Supreme Court weighs software patents

The Supreme Court did not seem particularly impressed Monday with the computerized trading “invention” for which Alice Corp. received a patent in the early 1990s. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy guessed that a group of computer-savvy folks “sitting around in a coffee shop in Silicon Valley could do this over a weekend.” Justice Stephen G. Breyer thought of an ancient accountant with an abacus telling King Tut when his gold was about to run out or Breyer’s own mother seizing the checkbook when her son was writing checks for more money than he had in his bank account. In other words, the justices seemed to think the Australia-based company had received a patent simply for invoking old concepts about how to keep a person or entity solvent and then saying that using a computer to keep track of the transactions would help. But there are broader issues at play in the case that could affect hundreds of thousands of software patents. And the justices were not nearly as clear about what rules should govern those, or whether the court needed to use this case to spell out those rules. Washington lawyer Carter Phillips, representing Alice Corp., warned of the consequences of choosing wrongly. The court, he said, could “inherently declare, and in one fell swoop, hundreds of thousands of patents invalid, and the consequences of that it seems to me are utterly unknowable.” The case has drawn the attention of the nation’s biggest technology companies. Some, such as Microsoft and IBM, are concerned about the loss of existing patents. Others, including Google and Facebook, worry that business process patents are too easily awarded, thwart innovation and launch waves of unproductive litigation. Patents are awarded for inventing any “new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.” But over the years, courts have created three exceptions. Those are for “laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas.” Alice and CLS Bank International are in litigation overAlice’s patents for a computer-implemented method of using a third party to ensure that foreign currency transactions proceed smoothly and protect the parties. CLS developed a similar program. Mark Perry, a Washington lawyer representing CLS, said the court’s recent jurisprudence should settle the matter. In one case, the court said that basic economic principles are abstract ideas and in another it said that simply running such a principle on


Is a paleo vegetarian diet possible?

acids make them a perfect nutritional match. Nutrition pitfalls: Vegetarian diet defined The spectrum of vegetarian eating runs from the most restrictive, vegan, to lacto-ovo (eating eggs and dairy-based foods but no animals). All plant-based eaters generally consume fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes and grains. Research rundown: Among the largest and longest research projects are the Adventist Health Studies, conducted over the past 40 years. The largest study in the series was conducted among nearly 100,000 Seventh-day Adventists. The researchers, based at Loma Linda University in California, use periodic questionnaires to gather data about participants’ health status, disease risk factors, eating and lifestyle habits and more. Results show that Adventist vegetarians have a lower risk of overweight, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, prediabetes and Type 2 diabetes than non-vegetarians in this population. And the closer people abide by a vegan diet, vs. the least-restrictive lacto-ovo vegetarian plan, the healthier they are. The Adventist Health Study and several other large observational studies have drawn a link between reduced red-meat and processed-meat consumption and lower chronic disease risk. Turner-McGrievy points out that the more people choose plant-based foods over animal-based foods, the more they can cut down on saturated fat and cholesterol. That’s a healthy move. But it’s not just plants that keep vegetarians healthier. Studies show they also tend to practice other healthful behaviors such as not smoking, being physically active, watching less television and getting sufficient sleep. That might turn out to be true for long-term paleo followers, but we don’t have the research yet. Nutrition pitfalls: Paleo vegetarian? The only foods that overlap in the paleo and vegetarian plans are fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Translated, this would be a vegan eating plan, plus eggs, minus grains and legumes. “Following this eating plan could make it difficult to get enough protein, dietary fibers, iron, zinc and B vitamins,” Turner-McGrievy says. Research shows most people can follow a regimented eating plan for a short time. That’s not the challenge. The challenge is finding a healthful eating plan you can follow day after day and achieve your long-term health goals. At this point, it doesn’t appear that the paleo eating plan meets these objectives for most people. Warshaw, a registered dietitian nutritionist and certified diabetes educator, is the author of numerous books published by the American Diabetes Association and the blog EatHealthyLiveWell found on her Web site, www.hopewarshaw.com. Have a nutrition question?


Beer Madness Round 2: The Elite 8

It’s unanimous: We can’t agree on anything. None of the matchups in Round 2 of Beer Madness, our quest to find the region’s best brew, produced anything near a landslide; four contests were decided by razor-thin 5-4 margins, and four elicited 6-3 results. In the Crisp category, Stillwater Classique barely survived, besting Dominion Lager 5-4. Reader panelist Lauren Smith recognized the Classique from the previous round: “I still love the smell of this beer,” she wrote, though mistaking it for a German-style hefeweizen (“light and wheaty, with a banana-like undertone”). Reader panelist Bruce Johnson was the biggest backer of the Dominion Lager, scribbling, “wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, free spirit.” (Dirty little secret: He’d voted against it last time around.) Smith also picked the winner in the other Crisp faceoff, choosing Bluejacket’s Forbidden Planet kolsch, a 6-3 victor over Lost Rhino Zlaty Czech Pilsner. “Very herbaceous with lemon grass,” she praised. Baker Erica Skolnik, one of our expert panelists, described the kolsch as “grassy, grapefruit, crisp.” In the Malt category, Devils Backbone Vienna Lager, which won a 9-0 decision over Chocolate City’s Cornerstone Copper Ale last time around, faced a more formidable opponent in Atlas District Common. The Vienna barely escaped elimination by a 5-4 vote. Expert panelist U.S. Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.) cast his vote for the Vienna, terming it the “more complex” of the two similar, amber, malt-accented lagers. But in the spirit of bipartisanship, he praised the District Common as “versatile for food and watching ball on TV.” Meanwhile, AleWerks Tavern Ale defeated the darker, roastier Evolution Lucky 7 Porter, 6-3. Skolnik termed the Tavern Ale an “obvious winner,” lauding its “smooth espresso” flavor. Pizzeria Paradiso owner Ruth Gresser begged to differ, concluding that “this one is a tossup” and choosing the porter. “Love it. Again,” reader panelist Bryan Berghoef wrote of the Tavern Ale. However, he’d cast his vote against that beer in Round One, loving the Burley Oaks ’Merica even more. Smith Commons Public House managing partner Miles Gray III, who delighted us with his colorful comments in Round 1, offered uncharacteristically sparse descriptions in Round 2. However, the Fruit & Spice category seemed to reinvigorate him. “Great nose. I would call this beer ‘Vermont farmhand,’ ” he wrote of Victory Swing Session Saison, a 5-4 victor over Hardywood Singel. Of Starr Hill’s The Love, Gray commented, “This beer deserves to go on. God speed, sir.


Robert J. Samuelson: Russia’s big bet on Putinomics

Anders Aslund of the Peterson Institute But Putin treats these setbacks — driven mostly by market decisions, not government sanctions — as short-term costs dwarfed by the long-term gain of reacquiring Crimea. His further ambitions are unclear. “My basic view is that Putin is intent on taking half of Ukraine,” says Aslund. “The question is when” — and whether added sanctions might deter him. So far, sanctions have been modest, mainly involving asset freezes and visa restrictions on a few Russian officials. Toughening sanctions will be hard for both macro and micro reasons. Start with the macro. Russia is among the world’s top oil producers. Logically, stern sanctions would crimp oil sales, which provide the bulk of Russia’s exports and tax revenues. But reduced Russian sales would probably push up oil prices and weaken the fragile global economic recovery. Not popular. Now the micro. Among big firms, the distaste for sanctions is tangible. In late March, Joe Kaeser, chief executive officer of the giant German firm Siemens, flew to Moscow, met with Putin and declared that “we support a trusting relationship with Russian companies.” Siemens sells high-speed trains to Russian Railways. In 2011, ExxonMobil signed a co-production agreement with Rosneft, the largest Russian oil company. ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson recently said cooperation was proceeding normally. At best, the record on sanctions is mixed. A Peterson Institute study of 204 cases from 1914 to 2000 judged two-thirds as failures. Sanctions did not cause Castro’s Cuba to collapse. They did not deter North Korea from building nuclear weapons. Although they may have pushed Iran into serious negotiations over its nuclear program, they haven’t yet forced it to change the program significantly. Sanctions fail because target countries believe other goals (including survival) outweigh economic costs. Sanctions are also evaded. To succeed, they must be widely honored. In 1980, after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter limited grain shipments to them. Led by Argentina, other suppliers filled the void. The Reagan administration later barred Caterpillar from selling 200 pipe-layers to the Soviet Union; the business went mainly to Japan’s Komatsu. Economic warfare is often costly for both sides. Putin’s central insight is that the other side is risk-averse. Although sanctions could be strengthened, the odds seem against it. Many U.S. executives see sanctions as a “lose-lose” proposition: U.S. firms lose foreign sales (“you get tagged as an unreliable supplier,” says a Caterpillar


Public forum on deer management sparks lively debate

Sharing your neighborhood with the wild creatures who naturally inhabit it is one thing. But when Ellen Bowditch realized she was routinely looking out her window to see 10 deer staring back at her, or driving up to her Lake Ridge home only to be confronted by three or four deer with no intention of darting off the driveway, she was no longer in the mood to coexist. “It’s not so much like we’re sharing,” she said. “It’s kind of like they’ve taken over.” Her statement drew knowing laughter from many of her neighbors, who had packed into a standing-room-only public meeting at Chinn Park Regional Library to share their concerns about the deer. While other Northern Virginia jurisdictions such as Fairfax County and Fairfax City have mounted aggressive campaigns to reduce the deer population, using methods including police sharpshooters, volunteer archery brigades and surgical sterilization, Prince William County has no official program for culling the rising numbers of deer on the county’s roads and in residents’ backyards. Kevin Rose, VA Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, explaining the effects of too many deer (Julie Zauzmer/twp) At Monday’s meeting, residents filled all of the 100 chairs in the room, and about 50 more people stood around the edges to hear just how serious the county’s deer problem is, and what they can and cannot do about it. County Supervisor Michael May had convened the meeting. Brian Lee, a May staffer who was present at the meeting, said that the Board of County Supervisors may take action based on residents’ comments about the situation. Kevin Rose, a biologist for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, explained that suburban backyards are actually a better habitat for deer than naturally occurring woodlands. They get more sunlight and more food, while the presence of humans deters predators such as wolves and mountain lions. As Prince William County has become less rural, the deer population has exploded. “When we create suburbia, we’re not tearing down deer habitat. We’re actually creating more,” Rose said. Rose and Charles Smith, an ecologist who has managed Fairfax County’s deer-reduction programs, explained the effect of deer overpopulation on plants and other wildlife as well as the options available for reducing their numbers. These include trapping deer and transferring them to other parts of the state; using contraceptives or surgery to prevent their reproduction; and killing them. The scientists


who has managed Fairfax County’s deer-reduction programs, explained the effect of deer overpopulation on plants and other wildlife as well as the options available for reducing their numbers. These include trapping deer and transferring them to other parts of the state; using contraceptives or surgery to prevent their reproduction; and killing them. The scientists said killing the deer is the only effective method. Trapping and transferring them is difficult, and more than half the deer usually die in the process, Rose said. And he said that sterilization is expensive — Fairfax City performed the surgery on just 18 does this year. Each procedure cost about $1,000, paid for by a research group, plus $436 in police overtime. Contraceptives are also expensive, and there is insufficient proof that they are effective. Rose told attendees that they could use fences, chemicals and home remedies like garlic and soap to protect their plants from deer. But he noted that those methods had only limited usefulness. A deer, starting from a stand-still, can jump over a six-foot fence “like we’d jump over a curb,” Rose said. And no matter how bad those rotten eggs that you spray on your plants taste, “a hungry deer will eat it no matter what.” Many attendees asked whether they could shoot deer on their own property. Prince William Police Lt. Kevin Brown explained that archers must be at least 100 yards from an occupied residence, while those hunting with guns must be on a five-acre property, among other restrictions. Some residents expressed concern about car accidents caused by deer, and Smith included graphic post-accident photographs in his slide show. Rose suggested that the county could install fences to prevent deer from crossing roads, or build tunnels under roadways so that deer can walk from one side to the other. It could also install signs that alert motorists when a deer has been picked up by a nearby sensor. Other remedies, such as reflectors on the road and whistles that drivers affix to their cars, generally do not work, he said. He noted that some people — tourists who visit Virginia’s parks to see wildlife, and animal protection advocates who oppose killing healthy animals, for example — see no need to reduce the deer population. But when Rose asked if Prince William residents wanted a county-wide deer reduction program, almost everyone in the room applauded, and dozens shouted “Yes!”


Montgomery County Animal Watch

These were among the cases received recently by the Montgomery County Animal Services Division. For information, call 240-773-5900. That number provides recorded information on such topics as the new Montgomery County Animal Services and Adoption Center’s hours and location in Derwood, adoption and licensing procedures, lost and found and field services. Mastiff chasing deer gets tangled in brush Free workshop for dog owners No-kill shelter has adoptable cats: Gaithersburg Reduced fees for cat adoption: Germantown — Compiled by Lisa M. Bolton


U.S. seeks stiff penalties against Ukrainian oligarch

But if American prosecutors get access to him, they would be certain to seek whatever information he could provide about the deals that have made Gazprom a financial pillar of the Russian political system, and a main source of support for President Vladimir Putin. Firtash and five others were indicted on charges of seeking to deploy $18 million in bribes in India to allow the purchase of titanium products. The indictment was obtained, and sealed, last June, but it was unsealed on Wednesday. It said that Firtash’s company, Group DF, had arranged the alleged bribes and had transferred money through American banks. The deputy chairman of Group DF, Robert Shetler-Jones, said in a statement released Wednesday: “There is no truth to the accusations. It is not a coincidence that the U.S. is trying to extradite our chairman at the moment when Mr. Firtash is needed for the economic and political reconstruction of Ukraine. This is an abuse of the Austrian justice system for ulterior political motives.” In the midst of the continuing hostile showdown between Washington and Moscow over Ukraine, in any event, American investigators will be more interested in Firtashs’s knowledge of Gazprom’s doings than the Indian case. The penalty he is facing if convicted is a severe one – forfeiture of his holdings in 159 different companies, and 41 bank accounts, all over the world. Firtash, according to reports, is worth as much as $1.2 billion. Gazprom is one of the main revenue producers for the Russian budget, and much of its income is from gas shipped to and through Ukraine onward to Europe. Gas sales have been at the heart of Ukraine’s difficult relations with Russia, and have helped define the course of Ukrainian politics. Firtash was close to ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, and as a middleman on gas sales he reaped a fortune. Ukrainian analysts contend that Gazprom used its revenue to secure a hold on Ukrainian politicians, and that a great deal of its foreign income goes into hidden accounts that are available for Russian political leaders. “Criminal conspiracies that extend beyond our borders are not beyond our reach,” said Zachary Fardon, the U.S. attorney for northern Illinois, in a Justice Department statement, referring to the allegations about the Indian bribe. “We will use all of the tools and resources available to us to ensure the integrity of global business transactions that involve U.S. commerce.”


Famed trader leaving JPMorgan Chase; underemployment an obstacle for blacks

WALL STREET Famed trader leaving JPMorgan Chase It’s the end of an era at JPMorgan Chase. Blythe Masters, widely credited as an architect of the notorious credit default swaps that helped fuel the financial crisis, is leaving after nearly three decades at the bank, according to an internal memo. The news isn’t all that surprising, considering that the physical-commodities business that Masters ran at JPMorgan was sold last month to Swiss trading firm Mercuria Energy Group for $3.5 billion. There was speculation on Wall Street that Masters would continue to run the bank’s core commodities business — the side that handles financial derivatives and the trading of precious metals. Instead, the JPMorgan veteran has decided to “take some well-deserved time off and consider future opportunities,” according to the memo. Masters plans to stick around over the next “few months” as the bank hands over its physical-commodities business to Mercuria. — Danielle Douglas JOBS Underemployment an obstacle for blacks While unemployment has been a major impediment to African Americans’ economic progress, underemployment is a bigger obstacle for them than it is for whites or Hispanics, the National Urban League says in its latest State of Black America report. The annual report, “One Nation Underemployed: Jobs Rebuild America,” noted that African Americans are twice as likely as whites to be unemployed. The unemployment rate for blacks was 12 percent in February, compared with 5.8 percent for whites. The underemployment rate for African-American workers was 20.5 percent, the report said, compared to 18.4 percent for Hispanic workers and 11.8 percent for white workers. Underemployment is defined as those who are jobless or working part time but desiring full-time work. “The post-recession economy is leaving too many people behind,” National Urban League President Marc Morial said. — Associated Press Also in Business ● Chrysler is recalling 867,795 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango sport-utility vehicles to install a shield to protect brake boosters from water corrosion. Vehicles from model years 2011 through 2014 will be inspected and the boosters replaced where necessary, the Auburn Hills, Mich.-based carmaker said in a statement. The Fiat division started an investigation following customer complaints about excessive brake-pedal firmness. ● A private survey shows that U.S. companies increased hiring at a healthy pace last month. Payroll processor ADP says private employers added 191,000 jobs in March. The construction industry added 20,000 jobs in March, up from an average 16,000


Pentagon grapples to understand how yet another insider threat went undeterred

The 34-year-old soldier who went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Tex., argued with members of his unit over an application for a leave of absence, witnesses said. Spec. Ivan A. Lopez had been undergoing treatment for depression and had seen a psychiatrist last month, but Army officials said they had not considered him a threat. Wednesday’s mass shooting by an Army specialist in Fort Hood, Tex., put the Pentagon on a dreaded, if increasingly familiar, footing as officials grappled to understand how yet another insider threat went undeterred. It unfolded just two weeks after the Defense Department unveiled the findings of three investigations into last year’s fatal shooting at a Navy Yard building in Washington, D.C., by a contractor and four years after a similarly extensive inquiry into a massacre at Fort Hood by an Army psychiatrist led to vows of sweeping reforms. Although there was little information late Wednesday about the possible motives of the gunman or the circumstances that preceded the shooting, former and current service members were shocked to learn that the Army post where Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan fatally shot 13 fellow service members in November 2009 had once again become the scene of carnage. “We do not yet know how or why this tragedy occurred, but nearly five years after the Nidal Hasan shooting at Fort Hood in 2009, it is clear that we must do far more to ensure that our troops are safe when they are at home on base,” Rep. Thomas J. Rooney (R-Fla.), a former Army lawyer who was based at Fort Hood, said in a statement. “We must thoroughly investigate what happened today so that we can take whatever action is necessary to prevent something like this from ever occurring again.” The shootings cast a pall over Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s trip to Hawaii, where he is hosting defense ministers from Asian countries. Standing on the deck of the USS Anchorage, Hagel vowed to get to the bottom of the latest Fort Hood shooting and continue to find ways to make military installations safer. Speaking from Chicago Wednesday, President Obama delivered remarks on the shooting at Fort Hood, saying it "reopens the pain" from the shooting there five years ago. “We don’t have any choice here but to address what happened and do everything possible to assure the safety of our men and women who work on


Air and Space Museum’s ‘Milestones of Flight’ gallery begins two-year renovation

a current events topic,” curator Margaret Weitekamp said. “We are very aware that we have adults with children visiting and the adults may not have been alive during the Cold War. We want to put objects in a little more context and tell some of the rich stories about what the objects represent.” The latest happenings with Hollywood’s A-listers. The revamped design will be more spacious and ordered, with a media wall and kiosks to give visitors more context on famous pieces. The square footage is set to grow to make room for future technological milestones and planned additions, including a model of the USS Enterprise from science fiction’s “Star Trek.” The Air and Space Museum arguably has a more difficult task than many other museums in Washington: It both commemorates and plans for innovation. But how does a federally funded museum celebrating innovation in the skies keep up with rapidly changing technology in a tight-fisted era? It’s a challenge museum officials acknowledge. While some of the exhibitions feature touch-screen technology, others have buttons and software seemingly plucked from ’90s arcade games. “We’re not going to be able to keep up” with changing hardware in exhibitions, Dailey said, but he noted that the museum now has wireless Internet access throughout its halls, making a complementary digital experience possible. “We want to take advantage of the technologies people are used to using to create a mobile experience, while at the same time dealing with the realities that we are one of the most visited museums in the world and not all visitors will have a mobile experience,” Weitekamp said. The museum has time to experiment with mobile additions to add context to its exhibits. Boeing’s $30 million gift will be paid out over seven years. Boeing has made previous gifts to the museum in its 38-year history, totaling $58 million. In addition to the renovation of the main hall, Boeing is funding overhauls of the How Things Fly children’s exhibit and new educational programs at the museum, including accredited course for teachers. Museum officials have not released the cost of renovating the gallery or how much of this $30 million gift will go toward renovation. But the cost of renovation is high enough to earn Milestones a longer name: It is now the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall. katherine.boyle@washpost.com A look at the best concert images from Washington Post staff photographers.


Transcript: Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Army, Fort Hood

can do a to help -- be helpful in the aftermath of this, to help the grieving families and the installations, please just call on us. We will all be there for you and for them. On the question of sequestration, this is one of the issues which I believe we've got to hit head on. It's going to affect not just this year -- and it already has, despite a bipartisan budget agreement which has reduced somewhat the impact of sequestration -- it's going to have dramatic impacts, as you have just described, General, in 2016. In the '15 budget, however, the administration has requested -- or not requested so much as opened up the possibility, I guess -- and I guess "requested" is accurate -- an additional $26 billion. Raising the caps by that much for FY '15 and -- as indicated is going to recommend additional revenues to pay for that additional $26 billion in spending above the Budget Control Act caps. I believe that the Army's share of that 26 billion (dollars) would be -- and correct me if I'm wrong on this -- 4.1 billion (dollars) for readiness and 3.4 billion (dollars) for the investment account. Does that sound about right? SEC. MCHUGH: SEN. LEVIN: SEC. MCHUGH: But, Chief? SEN. LEVIN: SEC. MCHUGH: SEN. LEVIN: GEN. ODIERNO: We also have not been able to keep up with our installation support structure. We've taken risks here. We're only funding that at 50 percent. So we put about almost a billion dollars back into that to help us sustaining the facilities that are necessary for our soldiers. We're also investing about $200 million in institutional training to continue to ensure that we improve and sustain our ability to train our noncommissioned officers, officers and new soldiers at the rates we think are appropriate to include initial aviation training and other things. And then finally, we've invested -- it would go to high-priority modernization programs, such as the 864, the U860 (ph), the Gray Eagle's intelligence platforms that we have that are key for the future as well as engineer capability that we have not been able to upgrade and update that we know is essential, based on our experiences over the last 13 years. In addition to that, I have submitted -- and it will come forward -- an initial $3.1 billion in ufers (ph) that are


FDA approves device to combat opioid drug overdose

the company will try to make sure opioid users have access to it, “regardless of their ability to pay.” The FDA used Thursday’s approval as an opportunity to underscore other actions the government has taken in recent years to combat opioid misuse and abuse that has crippled communities throughout the country. Those efforts include altering the labeling of certain opioid drugs, requiring manufacturers to conduct long-term studies about the safety of their drugs and encouraging development of tamper-resistant forms of existing opioids and new pain treatments that are not so addictive. At the same time, the FDA continues to face faces criticism for not doing more, and for potentially allowing the overdose epidemic to grow worse. The agency encountered a wave of opposition to its approval last fall of a new opioid, Zohydro, the first prescription narcotic comprising a pure dose of hydrocodone. Officials in Massachusetts last month blocked sales of the drug, with Gov. Deval L. Patrick (D) citing a public health emergency. Although the FDA agreed with the drug’s manufacturer that the pure hydrocodone formulation allows chronic pain sufferers to use the drug over the long term without the risk of liver damage, critics have warned that such a formulation makes the drug easier to abuse. Last month, the manufacturer of another opioid drug, OxyContin, said it plans to seek FDA approval for a tamper-resistant form of hydrocodone that would be less prone to abuse. Various states, their economies battered and their workers hampered by addiction, have taken aggressive measures in fighting prescription drug abuse. They include tighter drug monitoring programs, stricter “doctor shopping” laws, increased treatment and counseling and intensified law enforcement efforts to crack down the illicit sale of prescription drugs. Some police agencies have equipped officers with naloxone in an effort to get treatment to users suffering an opioid overdose before paramedics arrive. Some medical providers have expressed worry that Evzio could create a false sense of security among heavy opioid users, but the reaction to Thursday’s approval by the FDA was overwhelmingly positive among health-care providers and addiction groups. Knox Todd, a Texas emergency room physician who spoke on a call organized by Evzio’s manufacturer, said the approval will create an even better opportunity to prevent many overdoses from becoming deadly. “This will expand the availability of what we know is a life-saving drug,” he said, “to a larger population who can use it.”


Cassini spacecraft finds sign of subsurface sea on Saturn’s moon Enceladus

together. But the plumes could be created by a deep ocean sending water up through cracks and into space. So could there be life there? That’s highly speculative. Even if, in a general sense, Enceladus has features of habitability, it’s not clear how long the sea has existed, or whether it has ever had the right conditions for the origin of life. The origin of life is its own special mystery. Does it require an evaporating tidal pool bathed in sunshine — what Darwin called a “warm little pond”? “Liquid water’s not enough — not enough for the origin of life certainly,” said Carol Cleland, a University of Colorado professor of philosophy who has written about astrobiology. For example, “You need an energy source so that you can drive thermodynamically uphill processes.” Chris McKay, a NASA astrobiologist who has been a major advocate for a new Enceladus mission, says this moon has the major essentials for life as we know it. There’s the liquid water, obviously, and energy from tidal forces, plus such life-friendly elements as carbon and nitrogen, which were detected by Cassini when it flew through the plumes. “Carbon and nitrogen are the concrete and rebar — you need them to build,” McKay said, describing a partial blueprint for life as we know it. He said he’s optimistic about the existence of extraterrestrial life, but knows that he and his colleagues have yet to come up with a single sample. “It’s the occupational hazard of astrobiology to jump to the conclusion that you want to be true. I have to constantly chide myself and my colleagues for doing that,” McKay said. Chris Chyba, a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton, said any discussion about extraterrestrial life is hampered by a lack of a “theory of life.” “Trying to define it the way you define, say, a chair, is a hopeless project,” Chyba said. He compared it to the difficulties of Leonardo da Vinci five centuries ago when he tried to describe what water is: “It’s impossible for him to explain what water is because he was trying to do it before there was any theory of molecules or atoms.” More from The Washington Post: NASA cuts ties with Russia except on space station Series: Space exploration and the future of NASA ISS operation extended by Obama until at least 2024 Hubble telescope sees geysers on Jupiter’s moon Europa


Art review: ‘Kiyochika: Master of the Night’

village once known as Edo. Although Kiyochika’s images document the arrival of gaslight, locomotives and bricks, he’s not a documentarian. Despite the beauty and clarity of these pictures, they’re haunted — even animated — by a feeling of unease about the future. That sense of disquietude is amplified by the moody lighting. When people are shown, they’re typically depicted in silhouette, disengaged from one another. It’s almost as if they — not we — are the audience to these scenes of transformation, observing a world in flux, from the shadows and with an attitude of vague misgiving. This, of course, was a shift from Japanese printmaking tradition, in which people are more typically shown engaged in the business of living, not watching the world go by. By contrast, Kiyochika’s figures resemble ghosts. One, identified in wall labels as the “man in the hat,” is said to be a stand-in for the artist. He sports a European brimmed hat, a style that had just come into fashion in Japan and that Kiyochika uses to symbolize the new world order. Though known for his ability to sketch from life, the self-taught artist (1847-1915) was a master of composition, using careful placement, and even more careful lighting, to heighten his desired effect. In one 1879 image of a train, for instance, Kiyochika based the locomotive — a model that had not yet arrived in Japan — on an earlier railroad picture by the American printmakers Currier and Ives. Another of Kiyochika’s pictures, depicting one of two 1881 fires that laid waste to parts of Tokyo, is largely imagined. Though Kiyochika wrote that the picture was “drawn from nature,” only the street scene had been sketched weeks earlier, with flames and fleeing people added in later. In another print depicting the fire’s aftermath, “Ryogoku After the Fire,” the sparing arrangement of charred wood posts — along with the spectral human figures receding into the distance — lends the work a bleakly cinematic quality. But the works in “Master of the Night” aren’t photographs. Created with ink on paper, they’re still tethered to an artistic past that the artist hadn’t completely shaken off. Kiyochika was pulled between two extremes: the tradition of ukiyo-e printmaking — characterized by prettily “floating” landscapes — and a more critical engagement with a rapidly changing world. That antithesis imbues “Master of the Night” with unexpected depth and complexity, along with


Bob’s Shanghai 66: Surrender to possibility, and you might strike some gold

XLB, also called Pork Soup Dumplings at Bob's Shanghai 66, which opened recently in Rockville, (Dayna Smith/for the Washington Post) The menu at Bob’s Shanghai 66 is your friend, your enemy, your torturer, your lover. The single-page, two-sided document speaks a language all its own — multiple languages, in fact, to the point that sometimes you have little idea of what to expect when you order. To dine here is to channel your inner Buddha: Release all expectation and you will not suffer. The first disorienting statement is splashed across the top of the menu: 30-plus items, many of which are dim-sum staples and standard northern China offerings, have been herded under one category and rebranded “Shanghainese Tapas.” (Warning: Some are available only on weekend mornings.) My initial instinct was to laugh, then sigh, then applaud the utter brilliance of employing this increasingly empty Spanish term to market a pan-Chinese menu to Western diners. This Nebraskan by way of Texas, with bloodlines tracing back to the Old World, takes off his cowboy hat in salute to Bob’s firm grasp of our true mongrel nature in America. But back to the menu: The thing also advertises more than 120 dishes, simultaneously a critic’s dream and nightmare. My accounting doesn’t even include the various specials and drinks promoted via the dining room’s walls, where the line between decor and salesmanship is blurred beyond recognition. The sheer volume begins to take on a game-show quality: You’re not always sure what’s hiding behind any one description, even when you’ve sampled a similarly named dish many times before (imagine a mild mapo tofu with peas and carrots). The signature item at Bob’s Shanghai — the one everyone raves about with an unanimity uncommon in this divisive town — is the xiao long bao, or soup dumpling. The trendier among us abbreviate the dish to, simply, XLB, as if it were a stock market symbol or a tagger’s signature. Whatever you call them, the squat, bottom-heavy soup dumplings are indeed delicious, as they release their tiny tsunami of pork stock on first bite. My only wish? That the wrappers were more delicate, not the chewy raincoat that repels the dipping sauce of black vinegar and sweet soy spiked with fresh ginger. Whoever’s working the XLB station might take some pointers from the person rolling out dough for the shrimp-and-pork shumai, open-faced dumplings sheathed in droopy wrappers


Md. General Assembly makes all dog owners liable for attack regardless of animal’s breed

The Maryland General Assembly on Thursday gave final approval to legislation that would slightly shift the legal liability toward pet owners whose animals bite a person and undo a controversial court decision that singled out pit bulls as an inherently dangerous breed. The measure passed Thursday – which would apply regardless of breed – presumes that all dog owners should be held liable for a dog attack even if the owner had no reason to think the animal was dangerous. But the legal burden on pet owners could also be neutralized if the owner can prove that the animal had been docile except for the biting incident. Pet owners and their advocates hailed the measure, saying the Maryland high court’s decision singling out pit bulls had unfairly stigmatized the animals. But critics — even those who supported breed-neutral legislation — said the bill’s presumption can be so easily countered that the measure would, in effect, mean that victims will once again have to prove that an animal had been vicious prior to the attack that injured them. “We’re very pleased about passage about this bill,” said Chloe Waterman, state legislative affairs coordinator for the ASPCA. “Singling out a particular kind of breed punishes responsible dog owners but does nothing to further public safety. The General Assembly has consistently acknowledged that a dog’s breed doesn’t determine a dog’s behavior.” The measure, sponsored by Sen. Brian E. Frosh (D-Montgomery), passed the House Thursday by a vote of 136 to 2. The Senate voted for the same bill 45 to 0 on Feb. 28 after amending it to make owners liable for injuries caused by a dog that’s running loose. A dog owner could also avoid liability if the victim was trespassing, committing a crime or provoked the attack by teasing or tormenting the animal. Thursday’s vote caps nearly two years of wrangling in the legislature about who should be liable whenever a dog causes serious injury. The controversy arose following a 2012 Court of Appeals decision in Tracey v. Solesky. The high court, deciding a case in which a pit bull inflicted life-threatening injuries on 10-year-old Dominic Solesky from Baltimore County, held that the owners of pit bulls and pit bull mixes should be liable for damages regardless of the circumstances of the attack because the breed is so dangerous. The court, reviewing medical and veterinary literature, said the breed had not


Women in combat roles would strengthen the military

to study the feasibility of opening all military jobs to women by 2016. This would include more than 200,000 jobs that make up the core of the ground-level combat force in the Army and the Marine Corps. The Joint Chiefs have expressed strong support for this transition. But the success of women’s integration into combat units will depend on how quickly and enthusiastically officers and enlisted soldiers embrace it. Many servicemen resist the idea, citing studies that suggest the inclusion of women in combat would imperil unit effectiveness, good order and discipline. Opponents of women in combat rightly argue that the military’s physical standards must not be compromised to expand women’s access. The stakes could not be higher: our military’s fighting effectiveness. If the Army expects an infantry soldier to walk 20 miles while hauling 50 pounds of equipment, this standard should apply regardless of gender. Fortunately, the Army and Marine Corps have begun establishing job-specific standards that would apply to men and women — and women like Cadet Kenyon are showing they can meet the bar. As part of a pilot program last fall, four Marines became the first female graduates of the Corps’ enlisted infantry training course. All four passed what is considered the most strenuous aspect of the Marines’ infantry training: a 12-mile march carrying 80 pounds of gear. The initial transition is likely to be difficult as our all-male combat units adapt to integration. But my experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq have convinced me that what the military would gain by including women in combat far outweighs any short-term compromises. Our country’s most recent conflicts have demonstrated that the military needs women on the battlefield. We need their creativity, insight and empathy, qualities often lacking in male-dominated units. Recent studies During my patrols in Iraq from 2007 to 2009, I came to appreciate how much women could have contributed to my mission. Most Iraqi men were reticent to speak with us for fear of retribution from al-Qaeda. Iraqi women, often fed up with the violence in their neighborhoods, could be persuaded to provide information, but first we had to bridge the gender gap, build rapport and earn their trust, all of which took valuable time. Having women in our platoon would have dramatically increased our ability to elicit critical intelligence. This could mean the difference between a mission’s success or failure, with lives in the balance.


Following animal deaths, ‘budget uncertainty,’ National Zoo renews caretaker hiring

staff had been “spread too thin,” Baker-Masson said. “Some of the problems that arose reflected some staffing imbalances that, while temporary, did put stress on the system,” National Zoo Director Dennis Kelly and Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute Director Steven Monfort said Wednesday in a statement to the Committee on House Administration. The positions had been left open after budget negotiations fell apart last year, and many federally supported agencies were forced to implement a series of cuts known as sequestration. Smithsonian officials opted to implement a hiring freeze that lasted from July through October. The institution also offered a buyout in the summer 2013, and 19 National Zoo staff left by October. Soon after, the zoo found itself dealing with a number of animal deaths. In December, a young Przewalski’s horse and an antelope reportedly broke their necks after each charged into fences. The zoo also reported the death of a hog due to malnutrition and scars of unknown origin. “The rate of deaths has been shown that it’s pretty normal,” Kelly said. A Grevy’s zebra also attacked a zookeeper in December. The zoo said staff had not followed protocol, allowing the zebra into the area where the attack happened. A vulture almost escaped as well, and its flying feathers were more carefully clipped. The zoo called the incident “a learning experience.” Kelly told committee members that to pay for the competing missions of animal caretaking, scientific research and public outreach, he has worked to secure funding from outside sources, including philanthropic organizations, research grants and income from selling merchandise and food to visitors. Admission to the taxpayer-funded zoo is free. “These non-federal sources of income supplement our federal support, but they cannot replace it,” zoo officials said in a statement to the committee. According to the zoo, alternative sources of revenue have increased in the past four years. “We recognize the reality of the federal budget,” Kelly said. When cuts had to be made, Kelly said he turned first to departments that aren’t essential to animal care, often meaning fewer zookeeper talks and tours and more cuts to administrative departments. “It is a tough balance, we’re balancing that all the time,” Kelly said in an interview. “But our first priority is animal welfare and human safety. But at the same time we understand our mission is to provide a great guest experience, to do research and to do outreach.”


Peet’s Coffee & Tea to make Washington debut

Manager Tim Holland at Peet’s flagship store at 1701 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, which opens this week. Peet’s plans to open a total of 23 locations in the Washington area, many of which will be converted Caribou Coffee locations. (Jeffrey MacMillan/Jeffrey MacMillan ) Peet’s Coffee & Tea, long sold on the shelves of Whole Foods, Safeway and other area grocery stores, plans to open its first Washington cafe Monday. Twenty-two more stores, many of them at former Caribou Coffee locations, will follow in the next few months, as the California brand aims to carve out a stronghold in the Washington area. “D.C. is the major leagues of coffee-drinking,” said Dave Burwick, president and chief executive of Peet’s Coffee & Tea. “There is a lot of pent-up interest and demand for our products.” First up: A flagship store at 1701 Pennsylvania Ave. NW that will serve as the brand’s Washington prototype. The company has spent months demolishing — and building up again — the 1,380-square-foot store, which used to house Caribou Coffee. Walls were torn down, floors were stripped and all of the lighting was replaced. A latte at Peet’s Coffee. (Jeffrey MacMillan/Jeffrey MacMillan ) “There’s really very little overlap” between Peet’s and Caribou, Burwick said. “The decor, furniture, the equipment — all of that is different.” The goal, Peet’s executives say, is to create a familiar and intuitive space. Unsaid is the fact the coffee purveyor must differentiate itself from national chains that are already well established in the region, such as Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts. “We want to make sure the story of Peet’s shows through,” said Debora Kristofferson, vice president of brand and creative strategy. “We’re new to D.C., but we’re not a new company.” Peet’s was founded in 1966 in Berkeley, Calif. Among its early customers were the founders of Starbucks, who stocked their first stores with hand-roasted coffee beans from Peet’s. Today, the company has 233 stores around the country, with plans to add at least 60 more in 2014. Annual revenue is upwards of $500 million. Much of the company’s recent growth has been in expanding its grocery store presence — more than 12,000 stores now carry Peet’s packaged coffees — but it is shifting its focus to standalone cafes, Burwick said. “Grocery [sales] are always going to be critical for us, but you don’t fall in love with Peet’s because you buy it at Safeway,”


revenue is upwards of $500 million. Much of the company’s recent growth has been in expanding its grocery store presence — more than 12,000 stores now carry Peet’s packaged coffees — but it is shifting its focus to standalone cafes, Burwick said. “Grocery [sales] are always going to be critical for us, but you don’t fall in love with Peet’s because you buy it at Safeway,” he said. Peet’s, a publicly-traded company from 2001 to 2011, was purchased by Germany-based Joh. A. Benckiser in 2012. The conglomerate also acquired Caribou Coffee that same year and announced that it would re-brand a number of the company’s stores as Peet’s. In the Washington area, Caribou Coffee locations began shuttering earlier this year. Nearly all of them will reopen as Peet’s. “We got access to some great real estate,” Burwick said. “And we’ve realized that location is important: You can have the best coffee, but if you’re not on the right side of the road on the way to work in the morning, you’re just not going to make it.” In addition to the 23 Peet’s stores currently in the works, executives say they’re eyeing additional locations in the Washington area. “We’d love to be in Georgetown, but it’s hard to find a great space there,” said Michael Williams, vice president of store development. “We want each location to have its own personality.” At the Pennsylvania Avenue store, for example, there are framed photographs of U.S. presidents sipping coffee, a nod to the White House across the street. There is also a custom-made wood map of Washington, along with framed collages of Instagram photos submitted by local residents. “It’s exciting to come to a market where people already know the brand,” Kristofferson said. “But then the challenge becomes, how do we build on that?” To drum up more attention, Peet’s “barista trucks” have been making the rounds in the area, stopping at the likes of George Mason University and Farragut Square to give out free coffee. In addition, the company has signed on as the official coffee provider for the Washington Nationals. Peet’s stores will sell baked goods from Sterling-based Baguette Republic and Hawthorne Fine Breakfast Pastry in Severna Park. “There is a real appetite for coffee — and for learning about coffee — here in Washington,” Williams said. “This is a very important part of the world for us to be in.”


Five myths about the Boston Marathon bombing

Bill Iffrig, 78, at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon. (John Tlumacki/Associated Press) Susan Zalkind covered the Boston bombing for Boston Magazine and “This American Life.” At the Boston Marathon this month, its host city will mark one year since Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev allegedly planted two bombs at the finish line , killing three and injuring hundreds more. As the nation commemorates the resilience of runners, victims, first responders and residents, many questions surrounding this tragedy remain unresolved. Let’s tackle some persistent misconceptions. 1. The bombing couldn’t have been prevented. Three months after the bombing, then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said the bureau’s failure to share information about the elder Tsarnaev wasn’t important. “Even if [procedures] had been fixed prior to the Boston bombing, I do not think it would have stopped it,” he told the House Judiciary Committee. This is hard to believe. In 2011, Russian officials alerted the FBI to Tamerlan’s growing radicalism and asked it to monitor his travel. Though the FBI interviewed him, it didn’t stop him from traveling. A Boston agent at the Joint Terrorism Task Force received an alert from the Department of Homeland Security about Tamerlan’s flights to and from Dagestan in 2012, but Tamerlan wasn’t questioned at the airport. A similar tip Russia shared with the CIA later that year was overlooked because of a spelling error. Local police failed, too. After the bombing, Tamerlan was implicated in a triple murder committed in Waltham, Mass., on Sept. 11, 2011. (Erik Weissman, one of the victims, was my friend.) The day the bodies were found, a Middlesex district attorney said that “it does look like the assailants and the decedents did know each other”; soon after the marathon attack, the office said that its investigation into the killings had been “thorough” and “far-reaching.” Yet, though Tamerlan was one victim’s sparring partner and several friends gave police his name, officers never followed up. 2. Crowdsourcing helped the investigation. In an interview with CBS, Richard DesLauriers, the former head of the Boston FBI, stood by the decision to release photos of the alleged bombers. “These individuals could have had more bombs and could have set those bombs off,” he said. But when the FBI released the grainy images of the two suspects, chaos ensued. A few hours after their pictures appeared, the Tsarnaevs allegedly shot a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police


Book review: ‘Long Mile Home,’ on the Boston bombing, by Scott Helman and Jenna Russell

You know the outcome of “Long Mile Home,” a new book that reconstructs the Boston Marathon bombing, even before you start reading. Thanks to days of around-the-clock news coverage, the events of a year ago are still fresh in our minds — the two bombs that exploded near the finish line, the carnage, the rescues, the manhunt that shut down a U.S. metropolis, the capture of one alleged bomber and the killing of another. Yet you can’t look away. As the authors describe the ordinary lives of five people caught up in the attack and bring them inexorably together, with the dread of knowing where and how they will become part of the same horrific afternoon, you are back in Boston again, with the sickening feeling of seeing something terrible about to happen and being powerless to stop it. There is Heather Abbott, who lost her lower left leg in the bombing. David King, a trauma surgeon who ran the race and almost immediately began performing emergency surgery on blast victims. Krystle Campbell, who was killed by the first explosion. Police officer Shana Cottone, who was at the finish line that day and helped save two victims. And race director Dave McGillivray, who has dedicated his entire life to the 117-year-old marathon. The account by two Boston Globe reporters, Scott Helman and Jenna Russell, succeeds in every way. It is a harrowing narrative of the events and a behind-the-scenes look at the public officials and everyday people forever changed by the attack. It is also a portrait of a major American city, its psyche and the distance runners who consider the race a sacred rite. In Massachusetts, the authors write, “there is hardly a bigger tradition than Marathon Monday. . . . It’s a chance to breathe in a place that defines high-strung, a chance for Boston to put aside, at least for a moment, its tribalism and fractiousness, to welcome outsiders to a town not always known for its hospitality. To celebrate the top runners but also the stragglers, the strivers, and the hobbyists, all of them laced up and pointed toward the sea.” “Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City’s Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice” by Scott Helman and Jenna Russell. (Penguin) Three spectators were killed and more than 260 injured by the two homemade bombs, pressure cookers filled with gunpowder, nails, ball bearings


Top-performing schools with elite students

school districts has three campuses. All students take the International Baccalaureate diploma program. International Community School (Kirkland, Wash.) Students are selected through a lottery to attend this school focusing on international awareness. It is one of the few elite public schools without a selective admissions system. Instead, as happens sometimes, the lottery participants self-select into an academic powerhouse. Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts (Natchitoches, La.) Sophomores, juniors and seniors who survive the tough admissions process live at the boarding school, which was established by the state legislature in 1982. Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School for Government and International Studies (Richmond) Unlike the math-science orientation of most of the public elites, the focus of this school is on world cultures and building students’ leadership skills. North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (Durham, N.C.) This school, established in 1980 in an abandoned hospital, started the small but interesting trend of state-created boarding schools drawing bright and ambitious high schoolers from across the state. Northside College Prep (Chicago) Opened in 1999, the selective magnet school was the first new high school in Chicago in 20 years. It has 1,100 students whose academic classes are at the honors and AP levels only. Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics (Oklahoma City) The state-funded boarding school teaches all courses at the university level. South Carolina Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics (Hartsville, S.C.) Another state boarding school, this one is for 11th- and 12th-graders from across the state. Stuyvesant High School (New York) It has been teaching the city’s most academically ambitious students for several generations. It offers about 55 AP courses every semester and has many courses above that level. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (Fairfax County) It is the most selective public high school in the United States and draws mostly from the affluent households of Northern Virginia. Union County Magnet High School (Scotch Plains, N.J.) This selective-admission school focuses on science, math and technology. University Laboratory High School (Urbana, Ill.) Admission to this day school on the University of Illinois campus is competitive. The school makes good use of its higher-education environment. Whitney High School (Cerritos, Calif.) Like Jefferson, this suburban version of the New York City super-schools has a highly competitive admissions system. Unlike students at the state boarding schools, those at Whitney go home at nights. Get updates on your area delivered via e-mail


I ran the CIA interrogation program. No matter what the Senate report says, I know it worked.

Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. is the former head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service and the author of “Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives.” People might think it is wrong for me to condemn a report I haven’t read. But since the report condemns a program I ran, I think I have justification. On Thursday, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to declassify and release hundreds of pages of its report on U.S. terrorist interrogation practices. Certain senators have proclaimed how devastating the findings are, saying the CIA’s program was unproductive, badly managed and misleadingly sold. Unlike the committee’s staff, I don’t have to examine the program through a rearview mirror. I was responsible for administering it, and I know that it produced critical intelligence that helped decimate al-Qaeda and save American lives. The committee’s staff members started with a conclusion in 2009 and have chased supportive evidence ever since. They never spoke to me or other top CIA leaders involved in the program, or let us see the report. Without reviewing it, I cannot offer a detailed rebuttal. But there are things the public should consider. The first is context. The detention and interrogation program was not built in a vacuum. It was created in the months after Sept. 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 men, women and children were murdered. It was constructed shortly after Richard Reid narrowly missed bringing down an airliner with explosives hidden in his shoes. It continued while U.S. intelligence learned that rogue Pakistani scientists had met with Osama bin Laden to discuss the possibility of creating crude nuclear devices. When we captured high-ranking al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida in 2002, we knew he could help us track down other terrorists and might provide information to allow us to stop another attack. Those who suggest we should have questioned him more gently have never felt the burden of protecting innocent lives. Second is effectiveness. I don’t know what the committee thinks it found in the files, but I know what I saw in real time: a program that provided critical information about the operations and leadership of al-Qaeda. Intelligence work is like doing a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box top and with millions of extra pieces. The committee staff started with the box top, the pieces in place, and pronounced the puzzle a snap. The interrogation program was


With a Little Bits kit, kids can form different snap-together electronic circuits that let them create and power complex structures. (Little Bits via Associated Press) Building and construction toys have been popular since, well, forever, and there’s a reason why. “Directions aren’t necessary; no rules or instructions are needed,” says Judith Ellis, founder and chairwoman of the toy design department at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology. While Lego and Mega Blox have been favorites for many years — Lego celebrates its 82nd birthday this year — there are other options to consider. At the recent Toy Fair 2014 in New York, toy store owners showed a lot of interest in building sets, according to Adrienne Apell, trends specialist for the Toy Industry Association. “It’s been very hot, and that’s going to continue,” she says. Magna-Tiles are colorful geometric plastic tiles with magnets along the inside edges that allow you to assemble them into different structures. Some come in solid colors, and some are translucent for making see-through creations, such as “stained glass” windows. Tegu blocks also are magnetized but are made of wood. The smooth-sided blocks, rectangles and triangles come in soft, natural colors in six- or eight-block starter-set sizes (with a felt travel pouch) and larger sets of 22 to 480 pieces. There’s a car-building set, too. K’nex has kits for making simple machines such as windmills, water wheels, elevators and levers, allowing kids to tinker at home with concepts they might have been exposed to in the classroom. And targeting science-oriented young girls, GoldieBlox kits offer the chance to build such things as dunk tanks and belt-drive machines. Developed by engineering-school graduate Debbie Sterling, the kits feature a young inventor named Goldie, her friends and her dog, Nacho, using creative thinking to tackle various obstacles. Finally, if you’re one of those kids who are always taking apart broken appliances or rewiring the stereo, check out LittleBits. It offers materials for creating all kinds of electronic circuits, but you won’t have to worry about wiring, programming or soldering. The magnet-embedded modules snap together, and you can add buzzers, lights or other components to create more elaborate contraptions. An online library offers free plans, and you can share your creations there, as well. — Associated Press


Md. lawmakers approve student sleep study; Insanity claim planned in killings of children

MARYLAND Lawmakers approve student sleep study Maryland lawmakers approved legislation Friday that would require state health officials to conduct a study on the sleep needs of students and the experiences of school systems that have shifted the hours of their school days. The bill requires that the study include recommendations about whether public schools in the state should adopt a policy of starting classes at 8 a.m. or later. It comes at a time when such ideas are under consideration in Montgomery, Anne Arundel and Howard counties. Under the bill, the state study would review the science of children’s sleep needs, looking at benefits of sufficient rest and how sleep deprivation affects academic performance. Advocates for later school start times point to research showing sleep deprivation is linked to such problems as depression, obesity and car crashes. The state study, to be done by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Office of Public Health Services, is to be completed by year’s end. — Donna St. George Insanity to be claimed in killings of children An attorney for one of two Montgomery County women accused of fatally stabbing two children in a bloody exorcism said in court Friday that he would pursue an insanity defense, known in Maryland as “not criminally responsible.” The defendant, Monifa Sanford, 21, is scheduled to be tried on first-degree murder charges in August. She is accused of killing the two children Jan. 17 inside a Germantown townhouse. The children’s mother, Zakieya Avery, faces the same charges in the deaths of the children, ages 18 months and 2 years. Their older siblings — ages 5 and 8 — survived knife wounds. Under Maryland law, people can be deemed not criminally responsible if they essentially didn’t understand that what they were doing was wrong. — Dan Morse


Military’s mental-health system faces shortage of providers, lack of good diagnostic tools

needs to fund research aimed at developing more advanced tools, including brain-imaging scans and blood tests. Chiarelli, who is chief executive of One Mind for Research, a nonprofit dedicated to curing brain disorders, said another major problem confronting the military is a lack of mental-health professionals. He said the military’s efforts to hire more clinicians to diagnose and treat post-traumatic stress have been impeded by an overall national shortage. That, in turn, has led to an overreliance on prescription drugs instead of more time-consuming treatments, some of which involve getting patients to recall the traumatic events that fuel their condition. “It’s much easier to write a prescription for a drug than it is to sign someone up for 15 to 20 cognitive behavioral therapy sessions,” Chiarelli said. Nonetheless, some Army officials say, the resources provided at installations such as Fort Hood are quite substantial. But the demand for them is high. Fort Hood, and the Darnall Army Medical Center on post, provides psychiatrists, psychologists and family-life chaplains to help people with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress. “Could we use more? There’s always a need for more, especially after 12 years at war,” said a mental health professional at Fort Hood who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. Retired Army Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, a psychiatrist who has served at Fort Hood, said: “There is no installation in the entire military that is more prepared and sadly more seasoned at these kinds of tragic events than Fort Hood. Less than five years ago, they endured another mass incident. They have learned so much and put so many measures in place.” Soldiers should be taught self-regulation skills or techniques to track emotions, such as rage prompted by stress or fear, Sutton said, and should learn to control those emotions. Sutton, a co-founder of Threshold GlobalWorks, an organization that advocates the teaching of resilience skills, said such neurobiological approaches have shown promise. “The tough reality is that we may find the result of this investigation, for this particular tragedy, is there may be nothing that anyone could have done,” Sutton said. “It also means that efforts to somehow place blame on the system or on the individuals within it are really not helpful at this point.” Nakashima reported from Killeen, Tex. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Ernesto Londoño and Christian Davenport contributed to this story.


Information technology briefs

Cloud computing Software sales rise 4.8 percent in 2013 Software sales worldwide reached $407.3 billion in 2013, up 4.8 percent from 2012, thanks to new interest in cloud computing, new data from Gartner show. Microsoft led the market, generating about $65 billion in revenue last year, up 6 percent from the previous year. Oracle, IBM, SAP and Symantec were among the top five vendors, generating about $30 billion, $29 billion, $18.5 billion and $6.4 billion in sales, respectively. This is the first year that cloud computing company Salesforce.com has been among the top 10 software vendors, according to Gartner; the company grew software sales by about 33 percent since last year, taking in about $3.8 billion in revenue. “The software market has been changing shape over the past five years, and cloud is driving the bulk of this change,” Joanne Correia, Gartner research vice president, said in a statement. — Mohana Ravindranath SMART DEVICES In China, Intel opens innovation center Chipmaker Intel is scaling up investments in China’s tech scene, chief executive Brian Krzanich announced last week. The company is creating a new facility in Shenzhen, called the Intel Smart Device Innovation Center. The center could help Intel market its technology to the Chinese market, Intel said. Intel Capital, Intel’s investment arm, is also creating a $100 million fund for Chinese ventures, especially those related to tablets, smartphones, wearable devices and the Internet of Things, among other segments. “The China technology ecosystem will be instrumental in the transformation of computing,” Krzanich said at Intel’s developer forum Thursday in China. Intel Capital has invested $670 million in 110 Chinese companies since 1998, according to Intel. — Mohana Ravindranath


Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Jakob Hrusa and Andre Watts take on Czech composers

Andre Watts (Steve J. Sherman) A night at the symphony often — too often — involves a white-haired conductor showcasing the latest wunderkind in a splashy concerto. Saturday night at Strathmore, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra stood that formula on its head, with the talented young Czech conductor Jakub Hrusa leading a program featuring two pieces from his native land and a romantic warhorse performed by the venerable pianist Andre Watts. Janacek’s Suite from “The Cunning Little Vixen,” which opened the concert, showcased the conductor’s strengths. Hrusa, 32, wisely chose the arrangement by Charles Mackerras, which uses the composer’s strangely original orchestration rather than the sweetened version by Vaclav Talich. Hrusa offered vivid scenic delineation in Janacek’s balletic music, with a meticulous ear for melodic detail, tonal variety and rhythmic precision. Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony, which concluded the evening, presented a greater challenge. Hrusa delivered the outlines of a convincing interpretation with intelligently shaped movements, beautifully sculpted melodic lines and powerfully expressive climaxes. The woodwind solos of the slow movement were lovingly caressed, while the lilting dance rhythms of the scherzo took on a terrifying force by the movement’s close. Yet other stretches in Dvorak’s sprawling score sagged, with Hrusa unable to consistently sustain rhythmic tension and flow. The BSO’s obtrusive brass also threw off balances, and the orchestra’s palette of sound, section by section, tended toward the monochromatic. The Grieg Piano Concerto inspired a mostly ponderous reading from Watts, with unusually broad tempos in the outer movements. Favoring structural clarity over dramatic sweep, Watts took his time building to thunderous climaxes and luxuriating in moonlit lyricism. Yet rather than yielding introspective insight, Watts’s muscular but measured approach felt unduly sober. Only in the majestic final bars did soloist and orchestra finally indulge in romantic fervor and virtuosic abandon. Until then, it was an overly serious performance of an old warhorse that needed to be ridden with freer rein. Chin is a freelance writer.


Experts decode germs’ DNA to fight food poisoning

Chances are you’ve heard of mapping genes to diagnose rare diseases, predict your risk for cancer and tell your ancestry. But to uncover food poisonings? The nation’s disease detectives are beginning a program to try to outsmart outbreaks by routinely decoding the DNA of potentially deadly bacteria and viruses. The initial target are listeria bacteria, which are the third-leading cause of death by food poisoning and are especially dangerous to pregnant women. Already, the government credits the technology with helping to solve a listeria outbreak that killed one person in California and sickened seven in Maryland. “This really is a new way to find and fight infections,” said Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “One way to think of it is, is it identifying a suspect by a lineup or by a fingerprint?” Whole genome sequencing, or mapping all of an organism’s DNA, has become a staple of medical research. But in public health, it has been used more selectively, to investigate particularly vexing outbreaks or emerging pathogens, such as a worrisome new strain of bird flu. For day-to-day outbreak detection, officials rely instead on decades-old tests that use pieces of DNA and are not as precise. Now, with genome sequencing becoming faster and cheaper, the CDC is armed with $30 million from Congress to broaden the use of the technique with a program called advanced molecular detection. The hope is to more rapidly solve outbreaks — food-borne and other types — and maybe prevent infections, too, by better understanding how they spread. “Frankly, in public health, we have some catching up to do,” said the CDC’s Christopher Braden, an infectious-diseases doctor and epidemiologist who is helping to lead the work. As a first step, federal and state officials are rapidly decoding the DNA of all the listeria infections diagnosed in the United States this year, along with samples found in tainted foods or factories. This is the first time the technology has been used for routine disease surveillance, looking for people with matching strains who may have become sick from the same source. If this pilot project works, the CDC says, it sets the stage eventually to overhaul how public health laboratories around the country keep watch on food safety and to use the technology more routinely against other outbreaks. “Genome sequencing really is the ultimate DNA fingerprint,” said George Washington University microbiologist Lance


Tracing the U.S. heroin surge back south of the border as Mexican cannabis output falls

last time his family and others in their tiny hamlet gave up growing mota. “I wish the Americans would stop with this legalization.” Growers from this area and as far afield as Central America are sowing their plots with opium poppies, and large-scale operations are turning up in places where authorities have never seen them. In late January, police in Honduras made their first discovery of a poppy farm in the country, raiding a sophisticated mountain greenhouse as big as a soccer field. That same week, soldiers and police in western Guatemala came under attack by farmers armed with clubs and gas bombs when the security personnel moved in to destroy 160 acres of poppy. Along the border with Mexico, U.S. authorities seized 2,162 kilos of heroin last year, a record amount, up from 367 kilos in 2007. The needle habit in the United States has made a strong comeback as heroin rushes into the country. Use of the drug in the United States increased 79 percent between 2007 and 2012, according to federal data, triggering a wave of overdose deaths and an “urgent and growing public health crisis,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. warned last month. Although prescription painkillers remain more widely abused and account for far more fatal overdoses, heroin has been “moving all over the country and popping up in areas you didn’t see before,” said Carl Pike, a senior official in the Special Operations Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration. With its low price and easy portability, heroin has reached beyond New York, Chicago and other places where it has long been available. Rural areas of New England, Appalachia and the Midwest are being hit especially hard, with cities such as Portland, Maine; St. Louis; and Oklahoma City struggling to cope with a new generation of addicts. Pike and other DEA officials say the spread is the result of a shrewd marketing strategy developed by Mexican traffickers. They have targeted areas with the worst prescription pill abuse, sending heroin pushers to “set up right outside the methadone clinics,” one DEA agent said. Some new heroin users begin by snorting the drug. But like addicts of synthetic painkillers who go from swallowing the pills to crushing and snorting them, they eventually turn to intravenous injection of heroin for a more powerful high. By then, experts say, they have crossed a psychological threshold — overcoming the stigma


Lawrence Summers: An agenda for the IMF

the United States is tapering quantitative easing, Japan continues to ease on a large scale and Europe seems to be moving closer to taking such a step. All this is better than the kind of tight money that in the 1930s made the Depression great. But it is highly problematic as a dominant growth strategy. We do not have a strong basis for supposing that reductions in interest rates from very low levels have a large impact on spending decisions. We do know that they strongly encourage leverage, that they place pressure on return-seeking investors to take increased risk, that they inflate asset values and reward financial activity. The spending they induce tends to come at the expense of future demand. We cannot confidently predict the ultimate impacts of the unwinding of massive central bank balance sheets on markets or on the confidence of investors. Finally, a strategy of indefinitely sustained easy money leaves central banks dangerously short of response capacity when and if the next recession comes. A proper growth strategy would recognize that an era of low real interest rates presents opportunities as well as risks and would focus on the promotion of high-return investments. It would have a number of elements. In the United States, the case for substantial investment promotion is overwhelming. Increased infrastructure spending, for example, would in all likelihood reduce burdens on future generations not just by spurring growth, but by expanding the economy’s capacity and reducing deferred maintenance costs. Take the United States’ air traffic control system: Can it possibly be rational in the 21st century to rely on vacuum tubes and paper tracking of flight paths? Equally important, government could do much at no cost to promote private investment, including authorizing oil and natural gas exports, bringing clarity to the future of corporate taxes and moving forward on international trade agreements. With the increase of the value added tax on April 1 , Japan is now engaged in a major fiscal contraction at a time when it is far from clear whether last year’s progress in reversing deflation is anything more than a reflection of one-off exchange rate movements. A return to stagnation and deflation could rapidly call its solvency into question. Japan takes a dangerous risk if it waits to observe the consequences before enacting new fiscal and structural reform measures to promote spending. Europe has moved back from the brink,


After Fort Hood shooting, general just home from war is again comforting the wounded

had been making similar visits to hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan to check in on his wounded troops and offer words of encouragement. “Battlefield circulation” was what his staff was calling this day, which included hospital visits and a trip with two Texas congressmen to the crime scene. It was the same phrase that Army commanders, including Milley, routinely used in Afghanistan and Iraq to describe a day spent moving around those war zones. The 34-year-old soldier who went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Tex., argued with members of his unit over an application for a leave of absence, witnesses said. Spec. Ivan A. Lopez had been undergoing treatment for depression and had seen a psychiatrist last month, but Army officials said they had not considered him a threat. The sister of the wounded private told Milley that she was a single mom and part-time college student who was taking time off from a $10-an-hour job to be at her brother’s bedside. Money was tight, and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could stay before she would have to head home to Nevada. Milley took her cellphone number and promised to put her in contact with people at Fort Hood and groups in Killeen that could offer help. “Your brother is a tough soldier,” Milley said. “He’s got a strong family. He will get back on his feet. He will make it.” To spend a day with Milley in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting is to see how much Fort Hood, the Army and its commanders have been altered by more than a dozen years of war. More than 550 troops from Fort Hood have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and thousands more from the massive Army post have been wounded, though the pace of deployments and casualties has slowed considerably in the past year. Milley has logged about five years of combat time in Afghanistan and Iraq. On the granite memorial outside the 1st Cavalry Division headquarters at Fort Hood are the names of 28 soldiers who died under his command in western Baghdad in 2004 and 2005 when the insurgency in Iraq was still gathering strength. He is quick to note that his experience during America’s longest stretch of continuous war is not remarkable and probably is not even unusual. “You’ve got a whole crop of generals now


Australian navy vessel reports signals consistent with black box

are coming from what’s left of Flight 370, thought to be at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Confusing matters, a Chinese patrol ship on Friday and Saturday detected signals of its own, about 300 nautical miles from where the Australian vessel is positioned. Officials say it’s unlikely that the signals detected by the two vessels came from the same source. For at least the next day, the Ocean Shield will continue its slow runs over the small area where it has picked up the acoustics. The goal, Houston said, is to pinpoint the most likely location of the sound. If that can be done, search crews plan to lower an autonomous underwater vehicle onto the three-mile-deep ocean floor on Tuesday to search for wreckage and map out a possible debris field. The process could be arduous, because the ocean depths are at the limit of the vehicle’s capability. “This is not the end of the search,” Houston said. “We’ve still got a lot of difficult, painstaking work to do to confirm this is the spot where the aircraft entered the water. The best evidence we could get is imagery from the autonomous vehicle suggesting that the aircraft is on the bottom of the ocean.” If wreckage is found on the ocean floor, searchers will require months to map its location and bring it to the surface. “In very deep oceanic water, nothing happens fast,” Houston said. False leads and scant data have hampered the search for the plane, which flew in its final hours through a remote area virtually uncovered by radar. Investigators have tried to piece together the airliner’s likely crash site by analyzing communications the plane made with a satellite while airborne. Both the Australian vessel and the Chinese patrol ship have been operating along the arc that represents a best guess of the plane’s last known position. Although the latest signals provide a tantalizing clue, investigators say they are still desperate to find physical evidence of the plane’s whereabouts. On Friday, search teams began using underwater equipment to scan for black-box transmissions. More than two dozen ships and airplanes have been scouring a broad section of the Indian Ocean well off the western coast of Australia. The Ocean Shield, using black-box detection equipment provided by the U.S. Navy, picked up a signal in a relatively northern part of that search area, about 1,050 miles northwest of


More weapons on military installations isn’t necessarily a good idea

weapons on base? Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, thinks Congress should look into changing Defense Department policy on who can carry guns on military facilities, perhaps extending the privilege to “senior leadership at these bases, officers and enlisted men that you can trust,” he said on Fox News. Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Tex.) introduced a bill, the Safe Military Bases Act, that would lift firearm restrictions on base. Many current and former commanders disagree, including Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, Fort Hood’s chief. These officers are right, and lawmakers should not impose their views on those who run these military bases. The Defense Department has considered, twice, whether putting more guns in the hands of on-base personnel would make its facilities safer: after the 2009 Fort Hood shooting and after last year’s Washington Navy Yard massacre. Both times, Defense Department spokesman Damien Pickart said, the Pentagon declined to change policy, deciding that arming more people on base would pose safety problems and that the military would have to provide a lot of additional, costly weapons training. One major concern is that disagreements inevitably arise among co-workers, whether soldier or civilian; base commanders should not want to make it easier for escalating fights to turn deadly. Another is that even well-meaning people can miss with a shot or accidentally discharge a weapon. “Even in the military, there’s varying levels of training and capability at using weapons,” Steve Bucci, a Heritage Foundation analyst and former Army commander, told the Christian Science Monitor. Both are reasons for a clear delegation of on-base safety to people who are on duty and trained to provide close-quarters security outside of a battlefield context. The Defense Department’s policy is more flexible than those at many secure public places. Base commanders can authorize certain people to carry weapons, a prerogative we hope they use sparingly. That this flexibility exists, though, makes it all the more puzzling that lawmakers think they need to get involved. If Congress must do something, it should examine whether the Pentagon has enough military police or needs to invest more in well-organized, official on-base security. Read more about this issue: Kathleen Parker: The balm of gun control Richard Cohen: The debacle of gun control Adam Winkler: Is gun control dead? Fred Hiatt: Searching for the tipping point on gun control Dana Milbank: After Navy Yard shooting, RIP for gun control


Dana Milbank: Cure for political ills? Medical marijuana.

a further five-minute delay. There were no complaints, perhaps because munchies had been provided — potato chips and sandwiches, as well as Coca-Cola — and the crinkling of wrappers and crunching of chips could be heard throughout the event. If the pot proponents were any more laid back, they would have been horizontal. Americans are rapidly changing their views on marijuana legalization, with majorities in polls in recent months saying they support that effort. Here’s where a few opinion leaders stand. In this sense, our perpetually warring lawmakers would have benefited from meeting with the legalization crowd, and perhaps trying some free samples. Our ever-indignant representatives need urgently to chill out and free their minds. If the benefits the medical marijuana advocates touted on Monday are real, Congress should immediately reefer the matter to committee to draft a joint resolution: Everybody must get stoned. Jahan Marcu, a PhD who gave the pharmacological portion of Monday’s briefing, explained to me the mechanism by which medical marijuana, if consumed by a sufficient number of lawmakers, could cure our political ills. “Cannabis acts upon a system in our body, and that system — the endocannabinoid system — regulates five things,” said Marcu, who has long sideburns and wore an open-collar purple shirt. “It helps us to eat, sleep, relax, forget and protect.” Our leaders don’t have much trouble eating, and whether they sleep well and are protected from cancer and other illnesses is not our concern. But getting them to relax and to forget? This could be most therapeutic. Marcu said new research indicates that people who use marijuana perform better intellectually than those who drink alcohol or smoke tobacco. This suggests that if House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) were to switch vices from cigarettes and wine to pot, the body politic might be healthier. Tests show that marijuana makes animals less sensitive to provocations such as a bell ringing. “If you ring it, they get freaked out,” Marcu said. “If you give them a cannabinoid, they tend not to get freaked out.” In addition, cannabis might help lawmakers rise above the cycle of constant combat and revenge — much the way it helps soldiers overcome post-traumatic stress disorder. “That’s one great thing about the endocannabinoid system,” he said. “It’s there to help you forget useless information or information that’s harmful.” Far out. At the briefing, the advocates took pains to demonstrate their


Pentagon not properly tracking ‘revolving door’ data, report says

The Pentagon has failed to maintain a complete database of generals and other high-ranking officials who consider joining defense contracting firms after leaving the military, according to a report released last week. The database was required under a 2008 law passed by Congress because of concerns about a “revolving door” between the Defense Department and private industry, as well as potential conflicts of interest created when top brass seek jobs with companies that do work for the government. Despite that mandate, the Pentagon’s database remains “of marginal value,” according to the report released by the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General, which concludes that the Pentagon “may not have fully complied with the intent of this law.” The report marks the second time that the IG has raised questions about compliance. In 2010, the IG noted that the Pentagon had “initiated but not completed” the database. Government employees frequently go on to work for private industry — and vice versa — in Washington, where the consulting shops and K Street lobbying firms are full of former members of Congress and White House staffers. Meanwhile, hundreds of former generals and other top defense officials have used their experience and expertise to land lucrative jobs with defense contractors. In 2008, the Government Accountability Office found that 52 of the biggest defense contractors employed 2,435 former generals, senior executives and acquisition officers. Of those, 422 were in a position to work on defense contracts directly related to their former agencies and at least nine may have been working on the same contracts they previously oversaw. Top Pentagon officials involved in procurements that exceed $10 million are required to seek an ethics opinion from government attorneys before going to work for a defense contractor. Under the 2008 law, the Pentagon is supposed to keep those opinions for five years in a central database. Investigators found that some agencies were not uploading requests for ethics advice to the database. And a review of what was in the system revealed all sorts of problems, such as “unsigned, undated and potentially draft documents,” “opinions without corresponding requests,” and “various other record-keeping inconsistencies suggesting a lack of active supervision or quality control.” In a statement, U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), who requested the IG report, said she was “disturbed the Pentagon is willfully violating the law and thumbing its nose to Congressional intent to protect the integrity of


Maryland General Assembly revises medical marijuana law to ease patient access to drug

Maryland’s General Assembly on Monday voted to revise its relatively new but flawed medical marijuana law to make the program workable and ease access to the drug for patients who need it. The measure – sponsored by Sen. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Montgomery), Del. Cheryl D. Glenn (D-Baltimore) and others – is intended to allow specially certified private physicians to help their patients obtain marijuana for medicinal purposes through a state-approved distribution network. The Senate’s vote was 47 to 0, while the House passed the measure 125 to 11. “I’m ecstatic,” said Del. Cheryl D. Glenn (D-Baltimore), whose mother’s suffering during an illness that proved fatal might have been alleviated by medical marijuana. “This has been an emotional rollercoaster for me.” Under the law enacted last year, responsibility for administering the medical marijuana program was given to academic medical centers, but none was willing to participate. Under the compromise that passed Monday, the state’s existing marijuana commission would certify physicians with the ability to recommend that their patients receive the drug. Those patients would then obtain ID cards from the commission that would allow them to obtain the drug from a network of state-licensed growers and dispensaries. The measure also regulates the number of growers and dispensaries, and it prohibits participants in the system from accepting gifts or having a financial interest in either producers or dispensaries. “We’re very satisfied with the details,” Raskin said. “It’s been very bipartisan and searching for best practices in other states where it’s been done.” In its final form, the bill would license up to 15 growers, Raskin said. The commission would later review the program to see whether that number of growers was sufficient or whether more are needed. In earlier versions of the bill, the House passed a measure limiting the number of growers to 10; the Senate did not have a cap and instead allowed the commission to determine the number. Glenn said the marijuana commission is named in honor of her mother, Natalie M. LaPrade, who died of cancer about four years ago. Glenn said her mother, who could not eat because of her illness, might have been helped by medical marijuana, which acts as an appetite stimulant. She said the family talked about obtaining the drug for her mother event though the law did not permit it, but her mother refused. “My mother wouldn’t do anything illegal,” Glenn said.


Local digest: A roundup of D.C. area news briefs

to dismiss the charges. They argued that nothing McDonnell did for Richmond area businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. constituted an “official” act. Prosecutors must prove that point to substantiate the corruption charges. Spencer’s decision was largely expected. Last week, he rejected a similar request by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were charged in January in a 14-count indictment alleging that they lent the prestige of the governor’s office to Williams and Star Scientific, the struggling dietary supplement company he used to run, in exchange for loans and gifts. They have pleaded not guilty, and a jury trial is scheduled for July 28. — Matt Zapotosky THE DISTRICT Man fatally shot by police in Southeast D.C. police said they are investigating a fatal shooting Sunday night involving a police officer. About 10:10 p.m. Sunday, police responded to a report of a man with a handgun in the 4500 block of C Street SE, near Plummer Elementary School. When officers arrived, they found Isaac Little, 33, displaying a gun, police said. Little was ordered to put down the gun but refused, and an officer shot him, police said. Little was taken to a hospital, police said, where he was pronounced dead, police said. — Dana Hedgpeth Man interviewed in search for girl D.C. police said Monday that they found and interviewed a man they wanted to question as part of the search for 8-year-old Relisha Rudd but that they obtained no new information about her whereabouts. On Friday, police had released a short video of the man getting off an escalator at what appeared to be a Metro station. At the time, police did not know his identity but said he might have information about Relisha or her alleged abductor, Kahlil Tatum, 51, a janitor at the D.C. homeless shelter where the girl’s family lived. The man cooperated with the investigation, police said, but did not provide “any new information” to aid the search for Relisha. They did not publicly identify the man. Relisha has been missing since Feb. 26, when her mother allowed Tatum to take the girl with him. Tatum’s body was found last week in a shed during a police search of the 700-acre Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens in Northeast Washington. The search has ended there, but D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said it will continue elsewhere. — Lynh Bui