

When will home sellers and buyers be on basically equal footing? When supply equals demand. The magic number, many housing experts say, is six. As in, "it'll take six months to sell all the homes now on the market at the current pace of sales." During the first half of the year, the Baltimore metro area's supply averaged 11.5 months. "As that number approaches six, we'll start to see stabilization in pricing," said Kenneth Wenhold, director of the Mid-Atlantic region for Metrostudy, a housing-market research firm.

An Army master sergeant who grew up in Baltimore and graduated from St. Frances Academy was killed Tuesday while distributing food on a humanitarian mission in Biaj, Iraq, the Department of Defense said. Master Sgt. Anthony Davis, 43, had served in the Army for 26 years and was planning to retire when his tour ended, said his brothers and sisters, who gathered yesterday in Baltimore's Harwood neighborhood to remember the man who loved the Army so much they called him "G.I. Joe." Sergeant Davis was married and had five children and one grandchild.

ARLINGTON, Va. -- If not for Washington's train system and the vision of community leaders in the 1970s, Arlington might be nothing more than a former suburb swallowed by sprawl. Instead, it is the envy of its Northern Virginia neighbors, with the lowest property tax rate and highest office occupancy in the region. It has sought-after neighborhoods and an economy so sound it has lowered taxes twice in two years. Less than 20 miles away, Loudoun County, once a sleepy farming community, is reacting to a wave of development that took it by surprise in the mid-1990s and has forced its property tax rate to nearly double in 10 years.

They're the kinds of tales that tease out the treasure hunter in all of us. There's the one about the $40,000 Stickley music stand cloaked by neglect and nabbed for $500, and the $1,100 Steuben Arts and Crafts bowl with a $3 price tag. But antiquing in Northern Virginia's fox-hunting country is a lot like the sport itself. It's mostly about the thrill of the chase and the spectacular ride through gorgeous countryside. It turns out that the gold-mine find is as elusive as the crafty little fox. That doesn't mean you'll go home empty-handed.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Sen. Barack Obama whipped up crowds of ebullient Democrats in Virginia yesterday, hoping the high wattage of his retail-level campaigning can translate into political momentum on Election Day. After a revival-like appearance at the Virginia Democratic Party's annual dinner on Saturday and morning newspaper polls showing a commanding lead against Sen. Hillary Clinton in Virginia, his appearances started to take on the feel of a victory...

After calling Northern Virginia home for more than 20 years, AOL LLC announced plans yesterday to shift its headquarters to New York City in a move that's more symbolic than physical. New York is the world's advertising hub, and AOL is aiming to become an advertising empire, building on the success of its Baltimore-based unit, Advertising.com. All ad-related businesses will now be swept into an umbrella network - collectively called "Platform A" - alongside the Locust Point company. Yesterday's developments were described as the final stages in AOL's transition from a dial-up Internet service provider to an ad-driven company.