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President Obama has appointed Todd Park to be his top technology adviser, the White House announced on Friday. Mr. Park will become the chief technology officer for the executive branch, filling one of two vacancies left in the Office of Science and Technology Policy by Aneesh Chopra, who returned to the Advisory Board Company in February. Mr. Park has been the chief technology officer in the Department of Health and Human Services since the position was created in August 2009. He was responsible for modernizing the department's data infrastructure, and led the development of Health.gov, an online directory of public and private health insurance plans, and Health.Data.gov, an public inventory of the agency's data sets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Representative Norm Dicks, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee and the dean of Washington State's Congressional delegation, announced on Friday that he would not seek re-election. In a statement, Mr. Dicks said he decided not to run for a 19th term because he and his wife, Suzie, want ''to change gears and enjoy life at a different pace.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- On Nov. 29, 1962, a 7-year-old named Yo-Yo Ma gave a dazzling cello performance here at a televised concert that kicked off fund-raising efforts to build what is now the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. That connection came full circle this weekend, as a long roster of luminaries gathered at the White House and the State Department to celebrate the lives and careers of the five performers selected to receive the Kennedy Center Honors, including Mr. Ma, now 56. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To hear Will Ferrell tell it, accepting the 14th Mark Twain Prize for American Humor was a matter of relenting. ''For 13 consecutive years, I have been begged by the Kennedy Center to accept this award,'' he said Sunday night at a ceremony in Washington. ''And for 13 consecutive years, I've emphatically said, 'No.' '' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- The House will not vote this week -- or probably even this year -- on legislation that would grant the District of Columbia a voting representative in Congress, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House majority leader, said Tuesday. Mr. Hoyer said he was ''profoundly disappointed'' that Congress would not consider granting Washington's 600,000 residents a vote in the House. He conceded that it was unlikely that the bill would come up before the end of the current Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Obama administration gave the green light for construction to begin on the Mall for a long-delayed memorial to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At a ceremony on the memorial's site, across the Tidal Basin from the Jefferson Memorial, Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, signed the construction permits. ''It is time to honor Martin Luther King Jr. right here in the nation's front door,'' Mr. Salazar said. Harry E. Johnson, the project's chief executive, said planners had raised $106 million of the expected $120 million cost of the memorial ( model is above), which is expected to be completed in August 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The mastermind behind an embezzlement scheme that took nearly $50 million from the District of Columbia's government was sentenced Tuesday to 17 and a half years in prison and ordered to pay more than $60 million in forfeited assets, restitution and taxes. The woman, Harriette Walters, 52, is the last of 11 people to be sentenced in what officials have described as the largest and longest-running embezzlement scheme in the city's history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reports on the failure by the Capitol Police and Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police to prevent the assault by the supporters of outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump to the Capitol in January 2021. Also cited are the alleged mistakes of Capitol Police chief Steven Sund in preparing to increase security during the certification of election results by Congress, and the previous events that signal the Capitol attack like President Donald Trump's tweets of alleged election fraud.