The newest, hippest drink pouring into a glass near you: Craft soda

them into his Pontiac hatchback and drives them to area restaurants, novelty stores and farmers markets. “I spent years making dozens and dozens of batches with every flavor I could think of. Some were terrible,” says Norberg, a Harvard grad who launched an online directory of root-beer keg vendors right after he left college. “It took me a while to realize that I had a unique dream, and why not put everything into it? I wanted a high-end, luxury product that doesn’t exist in the root-beer market.” “I wanted a high-end, luxury product that doesn’t exist in the root-beer market,” says Norberg, the founder of Thunder Beast Root Beer. (April Greer/For The Washington Post) Norberg is riding the wave of a national trend: craft sodas, which are shaking up the soft-drink market in the same way that craft beer has altered the beer world. Small-batch, hand-crafted soda brands — such as Joia in Minnesota, GuS in New York and Maine Root in the Pine Tree State — are springing up across the country. A soda pop-tasting festival, sponsored by an Illinois-based events and entertainment company, is on a second-year swing through the Midwest this summer and fall. Even national brands are getting into the game. This past fall, PepsiCo announced that it would start selling bottles of Caleb’s Kola, made with fair-trade sugar (as opposed to high-fructose corn syrup), kola nut extract from Africa and spices from around the world; it also has introduced Mountain Dewshine, a clear version of Mountain Dew, also made with sugar and sold in a bottle. The soft-drink giant is introducing a line of craft sodas called Stubborn, with flavors such as black cherry with tarragon, orange hibiscus, pineapple cream and agave vanilla cream. Not to be outdone, Coca-Cola’s newly created craft beverages division bought two “natural soda” brands, Blue Sky and Hansen’s Natural, in June. And Keurig, best known for its coffeemakers, says it will introduce a sodamaking machine called Keurig Kold this fall, joining rival Soda Stream. Craft sodas are still a small portion of the $77 billion-per-year soda market — so small that industry newsletter Beverage Digest doesn’t measure it. But that sector is growing even as overall soda sales decline: 8.8 billion cases of soda were sold last year, down from 10.2 billion in 2004, according to the newsletter. Norberg fills bottles with his root beer. For distribution, he loads the


Afghan villagers skeptical as U.S. reopens probe into 2013 killings

Shahedullah, 24, holds pictures of his brother Mohammad Qasim, whose body according to Shahedullah was found close to the COP Nerkh military base, in Wardak province May 26, 2013. Picture taken on May 26, 2013. REUTERS/Stringer (© Stringer Afghanistan / Reuter/REUTERS) MAIDAN SHAHR, Afghanistan — Too little: The decision by the U.S. military, first reported last week, to reopen a criminal investigation into the deaths of at least 18 Afghan civilians who were allegedly slain by an Army Special Forces A-team. Too late: The killings unfolded between 2012 and 2013. With so much time having passed, few expect that justice will be served. “I have not the slightest belief in this inquiry,” said Esmatullah, a student who, like many Afghans, uses only one name. “It’s like throwing dust into the eyes of the people.” The unsolved killings remain among the most sensitive controversies of the American military presence in Afghanistan. At the time, they deepened the animosity between Washington and then-President Hamid Karzai, threatening to derail U.S. efforts to fight the Taliban less than an hour’s drive from the capital, Kabul. Allegations of the slayings first surfaced in November 2012, when villagers in Nerkh accused the U.S. Special Forces A-team unit of arresting and abusing family members in the Taliban-infested area. The disappearances of villagers continued until early 2013, triggering protests in Wardak province, where Nerkh is located. That prompted Karzai to order an investigation. He also ordered the A-team to leave the province, which it did in April 2013. Shortly thereafter, human remains were found buried near the A-team’s base. Afghan authorities, using clothing and possessions found at the sites, identified the bodies of 10 men who had been taken into custody by U.S. forces, according to Human Rights Watch. Eight other men were also believed to have been killed in operations linked to the A-team. At the time, the U.S. military denied the allegations. It said several investigations had found that neither U.S. forces nor other military coalition members were responsible for the killings, but none of those probes were criminal ones. The military did open and close a separate 2013 criminal investigation into the matter. It is not clear when the U.S. military decided to reopen the investigation, or why. “During the case review process, information and leads were identified that demand further investigation,” Chris Grey, a spokesman for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command in Quantico, Va.,


For 48 years, John ‘Doc’ Warman taught at Gonzaga. He was one of a kind.

Star-Spangled Banner,’” Dick said. It wasn’t just that he had a nice voice; he also sang it fast. Doc was typically in and out in under 50 seconds. “No embellishments,” Dick said approvingly. The two of them — the basketball coach and the classics teacher — perfected a musical act of their own, performing at school fundraising events. The bidding was furious to nab a spot at an annual dinner during which the pair performed standards and show tunes. Doc was musical director of Gonzaga’s shows. (The stage in the renovated theater is named in his honor.) He played piano in the small pit orchestra — without a score. (He memorized the music.) He was also the choir director and organist at Our Lady of Victory Church in the Palisades neighborhood in Northwest Washington. No one, friends remembered, had ever seen Doc dressed in anything other than a jacket and tie, leading some to speculate that he was born that way. An obituary would say that Doc had no children. Of course, he had thousands. Et tu, Momsie? Latin. I tell you, as I wandered around the cathedrals of England last month, I wished I’d had some in my back pocket. So many engravings looked like so much Greek to me, so to speak. My Catholic school education petered out before I got to Latin, but my grandmother Momsie used to tell a funny story about her Latin class at the District’s Notre Dame Academy in the early days of the 20th century. Translating a section of Virgil’s “The Aeneid,” Momsie came to a word she didn’t understand, so she asked the nun: “Sister, this says the Trojan horse was ‘pregnant with armed men.’ What does ‘pregnant’ mean?” “Ask your parents,” came the nun’s reply. Panda cub name? Elvis. Janet Mullen “Eventually the panda has to go back to China,” she wrote, “so we’ll be able to say, ‘Elvis has left the building.’ ” Well, let’s not focus on his departure just yet. Rather, let’s send him and his caregivers happy thoughts, happy thoughts that include referring to him as “Elvis.” If you can add weight to the groundswell of support for that name, let me know. E-mail me reasons it makes perfect sense to name Mei Xiang’s cub after the King of Rock and Roll. Put “Elvis Panda” in the subject heading. Twitter: @johnkelly For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly.


U.S. auto sales pick up in August

group. Such a designation means the suit could cover more than 160,000 California drivers and could give plaintiffs more leverage to negotiate a settlement. ● 7-Eleven expanded its delivery service to three cities Tuesday. Customers in Chicago, Los Angeles and parts of New York can order other items from the convenience stores, including chicken wings, cold medicine and paper towels. Orders are made through the app or Web site of DoorDash, the online delivery company that 7-Eleven has partnered with in those cities. Stores in Washington, D.C., and Boston will offer delivery in the coming months, the companies said, and more cities are planned. ● Manufacturing in the United States expanded in August at the slowest pace since May 2013 as anemic demand from emerging markets such as China translated into leaner factory order books. The Institute for Supply Management’s index fell to 51.1, lower than the Bloomberg survey median, from 52.7 in July, a report from the Tempe, Ariz., -based group showed Tuesday. A measure of exports matched the weakest reading since April 2009. ● General Electric on Tuesday named Beth Comstock, a longtime marketing and communications executive who leads GE Business Innovations, as vice chair. Comstock, 55, becomes the first woman in GE’s history to become a vice chair, a title that three other company executives also hold. In a statement, Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt said Comstock had spearheaded investment in the “Industrial Internet,” GE’s efforts to evolve into a digital industrial company. She also leads GE Ventures and Licensing, corporate marketing, sales and communications, and will take on responsibilities for developing new customer business models. ● U.S. law firm and class-action specialist Hausfeld launched a platform on Tuesday to help pursue claims against Google, posing a potential headache for the world’s No. 1 Internet search engine amid its regulatory troubles in Europe. Hausfeld, which has coordinated various high-profile class-action cases, said the Google Redress & Integrity Platform (GRIP) is aimed at those affected by alleged anti-competitive behavior by Google in Europe. It said the platform would build on the European Commission’s April charge sheet, which accuses Google of unfairly promoting its own shopping service to the disadvantage of rivals. — From news services Coming Today ● 8:30 a.m.: Labor Department releases second-quarter productivity data. ● 10 a.m.: Commerce Department releases factory orders for July. ● 2 p.m.: Federal Reserve releases Beige Book. — From news services


Officers charged in Freddie Gray case will face separate trials

National Guard and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D) to implement a citywide curfew. The scene Wednesday echoed demonstrations in April and May but on a smaller scale. “All night, all day we will fight for Freddie Gray!” a crowd of about 40 people chanted as the hearing got underway in the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse. As demonstrators headed from the courthouse toward the Inner Harbor, trailed by two police vans and a helicopter, one young man screamed, “I’m hurt! I got hit by a car!” At some point, police arrested the man. He was placed in an ambulance — as the crowd shouted, “Take off the cuffs!” — and driven away. Some in the group marched to the nearby police headquarters to demand information about him, Inside the courthouse, the hearing was packed. About 40 members of the public, dozens of reporters, 14 defense lawyers and seven prosecutors filled the dark wooden benches of the chamber. The officers, who had filed waivers that allowed them to be absent, were not in court. Protesters gathered outside the Baltimore courthouse where the first hearing in the case of six city police officers charged in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray is to get underway. Prosecutors filed charges in May against Officers Caesar R. Goodson Jr., William G. Porter, Edward M. Nero and Garrett E. Miller, Sgt. Alicia D. White and Lt. Brian W. Rice. Goodson, who drove the van that transported Gray, faces the most serious charges, including second-degree depraved-heart murder, involuntary manslaughter and other counts. Porter, Rice and White have been charged with involuntary manslaughter and other related charges. All six are charged with misconduct in office, second-degree assault and reckless endangerment. Defense attorneys argued in court that the case against their clients should be dismissed, alleging that Mosby’s news conference in May announcing charges against the officers overstepped rules of professional conduct for lawyers in Maryland. Defense attorney Andrew Graham said the top prosecutor’s declaration that she had heard demonstrators’ cries of “no justice, no peace” essentially meant “no convictions, no peace.” Graham also argued that it was inappropriate for Mosby to answer questions about evidence in the case during the news conference. She had discussed whether officers gave statements to investigators in April and commented on the knife Gray carried that had been used to justify his arrest, Graham said. Graham said the nationally televised comments tainted the


Protests outside Freddie Gray hearing turn briefly contentious

crowd shouted, “Take off the cuffs!” — and driven away. Protesters outside the 8th circuit courthouse for Baltimore City. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) “We want to know what happened to him,” said Cortly Witherspoon, president of the Baltimore Southern Leadership Conference. “We are going to make sure this man has a legal defense.” Baltimore police reported on Twitter that there had been one arrest. Gray was the 25-year-old African American man whose death from a severe spinal injury suffered in police custody inflamed Baltimore’s poor neighborhoods and drew the attention of a nation already embroiled in an emotional debate over how police officers treat young black men. On the day of Gray’s funeral in April, demonstrations seeking justice for Gray’s family turned into violent riots and looting, triggering a week-long state of emergency in the city. Gov. Larry Hogan (R) brought in the National Guard. The purpose of Wednesday’s hearing is to address whether any charges against the six arrested officers should be dismissed; the prosecutor should be recused; or the officers should be tried separately. About 400 people signed up on Facebook to participate in Wednesday’s protests, which were organized by the Baltimore People’s Power Assembly. But initial turnout was far smaller, with demonstrators seemingly outnumbered by the large law enforcement and media presence. “We don’t want any charges dropped against any officers, we don’t want a change of venue, and we don’t want the state’s attorney to be removed from this case,” protest organizer Sharon Black said Tuesday. “There’s a general feeling in the city that cops here have gotten away with murder.” Among the demonstrators on Wednesday was Tawanda Jones, the sister of Tyrone West, a Baltimore resident who was killed by police in 2013. “Indict, convict, send the killer cops to jail,” West chanted. “A poor black man’s reality is police brutality.” Baltimore police have prepared for potential clashes, department spokesman T.J. Smith said. Officers were barred from taking leave Wednesday, and about 1,400 officers have gone through “enhanced and advanced” civil disturbance training. At least four sheriff’s deputies were stationed on each street corner around the courthouse. “We’re going to treat a protest like a protest — which everyone has the right to do — and a riot like a riot — which people don’t have the right to do,” Smith said. Lee Patterson, 60, who led the chanting outside the courthouse, said he was


D.C. news in brief

Serve DC campaign Sept. 11 will honor first responders, military Serve DC, the District’s office for volunteerism, is hosting its #ThankUniforms campaign Sept. 11 to honor first responders, military service members, veterans and their families at Metrorail stations throughout the city. Pop-up locations will include Foggy Bottom-GWU (GWU Hospital exit), Navy Yard-Ballpark (M Street and New Jersey Avenue exit), U Street/Cardozo (U and 12th streets exit) and Union Station (Massachusetts Avenue exit). Visitors can pledge community service and send personalized messages to service members. To share their commitment, they can take a picture with a #ThankUniforms sign and post it on social media with the tag @ServeDC. The total number of hours pledged will be submitted to the Operation Honor Cards national tally on behalf of the D.C. government. The office will also collect pledges and messages online and compile photos and messages in a commemorative album. For information, go to servedc.dc.gov. D.C. Walk for the Animals fundraiser is Sept. 26 The D.C. Walk for the Animals and Pet-A-Palooza, a fundraiser for the Washington Humane Society, will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sept. 26 at Kingsbury Center, 5000 14th St. NW. Registration is $20 for those 13 and older, $15 for children 4 to 12 and free for children 3 and younger. Walkers are asked to raise money through pledges. Those unable to attend can register as virtual walkers. Other activities include live music, on-site pet adoptions, family-oriented games and pet contests. For information or to create a fundraising page, go to www.dclovesdcanimals.org. Tenant summit will address rights, concerns of D.C. renters The Office of the Tenant Advocate has scheduled its annual Tenant Summit from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 26 at Gallaudet University’s Kellogg Conference Center, 800 Florida Ave. NE. The day-long program will discuss issues confronting District renters. The event is recommended for tenants; tenant associations; housing attorneys, advocates and organizations; and those interested in renters’ rights. The summit is free, and lunch and parking are included. To register, go to ota.dc.gov or call 202-719-6560. — Compiled by Terence McArdle


Montgomery Animal Watch

These cases were received by the Montgomery County Animal Services Division. For information, call 240-773-5900. This number provides recorded information on topics such as the new animal services and adoption center’s hours and location in Derwood, adoption and licensing procedures, and lost-and-found and field services. Pit bull bites child: Dogs fight in pet hospital: Adoptable cats at no-kill shelter: Gaithersburg Noon to 3 p.m. Saturday6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday Adopt dogs and cats at MCHS no-kill rescue: Rockville Reduced fees for cat adoption: Germantown — Compiled by Lisa M. Bolton


Prince George’s County news in brief

State agriculture department offers tips to limit mosquitoes The Maryland Department of Agriculture encourages residents to practice pest management principles to help limit mosquitoes in the area. The guidelines come after mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus were caught in Bowie and a case of the virus was confirmed in a Baltimore resident last month. Suggestions to reduce mosquitoes and their larvae and the risk of being bitten include: →Remove any unnecessary water-holding containers, such as flower pots, trash cans, tires and buckets. →Install, inspect and repair window and door screens. →Regularly clean bird baths and pet food bowls. →Wear insect repellent and long, loose-fitting, light-colored clothing. →Avoid mosquito-infested areas during prime periods of activity, between dusk and dawn. The department’s mosquito control personnel have been conducting surveillance activities in communities across the state to spray infected areas. To report sites of suspected or known mosquito breeding on public property, call 301-422-5080 or visit www.mda.maryland.gov. Bowie public hearing on annual report is Tuesday at City Hall Bowie officials seek public input in the development of the Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report, an accounting of funds received from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant Program. A public hearing is scheduled for Tuesday at 8 p.m. at City Hall, 15901 Excalibur Rd., Bowie. The report ensures that allocated funds go toward the goals and objectives outlined in the Five Year Strategic Plan, such as housing, special needs, economic development and non-housing community development. A draft of the fiscal 2015 report is available for review and comment online through Friday, as well as at City Hall, the Bowie Senior Center, Bowie public libraries, and Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission community centers in Bowie. For information, visit www.cityofbowie.org. Metro to discuss service changes for next year at meeting Sept. 17 Metro will host a public hearing to discuss proposed service changes for next year at 6 p.m. Sept. 17 at Metro’s headquarters, 600 Fifth St. NW in the District. Prince George’s County commuters will hear from Metro officials and can give input on proposed line changes in College Park, New Carrollton, Greenbelt, Marlboro Pike, Forestville, District Heights and Laurel. Commuters can read about the proposed regional changes in English and Spanish online at www.wmata.com/bus/betterbus.cfm. To speak at the meeting, attendees must register in advance by e-mailing speak@wmata.com or calling 202-962-2511. — Compiled by Jillian S. Jarrett


Gourmet Symphony uses food, social settings to make the music accessible

himself as a “borderline millennial” who is trying to reach his generation. “D.C. is such a foodie town,” Devlin added, “and there are so many culinary artists in the area. We wanted to unite the artisanal community with the artistic community.” Devlin is the executive director and youth orchestra conductor of the McLean Orchestra, as well as the assistant conductor of New Jersey’s Princeton Symphony Orchestra. He also serves as associate conductor for Capital City Symphony, a nonprofessional community orchestra based at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street NE. Gourmet Symphony’s first event was a Kickstarter-funded concert at the Atlas in February. Devlin said he was surprised to learn that “70 percent of the audience had never been to a classical music event before.” He and Coco plan to change that with events that, Devlin said, “appeal to a younger generation of concertgoer than you might find at the Kennedy Center on a normal basis. But also we’ve found a large amount of support from people who have never come to a symphony orchestra concert before.” One way to attract those listeners is to banish the formality of the customary classical music performance. “The orchestra never performs on a stage,” Devlin said. “We’re always in the middle of the audience. Eating and drinking, Snapchatting, tweeting and Facebooking are encouraged. The orchestra will come and eat and drink with the audience between pieces.” At the Hamilton, he noted, musicians whose regular gigs are with the National Symphony and Kennedy Center Opera House orchestras will play pieces by Mozart and Beethoven while those composers’ favorite foods and drinks are served. The group ventured even further from the Kennedy Center this summer after getting an “Innovate D.C.” grant from the city’s Commission on the Arts and Humanities. That funded the “Taste Your Music” series with Capital City Symphony musicians at SOME and Miriam’s Kitchen. Along with meals, the events included music workshops, an instrument “petting zoo” and music therapy sessions. To Coco, the events demonstrated that “human interaction with the music transcends whether the walls are draped in marble or with hand-drawn pictures from the people who are there every day.” Over the summer, Devlin said, “we developed a little following. As we moved from place to place, the word spread that we were delivering food and music combined. At the last event, we served over 500 guests.” “It’s been humbling.


D.C. community calendar, Sept. 3 to 10, 2015

or 202-707-5221. www.loc.gov/bookfest. Free. See memorials by bike Yoga for adults Yoga in Mount Pleasant Pome fruit: Apples, pears and quince WithLoveDC yoga gatherings Congressional Cemetery Medieval Sufism 27th Annual D.C. Blues Festival Portrait story: Davy Crockett “The Sign of Venus” “Alberto the Great” Meet filmmaker Luca Verdone at this screening of his 2013 documentary film about the iconic career of the beloved mid-20th century comic actor Alberto Sordi. Experience clips, photographs, interviews and testimonials. 3 p.m. National Gallery of Art, East Building, Large Auditorium, Fourth Street and Constitution Avenue NW. 202-737-4215. Free. Page-to-Stage: New Play Festival Sunday, Sept. 6 Museum community day Visit special exhibitions “Organic Matters — Women to Watch 2015” and “Super Natural.” Noon-5 p.m. National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1250 New York Ave. NW. 202-783-5000. Free. Cathedral needlepoint tour Sunday yoga at the library “Banditi a Orgosolo” “Singin’ in the Rain” “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” Shaw knitting and crocheting circle “I Magliari” Monday, Sept. 7 Close up: The Declaration of Independence Tuesday, Sept. 8 U.S. Botanic Garden lunchtime tour Classical music Internationally known Magdalina Melkonyan performs. 12:10 p.m. Church of the Epiphany, 1317 G St. NW. 202-347-2635, Ext. 20. $10. Awareness through movement Carol Regan leads classes for those experiencing fatigue, pain or restriction of movement because of injury, surgery or treatment; learn new ways for moving comfortably, through simple floor exercises that change posture, breathing and movement. Tuesdays at 6 p.m. Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, 1632 U St. NW. 202-483-8600. www.smithcenter.org. $10 per class; $25 per month. Finding a Line: Skateboarding, Music and Media Happy tails Yoga at Northwest One Library Yoga at your library For adult and teen beginners, no experience required; take a mat. 7:30 p.m. Petworth Library, 4200 Kansas Ave. NW. 202-243-1188. Free. Wednesday, Sept. 9 Author talk Gallery talk Therapeutic yoga classes Finding a Line: Skateboarding, Music, and Media Yoga in Luce Chess club D.C. Builds: Master Planning for Union Station’s Second Century Sculpture in the Age of Impressionism: Rodin, Degas and Rosso Artist Trevor Paglen “Treason: Nixon and the 1968 Election” Zumba “Big Significant Things” Thursday, Sept. 10 Documentary film screenings Jonny Grave concert Luce Unplugged with The North Country, (Americana) Sandra Y. Johnson and friends Hard-swinging, bluesy vocals and instrumentals. Dog Tag Cafe will have a pop-up concession on the grounds for all performances, with light fare for purchase; attendees are also


Buzzard Point Marina to close in December, after a half-century of use

WASHINGTON, DC - Buzzard Point Marina at the southern end of Buzzard Point, about two blocks from the stadium site, hosts pleasure boats, in Washington, DC. The area is a proposed location for a new soccer stadium coming to Washington, conveniently located close to Nationals Park. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/The Washington Post) (Maddie Meyer/THE WASHINGTON POST) Buzzard Point Marina, where boat owners have docked for more than a half-century, will close in December, displacing about 60 boat owners, the National Park Service said Thursday. Officials said the marina is in need of improvements to remain safe and modern, but that to make them would be prohibitively expensive. Instead, the marina will close, and later, the agency will study other recreational opportunities on the Anacostia River. “Closing the marina is not a decision that was made lightly,” Gopaul Noojibail, a superintendent with the Park Service, said in a statement. Fifty-eight boat owners who use the marina have been notified that they must leave by the end of the year. Christine Barna, who works at the marina, spent the evening talking to disgruntled customers. “These people are the community of Washington,” she said, calling the Park Service “cowards” for closing the marina. “Boating is a necessity.” Brian Levy, 40, of Northwest Washington, said he had just paid his marina fees and had put his 26-foot sailboat, the Anchovy, in the water last week. He said he is disappointed to see the marina go. “This is one of the coolest spots,” Levy said. “It’s a quiet, tranquil place in otherwise bustling D.C. You feel like you’re 40 miles away from D.C., when you’re actually two miles from downtown.” Buzzard Point has long been one of the city’s least-trafficked corners, a spit of land jutting into the Anacostia in Southwest Washington. In addition to the boat slips — where one man has long lived in a solitary houseboat — the neighborhood is home to an assortment of heavy industries, junkyards and a Revolution-era fort. But the Buzzard Point neighborhood expects a much higher profile in the near future. After years of political wrangling, the professional soccer team D.C. United has signed a deal with the city to build a 20,000-seat stadium there to replace the aging RFK Stadium as the team’s home field. The soccer team — which could not be reached for comment Thursday evening — has hired the architects who built Nationals


Redskins still waiting on RGIII’s clearance

cleared to return to competition. On Aug. 27, Griffin spoke to reporters for the first time following the Detroit game. He said he wasn’t sure when he suffered the concussive blow and implied he wasn’t sure whether he actually had been concussed or displayed concussion-like symptoms. After suffering from injuries throughout his career, Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III lost his starting position. That night, the Redskins announced that an independent neurologist had cleared the quarterback to play. But roughly 24 hours later, on the eve of Washington’s game against the Baltimore Ravens, the Redskins released a statement from Kurtzke in which he explained that, after reviewing previously examined “neuropsychology data,” he agreed with a neuropsychologist that Griffin should be withheld from competition. The name of the neuropsychologist has not been made public. In short, the doctor had second thoughts about the verbal clearance he had relayed to the Redskins the day before. According to people close to the process, the reversal was a prudent course of action, reflecting due consideration by Kurtzke, who was relatively new to the league’s consultant program for concussed players. In denying Griffin’s clearance, Kurtzke recommended that he be retested in “one-two weeks” before a decision about his readiness to compete was made. There are no NFL rules or established best practices for releasing information about a concussed player’s clearance. And it’s unclear whether the Redskins were hasty in announcing Griffin had been cleared based on a verbal assurance or whether the Redskins properly announced his return in a timely manner only to have the decision reversed the next day. Gruden said Aug. 29, shortly after the Redskins defeated the Ravens, that the backtracking did not suggest that the Redskins were “incompetent,” noting that Griffin’s medical clearance was out of the team’s hands. One NFL executive said Friday he was puzzled by the reversal, which he characterized as unusual. He said he was equally puzzled by the neurologist setting a timetable for Griffin’s retest, given that the NFL concussion protocol attaches no timetable to any step of the process. Recovery and medical clearance take as long as it takes, the official said. Notes: The Redskins were in the process of working out an injury settlement with tight end D.J. Williams, who missed Thursday’s final preseason game because of a left groin strain. More on the Redskins: The Insider: The Insider: D.C. Sports Bog: Kevin B. Blackistone:


Beer of the Week: Perennial Artisan Ale’s Suburban Beverage gose

Suburban Beverage from Perennial Artisan Ales. (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post) Gose is not for everyone. The refreshing wheat beer, identified by its distinct salinity from the use of salt and coriander, and soured with lactobacillus, has been brewed in Germany since at least the Middle Ages, but it remains largely a novelty and cult beer around the world. That is slowly changing: When we took a survey of beer writers, brewers and bar managers this summer, the Old Pro Gose from Baltimore’s Union Craft Brewing was one of the most popular choices for drinking on a warm day. Suburban Beverage, a limited-release gose from St. Louis’s Perennial Artisan Ales, isn’t a traditional recipe, like the imported Bayerischer Bahnhof Gose from Leipzig, Germany: It’s made with key limes, Meyer lemons and orange peel. The result is sharply tart, full of tangy fruit, with a heavy dash of salt in the finish — closer to a margarita than any other wheat beers commonly found on tap. It’s bright and thirst-quenching, and a bit quirky: Because the hops are almost unnoticeable, you could easily pass Suburban Beverage to that friend who says, “Oh, I prefer cocktails to beer.” But it’s definitely a beer, and miles ahead of those Lime-A-Rita-ish concoctions inflicted on the public. In the Washington area, all bottles of Suburban Beverage have already been distributed to bars and stores, but expect to see it on tap at better beer bars, at least for the next few weeks. Perennial Artisan Ales Suburban Beverage. www.perennialbeer.com. Expect to pay $7 to $10 for a 10-to-12-ounce pour in bars, or $15 to $16 for a 750-milliliter bottle in stores. More from Food: Beer Column


The remarkable resurgence of a liquor that Prohibition almost killed

of 800-pound gorillas like bourbon and Scotch. But if you put rye sales on a bell curve, says Nick Crutchfield, master of whisky for Diageo — which has multiple Scotches in its portfolio, but also has Bulleit rye — the rise “would start around 2006, and then somewhere around 2011, it just shoots up. And I don’t think we’re going to see the other side of the bell for years.” Months after the whiskey debate at Tales, I asked Brown whether the bartender demographic had affected the results. He laughingly confirmed my suspicions. “Rye has become the symbol of the cocktail renaissance,” he said. “Nothing symbolizes this change in mores more than the advent of rye. Because it was done, gone. Nobody cared about rye.” Nobody, that is, until the mid-’00s, when craft bartenders began reviving old drinks and fell in love with rye’s spice and arcane cool, its history, its authenticity, the way its typically high-proof and spicy, dry qualities give it the pop to stand up to big vermouths and other powerfully flavored ingredients that might kick many bourbons under the carpet. “It was the bartenders who have always preached an appreciation for our ryes and told us to continue producing them, even when consumer demands were low,” says Eddie Russell, master distiller at Wild Turkey, which now makes five ryes, including the new Russell’s Reserve Single Barrel. Doug Atwell, head bartender at Rye in Baltimore, recalls getting docked a point in a bar skills test because, when the instructor asked for a Manhattan, Atwell didn’t ask what whiskey he wanted; he just made a rye Manhattan. When the instructor pointed it out, Atwell remembers cheekily responding, “Oh, sorry — I just assumed you wanted a good Manhattan.” It wasn’t just craft cocktails, either: The combination of a cheap PBR or Schlitz beer and a shot of Bulleit rye — “any bar I worked in, any bartender who came in, that’s what they called,” says Crutchfield. The pairing became an industry handshake even as the industry helped rye return. “For craft bartenders, this is our victory,” says Brown. “This belongs to no one else. It’s people who were passionate about it and told people, ‘Stop making your old fashioneds with bourbon. Stop making your Manhattans with bourbon.’ “It doesn’t mean it’s better than other whiskeys or better than gin. But rye is the thing that we brought back.”


Bloody Mary mix is the kick in this spicy start-up’s profits

be dedicated,” said David, who is a student of success stories like that of the late Sidney Frank, who became a billionaire through his marketing of Grey Goose vodka and Jägermeister. After college at then-Towson State University and the University of Maryland, where he studied nutrition, the beefy former wrestler first found work as a bouncer. One day, he walked into Middleton Tavern on the Annapolis waterfront as a young 20-something and asked for a job. He became a waiter. When one of the regular bartenders didn’t show up one day, David got his job. He learned his craft from the other bartenders while attending college. “That’s where everything got rolling,” he said of his Middleton days. David became known for his Bloody Marys, which he had carefully researched from other bartenders in the area and polled his guests about what they liked and didn’t like. The Bloodies were so good that he would mix a batch on the weekend to last the entire week. When his older brother and his sister-in-law opened Globe restaurant in an old theater on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 2006, David became bar manager and brought his Bloody Mary recipe with him. There, he learned exactly what to pay for alcohol, beer and other ingredients so that the bar could make money on its drinks. That knowledge would become critical when he later was computing exactly how much to charge bars for his Bloody Mary mix. Within a few months of arriving in Berlin, Md., he entered and won a Bloody Mary contest in nearby Ocean City. People started paying attention. David started making gallon jugs for friends and strangers, charging only for ingredients. He started making it for fishermen heading out on their boats for the day. His girlfriend, Theda, a hair stylist, and others encouraged him to bottle and sell his Bloody Mary mix. By 2011, Theda and her twin sister had worked up a simple business plan. “It was, ‘We need Greg and his Bloody Mary recipe,’ ” David said, jokingly. The two sisters and David scraped together $9,000 from their tip money to launch the project. Each owns a one-third share of the company. Sensing that he was on to something, David insisted that they take their time, holding down their regular jobs and pacing themselves. “We weren’t in a hurry to make this happen,” he said. “I wanted to do


Mexico’s account of how 43 students disappeared is wrong, new report says

Relatives and friends of 43 teachers college students who disappeared last year wait in Mexico City for a group of experts convened by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to present the conclusions of its investigation. (Omar Torres/AFP/Getty Images) GUATEMALA CITY — The report, more than 400 pages long, does not shed light on the fate of the students, but it calls into question nearly all the claims by Mexican authorities about how the crime unfolded in the troubled hills of Guerrero state, particularly the assertion that the students were burned to death at the base of a rural trash dump. The review, conducted over six months with the Mexican government’s cooperation by a group of experts convened by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, also proposed a possible new motive: that the students may have inadvertently stolen a bus full of drugs and that corrupt police officers wanted it back. “This report provides an utterly damning indictment of Mexico’s handling of the worst human rights atrocity in recent memory,” José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “Even with the world watching and with substantial resources at hand, the authorities proved unable or unwilling to conduct a serious investigation.” The Ayotzinapa students’ case marked a turning point for the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, generating months of street demonstrations and establishing that the drug-war atrocities that his government had hoped to leave in the past remained alive and well. Throughout all the upheaval, the parents of the students rejected the government’s version of events and clung to hope that their children were alive. Mexican Attorney General Arely Gómez González told reporters on Sunday that the government remains committed to getting to the bottom of the Ayotzinapa case and that the investigation will incorporate the report’s findings. She highlighted the areas of convergence between the government’s recommendation and the outside report, such as the conclusion that “the municipal police of Iguala and Cocula participated in the commission of these crimes.” “The government of the republic reiterates its commitment to Mexican society, and particularly to the victims’ families, to continue working to clear up the facts,” she said. Gómez added that the mandate of the experts’ group will be extended to allow them to complete their work. Since then-Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam stood before reporters in November with videos of witness testimony, the official story


Gunshot deaths of man in NW and man in burned car are both homicides

One man was killed in at least four shootings in D.C. over Labor Day weekend; and a body found inside a burning car has been ruled a homicide. A 55-year-old man was shot and killed in northwest Washington early Sunday, police said. In addition, police said a ruling of homicide was issued in the death of a man whose body was found Saturday night in a car that had been on fire. In the Sunday morning incident, police said Uyer Barnard Hooper, of Northwest was shot around 3:20 a.m. in the 6400 block of 7th Street NW. They said 27-year-old Dejuan Etheridge, 27, of Northeast Washington, was arrested about six hours later and charged with first-degree murder while armed. No information was released about a motive in the incident, police said. Another man was wounded by the gunfire, police said. The 7th Street shooting marked the 108th homicide in the city this year, three more than all of last year. What was believed to be the 107th homicide was discovered Saturday night when authorities were called about 9:15 p.m. to the 400 block of Xenia Street SE, where a car was reported on fire. After the fire was extinguished, a body was found inside the burned vehicle. Police said late Sunday night that the death was ruled a homicide by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. The victim was a man, and he had been fatally shot, police said. The man has not been identified, they said. .


A moral dilemma for the American Bar Association

support these programs. Its Beijing staff has grown to 12. At the ABA’s annual meeting in Chicago last month, members who wanted the organization to issue a statement criticizing the crackdown were met with strong opposition. Opponents argued that such a statement might provoke the Chinese government to retaliate by closing the Beijing office. Those opponents prevailed. The final statement was nonjudgmental, taking pains to note that developing the rule of law is a struggle for every nation, “including the United States.” It was addressed to nobody in particular. It acknowledged the detentions but neither criticized the arrests nor called for the release of the lawyers. ABA members who are supporters of the Chinese lawyers were bitterly disappointed. One of the greatest contributions U.S. rights groups can make to improving rule of law in China is to provide moral support to Chinese human rights activists who confront unjust government actions and are persecuted for it. To be sure, speaking out carries risks. The Chinese government could try to close the offices of offending organizations. For the ABA, this would be a setback, but it would not threaten the organization’s survival. Chinese rights lawyers face much greater risks, including arbitrary harassment, arrest and imprisonment. They need and deserve international support. The ABA is not alone in facing moral dilemmas in China. In the past decade, environmental groups, foundations and universities have poured tens of millions of dollars into setting up offices and campuses in the country to extend their important missions to this growing global giant. Nonprofits, by definition, exist not to make money but to promote social values. Universities that are pledged to uphold academic freedom must navigate an environment in which faculty cannot freely speak on topics such as Tibet or human rights. They all face pressures not to offend their Chinese hosts, but the solution cannot be to compromise the values that define them. It’s not too late for the ABA to do the right thing. It should withdraw its weak statement and issue a new one calling on the authorities to immediately release the wrongfully arrested activists and to make clear that they are not at risk of torture and other ill treatment. China’s beleaguered civil rights lawyers deserve no less. Read more about this topic: The Post’s View: China’s new crackdown on civil rights Teng Biao: China’s irrepressible lawyers The Post’s View: China arrests a lawyer


An American family saved their son from joining the Islamic State. Now he might go to prison.

said. But Khan did eventually tell his parents that he never believed the story that his mother was sick. A change in demeanor Back in Houston, Khan had slipped into a new routine, taking classes at the University of Houston and working at Pizza Hut as a delivery driver — without having drawn the attention of the FBI for his aborted trip to Syria. He was circumspect with friends about where he had been. One friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivities surrounding the case, said that when he returned he seemed less strident about following the tenets of Islam. “It was a change for the better,” the friend said. Khan continued to follow Garcia on Facebook and receive updates from his friend. Garcia had messaged him almost immediately after Khan left Turkey that he had found the facilitator Mohammad in a border town called Antakya. An excited Khane-mailed Farooq, according to court records and told her to keep Garcia in “your prayers.” Garcia had sent Khan photographs of himself, including one with an AK-47 rifle. “That’s my baby,” Garcia messaged shortly after he entered Syria. “You can have one too if you’d like.” In August 2014, when Garcia had joined the Islamic State, Khan cautioned: “make sure they are doing everything according to Islam you know, not killing innocent ppl and all that.” Garcia’s absence had not gone unnoticed. Worried family members contacted the FBI, which opened an investigation. A neighbor walks a dog in the Spring, Tex., neighborhood where Asher Abid Khan lives with his parents. (MICHAEL STRAVATO/For The Washington Post) By October 2014, the FBI finally unearthed Khan’s connection to Garcia after obtaining a search warrant for the convert’s Facebook account, and Khan was placed under surveillance. The FBI also suspected that Khan, who had applied for another visa for Australia, might be considering another effort to reach Syria. His friend Garcia was now believed dead; somebody had used his Facebook account to message his family that he had died as a martyr. On the morning of May 25, 2015, Khan was arrested at his house. “Why are you here? What did we do wrong?” his mother asked agents as they searched the house. Khan’s attorney, Berg — a former colonel in the Army Reserve, who has served at both Guantanamo Bay, where he helped set up the first military commissions, and


Will China crash?

Investors monitor a display showing the Shanghai Composite Index at a brokerage in Beijing last month. (Ng Han Guan/Associated Press) The questions that now face China are whether it can maintain its internal stability and contribute to the vitality of the wider global economy. Like many economic juggernauts before it — Japan springs to mind — China seemed unstoppable. Its economy hummed along at the almost unimaginable annual growth rate of about 10 percent. No obstacle seemed beyond its power to surmount. After the 2008-2009 financial crisis, it adopted a huge stimulus package equal to about 13 percent of its gross domestic product. Growth resumed, and China’s leaders were widely praised. It now turns out that the Chinese — like the Japanese — are not infallible. Indeed, after allowing for differences in historical circumstances, China and Japan seem to have committed similar mistakes. Japan had relied on exports and business investment until an appreciating exchange rate in the mid-1980s undermined the price competitiveness of its exports. It then adopted an easy monetary policy, which led to bubbles in real estate and stock prices. Similarly, China depended on export-led growth and, when the financial crisis dampened trade, switched to a massive expansion of credit to finance infrastructure projects and more investment in heavy industry. The trouble for both the Japanese and the Chinese was that these credit-driven booms were temporary. Japan’s bubbles burst (the stock market index is still below its 1989 peak). China’s bubbles left surplus production capacity in heavy industries and some sprawling residential developments that are largely empty. China’s leaders seem to have accepted the need for a new economic model — one that relies on consumer spending as the main engine of growth. But changing in theory and changing in practice are not the same. China’s economy is clearly weakening, and its growth is probably below the government’s target of 7 percent — perhaps way below. In August, China’s manufacturing index fell to its lowest point in three years. Also worrisome are weakening electricity production and railroad freight shipments. But in a report, economists Donna Kwok and Tao Wang of UBS discount these developments. About 70 percent of electricity consumption comes from industry, which is being de-emphasized. As for rail traffic, much of it involves coal movements for power plants; with weak electricity use, that’s diminished. China’s economy isn’t near collapse, write Kwok and Wang, although they


New Horizons has gone to Pluto, and now comes the Great Beyond

orbiting stars in our galaxy (not to mention all the planets in the billions of other galaxies in the known universe). But space is not designed for ease of human travel. The nearest star to the sun is Proxima Centauri, and it’s about 25 trillion miles away. If New Horizons were racing directly toward Proxima Centauri, it wouldn’t get there for tens of thousands of years. The more plausible targets for direct robotic exploration are closer to home. One possibility, someday, is Eris, a dwarf planet discovered by Brown and colleagues in 2005. It’s a virtual Pluto twin. New Horizons can’t go to Eris, because Eris is on the other side of our solar system; it’s also currently three times as far from Earth as Pluto is. This might be a better mission for the next century, when Eris’s eccentric orbit will have brought it much closer. Brown says a better target might be another of his discoveries: Quaoar, a 700-mile-diameter object that’s not much farther from the sun than Pluto. Or perhaps a probe will someday go to an as-yet-undiscovered planet. “There’s probably a lot of objects out there, and I think it’s probably just a matter of time before we find something similar in size to Pluto or possibly bigger,” said John Grunsfeld, the astronomer-astronaut and Hubble repairman who now is head of science for NASA. “The idea that there’s a large object out there is rattling around the community,” Brown said. New Horizons cannot go search for mystery planets. It’s not that kind of probe. Its telescope gives it a narrow gaze — “like looking down a straw,” said Fountain, the project manager. There is, however, one major feat that New Horizons has yet to accomplish, other than taking the plasma and dust measurements and steering itself toward MU69. It still has to tell Earth exactly what it saw at Pluto. The team leaders keep reminding everyone that New Horizons is carrying a trove of data, including high-resolution imagery, that has yet to return home. The big Pluto download won’t be finished until about the end of October 2016. Transmission rates are slow, and will get even slower, as the distant spacecraft gets more distant. Read more: After a wait, spacecraft confirms close pass of Pluto. Sees craters and mounds. New Horizons spots ice flows on Pluto’s surface The heroes and the secrets of the Pluto mission


A nationalist China unsettles foreign companies

market forces rather than “turning inward for solutions to address a slowing economy.” Optimism has been buffeted by the slowdown in China’s economy, while confidence in its leadership to handle that slowdown has been shaken by its clumsy handling of a stock market crash and a currency devaluation in recent weeks, as well as by an explosion at a chemical warehouse in the city of Tianjin last month that killed at least 145 people. “The near-religious belief in the foreign business community of technocratic, enlightened decision-making by China’s top leadership is being challenged by the kind of actions that recently took place,” Wuttke said. After committing itself to the rule of law at another gathering of its top leaders in 2014, the Communist Party has this year introduced new national security legislation and a law to regulate nongovernmental organizations that have provoked widespread concern in the foreign business community, who fear the specter of national security could be used to justify protectionism. “Yes, China needs a national security law, but the wording is so opaque and so vague that a lot of possible mergers by foreign business could be impossible,” Wuttke said. “In the time of an economic slowdown, the last thing you need is legislative uncertainty.” One of the frustrations that foreign companies face is that, as China tries to rebalance its economy, some of the most enticing market opportunities lie in service-sector industries — such as financial, health care, education and logistics. Yet those are sectors that tend to be dominated by state-owned companies and largely closed to foreign businesses. In an Aug. 28 report, Zimmerman said U.S. service-sector companies faced many hurdles, including “regulatory ambiguity and unequal approval procedures, standards that favor domestic service providers, de-facto technology transfer requirements, and market access limitations.” Wuttke said China’s banks are some of the largest in the world and are aggressively opening branches in Europe — while China’s domestic financial sector is still largely closed off to foreigners. Foreign companies have helped build the largest car market in the world in China in the past two or three decades, but they still face a web of restrictions on investment, equity ownership and procurement of parts, he said. There was optimism when China established a new Free Trade Zone in Shanghai in September 2013, but most of the benefits have flowed to local companies, business leaders say. The government’s handling of


Family carves out its own path in fight against 4-year-old’s rare disease

where he works as chief of staff for Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.). Olga, 42, stays home to care for their son, an only child. In grappling with their child’s obscure condition similar to Parkinson’s, a Baltimore family works to find funding, specialized research and treatment options. The Estopiñans’ experience illustrates how families struggle to find help fighting diseases that don’t attract a huge amount of research or specialized funding. It also shows how determined parents can forge a path for other families encountering similar obstacles. Not only did they agree to an experimental treatment and train their own nurses to care for their child, they also set up a foundation and Web site to assist research on the disease. Arturito’s signs of progress are small. He occasionally makes noises and slightly wiggles his feet. And when his arm is gently lifted up at the elbow, his index finger and thumb faintly move. “We tell him, ‘Yes, that’s you! You’re doing that!’ ” his father says, eyes beaming above the surgical mask he had put on because he thought he might have a cold coming on. “It’s been a very slow progression over the last year.” Arturito seemed like any other child when he was born — happy and active. But during his first year, he grew weak and lost control of his muscles. He was admitted to the hospital run by Children’s National Health System in the District, where the family was living at the time. The child was diagnosed with TK2-related mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, a genetic disease where proteins that help decode DNA break down. The disease is marked by severe weakness and is linked with Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS. Arturito’s parents scoured the Internet and called pediatric hospitals across the country, despite being told that looking for help would only lead to discouragement. Months after the diagnosis, the family contacted Michio Hirano, a New York neurologist at Columbia University Medical Center experimenting with a new medication, deoxynucleotide monophosphate, that significantly extended the life of mice that had been given the mutated gene. An investigational drug such as this can be prescribed on a case-by-case basis under what is known as the Food and Drug Administration’s compassionate-use rule. Once Hirano and his staff filed the required paperwork, the FDA gave the green light within days and Arturito was transferred to


Meet the Donald Trump of the House of Representatives

28, the day before the House left Washington for its six-week summer recess, he drew a withering reaction. Jordan, who has tried to avoid open warfare between the Freedom Caucus and GOP leadership, has been reticent to discuss Meadows’s bid to unseat Boehner. “It is what it is,” he said. But many, including Mulvaney, now refer to the Meadows motion as a “sword of Damocles” hanging over Boehner. They are insisting that he pursue a harder line against Democrats in the coming months, even if means shutting down the government. Both the speaker and McConnell insist there will be no government shutdown. Under House rules, the motion could be brought quickly to a vote at virtually any time. In N.C., a ‘petting zoo’ Intraparty clashes, of course, are nothing new. But these days, a combination of partisan redistricting, the abolishment of earmarks, a fundraising infrastructure and a completely upended media environment has undermined the stick-and-carrot system that have kept members like Meadows in line for decades. Where the most crucial opinion-maker used to be the editorial page of a middle-of-the-road hometown newspaper, national conservative talk radio and social media have come to matter more. Incumbents reliant on a national party fundraising network can now, to some extent, appeal to a national base of conservative activists. A day after filing his motion, Meadows, 56, drove eight hours to his home in the western North Carolina mountains. “I went from a lion’s den to a petting zoo,” he said. A 2011 redistricting turned the 11th Congressional District from swing territory to the state’s most conservative. Moderate Democrat Heath Shuler decided not to stand for reelection in the reconfigured district, and Meadows, who moved from Florida to a Jackson County resort town as young man and built a real estate career, emerged from an eight-candidate Republican field. Over the course of a recent 12-hour workday, Meadows heard nary a discouraging word despite having declared war against the leadership of a party whose presidential nominee won more than 60 percent of the vote here in 2012. “He’s making most of the people happy, which is hard to do,” said Kenny Barnwell, a Henderson County apple grower, during a roundtable discussion on immigration policy that held the potential for fireworks: Agribusinesses such as Barnwell’s, which are dependent on immigrant farm workers, are desperate for federal reforms, and Meadows is part of the conservative bloc that


At Dulles Airport, skip the Cinnabon and shop for the runway

The new Burberry store at Washington Dulles. (Andrea Sachs/for The Washington Post ) On impromptu shopping excursions in airports, I have picked up hand-carved wooden animals (Windhoek, Namibia), swishy print dresses (London’s Heathrow) and jingling jewelry (New Delhi). I still regret passing on the Chanel pinkie ring in Hong Kong. At Dulles, however, my most exciting purchase was a Snapple iced tea. Until recently, the shopping opportunities at the Northern Virginia airport have been more perfunctory than inspiring. Most of the stores specialized in travel-related sundries, such as neck pillows and headphones, and Washington-themed souvenirs, like stuffed panda bears and, um, saltwater taffy. Since last year, however, luxury retailers have started colonizing concourses A and B. L’Occitane, the French beauty-care company, appeared first, in December, followed by Montblanc, Burberry, Thomas Pink, Coach, Michael Kors, Estée Lauder’s M.A.C, Vera Bradley, Tumi, Swarovski, Kiehl’s and Vineyard Vines, the latest to open, in mid-August. Erwin Pearl, a jewelry store established in 1952, and Bluwire, a tech-geek store, are reported to be next on the docket. Starting in spring 2014, the much-smaller Reagan National Airport also received a retail makeover, adding Spanx, Brooks Brothers, Vineyard Vines, Brighton, Tumi and Pen & Prose. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority hired MarketPlace Development to reimagine 90 percent of the retail and dining options at the two Washington-area airports. The MWAA and the company are in the midst of selecting another round of high-caliber brands, which they will roll out through next year. “Consumer tastes in retail and dining are ever-changing,” said Paul McGinn, president of MarketPlace Development. “Years ago, the airport was a place of transaction. Passengers now crave, and come to expect, unique shopping and dining experiences.” McGinn said at Dulles, the nation’s ninth-largest international gateway, travelers typically fritter away 90 minutes between flights – enough time to exercise the credit card. He added that the top-tier shops cater to the rise of discerning travelers with money to drop on, say, a Burberry cross-body bag or a pair of Michael Kors sunglasses. The stores open at 7 a.m. and stay open until 9 p.m., accommodating both early-morning and red-eye passengers. More from Travel: Tips on how to travel light without sacrificing comfort and style Don’t get stuck in the millions-strong surge of passport applications. Renew now How TripAdvisor altered your vacation-planning universe


Maryland details how each state agency will cut spending by 2 percent

number of personnel working part time or on contract, and replace four faculty members with new hires who would be paid lower salaries. Those savings will amount to $18 million. The university system, which includes 12 schools and 152,000 students, will save an additional $7 million by trimming other expenses, such as travel costs and information-technology initiatives, according to the plan. “The USM has been rigorous in finding budget solutions, and will continue to address the budget challenges with a respect for the need to maintain core and critical services that support the educational mission of students,” Mike Lurie, a spokesman for the university network, said in a statement. Hogan’s office distanced itself from the university cuts on Tuesday, noting that the system, which is not part of the executive branch, was responsible for developing that portion of the savings plan. “The governor’s office did not dictate to them how to reach their goals,” Hogan spokesman Doug Mayer said. The remaining cuts — for executive-branch agencies — came from the administration. The Department of Human Resources accounts for the second-largest personnel savings, with 82 vacant positions set for elimination. Overall, the agency is expected to cut nearly $7 million in spending. The largest financial savings would come from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which will trim about $27 million. Most of the savings will come from programs that give reimbursements to providers. The Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services will cut its spending by about $24 million, accounting for the third-highest financial reduction for the state. The largest savings for that department, $5.6 million, reflects a drop-off in costs because of a continuing decline in the state’s inmate population. The other reductions include $3.5 million from ending roll call for corrections officers between shifts; $1.9 million in savings from closing the state-run Baltimore City Detention Center this year; and $1 million from increasing the officers’ shifts from eight hours to 10 hours. The state will have to negotiate with the corrections officers’ union to enact the roll-call and shift changes. Both plans have prompted safety concerns. Glenard S. Middleton Sr., president of the Maryland Public Employees Local 44, which represents the state’s corrections officers, told The Baltimore Sun that officers use roll calls to brief each other before and after their shifts, and many are worried about the possibility of working longer hours in a stressful job.


Alexandria and Arlington Animal Watch

ALEXANDRIA These cases were among the calls reported recently by the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria, which provides animal control services to the city. For information or to report emergencies involving animals 24 hours a day, call 703-746-4774. The league’s Web site is Coyote sightings: Raccoon packs up: ARLINGTON These cases were reported by the Animal Welfare League of Arlington, which operates the county animal shelter and provides animal control services to the county. For information or to report emergencies involving animals 24 hours a day, call 703-931-9241 or go to www.awla.org. Turtle trouble: Trapped slither: Squirrel rescue: — Compiled by Ria Manglapus


After 43 years, the vandal behind a Washington Post prank comes clean

I was kind of a minor troublemaker.” And a wonderful writer. When I was in Weekend, Hank wrote about museums and hunting, a combination that I’m pretty sure was not found at many other newspapers. His stories sang, though when they came in on deadline they could prove nearly impossible to edit. The transitions from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph were so finely crafted that trimming a few inches was like trying to insert a knife blade into a stone wall. Hank, I said, you surely exasperated many an editor. “Editors are fair game,” he said. “It’s hard to be both original and accessible, and I tried very hard to be both. And clumsy editing can kill a piece. It’s a very delicate thing. You just stick something in there that spoils the rhythm — or change a word from the right word to the almost right word or the unexpected word to the expected word — and the whole thing kind of sags like a souffle evaporating.” Hank is 76. He retired in 2001 after 36 years at The Post. “I tell you, I sometimes wake up in the night and think, ‘Damn, they paid me for this?’ I went from hot type and carbon paper right through the whole computer thing, and it was just a blast.” He added: “It’ll be kind of interesting to see what kind of tone [owner Jeff] Bezos tries to establish in his new place. I’m hoping that there will be insurrection and free play and all sorts of jolliness.” Me, too, Hank. What do you remember? The Post is moving only three blocks from its current headquarters, to One Franklin Square. Still, I can’t help but reminisce. I invite you to do the same. Do you have memories of The Post at 15th and L streets NW? Share them with me. Do you have Post memorabilia squirreled away somewhere? Snap a photo and e-mail that. Put “Post Stuff” in the subject line. Name the panda cub Elvis Today’s reason the National Zoo’s giant panda cub should be named after Elvis Presley comes from the District’s Eric Weinstein, who writes: “Elvis was supposedly very much a fan of martial arts. Pandas are, too (see ‘Kung Fu Panda’), therefore Elvis and the panda are one.” I sense a growing movement. Let’s keep the momentum going! Twitter: @johnkelly For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly.


Trials for officers charged in Freddie Gray case will stay in Baltimore

Black said moving the trials would have been a “tragedy of injustice.” “Who are true biased jurors?” Black asked. “They are not in Baltimore City. They are out of Baltimore City.” Gray suffered a severe spinal injury after he was arrested April 12 and put in the back of a police van. The case stoked national debate over the deaths of young black men in police custody. In response to rioting that broke out after Gray’s funeral, authorities called in the National Guard and set a curfew for the city. At Thursday’s hearing, defense attorney Ivan Bates argued that the case should be moved because all city residents felt the impact of April’s chaos in one way or another. He also said the city’s decision this week to approve a $6.4 million settlement with Gray’s family would affect the jury pool. All potential jurors are city taxpayers, who would be footing the bill for the settlement, he said. And he argued that the settlement could leave the impression that the officers are guilty. “In many ways,” Bates said, “we gave our officers a public trial.” Prosecutors disagreed. Undated family picture of Freddie Gray. (Baltimore Sun) Michael Schatzow, the chief deputy state’s attorney for Baltimore City, said the settlement agreement isn’t the same as an admission of guilt or wrongdoing. It would be more appropriate, he said, to wait until the judge and attorneys could interview and screen potential jurors to decide whether the pool would be unfair. “The notion that we should simply pick up and move and go somewhere else . . . is insulting to the citizenry of Baltimore,” Schatzow said. After hearing about 30 minutes of arguments and combing through reams of statements and evidence from both sides, Williams sided with prosecutors. The defense didn’t meet the burden of proof required to move the case, the judge said. “The citizens of Baltimore are not monolithic,” Williams said. “They think for themselves.” Given round-the-clock news coverage, the Internet and social media, “information is ubiquitous” and it would be difficult to find a jurisdiction that hasn’t been permeated with details of the case, Williams said. But the appropriate time to determine whether a jury would be unbiased is during the selection process. Williams added that he would consider future requests to move the trials if necessary. Judges elsewhere have moved high-profile criminal cases, but they don’t do so all


Energy secretary is urged to end U.S. nuclear fuel program at Savannah River

former nuclear arms negotiators Robert Einhorn and Robert Gallucci; former ambassadors Thomas Pickering and Joseph Nye; former White House director for arms control, former Pentagon and intelligence official Henry S. Rowen; former head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Jessica Matthews; former Nuclear Regulation Commission members Peter Bradford and Victor Gilinsky; National Medal of Science winner and a designer of the first hydrogen bomb Richard Garwin; and nuclear policy experts Henry Sokolski, Frank von Hippel, S. David Freeman and Ploughshares Fund president Joseph Cirincione. “Continuing with the MOX program and recycling work helps plutonium recycling advocates in Japan, China, South Korea, and other states maintain the illusion that plutonium separation and recycle are activities that responsible non-weapon states engage in,” the letter said. “The United States has for four decades consistently opposed the spread of such activities because of the obvious proliferation danger of putting nuclear-weapons explosive materials into commercial channels.” By abandoning its own program, the United States would gain credibility in dealing with those countries, the letter said. “None of these activities make economic sense,” the letter says. A U.S. renunciation of reprocessing would be timely with an international nuclear summit scheduled to take place next spring. Japan is close to opening a large reprocessing plant at Rokkasho. Congress has been weighing the renewal of civilian nuclear cooperation with China; the current text of that agreement would allow China to launch a reprocessing facility using U.S. technology or material without approval from the U.S. government. The civilian nuclear agreement with South Korea barred that country from developing its own reprocessing facility. “So far the debate has been whether or not the U.S. should continue its MOX program at Savannah River,” said Sokolski, an organizer of the letter. “This letter ups the ante by turning this budgetary issue into an occasion to get others, starting with Japan, China and South Korea, to defer the commercial production and stockpiling of nuclear explosive plutonium in the name of international security.” With the new fiscal year approaching, cost concerns are key, too. The red team report, written largely by experts at the department’s national laboratories, said that the reprocessing option would require an increase in funding from the current nearly $345 million a year. With twice that, reprocessing could possibly begin after 15 years of construction and about three years of commissioning at a total cost of about $30 billion. The


N.Y. requires salty food warnings; 2 major debt buyers to pay hefty fines

of dollars in refunds and fines Wednesday over charges of using “deceptive tactics” to collect bad debt. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Encore has been ordered to pay $42 million in refunds and a $10 million penalty. Portfolio Recovery Associates, the PRA Group unit, was ordered to pay $19 million back to customers and an $8 million penalty. The CFPB said both companies bought debt using “potentially inaccurate” information and pressured customers with false statements. They also tried to collect on debts using robo-signed court filings to “churn out lawsuits,” the CFPB said. — Reuters Also in Business ● Haggen has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In a news release sent out Tuesday, the Bellingham, Wash.,-based grocer said the bankruptcy filing was needed to help the company reorganize around its core, profitable stores. It will also give the company up to $215 million in debtor-in-possession financing options from its existing lenders to maintain day-to-day operations. The grocer went from a family business to a West Coast power virtually overnight after buying 146 stores from Albertsons in December, growing to a company with 164 stores. The company has struggled in converting many of those stores to the Haggen brand. ● Job openings in the United States surged to a record in July as hiring cooled, a sign employers are having a hard time finding qualified workers. The number of positions waiting to be filled jumped by 430,000, the biggest gain since April 2010, to 5.75 million, a Labor Department report showed Wednesday. That is the most in data going back to 2000. The July data show employers were optimistic enough about the economic outlook to post more vacancies and compete for a dwindling pool of available workers. ● A federal appeals court said litigation alleging that BP misled investors about the rate of oil flowing after an offshore oil rig explosion in 2010 can proceed as a class action lawsuit. Tuesday’s U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruling means that the lawsuit, led by pension funds in New York and Ohio, can continue on behalf of all buyers of certain types of BP securities during a 33-day period after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The lawsuit said low estimates of the rate of oil spewing into the Gulf inflated securities prices. ● A health insurer in western New York and affiliates said


Frustrated migrants blame U.S. for their predicament

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition. “This isn’t caused by the U.S.” In Britain, the crisis has renewed old arguments about the country’s commitment to the Middle East. In 2013, British Prime Minister David Cameron suffered a major blow when the House of Commons voted against British military action in Syria. The vote helped to deter U.S. intervention in Syria over allegations that Assad’s forces were using chemical weapons. As the number of refugees streaming out of Syria grows, the U.S. is under increased pressure to act. Despite both countries’ strong language against the Islamic State and Assad’s government, U.S. and British commentators have criticized their nations’ policies as wishy-washy. “I think the tone here is, above all, you start something and you fail to pick up the pieces — that’s the story of Iraq,” said Iain Begg, a professor at the London School of Economics who specializes in the political economy of the European Union. “And in Libya, it was, you push out [Moammar] Gaddafi, and then what?” Jebrail Mohamed, 26, thought he knew what happened next when the United States did not use more manpower in Syria. That led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in Syria and the need for Mohamed to leave the city of Aleppo. Then came the crossing into Hungary and eventually being sent to a processing center to wait for a passport. In this countryside camp, Mohamed receives 20 euros a day and takes comfort in walking with friends to the local grocery store, the closest thing to entertainment nearby. “We have no country left,” Mohamed said. “Now all we do is wait for passports to go somewhere. Wait. Wait.” As he spoke, a man walked out of the gate to go to the grocery store. “I’m going to Germany,” he joked. The European Union on Friday delayed until next month its efforts to begin a proposed refugee resettlement program, a reflection of internal disputes over how to deal with the crush of asylum seekers. Advocates of the resettlement plan had hoped the E.U. would find common ground Monday on a formula to place as many as 160,000 migrants among 22 countries. Many officials have cried foul. Denmark plans to reject the plan. Foreign ministers from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary issued a joint statement Friday calling for the E.U. to create a “more balanced distribution of finances” as well as


BSO at Strathmore skips the uncommon music in season preview

Concertmaster Jonathan Carney performed an agreeable interpretation of “Spring” from Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” (Chris Lee) Ensembles and concert series around the Washington area are coming back to life. On Thursday night at Strathmore, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra offered a preview of the season to come. The musical tasting menu was a hodgepodge of mostly single movements from a range of pieces. The first movement of Debussy’s “Ibéria” featured castanets and some Spanish flavor, with the mood remaining on the sedate side throughout the first half. The first movement of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, enough to catch a whiff of the composer’s elation at walking in the countryside, was followed by the slow movement of Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” symphony. It was perhaps extravagant to have a tenor saxophone player just for three movements from Prokofiev’s ballet music for “Romeo and Juliet,” planned for a concert performance next month with actors reciting scenes from Shakespeare’s play, co-presented with the Folger Theatre. The playing was mostly fine, except for a prominent wrong note somewhere in the violin section in the Beethoven and an early brass entrance in the Mendelssohn. Guest conductor Christopher Seaman’s introductions to each movement were basic but droll, wearing on one’s patience by the end of the evening. He had good ideas about ensemble balances and dynamics, shushing instruments or sections that drew too much attention to themselves, and he was at his best in a suitably eclectic rendition of Elgar’s complete “Enigma Variations.” Given the length of his microphone time, Seaman should have omitted Vivaldi’s “Spring” concerto from “The Four Seasons,” where his crassly amplified harpsichord spoiled the pleasing interpretation of concertmaster Jonathan Carney and his small string group. This might seem like the preview of a fairly boring season, but do not let that put you off. The BSO will play more interesting repertory, such as Strauss’s “Alpine Symphony,” Philip Glass’s Third Symphony, Sibelius’s “Four Legends” and John Adams’s “Harmonielehre,” as well as new music by Thomas Adès, Anna Clyne, James MacMillan, Christopher Rouse, Victoria Borisova-Ollas, Joan Tower and Kevin Puts. Downey is a freelance writer.


A closer peek at Pluto’s surface

craters; bright, smooth geologically young areas; masses of mountains; and an odd field of dark, aligned ridges that look like dunes. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute) One outer solar-system geologist, William McKinnon of Washington University in St. Louis, said if the ridges are, in fact, dunes, that would be “completely wild” given Pluto’s thin atmosphere. This view of Pluto, created from several images, shows what you would see if you were approximately 1,100 miles above Pluto’s equator. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute) “Either Pluto had a thicker atmosphere in the past, or some process we haven’t figured out is at work. It’s a head-scratcher,” McKinnon said in a written statement. The jumble of mountains, on the other hand, may be huge blocks of ice floating in a softer, vast deposit of frozen nitrogen. After several weeks of collecting engineering data from New Horizons, scientists started getting fresh Pluto pictures last weekend. The latest images were released Thursday. Besides geologic features, the images show that the atmospheric haze surrounding Pluto has several layers. The haze crates a twilight effect that enables New Horizons to study places on the night side that scientists never expected to see. In the center of this 300-mile wide image of Pluto is a large region of jumbled, broken terrain on the edge of the vast, icy plain, to the right. New Horizons was 50,000 miles away from the planet when it captured this image. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute) Monday marks two months from New Horizons’ close encounter with Pluto on July 14, following a journey from Cape Canaveral, Florida, spanning 3 billion miles and 9 1/ 2 years. As of Friday, the spacecraft was 44 million miles past Pluto. So much data were collected during the Pluto flyby that it will take until next fall to retrieve it all here on Earth. The spacecraft is operated from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which also designed and built it. New Horizons’ next target, if NASA approves it, will be a much smaller object that orbits 1 billion miles beyond Pluto. It, too, lies in the so-called Kuiper Belt, an extremely cold twilight zone on the outskirts of our solar system. After a set of maneuvers, New Horizons would reach PT1 — short for Potential Target 1 — in 2019. — Associated Press


The ABA is following developments in China

Barristers, solicitors and other members of the legal profession take part in a 2014 march of silence in Hong Kong to protest Beijing's policy toward the judiciary. (Bobby Yip/Reuters) Regarding Robert Edward Precht’s Sept. 7 op-ed, “A moral dilemma for the ABA”: The American Bar Association is concerned about recent legal developments in China and is following them closely, hoping that conditions will evolve to allow for ongoing international collaboration with Chinese lawyers, which has been mutually beneficial. The ABA is proud of its long-standing commitment to the rule of law and human rights. In China, ABA programs provide valuable support to lawyers working to advance reform on disability rights; domestic violence; criminal procedure reform; environmental rights; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights; and other human rights issues. Paulette Brown, Chicago The writer is president of the American Bar Association.


Beer of the Week: Sierra Nevada-Brauhaus Riegele Oktoberfest

one beer style that brings purists out of the woodwork, it’s Märzen, the traditional Munich beer identified with Oktoberfest. American brewers are allowed to have their merry way with IPAs, saisons, winter warmers, even lagers: Witness the relatively recent interest in hop-forward India pale lagers, or IPLs. But if they try to sell an “Oktoberfest beer” that strays too far from the malt-forward style, beer drinkers who care about German lager for only one month of the year will be up in arms about bringing der hammer down on an unauthentic Märzen. Many American breweries go out of their way to create as German a beer as possible: Barrett Lauer of District Chophouse, whose Oktoberfest has long been a local favorite, imports German malts, hops and yeast for his annual lager. This year, Sierra Nevada Brewing went a step further and imported brewers for its Oktoberfest beer. The results are superb, or, as Bavarians would say, “Ja, da legst di nieder.” Sierra Nevada’s 2015 Oktoberfest is a collaboration with Brauhaus Riegele of Augsburg, which has been brewing in Bavaria since the 14th century. (The company’s excellent beers hit Washington only this spring, though.) This is a one-off beer, as Sierra will be working with a different German brewer each year. Given Riegele’s multiple craft beer award wins inside and outside Germany, it’s a very good place to start. Poured from a bottle, the Oktoberfest has a gorgeous honey-orange color. The nose is a mix of biscuit malts and sweet caramel with a whiff of grassy hops. A sip brings more of the same: tastes of fresh bread, caramel and honey. There’s also a noticeable amount of spicy and floral hops. They play second fiddle to the malt — this is an impressively well-balanced beer — but are more prominent than in other, more traditional and more bland festbiers. There’s just enough punch to keep things interesting. Some prominent Oktoberfests are drenched in overly sweet caramel flavors, making finishing a whole stein something to power through. Not the Sierra-Riegele, where a creamy mouth feel and crisp finish make it easy to take another sip. Oktoberfest may technically end Oct. 4, but with this beer’s autumnal flavors, I could see myself enjoying it into November. Sierra Nevada Brauhaus Riegele Oktoberfest. www.sierranevada.com. Expect to pay about $8 to $8.50 per six-pack at area liquor stores. — Fritz Hahn More from Food: Beer Column


Merv Adelson, Hollywood and Vegas mogul who made and lost a fortune, dies at 85

Merv Adelson, a developer, philanthropist and onetime Hollywood mogul who churned out such top-rated TV shows as “The Waltons” and “Dallas” before losing his fortune in a series of financial disasters, died Sept. 8 in Canoga Park, Calif. He was 85. The cause was complications from a stroke, said his son Andrew Adelson. Mr. Adelson found early success in the grocery business, building Las Vegas’s first 24-hour supermarket in the early 1950s. He later helped build the La Costa resort in Carlsbad, Calif., which quickly became a favorite with Mafia bosses and celebrities including Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. In 1969, after meeting producer Lee Rich, Mr. Adelson formed Lorimar Productions, which launched the prime-time soap opera with such long-running hits as “Dallas,” “Falcon Crest” and “Knots Landing.” He later was married and divorced from TV personality Barbara Walters. He had an estimated worth of $300 million and homes in Los Angeles’s Bel-Air neighborhood; Malibu, Calif.; and Aspen, Colo., when a series of events, including the failure of a number of Internet start-ups he backed in the 1990s, led to ruin. Barbara Walters wraps her arms around her husband, Merv Adelson, moments after their wedding ceremony in 1986. (Peter Borsari/AP) Mervyn Lee Adelson was born in Los Angeles on Oct. 23, 1929. His parents ran a few grocery stores. As a teenager, he made deliveries to customers in Beverly Hills, Calif., meeting Cornel Wilde and other movie stars. By 21, he was managing one of the family stores. He occasionally accompanied his father to Las Vegas, where a relative ran a casino. On one trip, “I suddenly thought, everything is open 24 hours, but there’s no place to buy groceries,” Mr. Adelson recalled in a 2013 Vanity Fair profile. “I got the idea: a 24-hour supermarket.” With financing from his father and other investors, he opened Market Town off the Las Vegas Strip in 1953. It was an instant success, and two more stores followed. He told Vanity Fair that he was a millionaire after the first year of business. With Vegas booming, he and partner Irwin Molasky started building houses near the Desert Inn golf course and hundreds more around the city. Later they built the Las Vegas Country Club and other projects, including the city’s first indoor mall and private hospital. The latter was partly financed by gaming kingpin Moe Dalitz, who operated the Stardust and


We should name the giant panda cub after Elvis Presley. Here’s why.

President Richard M. Nixon meets with Elvis Presley at the White House on Dec. 21, 1970. Two years later, pandas arrived in Washington. Coincidence? (National Archives/Getty Images) On Dec. 21, 1970, Elvis Presley visited Richard Nixon in the Oval Office. On Feb. 21, 1972, President Nixon visited China. On April 16, 1972, two giant pandas — Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing — arrived at the National Zoo in Washington. That, my friends, is what we call cause and effect: a straight line from Elvis to Nixon, from Nixon to the pandas. We must continue that line, completing the circle: from the pandas back to Elvis. We must name the National Zoo’s new panda cub after the King of Rock and Roll. The photo of Elvis Presley shaking hands with Richard Nixon is one of the most striking images in modern U.S. history, the very embodiment of incongruity. It began with a restless Elvis flying from Memphis to Washington, then to Los Angeles before deciding to head back east. Writer Peter Carlson recounted the curious meeting in a 2010 article in Smithsonian magazine: “Elvis was traveling with some guns and his collection of police badges, and he decided that what he really wanted was a badge from the federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs back in Washington. ‘The narc badge represented some kind of ultimate power to him,’ Priscilla Presley wrote in her memoir, ‘Elvis and Me.’ ‘With the federal narcotics badge, he [believed he] could legally enter any country both wearing guns and carrying any drugs he wished.’ ” Elvis Presley was a fan of panda bears. In 1957 at Graceland, he posed with Mary Kosloski, 8, of the March of Dimes surrounded by stuffed pandas that were auctioned off for charity. (Courtesy of Elvis Presley Enterprises/Courtesy of Elvis Presley Enterprises) Aboard the flight, Elvis wrote a note to Nixon decrying the drug culture and “hippie elements” that were threatening the nation. He offered to help combat them. “I will be [in Washington] for as long as it takes to get the credentials of a Federal Agent,” he wrote. “I have done an in-depth study of drug abuse and Communist brainwashing techniques and I am right in the middle of the whole thing where I can and will do the most good.” After the plane landed, Elvis delivered the note to the White House. Six hours later — clad in a


Lang Lang leads BSO into 100th season

Lang Lang was the big draw for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s season-opening gala, and he didn’t disappoint. (Xun Chi) An orchestra’s season-opening gala is, first and foremost, about its donors and patrons, many of whom are not hard-core music lovers. Programming is a delicate balancing act — the music nestled between speeches, tributes and videos — and the presence of the obligatory marquee star notwithstanding, the actual musicmaking is often secondary. This is the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s centenary season, and its black-tie gala Saturday in Meyerhoff Hall was certainly a glamorous affair — both of Maryland’s U.S. senators, the city’s mayor and the City Council president were among the luminaries in attendance — and the energy level increased as the evening progressed. It was in short supply for the first two numbers, Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance March No. 4” and Paul Dukas’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (made famous in Disney’s “Fantasia”). Conductor Christopher Seaman was earthbound and prosaic, finding little of the fantasy in the Dukas — the climaxes all sounded the same — and flattening out the nostalgia in the Elgar. Headliner Lang Lang, who, we learned, made his professional concerto debut with the BSO in 1989, then took the stage for Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto. Lang is a superstar, and it goes without saying that he brought the house down. He is often called an “ambassador” for music because of his many forays into non-musical realms, such as sports, social media, corporate partnerships and the like. For many music lovers, the pianist’s show-and-tell performing style and his willingness to ignore basic rules of musical rhetoric when there’s a dramatic or maudlin point to be made are appalling. But he gave the audience what it came for and launched the new season with undeniable eclat. The evening closed with a wonderful, goofy, circuslike performance by Lang, the BSO and an assemblage of musicians and dancers from the orchestra’s “OrchKids” after-school program, all bopping and boogeying to Pharrell’s “Happy.” Battey is a freelance writer.


U.S. judge fines Russia $43.7 million in diplomatic feud over Jewish collection

precedent, indeed, to disregard the law and rule as the department prays.” Although it remains unlikely that the court penalty will be paid, the order strengthens the Chabad group’s ability to pursue Russian assets. For example, Chabad has subpoenaed information about Russian holdings from the U.S. arm of Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, which was a target of U.S. sanctions. Lamberth’s order adds an irritant to Russian-U.S. relations already roiled by Kremlin actions in Ukraine. The Obama administration has imposed several rounds of sanctions, including freezing $640 million of assets since March 2014 held in the United States by Russian banks controlled by three billionaire friends of Putin, the Wall Street Journal reported. A spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington declined to comment on the latest court ruling in the Chabad case. In January 2013, Russia’s Foreign Ministry called fines in the Chabad case “absolutely unlawful and provocative,” adding, “We have repeatedly stated that this verdict is extraterritorial in character, contradicts international law and is legally void.” The ministry called the collection a “national treasure of the Russian people,” adding that Moscow “will have to take a tough response” if Russian state property is seized in the United States. The Russian government has previously reacted to the case by barring state-run museums, including the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, from lending artworks to American museums. The National Gallery of Art’s 2014 exhibit of Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt, for example, did not include two Pushkin holdings, Degas’ “Blue Dancers” or a Cassatt version of “Mother and Child.” The Lubavitch movement of Orthodox Judaism began in western Russia in 1775, and the collection is sometimes referred to as the Schneersohn collection after the movement’s longtime leaders: Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn and his son, Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn. The books, documents and other materials in the collection make up “the community’s organizational records and spiritual history,” whose importance to the Chabad group “can hardly be overstated,” the group’s attorneys have argued. During World War I, as the German army advanced, the elder Schneersohn placed the books in storage. But the Soviet government later seized the library, which remains in Russian hands. A document archive was taken by the Nazis and then by the Soviet Army during World War II. In 1991, a court in Moscow ordered that the collection be returned, but Russian authorities


Virgin Galactic beefing up its rocket

SPACE Virgin Galactic beefing up its rocket Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, which wants to ferry tourists into space, is beefing up its rocket so that it can carry bigger payloads and help the company compete for another line of work: launching small satellites. Enhancements to its LauncherOne rocket will allow the company to fly much larger payloads, including as much as 400 kilograms to low Earth orbit, Virgin announced Monday. The announcement comes after OneWeb, which plans to build a global Internet satellite system, said it was hiring Virgin for 39 launches to send a constellation of small satellites into space. The increased payload capacity would also allow Virgin to fly government satellites, Virgin chief executive George Whitesides said in a phone interview from Paris, where the company made the announcement. While known mostly for its ambitions to fly tourists into space, Virgin’s move to increase its rocket payload shows how it also is attacking the lucrative satellite launch business. SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company, also announced Monday that it was awarded two commercial launch contracts recently, bringing its total manifest to 60 launches. Virgin said that it is also close to acquiring a commercial aircraft to help launch its rockets. Unlike rockets that are fired from a standing position from launch pads after a 3-2-1 countdown, Virgin’s rockets are escorted into the sky by massive airplanes. The rockets, which are tethered to the plane’s belly, are dropped from the aircraft and then fire their engines. Whitesides said that demand for launches “has become so significant that LauncherOne will have its own dedicated aircraft. Small satellites are big business.” — Christian Davenport INSIDER TRADING Two settle SEC civil charges over hacking Two defendants agreed to pay $30 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission civil insider-trading charges over a scheme to hack into networks that distribute corporate news releases, the regulator said Monday. Jaspen Capital Partners and chief executive Andriy Supranonok, both from Kiev, Ukraine, are the first of 34 defendants to settle SEC charges over allegations of the theft of more than 150,000 releases from Business Wire, Marketwired and PR Newswire before the news became public. The SEC said the scheme resulted in more than $100 million of illegal profit over a roughly five-year period. Authorities said traders would give hackers “shopping lists” of news releases they wanted to see in advance, and then make trades based on them. Nine