Rio’s Olympic Opening Ceremonies had low budget, high appeal

cities. The show really found its mojo when Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen cat-walked solo the length of the stadium to the tune of “The Girl from Ipanema,” what she had called “the longest runway I have ever been on.” The festivities livened into hip-hop dance routines and an everybody-join-in dance party. The Olympic delegations marched out, beginning with Greece. The athletes who paraded into the stadium, pumping fists and holding smartphones, represented 206 nations in almost as many colors and styles. Athletes from Cameroon wore traditional flowing robes; those from communist-led Cuba had outfits fashioned by a French luxury footwear designer; those from Australia wore seersucker and shorts as if preparing for an afternoon of yachting. The team from Tonga was led by an oiled-up, shirtless taekwondo champion who carried the flag. The U.S. athletes came out at 9:30 p.m., wearing white pants, blue blazers and striped shirts and led by superstar swimmer Michael Phelps. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, the most senior American official in attendance, held his cellphone high to record the scene. One of the biggest roars of the night came for a 10-member team of refugees, a group competing for the first time in the Olympics. That roar only amplified when the final team— the Brazilians — emerged. Many people had expected the Olympic flame to be lit by 75-year-old soccer legend Pelé, but he said that he would not participate in the ceremony because of his health. Instead, that honor went to Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima, a Brazilian former marathoner who won a bronze medal in the 2004 Olympics in Athens. The show was in many ways a respite from a drumbeat of bad news. Rio’s preparations for the Games were marked by endless trouble: sluggish venue construction, rising crime and coastal waters so polluted that Olympic swimmers were advised to avoid swallowing even a few spoonfuls. The last few days have been full of demonstrations, an anti-Olympics backlash driven by people who felt the time was not right to spend money on sports. Protesters blocked the torch’s progress as it made its way around the country and attempted to douse it with fire extinguishers and buckets of water; in a few cases they were met by police firing tear gas and rubber bullets. Just hours before the Opening Ceremonies, security forces fired tear gas and a percussion grenade after young people set fire


Teaching in China leads to love and lifelong travel partners

this is happening!’ ” About seven months earlier, both Kim and Alex had come to China with a one-way ticket, looking for something. But it wasn’t love. They were new graduates and had moved to Beijing to teach at the Tsinghua International School. Kim, who is half Chinese, had done a semester abroad in Beijing while at Brown University and wanted to get back to her roots. Alex had graduated from Columbia University, but he was having a hard time finding a job during the recession. He wanted to do something, anything, so when the teaching position opened in China he didn’t hesitate. He didn’t speak any Chinese. “I found out on a Monday. I was in China on a Friday,” Alex says. “I didn’t know anything. I could order beer. I could order lamb. I could sometimes count to 10.” Kim, who was teaching English, was covering Alex’s math classes and met him the day he arrived, jet-lagged and suitcases still in hand. She thought he was cute, and soon he was absorbed into her social circle. They and their friends would go out five or six nights a week, exploring the streets of Beijing, trying different restaurants and seeing all of the major sights. One favorite for dinner was Ping Ting for high-end sushi (and a secret all-you-can-eat price for native speakers.) They discovered an incredible noodle place that was literally a hole in the wall: You could get in only by climbing through a pulled-apart gate. Kim and Alex were getting closer, with Beijing as their playground. One night out, Alex held Kim’s hand. Then they went to dinner, just the two of them. When the school year ended, they hadn’t agreed to another year of teaching, but neither was ready to leave China. That’s when Kim brought up the backpacking idea. “It was not a very typical thing to suggest,” she says. “ ‘Hey, do you want to grab your backpack and it will be just me and you for six weeks, with no one else to talk to since you don’t know the language?’ But, luckily, he said okay.” “I wasn’t doing anything else,” Alex says with a laugh. They survived their rough bus ride and, over the next six weeks, visited 15 cities in six provinces. In each city, they opened a “Lonely Planet” guidebook, pointed to a page at random and chose their


Plunge for distance, tug of war: The Olympics' sad history of defunct medal events

we’re like, ‘Yeah, but we’d be so old,’ ” Johnston said. “How are we going to do this? And so maybe that’ll be our event. I don’t have to be fit to do that.” “I’ll be 70 pounds heavier, just like, floating across the water,” Ipsen said. “Our arms can be flappy, so it’ll be kind of like a bat wing.” Ipsen laughed so hard he made no sound and doubled over at the waist. “Oh, man,” he said. “I can’t wait.” While plunge for distance had a short-lived Olympic existence, other discontinued sports had longer tenures. Tug of war, for example, took place in all six Olympics from 1900 to 1920. The sport disappeared, Wallechinsky said, owing to rampant controversy: Some competitors wore illegal, weighted boots. “I believe they should bring tug of war back,” Wallechinsky said. “It’s something everybody can relate to.” People are pulling on that rope, so to speak. Organizers considered tug of war as an additional event for Tokyo 2020 before five other sports were chosen. “Most people who have witnessed a high-class tug of war competition can appreciate that it aspires to the Olympic traditions of strength, skill and stamina as well as a lot of technique,” England Tug of War Association Secretary Mick Copper said in an email. “Unfortunately, tug of war wasn’t included, but the sport will keep aiming for this goal.” Tug of war, like many defunct Olympic sports and a raft of other offbeat games, finds a home on the international stage at the World Games, a quadrennial competition that takes place one year after the Olympics. The World Games could share a slogan with the “DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story” fictional network ESPN 8, The Ocho: “If it’s almost a sport, we’ve got it here.” World Games events include canoe polo, trampoline gymnastics, lifesaving, fistball, floorball and flying disc. Nobody has yet deduced a way to play flying disc in a canoe, but maybe that’s an idea for Wroclaw 2017. The line between “almost a sport” and Olympic-worthy, though, is more arbitrary than you might assume. Rugby sevens, which will make its Olympic debut Saturday, was part of the previous World Games in 2013. So was sport climbing, which will included at the Tokyo 2020 Games. Let it not be forgotten that the venerable Olympic sport of modern pentathlon combines pistol shooting, fencing, freestyle swimming, show jumping and cross-country


Do transgender athletes have an unfair advantage at the Olympics?

any restrictions (based on the sexist assumption, I suppose, that trans men could never dominate their sports). Trans women, meanwhile, are no longer required to undergo gender-reassignment surgery to compete in female divisions, and the previously mandated two-year wait after transitioning has been jettisoned. To compete, a trans woman athlete is required only to declare her gender as “female” and have testosterone levels comparable to or below those of cisgender women. (Cisgender refers to folks whose biological sex matches their gender identity, the opposite of transgender.) These long-awaited changes are a big step forward in creating an equitable playing field — and they bring the IOC in line with the NCAA, which invoked a similar policy for college athletes. Mosier attends the BODY At The ESPYs pre-party on July 12, 2016. (Dave Mangels/Getty Images) Still, I understand why this rule change is so controversial, especially for female athletes. In my mind, I first imagined a young Bruce Jenner, tall and muscular, competing as Caitlyn Jenner and snaring all the gold medals in the women’s events. I imagined wrong, as it turns out, because I was unaware of the medical science behind the IOC decision. One competitive cisgender female runner, who did not want her name used, explained how “incredibly unfair” this is to her, attributing the rule change to the IOC’s “trying to be politically correct.” Another cisgender female athlete, former Olympic judo competitor Ronda Rousey, went further (and got graphic) when she complained to the media about her competitor Fallon Fox, a trans woman, claiming: “She can try hormones, chop her pecker off, but it’s still the same bone structure a man has. It’s an advantage. I don’t think it’s fair.” But here’s why we all had it wrong: The first-ever study of transgender athletes showed that the hormone therapy that facilitates male-to-female transition does more than just suppress testosterone. Published last year in the Journal of Sporting Cultures and Identities, the study showed that as testosterone levels approach female norms, trans women experience a decrease in muscle mass, bone density and other physical characteristics. “Together these changes lead to a loss of speed, strength and endurance — all key components of athleticism,” the study’s author, Joanna Harper, wrote in The Washington Post. Harper, who is chief medical physicist at Oregon’s Providence Portland Medical Center, a trans athlete and a participant in the IOC meeting that overhauled the trans


Orioles overcome shoddy defense, shaky relief to beat White Sox

Pedro Alvarez belted a 452-foot blast in the eighth inning — the longest at U.S. Cellular Field this season. (Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press) CHICAGO — It still wasn’t enough to stop them from sealing a 7-5 win over the Chicago White Sox, thanks to a pair of home runs by streaking designated hitter Pedro Alvarez and a 16-hit barrage. Alvarez’s second home run kicked off a three-run eighth inning that extended the Orioles’ lead to 7-2, but a pair of walks and two base hits led to the rare mid-inning removal of reliever Darren O’Day, who was charged with three runs before the White Sox ran themselves out of the inning. White Sox center fielder Adam Eaton grounded out to first base with men on second and third and one out in the home half of the eighth inning, but catcher Dioner Navarro was caught off third base and doubled up to end the inning. Closer Zach Britton recorded his 34th save in 34 tries, with starter Yovani Gallardo earning his fourth win of the season. Alvarez ascending With two more home runs, Alvarez now has 18 on the season and six in his last five games. The designated hitter’s eighth-inning blast was measured by Statcast at 452 feet, his longest of the season and the longest this season at U.S. Cellular Field. Rude greeting for Gonzalez There might be handshakes and hugs later this weekend, but the Orioles didn’t exactly greet former teammate Miguel Gonzalez warmly. Gonzalez, who started for the White Sox and came to Chicago after the Orioles released him in spring training, allowed four runs — three earned — on 10 hits to suffer the loss. He pitched six innings, but it wasn’t enough Friday. Errors come in bunches Friday won’t be going on the Orioles’ defensive highlight reel. Catcher Matt Wieters has been throwing base stealers out with regularity lately, but bounced a throw into center field in the first inning, and Adam Jones was saved from an error of his own when his errant throw to third base hit the netting in front of the dugout. The White Sox didn’t score on the error, but they did plate their fourth in the eighth inning on a throwing error by second baseman Jonathan Schoop on an attempt at a double play. The Orioles committed four errors for the game. — Baltimore Sun


Beer of the Week: Atlas Brew Works Dance of Days

Atlas Brew Works Dance of Days, a hoppy wheat ale. (Photo courtesy of Atlas Brew Works) Most breweries make a summer seasonal beer. This year, Atlas Brew Works decided to make three: a gose, a rye saison and a hoppy wheat ale, all released in limited batches. “The idea was to throw them all out there and see how it goes,” says founder Justin Cox. The wheat ale, named Dance of Days, is the one most worth seeking out in the Northeast D.C. brewery’s new tasting room or on tap at a local bar. It’s brewed and dry-hopped with a mix of Mosaic and Citra hops, a seemingly inescapable combination that provides a dank, citrusy nose and juicy orange and peach flavors. But the soft, smooth mouth feel is what sets this beer apart from others with a similar hop bill. This is Atlas’s first wheat beer, and Cox credits a mix of malted and raw wheat for making the body so lush and appealing. Dance of Days — named after a song by 1980s D.C. punk band Embrace — was intended to be brewed only once. However, Atlas made a second batch last week, which should help this excellent beer stick around just a bit longer. — Fritz Hahn Atlas Brew Works Dance of Days. atlasbrewworks.com. $6 per pint and $12 per growler fill at the brewery. More from Food: Beer Column archive


A touch abruptly ends Washington fencer Kat Holmes’s medal hopes — for now

a hit and this time it was clear there was no contact. “Mentally that didn’t really upset me,” Holmes said. “It [ticked] me off a little because I was like, I think she didn’t get that first touch. But those are things you can’t control. As an athlete, you really have to focus on what you can control. I asked for video review. That’s the extent of what I can do. Then when her blade wasn’t working, it definitely didn’t hit me, I think the ref realized I was right on that call. But you can’t get hung up on those things because there’s really no point.” The two fencers kept exchanging hits, Holmes answering each of Kirpu’s points. The two were cautious and tactical, their familiarity apparent throughout the match. “I had a plan, I executed the plan,” Holmes said. “To a large extent, it worked. In epee, anything can happen. Particularly in sudden death, anything can happen.” The 24-year old Estonian led 4-3 heading into the final minute of the third period. With just 54 seconds remaining, Holmes attacked and managed to tie the score and force the extra period. She immediately pumped her fist and let out a howl. “I think my mental game has always been a strong component of my game,” Holmes said. “My nerves in overtime weren’t any different than when I woke up this morning. When I set foot on the strip, I know what I have to do. It didn’t work out this time, but that’s not due to nerves.” The Opening Ceremonies kick off the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro Holmes’s Olympics are not over. She’ll compete in the team event on Thursday. The American team won bronze at the London Games and again will rely on sisters Courtney and Kelley Hurley, in addition to Holmes. Holmes said she’ll take at least a day to catch her breath before returning to the practice strip and prepping for her next Olympic match. With a morning bout on the first day of Olympic action, she sat out Friday’s Opening Ceremonies but said the experience of being in Rio de Janeiro has been exhilarating. “I’ve been to the Youth Olympic Games, the World University Games and the Pan Am Games, all of which were games, multi-sport experiences. But nothing compares to the stature and grandeur of the Olympics and being on this stage,”


Animal Watch: Going hog wild in the neighborhood

LADUKE DRIVE, Among cases received by the Montgomery County Animal Services Division.


Sam Mikulak leads U.S. on an upside-down day of gymnastics qualifying

a stretcher to applause and an ovation. French team leader Corrine Moustard-Callon confirmed later that Ait Said had broken his left tibia and had been taken to a hospital It was the second time Ait Said, a specialist on rings, had broken a leg during a vault. He suffered three fractures to his right tibia after a fall during a vault at the 2012 European championships and missed the London Olympics as a result. Asked whether he was aware of the extent of the Frenchman’s injury when he stepped up to compete, Mikulak said: “I heard a bunch of ‘Ooos,’ and I just made sure I stayed focused on the routine I was about to do. It’s always a shame when there’s an injury. This sport is absolutely brutal. . . . To go down like that at the Olympic Games is a horrible, horrible thing. But you still have to stay focused, get in the zone and do the gymnastics you came out here to do.” Later in the proceedings, the lights above the high bar dimmed during Brooks’s routine. He finished without a major problem, and Williams, the U.S. coach, chose to continue with the rotation, unsure how long the delay would be if he demanded the lights be fixed between routines. Led by Mikulak, a fist-pumping cheerleader after every rotation, the Americans posted the highest scores in their group on floor exercise, parallel bars and high bar. Trouble came on pommel horse. Mikulak’s lower body seemed to wilt as the routine neared its conclusion. His legs brushed the apparatus, then he fell off entirely just before his dismount. He chalked his hands anew, got back on and finished for a score of 13.1. Brooks managed just 12.766 after his fall. “I got a little ahead of myself,” Mikulak said. “It’s something that I’m just going to make sure I learn from today and don’t do on team finals.” Williams called the overall effort “not bad,” acknowledging his disappointment in the two shaky pommel horse routines. He said his message to the team between now and Monday will be consistency and focus, noting that Monday’s crowd is sure to be raucous in support of the Brazilian men. “It’s going to be really loud, and guys are going to be in the middle of routines when that happens,” he said. “They’re going to have to be ready for that.”


Peet’s Coffee finds ‘Peetniks’ in Washington’s upscale, educated crowd

in grocery stores in the D.C. area.” The fact that Washington also has a large base of transplanted Californians made its metropolitan area an even juicier target for growing the Peet’s brand. The company dates back 50 years to a Dutch business executive named Alfred Peet, who was early to the artisan coffee craze that gave rise to Starbucks and hundreds of caffeine boutiques. Back then, Peet introduced the European tradition of fresh, deep-roasted coffee to a country that often got its caffeine fix in cans, often freeze-dried. “You have this conservative, Calvinist Dutchman who shows up in Berkeley in the midst of student radicalism,” Burwick said. “He changed the way Americans think about coffee.” Peet arrived at the beginnings of the foodie revolution, when Alice Waters began preaching the verities of organic food. That’s part of the brand appeal for Peet’s, and it didn’t come cheap. “We sell for more than $1 a bag above Starbucks’ price,” Burwick said. Peet’s was a publicly traded company for a dozen years before being bought in 2012 by JAB Holding Company, a privately held Luxembourg firm that invests in consumer brands. JAB hired Burwick in January 2013 from Weight Watchers International, where he was president of North American operations. Since then, Peet’s has planted 21 stores in the District, Maryland and Northern Virginia. The company plans to open another store, in Georgetown, next month. Peet’s also signed a sponsorship deal with the Washington Nationals, where its sign graces the outfield and a Peet’s kiosk caffeinates the crowd at Nationals Park. Those stores that have opened in the past year and a half in the Washington area have grown sales annually by 10 to 20 percent. “We think we could have 30 to 40 stores in D.C.,” Burwick said. The arrival of Peet’s cafes has begun what Burwick calls a “virtuous circle” of sales. The 21 cafes have driven consumer traffic to its section of the shelf at the grocery stores in the region, where Burwick said business has grown from a 10 percent share in the Washington premium coffee market to more than 14 percent. “When you’re in a cafe,” he said, “it benefits the grocery. In a grocery, it benefits the cafe.” The company has also expanded its presence to office buildings, where it sells wholesale beans that are brewed and offered in places such as Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.


Kuwait was banned from the Olympics. This is the human price.

going on,” he texted. As the Olympic swim meet churned on in probably the world’s most vivid nation, Madouh forged through relative tedium with a bale of emotions. At least he knows how to haul them around by now. Since October, Kuwait has been banned from international competition because of a select International Olympic Committee no-no: government legislation allowing interference in national sport federations. Thus did forces many tiers beyond Madouh’s control come to negate his realistic Rio daydreams. Thus did the world prove again that when politics butts into Olympics, the ultimate pain visits the athletes. “Everything got obscured now. And nothing can be imagined the same now,” said Madouh, 29, a graduate of Arizona State University. “When you have the suspension, all your dreams and visions and scenes are just clouded and dark.” Bethesda teen sets mark in the 400-meter freestyle; horrific crash mars women’s road race. Athletes who have suffered past bans or boycotts might have spotted themselves in the unmistakable sadness in Madouh’s brown eyes during an interview in Dubai in May — or in the low-key anguish that laced his sentences. They probably would have known empathy, not just sympathy, when he said, “It pinches all of your muscles in your body. . . . Your arms get heavier. You can’t even walk sometimes. You get nauseous. A little stomach upset. But then you get over it, day after day after day, until, like, you don’t feel anything anymore.” And on Sunday, they would have nodded when he texted, “I keep remembering the amount of effort and the money spent into training.” Just two Aprils ago, a spot in Rio de Janeiro did seem plausible. It would mark his second Olympics, eight years after he went to Beijing as the first qualifying swimmer from the smallish country of 2.7 million (and swam an exhilarated personal-best of 22.83 in the 50-meter freestyle). It would be nine years after he swam 23.01 in Indonesia in 2007 to qualify, got out of the pool, saw his mother in the stands, pointed to his time and cried, then went back to Arizona State and entered a meeting room where his teammates applauded. It would be some culmination, and it certainly glimmered up ahead in April 2015 from Eindhoven, Netherlands, where he swam 23.42, 23.35 and 23.29, almost making the final. As noted the news release of his Dubai-based club,


At Rio Olympics, plenty of good seats still available

into the venue. “Even when we had some empty seats in some stadiums, we never had a low atmosphere,” he added. According to organizers, the Olympics have sold 82 percent of their 6.1 million tickets and are running 5 percent above the target for expected income from ticket sales with $345 million in revenue. Three-quarters of Olympic fans so far have been Brazilians. The logistics of getting to the stadiums was surely one hassle, but demand also seemed lackluster. Compared to the frenzied crowds during World Cup matches held in Brazil in 2014, the environment at the Olympic Park, and at outdoor viewing sessions elsewhere in the city, has felt tame. Some Brazilians see the Olympics as a waste of money when their country is suffering through a severe recession, strikes by teachers and political upheaval that recently led to the president’s ouster. Protesters tried to block the arrival of the Olympic torch to Rio, and police fired tear gas and a concussion grenade at protesters on the day of the Opening Ceremonies. “I have some friends that are very negative and think the Olympic Games are not important in this period,” said Mascarenhas, the fan at the tennis match. “Because we have a crisis, we have to spend money on other things like education and health. But I have a group of friends who are very excited, like me. It’s a mix.” The threat of the Zika virus, which hit Brazil hard over the past year, may also have scared away some foreign fans. Several athletes pulled out of the Games citing concerns about Zika. “I haven't even seen a mosquito. Knock on wood,” said Andrew Schwarz, 29, of Chicago, who made it to the first day of the Olympics despite a three-day delay in Miami. He was attending a women’s tennis match with his fiancee, Kristin Johnson, in a triple-decker stadium where 45 of the 48 front-row seats on one side of the court were unoccupied at one point. “I commented today that I thought it looked pretty empty,” Johnson said. “I’ve never attended anything related, so I don't have much to compare it to.” “But it seems crowded everywhere else we go,” Schwarz said. When it came to lines, that was clearly the case. Beyond the security queues, lines with dozens and hundreds of people stretched back from different concession stands in the jumbo parking-lot-size courtyard of


Iowa farmers ripped out prairie; now some hope it can save them

gigantic “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico every summer. In past years, this dead zone has suffocated marine life in an area the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. Some agriculture officials and city leaders believe lawsuits will not stop with Des Moines if gulf cities and states continue to lose fish harvests and tourist dollars to damage from the dead zone. Iowa joined several Midwestern states in an effort to cut the region’s contribution to gulf pollution nearly in half, but participation is voluntary in Iowa, and conservation efforts are lagging. A promising response, but hesitation lingers When Smith stepped off the edge of a soybean field into his prairie strip, he literally took a walk on the wild side. A prairie strip filled with black-eyed Susans lies next to soybeans on Smith's farm. (Andrew Dickinson for The Washington Post) Bees landed and took flight from his sweaty forearms. A chorus of dickcissel birds sang as blackbirds dipped, dived and screeched at humans strolling dangerously close to their nests. Butterflies flapped technicolored wings as they darted between plants. Prairie serves as habitat for hundreds of species. Its milkweed feeds monarch butterflies, which make an epic migration through the United States from Mexico to Canada every year. Monarch populations have dropped dramatically because of insecticides and loss of habitat. Providing wildlife habitat for birds and animals on the decline is one of the driving forces behind a program called STRIPS — Science-based Trials of Rowcrops Integrated with Prairie Strips. Smith said he planted his prairie two years ago because he strongly believed in that philosophy. He received funding from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to help pay for the seed, which is not always easy. Smith said other farmers told him agronomists at local NRCS offices fought them on the idea. “I told [the NRCS] what I was doing . . . they said okay,” Smith recalled. “But you go to another county, and it might be a whole different discussion. They say, ‘Do this, and you don’t do that.’ You don’t get a consistent answer in every office.” What STRIPS proposes is so new “and so innovative,” said Schulte Moore, one of the project’s leaders, that the entire conservation service is not on board. In Washington, officials are watching with interest. But in the counties, some farm advisers roll their eyes. Schulte Moore is hopeful that


Restaurateurs enraged as D.C. bars some fast-casual eateries

where fast-food restaurants could locate, which accelerated their spread. The Washington Post reported in May 1985, when the zoning commission first passed emergency regulations, that the District had 130 fast-food restaurants, 35 more than the previous year. The number of fast-food outlets, in short, had jumped 37 percent in one year. For years after the original restrictions were enacted, DCRA, the enforcer of city regulations, had to work through some bizarre calculations to decide whether a place was a fast-food restaurant. The agency, for example, had to determine whether at least 10 percent of the public floor space was devoted to patrons waiting in line to order. It also had to determine, before the restaurant even opened, whether 60 percent of its food items had been pre-prepared or packaged before a customer placed an order. It’s almost impossible to tell whether the city’s tortuous regulations have had their desired effect: DCRA says fast-food restaurants continue to open at a steady clip, but without reviewing every single certificate of occupancy, the agency can’t determine which ones were issued to traditional fast-food joints and which ones went to fast-casual restaurants such as Cava Mezze or &pizza. One thing’s for certain, though: The rules have led to conflicts. In 2006, the ANC for H Street NE protested the occupancy permits issued to several restaurants, arguing that the establishments were, in fact, fast-food joints. In the case of a Cluck-U Chicken franchise, the ANC said the place had such a “brisk carryout business” that its “off-premises consumption exceeds on-premises consumption.” Hoping to solve the problems it had helped create, the D.C. Zoning Commission amended its food-fast rules in 2007, approving the current three-point definition. A restaurant now has to meet only one of the three criteria to get slapped with the fast-food tag. There are no shades of gray: If a restaurant has a drive-through window, asks for money up front or uses disposable dishware, it’s a fast-food joint. No if, ands or buts. More change, in September For whatever reason, the District has become a fast-casual incubator, not only attracting popular chains such as Nando’s and Bobby’s Burger Palace but also nurturing its own brands such as &pizza, Taylor Gourmet, Sweetgreen, Cava Mezze and Beefsteak. These operations, whether local or national, tend to follow a formula: Ditch the low-grade ingredients and the uncomfortable settings of fast-food joints but maintain their speed, a quality


Family of ‘Clock Boy’ Ahmed Mohamed files lawsuit against former school

Irvin, Texas - July 15, 2016: Ahmed Mohamed and his father pose for a photo at the Islamic Center of Irving in Irving, Texas on July 12, 2016. (Cooper Neill /For The Washington Post) Ahmed Mohamed and his father Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed pose for a photo at the Islamic Center of Irving in Irving, Tx. in July. (Cooper Neill /For The Washington Post) Nearly one year after 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was arrested for bringing a “suspicious-looking” homemade clock to class, his family has filed suit against his former Texas school district, the principal of the high school and the city of Irving. The lawsuit filed Monday claims that Ahmed’s civil rights were violated in the incident that made the 9th grader go viral last September. Accusations of racial and religious profiling fueled the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed. Even President Obama chimed in on Twitter, telling the boy: “We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.” The charge — possession of a hoax bomb — was dropped, but MacArthur High School suspended Ahmed for three days. Ahmed built his clock inside a pencil case from Target. In middle school, he often showed off his creations to his teachers. (Cooper Neill /For The Washington Post) Ahmed’s school has stated that they did not think the clock was an actual bomb, but a hoax bomb. (Cooper Neill /For The Washington Post) Citing a pattern of disproportionate disciplinary actions for black students in the Irving Independent School District (ISD) and a history of anti-Muslim sentiment in Irving, the lawsuit alleges that Ahmed was discriminated against based on his race and religion. It also claims his Fourth Amendment rights were violated when he was interrogated by police and principal Daniel Cummings for over an hour without the presence of his parents before he was arrested. Ahmed’s family no longer lives in Texas. They moved to Qatar in October. But in June, they returned to Irving for summer vacation. That’s when they hired Hutchinson & Stoy, the Texas firm also representing a Baylor University student who claims the school ignored reports that she was raped by a football player. A spokeswoman for Irving ISD responded with this statement: “As with any legal matter of this nature, attorneys for the school district will review the filing and respond as appropriate. Irving ISD continues to deny violating the student’s rights and will respond


In Ellicott City, a town built on history and a river, cleanup is part of the culture

swept two people to their deaths. For a town where history is the financial lifeblood, the historic storm is a staggering blow. Main Street, with its mash-up of vintage clothing stores, antique shops and museums, lives on tourist dollars that are, for the moment, gone. Howard County officials said they are committed to helping their county seat get back onto its feet. As structural engineers, insurance adjusters and anxious owners slogged through the stagnant water and humidity this week, trying to put a dollar figure on the damage, the future was uncertain. “This is the worst ever, much worse than Agnes,” said Howard House owner Ron Peters, referring to flooding that followed the 1972 hurricane. Peters, who has rental homes just west of downtown that were hit hard, said the water “came down like the frigging Niagara River.” Nearly all of the historic district buildings have long stories, many of them arcs of success, decline and renewal. Two adjacent 1860s buildings in the 8100 block of Main have had incarnations as Holtman grocery store, Laumann barber shop — which at one point offered customers bloodletting with the help of leeches — and in the 1940s a library operated by the Howard County Women’s Club. But time took its toll. “Both buildings withstood floods and fires, substantial neglect and makeshift renovation,” current co-owner Walter Johnson wrote in a 1989 application for historic preservation. But the July 30 storm dealt a final blow, rendering the buildings so structurally unsound that they may face demolition, county officials said. That would orphan two shops and several tenants who lived above them. Just up the street, the longtime home of Caplan’s department store looked more bombed out than flooded out. The water burst through all sides, taking out the front and back. Cleanup begins after a night of flooding damages Ellicott City, Md., and surrounding areas. “The water just blew the place apart,” said Tamara Beideman, owner of Sweet Elizabeth Jane, a clothing store operating there. She lost $150,000 worth of inventory. Electronics with her point-of-sale data are “floating in the river someplace.” A river runs under it The first recorded flood was in 1780, just a few years after three Quaker brothers from Bucks County, Pa. — Joseph, Andrew and John Ellicott — founded what became a center of milling and graining. They chose a shallow valley in the middle of a lot of


The Brexit wild card? Ireland.

freedom fighter was the other’s terrorist, she said. “The past is best in the past,” Devlin said. “It doesn’t take much to stir tensions on the border,” said Eunan O’Halpin, a professor of contemporary Irish history at Trinity College in Dublin. “Is there still bitterness? Of course there is,” he said. A vote for a united Ireland? After the Brexit ballot, Irish politicians quickly began to jostle for advantage as they assessed what future negotiations over the coming split would mean — for the border, for the relations between north and south, between London, Belfast, Dublin and Brussels. “That Ireland can be both one unit and two separate units may be a bizarre political fiction, but it is a fiction that has enabled former enemies to live with one another in relative peace,” Ian McBride, professor of Irish and British history at King’s College in London, wrote in the Guardian. In an interview, McBride said, “I assume there’ll be a common sense solution to this.” He said too many people have too much to lose. The leader of the main opposition party in Ireland, Micheal Martin, said the rejection of Brexit by voters in Northern Ireland could be a “defining moment” in Irish politics and “may show people the need to rethink current arrangements.” Martin McGuinness, deputy first minister of Northern Ireland and a leader of Sinn Fein, called Brexit “a disaster for Ireland.” “Anything that resembled a return to border checkpoints would represent a grievous undermining of the Good Friday Agreement,” McGuinness said. “I view such a prospect with great alarm.” Sinn Fein’s leader, Gerry Adams, said that the vote by Northern Ireland against Brexit should boost support for a future referendum on Irish unity. Talk of such a “border poll” to consider the reunification of north and south raises hackles among British loyalists in the north. Arlene Foster, first minister of Northern Ireland, vowed that little would change along the border and said talk of a referendum on the unification of Ireland was folly. “This is the silly season, and often we have people coming forward with policy ideas that have no relevance to reality, and certainly a border poll, if it were to happen, would give a resounding result that we wanted to remain within the United Kingdom,” Foster told the BBC’s “Today” program. Sammy Wilson, a leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, which supported a leave


D.C. police arrest suspect in fatal shooting during dice game in Shaw

A man who was fatally shot in the head last week in Northwest Washington’s Shaw neighborhood was attacked while playing dice in a parking lot, D.C. police said in an affidavit filed along with documents regarding the arrest of a suspect. Marcus Martin, 19, of Southwest Washington was charged with first-degree felony murder and was ordered detained by a D.C. Superior Court judge at a hearing Monday. Martin is charged with shooting Derryk Johnson, 19, of Northwest Washington on Aug. 7. Police said Johnson was one of two people shot a few minutes after 10 p.m. in the 600 block of N Street NW. One victim survived. Police said in an affidavit that the gunman and two others were driving around the District looking for people to rob when they spotted a group of men gambling with dice on N Street. It was not clear from the court document whether the assailants obtained any money; it appears that the two men were shot moments after the gunmen approached. Police said they are looking for two other men in the case.


Local Digest: Monday, August 8, 2016

THE DISTRICT Suspect is charged in slaying in Shaw A man who was fatally shot in the head last week in Northwest Washington’s Shaw neighborhood was attacked while playing dice in a parking lot, D.C. police said in an affidavit filed along with documents regarding the arrest of a suspect. Marcus Martin, 19, of Southwest Washington was charged with first-degree felony murder and was ordered detained by a D.C. Superior Court judge at a hearing Monday. Martin is charged with shooting Derryk Johnson, 19, of Northwest on Aug. 3. around 10 p.m. in the 600 block of N Street NW. Police said in an affidavit that the gunman and two others had been driving around the District looking for people to rob when they the dice game. — Peter Hermann Four vehicles are struck with rocks D.C. police said four vehicles were struck with rocks Monday on Suitland Parkway. They said a juvenile threw rocks at cars near the Parkway and Stanton Road SE. No injuries were reported. — Justin Wm. Moyer MARYLAND Police say intruder was carrying a knife The man shot after breaking into the home of an off-duty police officer in Laurel on Sunday afternoon was armed with a knife, Prince George’s County police said. David Bartholmew, 31, has been charged with home invasion, attempted first-degree assault and related charges after he forced his way into the home of a police officer for the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, police said. The incident began about 1 p.m. in the 8000 block of Briarcroft Lane, police said. The officer, whom authorities have not named, heard a loud noise in his home and retrieved his duty weapon, police said. He discovered Bartholmew and identified himself as a police officer, authorities said. Police said Bartholmew, who was holding a knife, moved toward the homeowner. The off-duty officer fired one shot, they said. Bartholmew ran and was apprehended nearby, police said. He suffered an arm wound. — Lynh Bui VIRGINIA Crash at McDonald’s kills 1, hurts another One man died and another was critically injured after a 69-year-old driver crashed into a McDonald’s on Monday morning in Fairfax City, police said. At about 6:45 a.m., the man’s vehicle struck the north-side wall of the McDonald’s at 3924 Old Lee Hwy., Fairfax City police said in a statement, trapping two people between the tables they were sitting at and the wall. Harold Skeins,


Competing under a cloud of suspicion, Russian athletes hear boos in Rio

now — has been on the Russians. Kruse said Britain’s fencers have discussed the details and implications of last month’s WADA report since arriving in Brazil. “We’ve been talking about virtually nothing else,” he said. The topics included guessing which Russian fencers most relied on strength and looked the most buff. The discussion grew starker once Kruse lost a medal directly to a Russian. “I mean, look, I have absolutely no idea what’s going on,” Kruse said. “If this is a state-sponsored program of cheating, that’s obviously pretty sad for humanity. I’d like to see the best in people. Some of these Russians are very fit.” Kruse levied no accusations and spoke in a cheerful, almost sympathetic tone. “If we assume all of them are doping, and they’re clean, then we’re disrespecting their life’s work,” Kruse said. But he also stated the reality that has turned Russians into rogues: It is difficult to trust the fairness of the Games. Here are some of the best photos of the day. “If the facts we’ve been given are true in the Western media, then yeah, of course it is,” Kruse said. “I just don’t know what to say. I hope they’re clean. I suppose the one positive result is, if it’s state-sponsored, I imagine the athletes wouldn’t have much choice. I imagine it’s you take it, or you’re down the salt mine. No one knows who’s clean and who’s not.” Russian whistleblowers, first in a 2014 German television documentary and in New York Times and CBS “60 Minutes” reports this year, exposed a widespread, state-sponsored doping program that centered upon the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. The reports prompted WADA to commission an investigation; the resulting report confirmed and detailed the Russians’ doping efforts. The International Olympic Committee left the decision of whether and how to sanction Russian athletes who had not tested positive to individual sports federations. The probes and politics have left Russian athletes, clean or not, in awkward positions. Most Russian athletes did not know if they would be permitted to compete until — or, in some cases, even after — the Games started. On Thursday, the IOC announced it had cleared 271 Russian athletes to compete. The number climbed after two Russian swimmers and a wrestler won appeals through the IOC’s Center of Arbitration for Sport. The center also rejected three cyclists hoping to overturn their exclusion,


I suppose the one positive result is, if it’s state-sponsored, I imagine the athletes wouldn’t have much choice. I imagine it’s you take it, or you’re down the salt mine. No one knows who’s clean and who’s not.” Russian whistleblowers, first in a 2014 German television documentary and in New York Times and CBS “60 Minutes” reports this year, exposed a widespread, state-sponsored doping program that centered upon the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. The reports prompted WADA to commission an investigation; the resulting report confirmed and detailed the Russians’ doping efforts. The International Olympic Committee left the decision of whether and how to sanction Russian athletes who had not tested positive to individual sports federations. The probes and politics have left Russian athletes, clean or not, in awkward positions. Most Russian athletes did not know if they would be permitted to compete until — or, in some cases, even after — the Games started. On Thursday, the IOC announced it had cleared 271 Russian athletes to compete. The number climbed after two Russian swimmers and a wrestler won appeals through the IOC’s Center of Arbitration for Sport. The center also rejected three cyclists hoping to overturn their exclusion, but some athletes questioned how they could be let back in. “Clearly there’s more that needs to be done, and clearly the circumstances we’re dealing with is frustrating to a lot of athletes and unjust to a lot of athletes,” said U.S. swimmer Cody Miller, who won a bronze medal Sunday in the 100-meter breaststroke. “During this Games there will probably be people who miss the podium to people who don’t deserve to be on the podium. And that is wrong. And I don’t have a solution for that. But it’s wrong.” The sense of Russian cheating is apparent at the swimming venue, where a host of Russian athletes — previously banned — have been allowed to compete because of a last-minute decision by FINA, the sport’s world governing body. Initially, FINA banned seven Russian swimmers. When some of those swimmers have appeared on the starting blocks, the reaction from the crowd at Olympic Aquatics Stadium has been unmistakable: boos. The crowd booed Yulia Efimova, a 24-year-old breaststroker who was banned for 16 months for using anabolic steroids, later tested positive for the banned substance meldonium but had that ruling overturned. It booed the Russian men’s 4x100-meter freestyle relay team,


Man is killed near Georgia Avenue in Northwest Washington

A man who was shot several times Monday night in a parking lot behind a recreation center on Georgia Avenue in Northwest Washington has died of his injuries, according to D.C. police. The victim, identified as Donald Stephen Johnson Jr., 45, was wounded about 7:10 p.m. in the 5700 block of Georgia Avenue NW, along the border of 16th Street Heights and Brightwood Park. Police said Johnson, who has Maryland addresses in Bowie and Mitchellville, was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. The shooting occurred behind the Emery Recreation Center. A spokeswoman for the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation said officials do not believe the shooting was connected to the center. Police said the shooting was the latest violence in the area in the past several days. On Friday, a man was shot and wounded about 7 p.m. six blocks to the south, in the 5100 block of Georgia Avenue NW. And on July 30, a man was shot and wounded about 2:40 a.m. in the 5300 block of Georgia Avenue NW. Police did not say whether any of the recent shootings are related.


Man fatally stabbed in Northwest Washington

Correction: A man was fatally stabbed Monday night near a homeless shelter several blocks from Judiciary Square during a fight that police said started when one man bumped the other, according to an arrest affidavit filed in court. Police said the victim, who was not identified because his relatives had not been notified, was stabbed in the abdomen with a razor blade about 7:30 p.m. in the 500 block of Second Street NW, near the Gewirz Student Center for the Georgetown University Law Center, the D.C. Central Kitchen and the Unity Health Care Homeless Shelter. Police said in an affidavit that they arrested a suspect after they followed a trail of blood left by the suspect, who injured himself, down a street, through the kitchen of the shelter and out to a street on the other side. Police also said they saw part of the altercation on surveillance video captured at the law school building. The suspect was identified as George Joyner, 50, of Northwest Washington. He was charged with second-degree murder while armed. A home address that police had for the victim is that of a center that helps homeless people store mail and belongings. Another address for the victim, found in recent court files, is that of a homeless shelter on New York Avenue in Northeast.


A year after Obama’s visit, Ethiopia is in turmoil

rock-cut churches and medieval castles that attract tourists. A botched government attempt to arrest activists in the northern city of Gondar in mid-July led to two days of rioting that left 11 members of the security forces and five civilians dead. Two weeks later, tens of thousands held a peaceful demonstration over land issues and government repression. Protesters in Amhara declared solidarity with the Oromo people and their opposition to the government, which many say is dominated by the minority Tigrayan ethnic group. Activists abroad then called for demonstrations across the two regions this past weekend — a call to which thousands responded despite the Internet shutdown. “It is clear Ethiopia has a potentially serious and destabilizing unrest on its hands,” said Rashid Abdi, the Horn of Africa project director at the International Crisis Group. “What started off as isolated and localized protests in the Oromia and Amhara regions has now morphed into a much broader movement covering a large swath of the country.” He said the government has to move swiftly to defuse the crisis by engaging in talks with the communities and addressing the root causes of the dissatisfaction. Despite Ethiopia’s impressive economic gains, the growth has not been enough to “keep pace with rising social inequality” and unemployment, he said. Opening these lines of communication, however, may be difficult because of a lack of leadership. Opposition parties have been repressed — the ruling coalition won 100 percent of the parliamentary seats in elections last year — and local officials are often mistrusted or viewed as corrupt. Seyoum Teshome, a university lecturer in Woliso, a town in Oromia where protests also occurred, said people have taken to the streets because they do not feel they have any other choice. “They have no other option other than protests to explain their grievances,” he said. “They have nothing.” Gudina, the opposition leader, said his party has been so curtailed by authorities that it has little control over what has been happening in Oromia. Most of the party’s leadership was imprisoned when the protests began last year. He said that unless the government eased its repression, the violence would worsen. “These protests are at the level of an intifada — people in their own ways are resisting the government pressure and demanding their rights,” he said, using an Arabic term that means uprising. “I don’t think it’s going to die down.”


NICU at Md. hospital closed after discovery of potentially fatal bacteria

The neonatal intensive care unit at Prince George’s Hospital Center in Md. was temporarily shut down on August 9 after tests discovered the potentially deadly pseudomonas bacteria. Nine babies were transferred to nearby Children’s National Medical Center in D.C. The neonatal intensive care unit at Prince George’s Hospital Center was temporarily shut down Tuesday after the discovery of potentially deadly bacteria in nasal swabs of three infant patients, hospital officials said. Nine babies were being transferred from the hospital in Cheverly, Md., to the NICU at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington “out of an abundance of caution,” said Delores Butler, a spokeswoman for Dimensions Healthcare Systems, the nonprofit entity that runs hospitals in Prince George’s County. Those transfers were expected to be completed by Tuesday night. Hospital officials emphasized that the babies who tested positive for the pseudomonas bacteria have not shown any symptoms of illness from that infection, which can be mild in healthy individuals but far more serious for those with compromised or immature immune systems. Officials from the Prince George's Hospital Center in Cheverly, Maryland confirmed that nine neonatal intensive care unit patients have been transferred to other hospitals. Dimensions board members were notified by phone Sunday about the presence of what hospital officials are describing as a troubling “cluster” of the bacteria among the NICU patients, according to two individuals with direct knowledge of the phone calls. The discovery of the bacteria followed two recent deaths in the neonatal unit, said the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment to reporters. They also said the bacteria were found in water pipes near the NICU. Hospital officials said that the cause of the two infant deaths was still being investigated and that so far there was no evidence that the deaths were related to the presence of the bacteria. “There have been no clear deaths associated with these infections,” said Carnell Cooper, chief medical officer for the hospital center. He added that neonatal patients suffer from “a number of conditions that put them at risk to die.” Cooper declined to provide details on the infants’ deaths, which along with the presence of the bacteria, were first reported by WJLA (Channel 7). He said the hospital routinely swabs the nostrils of infants in the NICU to survey the amount and types of bacteria on their skin. When those


An epic Middle East heat wave could be global warming’s hellish curtain-raiser

experienced a heat index — a measurement that factors in humidity as well as temperature — that soared to 140 degrees in July, and Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, recorded an all-time high temperature of nearly 126 degrees. Southern Morocco’s relatively cooler climate suddenly sizzled last month, with temperatures surging to highs between 109 and 116 degrees. In May, record-breaking temperatures in Israel led to a surge in heat-related illnesses. Temperatures in Kuwait and Iraq startled observers. On July 22, the mercury climbed to 129 degrees in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. A day earlier, it reached 129.2 in Mitribah, Kuwait. If confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization, the two temperatures would be the hottest ever recorded in the Eastern Hemisphere. The bad news isn’t over, either. Iraq’s heat wave is expected to continue this week. Stepping outside is like “walking into a fire,” said Zainab Guman, a 26-year-old university student who lives in Basra. “It’s like everything on your body — your skin, your eyes, your nose — starts to burn,” she said. Guman has rarely left home during daylight hours since June, when temperatures started rising above 120 degrees and metal objects outside turned into searing-hot hazards. People escape the searing summer heat at a swimming pool in in Basra, Iraq, on Aug. 1. The temperature that day reached 120 degrees. (Nabil Al-Jurani/AP) About that time, Aymen Karim also began feeling trapped. The 28-year-old engineer at a government-run oil company in Basra said employees were ordered to stay home for several days in the past month. He and his family try not to go outside before 7 p.m. “We’re prisoners,” Karim said. Bassem Antoine, an Iraqi economist, said the weather has inflicted serious damage to the country’s economy. He estimates that Iraq’s gross domestic product — about $230 billion annually — has probably contracted 10 to 20 percent during the summer heat. Iraqi officials say scores of farmers across the country have been struggling with wilting crops, and general workforce productivity has decreased. Hospitals, meanwhile, have seen an uptick in the number of people suffering from dehydration and heat exhaustion. Tens of thousands of Iraqis displaced by battles between government forces and Islamic State militants have endured the heat in tents and other makeshift shelters. Humanitarian organizations have been unable to reach all of them because of budget constraints, restrictions by Iraq’s government and risks associated with operating in


Qatar wanted an Olympics team. So it recruited one from 17 other countries.

international competition to sit out three years before representing another. “It’s legal, so it’s absolutely fine,” said German player Finn Lemke. “No problem. But they’re good — that’s the problem.” Every four years, many countries take advantage of the same loopholes to boost the talent of their Olympic squads. Dozens of athletes who were born, raised and trained in the United States are competing in Rio de Janeiro under the flags of other nations. But Qatar’s recruitment of foreign-born athletes is among the most brazen. In 2000, for instance, Qatar fielded an entire weightlifting team comprised of Bulgarians, helping the athletes change both their citizenship and their names so they could compete at the Summer Olympics in Sydney. “We changed their names so they sound Arabic because their names are hard to pronounce,” Yousef Al-Mana, the president of the Qatar Weightlifting Federation, told the Orlando Sentinel at the time. “If you bring something good to Qatar, then you will get citizenship, too. This is a prize for you if you do something good for us.” Since then, Qatar’s Olympic team has more than doubled in size. In 2012, the small country took only 12 athletes to the London Games. At the IOC’s urging, they included four women on that team for the first time. At these Games, only two of the 39 athletes are women: sprinter Dalal Mesfer al Harith and swimmer Nada Arakji, who also competed at the 2012 Olympics. While the equestrian team here features some native Qatari competitors, they all live in the Netherlands, where they train as a team. (Not as surprising: Their horses aren’t from Qatar either, hailing from equine-friendly locales such as Belgium and Germany.) Some might see Qatar’s athletic ambitions as a chance to cash in, but it also represents an Olympic outlet for athletes who fail to make their home country’s national team. Sprinter Femi Ogunode was dropped from major events by Nigeria’s national team leading up to the 2008 Beijing Games when he received an email from Qatar inviting him over. “I said yes but told them I had no funds to move,” Ogunode told the Nigerian news website Premium Times last year. “They told me to send my passport and I was given passage to Qatar. The rest as they say is history, as I became a Nigerian-Qatari.” Despite its best efforts, Qatar has never won an Olympic gold, never


WikiLeaks offers reward for help finding DNC staffer’s killer

Mary Rich, the mother of slain DNC staffer Seth Rich, speaks at a press conference in Bloomingdale on Aug. 1. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post) The speculation started within days of Seth Rich being gunned down in what D.C. police believe was an attempted robbery near his townhouse in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Northwest Washington. Some on the Internet wondered if Rich was killed because of his work as a staffer with the Democratic National Committee, even suggesting he had handed WikiLeaks the 20,000 emails that embarrassed the DNC and forced the ouster of its chairwoman. Others suggested he was helping the FBI expose wrongdoing in the presidential election, and that made him a target. On Tuesday, WikiLeaks shoved those conspiracy theories into the mainstream when it announced on Twitter a $20,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in Rich’s killing on July 10 in the 2100 block of Flagler Place NW. It adds to a $25,000 reward offered by D.C. police, customary in all District homicides. Rich’s father, Joel I. Rich, said he was offended by what he termed “bizarre” reports that are circulating on Internet discussion and message boards. Rich and his wife, Mary Ann, who live in Nebraska where their son grew up, visited the location of the shooting last week and appealed for help in finding the killer. Seth Rich was shot and killed July 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Family Photo) (N/A/Family Photo) On Tuesday, Joel Rich said that the WikiLeaks reward seemed to legitimize the rumor mill. “I don’t think I want to comment,” he said at first, then added, “I hope the additional money helps find out who did this.” But, he said, “I don’t want to play WikiLeaks’ game.” Assistant D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said that “at this time we don’t have any information to suggest” a connection between Rich’s killing and the WikiLeaks data or other theories raised online. Newsham also said, “We are very pleased if anyone is going to assist us with the giving of reward money.” Rich was shot twice in the back as he walked to his townhouse about 4:20 a.m. Nothing was taken, but police have said attempted robbery is their leading theory for a motive, noting a spike in robberies in the neighborhood in the preceding weeks. WikiLeaks released the trove of emails later that month, on July 22. Rich, 27, had worked


U.S. athletes run fast, jump high, throw hard — why are we so bad at handball?

win.” French player Valentin Porte was not as generous. He predicted the U.S. basketball team would lose, 42-10, to an Olympic handball squad. For perspective, the largest margin of victory through two days of the 12-team Olympic competition has been 15 goals. “Physically, there would be no problem,” Porte said. “But because of finer points, they would be destroyed. Sorry.” “They would have problems shooting the ball,” Hansen said. “They would not score that much. It’s much more difficult than you think.” Garcia-Cuesta is trying to recruit college basketball and football players who fall short of professional leagues. Even that is difficult, because USA Handball lacks the resources or opportunities to entice them. Even the country’s best club teams, Cuesta said, practice just three times a week. The only leagues are regional. If the United States could pick its handball team from among its best athletes, though, Garcia-Cuesta believes it could win a gold medal by Tokyo 2020. “That would be an unbelievable team,” Cuesta said. “At that moment, we would all wake up and we would be very happy.” In handball, teams of six field players, plus a goalie, play with the objective of throwing a one-pound ball — bigger than a softball, smaller than a basketball — into a net. There’s a restricted zone in front of each net, like an enlarged hockey crease, where only the goalie can enter. Even defenders have to stay out; thus, the predominant defensive alignment is pretty much a semicircular wall. The most effective offensive move, then, is the jump throw, often made after a series of weaves and picks creates space. Players can leap into the restricted zone as long as they shot before landing. The collisions when players charge through the defensive line make block-charge calls look tame. The players are bigger than you expect. Nine of Denmark’s 14 players are at least 6 feet 5, and there aren’t many small, quick guys. Several players said the toughest adjustment for a skilled American athlete would be the physicality. In the past two days, Garcia-Cuesta has received 13 emails from former college athletes interested in handball as a path to the Olympics. He plans to hold a tryout at USA Handball’s headquarters in Auburn, Ala., on Oct. 15. And if Americans in Rio show interest? “Give them my contact,” Cuesta said. Jerry Brewer contributed to this report from Rio de Janeiro.


Bon Appétit names Washington its 2016 restaurant city of the year

something bubbling up. There’s a palpable enthusiasm, which many cities lack at certain times.” (Last year’s winner was San Francisco.) “It just seems like it’s the right time for D.C.,” he adds. Others agree: In May, the prestigious Michelin Guide announced that it would publish its first survey of Washington this fall. Among what impresses Knowlton about the city is a willingness to experiment and open “cool, rad restaurants,” including Bad Saint and the Dabney, the latter of which has a commitment to cooking over a live fire. “That’s nuts,” Knowlton says of the work chef-owner Jeremiah Langhorne is doing around the Dabney’s open hearth. “That wouldn’t happen in a lot of other cities.” Villamora agrees that the city is full of buzz surrounding relative newcomers who are pursuing their culinary passions, but she also gives credit to veterans such as José Andrés (Jaleo, Minibar, Zaytinya, etc.), Peter Pastan (Obelisk, 2 Amys, Etto) and Johnny Monis and Anne Marler (Komi, Little Serow), “who have been toiling for a long while and sowed the seeds” of the dining renaissance we’re experiencing. Knowlton says he thinks the most movement has transpired in the past three or four years, with Washington moving beyond the confines of its power-lunch or big-box restaurant reputation to cover not only new cuisines but also new neighborhoods. Villamora says the short-term effect of Bon Appétit’s recognition might be longer lines at spots like hers; long-term, it might be an increasing awareness that Washington is more than just a place to visit the monuments, museums or a tourist’s congressman. She sees knowledge of our food scene already spreading, when Bad Saint hosts diners from out of town who come prepared with a list of restaurants they want to visit. Knowlton guesses many people around the country still aren’t aware of Washington’s exciting culinary scene, and he says he’d like this honor to change that. “I think what I’m hopefully bringing to the table is a national perspective of at least reaffirming what Washington, D.C., people already know,” he says. More from Food: D.C. has three nominees on Bon Appetit’s best new restaurants list Bon Appétit names Rose’s Luxury best new restaurant in America D.C.’s food scene gets a prestigious boost: Michelin inspection (and stars) Pineapple and Pearls review: Dining so fine, we’re seeing 4 stars from the start Have questions about cooking? Join our live chat Wednesdays at 12.


Ethiopia’s regime has killed hundreds. Why is the West still giving it aid?

represent the worst ethnic violence that Ethiopia has seen in years. That the unrest is spreading to regions beyond Oromia underscores the depth of anger against the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front party. The weekend’s bloodshed should prompt the West to reconsider its aid to the regime. Ethiopia has been hailed as a model of economic development and touts its progress on global anti-poverty indicators as proof that its “developmental democratic” style is working. But the repeated use of force to silence dissent threatens development by sowing seeds of future unrest. The United States has long relied on Ethiopia as a partner in the fight against al-Shabab’s terrorism in Somalia and sends the country tens of millions of dollars in development assistance, tiptoeing around Ethiopia’s human rights abuses and resistance to democratic reforms. On Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa remarked that it was “deeply concerned” and expressed its “deep condolences to those who suffered as a result” but stopped short of explicitly urging the Ethiopian government to refrain from using excessive force against its citizens. The Obama administration should encourage a credible investigation into the killings and publicly make clear that Ethiopia’s continued crackdowns are unacceptable. Europe is on the verge of helping to provide Ethiopia with even more aid. Ethiopia is one of the key countries to which the European Union is offering “cash for cooperation,” meaning aid and trade incentives in exchange for helping to keep refugees and migrants from reaching Europe. Now Ethiopia is providing a litmus test of the stated E.U. commitment to human rights. If Ethiopia continues its pattern of abusing its citizens and stifling dissent, and if it fails to credibly investigate the recent killings, the European Union should make clear to the regime that it risks being dropped from the migrant agreements. Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said in response to criticism of the regime’s human rights record that “building democratic culture will take some time. But we are on the right track. It’s improving.” That’s hard to square with the continued killing and jailing of protesters. Read more about this topic: The Post’s View: Ethiopia silences its critics with a deadly crackdown on dissent The Post’s View: Mr. Obama’s visit to Ethiopia sends the wrong message on democracy Letters to the Editor: Human rights in Ethiopia Letter to the Editor: Ethiopia needs even more aid to stave off disaster


Federal probe finds Baltimore Police Dept. racially discriminated in practices that target blacks

and often without reasonable suspicion. The report says 44 percent of all stops over five years were concentrated in just two small, mostly-black communities, meaning that hundreds of African Americans were stopped at least 10 times, and seven were stopped more than 30 times. According to the report, one 22-year-old black man was detained merely for walking through an area known for high crime and drugs; another man wearing a hooded sweatshirt on a cold night was stopped because an officer “thought it could be possible that the individual could be out seeking a victim of opportunity.” One black man in his mid-50s was stopped 30 times in less than four years, the report says, and none of the stops resulted in a citation or criminal charge. The report says many of the department’s raced-based policing practices were encouraged by supervisors who told officers to target African Americans. The department also was found to have engaged in two kinds of illegal arrests: those without probable cause and those involving people standing legally on public property who were cited for minor offenses such as loitering or trespassing without proper notice. African Americans make up 63 percent of the city’s population but account for 86 percent of criminal charges issued by police. The report hammers the department’s use-of-force practices. It says officers often employed excessive force on people with mental-health problems, juveniles and people who were restrained and presented no threat to police. When it came time to review such misuses of force, the department failed to hold officers accountable, the report says. Out of nearly 3,000 force incidents logged over a six-year period, the report says, only 10 were thoroughly investigated and just one was declared excessive. The report faults supervisors’ monitoring of officers, saying that federal reviewers “did not identify a single stop, search, or arrest” that a front-line supervisor found to violate constitutional standards even though incident reports “describe facially unlawful police action.” The department discourages the public from filing complaints through a cumbersome process and “frequently” closes out complaints with little effort to reach the person who complained, the report says. “A cultural resistance to accountability” has developed in the department that leaves serious misconduct unpunished, even in the case of officers who have a reputation for violating department rules and constitutional protections, the report says. Wesley Lowery, Clarence Williams and Keith L. Alexander contributed to this report.


Man slain Tuesday night in Northeast Washington

A man was shot and killed Tuesday evening in Northeast Washington, the D.C. police said. The shooting was reported about 7:20 p.m. in the 4500 block of Quarles Street., , police said. The site is in the Kenilworth -Parkside neighborhood, between the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, and Kenilworth Avenue. Police said they were looking for a black auto with Virginia tags. The homicide was the third in the city in about 24 hours. The first was a fatal shooting on Georgia Avenue NW, and the second was a stabbing on Second Street NW. Both of those were Monday night.


Man fatally shot in Northeast D.C. on Wednesday morning

A man was fatally shot around 2 a.m. Wednesday morning in Ivy City near Gallaudet University in Northeast D.C. D.C. police officers heard a gunshot and responded to the scene on the 900 block of Mt. Olivet Road NE. The victim, whom police have not identified, was pronounced dead at the scene, according to Metropolitan Police Department spokeswoman Aquita Brown. Hours earlier, a man was shot and killed at around 7:20 p.m on Tuesday in the Kenilworth-Parkside neighborhood in Northeast D.C. Police said they were looking for a black car with Virginia tags in connection with that homicide. This latest homicide is the fourth in D.C. in the past three days. On Monday night, there was a fatal shooting on Georgia Avenue NW and a fatal stabbing on Second Street NW.


Montgomery County Animal Watch

These cases were among those received by the Montgomery County Animal Services Division. For information, call 240-773-5900, which provides recordings on topics such as new animal services, the adoption center’s hours and location in Derwood, adoption and licensing procedures, and lost-and-found and field services. Rabies exposure Two Labrador retrievers fought with and killed a raccoon. Animal Services picked up the dead raccoon at the dog owners’ home and sent it to the Maryland Public Health Laboratory in Baltimore to test it for rabies. The raccoon tested positive for the virus. Both dogs were current on their vaccinations and were placed under a 45-day isolation period. Had they not been vaccinated, a four-month quarantine would have been required. Alleged neglect A concerned woman reported that the owner of a certain Labrador retriever should not own the dog, because it was underweight and abused by the children who walk the dog, she said. The caller explained that seeing the behavior hurts her feelings, and she said that the apartment where the dog is kept is unclean. Animal Services met with the dog owner and observed the dog, which was in good condition and at an appropriate weight. The apartment was in order. When asked about the children walking the dog, the owner stated the children sometimes have to tug on the leash when the dog gets rambunctious; the owner said the complainant previously mentioned that concern to her. The investigator concluded there was no evidence of neglect, and the case was closed. The complainant said she thought the dog should have been removed from the owner’s home. “Advice for Adopters, Fosters and Other Dog Lovers” free workshop Reduced fees for cat adoption: Germantown Adoptable cats at no-kill shelter: Gaithersburg Adopt dogs and cats at no-kill rescue: Rockville — Compiled by Lisa M. Bolton


Officials: Bacteria scare should not impact on future hospital project

A potentially deadly bacteria was discovered recently at the Prince George’s Hospital Center in Cheverly, Md. (Mark Gail/The Washington Post) The discovery of a potentially deadly bacteria at the Prince George’s Hospital Center should not impact the hospital operator’s bid for state approval of a new regional medical center in Largo, officials said Wednesday. Dimensions Healthcare Systems, the nonprofit corporation that operates county hospitals, is asking health-care regulators to sign off on construction of a state-of-the-art hospital to replace the aging Cheverly facility where the pseudomonas germ was detected in the neonatal intensive care unit. The unit has been shut down while the source of the bacteria is investigated, and nine patients were transferred to Children’s National Medical Center. Approval of the regional medical center has been delayed amid questions about the facility’s proposed governance, financing and, most recently, its size and scope. Dimensions and its partner, the University of Maryland Medical System, say they will submit their modified application by Aug. 31. Maryland and Prince George’s County are planning a new regional hospital campus in Largo. (Courtesy of Prince George’s County) “This is not the type of incident that would have any direct impact on the CON [Certificate of Need] project review process,” said Paul Parker, director of the Center for Health Care Facilities Planning and Development for the Maryland Health Care Commission. Maryland Health Care Commissioner Robert E. Moffit told project planners in May that the size of the medical center needed to be reduced before he can recommend the project for approval. He asked for specific details about how UMMS would take over Dimensions’ role as operator of the hospital facility — a transition that is being closely watched by state elected leaders, including Gov. Larry Hogan (R). Since its founding in 1982, Dimensions has battled strikes, near-bankruptcy, lawsuits and severe reductions in patient volume, as more and more Prince George’s County residents sought health care elsewhere. With the poor and uninsured making up an increasing share of its patient load, the organization has struggled to maintain its physical plant, dispel negative perceptions about the quality of its services and prove to state regulators that it makes sense to build a new hospital. Officials from UMMS and Dimensions say they are working together and remain committed to the taxpayer-funded regional medical center project. Since the discovery of the bacteria, UMMS epidemiology experts have been working closely with


In vilifying Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova, Americans are splashing murky waters

long time ago with regards to athletes believing that they need something” for recovery, etc., he said. Efimova is deemed a chronic cheat here mainly because of her second offense: testing positive for the heart medication meldonium in the midst of the crisis over the exposure of state-sponsored doping in Russia. Meldonium was in broad use by Eastern European athletes legally until WADA prohibited it in January 2016. This spring, WADA declined to ban more than 200 athletes who tested positive for meldonium after January, including Efimova, because it’s unclear how long it takes to clear the system. It’s quite possible that she obeyed the WADA ban but the medication remained in her system anyhow. Efimova tried to explain these circumstances in her Olympic post-race news conference as King refused to look at her. Here was Efimova’s account of herself, and you can accept it or not. “I have once when I made mistakes, and I have been banned for 16 months,” she said. “For second time, it’s not my mistakes. Like, I don’t know why actually I need to explain everybody or not. . . . Like if WADA say, like, tomorrow, stop like yogurt or nicotine or, I don’t know, protein, that every athlete use, and they say tomorrow now it’s on banned list. And you stop. But this is stay [in] your body like six months, and doping control is coming, like, after two months, tested you, and you’re positive. This is your fault?” Salo has qualms about the inclusion in Rio of Efimova and other Russian swimmers who tested positive and has even indefinitely suspended all international swimmers from his Trojan program. But he does not believe in demonizing them for the systemic practices they were reared with in their federations. “They are unsuspecting pawns in government or federation directives,” he said. “Yulia is a nice woman with too much talent to need performance enhancing supplementation.” He believes she took meldonium on the advice of her doctor and observes that Eastern Europeans believe heavy training is bad for the system. “Apparently most of Eastern European athletes think they have to protect their hearts because training is contraindicated,” he said. Regardless of what anyone thinks of Efimova, it’s hard to see how the American censoriousness against her — or any individual athlete — is a solution to state-sponsored doping. And it’s just begging for anti-American backlash. King


The systemic racism in Baltimore’s police force

Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis delivers a statement Aug. 10 during a news conference in response to a scathing Justice Department report about the city’s police department. (Kim Hairston/The Baltimore Sun via Associated Press) IN THE Justice Department’s damning, astonishing report on the ingrained, systemic racism in Baltimore’s police department, one tidbit captures the larger picture. It describes an email by a city police supervisor containing a template for officers making trespassing arrests, with blanks to be filled in for date, location, suspect’s name and address — yet, oddly, no prompt for race or gender. Instead, the words “black male” were automatically included. That must have been a convenience for Baltimore patrol officers, who, as the report details, have routinely used minor charges to harass, detain and arrest African Americans for the offenses of walking down the sidewalk, gathering on a corner and speaking to police the wrong way. If that assertion prompts a raised eyebrow, consider this: In the five-year period ending last summer, blacks — who comprise 63 percent of Baltimore’s population — accounted for roughly 90 percent of suspects charged with trespassing, failing to obey an officer’s orders or “impeding” an officer. Eighty-four percent of those charged with disorderly conduct were black. And in a disproportionate number of those relatively trivial cases, where the arrests depended on an officer’s discretion, the charges were ultimately dropped. What is clear in the report In a news conference The problem is not a few bad apples, as Mr. Davis suggested in saying the abuses were carried out by “a relatively small number of police officers.” To the contrary: The problems are cultural, institutional and legal. Real change will encounter massive resistance, especially from the union representing police, which beat back legislation in Annapolis this year that would have required disciplinary trial boards in cases of serious police misconduct to include civilians, not just officers. Instead, lawmakers, quailing at the union’s opposition, decided only that civilians may be included on the boards — which, in practice, is unlikely to happen. The fact that trial boards are required before police face serious discipline arises from state legislation, the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights, which provides officers accused of wrongdoing with a matrix of protections — and impediments to discipline — unavailable to other public employees (except prison guards) or to police in most other states. Mr. Davis, who took office after


An epidemic of honesty on doping breaks out in Rio

Russia’s East German-style doping program, and despite Efimova’s own past record of violations. Sweden’s Jennie Johansson noted angrily that “someone that doesn’t deserve it” — Efimova — had edged her out for the last spot in an eight-person race final. Then male swimmers Camille Lacourt of France and Mack Horton of Australia criticized China’s Sun Yang, another Rio swimming gold medalist with a doping suspension in his past: “He pisses purple,” Lacourt said. What’s more, Australia’s top official in Rio backed Horton up when he refused Chinese demands for an apology. And, setting a new Olympic record for forthrightness, King said she wouldn’t mind a ban on the United States’ own top sprinters, Tyson Gay and Justin Gatlin, for their past doping. (They were suspended, then reinstated in time for Rio.) Trying to stem the candor epidemic, IOC spokesman Mark Adams babbled: “Clearly we want to encourage freedom of speech, but on the other hand, of course, the Olympics is and should be about respecting others and respecting the right of others to compete, and you know there is a line somewhere there — and each case is different — where people should be free to compete in tranquility, if you like, and not be aggressed by others. So, yes, we would encourage people to respect their fellow competitors.” Too late. There’s no “respecting fellow competitors” without also respecting the governmental and other athletic organizations that dope them, or tolerate their doping, for the sake of national glory, financial gain — or both. There’s no respecting them without surrendering what might be the best weapon against cheating, the one that Babashoff tried to employ, only to have it turned against her — shame. What must really terrify the IOC is that uncontrolled honesty threatens the foundational myth of the Olympics: that they promote harmony among nations. In retaliation for Horton’s remarks, China’s Global Times, a state-run newspaper, called Australia “a country on the fringes of civilization.” Rio de Janeiro is hosting the summer Olympics. Here’s why there’s reason to celebrate – and worry in Brazil. Vladimir Putin’s press agency, Tass, produced an interview with Efimova in which she accused fellow swimmers of playing “politics.” “I always thought the Cold War was long in the past,” she reportedly said, echoing Kremlin talking points with remarkable fidelity. “Why start it again, by using sport?” Like any revolt, the uprising in Rio might


Your farmers market tomato-squeezing is ruining them for everyone

On the bottom of the tomato, “the darker it is, the riper it is.” But if customers want to give them a squeeze, Mock will let them. “As a business, as a marketing thing, what are you going to do?” he said. “I’ve seen farmers post signs: ‘Do not touch the tomatoes.’ Then they have to have their staff waiting on customers one-on-one. I, as a business, can’t afford to do that, so I leave them on the display table.” Cook likes it when other vendors prohibit touching, because “it’s more [customers] that gravitate towards me,” he said. Breakage is part of the business: “If you want your tomatoes to go somewhere that they won’t be squeezed, get into the wholesale business.” (Mark Gail/The Washington Post) What is it about tomatoes that inspires such meticulousness in us? We sort through the Honeycrisps, or tap a few melons until we hear the best thunk. But heirloom tomatoes are so much better than the grocery store hybrids, and the window to get them is so small. And with all those tomatoes spread out on the table, there surely is an even juicier golden-crimson one in there for you. That one? No, that one. Try this one. (And you wonder why they cost $3.99 a pound.) If farmers want fewer people to squeeze their tomatoes, one strategy may be to display less of their seasonal bounty. Psychologists have found that the more choices you give someone, the harder it is for them to make a decision — and they may even walk away empty-handed. One could see that principle in action at a recent Thursday in the Penn Quarter farmers market. Visitors to the Garner’s Produce stand, which had an impressive spread of five types of heirlooms, as well as canning tomatoes and a full rainbow of cherry tomatoes, picked up more than a dozen contenders in their quest for the perfect one. “I’m a little bit of a weirdo. I pick them up in stores,” said Jillian Frederick, who lives in Mount Pleasant. She gently handled 15 tomatoes, putting each to her nose. The perfect tomatoes are “the pretty, vibrant ones that smell like they came off the vine,” she said. Beauty has a lot to do with it. Customers go for “the perfect round ones, and when we sell out of those, we’ll sell the next prettiest,” said Dana Garner Boyle,


Here’s how Hogan’s decision to withhold ‘fenced off’ money could impact counties

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s decision to withhold money from local governments to help them pay for teachers’ pensions could have a negative impact on the jurisdictions’ bond ratings, Moody’s credit rating service said Thursday. An official for the company said the decision does not automatically spell trouble for Baltimore and the 21 counties that were expecting the money to cover pension costs. But Moody’s issued a “negative alert” in a report released Thursday to indicate that Hogan’s move could be problematic. “We’re not saying the rating would change even if the funds are not restored, just that it would be a negative because these counties would have to come up with the funds themselves,” said David Jacobson, a spokesman for Moody’s. State budget officials announced last week that the governor planned to save, rather than spend, $80 million that the General Assembly set aside to be used on various programs that lawmakers outlined. The “fenced off” money includes $19 million for the pension contributions, of which Montgomery, Howard and Baltimore counties were set to receive $10.9 million. Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) said Thursday that he had not reviewed Moody’s report but that he could not see how a loss of the funding would harm the county’s bond rating. “Our bonds are tied to a number of factors,” Leggett said. “While we do take into consideration any level of support we get from the state, [the pension funding] should not threaten our bonds.” Del. Benjamin S. Barnes (D-Prince George’s), a member of the House Appropriations Committee, said counties should take Moody’s “negative alert” seriously. “The larger issue is why is he refusing to release the funds?” Barnes said. “Does he not want to keep the commitment to teachers’ pensions?” Hogan, when asked about the money during a visit to Frederick on Wednesday, called state lawmakers’ action to fence off the money a “terrible decision.” “They put good things and bad things in there and said you have to either support all of them or none of them, and we chose none of them,” Hogan said. “They took actions that were irresponsible, and now they are trying to point the finger at me.” The negative alert on the credit outlook report is the latest fallout from last week’s announcement. Hogan has been sparring with teachers’ union officials over his decision. After someone posted on the governor’s Facebook page questioning the


Polio returns to Nigeria, with two cases reported in areas liberated from militants

A health official administers a polio vaccine to a child in Kawo Kano, Nigeria, Sunday, April. 13, 2014. Nigeria is one of three countries in the world where the wild polio virus remains endemic. (Sunday Alamba/AP) | From staff reports and news services LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigeria’s removal from the WHO’s list of polio-endemic countries in October had meant the entire African continent was free of the crippling disease. Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the WHO, said in an email that “finding children paralyzed by polio shows that surveillance is working, even in areas of the country affected by insecurity, but it is a sobering reminder that countries need to remain vigilant and immunize children until the virus is completely eradicated worldwide.” Two children have been paralyzed by polio in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state in two local government areas that had been cut off by Boko Haram’s Islamist militants, Health Minister Isaac Adewole said in a statement Thursday night. Adewole ordered the deployment of a national emergency response team. The WHO said it was working with the government to urgently use large-scale immunizations and other measures to prevent more children from being infected. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a statement Thursday saying that “this is not the first time that polio eradication efforts have experienced a setback. It is a reminder that we must redouble efforts to strengthen surveillance and immunization activities. We remain 100 percent committed to eradicating polio.” It was unclear how accessible the two areas in Nigeria are. The United Nations last month suspended aid to newly liberated but still dangerous areas of Borno after Boko Haram ambushed a humanitarian convoy, wounding three civilians, including a UNICEF worker. The suspension came even as aid groups declared that half a million people are starving in those areas and children are dying daily of starvation. Because of the Islamist uprising in the country’s northeast, health workers have been testing sewage and stool samples of refugees from areas too dangerous to access. Nigeria’s fight against polio has been dramatic. Two decades ago, it was recording 1,000 polio cases a year, the highest in the world. The Islamist extremists opposed the anti-polio campaign. Boko Haram gunmen killed nine female vaccinators in northern Kano state in February 2013, but the vaccinations continued.


Animal rehabilitator Kathy Woods is a wildlife Florence Nightingale

that the animal should be enclosed comfortably. Duffy says he has seen the value of those directives almost daily. Then there are the particulars: Baby bunnies or fawns that seem to be alone rarely are (their mothers forage for food during the day). Baby owls hiss. Baby hummingbirds have such a high metabolism that they must eat every few minutes. Owls are vicious predators with powerful grips. Approach the cutest baby groundhog in the world, and he’s liable to bare his long teeth. Woods, who never names her patients, warns anyone who will listen not to anthropomorphize them. “Ms. Kathy says there’s a reason they’re called wild animals,” Duffy says. One Baltimore County woman recently called after a boater hit a post that supported an osprey nest. (Woods went out herself, picking up several swimming chicks by hand, climbing a ladder and placing them in a makeshift nest she had built.) Woods once got a call from a woman in western Canada who told her that some friends boating up the Atlantic coast had found a nest of baby birds on their vessel. Woods set up a meeting at a center in New Jersey. “We couldn’t do what we do without a network,” she says. Closer to home, the “chaos” continues year round. It’s summer now, a few months after the spring birthing season, which means baby birds are falling from nests, fawns and baby bunnies awaiting their feedings might seem to be alone, and cars are striking raccoons, skunks and opossums. Each incident is different, Woods says, requiring its own diagnosis, and she’s always happy to answer callers’ questions about an animal in need — or order a pickup if need be. The center will keep that patient as long as treatment is called for. Sometime next year, she’ll move to a new site in Gunpowder Falls State Park that includes a house. The center will lease it from the state for $1 per year. Woods hopes to use the new space to set up seminar rooms, accommodate more outdoor cages, add youth volunteer programs and do even more. In the meantime, if you need information on wildlife, you can check out the center’s website, which contains rundowns on dozens of species. Of if you need Woods, just pick up the phone. “There’s always room for more here,” she says. “You know where to find me.” — Baltimore Sun


Police identify suspect in slaying of man found shot behind NW rec center

Police have identified a suspect in connection with a homicide that occurred in Northwest Washington this week. D.C. police said Herman Lee Cook Jr., 45, is wanted on a second-degree murder charge in the slaying of Donald Stephen Johnson Jr., 45. Johnson was found behind a recreation center suffering from gunshot wounds at about 7:10 p.m. Monday in the 5700 block of Georgia Avenue, police said. Johnson was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police described Cook as armed and dangerous. Authorities are asking anyone with information about this case to call 202-727-9099 or text an anonymous tip to 50411. A reward of up to $25,000 is available for information that leads to an indictment and arrest.


High in their treetop nests, this biologist discovered the truth about eagles

he banded birds in Virginia as a volunteer for the Fish and Wildlife Service and offered his time to falcon recovery at the Peregrine Fund at Cornell University. In 1977, the National Wildlife Federation contacted him to help save the bald eagle from extinction. By that time, there were only 80 nesting pairs in the Chesapeake Bay, compared with the estimated 6,000 that had thrived there in the 18th century. Nationally, there were fewer than 500 nesting pairs, according to Fish and Wildlife Service data. Eagles were dying out due to loss of habitat, hunting and the pesticide DDT, which affected the birds’ fertility. Koppie remembers pulling infertile eggs out of nests near the bay in the 1970s. If a pair did manage to reproduce, there would be only one offspring. In the 1980s, Koppie helped relocate chicks from Canada to populate the United States. He traveled to 10 nests in four years to adopt babies from eagles that had more than two chicks. Over the next several decades, the bald eagle came back and was removed from the federal list of threatened and endangered species in August 2007. Koppie now sees things he never would have thought possible in the 1970s. There are four nests in the Chesapeake Bay area with four babies each. Around 1,600 nesting pairs live around the bay, and there are 143,000 individual eagles in the country, according to Fish and Wildlife data. There are currently three nests here in Washington, including the pair the D.C. Eagle Cam spotlights. “I’ve had a front-row seat to the recovery of a species,” Koppie says. “And they weren’t just a regular species. They were my passion. To have it happen and to be part of that, I have fulfilled something in my life.” Koppie now mostly rescues orphaned chicks or consults for groups that want to install eagle cameras. Last year, he treated a baby with a cold in a falcon’s nest on the 33rd floor of the Transamerica building in Baltimore. He recently responded to a call in Maryland, where an orphaned eaglet was caught in a soccer net at a middle school. Koppie with a wintering golden eagle at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Maryland. (Wayne Gorrow/ ) When he drops a startled orphan chick, like the one found in Maryland, into a new nest, the adult eagles always become willing foster parents, he says. Despite


Body found in Southeast Washington house being investigated as a homicide

D.C. police officers checking Friday on a person who had not been seen in the past few days discovered a body with visible trauma inside a Southeast Washington house, according to authorities. A police spokeswoman said the death is being investigated as a homicide. The discovery was made shortly before noon Friday in the 200 block of Newcomb Street SE, near Congress Heights. The name of the victim was not immediately released, and police would not say how it is believed the person died. The victim’s gender also was not described. Police said additional details would be made public later Friday.