Petro Poroshenko: Ukraine needs the U.S. to respond to Russia

and continues the fight against the Moscow-backed separatists. Russia has tested us with its transfer of cash, weapons and other equipment to the separatists and its vast anti-Western, anti-Kiev propaganda campaign, but we will not yield to its interference in Ukraine’s sovereignty or to the violence perpetuated by terrorists. Moscow is playing a dangerously irresponsible game. My fears of the violence spiraling out of control were confirmed July 17, when the separatists used Russian missiles to shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. This attack on innocents should never have happened. Like giving a handgun to a child, Moscow permitted the transfer of a highly sophisticated surface-to-air missile system to terrorists. With such a large number of lives lost — many of them children — this was a major tragedy. Adding to the horror has been the casual desecration of the crash site by the separatists, who have blocked access by investigators, tampered with evidence, looted belongings and treated the dead like offal. As families began to mourn, world leaders and investigators grappled with the unfolding investigation. Here, we look back at the reaction to the crash of MH17. As president, I have laid the groundwork for peace talks with the separatists by calling for dialogue along with guarantees of the rights of all Ukrainians. But these calls have been rejected, and Moscow continues to fan the conflict. It has always been my goal to bring together the parties and work out solutions for all Ukrainians regardless of geography, ethnicity or language. To help achieve these solutions, the West should begin thinking about a larger response to what has happened. As always, the United States should take the lead. Working together with the European Union, Washington can shape a worldwide coalition of nations in support of Ukraine to ensure that these terrorists are not able to strike again. It is important that the United States has instituted stronger sanctions in response to Russia’s aggression in my country. However, in light of this tragedy, the United States should consider imposing even tougher and wider-reaching sectoral sanctions on Moscow. And Europe needs to follow the lead of the United States and impose sectoral sanctions of its own. Russia needs to know that the international community is serious. It is long past time for it to act. In addition to broader sanctions, my country needs expedited deliveries of assistance to help us police our


In Chesapeake Bay waters warmed by summer sun, a deadly pathogen lies in wait

Disease Control and Prevention reports an average of 50 confirmed cases, 45 hospitalizations and 16 deaths each year along the Gulf Coast, where the pathogen is most common, and nationwide as many as 95 confirmed cases, 85 hospitalizations and 35 deaths. The Calvert County Health Department, which has issued a vibrio vulnificus alert, confirmed five infections around the Chesapeake Bay this summer. “It is likely that over the next few decades, if global warming continues, the vibrio will start to multiply in the tidal waters of the bay earlier in the year and will persist later into the fall and possibly the winter,” said Laurence Polsky, health officer at the Calvert County Health Department. “This will increase the number of people exposed to the bacteria over the course of the year, and the result will be a higher average number of cases as each decade passes.” Two strains of the pathogen, vulnificus and parahaemolyticus, can be picked up from eating raw seafood, particularly oysters, causing symptoms similar to food poisoning. In high-risk areas, thorough cooking of all shellfish is recommended. Vulnificus can cause an invasive infection of the skin when even a small cut or graze is exposed to water containing the bacteria. The first symptoms include redness or swelling of the skin, followed by lesions. Those who harvest oysters are particularly at risk because they frequently cut their hands and legs on the sharp shells and rocks. For most people, the bacteria usually causes only a mild skin infection or upset stomach, but in people over 60 and those with weakened immune systems or compromised liver function, the bacteria can advance rapidly, infecting and killing tissue, and eventually entering the blood stream and causing sepsis. If not treated quickly, a severe infection can result in amputation of limbs or death. Vulnificus blood infections in people with liver disease are fatal in approximately 50 percent of cases, according to the CDC. On the evening of July 10, after a day on the water in the Calvert Cliffs area, Donald went to bed feeling fine, only to wake at 1:30 a.m. with what felt like a fire in his right leg. “It was real painful, and I started getting the chills,” he said. “My whole body was shaking.” He was taken to a hospital in Calvert, where doctors suspected it was “cold foot,” a problem with blood flow. After he was


At Colorado’s borders, a dividing line over marijuana

to a medical emergency. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post) Pianalto, 51, has seen marijuana use derail promising teens, but he’s also been moved by stories of the relief that weed provides to some cancer patients. “Look, I know prohibition doesn’t work,” he said. “But I also know freewheeling, letting everyone do what they want, doesn’t work, either. I don’t know the answer. The problem is that now I talk to the kids in schools about marijuana and they just blow me off. I had a third-grader last month start arguing with me, saying it doesn’t hurt anything. He was using the same slogans he saw on the Colorado TV ads for legalization.” Mike Kollarits needed a fresh start, and Colorado offered a frontier. His construction and snowplowing businesses in Chicago were laid low by the recession, and a buddy told Kollarits about the booming medical marijuana business around Denver. Four years ago, Kollarits, his wife, and their two teenage boys made the move. Kollarits hadn’t smoked pot since he was 26; his wife — who asked not to be named because she is a special education teacher whose employer might disapprove of her selling weed during school breaks — had never been into marijuana. Their medical pot shop in a Denver suburb got off to a strong start, attracting a mostly older crowd. When they heard customers talk about using marijuana to wean themselves off addictive prescription pain pills, the couple came to believe that they were not just making a very good living but that they also were actually doing some good. Then Kollarits heard about Sedgwick and the chance to invest in the only pot shop in the eastern half of the state. Situated between two interstate highways that feed 15,000 cars into Colorado every day, Sedgwick “had everything except social interaction,” Kollarits said. To say the town is quiet wouldn’t be quite right; cows low through the night, and the doves’ cooing makes certain that most people get an early start. This is not Chicago. Kollarits has been too busy to mind the isolation. He spends at least half his time in the hamlet, building the new store, staffing the trailer. He’s hired seven people — including two retired women from Denver who are Buddhists, love weed and delight in being called “the pot ladies” when they visit the diner out by the interstate. Kollarits expects to double


U.S. releases images it says show Russia has fired artillery over border into Ukraine

Sunday “provide evidence that Russian forces have fired across the border at Ukrainian military forces, and that Russia-backed separatists have used heavy artillery, provided by Russia, in attacks on Ukrainian forces from inside Ukraine,” according to labels on the pictures by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The most recent photograph, taken Saturday, shows what is described as “blast marks” from rocket launcher fire on the Russian side of the border, and “impact craters” inside Ukraine. A photograph labeled as taken Wednesday shows a row of vehicles described as “self-propelled artillery only found in Russian military units, on the Russian side of the border, oriented in the direction of a Ukrainian military unit within Ukraine.” On the other side of the border, “the pattern of crater impacts near the Ukrainian military unit indicates strikes from artillery fired from self-propelled or towed artillery, vice multiple rocket launchers,” it said. Kiev government officials are optimistic after Ukraine’s military ousts pro-Russian forces near the separatist bastion. The Obama administration has said that direct Russian participation in Ukraine, along with its failure to use its influence on the separatists to allow international inspectors to reach the site of the July 17 Malaysian airliner crash inside separatist territory, should lead to increased sanctions against Russia. In a statement following President Obama’s call to Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Thursday, the White House said the two “agreed that Russia must not be permitted to destabilize the situation in Ukraine without incurring costs and that, accordingly, the international community will need to enact additional sanctions.” The administration has said it is considering its own additional measures against Russia, while European officials are scheduled to meet this week in Brussels to discuss activating new sanctions against key Russian economic sectors. Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said Sunday that the United States and Europe are likely to develop stronger sanctions this week against Russia. “We still think that the best thing the United States can do is send a message to Russia through very strong sanctions coordinated with the Europeans, and I’d expect in the coming days you will see the Europeans move out on stronger sanctions,” Rhodes said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Rhodes also said European leaders were open to sanctions against Russia’s energy, arms and financial sectors during talks with Obama in the past week. Josh Hicks contributed to this report.


For rare species, the future is in the freezer as zoos manage a conservation effort

last week attributed a combination of artificial insemination and natural mating to “high levels of genetic diversity and low levels of inbreeding” among captive giant pandas. Pandas no longer have to be captured in the wild for breeding, according to the study published in the online journal of Molecular Biology and Evolution. The National Zoo has its own example, Bao Bao, a female panda cub conceived “as the result of a precisely-timed artificial insemination . . . by scientists from the Conservation Biology Institute and China,” the zoo’s Web site says. The zoo is expected to celebrate her birth in less than a month, on Aug. 23. The institute near Front Royal is studying and breeding 22 species, as small as the endangered American black-footed ferret — 800 of which have been bred through artificial insemination — and as big as the Mongolian Przewalski’s horse, which bears an eerie resemblance to horses in ancient cave paintings. “This species was extinct in the wild in the 1960s,” said their caretaker, Budhan Pukazhenthi, a research scientist. Scientists started breeding the few captive horses that remained in that decade. Now there are 1,600 globally mostly due to artificial insemination with frozen and thawed semen, and nearly a third have been reintroduced in the wild. About 300 ferrets bred at the institute are now roaming the American plains, eating prairie dogs, their staple diet, and trying not to get eaten by coyotes. That’s nothing compared with the 100,000 that should be there, said Paul Marinari, the institute’s senior curator and stud book keeper for the species. The issue of not allowing unrelated animals to breed exploded into the public realm in February when the Copenhagen Zoo slaughtered a healthy 18-month-old giraffe, Marius, because he could not be used in the zoo’s breeding program. Marius’s genes were already well represented in that zoo’s population. So the managers fed Marius a last meal of rye bread, his favorite, and killed him with a shot from a bolt gun. In a step that drew worldwide condemnation, they butchered his corpse in front of zoo visitors, many of them children, and fed it to lions. Some critics accused zoos of trying to play God in the animal kingdom, but American scientists have heard enough of that jab. “Certainly I don’t think we’re playing God,” said Barbara Durrant, the reproductive physiologist who oversees the research arm that houses the


semen, and nearly a third have been reintroduced in the wild. About 300 ferrets bred at the institute are now roaming the American plains, eating prairie dogs, their staple diet, and trying not to get eaten by coyotes. That’s nothing compared with the 100,000 that should be there, said Paul Marinari, the institute’s senior curator and stud book keeper for the species. The issue of not allowing unrelated animals to breed exploded into the public realm in February when the Copenhagen Zoo slaughtered a healthy 18-month-old giraffe, Marius, because he could not be used in the zoo’s breeding program. Marius’s genes were already well represented in that zoo’s population. So the managers fed Marius a last meal of rye bread, his favorite, and killed him with a shot from a bolt gun. In a step that drew worldwide condemnation, they butchered his corpse in front of zoo visitors, many of them children, and fed it to lions. Some critics accused zoos of trying to play God in the animal kingdom, but American scientists have heard enough of that jab. “Certainly I don’t think we’re playing God,” said Barbara Durrant, the reproductive physiologist who oversees the research arm that houses the so-called Frozen Zoo of semen and biological material of 9,000 birds, reptiles, mammals and other animals. What happened in Copenhagen is extremely rare, where an animal was put down even as other zoos in Europe wanted to take it. That death is nothing compared with the countless animals that have disappeared from wildlands everywhere from Africa to Idaho due to habitat loss caused by humans, biologists said. A special issue of Science, published Thursday online, is devoted to what it calls the startling rates of animal declines and extinctions “through the destruction of wild lands, consumption of animals as a resource or a luxury, and persecution of species we see as threats or competitors.” “Current research . . . suggests that if we are unable to end or reverse the rate of their loss, it will mean more for our own future than a broken heart or an empty forest,” wrote Sacha Vignieri in the introduction. Zoos aim to be part of the solution. “We’re correcting what human interference has caused,” Durrant said firmly. “That’s not God’s plan.” Zoos in America haven’t always been this enlightened. When they need animals to keep family members in their populations from inbreeding, risking


so-called Frozen Zoo of semen and biological material of 9,000 birds, reptiles, mammals and other animals. What happened in Copenhagen is extremely rare, where an animal was put down even as other zoos in Europe wanted to take it. That death is nothing compared with the countless animals that have disappeared from wildlands everywhere from Africa to Idaho due to habitat loss caused by humans, biologists said. A special issue of Science, published Thursday online, is devoted to what it calls the startling rates of animal declines and extinctions “through the destruction of wild lands, consumption of animals as a resource or a luxury, and persecution of species we see as threats or competitors.” “Current research . . . suggests that if we are unable to end or reverse the rate of their loss, it will mean more for our own future than a broken heart or an empty forest,” wrote Sacha Vignieri in the introduction. Zoos aim to be part of the solution. “We’re correcting what human interference has caused,” Durrant said firmly. “That’s not God’s plan.” Zoos in America haven’t always been this enlightened. When they need animals to keep family members in their populations from inbreeding, risking some type of genetic mutation, they often simply grabbed them from the wild. In the 1970s, when the new Endangered Species Act limited such captures, zoos in the United States increased their efforts to trade animals to keep sex out of the family. That’s how Amani wound up at the National Zoo in Rock Creek Park, where the population of cheetahs was thinning, nearly 30 years later. She was born at Wildlife Safari in Winston, Ore., the daughter of Bryden, imported to the United States from Namibia, and Missy, imported from South Africa, both carrying genes that had not been introduced at the zoo in Rock Creek. Amani arrived in 2007 with her spotted honey-colored coat and big caramel cat eyes, and soon biologists were salivating over her potential to diversify the cheetah gene pool. Within two years, she was ushered to the institute nearly 100 miles west in the mountains where the breeding program is run. Getting cheetahs to couple is often a nightmare, and so it was with Amani. Artificial insemination isn’t an option because biologists haven’t figured out the ovarian cycle of females; only one artificial insemination in Cincinnati has been successful in a long list of


In Eastern Ukraine, rebels claim few changes after downed flight

A woman takes a photograph of wreckage at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 near the village of Hrabove (Grabovo), Donetsk region July 26, 2014. (Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters) HRABOVE, Ukraine Many local residents support the Ukrainian-based pro-Russia separatists who U.S. and Ukrainian officials say launched the missile that downed the plane. And though most locals deplore what happened to the civilian airliner, some simply don’t believe that the rebels did it. “It was shot down by Ukrainians. There were two planes behind [the Malaysia flight]. That’s what I heard,” said Oleg, 50, a resident of the village of Hrabove, where the bulk of the plane’s wreckage came to rest. Oleg, who would not give his last name because he feared for his safety, watched over the debris site one recent day with an 80-year-old rifle. “This is our help from Russia,” he said, shaking the rifle — not advanced antiaircraft missile systems capable of downing jets at high altitudes. Nor has the downing of the Boeing 777-200 slowed the pace of combat. Battles continue to rage around rebel-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine, including on Sunday, so close to the main debris site that international observers canceled a visit there. Residential neighborhoods in Donetsk have been shelled from the direction of Ukrainian military positions. U.S. officials said Friday that some 15,000 Russian troops were massing at the border with Ukraine, a fresh sign that Russian President Vladimir Putin, rather than stepping away from his support of the separatists, may be doubling down. Ukrainian and NATO officials have said that Russia has been shelling Ukraine from over the border and there were fresh reports of heavy weaponry and vehicles flowing over the border over the weekend, a charge that Russia has denied. Jerzy Dyczynski and Angela Rudhart-Dyczynski whose daughter, 25-year-old Fatima, was a passenger on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, sit on part of the wreckage of the crashed aircraft in Hrabove, Ukraine, Saturday, July 26, 2014. The couple who live in Perth, Australia, crossed territory held by pro-Russian rebels to reach the wreckage-strewn farm fields outside the village of Hrabove. Rudhart-Dyczynski said, "We have promised our daughter we will come here." (Nicholas Garriga/AP) The rebels themselves, who have denied involvement in the attack on the passenger jet, say that they have no intention of backing down anytime soon. In Torez, a city 13 miles from the border with Russia, Ukrainian intelligence


D.C. police investigate killing in Northeast

D.C. police are investigating the killing of a man who was found by authorities in the Unit block of N Street NE. Police were called to the area for an unconscious person around 5:24 a.m. Sunday. Authorities said the man, whom police did not identify pending notification of next of kin, was suffering from an apparent gunshot wound when officers arrived. He was transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to a news release. The release, which said detectives classified the killing as a homicide, also said authorities have scheduled an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of death. The Metropolitan Police Department is offering a reward of up to $25,000 to anyone with information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons wanted for any homicide committed in the District. Anyone with information about this killing may contact the police at (202) 727-9099 or send anonymous information to the department’s Text Tip Line by messaging 50411. Get updates on your area delivered via e-mail


Significant new European sanctions on Russia expected, U.S. says

Police in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic guard a convoy of investigators headed to the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. The international team abandoned its attempt to reach the site for a second day as fighting raged nearby. (Dmitry Lovetsky/AP) The Obama administration expects Europe to adopt significant new sanctions against Russia this week, including against key economic sectors that the Europeans have resisted targeting in the past, the White House said Monday. “In turn and in full coordination with Europe, the United States will implement additional measures itself” amid growing evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “doubling down” on his efforts to support separatists battling the government in eastern Ukraine, deputy national security adviser Antony Blinken said. Blinken’s remarks came as heavy fighting moved closer to the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, in an area under separatist control. The West has said the airliner was downed with a Russian-supplied missile fired from separatist territory, and investigators from the Netherlands and Australia hope to make it to the site before evidence is destroyed. On Monday, however, the investigators were forced to turn back for a second day after hearing explosions and being warned of heavy combat in the area, where the Ukrainian military claimed significant advances against rebels. Agreement on the sanctions followed a five-way videoconference among President Obama and his counterparts from Britain, France, Germany and Italy — all of whom separately indicated that they would support additional measures against Russia. European Union ambassadors are scheduled to meet Tuesday in Brussels to consider an arms embargo and sanctions against portions of Russia’s financial and energy sectors. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko hailed soldiers for forcing pro-Russian rebels out of several towns and cities. He said Ukraine is defending itself against "foreign mercenaries.” While agreement from leaders of Europe’s four leading governments was seen as a major step forward, it is unclear whether all 28 E.U. members — which operate on the basis of consensus — will support the new sanctions package, drawn up late last week. All had agreed to ready the package, to be imposed if there was evidence that Russia was expanding rather than withdrawing its support for the separatists. On Sunday, the United States published overhead surveillance photographs it said proved that Russia was continuing to supply weapons and to fire artillery from its own territory into Ukraine. Russia has also increased deployment of


Prince William County news in brief

spotted in Buckhall area of Prince William The Prince William County Health District recently received a report of a coyote in the Buckhall area of the county. Coyotes can be found throughout the state, in urban and suburban areas, according to Virginia Department of Health officials. They are fearful of people but will prey on small animals, including dogs and cats. Although it is rare, they can carry rabies. The Prince William Health District recommends the following tips to keep coyotes away: →Close and seal all openings under and into buildings. →Keep brushy areas in your yard cut back to prevent cover for coyotes. →Do not feed coyotes or any other wildlife. →Keep trash inside until the morning of trash pickup or place trash in an animal-proof container, such as a metal or plastic trash can with a tight-fitting lid. →Do not leave pet food outside; keep pet feeding areas clean. →Remove bird feeders when nuisance species — such as rats, rodents and squirrels — have been seen around them. →Clear fallen fruit around trees. Fruit could attract insects, rodents and other wildlife, which can attract predators such as coyotes. →Keep small pets inside as much as possible. When they go outside, put them on leashes or install coyote-proof fencing to protect unsupervised pets. Larger dogs are viewed as threats — particularly from January to June while coyotes are mating and birthing pups. If the techniques above do not keep coyotes away, contact an animal control service company for further assistance, or contact the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries at 855-571-9003. The Prince William Animal Control Bureau does not routinely respond to nuisance wildlife issues unless there is a concern about a rabid animal. If you observe a coyote or any other wildlife or pets in your community exhibiting signs of rabies, such as stumbling, foaming at the mouth or showing aggression, contact the county’s animal control division at at 703-792-6500. ‘Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over’ campaign to begin Prince William County police, along with law enforcement agencies throughout Virginia, will launch the “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” campaign Aug. 15. The effort to crack down on drunken driving will run through Labor Day weekend, when there is a surge in drunken driving incidents, officials said in a statement. If motorists are caught driving impaired, officials said, they will be arrested. — Compiled by Sarah Lane


Europe weighs Russia sanctions against economic pain

an awful lot of Russian money here,” Light said. “If it leaves the City, it won’t come back.” But the stance across the continent has substantially hardened in the wake of the downing of the Malaysia Airways jetliner. European leaders are drafting broader measures that could come into effect if Russia does not change course in Ukraine. “The Europeans can get very quickly to where the Americans are if they need to do so,” said Mujtaba Rahman, Europe director for the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm. Moves under consideration, E.U. officials say, could target the nearly $10 billion worth of bonds issued in Europe by Russian state-owned banks and financial institutions as well as impose an arms embargo and restrictions on dual-technology sales of equipment used in the energy industry. It is that last part that has Schwedt so worried. From the air, the PCK oil refinery — owned by an international consortium that Rosneft bought into in 2010 — looms like an iron castle over the town. In the aftermath of World War II, when 85 percent of Schwedt lay in rubble, the plant emerged as a saving grace, generating as many as 10,000 jobs during the height of the Soviet era. Today, years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the ties that bind this swath of Germany to Russia have not wholly dissipated. Residents still reminisce about receiving candy from the Soviet army. Several expressed admiration for Putin and called allegations of Russian complicity in the downing of the Malaysia Airlines jet a rush to judgment before the facts were known. Here, Sechin — a Putin confidant — is a household name. Inside the office of one refinery supplier, a sepia cutout of the local news story heralding Sechin’s visit to the plant in 2012 was pinned to a wall. In town, loyalty to the plant is fierce. PCK declined to comment on the possible impact of E.U. sanctions, as did several local officials. Why, many residents here said, should Germany make Russia its enemy? Citing the spat over U.S. spying between Washington and Berlin, Dieter Posselt, 62 and a former employee at the refinery, said: “German-Russian relations are just as good as German-U.S. relations these days. And what should we do? Start a war? No.” Witte reported from London. Karla Adam in London, Stephanie Kirchner in Berlin and Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.


Study finds that runners tend to live longer and have fewer strokes and heart problems

THE QUESTION THIS STUDY Speed, distance and running frequency made little difference: Even those who ran least often (once or twice a week), least far (less than six miles a week) and least rapidly (less than 6 mph) achieved benefits comparable to those who ran faster and farther. Running regularly for at least six years, however, was associated with the best mortality odds, with a 50 percent lower risk for cardiovascular-related death. The researchers noted that “not running was almost as important as hypertension” for increasing mortality risk. WHO MAY BE AFFECTED? CAVEATS FIND THIS STUDY LEARN MORE ABOUT The research described in Quick Study comes from credible, peer-reviewed journals. Nonetheless, conclusive evidence about a treatment's effectiveness is rarely found in a single study. Anyone considering changing or beginning treatment of any kind should consult with a physician.


Military personnel costs need a hard look

U.S. Treasury that cover military pay, retired pay, survivor benefits, and unemployment compensation,” the report said. Commission members looked at 65 special and incentive pay programs, more than 40 health benefit programs and 200 other distinct programs and benefits from eight federal agencies. The agencies also support military, veteran, retiree and family member quality of life. Some are self-sustaining, but others are costly — such as the $10.2 billion appropriated in fiscal 2013 for the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which has provisions to permit transfer of some or all unused benefits to a spouse or dependent children. One focus of the commission may be on basic military pay. Its report noted that the services have and need to maintain “a far more professional and technologically fluent force.” The strain of relocating every two or three years is also a growing problem for a changing military, which includes more women and married people with dependents. Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, has written about the strain on families. He and others have proposed recruiting skilled people at mid-career and starting them at higher ranks. That would reduce the need for others to have to relocate so often. The Marine Band already does this. Another target is bound to be the ancient military retirement program in which if you make it to 20 years your payments start immediately, no matter what your age, but you get nothing if you leave or are forced out before that. Only 17 percent of service personnel make it to 20 years and most often they are not the grunts who have done the fighting. During fiscal 2013, $54.7 billion was paid to 2.28 million military retirees, including active, reserve, disabled and survivor recipients, according to the retirement panel. Past studies have suggested that the retirement system has to change, to become more like private industry’s so there is some vesting shorter than 20 years and that an individual’s retirement program can be transportable when he or she leaves military service. Big changes in the military personnel pay and benefits are needed for the incoming generation of military service volunteers. The questions remain whether the commission will propose the changes needed, whether Obama will send them to Capitol Hill and whether the next Congress will have the foresight to pass the reforms required. For previous Fine Print columns, go to washingtonpost.com/fedpage.


In a surprising move, Dollar Tree will buy Family Dollar for $8.5 billion

its part, Family Dollar said it had begun exploring the deal this past winter. The two companies will maintain their separate brands. While Dollar Tree caters to a suburban customer base and keeps all prices at a dollar or less, Chesapeake, Va.-based Family Dollar prices some of its merchandise above a dollar and attracts lower-income consumers in urban and rural areas. The deal further crowds the already packed marketplace with small-box discount stores. Facing their own struggles, big retailers like Wal-Mart and Target in recent years started opening smaller stores in an effort to compete with their dollar-store competitors. Brian Sozzi, an analyst at Belus Capital Advisors, said in an article for The Street that Wal-Mart had made a big mistake in not buying Family Dollar. He called it “the first major failure of the Doug McMillon administration,” in reference to Wal-Mart’s new chief executive. But Jan Rogers Kniffen, a consultant to investors and retail companies, said he was skeptical that the deal represented a blow to Wal-Mart. “They want to participate, they want to play, they want to be competitive in this space,” Kniffen said. “But this business is not big enough to change Wal-Mart’s fate.” Analysts offered tempered praise of Dollar Tree’s move, saying it gave the retailer a chance to target new demographics and ward off its competitors. Yet the opportunity is accompanied by significant risks and challenges, they said, as Dollar Tree will be tasked with reversing Family Dollar’s flagging fortunes while simultaneously learning a business model markedly different than its own. “It’s very difficult juggling act, and I would say they would have earned their space in the retail hall of fame if they’re capable of doing that,” said Dutch Fox, a discount retail analyst at FBR. Family Dollar’s chief executive Howard Levine, will report to Dollar Tree’s chief executive Bob Sasser. To succeed, analysts said, Family Dollar’s new management will have to lure low-income consumers back into the retailer’s stores at pre-recession levels. “The turnaround story at Family Dollar definitely hinges on there being continued growth in that low-end space,” Fox said. “If five years from now the sales per square foot of Family Dollar don’t vastly improve, it would be difficult to look back at this merger and call it a rousing success.” Family Dollar’s stock jumped about 25 percent by closing time on Monday, and Dollar Tree’s stock rose by 1.2 percent.


U.S.: Russia violated 1987 treaty by testing ground-launched missiles

U.S. President Ronald Reagan, right, shakes hands with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Dec. 8, 1987, after the two leaders signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. (Bob Daugherty/Associated Press) The Obama administration has determined that Russia violated a 1987 treaty on intermediate-range missiles by testing a ground-launched cruise missile, a senior administration official said. The violation, which began some years ago, is included in a 2014 compliance report on the treaty to be released Tuesday and was the subject of a letter President Obama sent Monday to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “This is a very serious matter which we have attempted to address with Russia for some time now,” the official said. “We encourage Russia to return to compliance with its obligations . . . and to eliminate any prohibited items in a verifiable manner.” It was unclear how long the testing lasted, or whether it was ongoing. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that “we have notified Russia of our determination and are prepared to discuss this in a senior-level bilateral dialogue immediately.” Obama’s letter to Putin was first reported online Monday by the New York Times, which said that Russia began testing the missiles in 2008 and that the State Department first raised the possibility of a violation with Russian officials in 2013. At the time, the paper said, Russia said it had looked into the matter and considered it closed. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, prohibits possession, production or flight testing of a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles, or possession or production of launchers of such missiles. News of the alleged violation comes as relations between the United States and Russia are seriously strained over Russia’s backing of separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine. Obama administration officials have said that, despite their growing differences and the imposition of U.S. economic sanctions over Ukraine, Moscow has continued to cooperate with Washington on a range of nuclear and other foreign policy issues.


Afghan president’s cousin assassinated by suicide bomber

a renewed phase of bloody attacks by Taliban militants in Kandahar and neighboring Helmand province in recent weeks. Hashmat Karzai moved to the United States after his father was killed in the early 1980s by a relative, the New York Times reported in 2009. He settled in Silver Spring, Md., worked at a used-car dealership and became a U.S. citizen, according to Abdul Qayum Karzai, a Baltimore resident who is Hamid Karzai’s brother and Hashmat Karzai’s cousin. Hashmat Karzai’s wife, Awista, and four children live in Dubai but were in Afghanistan for Eid, Abdul Qayum Karzai told The Washington Post. He said he heard about the killing at 2 a.m. Tuesday Eastern time. “The armed opposition is looking for any kind of publicity and news they can create to prove their presence” and spread “chaos and disorder,” Abdul Qayum Karzai said. Insurgents have carried out similar attacks in recent years against prominent politicians and officials. Former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who headed a peace council formed to initiate talks with the insurgents, was killed at his residence in Kabul in September 2011 by a bomber who also had hidden explosives in his turban. Hashmat Karzai was known to be a keen hunter who kept wild animals, including a lion, at his sprawling high-walled residence. The attack was the latest to claim the life of a close relative of President Karzai. In July 2011, Ahmed Wali Karzai, a half-brother of Hamid Karzai, was fatally shot at his house by one of his bodyguards. The assailant was then killed by other bodyguards, and his body was later hanged by Karzai loyalists at a bazaar for public viewing. In recent years, there have been reports of differences and disputes among various members of President Karzai’s family. “As other Afghans are killed every day by terrorist attacks in the country, our family is not an exception, and we accept this sacrifice,” the presidential palace quoted Karzai as saying in a statement. Ghani condemned the killing on his Twitter account. “We will not succumb to cowardly acts of the enemies of Afghanistan,” he wrote. “Every loss of Afghans reminds us that we must stay united to overcome the challenges.” Ghani, a former finance minister, is locked in a dispute with former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah over a recount of a presidential runoff vote in June. U.S. Ambassador James B. Cunningham condemned the assassination, saying in a


Obama announces expanded sanctions against Russia as E.U. aligns

implications for their economies, had resisted moving much beyond individual visa bans and asset freezes. In Washington, senior administration officials attributed the change to U.S. resolve and Obama’s leadership. As fighting in eastern Ukraine has escalated in recent days, the United States has urged a tough response to reports of increased shipments of Russian heavy arms to the separatists and the firing of Russian artillery on Ukrainian positions across the border. “Today is a reminder that the United States means what it says, and we will rally the international community in standing up for the rights and freedom” of democratically ruled nations, said one official who spoke in a briefing for reporters on the condition of anonymity under rules imposed by the White House. But the most galvanizing event for Europe was clearly the July 17 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine. “The plane changed everything,” said Sophia Pugsley, a specialist in E.U.-Russia relations at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “And it’s really the German attitude that has changed. They’re the ones that are going to feel the pain in the parts of the economy that rely on Russia.” Germany depends heavily on Russian energy supplies, with Russia providing up to a third of German gas. The other European heavyweights also have strong economic ties to Moscow, with Britain relying on Russian money to help fuel its thriving banking sector and France depending on Russian defense contracts. Southern European countries still struggling with recession feared economic setbacks. The exact details of new E.U. sanctions will not be made public until they are published in the official E.U. journal, probably Thursday. Senior European diplomats said that much of their business with Russia probably will be preserved, with leaders negotiating carve-outs to protect their national interests. The arms embargo, for example, applies to future contracts, rather than existing deals such as France’s $1.7 billion sale of warships to Russia. By limiting the energy restrictions to oil, the new sanctions appear to leave Gazprom, Russia’s state natural gas pipeline monopoly, unaffected. The limitation was “a get-out-of-jail-free card” for Gazprom, said Pavel Molchanov, oil analyst at the investment firm Raymond James. But the overall scope of Tuesday’s announcement suggested that European patience with Russia has worn out. The measures are “meant as a strong warning: illegal annexation of territory and deliberate destabilization of a neighboring sovereign country cannot be accepted


When we were small: Whole Foods

A look back at this history of Whole Foods, starting with the original SaferWay and Clarksville Natural Grocery stores, which in 1980 merged to become the first Whole Foods Market. (Photos courtesy of Whole Foods) Welcome to “When we were small,” our series looking back at the small-business years of what became some of the country’s most recognizable companies, through interviews with their founders. John Mackey had just turned 25 years old when he opened a small vegetarian food market in an old victorian house in Austin, Texas. His business partner and girlfriend, Renee Lawson, was 21. Fast forward 36 years, and Mackey has grown Whole Foods Market into a natural and organic food empire, with nearly 400 locations, more than 80,000 employees and annual sales exceeding $12 billion. “Did I ever think it would get this big?” he said. “No, of course not.” In an interview, Mackey, who now serves as chief executive of the company, took us back to the small-business years at Whole Foods, including that first location in Austin, the firm’s most challenging period of growth, his decision to take the company public, and the one piece of advice he wish he had known when he was first starting out. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for clarity. J.D. Harrison: How did you get started in the food business? John Mackey: It started when I moved into a vegetarian co-op back in the ‘70s, and that’s really when I had my food consciousness awakened. I learned how to cook and eventually I became the food buyer for the entire co-op. Not long after that, I went to work for a small natural food store in Austin, and I became very excited and passionate about it. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had found my life’s work. Harrison: Okay, but how you decide to start your own store? Mackey: I came home from working at the store one night and said to Renee, “You know, we could do this, this isn’t that hard. We could open our own store.” She got excited about it, too, and we started researching and began to raise some money. We opened our first store in 1978. Harrison: How much capital did you start with, and where from? Mackey: Our goal was $50,000, but we could only find $45,000, so that’s what we started with.


When we were small: Whole Foods

floor, we had some cash registers in the front, two of them, and we had a little bulk food area. In another room, we had produce, and in the next room, we had a little dairy cooler and a little frozen food section. Most of the rest of the floor was lined with grocery and vitamin shelving. On the second floor, we had a vegetarian cafe, and it had some seating and little deck where people could eat outside. And on the third level, we had our little office that doubled as where we slept at night. Harrison: Wait, so you lived there, too? Right, we literally lived in the store. It was a single room that we used as an office, and we had a futon couch up there that we would sleep on at night and fold into a couch during the day. Harrison: Where did the food you were selling come from? Mackey: Back then, before the Internet, you had these paper catalogs that you ordered all the food from. So, we flipped through the catalogs, looked up the food we wanted, called them up, and they would show up in trucks. We would stick it on the shelves, our customers would buy it and we would restock the shelves. For two years, that was our little retail business. We only did about $400,000 in sales each year. Harrison: Now, back then it wasn’t called Whole Foods, correct? Mackey: No, it was SaferWay. It was a takeoff on the Safeway grocery stores, and being that age, we thought it was pretty clever. Harrison: When and why did you change the name? It was when we merged with one of our small store rivals. Our second year, we made a $5,000 profit, and as soon as we started making money, I wanted to grow. Looking back, the prudent thing probably would have been to stay there and make some money for a while, and then try to expand. But at that age, I was fairly ambitious. So, we decided to merge together with another little natural food store called Clarksville Natural Grocery. But they didn’t want to use our name and we didn’t want to use theirs, so we had to come up with a new, neutral name. We knew it was going to be a market, and we knew it was a food market. Well, what kind


What is 200 miles long and has 36 legs? One of the area’s long-distance relay races.

A runner traverses Gettysburg National Military Park on the second leg of the 2014 American Odyssey Relay. (American Odyssey Relay) To complete a mythical journey, one needs the following: a series of impossible tasks, a fairly accurate map and, most important, companions united in a common goal. And if said journey involves a lot of running, make sure to bring clean socks and ripe bananas. Running isn’t an activity usually seen as quest-worthy or a shared experience. A run is a solitary pursuit, one step and one breath at a time. Earbuds in, exertion out. Relay races, however, are helping to change that perspective. Whatever the preference, a 200-mile trek through rural back roads or a slice of the marathon course, local race organizers are capitalizing on the running boom and athletes’ desire to take on a challenge. It’s no wonder that many of these races are branded as an “odyssey” or an “adventure” in line with Nordic warriors of old. Running a relay might not have the gravitas of conquering foreign lands, but completing such a journey with a team — sidestepping potholes and animals in the road, running through the night with little sleep — feels like an accomplishment. “The people who have the most fun are those who accept there are obstacles,” said Bob Fleshner, founder and race director of the American Odyssey Relay, a spring race that takes about 140 teams of runners 200 miles from Gettysburg, Pa., to Washington. “We may not get told about it, but you have to be ready to overcome.” The Ragnar Relay Series’s Washington race starts at western Maryland’s Rocky Gap State Park, above, and ends at National Harbor. (Courtesy of Ragnar Relay Events) Depending on the race course, a runner could run a three-mile leg through residential streets or a nine-mile leg along a the country road. There are hills to tackle, fields to run through and, for those given the most arduous task, there’s the dark of night to beat. And relay races are more than just the running. Teams navigate the complexities of the course, switching off at exchange points and making sure each participant runs in order. However a team travels, often in a decorated van or bus, the goal is to get all the members to the end. Since the American Odyssey’s creation in 2008, Fleshner has seen wedding proposals at the finish line, veterans


Review of ‘The Bees’: Paull’s transfixing first novel exposes dangers of the hive mind

Bees — which is to say, the fear of them — dominated many summers of my childhood. Especially when walking (inevitably barefoot) through a particular Eastern Shore clover patch, I could focus on little else than trying to avoid their sting. Now my thoughts are hovering around bees again, but for a less foreboding reason. Laline Paull’s transfixing first novel, “The Bees,” isn’t explicitly about the real-world problems that threaten their survival , but the story’s inspired imagining of hive life compels one to wonder about the extraordinary complexity and sophistication of these insects — and to care about their fate. Set in a honeybee hive, the novel is a parable about the consequences of groupthink. Its heroine, Flora 717, is born into the worker caste, destined for nothing but the basest drudgery. But 717 isn’t like the other Floras. Though the elite bees, the Sages, call her big and ugly, she can speak, she produces royal jelly, and she’s very brave. Those unique abilities allow 717 an unprecedented freedom within the hive’s rigid class system. She nurses the larvae in the Nursery, waits on the bawdy males in the Drones’ Hall and flies as a forager, gathering pollen and nectar. But her greatest ability is also her most dangerous: Flora 717 can produce eggs, something only the queen is meant to do and a guaranteed death sentence for any others who dare. At first, I found myself putting down the book every few pages to research Paull’s descriptions of bee life. (Do they really secrete beeswax from their bellies? Fan nectar into honey? Periodically murder the drones?) It quickly became clear that in its basic facts, the novel sticks closely to real-world apian biology and behavior. That is fascinating enough, but Paull deftly wields this information to create an even more elaborately layered culture of beeness. It is beautiful with the intricate architecture of the hive. It is religious with worship centered on the queen: “Our mother who art in labor. . . hallowed be Thy womb.” It is sensual and passionate, especially when it comes to the harvesting of pollen from flowers. But it is also vicious, particularly when bee turns cruelly on bee. Paull’s version of the hive’s extreme matriarchy is home to many kinds of females, strong and meek, thoughtful and superficial, forward-thinking and hidebound. There is something comforting and cozy in the group-focused industry of


Plaintiff in D.C. handgun ruling: ‘It felt good’

Not long after a federal judge overturned the District’s ban on carrying a pistol in public, George Lyon concealed a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver in a pocket holster, walked out of his home in Northwest Washington and took a stroll. “It felt good,” said Lyon, one of four plaintiffs in the case — Palmer v. District of Columbia — which was filed in 2009 and finally decided Saturday. Lyon had also been an original plaintiff in the landmark 2008 Supreme Court ruling, District of Columbia v. Heller , that overturned the city’s ban on keeping handguns in the home. He could have worn the gun openly. “I think that at this time, with carrying in the District being only a few days old,” he said Monday, a day before the judge put a 90-day hold on the decision, “it is not the right time to introduce ‘open carry,’ ” referring to guns carried in plain view as opposed to concealed. “Some people may find the sight of a citizen openly carrying a firearm to be disconcerting.” Not all gun owners share his sensibilities. Photographs of men with guns posing at the Capitol and the Supreme Court were recently posted on the Virginia Gun Owners Forum’s Web site. VGOF has urged that gun owners show restraint. “It is VGOF’s official stance at this time that it WOULD NOT BE PRUDENT TO CARRY A FIREARM INTO WASHINGTON DC for several reasons,” it said in a statement. One of the reasons: “There is still a lot of confusion related to this ruling, and unless you have wads of cash and a good lawyer to defend you, then it would be best to let things air out for a while.” Most people on the forum tended to agree. But one VGOF “gold supporter” and member of the Virginia Citizens Defense League commented, “Seeing the Capital (sic), and a citizen carrying openly in D.C. That’s just . . . awesome.” In ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, U.S. District Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr., said recent gun rights cases left him with no basis for upholding the D.C. ban on carrying firearms in public. In 2010, for instance, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment provides Americans a “fundamental right” to bear arms that cannot be violated by state and local governments. Scullin suggested that the District come up with a system for


Palestinians in West Bank watch, worry and check their phones as Gaza conflict rages

Sami Shaath, a West Bank resident, looks at his phone as his daughter Farah, 5, watches. “All my family is in Gaza, and I can’t provide anything for them,” he said. (Max Becherer/Polaris Images for The Washington Post) Correction: RAMALLAH, West Bank — Then, if they answer, the relief he feels is quickly replaced by guilt and helplessness. “All my family is in Gaza, and I can’t provide anything for them,” lamented Shaath, 52, an Arabic-language professor, seated in the manicured garden of his comfortable four-story house. For nearly 15 years, tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have been unable to visit their relatives in Gaza, roughly 50 miles away, because of travel and other restrictions imposed by Israel. It is an emotional divide, not just a geographic one, that separates them. With the conflict between Israel and Hamas now in its fourth week, Palestinians in the West Bank find themselves, by their own admission, in a futile struggle to comfort relatives in Gaza, many of whom they have never met. The lives of the West Bankers are ordered by rumors and news broadcasts, tweets and Facebook postings about Gaza. And with each day, the emotional toll increases. “People think they are going to die at any minute,” said Shaath, a man compact in size but large in voice, with a pepper-colored moustache and graying hair. Moments earlier, Shaath received a text message he had been dreading. His cousin Muhammad, 25, had died in a Cairo hospital from injuries he sustained when an Israeli airstrike hit his home in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, a few days earlier. Three of Muhammad’s brothers were killed instantly in the attack, which leveled their house. Palestinian medics transported Muhammad to Egypt through the Rafah crossing, which is open only to those with medical emergencies. Shaath had met Muhammad and two of the other cousins when they were boys; the fourth, who was 15, Shaath knew only by his voice over the phone. “If they had walked past me on the street, I would never have recognized them,” he said with a faint smile. Shaath kept glancing at his cellphone. He was waiting for another text message with the timing of Muhammad’s funeral, so he could mourn at the same moment. In 2000, the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, erupted. As attacks on its citizens mounted, Israel tightened


Russia’s central bank vows to support banks hit by new sanctions

MOSCOW The United States and European Union imposed the penalties after accusing Russia of channeling weapons, support and volunteers to a separatist rebellion in east Ukraine. But Russia suggested that Europe would also feel the pain of the sanctions. “When Brussels starts a transition to a ‘third wave’ of sanctions, it affects the economic situation in the European Union no less than in Russia,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “Do the citizens of E.U. member states know what these games will turn on, in terms of lost jobs and lost commercial gains?” The wide-ranging sanctions aimed at Russia’s oil, finance and defense industries will restrict exports of Western-produced technologies crucial to developing new oil resources for Russia’s energy-dependent budget. They will also constrict medium- and long-term borrowing for most of Russia’s state-affiliated banks, which could slow economic growth. The sanctions are unlikely to inspire the Kremlin to make quick tactical and geopolitical shifts, analysts said. Russia's largest banks seek to reassure investors over E.U. moves that cut off access to capital markets, while Moscow announces bans on certain E.U. food imports. “Tension is growing, inside the [political] apparatus and on the part of businesses,” said Kirill Rogov, an analyst at Moscow’s Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy. “But as of now, this tension is not sufficient to effect any changes to the state policy.” In the short term, Russia can take steps — such as shoring up targeted banks — to keep the potential effects of sanctions in check and shield the general population that forms Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strong base of national support. Sanctions’ “effects on ordinary Russians are not showing up immediately,” said Boris Makarenko, an analyst at the Moscow-based Center for Political Technologies, who added that there was “a rally-around-the-flag effect” as Russian politicians highlighted a confrontation between the East and West. But in the longer term, economists warn that the country will experience a significant financial crunch. “The situation is kind of dramatic, if it is not possible to borrow this money at the foreign markets,” Rogov said. The promise of future pain is what economists say is keeping the Kremlin from responding to the latest rounds of economic sanctions in kind. “We’re not preparing to act on the principle of ‘an eye for an eye,’ ” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters on Monday – a sentiment repeated by other Russian government


Investigators again blocked from plane crash site; Ukraine blames rebel mines

who control the territory around the crash site, but he said he hoped that “in the next few hours, in the next 24 hours, there will be positive news in the fulfillment of this task.” As volunteers were combing the crash site for bodies and debris, friends and family members were trying to cope with their loss. The latest impasse in the crash investigation developed a day after President Obama announced new sanctions against Russia and called on President Vladimir Putin to stop supporting the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, pull his troops back from the Ukrainian border and promote a negotiated settlement between the separatists and the Western-backed Ukraine government. Obama unveiled a new round of U.S. measures that he said would affect “key sectors of the Russian economy.” Among other actions, he expanded a list of Russian banks and defense companies subject to U.S. sanctions. The European Union earlier Tuesday imposed a wave of tough new sanctions on Russia, including an arms embargo and limits on access to European capital markets for Russian state-owned banks. Russia reacted sharply Wednesday, professing bafflement at Obama’s accusation that it has not been cooperating with the international investigation of the Malaysian plane crash. U.S. officials have implicated Russia in the tragedy, saying the airliner was shot down with a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile from separatist-held territory and that the rebels have been armed and trained by Russia. “Russia presented its existing data from objective monitoring connected to the air crash,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement Wednesday. “At the same time, the American side up to this day has not demonstrated any facts, except for unsubstantiated accusations and information from social networks.” Lukashevich also accused the Dutch officials leading the investigation of delaying an invitation to Russia to participate. In an interview with Russia’s Interfax news agency, Moscow’s ambassador to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov, said Europe would suffer more from the new sanctions than Russia. People around the world gather to grieve for those who died when the plane was shot down above eastern Ukraine. “The damage on the European economy will be comparable to the damage the E.U. is trying to inflict on the Russian economy, if not greater,” Chizhov said Wednesday in Brussels. He said certain carve-outs in the sanctions package made it obvious that Europe was worried about protecting its own interests. “They reserve some


D.C. firefighters work to extinguish fire at National Zoo

D.C. firefighters quickly extinguished a small kitchen fire Wednesday in a restaurant on the grounds of the National Zoo in Northwest Washington, according to a fire department spokesman. The call came about 11:50 a.m., and firefighters were on the scene off Connecticut Avenue by noon. The fire was out in a few minutes. Pamela Baker-Masson, a spokeswoman for the zoo, said there was more smoke than fire, and while patrons were briefly ushered out of the restaurant, they were quickly allowed to return. The restaurant reopened. Annalisa Meyer, another spokeswoman for the zoo, said the fire appears to have started in the kitchen of the Mane Grill, near the lion and tiger exhibits and the Rock Creek entrance. No injuries were reported Meyer said no animal exhibits were affected. Get updates on your area delivered via e-mail.


The U.S. National Arboretum is breathing new life into an old plant

shrub of the heath family, but unlike them, it increases by creeping runners. A colony may fruit, but the berries contain no seed or are sterile. Because it spreads no more than six inches a year, botanists calculated that the largest known colony, in south-central Pennsylvania, might be 13,000 years old. This makes it one of the most ancient life-forms on Earth, and a lot older than the venerable giant redwoods or bristlecone pines. The contained nature of box huckleberry colonies makes them both wondrous and prone to loss through habitat destruction, which humans seem to have perfected. The arboretum collection began because Pooler’s now-retired scientific colleague Ruth Dix took a cutting from a stand of box huckleberry that was about to perish in Anne Arundel County. Over the years, she collected and propagated clones from wild colonies in several states, each of them adapted to its own climate, soil and growing environment. Generally, the plant likes to be in hardwood forests with soils that are sour and dry but not poor. Like a lot of woodland plants in an undisturbed setting, it builds up a symbiotic relationship with beneficial fungi in its root zone. At the arboretum, the gathering of these different colonies has permitted the cross-fertilization of the flowers and the development of living seed. When I was there, Spaulding was packing the berries in marked vials. In the lab, they will be examined to see which seeds are viable for germination. The clusters of pretty heatherlike flowers, appearing in May, were pollinated by colonies of commercially raised bumblebees brought in for the task. Each of these assembled plants reflects the peculiar genetic adaptation for its locale, and this diversity of ecotype, as it’s known, bodes well. The aim is to raise strains that can be used to replace lost or threatened colonies in the wild. But through breeding and evaluation, Pooler is also looking to develop traits that nursery growers need in garden plants. These include a willingness to propagate, vigor, disease resistance and ornament of leaf and flower. In a few years, the box huckleberry may become a stalwart ground cover of the shade garden. One of the hardest challenges for gardeners is to find a reliable evergreen cover for beds in dry shade conditions, a role that used to be filled by the now disfavored English ivy, pachysandra and periwinkle. One day, perhaps, this wee


In Gaza, 11 members of a Palestinian family are killed in a single strike

said. After lunch Tuesday, Naim took a nap, as did his brother, Abdul Karim. The women cleaned up and chatted, reconnecting. That is when the first hit occurred, an explosion that tore through the house, sending bricks, metal and dust flying, recalled Abdul Karim who had woken up and ran outside, along with his son and wife. Then a second one came, throwing Abdul Karim to the ground. When he got up, he ran back into his house to help his relatives. “I found my nephew, Yahya, on the ground and picked him up,” Abdul Karim said. “Half his face was ripped apart.” Nearby lay his grandson and namesake. He was 14 months old. His hand was nearly severed, and he was covered in blood but still alive. When he saw him, Abdul Karim lost consciousness. An ambulance arrived and took the infant to the hospital. Family members later found the bodies of Naim, his wife and his six daughters in the rubble. They were all in his bedroom, as if they had gone there to wake him up after the first explosion. The body of Abdul Karim’s 18-year-old daughter, Hadeel, was also in the debris. By nightfall, the Balata family had buried their dead in the cemetery, steps away from the house. On Wednesday morning, the baby died of his injuries in the hospital. He was later placed in one of the graves. At a memorial service Wednesday afternoon, Allah Balata sat solemnly in a chair. Now, he was the last surviving member of his family, the only one who will carry on his father’s name. Allah showed a photo in his cellphone of his brother Yahya proudly clutching a certificate for scoring high marks on his final exams. Neighbors and local officials, in interviews, said the family was not linked to Hamas or any other Palestinian militant faction. Abdul Karim, a driver with a Palestinian news agency, said he had no ties to the insurgency and does not understand why his house was attacked. There were dozens of men at the service, held in a building where 52 members of the Balata family lived. But unlike at most wakes in Gaza, there were no calls for revenge, no vocal denouncements of Israel. There were also no Hamas flags or Palestinian flags. When asked whether he felt Hamas was partly responsible for his family’s woes, Abdul Karim did not


Market Basket isn’t just a company, it’s a community

Thousands of Market Basket supermarket employees and supporters hold a rally Friday, July 25, 2014 in Tewksbury, Mass., in support of ousted CEO Arthur T. Demoulas. The company's board of directors is holding a meeting in Boston. A decades-long family feud among owners of the privately held chain has led to a worker revolt, customer boycotts and empty shelves in the chain's grocery stores in Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. (Chitose Suzuki/AP) Who is a company? If we speak of the men and women of Boeing, say, or Wal-Mart or Market Basket, a supermarket chain in New England, where this question is being posed most emphatically of late, are we referring to the company’s employees? Its founders? Its founders’ grandchildren, even if they play no role in the company’s endeavors? Its shareholders, even if they hold the company’s stock just for a few months or, in the case of high-frequency trading, a fraction of a second? If this is a question of control, the answer is clearly the shareholders or, at privately held companies, the owners. Over the past 40 years, however, as the idea has taken hold that companies are supposed to be run solely for the benefit of shareholders, even if it comes at the expense of the company’s workers and their communities, this control has hollowed out the U.S. economy. That’s why the eruption at Market Basket over the past few weeks poses such important questions. At the same time, the Market Basket uprising is sui generis: The company’s workers (none of them unionized), managers and consumers have all but shut the chain down in an attempt to persuade the owners to rescind their firing of Market Basket’s president. Workers and shoppers demonstrating — 6,000 of them at one rally — to bring back a chief executive? What country are we talking about? And what manner of chief executive? The executive in question, Arthur T. Demoulas, won the allegiance of both his employees and shoppers by delivering the kind of goods — good food, good pay, low prices — that most CEOs feel compelled to subordinate to the gods of quarterly reports and shareholder value. At Market Basket, by contrast, clerks start at $12 an hour, experienced cashiers can make more than $40,000 a year and even part-timers are enrolled in profit-sharing plans, and, yet, the goods on the shelves go for less than they would at


Japan poised to impose sanctions on Russia over Ukraine

say Japan’s decision to coordinate policy with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which has put funding for all new projects in Russia on ice, could have a sizeable effect. The cabinet is expected to endorse the sanctions in the coming days, perhaps as soon as Friday, and release details. Russia did not mince words in responding to Japan’s moves, calling them “unfriendly and short-sighted.” “Tokyo’s imposing new sanctions against Russia, no matter what reservations were arranged, will inevitably harm the entire complex of bilateral relations and will cause regression,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, according to Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency. “Japan needs to take this into consideration,” the ministry added, accusing Tokyo of following Washington’s orders. The situation is tricky for Abe, whose country is a major U.S. ally but who has gone to great lengths to mend fences with Putin. Last year, he became the first Japanese leader in a decade to visit Moscow. “So much of Abe’s foreign policy has been invested in improving ties with Russia,” said James Brown, an expert on Russian-Japanese relations at Temple University’s campus in Tokyo, who recently published a report called “Hajime.” “But Russia is not going to climb down, so Japan is really stuck.” Closer relations For almost two years, relations between Japan and Russia have been on an upswing. The rapprochement began in 2011 under a previous government, but it has accelerated sharply since Abe assumed power. The two nations have even managed to put aside an old, festering territorial dispute over a small chain of islands between the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. Although other world leaders, including President Obama, stayed away from the Sochi Winter Olympics in February, mainly over Putin’s human rights record, Abe was at his side. Meanwhile, the Japanese leader, facing strained relations with China and South Korea, has been looking for new friends in the neighborhood. Add to that Japan’s need for new energy supplies since the 2011 nuclear disaster and Russia’s desire to develop its far east, and it’s a recipe for political pragmatism. Bilateral trade hit a record high of $34.8 billion last year, according to the Japanese government. A significant chunk of that was because of fuel imports. Since the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility led to all of Japan’s nuclear power plants being shut down, the country has had


to climb down, so Japan is really stuck.” Closer relations For almost two years, relations between Japan and Russia have been on an upswing. The rapprochement began in 2011 under a previous government, but it has accelerated sharply since Abe assumed power. The two nations have even managed to put aside an old, festering territorial dispute over a small chain of islands between the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. Although other world leaders, including President Obama, stayed away from the Sochi Winter Olympics in February, mainly over Putin’s human rights record, Abe was at his side. Meanwhile, the Japanese leader, facing strained relations with China and South Korea, has been looking for new friends in the neighborhood. Add to that Japan’s need for new energy supplies since the 2011 nuclear disaster and Russia’s desire to develop its far east, and it’s a recipe for political pragmatism. Bilateral trade hit a record high of $34.8 billion last year, according to the Japanese government. A significant chunk of that was because of fuel imports. Since the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility led to all of Japan’s nuclear power plants being shut down, the country has had to rely on fossil fuels for energy. Japan now accounts for one-third of the liquefied natural gas market and gets about 10 percent of its supplies from Russia, according to Brown of Temple University. “Abe’s greatest risk in sanctioning Russia may not be diplomatic but, rather, economic,” said Sheila Smith, a senior Japan fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Japan’s growing dependency on Russian energy will suffer if sanctions continue to deepen.” If Japan’s proposed sanctions — which Washington has welcomed — are going to cause problems with its relations with Russia, it should be apparent soon enough. Putin is to visit Japan in the fall, and Moscow has made it clear that it is up to Tokyo to uninvite him. “Nothing has been decided” about whether the visit will go ahead, Yoshihide Suga, the chief cabinet secretary, said this week. A cause for concern For now, Tokyo’s proposed sanctions and the measures announced by the United States and the E.U. are causing consternation in Japan’s business sector. They could particularly imperil energy projects. Japan’s biggest conglomerates have started internally reviewing which of their joint ventures could be affected, according to an official at one major corporation who spoke


Take happy hour outdoors at Denizens, Republic and Piazza Beer Garden

The beer garden at the new Denizens Brewing Co. in Silver Spring seats 150 people. The brewery will begin producing its own beer in mid-August. (Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) A brewpub with room for 150 people outdoors. A restaurant’s off-street rear patio serving killer oysters and local brews. A facelift and expansion for a German-inspired beer garden. These aren’t the latest additions to the H Street corridor or downtown destinations: They’re three happy hour spots inside the Beltway in Montgomery County, Md., and they’re perfect for the next time you find yourself looking to meet friends for a drink in the sun. Denizens Brewing Co. 1115 East-West Hwy., Silver Spring. 301-557-9818. www.denizensbrewingco.com. Open at 4 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday and 3 p.m. Friday-Sunday. Montgomery County’s newest brewery and brewpub opened a 150-seat beer garden near the intersection of Georgia Avenue and East-West Highway in mid-July, even though the on-site brewery won’t be up and running until later this month. In the meantime, a hoppy, citrusy rye IPA and a refreshing ESB-style ale are being brewed at Beltway Brewing Company in Ashburn. The full lineup of Denizens beers will debut sometime in September. The Piazza Beer Garden in Bethesda was expanded and redecorated for World Cup viewing, and is one of the most attractive outdoor spaces in the neighborhood. (Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) With most of the indoor space also under construction, Denizens’ biggest attraction is its outdoor seating. Long, Oktoberfest-style communal tables and benches fill most of the patio, with a smattering of round patio furniture and picnic tables around the edges. Servers bring pints of Denizens beers or guest ales from the likes of Allagash and Brewers Art, though when all the tables are packed, it’s easier to get up and place orders yourself, either at the small outdoor bar or the counter inside. (There are no happy hour specials; house pints cost $6.50.) The BBQ Bus food truck will be in charge of the permanent kitchen, which is scheduled to open next week. Until then, meals will be provided by a rotating cast of food trucks. Go Fish will bring crabcakes and fish tacos on Saturday, and Holy Crepes will be there Sunday. Customers also can bring their own food, either from home or local restaurants. Piazza Beer Garden 7401 Woodmont Ave., Bethesda. 202-841-9114. www.piazzabeergarden.com. Open at 4 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 3 p.m. Friday and 1 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Let’s be honest:


The $20 Diner visits Richmond for Washington Redskins training camp

that the kitchen’s superb tacos were more Mexican-style and its pupusas were heavier on cheese than loroco, the flower buds common to Salvadoran cuisine. Still, we had few complaints. 5761 Hull Street Rd. 10.2 miles from training camp. 804-276-3595. Price range: $2-$12.99. Brewed Richmond Hardywood Brewery worker Andrew Menninger rings up a beer sale as Kenzi Korman looks over his shoulder during a quieter moment during the brewery's weekly food court. Hardywood Brewery sponsors a weekly food court and invites various food trucks to come and offer their food in its Richmond parking lot while it sells beer and other drinks inside. (Timothy C. Wright/For the Washington Post) Two years ago, Virginia’s General Assembly passed legislation to allow breweries to sell beer by the glass, even if they don’t have a restaurant on-site. The change in law has led to a booming craft beer scene in the Richmond area, which has grown from one brewery to approximately 12, including Isley Brewing, Strangeways Brewing and Triple Crossing Brewing, with more on the way. Hardywood Park Craft Brewery A customer at the Hardywood Food Truck Court walks past with her brick oven pizza made by the folks at Pizza Tonight. (Timothy C. Wright/For the Washington Post) When I visited Hardywood, the brewery had just released the latest in its reserve series, Virginia Blackberry, a Belgian-style white ale brewed with blackberries from Hanover County. The wheat beer is a perfect summer quaff, dry and lightly sweet without an overt fruity character. I brought home four bottles of the stuff. But the brewery, which was co-founded by a pair of former home-brewers, Eric McKay and Patrick Murtaugh, has many other styles, based both in the Old and New World: Hardywood Singel, a Belgian abbey-style blonde ale and the brewery’s flagship beer; Hardywood Cream Ale in cans, a nod to New Jersey-based Krueger Brewing, which sold the first canned beer in Richmond in 1935; and a line of products in its “barrel series,” in which beers are conditioned in used bourbon barrels. If you don’t get RGIII’s autograph during Fan Appreciation Day on Saturday, this is where you should drown your sorrows. (Or even show off the quarterback’s signature if you’re so lucky.) 2408 Ownby Ln. 0.7 miles from training camp. Less than two months old, Ardent Craft Ales doesn’t yet have a line of beers to compare to Hardywood’s. But it does have one


Don’t raid soldiers’ benefits to offset hardware costs

In Walter Pincus’s July 29 Fine Print column, “Time to look at military personnel costs ,” he pitted weapons systems against military pay and benefits, as if those serving or who served two decades or more in uniform are a liability to our “country’s defense posture.” Nothing could be further from the truth. His “guns vs. butter” comparison is a false choice. To ensure that we maintain a strong defense posture, Congress has a constitutional obligation to fund not just weapons systems but also the pay and benefits to those that operate or have operated those systems. Asking Americans to choose between six more F-16 squadrons or a cost-of-living adjustment to working-age retirees is akin to asking soldiers to pay for their own bullets. Leveraging pay and benefits for those in uniform as the “bill payer” has led us to the brink of a retention crisis, when years of pay caps and benefit cuts have nearly decimated retention and recruiting. The past decade of plus-ups to pay, housing allowances, retirement and health care have kept retention and recruiting from going into the ditch. Those in uniform are not the problem or a liability. They have always been our nation’s answer. Norb Ryan, Alexandria The writer is president and chief executive of the Military Officers Association of America.


News reports on ‘kissing bug disease’ risk in N.Va. are overstated, health officials say

Health officials are cautioning that news reports that the parasitic disease known as chagas could be prevalent in Northern Virginia are overstated. The state doesn’t report cases of the illness, also known as the “kissing bug disease,” because it so rarely diagnosed and is very rarely contracted in the United States, said Margaret Tipple, a public health physician with the state Health Department. The news reports have been prompted in part by a recent magazine article in which a District cardiologist refers to Northern Virginia as a possible “ground zero” for the disease. Chagas is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which is transmitted to humans through bites from the triatomine bug, which is common in poor living conditions within parts of Latin America. The disease is usually asymptomatic, and many of those who acquire it never become ill. But in some people, it can lead to chronic conditions affecting the cardiovascular and digestive systems, resulting in death. The disease is endemic to Central and South America, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 8 million people are infected worldwide. Chagas can be spread through congenital transfer from mother to child, contaminated blood transfusions, infected organ transplants, laboratory accidents or, in rare cases, contaminated food or drink, according to the CDC. In an interview with The Washington Post on Wednesday, cardiologist Rachel Marcus elaborated on her comments in the Atlantic. She said she did not intend to imply that there were a large number of confirmed cases in Northern Virginia. The area is a likely place to find the disease because of the sizable number of residents who have emigrated from Bolivia, where chagas is a major health problem, she said. An informal study she conducted seemed to support this conclusion, she said. Out of 66 Hispanic immigrants she screened for the disease, 29 percent tested positive. Out of the 66, 34 had come from regions in Bolivia where the disease is prevalent. Seventeen of the those 34 had chagas, she said. This led her to surmise that there needed to be increased awareness of the disease and the need for testing and treatment. Marcus added that, overall, the risk of someone in Northern Virginia getting the disease, is exceedingly low because the disease does not spread through casual contact. “It’s not something that should make people fear their neighbor,” she said of chagas. “If there


The meat-mushroom blend makes sense

cheaper by putting soy in it,” Minor says. “This is revolutionary because it’s so simple. It’s meat and mushrooms. They go together like peanut butter and jelly.” Clearly, Minor has skin in the game. If chefs and restaurant operators see what the industry calls “blendability” as an easy way to serve more-healthful food, his members are going to sell a lot more mushrooms. But then, the man does have a point. In an industry that thrives on giving customers what they want, the best way to get people to improve their diets is to find healthful foods that don’t taste like a sacrifice. No wonder, then, that the Cheesecake Factory and Seasons 52 restaurant chains recently added meat-mushroom burgers to their menus. Institutions including Yale, Harvard and the University of Southern California use mushrooms in Bolognese sauces, taco fillings and chilies. Compass Group, one of the world’s largest food-service operators, is encouraging its cafes to do the same; more than 300 locations have already signed on. Mixing meat and mushrooms, Minor admits, is hardly a novel idea. Beef dishes such as Wellington and stroganoff are classics because the pairing with mushrooms is a natural one. But positioning blends as a healthful and more eco-friendly alternative is new. The evidence is compelling: Substituting mushrooms for just one-quarter of a recipe’s beef content reduces calories, fat and sodium by about a third. Because livestock production and distribution accounts for an estimated 14.5 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide, eating less meat is also environmentally responsible. The push for blending started in 2011, when the Mushroom Council, an industry trade group, joined a Culinary Institute of America initiative called the Healthy Menus R&D Collaborative. Participants, which include McDonald’s, Panera, Compass and Cargill, aim to develop practical ways to expand healthful dining choices. Chefs at the CIA in Napa, Calif., worked to develop recipes that substituted mushrooms for ground beef. At an early tasting, Minor says, the dishes “tasted good, but the texture was wrong.” For a follow-up, chefs quartered button mushrooms, cooked them, then minced them to mimic the texture of ground beef. “That,” he says, “was the aha moment.” The technique can be applied in any kitchen. Among the most enthusiastic adopters have been school cafeterias. In 2010, Congress passed tougher federal nutrition guidelines governing school meals, and food-service directors have been scrambling to find ways to cut back on calories and fat


Man accused in fatal hit-and-run of U-Md. student will go on trial in December

A Cheverly man charged in the January hit-and-run crash that killed a University of Maryland student will go to trial in December, authorities said. Officials announced the trial date for 29-year-old Liam Adepo on Friday morning after a judge set his bond at $10,000. Adepo faces several charges in connection with the death of 22-year-old Cory Hubbard, including negligent homicide, driving while impaired and failure to remain at the scene of an accident, state prosecutors said. A jury indicted him on July 22, court records show. Hubbard was crossing the busy stretch of Baltimore Avenue near Knox Road in College Park on Jan. 17 when a dark sedan struck him at about 2 a.m., police said. Hubbard was not in the crosswalk, but the driver didn’t stop after striking the college senior, authorities said. Adepo turned himself in to police about 14 hours after Hubbard was struck, police say. The death of Hubbard and other pedestrians being struck while crossing U.S. Route 1 in College Park prompted Maryland transportation officials to lower the speed limit from 30 mph to 25 mph, a change that took effect Friday. In July, 21-year-old Janelle Marie Oni died in what police called a hit-and-run on Baltimore Avenue. And in April, 23-year-old Carlos Pacanins was hit while crossing the street in the same area. The driver in the crash that killed Pacanins stayed on the scene, police said. Get updates on your area delivered via e-mail


Driven mostly by Howard U. musicians, DuPont Brass hit its stride on D.C. streets

without tips. Then came the challengers. “Everyone got hip to that spot because of us,” Neal said. “There is always someone we have to battle with to get our spot back.” Drummers, violinists, guitarists — DuPont Brass has taken on all comers. “People always give up . . . not to be cocky, but they didn’t sound as good as we do,” Easter said. “It’s all about drive and desire,” Daniel said. “For a lot of us, this is the career that we’ve chosen. There is no offseason.” After practice, the band usually unwinds at Daniel’s house in the District’s Bloomingdale area. Things can get quite crowded in the house. Snare drums are stacked in the living room. Saxophones and trumpets are lined up against the wall in the hallway. On an early summer night, Neal and Gossett wash frozen chicken and put it on a George Foreman grill; they’re skipping cookouts and parties in favor of a three-hour rehearsal later that evening. “We already understand what works for us and what’s necessary,” Bailey said. “When we start playing, people are going to hear how hard we worked. When we see people invest in us financially and emotionally, that makes the three-hour rehearsals all worth it.” The performance schedules are planned by Gossett, currently a graduate student at Louisiana State University. Gossett takes time away from his studies every day to plan the band’s activities. “I’m about to let you all know now: I’m about to send four very long texts,” reads his warning message to the band, preceding a detailed read-out of the group’s upcoming itinerary, which he sends through GroupMe, a mass text messaging app. Gossett also helps negotiate the band’s fees. It’s an important aspect of management, especially after experiences with some shady business deals early in the group’s career. He can’t attend every gig because he’s in school at LSU, but he makes it back for the big ones. When DuPont Brass played a wedding in the District last year, the couple flew Gossett up for the performance. “Definitely one of our best gigs so far,” he said. “This is what we do. This is what I’ll do until I die,” Bell said. “If someone asked me to pick between making music and breathing, I’d rather choke and spend my last breath on my horn. What would be the point of living if I can’t play?”


There is no health crisis from immigrant children at the border

Dr Meeta Khan, wears a face mask as she examines a respiratory patient at the Rush University Hospital emergency department. (Charles Rex Arbogast/AP) The writer is the scientific director of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. John Armstrong, Florida’s top health official , sent a letter last month to the heads of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency — taking the extra step of copying the media — requesting that they tell him how many of the children who recently crossed the U.S. border from Mexico are in Florida and what illnesses they have. In asserting that this information was “urgently needed and is vital to guarding the health and safety of Florida communities, ” Armstrong fanned anxieties that the influx of children from Central and South America poses a large-scale threat to public health. Likewise, Georgia Rep. Phil Gingrey, a chair of the GOP Doctors Caucus, penned a letter last month to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden requesting a national threat assessment, claiming he had heard reports of children crossing the border “carrying deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus, and tuberculosis.” The congressman later added smallpox to his list of diseases of concern. Let’s everybody calm down. No one has ever been infected with Ebola in the Western Hemisphere, dengue fever isn’t transmitted from human to human, only one confirmed case of flu has been found so far among the children and smallpox has been eradicated worldwide. That leaves tuberculosis, an infectious disease that actually is of great public health concern. TB is an airborne illness, caused by a bacterium that can infect any part of the body, though it typically affects the lungs. Symptoms include severe weight loss, lethargy and bloody coughing. It can be fatal without treatment. I certainly share the concern that the American public is not adequately protected from TB. But as a doctor who led the response to an actual TB epidemic in New York City in the 1990s, I feel compelled to explain that tuberculosis already exists in the United States. It has always been here. By far the most effective way of protecting Americans from it is to provide the public health system with the resources it needs to treat and prevent the disease in our communities every day. The United States faced a TB


Md. man dies in Liberia of another illness after Ebola epidemic prevents evacuation

Maryland native Nathaniel Dennis, 24, did not have Ebola. But when he died Wednesday morning in Liberia after a weeklong coma, unable to leave the country for treatment, his family said they counted him a victim of the deadly virus. “Ebola shouldn’t have the power to kill people without the disease,” said Norwood Dennis IV, 25, his older brother by just 364 days. Dennis, of Columbia, Md., died in Sinkor, Liberia after testing negative for Ebola. Since he was discovered comatose last week, his family had been fighting to fly him out to Ghana or to the United States to receive attention from a neurologist at a better-equipped facility, but travel restrictions in place to stop the spread of Ebola kept him trapped. Dennis was working at a local radio station in Monrovia, pursuing his dream of a career in music and living with his mother, who had moved back to Liberia a few years ago to teach and help rebuild her native country after the civil wars. Early in the morning last week, his mother walked into his room and found Dennis unconscious but breathing. Dennis’s 27-year-old sister, Natasha Dennis, said her family had always called the youngest brother the “miracle child” because he was born three months premature and underwent brain surgery as an infant. She said they did not yet know the specific cause of his death, but suspected he had multiple seizures before falling into a coma. “He was our baby brother, I always was the protector,” Natasha said, apologizing for crying. At first Dennis was placed in quarantine, where he was tested for ebola for three days, during which time his mother was unable to see him, his sister said. When he was released after testing negative, the family transferred him to a different hospital that they said did not have the tools to perform dialysis when Dennis’s kidney function deteriorated. “I don’t know if he would have survived, but he deserved that chance,” his sister said. “He deserved the chance for us to fight with him and maybe save him.” The family had been in constant contact with the U.S. embassy in Liberia after Nathanial became ill but because of the fear of Ebola’s spread, they were unable to evacuate. The State Department was unable to comment before publication. Norwood Dennis IV said he was praying for the two Americans that the State Department


As the West steps up sanctions, Russia starts banning food

Russia. Service staff work at a McDonald’s in Moscow. Russian officials are considering banning some items from U.S. fast-food chains. (Denis Sinyakov/Reuters) As evidence of the link to sanctions, Sonin pointed to the ink and airtime that have been devoted to publicizing the recent food bans in state-run media. “You can tell by the way it was reported,” he said. “It would not be such a very big thing if this was a local issue.” Indeed, Russian media has been almost as committed to reporting the unfolding serial drama of food regulations as it has to documenting the tit-for-tat accusations of cross-border shelling between Russia and Ukraine. The first significant restrictions were directed at dairy products from Ukraine. Many of those products have been blocked from Russian markets since Ukrainians in Kiev’s Independence Square ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in February; the rest were formally curtailed in late July. Fruits and vegetables from Moldova, which, like Ukraine, agreed this summer to formally affiliate itself with the European Union, were the next to hit the chopping block, achievingproduce-non-grata status around the same time. In the past few days, the scope of the limitations has expanded rapidly: As of Friday, Russian officials have banned most grain imports from Ukraine, stopped bringing in produce from Poland and are murmuring about potentially expanding the food blacklist to include European fruits and vegetables, U.S. chickens, and flagship items from U.S. fast-food restaurant chains such as McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC, according to reports. Separately this week, Wendy’s announced it would be closing its locations in Russia. That the Russian government has not formally slapped the United States or the E.U. with blanket food bans hasn’t kept state news outlets from speculating that Russia could get along just fine without importing the food products in question. Russia gets about a quarter of its produce from the E.U., but these products could be replaced, a Russia 24 news channel report claimed, with imports from places such as Turkey, Israel, China, Iran and Argentina. The situation has befuddled agricultural exporters, leaving them wondering how their products could have run afoul of Russian regulations overnight — and how they became apparent pawns in a diplomatic game. James Sumner, president of the USA Poultry & Egg Export Council, has been involved in poultry exports to Russia for almost a quarter-century, since the days when the country bought about 40 percent