Two sisters, ages 16 and 13, are missing and police are asking for the public’s help in locating them.
The sisters were last seen near the intersection of 23rd Street S. and Route 1 in Crystal City, according to the Arlington County Police Department, which put their names and photos out on social media (below).
No other details about the circumstances surrounding the disappearance were made available.
ACPD first posted about the missing sisters early Sunday afternoon. They were still reported as missing as of 4 p.m. Monday, a police spokeswoman tells ARLnow.
Update on 5/18/23 — The sisters have been found, ACPD said. Scanner traffic suggests that they were spotted in the Ballston area.
Recycling bins in Arlington County (staff photo by Jay Westcott)
Arlington’s recycling rate is trending up — but there is still a ways to go to reach the county’s goal of diverting nearly all trash from incinerators and landfills by 2038.
In 2021, the recycling rate, which now includes the county’s new food scrap collection program, was 52.4%, according to Solid Waste Bureau Chief Erik Grabowsky. Last year’s rate is projected to be 54%.
The county’s recycling rate has risen incrementally in the last six years, from 44.5% in 2015. But residents and the government will have to double down on food scrap collection and recycling, while reducing overall waste, over the next 15 years if the county is supposed to reach its goal of diverting 90% of trash from incineration and landfills by 2038.
Grabowsky says greater participation in the county’s food scraps collection program and improved recycling habits would get the county halfway there.
“If we do a much better job of recycling and a much better job of food scrap collection, we get into the mid-to-high 70th percentile,” he said in a February meeting. “Beyond 75%, it’s a real challenge.”
To close that 15% gap, county staff, a Solid Waste Committee and local environmentalists have several ideas, including promoting reusable dishware in Arlington Public Schools and starting collections for hard-to-recycle items.
These and other ideas could be incorporated into a forthcoming Solid Waste Management Plan to replace the current one approved in 2004. This road map, which could be ready for public engagement this summer, will guide the county’s approach to waste management and could include interim milestones to make a 90% diversion rate seem manageable: a 60% diversion rate by 2028 and 75% rate by 2033.
Solid Waste Committee Chair Carrie Thompson says she likes to think of this plan as a “Zero Waste Plan,” the most important objective of which is getting all Arlingtonians on board with producing less trash.
“We’re all in this together,” Thompson tells ARLnow. “We have to be conscientious because the county can only do so much… If we all do better about what hits the bins, then what they do is more effective.”
For instance, food scraps and compostable paper comprised 26-32% of what went into the trash last year, while recyclable paper products and glass comprised about 14-16% of trash, according to data provided to ARLnow. Since 2019, residents have been asked to recycle glass separately to improve recycling quality and save the county money.
Conversely, trash and glass make up about 14% of the recycling stream and have no value, according to an updated pamphlet from Arlington County about what should and should not be recycled.
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The now-annual free event is set for Saturday, June 3 this year with a full lineup of music, food, drinks, street performers and family-friendly activities. This will mark the event’s fourth year, which replaced “Taste of Arlington” in 2019. It’s organized by the Ballston Business Improvement District (Ballston BID).
The Quarterfest will follow the same crawl format that’s been the case the previous two years. Organizers told ARLnow that this was originally a “pandemic solution,” but it’s been deemed so successful that they are sticking with the format “for the foreseeable future.”
The event will again be centered along Wilson Blvd, though a number of businesses off the main drag will also be participating. The line-up includes:
Noon-7 p.m. –DJ Ricky at Ballston Quarter
Noon-2 p.m. — Family Activations at Ballston Quarter
1-2:30 p.m. — Scott Kurt at the Filling Station
1:30-3 p.m. — Melissa Quinn at Bronson Bierhall
2-3:30 p.m. — David Thong Band at Ballston Local
2:15-3:30 p.m. — Rook Richards at Ballston Quarter
3-4:30 p.m. — The Crista Trio at SER
5:15-6:45 p.m — Keeton at Ballston Quarter
7-11 p.m. — Quarterfest Afterparty at WHINO
Several other bands and performances will be announced closer to the event date. A full list of participating restaurants will also be released as the event creeps closer.
As was the case last year, there are no planned Quarterfest-related road closures. Some 7,500 people attended the event in 2022 and organizers told ARLnow they expect similar attendance again this year.
Quarterfest debuted in 2019 as a replacement for the “Taste of Arlington” festival, which organizers said at the time didn’t adequately spotlight the then-new Ballston Quarter development.
Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that highlights Arlington-based startups, founders, and local tech news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1515 Wilson Blvd in Rosslyn.
An Australian company with its American headquarters in Arlington says it is part of the fight against online radicalization.
Fivecast is a software company specializing in mining intelligence from publicly available data, which is also known as open-source intelligence.
The company, with its U.S. headquarters in Courthouse at 2311 Wilson Blvd, recently raised $20 million that it will use to further develop its products, hire some 50 employees, expand into new markets and meet a surge in demand for its services in the U.S.
That demand, the company says, is driven by a need among law enforcement agencies for better intelligence to counteract radicalization happening on the internet.
“Within the U.S., there are specific areas of high demand for Fivecast solutions: U.S. law enforcement are looking to address the growing challenge of violent extremism and online radicalization exacerbated by the continuing divisive U.S. political environment,” Marketing Director Monica Brink told ARLnow.
The increased attention comes as extremist-related murders actually have been trending down — from highs in 2015 to 2019 — but the number of murders committed by far-right extremists has gone up, according to a report by Anti-Defamation League. (The mall shooter in Allen, Texas, for instance, is said to have had neo-Nazi sympathies.)
A connection between social communication platform Discord and far-right extremism, in particular, is also firming up. Most recently, the government seemed blindsided by the fact that a young man could — and did — leak classified documents in a Discord channel where he and other young users talked about guns and posted offensive memes.
Fivecast says understanding these online havens for extremist thought and getting ahead of threats is hard and growing more difficult.
“An increasingly complex and growing threat landscape combined with the sheer volume of data available online make it extremely difficult for intelligence teams across both the public and private sector to collect, filter and analyze data in a timely way,” Brink said.
That is where its product comes in.
Fivecast runs a platform that collects and analyzes publicly available information for tasks such as identifying violent extremism and foreign influence operations as well as countering terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime, she said.
Private companies and public agencies turn to the company’s platform for help surmounting growing obstacles to protecting communities and businesses from threats.
Fivecast co-founders (left to right) David Blockow, Ross Buglak, Brenton Cooper and Duane Rivett (courtesy photo)
Fivecast says there is an ongoing need “for insider threat detection, large-scale security vetting and protective security” across U.S. government operations — and this is one reason it settled in Arlington.
“Fivecast chose Arlington due to the high demand for our open-source intelligence technology within the U.S. government sector as well as the talent available within the intelligence industry in this region,” Brink said.
“Arlington is well suited to our overall company mission of enabling a safer world,” she continued. “The business environment here is filled with government agencies who have a similar mission and understand the value of applying the latest AI-enabled risk analytics technology to address important intelligence challenges and keep communities safe.”
Outside of the U.S., Fivecast operates in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Together, these five countries comprise what’s known as “Five Eyes,” an alliance among the countries with roots in intelligence-sharing activities during World War II and the Cold War.
The company says it intends to use its new funding to grow its presence and staffing in Australia, the U.S. and the UK. It also intends to get into new markets, including corporate security and financial intelligence.
