National Guardsman wins settlement after losing ‘in-sourced’ job

is against federal law for employers to penalize service members because of their military service under the terms of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, or USERRA. A change to the law in 2010 clarified that the obligation follows the new employer when jobs change from private to public-sector positions. Michael Hanke, 46, a resident of Chippewa Falls, Wis., worked in 2009 at Communications Technology, or ComTek, a company that supports Army ROTC programs. He was part of the cadre operating the ROTC program at the University of Wisconsin-Stoudt. While he was deployed to Iraq as a sergeant first class with the Wisconsin Army National Guard in 2009 and 2010, the U.S. Army Cadet Command, which oversees ROTC programs, in-sourced much of the work previously done by ComTek, hiring many of the same employees. But the command told Hanke he could not be hired while on active duty, and when he requested re-employment upon returning in 2010, both ComTek and the Army turned him down, according to the OSC. Hanke, a 21-year veteran of both active duty and National Guard service, was given no notice that his job had been in-sourced while he was in Iraq. “I was just floored,” Hanke said in an interview. Hanke said that he and his wife had just purchased a new home when he learned that his job was lost and that the family’s credit rating was badly damaged. “We almost lost the home two times,” he said. The settlement is equivalent to several years of salary, although the exact amount is confidential under the terms of the agreement. “By no means does it make up for the damage done, emotionally and physically,” Hanke said. The federal government, which is the largest employer of citizen-soldiers, is also the biggest violator of the law. In fiscal 2011, more than 18 percent of the 1,548 complaints of violations of that law involved federal agencies, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “The case was settled to both parties’ mutual satisfaction,” a spokesman for the Army Cadet Command said. The Army did not admit liability in the settlement. “OSC will continue to press for the employment and re-employment rights of our veterans and National Guard and Reserve members, and for all federal agencies to live up to their obligation to be a model employer under USERRA,” OSC special counsel Carolyn Lerner said in a statement.


President Obama’s 2012 address to U.N. General Assembly (Full text)

and Libyans voted for new leaders in elections that were credible, competitive and fair. The democratic spirit has not been restricted to the Arab world. Over the past year, we've seen peaceful transitions of power in Malawi and Senegal and a new president in Somalia. In Burma, a president has freed political prisoners and opened a closed society. A courageous dissident has been elected to parliament, and people look forward to further reform. Around the globe, people are making their voices heard, insisting on their innate dignity and the right to determine their future. And yet the turmoil of recent weeks reminds us that the path to democracy does not end with the casting of a ballot. Nelson Mandela once said, "To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." (APPLAUSE) True democracy demands that citizens cannot be thrown in jail because of what they believe, and that businesses can be open without paying a bribe. It depends on the freedom of citizens to speak their minds and assemble without fear, and on the rule of law and due process that guarantees the rights of all people. In other words, true democracy, real freedom is hard work. Those in power have to resist the temptation to crack down on dissidents. In hard economic times, countries must be tempted -- may be tempted to rally the people around perceived enemies at home and abroad, rather than focusing on the painstaking work of reform. Moreover, there will always be those that reject human progress, dictators who cling to power, corrupt interests that depend on the status quo, and extremists who fan the flames of hate and division. From Northern Ireland to South Asia, from Africa to the Americas, from the Balkans to the Pacific Rim, we've witnesses convulsions that can accompany transitions to a new political order. At time, the conflicts arise along the fault lines of race or tribe, and often they arise from the difficulties of reconciling tradition and faith with the diversity and interdependence of the modern world. In every country, there are those who find different religious beliefs threatening. In every culture, those who love freedom for themselves must ask themselves how much they're willing to tolerate freedom for others. And that is what we saw play out in the last two


Roger Thurow

Senior Fellow on Global Agriculture and Food Policy, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs Roger Thurow joined the Council in January 2010 after three decades at The Wall Street Journal. For twenty years, he was a foreign correspondent based in Europe and Africa. His coverage of global affairs spanned the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the release of Nelson Mandela, the end of apartheid, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the humanitarian crises of the first decade of this century – along with 10 Olympic Games. In 2003, he and Journal colleague Scott Kilman wrote a series of stories on famine in Africa that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting. Their reporting on humanitarian and development issues was also honored by the United Nations. Thurow and Kilman are authors of the recent book ENOUGH: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty. In 2009, they were awarded Action Against Hunger’s Humanitarian Award. Thurow's most recent book, The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change, was published in May 2012. Roger Thurow graduated from the University of Iowa. He lives in the Chicago area with his wife Anne, and their two children, Brian and Aishling.


U-Md. officials announce new joint public health school

University of Maryland leaders announced Tuesday that they are creating a collaborative school of public health that will bridge campuses in College Park and Baltimore, enabling faculty and students from the two locations to work together more closely. The joint effort comes after state university regents in December rejected a proposal to merge the flagship U-Md. in College Park with the University of Maryland, Baltimore. UMB has nationally ranked law and medical schools. College Park has neither. The concept of a larger merger drew significant opposition, especially from Baltimore, which might have been seen as a junior partner even though UMB is a major research institution in its own right. Instead, the watchword now is “collaboration.” The public health venture will bring together a 2,200-student school of public health in College Park with a 72-student master’s in public health program based within the School of Medicine in Baltimore. (About 100 master’s students among the 2,200 are at College Park.) The first master’s degrees from the collaborative school, assuming it wins accreditation, would be awarded in 2014. As of now, only three collaborative public health schools exist in the country. Already, officials said, two professors from College Park have been given joint appointments on the UMB faculty, and students from College Park have worked on projects in Baltimore. Such teamwork will expand and flow in both directions. Joint research grant applications are also in the works. College Park’s faculty has expertise in social epidemiology, health education, biostatics and other public health topics, said U-Md. President Wallace Loh, which complements UMB’s strengths in clinical research, epidemiology, global health and other subjects. “This was a way for the two campuses to immediately engage,” said UMB President Jay A. Perman, who made the announcement with Loh at the University System of Maryland headquarters in Adelphi. State university officials, eager to show that Maryland’s public universities are not balkanized, say more joint projects are in the works. “This is a great first step,” said state Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert), who had advocated a larger merger. He urged more teamwork among public universities in engineering, public policy and other fields. Eventually, Miller predicted, “a complete merger” of UMB and the flagship school will take place. “It might not happen in my lifetime,” he said, “but it’ll happen.”


Loudoun County animal watch

Skunk takes a nose dive: Hawk hit by car: Oh, deer: Shedding light on raccoon’s plight: Dog hit by car:


A flimsy U.S. sanctions policy toward Iran

the most prominent entity targeted by CISADA is Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA, and even its ties to the U.S. market remained largely untouched. The last five companies to be sanctioned by the Obama administration — FAL Oil Co., Bank of Kunlun, Kuo Oil, Zhuhai Zhenrong Co. and Elaf Islamic Bank — are all marginal entities in Iran’s economic edifice. The reason for the stunted state of U.S. sanctions policy is understandable but deeply unfortunate. Administration after administration has been reluctant to enforce sanctions against foreign companies with ties to Iran because of the diplomatic fallout that would invariably accompany such a decision. More often than not, the most egregious violators are companies headquartered in countries that are close U.S. allies or represent key strategic relationships for the United States, such as China and Russia. Fully implementing U.S. sanctions would require the political will to persist through a temporary downturn in those ties. President Ronald Reagan demonstrated such political will when he sanctioned Western European companies that defied orders not to supply U.S.-origin oil and gas equipment and technology to the Soviet Union for the development of its Siberian gas pipeline. Had it not eventually been thwarted, that project would have nearly doubled Soviet annual hard currency revenue and created a dangerous level of dependency in Western Europe on Soviet supplies of natural gas. Today such fortitude is strikingly absent. But at what cost? Obama’s failure to fulfill his pledge to fully exhaust all non-military options regarding Iran suggests that the White House thinks the potential of sanctions to influence Iranian behavior is overblown and not worth the diplomatic consequences. The full enforcement of sanctions is a logical intermediary step before the use of force. The administration’s failures on that front suggest that it views actual warfare as more palatable than ruffled diplomatic relationships with countries such as China, the primary violator of “sanctionable” activity currently on the books. That, in turn, makes the likelihood of some sort of conflagration over Iran’s nuclear program all the more probable. Read more on this debate: Karim Sadjadpour and Blake Hounshell: If Israel bombed Iran — the view from Washington Azadeh Moaveni: If Israel bombed Iran — the view from Tehran Anat Berko: If Israel bombed Iran — the view from Tel Aviv David Ignatius: Iran — the war game Amos Yadlin: 5 steps Obama can take to avert a strike on Iran


D.C. community calendar, Sept. 27 to Oct. 4, 2012

grounds. Sponsored by D.C. Building Industry Association. 7 a.m.-5 p.m., 611 Alabama Ave. SE. Free. Call Gail Edwards at 202-966-8665 or www.dcbia.org. Maine Avenue “End of Summer” church fair, Cathedral tower climb, National Theatre kids reptile program, D.C. Green Festival, Virginia (Capital) Avenue walking tours, Using what you have to redecorate your home in hours, Freedom Plaza walking tour, Hill Center open house, Fall harvest tea, Church organ dedication, Exploring Ballet With Suzanne Farrell, “12 Angry Men,” Canning demonstration, Lemon-scented herbs, discussed by members of the South Jersey Unit of the Herb Society of America. 1-4 p.m., U.S. National Arboretum, 3501 New York Ave. NE. Free. 202-245-2726. “The Fireman’s Ball,” Latin American history, “The War of 1812: A Forgotten War,” “Black Peter” and “Loves of a Blonde,” Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Creation,” Presidential pets, Clarinetist Rob Patterson concert, “Opera in the Outfield,” Unity Church community concert, “Korean Art and Soul,” Sunday, Sept. 30 The Dream Act and marriage equality issues, Revolution on the mall, Jam-making demonstration, Exploring Alternative Energy Uses in the Landscape, Local Latino history, From Whistler’s Chelsea to the D.C. Waterfront, What the Old Post Office Tower Saw, John Quincy Adams biography talk, J.J. McCracken: Contemporary Responses to Ancient Iranian Arts, U.S. Navy Band Brass Quartet concert, “Amadeus,” a screening of a “director’s cut” of the film about a brash Mozart and his rival, Antonio Salieri. Starring Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham. 4 p.m., National Gallery of Art, East Building Concourse, auditorium, Fourth Street and Constitution Avenue NW. Free. 202-842-6799. Pipe organ recital, Daniel Burnham Forum on Big Ideas, Eugenie L. Birch, professor and chair of the Graduate Group in City Planning, University of Pennsylvania, examines challenges facing America’s communities and offers possible solutions to guide us over the next 50 years. 5:30 p.m., National Building Museum, 401 F St. NW. $15; students, $10, registration required. 202-272-2448. “Who Won the Civil War?,” Conveyor band art-pop concert, Museum classical concert, Duthoit – Sores - Hautzinger Trio in concert, Monday, OCt. 1 The Building Zone, Botanic Garden lunchtime tour, “Art and Espionage: Michael Straight’s Giorgione,” Closing art exhibit reception, “School’s In” staged reading, “Cultures in Motion: James Wong Howe Himself,” actor Stan King reenacts Howe in an interview conducted by producer Jewell Robinson using stories from the life of the Chinese American cinematographer was nominated for 10 Oscars and won three. 7 p.m., National Portrait Gallery, McEvoy Auditorium, Eighth and


Communications curfew

analyst for Bankrate.com, said: “We continue to see a decline in the availability of free checking. I don’t expect it to reverse anytime soon.” Overall banking fees have increased. The average monthly maintenance fee for a non-interest checking account is now at a record high of $5.48; the average nonsufficient funds fee is $31.26, up from $30.83 last year. And expect to pay an average fee of $2.50 to the owner of the ATM, a new record and up 4 percent from last year. Plus, your bank will charge you another $1.57, on average, at that ATM, an increase of 11 percent, reports Herb Weisbaum, NBC News contributor. Bankrate.com says if your bank eliminates your free checking and starts imposing fees you can’t stand, shop around for a new banking relationship. “There are plenty of smaller community banks and credit unions that still offer free checking,” McBride says. “Our recent survey showed that 72 percent of the largest credit unions still offered free checking.” Just Say No There comes a time when we have to be true to our budgets and ourselves, and just say, “No, I can’t afford that.” Really, it’s okay to be honest about what you can and can’t afford because that can reduce financial stress and boost your financial health, writes Veronica Dagher of the Wall Street Journal, who then offers tips to help you say no. Chief among the strategies is setting boundaries, says Carl Sword, a New York-based psychoanalyst. “There’s a lot of peer pressure in our society to spend,” Sword tells Dagher. “When presented with an offer, folks can alleviate some of that pressure by using a phrase such as ‘Let me think about that and check my budget,’” he says. “Doing so may help them avoid a snap spending decision, weigh the offer in light of their finances and feel less on the spot with their friend.” Responses to “The Mooching Class” For last week’s Color of Money question, I wanted to know what you thought of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s comments during a fundraising event in which he characterized 47 percent of Americans as freeloaders and said they were “dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.” You can watch the full clip


Scientists scramble to understand a new virus similar to the one that caused SARS

A newly discovered virus that killed a Saudi Arabian man in June and is now causing life-threatening illness in a person from Qatar is similar to strains carried by bats, researchers reported Thursday. (Ian Waldie/Getty Images) The newly discovered virus that killed a Saudi Arabian man in June and is now causing life-threatening illness in a person from Qatar is similar to strains carried by bats, researchers reported Thursday. Most of the bat strains do not infect people. Why the new strain does — and how it got into two unrelated people from the same part of the world months apart — is a mystery being urgently investigated by scientists in Europe, the Middle East and the United States. The new bug is a coronavirus, a family that includes the agent of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which caused more than 8,000 infections and 900 deaths in 2003. The SARS coronavirus is also carried by bats. “It is perplexing. But it is the very early days,” said Nick Phin, an epidemiologist at the British government’s Health Protection Agency who is helping investigate the case of the Qatari patient, who is in an intensive care unit of a London hospital. The goal is to determine as quickly as possible whether the new virus is a threat to public health or a one-off event that in less vigilant times might have been missed entirely. So far there is no evidence of other, unexplained cases of severe pneumonia with kidney failure, which are the hallmarks of the two cases. “We should keep our feet on the ground. Two birds don’t make a summer and two patients don’t make an outbreak,” said Ron A.M. Fouchier, a virologist at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam. Fouchier determined the gene sequence of the new virus and posted it for other investigators to see and use. With no sign that the virus is transmitted from person-to-person or is easily picked up from animals, the advice to the public “has to be go about your normal business,” Phin said. Fouchier’s laboratory isolated the new coronavirus from lung tissue from a 60-year-old Saudi man who was admitted to a hospital in Jeddah on June 13 and died June 24. The Qatari patient became ill on Sept. 3 and was hospitalized in Doha a few days later. On Sept. 11, he was sent by air ambulance to England. There, a coronavirus


patients’ illnesses, although that has not been proved. Coronaviruses are one cause of the common cold. It’s possible the new virus could be another one of them. To test the strain’s virulence, Fouchier’s lab will infect macaque monkeys and ferrets with it. Ferrets are considered good models of human respiratory infections, and macaques were used to prove the pathological effects of the SARS virus. “We want to see whether this virus really causes severe disease,” Fouchier said. Fouchier’s lab has also collaborated with a lab at the University of Bonn and the British Health Protection Agency to make a diagnostic test using gene probes and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) devices, which is available now. A key question is whether the two cases are tips of an iceberg, with lots of other cases going unseen. To help answer that, epidemiologists are interviewing about 80 people with recent contact with the Qatari man — family, friends, hospital workers, the air ambulance crew. “We’ve not had an indication that any of the family or any of the contacts were ill,” Phin said. Blood samples are being drawn to see if anyone has antibodies to the new virus, which would suggest they had been infected without knowing it. How the men became infected is unknown. The Qatari is too ill to be interviewed. The SARS outbreak apparently started when one or more people picked up the virus from exotic animals, such as palm civets and ferret-badgers, in live markets in China. Research after the epidemic The SARS experience suggests that the new coronavirus may also have animal carriers other than bats. The Qatari patient had “contact with camels and sheep,” Phin said. “But a lot of people in the Middle East have contact with camels and sheep. We are not aware of any exotic exposures.” He would not describe the man’s work or lifestyle because of patient confidentiality. A review of whether the Saudi patient who died had any unusual animal exposures is underway. Unusually silent in the investigation is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. government’s epidemiology agency that is usually out front in outbreaks of strange or new diseases. “We are willing to help anyway we can,” said Tom Skinner, a CDC spokesman. He would not say whether Saudi Arabia or Qatar had asked for help in investigating the cases or if a team of epidemiologists would be dispatched.


The risk of easy money

Fed news, and money became cheaper for those looking to buy these assets, which, of course, unemployed Americans are unlikely to own. Lower interest rates are often cited as a benefit to the housing market. Here, too, however, well-off Americans are more likely to gain than those who are struggling. Wealthier Americans have accrued equity in their homes more quickly than others, the St. Louis Fed reports, and probably have higher credit scores. Lower mortgage rates have allowed many of them to refinance and lower their monthly payments. But many middle-class homeowners are underwater on their mortgages and can’t refinance. The Christian Science Monitor recently reported that at the end of June, 69 percent of U.S. mortgage borrowers had interest rates above 5 percent, according to CoreLogic data, and 84 percent of underwater borrowers had loans with interest rates over 5 percent. In addition, marginally lower mortgage rates — off of historical lows — may not improve the overall housing market in ways that would restore some of the value lost in their homes or materially accelerate the emerging housing recovery. About 7 percent of the roughly 50 million U.S. mortgages are delinquent, Lender Processing Services reported this month. Despite historically low interest rates, millions of households that could benefit from refinancing and are current on their loans haven’t done so. These borrowers have an average home value of $197,300 — solidly middle class. Fed officials were heroic during the financial crisis and their actions clearly contributed to the recovery. For the good of the country, they are now trying to make up for congressional inaction. In the end, however, they can’t. They might be able to move the needle ever so slightly, but the process of doing so will exaggerate financial inequality. The United States faces structural employment problems because of the long-term effects of globalization and technology. This was only exacerbated by the Great Recession. The most effective solution would be for Congress to pass laws positioning our country to better compete in the rapidly changing 21st century; we need to prepare more Americans to benefit from globalization and technology. Options for lawmakers include changing our immigration policy to allow job creators and science, technology, engineering and math graduates to stay in the United States; crafting a national energy policy with incentives to make the United States a leader in energy production and advanced energy utilization and technology;


China expels Bo Xilai from Communist Party, sets November date for transition

of charges suggested that China’s leaders ultimately agreed to throw their full weight against him, perhaps out of concern that treating Bo too gently could leave him undiminished as a potential rival to a new team of leaders. Among other charges, Bo was accused of abusing his office, accepting bribes (directly as well as through family members), failing as a supervisor, promoting the wrong people and breaking an assortment of party rules. Other charges included “improper relationships with a number of women” and playing a role in the murder plot. Bo has not been seen in public in months and had not — until Friday — been mentioned by name in state-controlled media for a significant period of time. No information on his whereabouts or his potential trial date was included in a report by the state-run Xinhua News Agency, which detailed the charges. As an apparent sign of how thoroughly authorities want to purge Bo from the party, investigators reached back decades in detailing his alleged crimes — going as far as his early posts in Dalian city and as China’s minister of commerce, and continuing to his recent powerful perch on China’s Politburo and his role as party chief in Chongqing, one of China’s biggest cities. They also ended Bo’s list of alleged misdeeds on an ominously vague note, saying investigators had discovered clues suggesting “other crimes.” “This last one is the most serious one,” said Cheng Li, an expert on Chinese leaders at the Brookings Institution. “It could mean the party leaders are trying to hold a big card over Bo to force him to cooperate.” Bo’s wife and his former top aide cooperated fully at their recent trials, never challenging an official, if at times bizarre, account asserting that Gu had killed British businessman by luring him to a hotel room, getting him drunk and then poisoning him with cyanide-laced water. Bo — whose role, if any, in the murder plot remains unclear — could prove a more defiant subject, however. He built his career on a charismatic personality and a penchant for making unorthodox moves and challenging Beijing’s traditional power structure. Before his downfall, Bo was seen as a leader for a growing leftist, Maoist movement in China. As recently as this month, his supporters were turning out in force at anti-Japanese riots, carrying incongruous banners arguing for Bo’s cause, as well as portraits of


Afghan troops get a lesson in American cultural ignorance

KABUL — In Afghanistan, the U.S. military has tried training sessions, embedded cultural advisers, recommended reading lists and even a video game designed to school the troops in local custom. But 11 years into the war, NATO troops and Afghan soldiers are still beset by a dangerous lack of cultural awareness, officials say, contributing to a string of insider attacks that have threatened to undermine the military partnership. So the Afghan army is trying something new: a guide to the strange ways of the American soldier. The goal is to convince Afghan troops that when their Western counterparts do something deeply insulting, it’s likely a product of cultural ignorance and not worthy of revenge. The pamphlet is intended to “strengthen our understanding of our [NATO] counterpart,” according to an English translation of the pamphlet that was provided to The Washington Post. But in doing so, it also reveals seemingly minor — and rarely acknowledged — cultural faux pas that have created palpable tension between the two forces. Photos of everyday life in Afghanistan as coalition forces attempt to transfer responsibilities to Afghan troops. “Please do not get offended if you see a NATO member blowing his/her nose in front of you,” the guide instructs. “When Coalition members get excited, they may show their excitement by patting one another on the back or the behind,” it explains. “They may even do this to you if they are proud of the job you’ve done. Once again, they don’t mean to offend you.” And another tip: “When someone feels comfortable in your presence, they may even put their feet on their own desk while speaking with you. They are by no means trying to offend you. They simply don’t know or have forgotten the Afghan custom.” Pointing the soles of one’s shoes at someone is considered a grievous insult in Afghanistan. The guide also warns Afghan soldiers that Western troops might wink at them or inquire about their female relatives or expose their private parts while showering — all inappropriate actions by Afghan standards. While some of the tips may be amusing to an American audience, the intention is deadly serious.Fifty-one coalition troops have been killed this year by their Afghan counterparts. While some insider attacks have been attributed to Taliban infiltrators, military officials say the majority stem from personal disputes and misunderstandings. The 18-page pamphlet, officially titled “Cultural Understanding — A Guide


Services, fitness and restaurants buoy Washington’s retail market

While that old sad song about Washington’s challenging office market is sounding a bit like a broken record, there is good news on the retail front. The office vacancy rate in the nation’s capital ticked up 50 basis points over the past year, contrary to the 40-basis-point decline in office vacancy for the broader United States. The trends are reversed for retail property. The Washington region is experiencing better-than average improvement in the sector while nationally, retail continues to ride out the choppy economy. The national retail average vacancy rate recovered only 50 basis points, meanwhile retail vacancy in the president’s backyard improved nearly twice as much, by about 90 basis points. Local store closures such as Sears and Bloom, the Food Lion concept grocery, have been a drag on the retail market here, just as they have been across the country. However, demand for retail space in the region has been buoyed by three important business segments: services, fitness and restaurants. Local professional and everyday service shops have been springing up in an attempt to meet the demand spawned by new households in the region, and outsized absorption of retail space has been posted in Maryland’s outlying suburbs, the Largo area, Frederick County, and Germantown. In Northern Virginia, Springfield has also benefited, largely as a result of influx of works from moves related to the Pentagon’s base closure and relocation process. New restaurants have been chasing affluent households, with Fairfax registering the strongest growth in restaurants in 2012, while Potomac and enclaves along the Dulles Tech Corridor placed just behind. Somewhat surprising perhaps, is that already well-established hot dining destinations in downtown D.C. have continued to add new establishments, with a net gain of 21 new eateries over the past nine months. The region’s demographic profile is quite active, which has drawn the attention of national fitness chains in a big way. So far this year, 30 new gyms have opened here, and a high concentration of those new sweat shops dot the path of household growth from Falls Church to Loudoun County. So it is clear from recent retail trends that D.C. residents still want to pay people to do stuff for them, work out, and not have to make every meal at home. Erica Champion is a senior real estate economist with CoStar Group in Washington.


Lager gets a shot in the glass

associated with cans of watery boredom. The pioneering home brewers who often started these breweries tended to have little familiarity with lagering, a fermentation process that requires enough refrigeration and patience to keep beer cool for several weeks or months before it is served. Lagers remain both more challenging and more costly to brew than ales. A Pilsener, seemingly simple, “turns out to be one of the hardest beers to make” because the neutral flavor profile of lager yeast can’t hide mistakes like ale yeast can, says Favio Garcia, brewer at Loudoun County’s Lost Rhino Brewing. (Nonetheless, he brews his Rhino Chasers as a flagship offering.) And in the words of Jack Hendler, of the young all-lager Massachusetts brewery Jack’s Abby, “Lagers aren’t a good way to go if you’re looking for more brewing space or looking to put more beer out. Right now, if we switched to ales, we could more than double our capacity and still have the same quality product going out the door.” Still, Hendler says the emphasis on lagers helps Jack’s Abby by giving it an unusual niche in the marketplace, and he adds that lagers, like ales, can be bold and experimental. “Our most popular beer, by not even a close margin, is our ridiculously hoppy lager. We call it an India pale lager as opposed to an India pale ale.” Garcia says that in the coming months he, too, will be brewing an India pale lager, a nascent style that tends to feature citrusy and herbal notes from American hops. The District Chophouse & Brewery has been featuring a similar “pale lager” recently as well. Classic styles, however, are better options for Washington-area residents looking to sample craft lagers for the first time. A good starting point is Garcia’s refreshing Rhino Chasers Pilsener, with its grassy and earthy aroma and buttery texture. Or try Devils Backbone’s Vienna Lager, a straightforward blend of bready malts with a hint of caramel. Brew master Oliver says the brewery will also be bottling three more lagers next year: a strong pale lager, a black lager and a Baltic porter, traditionally brewed as a lager. “I like to say that intensity of flavor is not equal to quality of flavor,” he says. “There’s nothing like having a nice craft lager. It’s clean. It’s refreshing. It’s rewarding.” Fromson, a freelance writer, lives in Washington. Follow him on Twitter: @dfroms.


Fred Begun, National Symphony Orchestra timpanist

Fred Begun is captured in an image, which is a triple exposure, while rehearsing for the National Symphony Orchestra. (Dick Darcey/WASHINGTON POST) Fred Begun, a Brooklyn-born Juilliard graduate who spent 48 years as principal timpanist of the National Symphony Orchestra, died Sept. 23 at George Washington University Hospital. He was 84. He died of complications from a single-car accident three weeks ago, said his daughter Rosalie Begun. Two months after graduating in 1951 with a percussion degree from the Juilliard School in New York, Mr. Begun became the timpanist for the NSO. It was a rare symphony orchestra vacancy in an era where most timpanists found jobs in radio and TV studio orchestras. His earliest ambitions were in jazz, and he was smitten by the animated playing of drummer-bandleader Gene Krupa in the 1930s and 1940s. Mr. Begun channeled that jaunty showmanship into his symphonic career — he was frequently described as a dancer behind the drums. He also favored the hep-cat jive talk favored by jazz musicians, often ending sentences with “baby.” Paul Hume, The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classical music critic, once described Mr. Begun as a “virtuoso artist of rare caliber.” While the drummer gave thunderous interpretation to dramatic music — his blistering percussion work on Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4, Op. 29 was likened to “Armageddon itself” — Mr. Begun most prided himself on modulation and eliciting graceful and melodious phrases. He said the hardest pieces to play required the discipline to create almost no sound on the kettle drums and still provide essential girding for a symphonic work. “It’s something like this,” he once told The Post as he leaned over a drum and brought forth an almost silent rumble with his sticks. “That’s the opening of ‘La Mer’ by Debussy. The problem is to get the long, sustained sound . . . and keep it going absolutely pianissimo. That’s hard.” One of the highlights of his career was playing composer Robert Parris’s Concerto for Five Kettle-Drums and Orchestra in 1958. It provided a rare chance for the timpanist to move to the front of the stage and shine as a featured soloist. Mr. Begun told Time magazine that he encouraged Parris, a fellow Juilliard graduate, to write the piece. “I suggested five drums jestingly,” Mr. Begun said, one more than the traditional maximum with an orchestra. Even at four drums, it was a technically complicated


The world hedges its bets through China’s transition

Elizabeth Economy is the C.V. Starr senior fellow and director of Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This was a big week in China. Former top senior official Bo Xilai, whose wife gained notoriety for arranging the death of a British expatriate, has been expelled from the Communist Party and faces myriad charges from corruption to philandering. The dates for the Party Congress, at which China’s new leadership will be announced, have finally been set. And Vice President Xi Jinping is back in public after a recent two-week absence. With these issues behind them, China’s leaders hope to end all the speculation about political paralysis and move on with governing. Unfortunately, their moves raise as many questions as they answer. At one level, the questions are straightforward. Where was Xi? It matters whether his absence was due to a stroke, an assassination attempt, an effort to hammer out a new political reform program or none of the above; after all, each potential explanation says something different about the political future of China’s likely next president. And what will happen now with Bo? Party leaders have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at this onetime political star; what is their endgame? At a more profound level, however, recent events underscore the deep uncertainty that defines China’s political system. This uncertainty surrounds not only the leadership transition but also the contours of China’s broader political path forward and the nature of its engagement with the outside world — and this is what Chinese leaders most urgently need to address. The corruption scandal involving a regional boss has preoccupied China in the months before its once-in-a-decade transition of power. China’s leaders could scarcely have scripted a worse political transition. This fall, most of the positions in the Standing Committee of the Politburo — the consensus-based body that leads the Communist Party — are up for grabs. The transition represents the most significant generational leadership shift in a decade, but it has been marred by scandal and vicious political infighting. First came the fall of Bo, who had been widely considered a top contender for membership in the Standing Committee. More recently, retired party elders reportedly sharply criticized Xi for his “unreliability” and unseeming ambition. They see not just the future of the country at stake but also their legacy. Their unwillingness to relinquish influence virtually guarantees that discord and political divisions


Reston Zoo director guilty of drowning wallaby

The curator testified that animals had been euthanized in shocking ways at the Reston Zoo: Some were shot, rabbits were slammed into walls and chickens were fed to pythons. But in a Fairfax County courtroom Friday, Ashley Rood said she reached her breaking point after uncovering evidence that the zoo’s director, Meghan Mogensen, had drowned an injured wallaby named Parmesan in a plastic bucket. Rood confronted Mogensen, resigned in protest and later called police. “I think you and your father are sick and sadistic people, and I don’t want to be part of this anymore,” Rood recalled telling Mogensen, whose father owns the zoo. “It’s one thing to euthanize an animal, but it’s another thing to drown it.” Mogensen, 26, of Silver Spring, was convicted of animal cruelty and sentenced to 30 days in jail after Rood’s whistleblower complaint. A judge also found her guilty of possessing animal anesthesia without a license. Meghan Mogensen (Fairfax County Police) The unusual trial featured testimony about a wallaby autopsy known as a necropsy, veterinary forensics experts and fingerprint analysis as prosecutors sought to show that Mogensen cruelly killed the wallaby and then mounted an elaborate coverup. The testimony also raised questions about the zoo’s care of its animals. Other zoos owned by Eric Mogensen have also come under scrutiny in recent years, according to media reports. Meghan Mogensen’s attorney, Caleb Kershner, contended that his client, who didn’t testify during the trial, had humanely euthanized the wallaby using a lethal injection and was acting out of compassion for an animal in pain. “She was concerned about this animal,” Kershner said in his closing statement. “It was suffering.” Rood testified that Parmesan had injured its left eye while hopping about its pen at the end of January. Rood said zookeepers bandaged the wallaby’s eye and put the animal in a plastic crate but that Parmesan managed to bang its head again and punctured the eye, which started bleeding. Rood said she then told Mogensen the animal was injured and that Mogensen consulted with her father about what to do. Eric Mogensen wanted to euthanize the wallaby, Rood testified, a decision that left her “dumbfounded” since she thought the animal could be treated by a veterinarian. Rood said Mogensen ordered her to pick up food for the animals, but when she returned to the zoo she found Parmesan’s open crate next to a spigot and a


As Apple and Samsung dominate, Japan’s tech giants are in a free fall

The annual video game expo, which is held from Sept. 20 to 23 at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan, attracts thousands of business visitors and the general public with exhibitions of upcoming game software and the latest hardware. TOKYO — Companies such as Sony, Panasonic and Sharp once controlled the industry, outclassing and outselling their U.S. rivals. But now they represent the most alarming telltale of corporate Japan’s two-decade struggle to adapt, downsize and innovate. While the Japanese economy staggers, the consumer electronics companies are in an accelerated free fall, unable to catch on in the digital world of tablets and smartphones. They’re cycling through executives, watching their stock prices dip toward 10-year lows and laying off employees; Sharp recently reported plans to slash nearly one-fifth of its workforce. The companies — bleeding money on their once-profitable televisions — have also set off on a nontraditional hunt for profits, developing everything from solar panels to medical devices. The companies still have famous brand names, and tech analysts say they still produce some of the world’s highest-quality hardware devices. But they face a fundamental problem: It’s been years since they’ve turned out products that people feel they need to have. Those who study the consumer electronics industry describe a decade of missteps and miscalculations. Japan’s giants concentrated on stand-alone devices like televisions and phones and computers, but devoted little thought to software and the ways their devices synced with one another. As a result, their products don’t always work in harmony, in the way an iPhone connects naturally with a laptop and a digital music store. In other cases, the Japanese companies were simply too slow to turn cutting-edge technology into usable technology. Sony, for instance, was early to embrace e-book technology, but struggled to pair it with intuitive software or an easy-to-download selection of books. The companies also completely missed the rapid rise of smartphones, with Apple and South Korea’s Samsung grabbing the majority of the market. Even the Japanese companies’ strengths matter less now, as consumers have lost the willingness to pay a premium for quality. Sharp and Sony and Panasonic make among the world’s best televisions, for instance, but such Korean competitors as LG and Samsung have found ways to make products that are almost as good for far less money. “In the past there was a huge gap between the best of breed and second best,” said


Youngest Guantanamo detainee returned to Canada, ending protracted legal saga

Omar Khadr is seen in this undated family handout photo. The youngest Guantanamo prisoner, Khadr, who was a 15-year-old fighting in Afghanistan when captured in 2002, was sent to finish his sentence in his native Canada on Sept. 29, 2012. (HANDOUT/REUTERS) The youngest inmate at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a Canadian-Egyptian citizen captured on an Afghan battlefield a decade ago when he was 15, was transferred to Canada early Saturday, ending a contentious legal saga. Omar Khadr pleaded guilty to charges of murder and other war crimes in October 2010 as part of a deal with prosecutors, who agreed to allow him to serve most of his sentence in his native Canada. Khadr’s age when he was arrested and allegations of torture by U.S. interrogators made his one of the most controversial detainee cases in the post-Sept. 11 era. The United Nations publicly criticized his prosecution, arguing that children should not be tried for war crimes. His plea deal stipulated that Khadr, now 26, would serve an eight-year sentence, including at least one year in U.S. custody. It took the Obama administration and the Canadian government twice that long to agree on the terms of his incarceration in Canada. Under Canadian law, Khadr could be eligible for early release after serving one-third of his sentence. “The United States coordinated with the government of Canada regarding appropriate security and humane treatment measures,” the Pentagon said in a statement Saturday morning announcing the transfer. The statement said Congress had been notified about the impending move. Here is a look at some of the week’s best photographs from around the globe. Khadr’s release reduced Guantanamo’s inmate population to 166. “Omar Khadr’s repatriation provides an opportunity for Canada to begin to right a wrong,” Andrea Prasow, an attorney at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “International law provides him the right as a former child soldier to be reintegrated into society.” Khadr was taken into custody after sustaining serious wounds during a firefight in July 2002 in Khost province, in eastern Afghanistan. He was initially held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where he has said he was abused by U.S. personnel. He has alleged he was threatened with rape and forced to endure painful stress positions. The abuse continued after he was transferred to Guantanamo in October of that year, Khadr later told his lawyers. The prisoner implicated


Jupiter, Venus take turns hogging our attention

to 10 hours and 33 minutes on Oct. 31 – a whopping hour and 13 minutes of lost light. Don’t worry, though, as we’ll make up for it on the other side of the winter solstice in December. With crisp autumnal skies, be watching for Orionid meteors later in the month. Sky gazers should expect the shower’s peak on Oct. 20-21. The ZHR, or zenithal hourly rate, is forecast to be 25 meteors an hour, according to the International Meteor Organization (www.imo.net). Meteors occur when specks of comet dust – in this case the famed Halley’s Comet – strike the Earth’s atmosphere. The best time to find them is after midnight. Down to Earth events ● ●Oct. 6 — “We Make ’Em and Fly ’Em – Three Decades of Telescopes for Observing the Sun at the Smithsonian,” a lecture by Peter Cheimets, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. 5:15 p.m. Albert Einstein Planetarium, National Air and Space Museum, National Mall. (After lecture, stargazing at the museum’s public observatory.) Information, airandspace.si.edu . ●Oct. 13 — Family Day, “Hispanic Innovators in Aerospace.” 10 a.m.-3 p.m. National Air and Space Museum, National Mall. airandspace.si.edu . ●Oct. 13 — Gaze upon the autumnal heavens with telescopes, hosted by the National Air and Space Museum at Sky Meadows State Park near Paris, Va., 6-8:30 p.m. Parking: $5. Arrive before dusk. airandspace.si.edu/events/skywatching . ●Oct. 13 — “When Fermi Met Jansky: A Romance Across the Electromagnetic Spectrum,” a lecture by Roopesh Ojha of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. University of Maryland Observatory, College Park. 7:30 p.m. capitalastronomers.org . ●Oct. 14 — Larry Evans of NASA’s Messenger mission discusses the mission to Mercury. Meeting Room 80, Enterprise Hall, George Mason University, Fairfax. 7 p.m. www.novac.com . ●Oct. 20 — “Mercury: Oh Strange New World That Has Such Structures In It!” a lecture by Michelle Selvans of the National Air and Space Museum Center for Earth and Planetary Studies. 5:15 p.m., Albert Einstein Planetarium, National Air and Space Museum, National Mall. (After lecture, stargazing at the museum’s public observatory.) airandspace.si.edu . ●Oct. 20 — “When Was Creation?” Estimates of the age of the universe through time, at the Montgomery College planetarium, Takoma Park. 7 p.m. www.montgomerycollege.edu/departments/planet . ●Oct. 20 – Embrace the autumn night sky’s joyful offerings at “Exploring the Sky,” hosted by the National Park Service and the National Capital Astronomers. Meet at Rock Creek Park, near the Nature Center


NATO soldier, civilian contractor killed in Afghanistan

KABUL Saturday’s attack, which was initially reported as an apparent insider attack, also killed three Afghan troops, NATO officials said. But Sunday, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force attributed the attack to possibly insurgent fire. The incident happened in eastern Afghanistan, NATO officials said. ISAF said in a statement that the incident occurred while an ISAF unit was manning a temporary check point in an area near and Afghan National Army unit. The statement said the shooting occurred following a short conversation between NATO and Afghan personnel. In an ensuing exchange of fire, three Afghan troops were killed. “We deeply regret the loss of life in this tragedy,” the statement said. “Our deepest sympathies are with the families of our personnel who were killed.” An official in Maidan Wardak province said the attack happened in a post in the province’s Sayed Abad district. Most coalition troops in the province, which is less than an hour’s drive west of Kabul, are Americans. The Taliban, who have claimed responsibility for a number of past insider attacks through their infiltrators, described Saturday’s incident in a statement as an “internal clash” between Afghan and foreign troops. The attack came hours after U.S. officials in Washington said joint small raids with Afghan forces were resuming after being halted early this month following an increase insider attacks, also known as green-on-blue attacks. Dozens of Afghan forces have also died in insider attacks. But the rising toll and spread of strikes against foreign forces has touched the nerves of NATO and U.S. officials. “I’m mad as hell about them, to be honest with you,” Gen. John Allen, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, told CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview scheduled to be broadcast Sunday, according to the Associated Press. “It reverberates everywhere across the United States. You know, we’re willing to sacrifice a lot for this campaign, but we’re not willing to be murdered for it.”


Ignore the bad news. There’s lots of innovation going on.

The chatter on CNBC the other day seemed preoccupied with all that is wrong in the tech world. There was Craig Barrett, the former chairman of Intel, complaining yet again about the state of public education. Someone else questioned whether Apple had lost its way because it released an iPhone with a misguided maps app. Others went on about the precipitous drop in Facebook stock. Tesla, the electric car company, reported it was having production problems. The talk was enough to make me doubt our ability to innovate. But the mood soon passed. All it took was a lunchtime visit to the D.C. offices of the law firm Cooley, where investors, bankers, accountants and others gathered to hear pitches from a crop of eager start-ups. “Capital Call” is a biannual affair, part of Cooley’s efforts to nurture a start-up ecosystem and generate a little good will that might bring work to the firm in the future. Entrepreneurs get three minutes in front of the crowd to stir up interest and ask for money. The 13 that presented at last week offered a window into where business is headed. There were cloud-based businesses to manage health data and create virtual recording studios. An Arlington firm called Distil offered a product to prevent software bots from “scraping” Web sites to steal content. Barrel of Jobs said it had a patent-pending way to pay people for job referrals. Brain Sentry is marketing a helmet sensor capable of detecting concussion-inducing impacts; Shockatoo makes a kind of animated tatoo to bring self expression into the digital age. Still others would allow us to be more social. CrimePush’s app lets people report crimes with their smartphones. PersonSpot helps users create their own “social” magazines. TouchdownSpace is building a service to help road warriors find an open office. I have no idea how successful these companies will be, but contrary to what you may hear sometimes, we seem in no danger of running out of fresh ideas.


L-3, Virginia Tech open cybersecurity center

innovative security solutions than we might do on our own,” Rose said. Charles Clancy, “Cybersecurity in particular is an area where the needs are pretty significant,” he said. “By having [the] university and a company working together so closely, we can significantly shorten the lead time between innovation and solution.” Glotech protest upheld The Government Accountability Office has upheld a protest filed by Rockville-based small business Glotech against a U.S. Agency for International Development award. The agency issued blanket-purchase agreements, meant to speed individual orders, to seven companies, including Bethesda-based IBM Global Business Services-Federal, Chantilly-based Computer Sciences Corp., Fairfax-based CGI Federal and Herndon-based HP Enterprise Services. Glotech argued USAID failed to sufficiently take price into consideration. The GAO agreed, writing that the agency “gave no meaningful consideration” to cost and calling for a new selection decision. GST expands NOAA work Greenbelt-based Global Science & Technology said last week that it has received a contract to continue and expand a program that uses sensors to collect detailed environmental data. Under the new $9.7 million, one-year task order with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, GST will manage more than 5,000 sensors — some in the form of weather stations located on the ground and others that ride along on a nationwide fleet of commercial trucks. The initiative started as a small pilot program, under which the mobile data stations were attached to buses in the Northeast. “Where we’re at now is a coalescence ... of all of it under one program,” said Paul Heppner, who manages the program for GST. He said collected environmental observations are forwarded to the National Weather Service. “We’ve got to start getting this data to the forecast offices, getting it to the modelers, getting it to the people who are actually going to start making use of it,” he said. CloudBolt gets started John Menkart The business, which got started last month, is hawking software meant to make it easier for government agencies and commercial businesses to manage their technology infrastructure and programs as they move to cloud — or Web-based — computing. The software, said Menkart, can help organizations that have a whole range of technologies tie them together to be more efficient and cut costs. Thus far, the start-up has about 15 employees and is getting business off the ground by offering a free download of its signature product, called CloudBolt Command & Control.


Government contractors seeking commercial opportunities in cyber

Booz Allen’s cyber facility in Maryland is one of nine virtually-connected centers and labs in the Cyber Solutions Network, each equipped with the tools and expertise needed to counter cyber threats, including cyber analytics, network defense, product testing and evaluation and advanced cyber training. (Jeffrey MacMillan/JEFFREY MACMILLAN FOR WASHINGTON POST) The government’s technology can receive a bad rap — too slow, too big, too outdated. Technology contractors rarely have the cache of consumer-oriented firms such as Apple and Google. But in the cybersecurity field, that paradigm may be turned on its head. Government contractors certainly hope so. Seeing an area in which the government has taken the lead, and hoping to diversify their businesses in the face of declining federal spending, these companies regard cybersecurity as a prime opportunity to develop or expand their commercial practices. Mark J. Gerencser, who leads McLean-based contractor Booz Allen Hamilton’s commercial business, said it simply makes sense to create new bridges between the government and commercial sectors, given how interconnected the world has become. “Cyber can’t be solved by the government alone, nor can it be solved by private industry,” he said. Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Kenneth A. Minihan, who formerly headed the National Security Agency and is now a managing director at Paladin Capital Group, agrees. There is “absolutely symmetry between the critical infrastructure that the government needs and the critical infrastructure that the private sector needs,” he said. Some analysts say the shift won’t be easy given the different language and business models required when selling to the commercial world. But that hasn’t stopped government-focused companies from making forays into sectors such as health care, energy and banking. Hanover-based KEYW, for instance, has been known for its work with federal intelligence agencies, but recently announced it’s working on a commercial project. Fairfax-based ManTech International, squeezed by spending reductions in Iraq and Afghanistan, has also identified cybersecurity as an area where it is establishing commercial work. The company had left the commercial market nearly a decade ago. “I think we’re in the absolute best position we could be” in, said L. William Varner, president and chief operating officer of ManTech International’s mission, cyber and intelligence solutions group. ManTech’s experience working for the government “gives us a cache that few companies have.” Cyber for government The government market alone is vast. Herndon-based Deltek, which analyzes the government contracting market, estimates that in fiscal


Haiti takes on dreaded disease elephantiasis one mouth at a time

Officials in Haiti are using “mass drug administration” to fight a parasitic infection that can cause permanent swelling. In a sunny courtyard of the Evelina Levy School for Girls, hundreds of girls in blue uniforms did their part to rid Haiti of an ancient and reviled disease. They lined up in pairs to get three pills dropped into their mouths. They swallowed them down with a quarter-cup of water. They got a second medicine, a flavored tablet, to chew as they walked back to class. Two middle-aged women treated 12 girls every 21 / 2 minutes, one pouring the water and the other shaking out the pills. Another woman ticked the columns for age, sex and drug on a white form with a green pen. “Mass drug administration” is easy if your target is elementary school students. It’s harder when you want to reach nearly everyone else in a country of 10 million people. That is the goal Haiti set this year in its campaign against a parasitic infection called lymphatic filariasis that is present in 80 percent of the country. Spread by mosquitoes, in severe cases it leads to permanent swelling of an arm or leg. That condition, called “elephantiasis,” can be grotesque and life-changing. In men, the worms can cause a swelling of the scrotum that is even more stigmatizing. Human-generated carbon emissions are making the ocean more acidic, which has become a cause for concern to the fishing industry and scientists. Lymphatic filariasis is a “neglected tropical disease,” the name for a group of maladies that have disappeared from industrialized countries or never existed there. Others include onchocerciasis (“river blindness”), schistosomiasis (“snail fever”), soil-based intestinal worms, and the eye infection trachoma. For 1.9 billion people, most of them poor, they are still threats. Eliminating the diseases has been an object of intense effort and research over the past decade. The work is largely unknown outside the global health community, overshadowed by higher-profile campaigns against AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. In 2010, 484 million people worldwide took drugs against filariasis — more than for any other neglected tropical disease but still only one-third of the people at risk for it. “You could argue it’s the world’s largest public health program,” said Peter J. Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Most of the neglected diseases can be cured in their


Alsop and Baltimore Symphony beautify Bernstein’s ‘Kaddish’

work in June 2011. I was perfectly willing to believe that the text was unusable — until I heard Alsop and the gifted actress Claire Bloom perform it. Their performance didn’t so much rehabilitate it as give it a context: This whole piece is dated, but it’s a unified whole, and text and music match better than you might think. Both are much lighter and less profound than they believe themselves to be. Bloom found just the right tone of gentle overblown anxiety, not quite petulant and not quite thundering, to make the words palatable, and the orchestra and Alsop further tempered them with some fine playing. Certainly it was a better performance than the National Symphony’s reading last year. The Washington Chorus and the Maryland State Boychoir offered articulate cohesion. One piece of continuity was the soprano Kelley Nassief, who was a little dwarfed here by her placement in the balcony above the huge forces on stage. The symphony was by far the most compelling piece on the program. This was the BSO’s second all-American program in two weeks, a rousing start to the season that plays to the music director’s strengths, but the first half didn’t have the fizz and spark of the second. It opened with John Adams’s “Short Ride in a Fast Machine,” an energetic piece that’s taken its place in the orchestral canon. But here after a spicy beginning it turned bland, with more emphasis on long sustained brass notes than the rapid notes of strings and percussion, as if it had worked its way into a comfortable groove and could simply coast along. This was followed by “Ansel Adams: America,” a piece by Dave and Chris Brubeck that the BSO gave its East Coast premiere in 2010. I applaud the orchestra’s instinct to revisit a new work so soon after its premiere, giving it a chance to become somewhat familiar to its audience. But the work itself held little interest for me, consisting of attractive but generic statements, repeated over and over, played under a compilation of photographs both of and by Adams. The juxtaposition of disparate images raised interesting but perhaps unintended questions about the dividing line between art and documentary — is the music supposed to accompany Adams’s art or narrate his life? Unfortunately, it also created the impression that this was less a musical work than a well-meaning educational slide show.


Three NATO soldiers killed in Afghan suicide bombing

Afghan police secure the site of a suicide bombing in Khost, south of Kabul, Afghanistan, Oct. 1, 2012. The suicide bomber was driving a motorcycle packed with explosives and rammed it into a patrol of Afghan and international forces, killing over a dozen people, including three NATO service members and their translator, official said. (Nashanuddin Khan/AP) KABUL — Among the dead were four Afghan policemen, including the commander of a special unit called the Rapid Reaction Force, and an interpreter for the NATO-led force. The Interior Ministry said dozens of people were wounded, many of them civilians. The Afghan and NATO forces were on a foot patrol when the bomber struck in front of a bank in a crowded part of Khost, near the border with Pakistan, officials said. The Taliban asserted responsibility for the attack, part of the latest spate of violence in Afghanistan. A local official speaking on the condition of anonymity said the three dead NATO soldiers were Americans, who make up the bulk of the coalition force in Khost. Photos of everyday life in Afghanistan as coalition forces attempt to transfer responsibilities to Afghan troops. The attack came two days after two Americans — a soldier and a civilian contractor — were killed during an exchange of fire, apparently with Afghan forces. The clash, in which three Afghan troops also were killed, may have been a result of a misunderstanding, one Afghan official said, though U.S. officials disputed that assertion. At least 51 foreign troops have been killed this year in “insider attacks” by rogue Afghan forces.


West Nile virus leaves man disabled years after the bite of an infected mosquito

had followed nature’s prerogative and brought me to this. According to the CDC, the disease first identified in Uganda in the 1930s had traveled thousands of miles within a bug and alighted in New York 13 years ago. Birds became the vector for the virus, migrating and spreading disease throughout the country. This summer, the virus has sickened people in nearly every state. Feeling as if I had failed my caregivers, my family and myself, I focused my hopes on getting to Chicago and its world-renowned rehabilitation hospital. Chicago was home when I was not on the farm, and I had all the resources of family and friends there to count on. By mid-September, after five weeks of treatment brought no improvement, I was flown out of Vermont by air ambulance and started rehab the morning after my arrival. A therapist strapped my hands to a sort of elevated bicycle wheel that I was supposed to crank, and she moved on to other patients. I still recall the look of surprise and muted frustration on her face when she returned a few minutes later to find my arms fallen uselessly out of the contraption, the flaccid muscles hopeless for this mode of therapy. I was in the post-polio division, tended to by neurologists as famous as world-class athletes and by nurse’s aides who fed me, cleaned me from stem to stern and taught me not to buzz too often, especially at night. My siblings flew in to visit, sit by my bedside, read to me and roll my wheelchair to the park down the street. My son, 11 at the time, and my wife bravely endured, willing me to keep my spirits up, feeding me on little doses of love, salted with humor. I fended off the psychiatrist obsessed with putting me on antidepressants and overruled proposed 3 a.m. shots of blood thinner that was supposed to keep me from dying from a blood clot. There was no real therapy, just visits from young and shiny residents intrigued by my strange, slowly deteriorating condition. My doctors were stymied and began planning to discharge me — in theory, to somehow gain the strength at home to return for therapy. Then my older sister, a scientist and Internet bloodhound, found a new source for information and guidance: a doctor in Jackson, Miss. Neurologist Arturo Leis of the Methodist Rehabilitation Center had treated


Wary Americans saving more, even as government encourages risk

prices and making it cheaper to buy homes. But if consumers remain on the sidelines, it means the policies may benefit only the most well off and secure — and fail to help average Americans or the broader economy. “People have lost their appetite for risk,” said Karen Dynan, co-director of the economic studies program at the Brookings Institution. “They’ve been burned by the stock market. They’ve suffered through capital losses on their homes. And so they’re hunkering down in what they view as the safest place to store money.” Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke “My colleagues and I know that people who rely on investments that pay a fixed interest rate, such as certificates of deposit, are receiving very low returns, a situation that has involved significant hardship for some,” he said in a speech Monday. “Only a strong economy can create . . . sustainably good returns for savers.” The mattress trap Households began squirreling away cash in the midst of the recession. The savings rate, which was at 1 percent in 2005, generally fluctuated between 5 percent and 6 percent during the recent recession. This year it has hovered around 4 percent, still above historical norms. “A lot of families have drained whatever savings they had because of hard times — job losses or low wage growth — and are trying to replenish their reserves,” Dynan said. Nearly half of Americans still do not have enough savings to cover three months of expenses, according to a recent Bankrate.com study. Even those on solid financial footing are wary about the stability of the economy and unwilling to subject themselves to market risks, said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst for Bankrate. They know they need to invest some portion of their income to create wealth but are not shoveling money into the stock market, despite the possibility of higher returns. Some say the wild market swings of the past few years have been too unnerving for average investors, and the recent spate of technical glitches certainly does not help. Others peg the outflow from stocks on shifting investment strategies as cautious Americans turn to bonds. But holding on only to safe bets could prove detrimental to investors in the long run, some analysts say. The rate on the 10-year Treasury bond has been well under 2 percent, and banks typically offer less than 1 percent in interest on savings


At the Reston Zoo, a wallaby’s death exposes our hypocrisy

one Reston mother of two, who has a season pass to the Reston Zoo and is also a member of the National Zoo, where she volunteered for years. Despite the court case and the wallaby’s death, she won’t shun the Reston menagerie. “You know, I heard about it. I’m sorry for what happened, but we’re really big zoo supporters,” she said. Her 3-year-old daughter immediately began telling me about her favorite animal, a one-horned eland antelope she calls a “unicorn.” “I figured everyone makes mistakes and I’ll give them one chance,” said Virginia Fredricks, a mother of two who is also a season pass holder at the Reston Zoo and was among about a dozen families who came Monday morning, despite hearing about the wallaby incident. “It was posted on our Listserv, and everyone just went crazy. All about how horrible the place is and don’t go and how it should be shut down,” said Fredricks, who shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll keep coming and give them one more chance. If I hear about anything else like this, we’ll stop coming. But the kids love it so much.” And with that, her 4-year-old son started telling me about the alligators. See, that’s the magic. There is nothing like seeing animals face to face. It’s no wonder that despite the amazing and exotic residents at the National Zoo, most kids love Tulip the cow most, because she’s always there and they can get close to her. At the Reston Zoo, my kids had their overalls nibbled by baby goats, and they touched the hard shell of a tortoise. Where I saw peeling blue paint and a depressing monkey habitat, my son determined there was a family, and the baby was following his mommy and the bad one swinging over there was the little brother. He saw their humanity, even if the zoo’s own was lacking. And it was on the zoo’s bumpy tractor ride that my children marveled at the huge, beautiful golf-ball-sized eyeballs of the ostrich, who pecked at their cups for treats. You never get a sense of that until you’ve seen it up close. These zoos are far from perfect. And as we pick and choose our outrage — horrified by the death of a cute wallaby, blase about the way pigs live and die to feed our bacon obsession — we show that we aren’t perfect, either.


Post reporter David Finkel among 23 awarded MacArthur grants

and ordeals” to public attention. “They’re not just endorsing my work in particular but a type of journalism,” said Finkel, who is at work on a book that chronicles the postwar lives of some of those he profiled in “The Good Soldiers.” “I like to think this is an endorsement of long-form journalism, in which you stay long enough to tell the story.” As for the monetary award, Finkel said, “I don’t know how it changes anything. I’m either singleminded or simple-minded — I’m paying attention to the book I’m writing. I have a story I want to keep telling.” He said he has no plans to leave the newspaper. Finkel is the second journalist affiliated with The Post to receive a MacArthur. The first was Katherine Boo, a former staff writer, who was recognized for her work in 2002. Mengestu was born in Ethiopia but emigrated with his family to the United States at the age of 2. He grew up in Peoria and Forest Park, Ill., and graduated from Georgetown in 2000. His first novel, “The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears” (2007), was about a struggling Ethiopian refugee who runs a grocery store in gentrifying Logan Circle in Washington. A New York Times review called it “a great African novel, a great Washington novel and a great American novel.” His second, “How to Read the Air” (2010), is about a young Ethiopian American man who retraces his parents’ travels after they came to the Midwest from Africa. His third book will be published next year. The MacArthur committee said Mengestu’s work enhanced the “understanding of the little-explored world of the African diaspora in America in tales distilled from the experience of immigrants whose memories are seared by escape from violence in their homelands.” Mengestu, who recently moved back to Washington with his family after five years in Paris, called the award “a remarkable surprise.” He said he intends to use the money to continue his writing and to help create “a new system of publishing” in Africa, with the intent of both expanding the translation of Western books and promoting indigenous writers. Others cited by the Chicago-based foundation were Maurice Lim Miller, who runs an anti-poverty agency in Oakland, Ca.; Laura Poitras, a New York documentary filmmaker whose work has focused on the war on terrorism; Melody Swartz, a bioengineer in Switzerland who studies the cellular response to


NSO opens with pretty sounds, fancy dresses, striking decor

Globally-celebrated violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter (in green) plays with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. (Juana Arias/For The Washington Post) It’s been a rough start to the season for a lot of American orchestras. On Monday, the Minnesota Orchestra locked out its musicians and canceled concerts through Nov. 25 after the players turned down a proposal to cut their salaries by 50 percent. The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra canceled several weeks of concerts; the Atlanta Symphony has tenuously resolved a lockout, but orchestra members are still unhappy; the Chicago Symphony had a brief strike; the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra is in challenging contract negotiations. Don’t worry about the National Symphony Orchestra, though. Safely ensconced in the gilded cage of the Kennedy Center, it negotiated a new contract with its players this summer that actually involved cost-of-living raises at a time when the industry norm is becoming salary freezes and cuts. And on Sunday night, it opened its 82nd season with a gala concert-ball that raised, as orchestra Chairman Paul Stern announced, $1.3 million. Who needs the real world? I’ve written before that the NSO players seem happy with their new music director, Christoph Eschenbach. They should be happy. They’re in one of the best-paid orchestras in the United States, and they have a leader with a lot of soul and enthusiasm. Of course, they can’t always tell when he’s giving the downbeat, and the second violinists play almost exclusively to his back, since he spends so much time turned toward the firsts, but why let details get in the way of your enjoyment? Money isn’t a measure of musical value, but if you’re making enough of it, you may not care. The opening-night gala isn’t really about music anyway. It’s about “music,” a signifier denoting pretty sounds and fancy dresses and really striking floral decorations like abstract prints in an upscale hotel hanging across the silver-and-gold facade of the new organ. Said organ, obtained at a bargain price, won’t be fully operational until its official unveiling Nov. 27; David M. Rubenstein, the Kennedy Center chairman, who donated the instrument, gave a sweetly funny explanation as to what takes so long (the technicians can only work after hours when the building is empty) that got so many laughs it was unclear whether people actually believed him. Rubenstein also eulogized the late Marvin Hamlisch, the acclaimed composer and longtime principal pops conductor


Two Americans killed in unusual gunfight involving several Afghan soldiers

In this photograph from Sep. 10, 2012, Afghan troops look on during a joint artillery maintenance training session with US troops in Kandahar province. So-called insider attacks have become the leading threat to the U.S. military’s effort to wind down the Afghan war (TONY KARUMBA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES) Two days after the U.S. military resumed joint operations with Afghan security forces last week following a spate of “insider attacks,” a platoon of American soldiers stopped at an Afghan army checkpoint in a volatile eastern province. The Americans had a cordial conversation and cracked a few jokes with their Afghan comrades during the Saturday afternoon patrol in Wardak province. The Afghans offered the Americans tea. Then, according to a U.S. military official, an Afghan soldier, without warning or provocation, raised his weapon and opened fire — mortally wounding the senior American on the patrol. In a war in which insider attacks have become commonplace, what happened next made the incident extraordinary, the American official said. Another Afghan soldier at the checkpoint opened fire on the Americans, killing a U.S. civilian contractor and wounding two other American soldiers. Soon, Afghan soldiers and possibly insurgents began firing at the Americans from several directions. NATO officials initially described the deadly episode as an insider attack but later said they had not yet classified it as such because of suspected insurgent involvement. A top Afghan military official denied that what took place was an insider attack and said the shooting was caused by a misunderstanding. A preliminary military report, however, has concluded that the gunfight began only after an Afghan soldier opened fire on U.S. troops, according to the American official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “What sets this apart is that there were multiple attackers from multiple positions and there was zero provocation,” said the official, who had access to the report but was not authorized to speak for the record. “Typically we are talking about a single gunman who acted in a somewhat rogue fashion, but in this case we are talking about an entire Afghan army unit and a large loss of life on both sides.” Insider attacks have become the leading threat to the U.S. military’s effort to wind down the war by the end of 2014, leaving behind a local force capable of protecting the fragile Afghan state. Before Saturday’s incident, Afghan security forces had killed at least 51 NATO


How do you like them (organic) apples?

pathology at Penn State University who now grows USDA-certified organic apples and peaches at Apple Tree Vineyard & Farm in Fairfield, Pa., just outside Gettysburg. “You’re relying on the varieties you pick and how you train them.” The so-called “training” of fruit trees is still relatively new, but Travis is a convert to the practice of directing the shape and growth of trees. He not only plants his trees closer together than growers did in previous eras — this reduces the amount of space he must control for weeds and pests — but he also directs their growth virtually straight up with a trellis system, reaching heights up to 13 feet. This creates almost a “solid hedge of trunk and leaves,” which are exposed to maximum sunlight and greater air circulation, both of which help reduce fungus. Other diseases, of course, may arise during the growing season, and Travis may be forced to use a National Organic Program-approved spray to eliminate them. (Organic sprays are a whole other story, because people such as Waterpenny Farm’s Plaksin say the sprays can contain chemicals such as sulfur or copper that can be bad for the environment.) Weeds are also a major issue for orchards because growers can’t use herbicides such as Roundup. Instead, they’ll rely on hoeing machines or natural products, such as the one derived from lemon grass that Travis uses, to burn the tops of weeds. The most innovative practices, however, may concern pest management. Travis likes to rely on nature — or a manipulation of nature — to keep harmful insects away from his trees. He employs “integrated pest management” techniques in which he provides habitat for “beneficial” insects that prey on the destructive ones. He also fills his orchard with sex pheromones from, say, a female oriental fruit moth, which confuses the males and prevent them from mating and increasing their populations. These are just a few of the reasons why you might pay $1 more per pound for Travis’s apples than for conventional ones. (You can find his Crimson Crisps locally at some Yes Organic Markets.) “People will ask, ‘Why should I pay the difference for your apples?’ ” Travis says. The answer to this pioneering East Coast grower is obvious: “Because it’s so much more work to grow organic apples.” RELATED: 9 apple varieties to try Try these Virginia ciders Virginia cider, flavored by early America


Virginia cider, flavored by early America

Here are a few of our all-time favorite apple recipes for those freshly picked and farmers market fruits from the Recipe Finder database. Diane Flynt plucks a Dymock Red from a tree, digs into it with her penknife, then hands me a wedge. The apple, a few weeks short of fully ripe on a warm, sunny early August morning, makes my mouth pucker — not with the unripe sourness of malic acid but with a searing astringency, as if the fruit has sucked my palate dry. It tastes nothing like a typical farmers market apple. “This is a tannin apple,” Flynt says, pointing with her knife for emphasis. “If you don’t have an orchard and grow your own apples, you don’t have tannin.” Try these Virginia ciders Flynt, 59, talks a lot like a winemaker, only her medium is apples instead of grapes. She and her husband, Chuck, planted their first trees of heirloom apple varieties in 1998 in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Floyd, Va., and marketed their ciders beginning in 2006. The Flynt’sFoggy Ridge was Virginia’s first modern hard cider producer; it ignited a local cider boom that has echoed nationwide. Today, Virginia brands include Albemarle, Bold Rock, Castle Hill, Old Hill and Potter’s Craft. Two more cider works are expected to open in 2013, according to the Virginia Wine Board Marketing Office. (Virginia licenses cider works as farm wineries.) With the state’s official Cider Week coming up next month, I went on a scouting trip. The national market for hard cider grew 23 percent last year, to 5.7 million cases, according to Shanken News Daily, which covers the alcoholic beverage business. Brands such as Woodchuck, Strongbow, Crispin and Ace led the way. Crispin, acquired this year by MillerCoors, is expected to sell 1.4 million cases in 2012. Boston Beer launched Angry Orchard cider in April. A month later, Anheuser-Busch reached for its slice of the pie with Michelob Ultra Light Cider. Flynt rankles at the involvement of the beer behemoths. She champions her small-production artisan approach. “Cider is a niche in the beverage market,” she says. “Artisan cider is an alcove inside a niche.” Her way means growing heirloom varieties traditionally used for cider and pressing only once a year, in the fall after the apples are harvested. “You can’t make great cider from Red Delicious and Granny Smith,” Flynt says. “Those make sweet, apple-y, one-dimensional ciders


Q&A: Bill McNabb, Vanguard Group chief executive

of them. Just look at some of the new EFTs introduced. Just by their names, you go, “Why would anybody introduce this?” It’s just encouraging all the wrong things. What is the best idea? Target retirement funds. They are incredibly simple to understand, yet incredibly sophisticated underneath. Obviously, I think ours are the best. A couple of our competitors do it really well, also. I think 401(k) participants are much better off as a result. You’ve got a fairly stressful job. What do you do to relax? It’s mostly family time and exercise. I’m kind of an endurance person. What kind of endurance? Marathons? Running? Triathlons? Rowing? I do a little of each, actually. Season by season. . . . A lot of cycling these days. Every summer, this is the first summer I missed it in 12 years, I do a two-day, 200-mile bike ride in Massachusetts to raise money for cancer. Then in the fall, I’ll try to do one masters rowing race. In the spring, I’ll try to do a couple of running races or a triathlon. So as a couple of my friends said to me, “You have athletic [attention deficit disorder].” I just try to mix it up. Describe your day. I get up at 5 a.m. I’m usually in the office by 5:45. It’s get up, get dressed, go to work, pick up a cup of coffee. Spend the first couple of hours usually scanning the news, different Web sites. See what’s going on in Europe, Asia, so forth. Catching up on e-mail. Getting my day set. My days really vary, depending on what’s going on. Many days, we’ll have one of our active managers coming through. I may sit down for and hour and a half with each of the teams. There’s usually no shortage of meetings around strategy issues or business issues come up. Do you travel much? I travel for work. My wife loves to travel, but you spend enough times on planes. What do you read? I read a lot of fiction now. Some junk. Some fun. Then some serious. I read one of the bestsellers, “Gone Girl.” It’s a thriller. I really like biographies when they are really well done. I’m reading [Walter] Isaacson’s Steve Jobs book. When [David] McCullough came up with “1776” a few years ago, I probably read that twice. I just found that incredibly useful.


Md. expands probe of death at cosmetic surgery center

Maryland is working with federal health officials and authorities in Pennsylvania and Delaware to investigate a cluster of infections at a cosmetic surgery center in Baltimore County, Maryland officials said Tuesday. One woman died after contracting a severe bacterial infection following liposuction at the Monarch Med Spa in Timonium, Md. Two others who also had liposuction at the center also contracted infections and were hospitalized. The facility has been closed since Sept. 18. No additional Maryland cases have been reported. Delaware health officials have confirmed one infection by a resident at one of the Monarch locations in Pennsylvania. Maryland officials are working with experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to do additional tests as part of the investigation. Cosmetic surgery centers in Maryland are not licensed by the state. The state is seeking public comment on potential approaches to oversight of these facilities. The women in Maryland contracted invasive streptococcal infections known as Group A Streptococcus. Most GAS infections are relatively mild illnesses, such as strep throat. But occasionally these bacteria can cause severe and even life-threatening diseases when they infect parts of the body where bacteria usually are not found, such as blood, muscle or the lungs. These infections are known as “invasive GAS disease.” About 10 to 15 percent of patients with the disease die of it. One of the most severe, but least common, forms of the disease is necrotizing fasciitis, sometimes described as “flesh-eating bacteria” disease. Health officials have declined to give specifics about the Maryland patients’ infections. Over the past five years, an average of 189 cases of invasive GAS were reported annually in Maryland. About 9,000 to 11,500 cases of invasive GAS disease occur each year in the United States, resulting in 1,000 to 1,800 deaths annually.


Turkey strikes back at Syria after shell kills at least 5 Turkish civilians

allies who have turned into bitter foes since Erdogan joined his Western allies in calls for Assad to step down. The tensions soared sharply after Syria shot down a Turkish jet in June, killing two pilots over international waters, according to Turkey, and within Syrian territorial waters, according to Syria. Meanwhile, a surge in the levels of violence in Syria over the summer months has propelled tens of thousands of refugees into Turkey, straining government resources and heightening government frustrations with the failure of its Western allies to take tougher action against Assad. The number is likely to grow as the violence continues to rage. The suicide attack in Aleppo signaled that the rebels are growing more sophisticated in their strikes against government targets, at a time when the regime is stepping up its assaults against rebel-held areas with aerial bombardments. According to state media, two suicide bombers detonated car bombs containing more than 2,000 pounds of explosives in the city’s central Saadallah al-Jabri square shortly after 8 a.m., killing 34 people and injuring 122. A third explosion nearby occurred while officers were dismantling a bomb, according to the official Syrian Arab News Agency. The target, apparently a military officers club, was completely demolished. The blasts also caused widespread damage to the surrounding area, ripping the facades off several buildings. State television showed the bodies of three men wearing military uniforms lying amid piles of debris. SANA said civilians and military personnel were among those killed, but rebels claimed that all of the victims were members of the security forces, saying that the area represented a legitimate target because it had been turned into what rebel spokesman Mohammed al-Halbi called “a military barracks.” High-ranking officers were living at the officers club, and two government-owned hotels damaged in the blast were being used to accommodate Syrian and Iranian intelligence operatives, he said. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Jabhat al-Nusra, a militant group that has carried out a string of suicide bombings in Damascus and Aleppo in recent months. Colum Lynch at the United Nations and James Ball, Anne Gearan, Scott Wilson and Craig Whitlock in Washington contributed to this report. More world news coverage: - Libyans say little is being asked about attack - Egypt’s Maria TV pitches strict vision of Islam - Miami Venezuelans face long trip to vote - Read more headlines from around the world


Loudoun County animal watch

Beagles interrupt soccer games: Injured hawk: Kittens get stuck: Injured stray kitten: Raccoons in dumpster:


David Ignatius: A framework to end the Afghan war

While the overlooked war in Afghanistan grinds on, a group of officials in Washington, Kabul and Islamabad are exploring a bare-bones strategy that would narrow each side’s demands to a set of minimum conditions for escaping the current diplomatic dead end. The aim is to create a pathway for the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops from a war that almost nobody sees as “winnable” by military force alone. The goal is a framework for political transition where each side’s demands are boiled down to the irreducible essentials — providing a better deal for each party than they could get from battling on. U.S. officials involved in the informal discussions liken this approach to the 1993 Downing Street Declaration on Northern Ireland that narrowed Catholic and Protestant demands to the basic items that created space for the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended the civil conflict there. U.S. officials have explored such an approach with Gen. Ehsan ul-Haq, a former chief of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence directorate and a former chairman of the Pakistani joint chiefs of staff. He outlined his seven-point “road map” during a recent conversation at the Nixon Center in Washington. The aim of this exercise, he said, was to focus on political transition, rather than the military impasse. Haq sees two baseline U.S. demands: No al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, and no return to the Taliban’s oppressive policies toward women; the Taliban, according to Haq, has just one irreducible demand:No more foreign forces in Afghanistan. Photos of everyday life in Afghanistan as coalition forces attempt to transfer responsibilities to Afghan troops. These minimum conditions for the two main combatants can probably be met, argues Haq. He notes that Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, in his recent message on the Muslim holiday known as the Eid al-Fitr, defended peace talks with the United States as a way to “reach our goals” and said that the Taliban would “give all legitimate rights to women in the light of the Islamic principles, national interests and our noble culture.” Other Taliban statements have appeared to reject al-Qaeda. Haq’s road map also addresses the core demands of other parties: for Afghanistan’s Tajik and Hazara communities, he would stress reconstruction and economic assistance, as well as a broad process of national reconciliation — for which Omar’s Eid statement also indicated support. To calm the region, Haq proposed a kind of Afghan neutrality, with no


D.C. Tax and Revenue Office to implement property appraisal system procedures

The D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue will implement several new procedures by next month to protect the city’s computer-assisted property appraisal database, a system that internal auditors determined relies on weak internal controls. The auditors found that a handful of managers — dubbed “superusers” — could change assessed values of property in the city without detection. The Washington Post obtained a draft of the audit and published the findings in August, prompting D.C. Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large) to request more information about a system auditors described as “significantly flawed” in the draft report. The document had not been made public before then. This week, the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, which oversees the tax office, provided council members with a revised final audit and response to the auditors dated Sept. 12 that promises to implement several of the audit’s recommendations by Nov. 1. Some of the new procedures include tighter and frequent reviews of the city’s assessment rolls. The D.C. Council Committee on Finance and Revenue will hold an oversight hearing Wednesday on the division within the tax office that handles assessments. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) said he is withholding judgment about issues in the tax office until the hearing. The Post found that the office, led by chief appraiser Tony L. George, lowered the proposed taxable value on 500 commercial properties this year through settlements with property owners. One staff appraiser filed an anonymous complaint about the settlements, spurring investigations by the FBI, a congressional committee and internal auditors. The Post also found that George was terminated from a previous job, in Fulton County, Ga., for lowering assessments without explanation, which he did not disclose on his D.C. job application. Catania said in a letter to Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi this week that he still needs more information about how the tax office secures the database. “Your responses did not relieve my concern over the sufficiency and integrity of internal controls,” Catania wrote. The agency has a Tuesday deadline imposed by Catania to respond to more questions. Evans said he has not thoroughly reviewed Gandhi’s responses or the procedures that are to be put in place by Nov. 1. The division that handles assessments, known as the Real Property Tax Administration, will request by Nov. 1 daily reports of detailed transactions that are entered into the computer system. The tax


On campaign trail, Webb picks his spots

U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, left, listens as U.S. Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia joins him Tuesday Oct. 2, 2012 for a day of campaigning in Helena, Mont. (Matt Gouras/AP) At a restaurant in north-central Montana, Sen. James Webb looked out at about 150 supporters of his best friend on Capitol Hill and acknowledged how rare it was to be out on the road, particularly in faraway Great Falls. “You don’t come up to this part of the United States on your way to anywhere else,” Webb joked Monday night, drawing laughter from the crowd. He focused his remarks on his bond with Sen. Jon Tester, which was forged shortly after the two Democrats narrowly won their 2006 Senate races. “I told Jon that I would do anything I could to make sure he remains in the United States Senate,” Webb said. Tester may hope to return to Congress in January, but Webb won’t. The Virginian is retiring after one term in the Senate, in part because of his distaste for the rigors of campaigning. Now, as some fellow Democrats seek his help on the trail — including the man hoping to succeed him, former governor Timothy M. Kaine — Webb is picking his spots, mostly helping candidates to whom he feels personally close. In the market for campaign surrogates, Webb’s relative scarcity makes him a valuable commodity. He generated buzz last week after his passionate speech introducing President Obama at a rally in Virginia Beach. Webb, a decorated Marine veteran and former Navy secretary, subtly criticized Mitt Romney for not being drafted into the military during the Vietnam War and not-so-subtly attacked the Republican presidential nominee for his “47 percent” remarks and for failing to mention veterans and the Afghanistan war during his convention speech. Veterans, Webb said, “are owed, if nothing else, at least a mention, some word of thanks and respect, when a presidential candidate who is their generational peer makes a speech accepting his party’s nomination to be commander in chief.” Although he has made it clear that he supports Obama, Webb has also been outspoken about the issues on which he disagrees with his party and its standard-bearer. And Webb has said very little about Romney, so his remarks last week struck a chord. Garren Shipley, a spokesman for the Virginia Republican Party, said that Webb’s public appearances only served to highlight the gulf between him