In today’s rundown: More D.C. residents could be eligible for food stamps.  |  How families can eat healthy meals on a food stamp budget.  |  How a love of history may be empowering women in Japan.

— Earlier this week, members of the D.C. City Council kicked off a food stamp expansion program which will change eligibility requirements for residents who use food stamps.  According to the Washington Informer, “the Council expanded the Categorical Eligibility test that measures a resident’s ability to receive food stamps by household size and income to include residents with higher gross annual incomes who have high housing and childcare costs.”  Click here for more details.

— Nationwide, a record number of Americans are receiving food stamp benefits.  With so many people on a tightened food budget, the Associated Press asked chefs how a family of four can prepare good meals on $68.88 a week.  Click here to see how they managed.

— A new urban subculture is being credited for empowering women in Japan.  NPR reports that reki-jo — or “history girls” — immerse themselves in historical sites, history books and various time periods.  The face of the movement is a fashion model who writes and speaks about history and history buffs.  Historians say the reki-jo represent the rise of women in Japan’s “nerdy comic book subculture” known as otaku.  Click here for more.

In today’s rundown: An 18-year-old from Japan will become the first woman in a decade to play pro baseball in the U.S.  |  Alexandria City Council members say they want to make sure public housing tenants have fair notice before they have to relocate.  |  The story of a woman who was refused a rape kit even though she said she’d been drugged and assaulted.

–After public housing residents were given little notice that they’d have to relocate, lawmakers in Alexandria are pushing to ensure tenants will be given a fair amount of notice before they have to move.  Residents are being asked to relocate because the city is developing land and renovating public housing.  Click here for details.

— In this week’s Washington City Paper: a look at a case in which a woman who believed she’d been drugged and raped was refused a rape kit at three different hospitals.  Officers gave various reasons for preventing hospital employees from administering the kit.  Click here to read what their reasons were and how the law has changed since this incident.

— For the first time in a decade, there will be a woman on an American pro baseball team.  18-year-old Eri Yoshida will play for the Chico Outlaws of the Golden Baseball League.  Yoshida was the first woman on a pro baseball team in Japan.  Yoshida — a pitcher — learned to throw a knuckleball by watching videos of the Boston Red Sox’s Tim Wakefield.  Click here for more details.

You can get more information and news from The Women’s Foundation here:

In today’s rundown: A study finds that fewer women are making it into the upper levels of the federal government.  |  What happens when the church encourages an abused woman to remain with her abuser. |  Unemployment numbers remain stable despite snowy February.

— A new report from Federally Employed Women (FEW) has found that while men and women are nearly equally represented in the lower grades of the federal workforce, fewer and fewer women are making it into the Senior Executive Service.  From 2006 to 2009, the small number of women entering the SES was “absolutely unacceptable,” according to FEW.  Click here for more details.

— A Huffington Post columnist explores what happens when a woman’s church family encourages her to remain in a relationship with an abusive man, and a reader shares her difficult story.  Click here to read more.

— Unemployment in the Washington region stabilized at 6.9 percent in February.  Economists had expected a large increase due to February’s severe weather.  Click here for more.

You can get more information and news from The Women’s Foundation here:

In today’s rundown: D.C. is expanding the food stamp program.  | District Public Schools teachers have reportedly negotiated a 20 percent raise over five years.  | A Washington Post columnist takes a look at “The Invisible Underclass.”

— District officials announced Tuesday that they expanded the city’s food stamp program recently, allowing up to 5,000 residents to be added to the rolls to help fight poverty and boost the local economy.  Click here for more details.

— D.C. Public Schools teachers would receive a 20 percent raise over five years and a shot at thousands of dollars more as part of a new deal struck between Chancellor Michelle Rhee and the Washington Teachers’ Union.  For more details on what sources say is in the new contract, click here.

— In the wake of last week’s shooting that claimed the lives of four young people in Southeast D.C., columnist Eugene Robinson takes a look at the disparity and economic statistics in that community.  He also wonders why it takes a tragedy followed by a presidential visit to “train the spotlight even briefly on the too-large segment of the African American population that remains mired in desperate poverty and self-sustaining dysfunction.”  Click here to read “The Invisible Underclass.”