You’re Not From Here, Are You?: Less than a year after the U.S. Census Bureau shocked everyone in the District with the news that the city’s population had grown, by nearly 30,000 people, for the first time in 50 years, a new report came out today showing that no state (or “equivalent,” as the District gets counted) grew as much as D.C. did since last year’s count. More than 16,000 people moved here since 2010, which makes all the thousands of people who moved here after the 2008 election suddenly feel like smug, longtime residents. +2

Presidential Purchase: Like many Washingtonians, President Barack Obama often feels the need to head out to shopping malls in the suburbs to meet his basic retail needs. Unlike many Washingtonians, Obama has a motorcade with sirens and armored vehicles to help him get there without dealing with traffic. Stuck in D.C. waiting for Congress to extend a payroll tax cut while his wife and daughters are in Hawaii, Obama hit Potomac Yards with his dog, Bo. There, he bought some pet toys, some iTunes gift cards, and the Wii version of a game called “Just Dance 3.” Which we certainly hope he’s not planning on opening up and playing by himself while the kids are still out of town. +1

Cheetahs No Longer Anonymous: The inhabitants of the National Zoo keep on breeding like, well, animals. The latest cubs (born in Front Royal, Va., not in Woodley Park) belong to the zoo’s cheetahs. Today, their names were announced, thanks to some crowd-sourcing through (and we are, actually, not making this up) cat meme site I Can Haz Cheezburger: Damisi and Ashaki, both of which come from Swahili. No word on whether the cheetahs have been set up with their own BuzzFeed account yet. +2

Daggers Drawn: Holiday travel can be stressful. Which may be why a passenger flying from National Airport to Chicago today was stopped with, according to authorities, a pair of throwing daggers hidden in a hollowed-out hardcover book; no one was going to step in front of him in the Potbelly line! The knives and book were confiscated. What title was used to hide the weapons hasn’t been disclosed yet, alas. -2

Yesterday’s Needle rating: 60 Today’s score: +3 Today’s Needle rating: 63