DISTRICT BRIEFING

FEDERAL COURT

Judge Credits Child Agency's Progress

U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan said he was pleased to hear good news from the city's Child and Family Services Agency yesterday. Agency officials reported progress on the stipulation order signed last month to freeze a motion to return the imperiled agency to federal hands.

The agency has trimmed backlogged cases and hired social workers and a consulting firm to help with improvements. But the improvements are "a temporary shoring up of the agency," Hogan said, and the leaders now must move forward to fulfill the rest of the improvements called for in the stipulation agreement.

As caseloads and other problems soared over the summer, Children's Rights, a New York-based advocacy group that is behind a 20-year-old lawsuit against the D.C. agency, filed a contempt motion to have it put back into federal receivership, which it emerged from in 2001.

-- Petula Dvorak

SUPERIOR COURT

Guilty Verdict in Glover Park Strip-Club Fire

A D.C. Superior Court jury yesterday found a Phoenix-based truck driver guilty of 10 counts of assault with intent to kill and arson in connection with a 2007 fire at the Good Guys strip club in Glover Park.

In the nearly week-long trial, prosecutors said that Gasile Graure, 38, became angry when he was thrown out of the club for taking a cellphone picture of a female dancer and later returned to the club and set it afire. Graure's court-appointed attorneys said their client did not set the fire.

No one was killed in the fire, but a club manager received second- and third-degree burns to 80 percent of his body. Sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 13.