Classical listings: Performances in the Washington region

“Don Giovanni” Maestro Lorin Maazel conducts a new production of Mozart’s two-act opera, “Don Giovanni,” directed by Giandomenico Vaccari. At Castleton Festival Theatre. Through July 18. 8 NSO Summer Music Institute Concerto Competition Finals Young musicians in the NSO’s Summer Music Institute compete for the chance to join the SMI Orchestra in concert on July 27. At Kennedy Center, Millennium Stage. 10 Baltimore Symphony Orchestra: All-Baroque Soprano Nola Richardson and Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s concertmaster, Igor Yuzefovich, violin, join the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s concertmaster, violinist Jonathan Carney, Dariusz Skoraczewski, cello, Andrew Balio, trumpet, to present a program of baroque music. At Music Center at Strathmore. Denyce Graves The mezzo-soprano performs with the Castleton Festival Orchestra in a concert led by Maestro Lorin Maazel. At Hylton Performing Arts Center. Matthew Morrison Led by conductor Steven Reineke, Morrison and guest vocalist Laura Benanti perform with the NSO. At Wolf Trap, Filene Center. 11 Baltimore Symphony Orchestra: All-Baroque Soprano Nola Richardson and Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s concertmaster, Igor Yuzefovich, violin, join the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s concertmaster, violinist Jonathan Carney, Dariusz Skoraczewski, cello, Andrew Balio, trumpet, to present a program of Baroque music. At Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. U.S. Army Concert Band Musicians and band alumni perform works by Shostakovich, Sousa and Eric Whitacre. At U.S. Capitol (west steps). National Symphony Orchestra: Disney’s “Fantasia” Live in Concert Led by conductor Emil de Cou, the NSO performs music from Disney’s 1940 animated musical “Fantasia” as the film plays on the big screen. At Wolf Trap, Filene Center. Through July 12. 12 Alon Goldstein The pianist returns for a Fine Artist Concert Series performance. At Downtown Piano Works. 13 Castleton Festival: Story In Music Maestro Lorin Maazel conducts a symphonic concert featuring Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” as well as three works composed by Maazel: “The Empty Pot,” which is based on a Chinese legend, “The Giving Tree,” which was inspired by Shel Silverstein’s book of the same name, and “Vapours and Capers,” a blend of Irish folk songs. At Castleton Festival Theatre. “Aria Jukebox” Wolf Trap’s 2014 artist in residence, bass-baritone Eric Owens, Filene Young Artists and pianist Kim Witman perform opera highlights chosen by the audience. At The Barns at Wolf Trap. Steinway Series featuring Sara Daneshpour The pianist plays works by Franck, Schumann and Ravel. At Smithsonian American Art Museum. NSO Summer Music Institute Orchestra Concert Conductor Elizabeth Schulze leads the young musicians in this


Falls Church’s Rheinhardt Harrison sets world record for 10-year-olds in half-marathon run

and salad (but NOT onions). “With track, you’re just running around a circle, over and over and over,” he said, emphasizing the monotony with a slouch of mortal boredom. And a half-marathon through the streets? “Not bad. There’s lots of stuff to look at. I saw this water park there [Cameron Run]. I really want to go.” Rheinhardt’s running career began when he was 3, he said. “I think I ran a 2K, and I ran past the finish line, and I didn’t want to stop. At least that’s what my dad tells me.” Rheinhardt’s adult competition is noticing him, too. When his mother happened to meet a fellow runner recently and Rheinhardt’s name came up, the man said: “You’re Rheinhardt’s mom? He’s the one at the 5K races we’re trying to beat,” Johannesen recalled. Harrison said runners at the starting line’s front group, where race organizers often try to put the elite competitors, now make room for Rheinhardt. To get a sense of how fast this 10-year-old is, his personal best in the mile is 5:44 and his best time in a 5K is 19:01. Many adults would love to run times like that. Marc Davis, a former Olympic steeplechase runner and holder of the American 5,000-meter road race record from 1996 until last month, has known Rheinhardt and his family for several years. “He’s a very relaxed kid,” Davis said. “His parents are doing it right and allowing him to be in the sport the way he wants to do it. To see him run the shorter distances is one thing, but to run the longer distances and be equally successful is pretty impressive.” Next up is the “boring track” season and a goal of national titles in the 800- and 1,500-meter runs. Beyond that, he would like to attend the University of Oregon, cradle of great distance runners, including his favorite, former star Steve Prefontaine. Then the Olympics, and after sports? “I’d like to be a dancer,” he announced, stepping into an Irish jig along with his 8-year-old sister, Ella. “Or work in a running store, or be a running coach.” On Tuesday, two days after running his record half-marathon, his father held him out of track practice. “Rest is just as important as pushing it,” Harrison said. But after talking about his running was over, Rheinhardt turned to his father and said, “Can I run, Dad?”


D.C.’s master sommelier numbers on the rise

you have the image of a sommelier as an Old World snob, consider that Myers is known around town almost as much for his love of heavy metal music and for his body art. At the Virginia Wine Summit in Richmond last October, he introduced himself to a panel audience by saying, “My goal is to become the world’s most-tattooed master sommelier.” “Done and done!” he said last week. The master sommelier program has come under criticism in recent years because so few new masters are crowned. Only five of the 65 candidates who took the test this time in Aspen succeeded. In addition to Slipp and Myers, they were Alexander LaPratt and Pascaline Lepeltier of New York and Lindsey Whipple of Las Vegas. The stress and strain of the exams were depicted in last year’s feature film “Somm,” and, in October, the court, which is based in London, announced procedural changes aimed at easing some of the pressure on the advanced and master candidates. Local master candidates who have achieved the third level and sport the green lapel pin of an advanced sommelier include Elli Benchimol of Range; Jennifer Knowles of Fiola Mare (recently of the Inn at Little Washington); David Denton of Charlie Palmer Steak; CityZen bar manager David Kurka; Winn Roberton of Bourbon Steak; Erik Segelbaum of Le Diplomate, Matthew Carroll of Brabo in Alexandria, Julie Dalton of Wit & Wisdom in Baltimore; and John Filkins of Potomac Selections, a wine importer. Several more have earned the purple pin of certified sommelier, the second level. Others have moved on from Washington after pursuing their wine studies here. Carlton McCoy apprenticed under Myers at CityZen before taking the top sommelier position at the Little Nell in Aspen. He became a master sommelier last year. Jill Zimorski, formerly at Cafe Atlantico and Volt, now at the Little Nell, and Michael Scaffidi, formerly of Plume at the Jefferson Hotel and now with Union Square Restaurant Group in New York, are advanced sommeliers. Chef-turned-somm John Wabeck, now with Pittsburgh’s Spoon restaurant, is also advanced. The extensive local interest in the program prompted the court to hold its introductory-, certified- and advanced-level examinations in Washington for the first time in 2012. Morgan remembers that when she passed the advanced level in 2003, “no one around here knew what that was.” That was the year Goldston moved to Washington to head the wine


U.S. military, national security agencies vexed by dependence on Russian rocket engines

May 13, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who is in charge of the country’s space sector, said at a media briefing that his country would no longer sell rocket engines to the United States for military purposes. On his Twitter account he made a reference to the U.S. reliance on Russian rockets to send astronauts to and from the international space station, saying the United States should consider using a trampoline. The Air Force and the White House have both signaled that they have heard nothing official from the Russian government about a blockade on engine sales. It’s possible, experts say, that Rogozin’s angry comments were simply political bluster and did not indicate a new Russian policy. “I think this is a time to pause and find out if that is an official position,” Gen. William Shelton, head of the Air Force Space Command, told reporters recently in Colorado Springs at the 30th Space Symposium. “Industry to industry, I think there are some indications that business as usual is what we’re talking about.” Not happy with business as usual are certain members of Congress — including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is pushing for bans on new purchases of Russian engines to go along with a boost in domestic engine production. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, head of the start-up space company SpaceX, has been intensifying his efforts to capture a chunk of the national security launch business and is also competing to win NASA’s upcoming contract to send astronauts to the space station. Musk has pointedly cited the reliance of his competitors on Russian engines; SpaceX uses American-made hardware. SpaceX recently sued SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said last month that the launch industry’s long-standing reliance on Russian engines is a “terrible strategy.” But Gass, the ULA chief, said that his company had long planned for a potential disruption in the supply of Russian hardware and that one option is to rely more heavily on Delta IV rockets, which do not use the Russian engines. “We’re looking at all kinds of alternative engines,” Gass said. “This country should be investing in propulsion technology.” Related: Series: The future of space exploration SpaceX CEO takes to Twitter in battle over rocket launches This is SpaceX’s new Dragon spacecraft. And it’s gorgeous. Russian official tells U.S. astronauts to go to space on a trampoline SpaceX accuses rivals of violating Russia sanctions. Federal court agrees.


Post Hunt 2014: The Opening Questions

Which best describes CNN’s coverage of the Flight 370 disappearance? A. C. E. F. G. Which of the following things did Toronto Mayor Rob Ford NOT do? B. said he wanted to “eat” a certain female politician because, as a happily married man, he has had “enough to eat” at home. D. cocaine but only “in one of my drunken stupors.” E. with his bare hands. G. applying the Taniyama conjecture. In the song “Mister Bojangles,”what did the dog do? J. Bojangles’ leg. K . quicksand. L . died. Which of the following acts performed at this year’s South by Southwest Music Festival? F . G . H . I. Casket Girls, Chuck Mead & His Grassy Knoll Boys, The Suffers, Two Cow Garage, The Yolks, Motel Beds, Paint Fumes, Vancouver Sleep Clinic and Buck Biloxi and the F---s. Hollywood producers are casting a movie about the first woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Prize for physics, the Pulitzer Prize for public service, and the Pritzker Prize for architecture. The real-life woman is homely and 20 pounds overweight. Whom do they cast? P. glasses. Q. R . glasses and a bun. S. More on Post Hunt: What you need to know about the 2014 Post Hunt Download the full magazine Gene and Tom chat about the Hunt Post Hunt practice puzzles Puzzle explanations from Post Hunt 2013 E-mail us at wpmagazine@washpost.com. For more articles, as well as features such as Date Lab, Gene Weingarten and more, visit The Washington Post Magazine. Follow the Magazine on Twitter. Like us on Facebook.


In New York, gay Russian refugees feel like nobodies — until our wedding days

Our favorite were the Latina lesbians in their late 40s, one wearing a tailored white suit, the other, a white wedding gown. They had a rolling suitcase with them, presumably because they’d also changed clothes somewhere along the way. Three days later, I witnessed for Natalia and Asia. That time, my favorite couple were two French men with a French bulldog. A lot of people came: my wife, Darya; Oleg and his husband, Dmitry; Andrei and his husband, Denis; Ksenia and her wife, Liza. Everybody wears their wedding bands on their left hands, American-style, rather than on the right, as Russians do. Not only can you get married at New York City Hall, you can also attend your friends’ weddings and get the thrill of recognition all over again. We took group photos in the chapel and in front of a giant picture of City Hall, placed inside City Hall specifically for such photo-ops. I don’t think anybody cared that the clerk kept pronouncing Asia’s name wrong, like the continent; she still felt more recognized than she had since she, Natalia and their daughter came over in January. And I do not even believe in marriage. I’m opposed to it as an institution, and I’ve spoken about it publicly often enough that the Kremlin youth movement has declared me the No. 1 enemy of the traditional Russian family. But it turned out that getting settled in the United States with my partner and our three kids would be a lot easier if we got married. When Darya and I wed in late March, we frustrated our chosen minister by trying to refuse to say vows as part of the ceremony. In the end, each of us ended up writing our own vows. In hers, Darya said she was not so much wedding me as she was marrying the United States of America. “We are still in the honeymoon period,” she said of her new country. “I’m sure we will have our ups and downs. But I will always love her for enabling me to marry the woman I love.” Fact or fiction? A collection from Outlook’s popular Five Myths series. Neither Nik nor Phillippe nor Oleg nor Dmitry nor Andrei nor Denis nor Ksenia nor Liza nor Natalia nor Asia nor I could have put it better. outlook@washpost.com Read more from Outlook and follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.


‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ with music at Strathmore Arts Center

Linda Powell played Titania and Hippolyta in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Folger Theatre. (Courtesy of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra) Mendelssohn and Shakespeare shared the Strathmore Arts Center stage on Thursday where the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Folger Theatre collaborated on a romp through scenes from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” embedded in the glow and the energy of Mendelssohn’s incidental music. With seven actors taking on 20 roles, a pair of soloists, the women of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society and a simple set — four chairs up front and a chaise lounge almost hidden upstage of the basses — you might think that things would have been a little crowded, but not so. The action, moved mostly east/west across the stage; costume changes (a shoulder wrap here, a flashy vest there) happened in full view and the orchestra musicians escaped unscathed as Helena chased Demetrius, Lysander chased Helena, and Puck scurried around sprinkling his love-juice on the wrong eyelids. Marin Alsop led an assured performance, beautifully coordinated with the goings-on around her and, although the strings sounded a little fuzzy around the edges in the scherzo passages, the winds had a wonderful outing, splendidly balanced and focused. Cody Nickel’s Bottom, Spencer Aste’s Puck and Linda Powell as both an imperious Hippolyta and a magnificently sexy Titania took charge of much of the fun. But the amplification! This is a big hall where a solo violin sounds like it’s coming from somewhere north of Rockville, so there is no doubt that the actors had to be miked — but did it have to be so loud that they overbalanced the orchestra? . Reinthaler is a freelance writer.


Alleged sex assaults by drill sergeant the latest in a long line during military training

The alleged sexual assault of numerous female trainees by an Army drill sergeant in Missouri has underscored two persistent points of contention in the military: whether the Pentagon has done enough to vet troops who oversee introductory training, and whether men should supervise female trainees at all. The questions arise anew after the latest set of allegations against a U.S. service member responsible for training subordinate female troops. Army Staff Sgt. Angel M. Sanchez faces a possible court-martial for numerous alleged actions, including forcing recruits to perform oral sex and raping a female soldier while in Afghanistan between March 2011 and March 2012. He appeared at a pretrial hearing on the base that concluded on Wednesday. The latest allegations come despite a renewed Pentagon effort to crack down on sexual assaults in the military. Since May 2013, the Pentagon has launched more than two dozen initiatives to stop sexual assault; Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel also ordered the services to scrutinize the backgrounds of recruiters, drill instructors, sexual assault response officials and others in positions of authority. The effort led to the suspension of hundreds of service members, some of whom could be discharged, defense officials said. In May, the Pentagon said that more than 5,000 sexual assaults had been reported in the military in fiscal 2013, up from 3,374 the year before. The 786-page report lists at least a dozen little-known cases in which authorities investigated allegations that U.S. troops assaulted recruits or trainees they oversaw. In this Feb, 18, 2011 file photo a vehicle drives out of the Sverdrup Gate of Fort Leonard Wood near Rolla, Mo. Staff Sgt. Angel M. Sanchez, a former drill sergeant at the base, was accused May 28, 2014 at a pretrial hearing at the post of sexually assaulting several female soldiers during the past three years, including at least one while he was deployed in Afghanistan. (Orlin Wagner/AP) In one incident, a junior enlisted woman in the Air Force reported that she was called into a supply room by a male military training instructor, who fondled her and took off her pants. According to the report, the woman “stated that she froze and [the instructor] had sexual intercourse with her.” The woman reported the incident. The instructor, whose name and base are not included in the report, was convicted of adultery, obstruction of justice and making a false statement to authorities but acquitted


Some of the internal problems that led to VA health system scandal

more than 2,000 patients — far more than the 1,200 goal set forth in the Veterans Health Administration handbook. The agency is struggling to hire 400 primary-care physicians, positions that are notoriously hard to fill because of a nationwide shortage of these types of doctors. This is not just a VA problem but an issue plaguing the U.S. medical system. At the same time, the demand for VA services has increased. The Obama administration recently made it easier for veterans to qualify for care for post-traumatic stress disorder and exposure to toxic chemicals such as Agent Orange. Waves of veterans of recent wars have flowed into the system. The Vietnam War generation has aged. The system handled about 84 million outpatient visits in 2012, an increase of 23 percent from 2008. Cold calculations How a backlogged VA determines the true cost of war. The system is overburdened. Is it the only problem? No. Media organizations and government watchdogs have reported some serious malfeasance on the part of managers at VA medical centers in Phoenix and elsewhere, accusing them of falsifying records to give the impression that patients are being seen on a timely basis. These managers got bonuses for sticking to VA guidelines for what constitutes a timely appointment — up to about 14 days from the patient’s requested appointment date. Officially, according to paperwork they submitted to their superiors, they did a good job. But based on secret lists that they hid from their bosses in Washington, patients in Phoenix waited an average of 115 days for an appointment. Some 40 veterans died while waiting for care, according to the CNN report that sparked widespread outrage about these problems. A recent VA inspector general’s report determined that the problems were “systemic” and extended beyond Phoenix. What kind of care do veterans get from VA? Despite the troubles, the care veterans receive from VA is considered good, and satisfaction among patients is relatively high, according to a number of studies and surveys. In 2005, the RAND Corp. compared the medical records of VA health-system patients with a national sample and found that VA patients had a better quality of care, particularly for depression, diabetes, high cholesterol and hypertension. A 2013 survey released by VA found that 93 percent of patients had a favorable impression of the care they received. And a lot of veterans take pride in the fact that


The world’s last known case of smallpox occurred in Somalia in 1977. That year, Dr. de Quadros moved to Washington to work for the Pan American Health Organization, WHO’s regional branch for the Americas. He turned his attention to polio, a disease that often causes paralysis. Since the discovery of a vaccine in 1955, polio had been largely eliminated from the United States and other countries with advanced medical care. But it remained a scourge in many poorer nations, where its victims were often reduced to lives as beggars. Dr. de Quadros adopted many innovative methods to vaccinate children and bring the disease under control. He obtained investments from UNICEF, Rotary International, the Inter-American Development Bank and other organizations and established an international fund to help poorer countries buy vaccines at a discount. He taught governmental health and finance ministers about the social benefits of preventive medicine. He organized “national immunization days,” in which the vaccination of millions of children was seen as a holiday, with music and sports as a sidelight. Even more remarkable was Dr. de Quadros’s diplomatic ability. In several countries where there were wars or rebel insurgencies, he was able to persuade the combatants to lay down their arms in the cause of public health. “Ciro met with rebel leaders from El Salvador in a bar in Georgetown,” Jon K. Andrus, deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization, recalled in an interview. “He said if you just stop fighting one day, it will benefit everybody. Ciro was a hero in that sense.” He called the truce “days of tranquility,” when public health workers could go into the countryside without fear and vaccinate children against polio. Even the feared Shining Path guerrilla group in Peru agreed to take part. The last known case of polio in the Western Hemisphere was recorded in Peru in 1991. “I think what Ciro accomplished in the Americas was nothing short of miraculous,” Henderson said. “I’ve never seen anyone else who could do what Ciro did.” Ciro Carlos Araujo de Quadros was born Jan. 30, 1940, in Rio Pardo, Brazil. He graduated from medical school in 1966 at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil. While working for the Brazilian public health service, he developed an interest in epidemiology and infectious diseases. He received a master of public health degree in 1968 from the National


An oil-rich area south of Texas is Mexico’s newest drug-war crisis zone

new group wanting to collect. The caller demanded $5,000. He hung up the phone — he had dealt with this long enough. “If the government doesn’t do anything soon,” the grocer said, “there will be a revolution here.” Info ‘flows very slowly’ The latest wave of violence in Tampico broke out the first weekend of April, two days after the arrest of a Gulf cartel boss known as Commander 14. The ensuing struggle for authority spilled into the streets, with running gun battles in several neighborhoods, leaving at least 17 people dead. Since then, residents learn of the day’s damage — the burned buses, decapitated bodies, bursts of gunfire — on Twitter and Facebook pages because the local press all but avoids reporting on the violence due to cartel intimidation. Last week, one Tampico newspaper ran an editorial about the history of wine-making and reprinted a full-page, 22-year-old interview with a former German president. Another newspaper published a front-page story about the city’s 32,000 street dogs. But there has been little investigation into why two branches of a popular sandwich shop, Tortas Yoya, were burned to the ground. Or who sprayed bullets into the facade of the El Rincon del Angus steakhouse. Or why attackers burned down La Cerveceria beer hall and La Clasica Cantina, both on Avenida Hidalgo, one of the city’s main boulevards. There are rumors that the businesses were targeted because they were laundering money for rival cartels or because they had failed to pay their protection fees. “Information flows very slowly here,” said Lubin Jimenez Horak, who hosts a twice-daily radio program that has a reputation for addressing the violence more forthrightly than most. “We all know that the problem exists, but what can we do?” On May 11, the University of the Northeast in Tampico alerted medical students that they should wear civilian clothes rather than hospital attire. The cartels had been abducting doctors and forcing them to treat wounded foot soldiers. “They think, ah, you know how to suture and cure wounds, come with me,” one medical student at the Autonomous University of Tamaulipas said. “The cartels kidnap for money, but most of the time it’s to cure their wounds.” Classes had just ended for the semester, but there was nothing to celebrate. “We used to go out and have a little fun,” the student said. “But now they’ve burned down all the bars.”


D.C. police investigate fatal shooting on North Capitol Street

D.C. police are investigating a shooting that left one man dead Friday night, authorities said. Police were called to the 1200 block of North Capitol Street in Northwest about 9:20 p.m. after receiving a report of a shooting in the area, said spokesman Hugh Carew. When officers arrived, they found 32-year-old Donta Thrower of Northwest suffering from a gunshot wound, police said. Thrower was transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police do not have a suspect in the case, Carew said. Police are asking anyone with information to call (202) 727-9099. Get updates on your area delivered via e-mail


Local digest: News in the Washington area

THE DISTRICT Man fatally shotin Northwest D.C. police are investigating a shooting Friday night that left one man dead, authorities said. Police were called to the 1200 block of North Capitol Street in Northwest about 9:20 p.m. after receiving a report of a shooting, spokesman Hugh Carew said. When officers arrived, they found 32-year-old Donta Thrower of Northwest suffering from a gunshot wound, police said. Thrower was pronounced dead at a hospital. Police do not have a suspect in the case, Carew said. — Lynh Bui Fire ofﬁcial dieswhile on duty at base The battalion chief of Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling died Friday while on duty. Air Force authorities reported the death of John McDonald, 54, a Navy veteran. Black bunting was draped on the outside of the firehouse for McDonald, who served at the Naval District Washington Fire and Emergency Services Central Battalion station. Additional details were not immediately released. — Keith L. Alexander MARYLAND Ofﬁcers involvedin shooting named Prince George’s County police have identified the officers involved in a Friday shooting that left one man dead after he refused to put down a pellet gun that resembled an assault rifle, authorities said. Cpl. Vincent Tabbs and Officer Andrew Nacin have been placed on routine administrative leave as the department investigates the shooting that left the Suitland man dead. Police have identified that man as Mark Anthony Blocker, 20. The incident began about 2:15 a.m. Friday when police were called to the 3300 block of Curtis Drive after receiving reports that a man wielding a “long gun” was arguing with another person. Officers saw the man with what appeared to be an assault rifle and ordered him to drop the weapon, police said. When the man refused to comply, officers who were “in fear for their lives” fired their guns and hit the man, authorities said. — Lynh Bui VIRGINIA Assault at Loudoun mall investigated The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office is investigating an assault of a 16-year-old girl in a bathroom stall at Dulles Town Center on Friday morning. A man reached under the stall and grabbed the teenager, according to the sheriff’s office. The suspect then fled. The sheriff’s office said the assault is the second incident at Dulles Town Center reported in the past month. Two weeks ago, a 62-year-old woman was inside a bathroom when a man touched her inappropriately from an adjacent stall. — Ovetta Wiggins


Members of Congress press D.C. to rename street by Chinese Embassy after jailed activist

Seeking to put a less cuddly spin on the Chinese government ahead of next week’s 25th anniversary of the military crackdown on Tiananmen Square, a powerful group of congressional representatives is pushing to rename a street in front of the Chinese Embassy. The sprawling white stone compound sits at 3505 International Pl. NW, about a mile from the National Zoo’s much-loved panda house, home to Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their adorable offspring, Bao Bao — all on loan from China. But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) and a bipartisan group of congressional colleagues want the stretch of street in front of the embassy renamed for imprisoned pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo, who won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. “This modest effort would undoubtedly give hope to the Chinese people . . . and would remind their oppressors that they are in fact on the wrong side of history,” they wrote in a letter to Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) and members of the D.C. Council. Gray spokesman Pedro Ribeiro said the request is under review. Hundreds of people were killed in June 1989 when Chinese soldiers opened fire on unarmed civilians in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Dan Southerland, The Post's Beijing bureau chief at the time, talks about what led to the anti-government demonstrations and military crackdown. This video was originally produced for the 25th anniversary of the event. “Obviously, a letter signed by a number of members of the House is something we want to take seriously,” said Phil Mendelson (D), the council’s chairman. But Mendelson has so far refrained from endorsing the idea, citing both practical issues and possible concerns about setting precedent. Mendelson has helped sink a series of requests from Gray to name city streets for people who died tragically in recent years, including a murder victim. District law, Mendelson said, requires people to be dead for two years before a street can be named after them, though he said the council has the power to make exceptions. “I certainly don’t want to be dismissive. . . . The fact that it is an international human rights issue makes it important enough to consider,” Mendelson said. There could be better ways of “trying to use the nation’s capital” to press the issue, he said. A Chinese Embassy representative, Jian Fangning, said in a statement that “Liu Xiaobo is a man who


In Norfolk, evidence of climate change is in the streets at high tide

coast. In 2012, the U.S. Geological Survey declared a 600-mile stretch of coastline, from North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras to Boston, a “sea-level rise hotspot,” with rates increasing at three to four times the global average. Third, the land around Norfolk is sinking, a phenomenon called “subsidence,” due in part to continuing adjustments in the earth’s crust to the melting of glaciers from the last ice age. Plus, the city is slowly sinking into the crater of a meteor that slammed into the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay 35 million years ago. Put it all together, as VIMS scientists did when they were asked by the General Assembly to study recurrent flooding in tidewater Virginia, and models suggest tides ranging from 11 / 2 feet to 71 / 2 feet higher by 2100. Five and a half feet represents “business as usual,” a vision of the future without “significant efforts by the world’s nations to curb greenhouse gases,” the report said. “Recent trends in Virginia sea levels suggest we are on [this] curve.” Larry Atkinson, an oceanographer who is co-director of the Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Initiative at Old Dominion University, said when the mayor was asked about the report, he waved away the question. “He says, ‘I can’t think about five feet. What do you want me to do, move the whole city?’ ” It’s not just Norfolk, Atkinson said. Much of the Eastern Shore would be underwater; Baltimore and Washington would be in trouble, too. “At five feet,” he said, “the Mall’s flooded.” Driving around town, Atkinson and his colleague Michelle Covi recently pointed out dozens of places where water regularly fills the streets, keeping people from work. “By 2040, this will be flooded every high tide,” Atkinson said as he drove north on Hampton Boulevard. “That means the main road to the Navy base will be impassable two to three hours a day.” Atkinson pulled in to O’Sullivan’s Wharf, a bar with a back deck overlooking Knitting Mill Creek. Over hush puppies and beer, he and Covi fretted about Superfund sites along the Elizabeth River. The toxic muck has been capped, but they wondered: Is the Environmental Protection Agency looking into what might happen when the water rises? “Even landfills could be a problem,” Covi said. “I’d think they would float. Just pop up and float away.” At a nearby table, Atkinson spotted Deborah Miller, a


Skywatch: A plethora of planets are visible in June

when the sun appears to touch the imaginary line of the Tropic of Cancer. Washington gets 14 hours and 54 minutes of daylight June 18 through June 23. After that, we start losing daylight. Down-to-Earth events ● June 5: Astronomer Wade Henning explains “Extreme Exoplanets” at the University of Maryland Observatory in College Park. Enjoy planets and stars through telescopes after the talk, weather permitting. 9 p.m. www.astro.umd.edu/openhouse. ● June 6: Fifth annual Astronomy Festival. See the sun safely and gaze through telescopes at the moon, Saturn, Mars, Jupiter and other cosmic features from the northeastern corner of the Washington Monument grounds, near 15th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. Astronomers from the Naval Observatory, NASA, the National Science Foundation and local groups guide you through the heavens. 6 to 11 p.m. Hosted by Hofstra University. www.hofstra.edu/dcstars. ● June 8: Northern Virginia Astronomy Club members discuss telescopes, binoculars and other optical equipment at the group’s regular meeting. Room 163, Research Hall, George Mason University, Fairfax. 7 p.m. novac.com. ● June 18: “From Skylab to Interplanetary Space Weather: The Next Frontier,” a lecture by NASA scientist Lika Guhathakurta. Learn how space weather is vital to space missions and to life on Earth. Lockheed Martin Imax Theater at the National Air and Space Museum on the Mall. 8 p.m. Webcast available. airandspace.si.edu. ● June 20: Talk about space and take a heavenly gaze at the University of Maryland Observatory in College Park. Telescopic viewing, weather permitting. 9 p.m. www.astro.umd.edu/openhouse. ● June 21: Party with the planets. Under dark skies away from city light, enjoy an exploration of the cosmos by Northern Virginia Astronomy Club members and Sean O’Brien of the National Air and Space Museum. At Sky Meadows State Park in Delaplane, Va. Parking $5. Arrive before dark. 8 to 11 p.m. Park phone: 540-592-3556. airandspace.si.edu. ● June 21: “Exploring the Sky,” hosted by the National Park Service and the National Capital Astronomers, at Rock Creek Park near the Nature Center in the field south of Military and Glover roads NW. 9 p.m. capitalastronomers.org. ● June 26: “From Air and Space to the Railroad and Beyond: An Evening with Brig. Gen. James A. McDivitt.” Sharing his wit and many stories, McDivitt will discuss his career as an Air Force pilot, astronaut and private businessman. Lockheed Martin Imax Theater at the National Air and Space Museum on the Mall. 8 p.m. Webcast available. airandspace.si.edu.


At 1776, Australian engineering firm sets sights on Defense Department

Michael Brett, chief operating officer of Australia-based Aerospace Concepts, is working at 1776 in an attempt to offer the company’s services in the United States. (Jeffrey MacMillan/Jeffrey MacMillan) Washington’s tech incubator 1776 is known for housing fledgling start-ups, providing select businesses with mentors and office space. One the incubator’s newer members is different from its neighbors, many of whom develop mobile and Web software for consumers. Aerospace Concepts, an engineering consulting company based in Australia, is operating its U.S. headquarters out of 1776’s office in downtown Washington, and it is teaming with Lockheed Martin to try out a futuristic technology called quantum computing. Quantum computing systems often use atomic particles called “qubits” to compute, instead of the 1’s and 0’s in traditional computing. In theory, quantum systems are better and faster at solving problems with rapidly changing variables. Lockheed Martin owns one of two commercially sold quantum systems in the world; Google owns the other. With its footprint in the District, Aerospace Concepts is hoping to market its engineering and consulting services to the Defense Department, according to Chief Operating Officer Michael Brett, one of two Aerospace Concepts employees in the United States. The company primarily contracts with the Australian defense department, Brett explained — recent projects include designing a large telescope and other astronomy tools, for example. The company’s 30 employees — most of whom work in Adelaide, Australia — also focus on solving complex problems involving the automotive industry, robotics and aircraft certification, among others. “Our perception is that we have something to offer in the U.S. market — our skills in dealing with complex systems,” Brett said. “We wanted to come to the U.S. and test our mettle against the best and see if we could build out our business in this market.” In early May, Aerospace Concepts embarked on a partnership with Lockheed Martin that would allow the consulting firm to access Lockheed’s quantum computer, the D-Wave 2. Aerospace Concepts is the first business that Lockheed has asked to test out the system — over the past couple of years, the defense giant has invested in quantum computing research centers at the University of Maryland and the University of Southern California. Lockheed’s quantum computing system is stored on USC’s campus — and takes up the size of a large room — so Aerospace Concepts’ engineers in Australia access it through the Internet cloud. Embracing quantum computing


Mixed reaction to Bergdahl’s recovery by service members who consider him a deserter

prisoners of war home.” But the reaction from current and former U.S. service members was decidedly more mixed. Some said that although they were glad to see Bergdahl freed, he needs to be held accountable for his choices. Disappearing from a military post in a war zone without authorization commonly results in one of two criminal charges in the Army: desertion or going absent without leave, or AWOL. Desertion is the more serious one, and usually arises in cases where an individual intends to remain away from the military or to “shirk important duty,” including a combat deployment such as Bergdahl’s. U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was handed over May 31 by members of the Taliban. Javier Ortiz, a former combat medic in the Army, said he is frustrated with Bergdahl’s actions and thinks he should be tried for desertion, even after five years in captivity in Pakistan. Many U.S. troops had misgivings about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while they were deployed but did not act on them as Bergdahl did, said Ortiz, of Lawton, Okla. “I had a responsibility while I was there to the guys I was with, and that’s why this hits the hardest,” said Ortiz, who was in Iraq from March 2003 to March 2004 with the 101st Airborne Division. “Regardless of what you learned while being there, we still have a responsibility to the men to our left and right. It’s terrible, what he did.” After he went missing, the military conducted an extensive search for Bergdahl. The plan was to create a blockade that would prevent his captors from taking him far from Paktika province, especially into Pakistan. The bulk of other operations were halted to focus on finding Bergdahl. One Afghan special operations commander in eastern Afghanistan remembers being dispatched. “Along with the American Special Forces, we set up checkpoints everywhere. For 14 days we were outside of our base trying to find him,” he told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is a member of a secretive military unit. But U.S. troops said they were aware of the circumstances of Bergdahl’s disappearance — that he left the base of his own volition — and with that awareness, many grew angry. “The unit completely changed its operational posture because of something that was selfish, not because a soldier was captured in combat,” said one U.S. soldier


Kepler space telescope spies a ‘Mega-Earth’

wants, regardless of earthling theorists,” said Sara Seager, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology planetary scientist who was not involved in the new discovery but said by e-mail that she finds it “incredibly exciting.” Kepler-10c, which orbits a star 560 light-years away in the constellation Draco, isn’t likely to harbor life. It is too close to the parent star, and the surface is thoroughly roasted. Gravity at the surface is nearly three times that of Earth. If there were creatures somehow bounding around, they would probably be rather squat. The planet is 2.3 times the diameter of Earth but is much denser, particularly toward the core. “It’s still rock, but it’s rock that’s twice as dense as the rock we’re used to,” said Dimitar Sasselov, a professor of astronomy at Harvard University and a co-author of the paper describing the “Mega-Earth.” The Kepler telescope, launched in 2009, has found the faint signatures of thousands of planets, though some need additional observation before their discovery can be confirmed. The telescope examines a relatively small patch of the sky, taking images of stars and looking for periodic dimming of the starlight. If that dimming follows a regular pattern, it may be from a planet repeatedly passing across the face of the star as seen from the telescope. Ground-based telescopes have followed up the Kepler leads and gathered new details about these planets. After the space telescope found Kepler-10c, a telescope on the ground measured its mass and discovered that it is a giant, rocky world. It now appears that planets are extremely abundant — virtually every star may have at least one planet. But the habitability of these worlds remains a mystery. No one has found an exact Earth twin — a rocky, Earth-size world orbiting a sunlike star in the habitable zone. (The Washington Post) One bulletin Monday from the American Astronomical Society meeting in Boston offered a reminder that there are a lot of ways a planet can prove inhospitable to life. The “space weather,” for example, might be ghastly. Astrophysicist Ofer Cohen of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics modeled the environments of three candidate planets identified by the Kepler telescope, each apparently rocky like Earth, and orbiting their stars in what is deemed the “habitable zone.” That’s the region in the Goldilocks position, not so close to the star that the planet gets baked and not so far away that


Chocolate hazelnut spread taste test: Beyond Nutella, options abound

(Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post) Nutella needs no introduction. There are probably enough Italophiles, college students and hazelnut lovers to lobby for classifying the chocolate-hazelnut spread as its own food group. These days, though, it’s practically impossible to walk into a grocery store and not find other brands vying for attention. To see whether Nutella — which turns 50 this year — is holding its own, we conducted a blind taste test. Competitors included store brands, familiar labels such as Hershey’s and Jif, and domestic and imported products labeled spreads or butters and sold at supermarkets and specialty shops. Food section staffers licked many small plastic spoons. Here are the results, listed in order of preference, including an averaged rating (on a scale of 1 to 5): Best Azienda Agricola Nocciole d’Elite Crema di Nocciola This Italian import was the uncontested winner — and by far the most expensive of the competitors. Although its consistency was thinner/runnier than most of us would have liked, it earned praise for its “pure hazelnut flavor,” prompting one judge to rejoice, “ding ding ding.” The mellow chocolate favor imparted by cocoa powder is a bit subdued, so chocoholics, keep that in mind. $21 for 8.8 ounces, or $2.39 per ounce; available at Dolcezza, 1704 Connecticut Ave. NW, 202-299-9116, plus three other locations of the gelato chain (call ahead to confirm availability). These desserts feature the chocolate-hazelnut flavors of Nutella or make a perfect base on which you can slather the beloved spread. Click on each dish name to get the recipe. Peccati di Ciacco Gianduia Chocolate Hazelnut Spread Tasters detected hints of caramel and vanilla. Overall, “pretty sweet but good.” $10.99 for 7.76 ounces, or $1.42 per ounce; under the Ritrovo Selections importer label at A. Litteri, 517-519 Morse St. NE. 202-544-0183. Ferrero brand Nutella The European Nutella prompted opposing opinions on a variety of counts, from “canned chocolate frosting flavor, with little hazelnuts” to “nice nutty beginning; not too sweet, really good.” $15.99 for 35 ounces, or 46 cents per ounce; at the Italian Store, 3123 Lee Hwy., Arlington. 703-528-6266. Safeway Select Hazelnut Spread This store brand delivered a respectable bang for the buck. “Pretty classic,” “pudding,” “balanced but not distinctive” and “the nut taste is fresh and good.” $3.79 for 13 ounces, or 29 cents per ounce. Acceptable Ferrero brand Nutella Food critic Tom Sietsema revisits 19 restaurants for this season’s guide.


Tree rings give scientists information about weather conditions hundreds of years ago

says, because “1587 was the worst single-year drought in the last 1,072 years in the Tidewater” as well as on the nearby Outer Banks of North Carolina. Stahle began creating a statistical model correlating tree-ring width with drought by comparing 20th-century rings to 20th-century data about annual precipitation. “So precise are the tree rings, we can compare 1901 tree growth to 1901 precipitation,” he says. As he looked back further, he found that long droughts were far more common and far worse than droughts in recent history. For instance, in the 1960s, Washington experienced a shortage of rainfall that lasted about five years and resulted in water restrictions, brush fires in suburban woods and an alarming drop in the level of the Potomac River, with utilities sucking up 80 percent of the river’s flow on the worst days in 1966. As severe as this was, Stahle found that it pales in comparison with droughts of the years 1000 to 1400, some of which lasted for 30 or even 50 years. Persistent periods of minimal rain continued into the colonial era. When the Jamestown colonists landed in Virginia in 1607, they unwittingly arrived in the second year of a drought that lasted seven years, Stahle’s tree rings prove. Historians are factoring this information into their accounts of why Jamestown suffered severe disease and starvation, problems that nearly wiped out the colony before reinforcements arrived in 1610. The Mid-Atlantic again suffered a major drought for much of the time between 1691 and 1714, Stahle says. But tree-ring samples show that rainfall markedly increased in the 19th and 20th centuries. While Stahle’s studies have focused on bald cypresses, other researchers have begun to look at the rings of the tulip poplar, a fast-growing tree that prefers less swampy environments. Neil Pederson of Columbia University has shown that tulip poplars can live 600 or 700 years and that, like bald cypresses, their rings are excellent barometers of precipitation. Pederson has pushed back the East Coast record of upland tree rings to 1453, when Columbus was still a child, by studying the Hudson Valley’s colonial houses, whose beams and sills were often made from tulip poplar. “We are just realizing the value of this incredible species,” Pederson says. “Tulip poplars are very sensitive to drought, shedding their leaves, and then their growth slows.” Less wood is added, meaning rings are narrower. Like Stahle’s findings, Pederson’s


Falls Church boy’s record run not accepted by Association of Road Racing Statisticians

A Falls Church boy’s apparent world record time for a half-marathon for a 10-year-old, has been rejected by the Association of Road Racing Statisticians because the Alexandria course was altered after its length had been certified. Reinhardt Harrison In addition, Young noted, a new record for 10-year-olds was certified over the weekend: 1:34:53, run last year in Austin, Tex., by Hunter Perez and submitted after Harrison’s time was publicized. Harrison retains his world record for the 10-mile run for 10-year-olds, set and certified in April during the Cherry Blossom 10-Miler in the District. Harrison’s father, Dennis Harrison, said he appreciated the diligence of the ARRS, and that “at his age, Rheinhardt doesn’t need to be chasing world records (less than 10 seconds off). If he decides to run another half-marathon as one of his training runs during the fall cross-country season, we won’t discourage him...but our intent will be to build his endurance for his shorter 3K cross-country races, not to set an age group half-marathon world record.”


Lockheed Martin wins Space Fence contract

space objects — a small fraction of the total amount. The new system will be able to track as much as 10 times more — and much smaller pieces of debris. Steve Bruce, a Lockheed vice president, said that the current system can see objects about the size of a basketball but that the new one will be able to see things the size of a baseball or smaller. “We’ll know more about what’s in space than we do today,” he said. “This is an extremely important mission.” Space debris can whip around the world as fast as 17,000 miles per hour. At that velocity, even something just a half-inch in diameter would pack a punch like a bowling ball traveling at 300 mph, according to NASA. Even flecks of paint can cause damage, officials say. Lower orbits of space are full of all sorts of junk, and the problem is getting worse and more problematic as businesses and the Pentagon increasingly rely on outer space for all sorts of functions. The flotsam has gathered during more than 50 years of spaceflight. There are spent rocket boosters that, laden with fuel, have exploded. Defunct satellites left in orbit have decomposed. And the junk begets more junk, as crashes create more debris, which can then cause even more collisions. Over the years, the litter has included a glove that an astronaut dropped in 1965 and a spatula that was being used to spread a sealant during a space repair of the shuttle Discovery in 2006. Using the warnings issued by the Pentagon, operators of the 1,200 satellites in space move their equipment out of the way of the flying debris. In 2012, the United States issued more than 10,000 warnings of close calls to U.S. and international satellite owners, helping with 75 “avoidance maneuvers.” Much of the debris is attributed to two events that added thousands of new pieces of garbage to space, severely exacerbating the problem but also raising awareness about the growing clutter (which was highlighted in the movie “Gravity”). In 2007, China blew up one of its dead weather satellites, and then two years later, an active U.S. communications satellite crashed into a defunct Russian satellite. Lockheed said in a statement that its system will be able to track more than 200,000 items in space “with improved accuracy and better timeliness.” “With better situational awareness and tracking systems,


17,000 miles per hour. At that velocity, even something just a half-inch in diameter would pack a punch like a bowling ball traveling at 300 mph, according to NASA. Even flecks of paint can cause damage, officials say. Lower orbits of space are full of all sorts of junk, and the problem is getting worse and more problematic as businesses and the Pentagon increasingly rely on outer space for all sorts of functions. The flotsam has gathered during more than 50 years of spaceflight. There are spent rocket boosters that, laden with fuel, have exploded. Defunct satellites left in orbit have decomposed. And the junk begets more junk, as crashes create more debris, which can then cause even more collisions. Over the years, the litter has included a glove that an astronaut dropped in 1965 and a spatula that was being used to spread a sealant during a space repair of the shuttle Discovery in 2006. Using the warnings issued by the Pentagon, operators of the 1,200 satellites in space move their equipment out of the way of the flying debris. In 2012, the United States issued more than 10,000 warnings of close calls to U.S. and international satellite owners, helping with 75 “avoidance maneuvers.” Much of the debris is attributed to two events that added thousands of new pieces of garbage to space, severely exacerbating the problem but also raising awareness about the growing clutter (which was highlighted in the movie “Gravity”). In 2007, China blew up one of its dead weather satellites, and then two years later, an active U.S. communications satellite crashed into a defunct Russian satellite. Lockheed said in a statement that its system will be able to track more than 200,000 items in space “with improved accuracy and better timeliness.” “With better situational awareness and tracking systems, collisions and dangers from space debris can be avoided,” the statement said. “The vastly improved performance offered by these radars will also enable the decommissioning of the decades-old Space Surveillance System. Space Fence will transform the future of space situational awareness while protecting our nation’s space assets.” The company expects the system to be operational by 2018. And the contract comes with an option to build a second phase of the space fence in western Australia. Raytheon could protest the decision, but Mike Nachshen, a Raytheon spokesman, declined to comment “pending our post-decision debrief with the Air Force.”


Eugene Robinson: EPA coal plant proposal is the right step

Even for people who don’t believe in it, climate change just got real. It’s about time. The Obama administration’s proposed new rule for existing power plants — reducing heat-trapping carbon emissions by up to 30 percent by 2030 — is ambitious enough to get anyone’s attention. No, this one measure will not halt or reverse human-induced warming of the atmosphere. But the rule is necessary in the context of seeking international consensus on solutions — and also significant in its own right. Before Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy could announce the new rule Monday, critics were already bellowing about higher energy rates and lost jobs. They pretended not to see that President Obama — as with health-care reform — is taking what ought to be seen as a Republican-friendly approach. The rule, which will not become final until next year, gives states great flexibility in how they reach the target. They are not forced to immediately begin shutting down the aging coal-fired power plants that constitute one of the biggest sources of carbon pollution. Rather, each state can take the path that best fits its circumstances — ramping up the generation of energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar, for example, or entering regional cap-and-trade agreements. Ultimately, however, hundreds of those aging, dirty, coal-fired plants will have to close. If the planet could speak, it would say good riddance. A collection of cartoons on the environment and climate change. Many of those who do not believe in climate change also reject the idea that carbon dioxide can be called a pollutant, since it is a natural and necessary component of the air we breathe. But direct measurement shows that the concentration of carbon dioxide in atmosphere has increased by an astounding 40 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when humankind began burning fossil fuels in earnest. As with any poison — or pollutant — it’s the dose that counts. This thickening pall of human-generated carbon dioxide — which traps heat, according to universally accepted principles of physics and chemistry — has coincided with a long-term rise in average temperatures that agrees with climate scientists’ predictions. The big unanswered question isn’t scientific, it’s political: Will we continue to turn up the thermostat? The question that some skeptics like to pose — “Why should the United States take such a big step on its own?” — is


Fairfax County Animal Watch

FAIRFAX COUNTY No incidents were reported by the Animal Control Division of the Fairfax County Police Department. For information, call 703-246-2253. FAIRFAX CITY The following incidents were reported by the animal control section of the Fairfax City Police Department. For information, call 703-385-7924 or go to www.fairfaxva.gov and click on “Animal Control” on the department’s main page. Groundhog doesn’t make it: Biting the helping hand: Raccoon dies: Owner surrenders animals Vienna The following incidents were reported by the Vienna Police Department. For information, call 703-255-6396. Dog bites: Cat bites: Dog owner sought: Stray cat rescued: Stray kitten: — Compiled by Ria Manglapus


Occidental restaurant serves bugs to raise money for DC Central Kitchen, combat hunger

The Occidental Grill & Seafood, a stately restaurant across from the White House, served a variety of buggy dishes on its patio Wednesday and helped the event’s sponsor raise about $6,000 for DC Central Kitchen. Caitlin Phillips was savoring a burger in the sunshine of the patio at Occidental Grill & Seafood, a stately old restaurant across from the White House, when she paused and reached for a napkin. “I have cricket stuck in my teeth,” she said, delicately easing the insect leg out before continuing with lunch. While many lunching at the Occidental on Wednesday chose from the traditional menu — a steak salad, or duck confit flatbread, or a crab cake — those on the patio had walked into a pop-up eatery featuring bugs. At the Pestaurant, as some called it, guests were snapping up grasshopper burgers, chocolate ant rounds, salt-and-vinegar crickets, roasted locusts. “This is really good,” Phillips said of her burger, a mix of turkey, ground grasshopper, spices and — for crunch — whole grasshoppers, bulgy eyes, knobby knees and all. “I put an extra one on as a garnish,” she said, lifting the sweet-potato bun to show. “See? He’s up there.” What better way to combat hunger? Eat bugs. A New York chef has created a dish for the extravagant palette - a gold leaf and caviar-enriched lobster roll that sells for $160. The lunch raised about $6,000 for D.C. Central Kitchen, with a company donating $5 for anyone who tried an insect. The whole thing was brought to the people of Washington — and other cities in Australia and Europe — by an international business, Rentokil. “I like that it was sponsored by a pest-control company,” said Nicole Gurley, laughing and tossing back a grasshopper leg. “That just makes it even weirder.” (The bugs, a Rentokil spokesman assured when asked, were raised for human consumption. As in, they didn’t just clean out their traps Tuesday and fry up the victims.) Some diners came for the cause. “There are a lot of food shortages in the world,” said Robert Osberger, who came from Cleveland Park but couldn’t persuade friends to join him. “This could be a good, high-protein alternative food source.” Some came to the Pestaurant because they were curious. And some were drawn by the price, a shining beacon in the midst of an expense-account town. “I’m an artist,” Phillips said. “I’ll always come


Charles Lane: Glorifying and demonizing Bowe Bergdahl

In the 1970s, Vietnam veteran-turned-novelist Tim O’Brien created Pvt. Cacciato, an impulsive soldier who, one fine day, gathered up rations, water, maps and a compass and, as O’Brien mordantly put it, “left the war,” telling his buddies that he intended to walk all the way to Paris. “Going After Cacciato Now Afghanistan has given us Bowe Bergdahl, who apparently thought he could walk to Pakistan in real life as easily as Cacciato walked to Paris in fantasy but instead wound up a prisoner of the Taliban for five years, until President Obama swapped five top Taliban figures for him last week. Politicians and pundits are struggling to impose their own self-serving narratives on this stranger-than-fiction character and his stranger-than-fiction tale. Obama made a bit of a fool of himself by treating Bergdahl’s impending return as appropriate for Rose Garden celebration, complete with grateful parents, even though he knew, or easily should have known, that Bergdahl is hardly a hero. That attempt to gin up an election-year feel-good story fell flat, as did national security adviser Susan Rice’s clueless depiction of Bergdahl’s Army career as one of “honor and distinction.” White House efforts to glorify Bergdahl were matched by the right’s efforts to demonize him. He stands accused of desertion, which is indeed a very serious offense. Convicting him of it under military law requires proof, which we don’t yet have, that he intended to leave his unit for good or sought to avoid a hazardous assignment. Nor is it proved, despite what you may have heard, that Bergdahl’s going AWOL directly or indirectly caused the deaths of six soldiers sent to look for him, though the search certainly imposed costs and risks on the Army and its troops. Never mind: According to Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, “There is compelling evidence that the sergeant violated military law and may have even collaborated with the enemy.” I know of no mathematical formula that can determine whether freeing five dangerous enemies of the United States was too high a price to get this one soldier back, any more than I can figure out what Obama’s critics think he should have done about Bergdahl — let him rot forever in Taliban custody? But I do think we could all benefit from O’Brien’s sense of war’s ineradicable moral dilemmas and inherent absurdities — not the least of which is that even the most powerful army


Interim Veterans Affairs chief to visit clinic

VA contacts veterans on Phoenix wait list The interim chief of the Department of Veterans Affairs announced Wednesday that the agency has reached out to almost all of the approximately 1,700 veterans that a Phoenix VA hospital placed on unofficial wait lists that hid treatment delays. Acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson said at his first meeting with veterans groups that the department called 1,586 former troops and sent letters to those who had not provided phone numbers. Gibson said VA reached out to those veterans to discuss their medical needs and to begin scheduling appointments. He plans to visit the Phoenix clinic Thursday, when he also is scheduled to outline additional actions from the department. An interim report last week from the VA’s inspector general substantiated recent allegations that VA clinics across the country manipulated their scheduling records to cover up treatment delays, in part to improve their chances of securing bonuses. “Getting this right is our top priority, and taking care of the veterans in Phoenix is a good place to start,” Gibson said. “The department will also continue reaching out to veterans nationwide to accelerate their access to care, and that is the message I intend to deliver in Phoenix and across the country.” — Josh Hicks from Federal Eye Republicans list steps to address VA issues A group of key Republicans wrote to President Obama on Wednesday outlining actions they want the White House to take to address widespread scheduling issues at Veterans Affairs hospitals. The lawmakers, who included House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), along with Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), said the resignation of former VA secretary Eric K. Shinseki last week is not enough to fix he department’s problems. The Republicans asked that Obama support GOP legislation aimed at addressing treatment delays and allowing the VA secretary to fire senior executives over poor performance. They also said the secretary should direct VA to cooperate with congressional committees as they investigate the scheduling matter, which involves manipulation of appointment records to hide long wait times. “It is imperative that you lay out for the American people your vision for reforming what is clearly a broken system,” the Republicans said in their letter to Obama. — Josh Hicks from Federal Eye Term limits may be on the ballot in Illinois A preliminary review of paperwork


GM releases results of ignition-switch probe

The long-awaited results of an internal investigation into General Motors’ flawed handling of an ignition switch defect linked to at least 13 deaths were released Thursday, and it should go a long way to answering some of the puzzling questions still hanging over the scandal. The report by former U.S. attorney Anton R. Valukus should address: Why did GM take more than decade to order a recall? As early as 2001, engineers noticed that the ignition switch installed in Saturn Ions, Chevrolet Cobalts, Pontiac G-5s and other small cars could be inadvertently turned off, causing cars to stall, disabling air bags and stiffening brakes and steering. The question is particularly perplexing because company documents given to congressional investigators said a fix would cost just 90 cents per switch when the cars were in production. GM officials have indicated they struggled to grasp the scope of the problem, even as engineers investigated and company lawyers authorized settlements tied to accidents in which the defect played a role. GM CEO Mary Barra revealed the findings of an internal probe into why the company did not recall faulty ignition switches earlier and detailed the company's actions, including firing 15 employees. When did top GMofficials, including chief executive Mary T. Barra, learn about the problem? Barra has said that she first got wind of the switch problem in December, but did not understand its full implications until late January, a couple of weeks after taking over as GM’s CEO. Meanwhile, former Treasury Department officials who worked on the company’s bankruptcy and $50 billion federal bailout said they never knew about the switch problem. Why did GM quietly redesign the ignition switch in 2006, a move that seemed to alleviate much of the problem? Who knew about the change? And why was it not documented with a new part number? And why did it not lead to a recall of older vehicles equipped with the defective part? Two GM engineers have been suspended with pay in connection with that change. But it remains unclear whether any higher-ups knew about the change. Why did GM not tell federal safety regulators that it was investigating the role of the switches in frontal accidents in which air bags did not deploy? National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration acting chief David Friedman said that in September 2012, a GM engineer was so concerned about the problem that he wrote


Obama, allies say Russia has chance to rebuild ties with West

President Obama waves as he boards a plane to leave Belgium at the military airport in Melsbroek on June 5. (Eric Lalmand/AFP/Getty Images) (Eric Lalmand/AFP/Getty Images) BRUSSELS — “If he continues a strategy of undermining the sovereignty of Ukraine, then we have no choice but to respond,” Obama said at a news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron following a meeting of the Group of Seven major developed nations here. Cameron expressed the same view. Obama said Putin has an opportunity “to seize this moment” and turn the page. He said he was pleased to see Putin not denounce the May 25 election of Petro Poroshenko as Ukraine’s new president, saying it “offers the prospect that he’s moving in a new direction.” But if Putin “remains on the current course, we’ve already indicated the kinds of actions we could take,” Obama warned, suggesting a wider deployment of sanctions targeting broad sectors of the Russian economy — beyond the existing sanctions that target only individuals or specific companies. Obama and Cameron suggested that Putin has about until the end of the month to make a choice about whether he will change course in Ukraine. In his remarks, Cameron said Russia had lost its seat in the Group of Eight — which has now effectively reverted to its former status as the G-7 — because of actions that are “totally at odds with the values of this group of democracies.” The British prime minister seemed to offer specific criteria for applying stricter sanctions: the end of Russian support for separatists operating in eastern Ukraine and the recognition of the Poroshenko government. “If these things don’t happen, then sectoral sanctions will follow,” Cameron said. Speaking later aboard Air Force One, U.S. officials made clear that certain escalatory actions — such as Russian troops crossing the border into Ukraine — would trigger more punitive measures. But they would not define exactly what Putin would have to do to avoid further sanctions. Nor would they set an exact deadline. “Clearly sectoral sanctions are on the table,” said Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. “If we see the status quo continuing, we are going to move to additional sanctions. . . . We’ll be calibrating those based on what the situation is.” Many in Eastern Europe have worried that the West would not impose additional punishments if the crisis continues. Obama was


New report on BP oil spill points to faulty blowout preventer procedures

The board said other companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico should take steps to make sure that sequence of events does not happen again. “There are a lot of changes to be made,” an official said, adding that the investigation found “a litany of flaws with the blowout preventer.” The board also said that two separate instances of bad wiring contributed to the failure of two backup batteries on the “blue pod” and “yellow pod” designed to make sure the blowout preventer’s blind shear rams activated. It said that the yellow pod activated anyway. The report faulted the maintenance by Transocean, owner of the Deepwater Horizon. The worst maritime oil spill in history occurred in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. As the high-stakes BP trial continues, here’s a look back at cleanup efforts in the spill’s aftermath. The board is an independent federal agency charged with investigating industrial and chemical accidents. It examined the reasons for the deadly explosion that took place at BP’s Texas City refinery in 2007, and it is investigating the West Virginia storage tank leak that contaminated water supplies for thousands of people. But it is a small agency, and it hired outside consultants to assist in the Deepwater Horizon case. The board has struggled against other agencies during the BP oil spill investigation to gain access to damaged equipment, and it went to federal court to get its subpoenas enforced. Transocean has argued that offshore incidents are outside the board’s jurisdiction. Yet the companies involved in the disaster — and plaintiffs’ lawyers — saw the report in the context of ongoing litigation over where and how much negligence might have been involved. And industry groups sought to defend drilling practices in the gulf, where drilling has returned to levels that prevailed before the spill. “There is nothing here that hasn’t already been exhaustively addressed by regulators and the industry,” the American Petroleum Institute said in a statement. “The report appears to omit significant facts and ignores the tremendous strides made to enhance the safety of offshore operations” since the spill. The board said it relied on information from a variety of sources, including relatively recent court cases brought by private plaintiffs about how to apportion blame for the spill. Mary Beth Mulcahy, who oversaw the board’s technical analysis, said that the agency used real time pressure data from the Deepwater Horizon. The board


How to select the proper trees for a new home’s yard

site plan may also indicate a utility easement running across your front yard where underground lines for electricity, gas, cable and phone are buried, Baish said. The easement can be as wide as 15 feet from the curb toward your house; inside this area, a utility has the right to remove a tree if its roots are causing a problem. This is far less likely if you contact “Miss Utility,” a local service (District and Maryland, 800-257-7777; Virginia, 800-552-7001) that arranges for each utility to come and locate its lines, usually by spraying a different stripe across your lawn, so that you can factor this into your tree-planting decisions. When you’re finally ready to start selecting trees, you’ll discover that much of the advice has changed since you bought a tree for your old house 20 years ago. Back then, the emphasis was on ornamentals and bigger trees that looked good and were easy to maintain. The easy-to-maintain part is still true, but ecological and environmental considerations are the new starting point. Today, local foresters and horticulturists urge homeowners to favor native tree species wherever possible because they have a much higher tolerance for Washington’s cold winters, hot and occasionally dry summers, and changing climate. Urban forester Samantha Wangsgard of Fairfax County’s Urban Forest Management Division said her office also urges homeowners to pass on widely planted native species such as the red maple and consider less familiar ones such as the swamp white oak. A neighborhood with too many of the same tree can quickly become denuded if those trees become diseased, she said. At the same time, the experts also said that sometimes a nonnative is your best option. For example, the flowering dogwood, whose blossoms are the state flower of Virginia, is susceptible to a debilitating fungus. Wangsgard said her office now recommends the hardier Appalachian spring dogwood, a cultivar that was developed in Maryland to be more disease resistant. It’s a pretty seamless substitution, she added, because the cultivar’s blossoms so closely resemble Virginia’s state flower that only an expert will notice the difference. In many new home communities in the outlying suburbs, another desirable trait in a tree species is leaves that are distasteful to deer. Sterling horticulturalist Josh Kane has found that deer do, in fact, have preferences, avoiding some evergreens, including the native eastern red cedar and the nonnative arborvitae family. But Kane


Style Invitational Week 1075: Falsity is Job One — write some fake auto trivia

(Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) In Florida, the use of directional signals is mandatory even when not turning. On cars purchased in Massachusetts, however, turn signals are optional equipment. Nevah use ’em — why pay for ’em? It’s high time that The Style Invitational furthered its mission to unenlighten the reading public with a contest seeking totally bogus trivia. This week, on the suggestion of 377-time Loser Jeff Contompasis (rhymes with “quantum gases”): Send us some fictoids about cars and trucks and driving and stuff, like the examples above, which Jeff wrote for our Week 998 contest for fictitious laws. Winner gets the Inkin’ Memorial, the Lincoln statue bobblehead that is the official Style Invitational trophy. Second place receives “Heads of State,” by Carl Sferazza Anthony (back when he was a Washington Post researcher, his latter two names were transposed). This nifty book depicts such fabulous artifacts as a screaming-green Richard Nixon Head candle, a Herbert Hoover Head lemonade pitcher (the head is lopped off at the top for easy access); and a George W. Bush Head jack-in-the-box, from which W pops out complete with lectern. We’d love to offer a few of these heads ourselves, but our second-prize budget is zero. So we thank Loser Pie Snelson for donating the book, at least. Other runners-up You can get a Nixon candle on eBay, but this week’s second-prize winner gets a picture of one (but so much more!). ( / Bloomsbury Books, 2004) The Style Conversational: The Empress’s weekly online column discusses each new contest and set of results. Especially if you plan to enter, check it out at wapo.st/styleconv. REPORT FROM WEEK 1071: THREE ON A MATCH In Week 1071, the Empress sent people to a Web site containing a huge list of three-letter abbreviations, from AAA to DZZ. Each of them links to a list of things that those three letters stand for. The contest was to choose any two or three of those things and compare or contrast them. THE WINNER OF THE INKIN’ MEMORIAL ACE: Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals 2nd place and the genune alligator-foot back scratcher: CWB: Canadian Western Bank 3rd place AGA: American Gas Association, American Gastroenterological Association 4th place DRI: U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island TRI AGAIN: HONORABLE MENTIONS AAA: Antiaircraft artillery; Morse code for aerial attacker; AAI: Airports Authority of India ABA: Australian Breastfeeding Association ABC


Her D.C. has changed. But some of the best remains

an entertaining disposition devote themselves to coming up with new cocktails. I’ve created about 75 cocktails in my career; about 15 of them were good. They can briefly be the center of attention, but at the end of it, it’s about the experience. If all you’re doing is selling drinks, I guarantee you’ll be out of business in six months.” 924 25th St. NW. 202-338-8707. Bonus: The restaurant is not far from the Kennedy Center if you are seeing a show. Cosmopolitan recipe Best Organic Mud Shampoo: Terressentials (April Greer/For The Washington post) It seems counterintuitive to wash your hair with dirt, but Maryland’s Terressentials boasts that its Pure Earth Hair Wash cleans hair without chemical detergents or preservatives. The wash has no added foaming agents, so it’s goopy, not sudsy. Fragrances include lavender and lemon. Many other organic hair and skin products line the shelves of the shop in Frederick, including face lotion, body wash and an extra mild body and hair wash for babies. The line is pricey, but for those dedicated to using all-natural products, the benefits might just outweigh the hefty cost. Founders Diana Kaye and Jim Hahn began making organic products to benefit Kaye’s health after she recovered from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. They opened the first Terressentials store in 1996 in Middletown, Md. The Frederick store has been operating since 2009. As for my hair? The mud took getting used to, but it not only cleansed, it left my curls smooth and glossy, too. 100 E. Patrick St., Frederick, Md. 301-378-0069. Best Local Soap Makers: SoapBox Soap (April Greer/For The Washington post) Poverty breeds illness, and something as simple as hand washing can make a world of difference. SoapBox is an Alexandria-based company that makes soap and donates one bar to those in need (here and abroad) for every bar sold. The handmade soaps, in scents such as lavender, lemon grass and eucalyptus, are all-natural and gluten-free; using them is an easy way to do good without even really trying. They are sold at local Whole Foods and Harris Teeter grocery stores and several area Target locations. Best Piñatas: Megamart Amid all the world-beat newcomers to Hyattsville is the mainstay Megamart, the Hispanic supermarket known for its reasonably priced groceries and party supplies, including piñatas. Kick your birthday party up a notch with a piñata shaped like a pirate. The chain has multiple locations here. 2340


firm that experts call it hardpan. Mike Goatley, a turf specialist at Virginia Tech, said that trying to landscape in a yard with this type of subsoil is “like trying to grow plant materials in concrete.” There is a solution, which requires a builder to take an additional step. Typically, at the end of the job, a home builder engages a landscaping contractor to “scarify,” or lightly till, the surface of the compacted subsoil before spreading the stockpiled topsoil. Then the yard is sprayed with a mixture of water, green paper mulch, seed and straw. (In late fall or early spring, sod might be used instead.) The extra step would require the landscaping contractor to spread a two-inch layer of new compost and thoroughly rototill it to a depth of 4 to 5 inches before the spraying. To be effective, a high-quality compost from a reputable source, such as a local municipality’s compost-producing facility, must be used. Breaking up the uppermost layer of subsoil greatly increases the soil’s ability to absorb rainwater, and adding the top-grade compost gives a huge boost to everything planted in the new yard. For the past two years, Mark Carroll, a turf specialist at the University of Maryland, has run a pilot project in Howard County that enhances the yards of new houses in exactly that way. The treated yards look superior to those that did not get the extra amendments, Carroll said, and the treatments reduce lawn maintenance. They will not need fertilizer for at least three years, and very little after that, because the soil amendments have long-lasting effects, he said. The biggest plus of Carroll’s program is not a homeowner’s enhanced landscape, however. The entire region can potentially benefit. When more rainwater is absorbed in individual yards, less runs off and eventually enters the Chesapeake Bay. When far less fertilizer is used, the quality of the water that does run off is higher because it contains very little nitrogen and phosphorus, pollutants contained in fertilizer that have negatively affected marine life in the bay as well as in streams and rivers that drain into it. Every local jurisdiction is concerned about runoff, and Fairfax County recently took action to address it. Beginning July 1, the county will require builders and developers of new-home communities to reduce both the volume of storm water runoff and the amount of phosphorus and nitrogen in it.


Obama, other Group of Seven leaders offer olive branch to Putin

hope now is that sectoral sanctions will quickly become unnecessary. Obama and Cameron suggested that Putin has roughly until the end of the month to decide whether he will change course in Ukraine. “If he continues a strategy of undermining the sovereignty of Ukraine, then we have no choice but to respond,” Obama said at a news conference with Cameron, who expressed the same view. “Sectoral sanctions are broader; they’d be more significant,” Obama said. “My hope is, is that we don’t have to exercise them because Mr. Putin has made some better decisions.” The comments by Obama and Cameron were striking because they suggested that the leaders would seek to impose harsher sanctions on Russia if Putin does not take active steps to resolve the crisis in Ukraine. Many in Eastern Europe have worried that the West would not impose additional punishments if the current situation continues in eastern Ukraine, where separatists widely believed to be backed by Russia are stirring unrest and violence. “I think Europeans understand that the reason we’ve seen such extraordinary growth and peace on this continent has to do with certain values and certain principles that have to be upheld,” Obama said. “And when they are so blatantly disregarded, the choice is clear: Europeans have to stand up for those ideals and principles even if it creates some economic inconvenience.” A joint statement from the G-7 condemned what it called Russia’s illegal annexation and “unacceptable interference” in other areas of Ukraine and said the body will refuse to recognize Crimea as a part of Russia. “We stand ready to intensify targeted sanctions and to implement significant additional restrictive measures to impose further costs on Russia should events so require,” the statement said. U.S. officials later said certain provocative actions — such as Russian troops crossing the border into Ukraine — would trigger more punitive measures. But they would not define exactly what Putin would have to do, nor would they set an exact deadline. “Clearly sectoral sanctions are on the table,” said Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. “If we see the status quo continuing, we are going to move.” Obama and Cameron acknowledged that there are differences of opinion among the 28 European Union nations and that rallying them all to favor stricter sanctions would be difficult. “Do I expect unanimity among the 28 E.U. members?” Obama joked. “Welcome


Luxury shopping returns to downtown D.C. Is Washington ready to buy?

if and when she found the right location. The problem with most commercial spaces is that they’re owned by individual landlords, so retailers have little control over neighboring stores. Disegni looked in Georgetown, “but we didn’t like the adjacencies.” She finally said yes when she was approached by CityCenter, where Longchamp will be surrounded by other luxury companies, most of which have signed 10-year leases. “They’ve been incredibly careful,” she says. The upscale vibe, along with international tourists who know the Longchamp name and the convention center nearby made it a “good mix for our brand.” Ditto for Paul Stuart, which sells classic men’s and women’s clothing. The company has one store in New York and two in Chicago. The new Washington location opening next year will be the fourth store since the company was founded in 1938. Why D.C.? Why now? “Believe me, we get a lot of calls from real estate people,” president Michael Ostrove says. He was attracted by the concept of the project — especially the fact that it’s not a typical mall setting — and the downtown location. “We just thought there will be a great awakening of this area.” The return downtown The best stores in Washington started downtown: Woodward & Lothrop, Hecht’s and the famed Garfinckel’s, which opened in 1905 and reigned as the most stylish place to shop in the nation’s capital. Kings, movie stars and first ladies including Jackie Kennedy showed up at the flagship store at 14th and F streets. Then came the suburban malls and fewer reasons to go into the city to shop. But the real end of downtown retail came from the 1968 riots, which burned out hundreds of stores, and the development of the Metro system in the 1970s, which turned the streets into a construction zone. “It really ended good business in downtown,” says Peter Marx, president of designer retailer Saks Jandel. His great-grandfather founded the luxury women’s clothing store in 1888; the family relocated the boutique from 12th Street to Friendship Heights more than 50 years ago and operated a satellite location in the Watergate for two decades. After years of declining sales, Garfinckel’s closed in 1990 and was replaced by a Borders bookstore (and now the Hamilton restaurant). Woodies closed in 1995; the 11th and G streets headquarters sat empty for eight years after a failed attempt by the Washington Opera to convert


Georgetown Day School buying Tenleytown properties

school spokeswoman Alison Grasheim, but school leaders envision the Safeway site, at 4203 Davenport St. NW, as a new campus and the neighboring dealership property, which fronts Wisconsin Avenue, as a commercial development that would support the school financially. “We had hoped for the opportunity for everyone to be on the same campus,” Grasheim said. “We just have felt that it makes for a better school community and better connects students through grade levels.” School officials also see the move as a way to bolster Georgetown Day’s financial sustainability, allowing it to hold tuition increases in check and maintain competitive faculty salaries. Not only will the school save operating expenses by consolidating two campuses into one, but the new commercial development probably will produce a revenue stream far into the future. “As we look ahead, there are multiple opportunities to consider that could bring in significant revenue for the school through smart, careful planning and development of the sites,” school officials wrote in an e-mail to parents Thursday afternoon. Both the dealership and the grocery store will remain open for at least 10 months through lease agreements with the school, and terms of the sale prevent the construction of a new grocery store on the site. The decision to sell marks an abrupt turnaround for Safeway, as it had been contemplating a mixed-use development of the Tenleytown location that would have included a much larger store with apartments on top. Its departure from the neighborhood belies otherwise tightening grocery competition in the city, with Giant Food, Harris Teeter, Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe’s and independent chains all opening or seeking to open new stores. While the grocer’s preference to add apartments when building new stores has been well-received in D.C. neighborhoods such as Petworth and Mount Vernon Square, it caused strife among Tenleytown neighbors, raising the prospect of a lengthy and expensive approval process. Safeway spokesman Craig Muckle said the company got numerous offers from the school before coming to a deal. “Until GDS made its offer, we were continuing efforts to redevelop the existing store,” Muckle said. Winning zoning approval has not been easy for some developers in the area; a plan to redevelop a Giant Food store with housing nearby took more than 10 years to meet approval. Muckle said that the disagreements weren’t the deciding factor in the sale but that “the offer presented by GDS provided


Charles Krauthammer: Free Bowe Bergdahl, then try him

What is it with Susan Rice and the Sunday morning talk shows? This time she said Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl had served in Afghanistan “with honor and distinction” — the biggest whopper since she insisted the Benghazi attack was caused by a video. There is strong eyewitness evidence that Bergdahl deserted his unit and that the search for him endangered his fellow soldiers. If he had served with honor and distinction, there would be no national uproar over his ransom and some of the widely aired objections to the deal would be as muted as they are flimsy. For example: 1. America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. Nonsense. Of course we do. Everyone does, while pretending not to. The Israelis, by necessity the toughest of all anti-terror fighters, in 2011 gave up 1,027 prisoners, some with blood on their hands, for one captured staff sergeant. 2. The administration did not give Congress 30-day notice as required by law. Of all the jurisdictional disputes between president and Congress, the president stands on the firmest ground as commander in chief. And commanders have the power to negotiate prisoner exchanges. Moreover, from where did this sudden assertion of congressional prerogative spring? After five years of supine acquiescence to President Obama’s multiple usurpations, Congress suddenly becomes exercised over a war power — where its claim is weakest. Congress does nothing in the face of 23 executive alterations of the president’s own Affordable Care Act. It does nothing when Obama essentially enacts by executive order the Dream Act, which Congress had refused to enact. It does nothing when the Justice Department unilaterally rewrites drug laws. And now it rises indignantly on its hind legs because it didn’t get 30 days’ notice of a prisoner swap? 3. The Taliban release endangers national security. Indeed it does. The five released detainees are unrepentant, militant and dangerous. They’re likely to go back into the field and resume their war against local and foreign infidels, especially us. The administration pretense that we and the Qataris will monitor them is a joke. They can start planning against us tonight. And if they decide to leave Qatar tomorrow, who’s going to stop them? The administration might have tried honesty here and said: Yes, we gave away five important combatants. But that’s what you do to redeem hostages. In such exchanges, the West always gives more than it gets for the simple reason that


Eugene Robinson: Six issues raised by Bowe Bergdahl

of his senses? That seems possible, too. These are questions for the military justice system to answer, and Bergdahl should be held accountable. Deserting one’s post in a combat zone is a grave offense. But Bergdahl has not been found guilty of anything, or even formally accused of anything. He was, until his release, an active-duty U.S. Army sergeant being held by the Taliban. We cannot decide whether to secure a captive soldier’s release based on his or her political views — and we certainly cannot take into account what the soldier’s father might think about U.S. foreign policy. Recent proof-of-life videos from the Taliban appeared to show that Bergdahl’s health was deteriorating. Meanwhile, the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan soon will come to an end. The time to act was now. 2. Reports that six U.S. servicemen died on missions searching for Bergdahl have been denied by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. My impression is that this may be a matter of semantics. For example, troops at an outpost under Taliban fire might have been ordered not to evacuate if there were reports that Bergdahl could be in the area. In my book, such duty should count as participation in the search. The nation’s hearts should go out to the families of any who died looking for Bergdahl. These men were bravely doing their job, as defined by their commanders: Bring home a U.S. soldier being held by the enemy. 3. Was the price of Bergdahl’s freedom too high? No, it wasn’t. The five Taliban commanders released in exchange should properly be described as one-time Taliban commanders. I don’t doubt that they were powerful, dangerous enemy leaders at the time of their capture. But all have been held at Guantanamo since at least 2002. The war and the world have changed. It defies credulity that any of them could emerge after such a long absence and regain command; for one thing, many — if not most — of the fighters they once led are dead. Drone strikes would be launched the minute one of the five appeared on the battlefield. The release does boost the Taliban’s morale, however, so the deal is not cost-free. But I believe bringing Bergdahl home is worth it. 4. I said the way Obama did this was “mostly” reasonable. The president should and could have informed Congress that he was going ahead with a prisoner


Afghan presidential race front-runner Abdullah escapes suicide attack in Kabul

Sangcharaki, a spokesman for Abdullah. “Abdullah’s vehicle was lifted up by the . . . blast and was damaged slightly. He, his deputies and all of his campaign managers are safe,” Sangcharaki said. Shortly after the attack, Abdullah appeared on television to say he was undeterred by the apparent assassination attempt, the first against a presidential candidate in this year’s election. “Again, threats can’t stop us and our people. We are still [dedicated] to what we have promised for a better future,” he said. Abdullah’s second deputy, Haji Mohaqiq, said surviving the attacks showed that “God was on the side” of Abdullah and his team. Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister who finished second in the April presidential vote and is facing Abdullah in the June 14 runoff, condemned the attack. “This is the act of the enemies of Afghanistan to disrupt the democratic process in the country,” Ghani was quoted as saying on his social media account. The blasts shattered windows at the hotel and several other nearby buildings. Damaged vehicles and the wreckage of a car used in the attack could be seen on the road, which was littered with debris. “They were really powerful explosions. My ears are affected by them,” said Shah Wali, who witnessed the attack. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombings. The radical Islamist Taliban movement has carried out such attacks against Afghan forces, foreign troops, and targets associated with the government and foreign interests in the past. The Taliban launched scores of attacks April 5 in the first round of the presidential voting but was unable to prevent millions of Afghans from participating in what has been described as the first peaceful transition of power through the ballot box in the nation’s history. The Taliban said early this week that it would sabotage the second round and warned people against taking part in the poll. With most U.S. and NATO troops set to pull out of the country by year’s end, and all U.S. forces scheduled to leave by the end of 2016, a successful runoff is regarded as crucial to Afghanistan’s stability. If all goes as planned, President Hamid Karzai, who is limited to two terms, will hand over power to his successor in the first week of August. Afghanistan’s constitution says elections would have to be held again if either of the candidates in the runoff were to die.


Woman’s body found near Taft Bridge in Northwest D.C.

Two people on Friday morning discovered the body of a woman near the William Howard Taft Bridge in Northwest Washington, according to D.C. police. The cause of death remains undetermined, and Officer Araz Alali, a police department spokesman, said detectives have not yet identified the victim. She was found a few minutes after 4 a.m. along Cathedral Avenue in Northwest, near where Connecticut Avenue crosses over in Rock Creek Park. The U.S. Park Police initially investigated; D.C. police handles all death investigations. Numerous streets were closed Get updates on your area delivered via e-mail