His Excellency the Ambassador of the People's Republic of China Zhang Yesui and Madame Chen Naiqing, Susan E. Lehrman, Plácido Domingo and his wife, Marta Ornelas. Photograph by Kyle Gustasfson.

In just a few short years, ball chair Susan E. Lehrman has transformed the annual spring Opera Ball into the city’s most extravagant and must-attend event of the year. Saturday’s event at the Chinese Embassy was no exception, with town cars, BMWs, and Mercedes wrapped around the block in Van Ness as black tie-clad guest spilled forth for an evening of exotic entertainment. Lehrman, who underwrites the full cost of the event (estimated in the mid-six figures) to maximize the nearly $1,000-a-head event’s benefit to the Opera, has had luck encouraging embassies not known for their openness­—Russia last year, China this year­—to allow her to transform their public spaces into foreign worlds filled with food, decorations, copious amounts of high-end alcohol, and a general, care-free Fin de siècle escapism.

Dan Shapiro has been named the US ambassador to Israel.

The Jewish press has been abuzz about the news that longtime DC resident—and member of Washington’s venerable Adas Israel synagogue—Dan Shapiro was being named US ambassador to Israel. Given that Adas is located near the Israeli Embassy at Van Ness Street and Reno Road, this announcement raises the possibility of Shapiro and Israeli ambassador Michael Oren conducting business over gefilte fish at a post-service Kiddush.

Mixing diplomacy and davening (Yiddish for “prayer”) is a Washington tradition. In the 1970s, when Yitzhak Rabin was Israel’s ambassador, he attended Adas for the High Holidays with Nixon speechwriter William Safire. The rabbi gave a blistering Yom Kippur sermon advising his congregation “not to let our country be divided and polarized by those who use the technique of alliteration”—an allusion to the Safire-penned speech for Vice President Spiro Agnew criticizing “the nattering nabobs of negativism.” Safire, who had stopped traveling with Agnew to return to DC for the holiday, squirmed. He wrote later that this wasn’t the sin he had come to atone for.

Raynell Cooper and Alex Trebek

What is college tuition? After winning the Jeopardy Teen Tournament, Richard Montgomery High School senior Raynell Cooper must now decide how to spend his $75,000 in prize money. Raynell, 16, is captain of the Rockville school’s It’s Academic team and prepared for Jeopardy by studying young-adult literature and wagering theory. But it was in David Breslaw’s world-history class that he learned the correct response to the deciding Final Jeopardy clue: “Completed in 1869, it has also been known by its nickname, ‘the highway to India.’ ”

“It was kind of an easy question,” Breslaw says. (The answer is the Suez Canal.) Raynell’s $10,800 all-in wager vaulted him from last place to the winner’s circle. The final segment aired March 2.

On graduation, Raynell hopes to study political science and geography at George Washington University and embark on a career in government. “I love being in the city,” he says. Good thing he’s got that prize money. A year at GW will cost him more than $44,000.

Think you can take on Raynell? Four clues he responded to correctly during the tournament follow below.

The uniquely Washington ritual that is the White House Correspondents' Dinner came and went Saturday night, and of course Washingtonian was there on the red carpet to capture the glam up close and personal.

Who do you think had the best night? President Obama is getting a lot of props for his legitimately funny digs at Donald Trump (The Donald is, as you might imagine, less amused than the rest of us). And what about host Seth Meyers? The SNL veteran may not have knocked every single joke out of the park, but surely he was funnier than Jay Leno.

Irvin Nathan, Esq., the Acting Attorney General for the District of Columbia, represents the United States in the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s 2011 Mock Trial, 'The Robert Chiltern Affair.' Photo by Kevin Allen, courtesy Shakespeare Theatre Company.

It was Oscar Wilde who wrote in 1893 that “the growing influence of women is the one reassuring thing in our political life.” Presumably he would have approved of the action onstage Monday night at Sidney Harman Hall, where Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor joined an all-star judiciary panel, including fellow Justice Samuel Alito and DC appeals court Judge Merrick Garland for Shakespeare Theatre Company’s annual mock trial, once described by the New York Times as a “Washington wonk’s dream.”

The trial, riffing on the company’s current updated production of An Ideal Husband, debated whether fictional character Laura Cheveley was within the confines of the law when she approached New Jersey Representative Robert Chiltern, the husband of a college classmate, and asked him to support an earmark for a tunnel connecting Penn Station and Secaucus. Cheveley, who stood to receive considerable financial gain from the new tunnel, attempted to persuade Chiltern by presenting him with a letter he had written almost 20 years ago that revealed his prior corrupt association with a lobbyist.

Acting as counsel for the defendant was Paul Weiss partner Beth A. Wilkinson—well known for her prosecution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh—who happens to be married to Meet the Press anchor David Gregory. Acting DC Attorney General Irv Nathan served as counsel for the United States, while the Supreme Court panel included Douglas Ginsburg, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and David S. Tatel.

>> See more pictures from Artini 2011 

The drinks are strong, the lines are long, and fashion takes a surprising turn for the fierce. This year’s Artini event at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, which took place Saturday night, challenged 12 area bartenders to create a beverage experience worthy of the artworks—all currently hanging in the museum—that inspired it. A list of participating restaurants and the cocktails they created follows after the jump.

Bloomberg Government is adding to its already substantial Washington newsroom, hiring Anne Laurent, a former executive editor at Government Executive, to join BGov’s team covering government contracts and the companies that do business with federal agencies. Laurent is currently director of the Initiative for Collaborative Government at CGI, an international technology company, where she works in the federal and defense business unit. Her credentials give BGov a journalist who has covered government contracting as well as worked in the contracting system. She’ll start next month.

BGov wants to establish itself among Beltway readers as the go-to source for journalism about the intersection of business and government, and the company has apparently set its sites on the byzantine, multibillion-dollar market of federal contracts as a prime coverage area. BGov has already created a large database of contract spending, which is available to subscribers and used by reporters to craft their stories.

“Anne is a longtime power player in the world of federal contracting,” says BGov’s managing editor, Mike Riley, “and she brings to BGov a sophisticated understanding of the business impact of government actions, including the flow of federal money to companies nationwide.”