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I'm an 84-year-old man on Social Security with original Medicare and Mutual of Omaha gap insurance. My insurance premium was raised from $262 to $363 a month, a 39% jump. After all my monthly expenses, I have just $240 left. What can I do in the event of another increase in my premiums? If you've had your current Medicare supplement plan for years, it's not surprising that you've seen your costs steadily rise, says Steve Zaleznick, senior Medicare advisor at PlanPrescriber, a Maynard, Mass.-based online provider of Medicare education and plan comparison tools.

Here's a capital idea: a $280 round-trip fare on Southwest from LAX to Washington Dulles that includes all taxes and fees. It is subject to availability, and there is a 10-day advance-purchase requirement. There is no minimum stay. The ticket is for travel Tuesdays and Wednesdays through May and from Aug. 28 to Oct. 30. Info: Southwest , (800) 435-9792. Source: Airfarewatchdog.com Follow us on Twitter @latimestravel and like us on Facebook

NEW YORK - The next wave of union protesters isn't blue collar. It's lawyers, paralegals, secretaries, helicopter pilots, judges, insurance agents and podiatrists. These white-collar workers are not exactly the picture of the labor movement, but they are becoming a more essential part of it as they turn to unions for help in a tough economy as bosses try to squeeze out more profits. "Employers have been downsizing, asking employees to take on larger roles, making them work more hours," said Nicole Korkolis, spokeswoman for the Office and Professional Employees International Union.

Here's a quiz derived from National Council for Geographic Education curricula and questions devised for the National Geographic Bee. The bee, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, will draw the winners of state contests to Washington, D.C., to compete May 20 to 22 in the nationals. First prize includes a $25,000 college scholarship and a trip to the Galápagos Islands. No prizes given for correctly answering these geography-related questions, just bragging rights. (Note: The questions get progressively tougher.)

Residents of Washington D.C. and surrounding states are dealing Saturday morning with the aftermath of a fierce storm that pummeled the region late Friday night, leaving scores without power during what is expected to be a sweltering weekend. The National Weather Service said six people died and 20 reported injuries from Friday's extreme weather. Two of those fatalities occurred in Fairfax County, Va., according to the Washington Post ; both people were struck by falling trees.

The nation's capital became the 30th U.S. locality to sue the gun industry, seeking to stem the flow of illegal weapons into the city and to win compensation for health care and other costs. The suit against 23 gun makers and two distributors relies on a 1990 Washington law against certain assault weapons and "machine guns." Although the city has prohibited unregistered firearms and banned the registration of all handguns since 1976, the suit, filed in D.C.

First Lady Barbara Bush urged shopping malls not to bar holiday Salvation Army solicitors, as she dropped $10 into the kettle at a Washington, D.C., mall where she was Christmas shopping. Mrs. Bush cited the group's work to help the needy and victims of natural disasters and said: "It just wouldn't be Christmas without that bell ringing." A comparatively high number of Washington malls are excluding the annual solicitation on the grounds that they do not allow any other groups to solicit.

This part happens all the time: A construction crew putting up an office building in the heart of congested Tysons Corner in McLean, Va., hit a fiber-optic cable no one knew was there. This part doesn't: Within moments, three black SUVs drove up, half a dozen men in suits jumped out, and one said, "You just hit our line." Whose line, you may ask? The guys in suits didn't say, recalled Aaron Georgelas, whose company, the Georgelas Group, was developing the Greensboro Corporate Center.

THE Willard InterContinental, a historic hotel near the White House that has hosted power brokers for decades, is making a pitch for vacationers to Washington. Under the tutelage of its new French general manager, Herve Houdre, a veteran of the tony Hotel de Crillon and Hotel Plaza Athenee in Paris, the Willard has opened a sidewalk cafe on Pennsylvania Avenue, put up a history gallery and started serving afternoon tea.

Despite a midday deluge, book lovers turned out in record numbers for the ninth annual National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. The gray morning couldn't dissuade 130,000 people from attending readings and signings on the National Mall between the Washington Monument and the Capitol. Author appearances took place under large white tents -- big enough to seat hundreds -- that filled to overflowing once the rain started in earnest around 2 p.m. Junot Díaz, who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his novel "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," stood in a muddy field after his appearance, chatting in English and Spanish with a scrum of persistent, umbrella-carrying fans.

Here's a quiz derived from National Council for Geographic Education curricula and questions devised for the National Geographic Bee. The bee, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, will draw the winners of state contests to Washington, D.C., to compete May 20 to 22 in the nationals. First prize includes a $25,000 college scholarship and a trip to the Galápagos Islands. No prizes given for correctly answering these geography-related questions, just bragging rights. (Note: The questions get progressively tougher.)

SACRAMENTO - When Michelle Rhee wants to make a point about what she sees as the coddling of American children, she refers to her daughters' abundant soccer trophies. "My daughters suck at soccer," she says to crowds that roar with knowing laughter. The former District of Columbia schools chancellor is pitch perfect in the role of outraged parent and education reformer, distilling complex policy debates into bare-knuckled banter. In Rhee's world, as she recently told crowds in Los Angeles and Sacramento, teacher seniority protections are "whack," principals can be "nutty" and charter schools can be "crappy.

A spring break in the nation's capital is a rite of passage for some families, but if the airfare from the West Coast to the East has stretched your vacation budget, take heart. Many places are free, thanks to government funding (although the sequester may cause some changes in hours or personnel). Here are some suggestions on how to make the most with the least: Smithsonian: No visit to Washington, D.C., is complete without a visit to the nation's museums. First-time visitors learn fast that a trip to the Smithsonian is not a visit to one place.

WASHINGTON -- A drive-by shooting early Monday morning in Washington, D.C., injured at least 11 people. None of the victims' injuries are life-threatening, a Washington Metropolitan Police Department spokeswoman said Monday. The department is investigating whether a 12th person was hurt when two cars sped by a street corner in an up-and-coming part of the city, opening fire on a crowd gathered outside a building. Police have not yet released any information on the shooters' potential motives.

The Batman mask worn by George Clooney , the slinky Catwoman suit worn by Halle Berry and other Hollywood film items will be donated to a Smithsonian museum on Friday (today). In an afternoon ceremony in Washington, D.C. , Warner Bros. Chairman Barry Meyer is scheduled to turn over more than 30 artifacts from 13 of his studio's films to the National Museum of American History . The pieces are dominated by superheroes but draw on a little of the studio's past, too. Among the items being donated to the Smithsonian are the overcoat worn by Bette Davis in "Now, Voyager" (1942)

What's remarkable about photojournalist Leonard Freed's book "This Is the Day: The March on Washington" (Getty: $29.95), a photo essay documenting the historic Aug. 28, 1963, civil-rights march, is that it includes only one photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. A wide-angle shot of the crowd gathered at the base of the Lincoln Memorial shows a barely discernible King at the podium giving his celebrated "I Have a Dream" speech. Freed's "focus was on seeing the event from multiple points of view, from students to clergy to the national park rangers," said Paul Farber, instructor of urban studies at the University of Pennsylvania who worked closely with the photographer's widow, Brigitte, to select 75 images from his archive of 500 black-and-white photos (Freed died in 2006)

It was moving day at the Russian embassy and a small parade of dullish-blue vans lumbered along Massachusetts Avenue, loaded with antique furniture and vodka boxes packed with assorted papers and, perhaps, some old secrets. After generations in a stately old building purchased by their Czarist predecessors near the heart of the capital, Russian diplomats last month relocated to the suburbs under the watchful eye of uniformed U.S. Secret Service police and neighbors such as Charlotte Jones.

Hundreds of thousands of abortion rights supporters rallied Sunday on the National Mall, railing against what they described as a dozen years of government backsliding on the issue of reproductive freedom for women in the United States and around the world.

The latest artwork to join the permanent Phillips Collection in Washin g ton isn't an oil painting, a sketch or even a sculpture. It's a small room that will be coated with more than 800 pounds of beeswax and where one to two people at a time can squeeze in and behold its golden-tinged walls. The idea is to create "a meditative encounter that is expected to be immediate and intense," according to a museum statement. The installation is the brainchild of German artist Wolfgang Laib, who in the past has created temporary wax rooms at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at several European museums.

California is sorely lacking when it comes to school reform, failing to adopt policies to limit teacher tenure and use student test scores in teacher evaluations, according to a rating of states issued Monday by a high-profile education advocacy group. California received an overall grade of F, ranking 41st nationally, from StudentsFirst, a Sacramento-based group run by Michelle Rhee, the former schools chancellor in Washington, D.C., whose outspoken views have polarized those who share her focus on improving the nation's schools.