D.C. fails to meet smog standards
The Environmental Protection Agency told the city that it has failed to meet new smog standards that took effect last week.

Most of the District, which has until 2010 to meet the pollution regulations, violates the newly enacted standards, The Washington Post reported.

The EPA will work with city officials to formulate a plan to curb carbon dioxide emissions from cars and factories.

“We’re going to raise the bar for everyone,” EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt said in an interview with The Post. “This isn’t about dirtier air. It’s about a clear and tougher standard for clean air.”

While D.C. officials are toying with ideas such as radar that will detect polluting cars, they largely attributed the smog to air blowing in from the Midwest, The Post reported.

Transport pollution, which blows in from other areas, accounts for 70 percent of pollution sampled on summer days, Joan Rohlfs, chief of air quality planning for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, told The Post.

Smog is formed when nitrogen oxides and organic compounds from power plants and other sources react with heat and sunlight to form ozone, an irritant that often leads to asthma attacks and lung damage.

Howard Univ. police shoot former student
Howard University police officers shot a former student in the hand Tuesday, days after opening fire on his car.

The shootings started April 9, when campus police fired shots at a red Sport Utility Vehicle. The car’s driver, former Howard student Gebrian Dixon, tried to run over an officer, reported The Hilltop, the university’s student newspaper. Dixon fled the scene in his SUV unharmed.

Four days later, Dixon was shot in the hand after he tried to run over a campus police officer in a parking garage again, Howard President H. Patrick Swygert told The Hilltop.

Swygert said an officer spotted Dixon’s SUV after noticing a bullet hole in its tire.

“A campus police officer … saw the red SUV enter the garage and called for backup,” he said.

He said that campus police waited for Dixon to enter the garage, and then asked him to freeze once he entered his car.

“The driver ignored the request to freeze and hit a car and a pole before attempting to run down one of the officers,” he said.

University officials said they filed aggravated assault charges against Dixon, The Hilltop reported. Swygert said that the two officers who shot Dixon have been placed on administrative leave pending a University investigation.

Dixon told The Hilltop that the shooting was unjustified.

“I rolled down the window to talk to them, and I noticed that they were reaching for their guns,” Dixon said, “so I put my hands up and said ‘hold up, hold up’ and that’s when they shot me in the palm of my right hand.”

-Ryan Holeywell