Anthony Fauci: An AIDS-free generation is closer than we might think

Anthony S. Fauci is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. Because of the extraordinary progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS, we can now consider a question that just a few years ago seemed far-fetched. No longer is it whether we can achieve an AIDS-free generation. Now, the question is: How long will it take and will it be sustained? Vaccines historically have played an important role in the control and even elimination of global health scourges such as smallpox, polio and measles. So two important questions regarding an AIDS-free generation are: Is an HIV vaccine needed to reach this goal, and if so, what role will it play? An AIDS-free generation would mean that virtually no child is born with HIV; that, as those children grow up, their risk of becoming infected is far lower than it is today; and that those who become infected can access treatment to help prevent them from developing AIDS and from passing the virus on to others. While the road to an AIDS-free generation will be long and arduous, recent progress in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment has been encouraging. Initiatives such as the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria are channeling antiretroviral treatment to millions of people in hard-hit countries. Of the estimated 34 million people worldwide infected with HIV, more than 10 million have access to antiretroviral drugs. Treatment reduces the levels of virus in infected individuals, benefiting their health and lessening the chances that they will transmit the virus to others. Thirteen countries receiving PEPFAR funds have reached a key “tipping point” at which the annual increase in new patients on antiretroviral treatment exceeds the annual number of new HIV infections. The curve of new HIV infections in many countries is trending downward. Mathematical models suggest that, by implementing existing HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention tools much more broadly worldwide, we can reach an AIDS-free generation. But without an effective HIV vaccine, reaching that goal will take much longer and will be more difficult, and along the way more people will become infected and more lives will be lost. So while it may be possible, and even likely, to achieve an AIDS-free generation without it, an effective HIV vaccine would get us to an AIDS-free generation faster and, more important, help


Despite irritating flourishes, BSO displays some creativity with Vivaldi, Bach and Handel

Jonathan Carney, front. (Dave Hoffmann) The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra offered an easy-listening concert on a balmy summer’s eve Thursday at Strathmore. Led by BSO concertmaster Jonathan Carney, the program consisted of well-known numbers by Vivaldi, Bach and Handel, with a movement from the “Holberg Suite” by Grieg. Although the orchestra was greatly reduced, it still lumbered in the faster pieces and made the harpsichord onstage basically an inaudible piece of furniture, but for a few anticipatory arpeggios. Carney can be an irritating performer. His mannered and energy-wasting playing sometimes comes at the expense of accuracy. In his two solo numbers — “L’inverno” and “L’estate,” from Vivaldi’s “Le quattro stagioni” — he would sometimes play with his back to the audience, a la Miles Davis. And he was in over his head trying to lead the full ensemble while playing in Bach’s complex Orchestral Suite No. 3, whose faster sections were devoid of dynamics or internal shaping. That said, the two concertos were full of individual touches bespeaking detailed creativity and thinking-through. Kudos to the BSO and especially principal cellist Dariusz Skoraczewski for successfully mastering Carney’s tempo flexibility and other dramatic flourishes. For the rest of the pieces, they were efficient run-throughs, the horns and oboes braying lustily and the trumpets, while not perfectly in tune, displaying shining tone and blend. Battey is a freelance writer.


Hints From Heloise: Attracting wildlife

Dear Readers: If you enjoy the outdoors and the wildlife that lives in it, there are some easy things you can do to SUPPORT THE ANIMALS. The National Wildlife Federation suggests the following: * Select plants for around your home that are native to the area. Make sure you have plants that animals can use not only for nests and shelter, but that also provide food in the form of nectar, berries or nuts. * Have a water source available. If not a natural stream, then have a few decorative dishes filled with water, birdbaths or a small pot. * Think about planting smaller shrubs and grasslike plants. Along with rocks and special landscaping, smaller animals and reptiles can be encouraged to hide and live there. * Place birdhouses around your property, but also have plants that attract insects for the birds to eat. Try doing just one small thing to help benefit the wildlife near you. -- Heloise P.S.: If you are lucky enough to enjoy backyard wildlife, please be sure to be kind to them all. HANDY TRIVET Dear Heloise: When I need a rack (to put something on while cooking -- Heloise), I use the 6-1/2-inch-diameter rack that came with my pressure cooker. This particular size is perfect for roasting a Cornish hen. -- Andrea Johnsen, via e-mail Good idea, Andrea. Racks often are used when baking cakes. And doesn’t a home-baked cake sound delicious? I have a pamphlet filled with some of my favorite cake recipes, like Strawberry Gelatin Cake and Mother’s Tomato Soup Cake. To receive a copy, just send $3 and a long, self-addressed, stamped (66 cents) envelope to: Heloise/Cake, P.O. Box 795001, San Antonio, TX 78279-5001. Put frosting on a cake as soon as it has cooled, and this will help keep the cake moist. For a quick cool-down, I let the cake pans sit on a cooling rack about 10 minutes, then put them into the refrigerator on a wire shelf. -- Heloise PET PAL Dear Readers: Sallyanne Calvert of Middle Point, Ohio, sent a photo of her dog Jethro, who looks like a dachshund. He is standing up against the TV stand watching another dog on TV. To see Jethro, visit www.Heloise.com and click on “Pets.” -- Heloise FLOWER POWER Dear Heloise: I enjoy reading your hints in the Abilene (Texas) Reporter-News. I read the one about buying flowers for the


The Circuit: Robots and the U.S. work force; Hulu off market; Microsoft on data collection

Robots come for the middle class: In a report from MIT Professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, the researchers blame automation for low job growth over the past decade, the report said. And more careers that once seemed out of reach of automation are now being threatened, the report said, such as the jobs of truck drivers that may be threatened by Google’s driverless car. Hulu off the market: The online television Web site Hulu is off the market again, its owners said Friday, saying that they believe the best path for the service is to keep it under its current ownership structure. The company is owned jointly by 21st Century Fox, NBCUniversal and the Walt Disney, and went up for sale this year. Now, the site’s owners said, they will invest $750 million in the site “in order to propel growth.” Microsoft says it does not grant blanket access to data: But, the statement said, there are aspects of data collection programs that Microsoft officials “wish we could discuss more freely.” The company has asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow the firm more freedom to discuss its involvement in government data collection programs. Sprint promises unlimited data for life: Cybersecurity bill: The Senate panel on commerce Thursday unveiled a bipartisan draft bill on cybersecurity, sponsored by Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.). Rockefeller, who serves as the committee’s chairman, expects that the bill will be marked up this month, The Hill reported. The bill would put the responsibility of developing voluntary private-sector standards for companies that operate critical U.S. infrastructure, such as banks and utility providers to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Sign up today to receive #thecircuit, a daily roundup of the latest tech policy news from Washington and how it is shaping business, entertainment and science.


to bring his audience to the places he and his scientific colleagues have visited. After a team of researchers takes off from the Foja Mountains in a helicopter, he writes, the “forest would return to its splendid sense of isolation. . . . The bowerbirds would continue to dance around their bowers. Nearby, the male six-wired would shake himself into a joyous blur, and the uninhibited displays of other birds in this paradise would resume without a human audience.” In “Butterfly People,” Leach analyzes our relationship with the natural world from a historian’s perspective, by looking at 19th-century Americans who devoted their lives to the study of some of world’s most gorgeous insects. His book is impeccably researched, with an astonishing level of detail about these butterfly-obsessed men (and in rare cases, women). At times, this research is illuminating: It’s fascinating to read about how an immigrant German butterfly enthusiast named Augustus Grote, forced to leave Staten Island and take up residence in Bremen, wrote a friend in 1899 that the mailed gift of a green luna moth’s cocoon eased his homesickness near the end of his life: “A beautiful luna came out today, and I have been watching it for hours and imagining I was back on Staten Island. And his description of the West Virginia laboratory of legendary butterfly collector William Henry Edwardsis priceless. “Edwards converted his own home (basement, porches, clothes closets) and land around it into a nursery, with larvae and pupae stuck on or in virtually every spot — in pots, kegs, barrels, and half-pint jelly glasses with tin tops, and even in his bedroom, where butterflies sometimes pupated, freed by the heat of the fireplaces to fly from room to room.” But over the course of a long book, this degree of detail becomes overwhelming. Leach dwells at length on the petty infighting among butterfly experts. While these spats do touch on some critical aspects of American society, including the debate over evolution and the question of class, many of them are the sort of tedious feuds that take place in any academic department. Leach writes that Grote’s concerted campaign to discredit another German immigrant, Herman Strecker, in the 1870s and ’80s, changed “the course of American work on butterflies.” But since Strecker went on to publish some of his generation’s seminal works on butterflies, it’s unclear how this extended bout of name-calling changed


Esther J. Cepeda: Saying no to alcohol

From my regular dining spots pushing pricey, fruity concoctions ending in “-tini” to the moment on my last grocery store trip when I found a margarita mix display sitting next to the toilet paper, it seems evident that alcohol’s popularity has reached a new, femininity-infused peak. Last winter the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified binge drinking among women and girls— especially high-school girls and young women, whites and Hispanics, and adult women with household incomes of $75,000 or more — as a serious but under-recognized problem. Gabrielle Glaser’s new book, “Her Best-Kept Secret: Why Women Drink — And How They Can Regain Control,” contends that women are drinking more now than at any other time in history, at least in part to cope with the stresses of motherhood and career. Recently, British experts reported a rise in liver disease among female professionals under 30 in some of London’s wealthiest areas. They over-imbibe socially, but also on the job — either during work-related functions or after-work gatherings. It’s not so different in America. As The Wall Street Journal reported in late June, companies are offering open bars, kegs and on-site happy hours to employees — especially younger ones — to help lure talent, keep people comfortable during increasingly longer workdays, and connect employees across different divisions while fostering workplace community. I’ve worked in such environments and they became yet another place where I had to steel myself for the inevitable weirdness of being a non-drinker in an alcohol-centric society. Seriously, I felt less peer pressure to drink as an undergraduate at a state university with a legitimately terrible reputation as a party school — our campus was closed multiple times due to alcohol-fueled riots — than I have as a professional in corporate settings. Which brings us to the question of how best to deal with being the anomalous adult who, by choice, steers clear of the ever-expanding world of “alcoholification.” I say “by choice” because I don’t have any good reason or excuse that stops people in their tracks. Unless you are an obviously pregnant woman, have an illness that requires medications, are a recovering alcoholic (and don’t mind fessing up to it) or are devoutly religious, you get puzzled, sometimes alarmed, looks when turning down a drink. “It’s important to give people who want to abstain the language and the reasons for saying ‘no’ because people respond


Zimmerman found not guilty in killing of Trayvon Martin

eager to introduce the texts to further the defense claim that Martin was the aggressor in the fight and that Zimmerman — whom a gym owner described as “soft” and unathletic — was overpowered by the tall and slender teenager. O’Mara and West, a former rock-and-roll DJ with a shaved head and an imposing courtroom presence, succeeded in turning many of the state’s key witnesses into assets for the defense. They got John Good, a neighbor, to testify that he saw a figure in dark clothes (Martin’s hoodie was dark) straddling another person and doing a mixed-martial-arts-style “ground and pound” while “raining down blows.” They also got lead police investigator Chris Serino to testify that he believed Zimmerman’s self-defense account. Local prosecutors had not pursued the case, but Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) appointed a special prosecutor, naming State Attorney Angela Corey of Jacksonville, Fla., to oversee it. Corey’s assistants, who argued the case, often seemed to struggle with their own witnesses. Bernie de la Rionda, a veteran prosecutor with a booming voice and a penchant for making fun of his own baldness, tangled repeatedly with Serino. And he struggled with Shiping Bao, a medical examiner and key witness, who testified that Martin might have lived for up to 10 minutes after being shot. The timing was important because Zimmerman had told police investigators that he spread Martin’s arms after the shooting to check for weapons, but the teen was found with his arms under his body. Bao’s assertion allowed the defense to suggest that Martin might have moved his hands in the moments before his death. In their best moments, prosecutors were able to highlight inconsistencies in Zimmerman’s accounts of the shooting and build a narrative about him as “a wannabe cop” who shot Martin “because he wanted to, not because he needed to.” They had much to work with — police conducted several taped interviews with Zimmerman and recorded a reenactment — all without Zimmerman requesting an attorney. Prosecutor John Guy said it would have been a “physical impossibility” for Zimmerman to have reached behind his back for his concealed and holstered Kel-Tec 9mm handgun if he had been lying on the ground with Martin on top of him. Vincent di Maio, a distinguished silver-haired forensic expert who entered the courtroom with a Panama hat in hand, spoke at length about the gunpowder tattoo that formed on Martin’s


Egypt’s army chief defends coup

nationwide crackdown against the Brotherhood, whose leaders are jailed or in hiding after their year-long effort to run the country. The United States has backed a call by Germany for the release of Morsi, who has been held without charge since the army overthrew him on July 3, and some Egyptians have expressed misgivings about the direction in which their country is heading since army soldiers gunned down at least 51 Morsi supporters at a demonstration last week. Sissi defended the removal of Morsi, saying the army acted only in response to “the will of the people.” Morsi had rejected the efforts of an envoy sent by the army to persuade him to agree to hold a referendum on his rule, after millions of people took to the streets to demand that he step down, Sissi said. The military’s current role is intended to be temporary, he added. “The Egyptian military is preparing to complete its work and is apolitical,” the general said. “It has laid down a future plan that facilitates the right of free choice, and this plan was blessed before the Egyptian people through its main representatives.” Within hours of his speech, delivered to military officers and reported by state media, the judiciary intensified pressure on the Brotherhood’s leadership by announcing that it was freezing the assets of 14 top Muslim Brotherhood officials accused of inciting violence during the upheaval. Among them were the Muslim Brotherhood’s “supreme guide,” Mohammed Badie, who is in hiding, and deputy leader Khairat el-Shater, who is thought to be in custody. Tensions have been rising between the military and the Brotherhood, which has vowed to continue a campaign of protests and civil disobedience until Morsi is reinstated. Marches are planned for Monday, and Muslim Brotherhood supporters are sustaining daily protests at two encampments on the outskirts of Cairo. Meanwhile, the interim government is starting to take shape. Hazem el-Beblawi, the economist appointed to head a new cabinet, named a former ambassador to the United States, Nabil Fahmy, as foreign minister. A veteran of the World Bank with a doctorate from Boston University, Ahmed Galal, was appointed finance minister. Liberal opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, a leading figure in the campaign to oust Morsi, was sworn in as vice president, a job he accepted last week after his appointment as prime minister was rejected by the Salafist Nour party.


An impressive track record on transporting crude oil

The July 9 editorial “Runaway train” continues to propagate the notion that the nation’s energy needs can be met only by pipelines or railroads, and that one mode of transportation is better than the other. The truth is that the nation needs both railroads and pipelines to transport crude oil safely and reliably, and each has a role to play in enhancing U.S. energy security. Furthermore, environmentalists’ claims that there should be no shipments of oil for the safety of the nation are unrealistic, and fighting the transport of fossil fuels is an untenable path to achieving the noble goal of 100 percent renewable energy. The events in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, this month were tragic, and those in the U.S. rail industry are closely following the investigation and what it reveals about the safe movement of crude oil. The accident notwithstanding, it remains true that hazardous materials accidents and spills from freight rail are exceedingly rare, with 99.997 percent of all hazardous materials shipments reaching their destination without a release caused by a train accident. In 2012, railroads set safety records, continuing a string of annual achievements reaching back decades. The freight rail industry remains focused on continually improving its safety record and ensuring that the goods we haul reach their destination securely. Edward R. Hamberger, Washington The writer is president and chief executive of the Association of American Railroads.


After Sandy, New York aims to fortify itself against next big storm, climate change

this,” said Jordan Fischbach, a policy researcher at Rand. “Is it close enough to the top of the list, and will it compete with other priorities in the decade or two to come?” As Morello, a carpenter, and city officials here can attest, adapting to climate change is generally not technologically complex. It is mostly about raising homes, buildings and other vital facilities to escape rising seawater or, if that is impractical, building barriers . It is about taking advantage of the natural topography to help sap the strength of damaging storms, waterproofing and protecting critical infrastructure such as electrical grids and assessing the possible results of prolonged heat and drought, and trying to mitigate them. “It’s not rocket science. A lot of these things are things we do already,” said Jessica Grannis, adaptation program manager at the Georgetown Climate Center at Georgetown University Law Center, a clearinghouse for information on such preparations. “It’s just tailoring them to a changed future.” “It’s planning. It’s money. And it’s will,” said Daniel Zarrilli, New York’s director of resiliency, who lives on Staten Island, one of the areas hardest hit by Sandy. Nineteen states and many localities, including Washington, are preparing such plans, according to Vicki Arroyo, the Georgetown center’s executive director. Chicago, which faces little flood danger, is figuring out how to cope with increasing heat. The five counties around low-lying Miami must determine how they can respond to rising waters. In Norfolk, there is talk of retreating from neighborhoods that flood regularly. Still, the sheer scope of what New York hopes to protect is staggering. Under the FEMA maps last issued in 1983, 33 square miles of the city, or 11 percent of its land, were in danger of flooding in a 100-year storm — a storm that has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any year. Preliminary 2013 maps have increased that to 48 square miles. By the 2050s, 72 square miles, or 24 percent of the city, will face that danger because of sea-level rise. About 398,000 homes will be in those flooding zones under the new FEMA maps. (The city has more waterfront than Miami, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco combined.) New York’s panel of climate experts predicts that the number of days each year when the temperature is above 90 degrees could triple to 52 by 2050. The city supplies electricity to about 8.3 million


Commentary: Metro D.C. prepares for climate change

90 years, and as development in the D.C. region grows, preparation will be required in low-lying areas. Flooding due to megastorms, combined with wind and precipitation damage, costs the region millions of dollars annually, and is increasingly punctuated by “billion dollar events” such as 2003’s Hurricane Isabel and last year’s Hurricane Sandy. This does not account for the dozens of lives lost in these events. The report finds that as temperatures rise, the Chesapeake will effectively travel south in terms of temperature change. If greenhouse gases are not substantially reduced, by 2050, the summer water temperature of America’s largest estuary could mirror today’s North Carolina Sound; by 2100, the temperature may mirror the central coast of Florida. Rising temperatures and increased [carbon dioxide] will decrease dissolved oxygen levels and acidification of the water, threatening oyster beds and aquatic vegetation. This has major implications for water quality throughout the region. The council is working with various agencies in the region grappling with climate changes, such as NASA. “COG [began] working with us and others in preparation for events to explore the D.C. area’s climate risks, to define practical adaptations, and to explore how many organizations can work together to adapt,” notes Kim Toufectis, a master planner at NASA. “What began in New York, we look forward to sharing with our hometown,” continued Toufectis, highlighting the importance of applying best practices in climate adaptability. The council has worked extensively to address the root causes of global warming, establishing greenhouse gas reduction goals and a Climate and Energy Action Plan to mitigate emissions. This new report has found, citing regional climate experts, that local impacts will be substantial. Reducing global emissions is the crucial factor in reducing risks of climate change in the long term. The report [finds that since] there is virtual certainty that climate change will continue to impact our infrastructure, safety, and health for decades, reducing the severity of those changes through adaptation and emissions reductions measures is critical for our region. This report outlines clear steps for how to adapt to the effects of climate change. We identify key areas for preparedness, including hardening our transportation, water, and energy infrastructure, smart development with more resilient land use practices and the continued engagement of the climate science community. The council will continue to engage local partners to plan for the future and work to reduce carbon emissions in the region.


Why ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ is still a viable model for some local manufacturers

model, even if it brings with it some tough challenges. Here’s a look at three firms that are keeping their manufacturing jobs here and why they’re finding that to be good business. Sundog Productions Fairfax-based manufacturer of T-shirts and other garments. Cas Shiver started his T-shirt business in 1986 in his parents’ garage. Thanks in part to a big boost from a 1991 contract with Ralph Lauren to produce 80,000 T-shirts and other apparel, Sundog Productions grew from a small tie-dye shop to a bustling garment-making operation that includes cutting, sewing, dyeing, embroidering and printing. As Sundog expanded, Shiver worked to keep in Virginia the kinds of jobs that many other manufacturers had outsourced. Unsurprisingly, he repeatedly missed out on business opportunities by sticking to that principle. “I fell on my sword all throughout the ’90s with ‘made in America,’ and nobody cared,” Shiver said. Prospective customers would tell him, “We want what you do, but it’s too expensive.” And so Shiver kept his operation in Fairfax, but in 2004 he opened a second facility in Amatitlan, Guatemala. Wages were lower there — his workers made the equivalent of $12 a day — and so he was able to slash prices on products made in that location. By contrast, his hourly workers in Virginia are paid anywhere from $7.50 to $18 per hour, and most employees in the dyeing area make between $15 to $25 an hour. “In going down to Guatemala, we were able to accept orders from the big boys,” Shiver said, including major global retailers such as Kohl’s, Kmart and Wal-Mart. He maintained the dual operations for several years, but eventually nature forced a reassessment of that strategy. A punishing tropical storm flooded the Guatemala factory in 2010, and Shiver opted not to rebuild it. He found it difficult to keep an eye on two facilities, and he said the business model for the Guatemala plant was thorny. “The reality was it was feast or famine. You get an order from Kohl’s, it’ll keep you busy for a month,” Shiver said. But then there might be lulls in between massive orders, a problem he didn’t have stateside where he has smaller orders. And business challenges aside, the Guatemala venture never quite jibed with Shiver’s belief in the importance of “made in America” products. Now, Shiver focuses on Sundog’s Fairfax operations. The company relocated in June to a


At Castleton Festival, young composer’s symphony is given its premier

Conductor Lorin Maazel is seeing his dream come true as the Castleton Festival, nestled in the Piedmont hills of Virginia, celebrates its fifth anniversary. On Sunday, Maazel introduced the afternoon’s orchestral concert with a plug for a new competition, for composers younger than 25 to have their works premiered at the festival. (Castleton already supports a summer training program for young musicians headed for professional careers.) This year’s winner was Philadelphia-born Charles Peck, whose “Metropolitan” for symphony orchestra was premiered before Rafael Payare conducted a stormy version of Mahler’s 70-minute Fifth Symphony. The morning chamber music program received dazzling virtuoso playing for Johan Halvorsen’s takeoff on a Handel passacaglia. Violinist Eric Silberger and cellist Daniel Lelchuk raced through the set of variations requiring a wide variety of string techniques and expressive, tonal colors. The same players next took on Zoltán Kodály’s Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7, a three-movement paean to music that Kodály — with composer Béla Bartók, his comrade — had collected from Central European folk music. Both musicians tore into the score with passionate and rhapsodic, even improvisatory, styles. Beethoven’s Septet in E-flat, Op. 20, calls on three winds — horn, bassoon and clarinet — against four strings — violin, viola, cello and bass. At first, the players fell short of impeccable intonation and ensemble. But they soon recovered, capturing Beethoven’s depths of harmonic shading, giving zest to the scherzo and a beautiful singing tone to the adagio. Reflecting a bygone era and the thrill of the hunt, the horn solos of Zach Glavan were captivating. In his “Metropolitan,” Peck sketched five visions of the sounds and feelings provoked by an urban landscape. His opening “Luminous Canopy” was translated into transparent textures, ranging from softly warbling flutes and violins to the whole orchestra in muted, transparent colors. Through “Urban Glass,” “Magnetic Avenue,” “Iron Organ” and “Midnight City,” Peck etched cityscapes of noisy chaos and darker sounds of night reinforced by low-lying strings and brass. Above all, conductor David Hanlon shaped each movement with a precise baton, giving all five a separate identity. The Castleton Festival Orchestra, conducted by rising star Payare, was unbelievable in the Mahler. These young musicians, with a few veteran players sprinkled in, rarely failed in technique and expressiveness to voice Mahler’s intent. Payare led them in probing the mournful landscapes of the funeral march; the piece was written at the time Mahler


Sound waves can be used to levitate and move objects, study says

Swiss scientists use sound waves to levitate and manipulate objects, such as water droplets and a particle of sodium, in mid-air. Scientists have been able to use the power of sound to levitate small items — including insects and fish — for decades. But now researchers in Switzerland have figured out how to move objects around in midair, according to a new study. The breakthrough in acoustic levitation will allow scientists to unlock “a huge amount of applications for this very powerful method,” including in pharmaceutical and electronics manufacturing, said author and mechanical engineer Dimos Poulikakos of ETH Zurich, a science and technology university in Switzerland. The study was published online Poulikakos’s team performed a number of midair experiments, such as combining water droplets or chemical solutions, inserting DNA into cells and even making a tiny portion of instant coffee. They also levitated a wooden toothpick — something that had never been done before — while rotating it and moving it forward and backward. Sound waves exert pressure when they hit a surface, but the effects are usually too small to notice. But if the intensity is cranked up high enough, sound has the ability to counteract the effects of gravity. Poulikakos and his colleagues used levels of about 160 decibels; that’s louder than standing near a rocket launch and is enough to rupture a human eardrum. But they were able to work without ear protection. They took advantage of the fact that the frequency of sound — the physical property that gives it a pitch — also matters. Using 24,000 hertz (Hz), a level comparable to a dog whistle, they were unaffected by the noise. The upper range of human hearing is about 20,000 Hz. Their levitation device looks something like a chessboard, with each penny-size square emitting its own sound. A large, clear plastic plate is placed a small distance above the chessboard to reflect the sound; if the sounds waves are strong enough, objects can hover and move around within the space. The tricky part was figuring out how to move things from square to square carefully, without damaging them, said lead author Daniele Foresti, also a mechanical engineer at ETH Zurich. Foresti found that balance was the key. Push too hard, and the sound waves will cause a water droplet to explode. Don’t push hard enough, and the droplet will fall and gravity wins. Eventually, he


Kids at the Kennedy: Two youth orchestras show their stuff

Samuel Matzner, violist from Arlington, Virginia, member of the 2013 National Youth Orchestra of United States of America, rehearsing at Purchase College, SUNY, 7/2/13. (Chris Lee/Chris Lee) If you want to fill the seats of your concert hall with young people, put young people on stage. The National Youth Orchestra of the United States, musicians ages 16 to 19, played the Kennedy Center Concert Hall for the first time Saturday night, and the hall was overrun with families, friends, fellow members of the region’s youth orchestras and aspirants. The NYO-USA, spearheaded by Carnegie Hall, is starting with a bang. It’s good news that Carnegie Hall is putting a lot of money into an outlet for talented young musicians. Money and prestige; the inaugural tour goes from Washington to London and Russia with conductor Valery Gergiev and violin soloist Joshua Bell. The kids — garbed in fire-engine red pants — are audibly thrilled. On Saturday, the orchestra, 120 members strong, presented the sonic equivalent of a Labrador, leaping out into the hall with infectious, woofy, enormous energy. The hype, though, is slightly frustrating. There are so many significant youth orchestra programs around the country, doing important work, often without much media attention, that it seems unfair to herald this new orchestra as if it was breaking new ground. This was underlined Sunday night, when the Kennedy Center/National Symphony Orchestra’s annual Summer Music Institute Orchestra performed: same venue, same basic talent pool (the SMI’s musicians range from 15 to 20) but a lower-key affair, and admission was free. Artistically, the difference between the two wasn’t as great as the context might lead you to expect. The NYO has followed the lead of the acclaimed Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra — long Venezuela’s national youth orchestra — in its monumental size. That many people playing together results in an impressive sound, even if the strings were slightly woolly at the beginning and there was a touch of callowness in the winds. The SMI orchestra, with 68 members, was lither, lighter and a shade paler. Of course, the groups have different goals: The NYO is focused exclusively on performance, where the SMI musicians (who will perform again July 28) were at the start of a three-week training program with a lot of different components. The NYO is showcasing American youth with a predominantly Russian program — Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto, Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony — under a


Aide to man with Down syndrome who died in theater had warned police, report says

Saylor from the theater, the four fell in a heap on a slightly inclined ramp and, during a struggle, the deputies placed three sets of handcuffs on him. When Saylor suddenly grew quiet and unresponsive, the deputies removed the handcuffs and administered CPR. The Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Baltimore ruled Saylor’s death a homicide as a result of asphyxia. There was unexplained damage to his larynx. A witness said one of the deputies had a knee on Saylor’s back, but no one reported seeing the deputies touch Saylor’s neck. When the deputies couldn’t find a pulse, they removed the handcuffs and started chest compressions until Saylor started breathing again, snoring but unconscious, according to the documents. The aide was asked to help. “I tapped him and said, ‘Wake up, Ethan,’ ” she wrote. In March, a Frederick County grand jury determined no charges were warranted against the deputies, who have since returned to their full duties. Afterward, none of the evidence presented to the jury was made available to the family or public for months, despite Freedom of Information Act requests. Instead, Daniel Karp, an attorney for the sheriff’s office, said an internal affairs investigation first had to be completed. For Saylor’s family, that meant not only did they have to mourn a young man who was known for his all-encompassing hugs and his fascination with the police — they were also left with more questions than answers. “Why is my family still unable to read the statements of those who sat yards away from our Ethan that day?” Saylor’s sister, Emma Saylor, wrote in The Washington Post on June 14. “It has been several months now, and questions remain unanswered. For what reason?” In the months following Saylor’s death, representatives from the family and advocacy groups met with the U.S. Department of Justice about the case and called on Maryland officials to conduct an independent investigation. Karp said Monday that the internal affairs investigation has been completed but that he couldn’t comment on any specific findings. “This matter has been investigated thoroughly,” said Karp, who defends municipalities and public officials in civil lawsuits. “It’s obviously a tragic and unfortunate incident, but the deputies did nothing wrong.” Espo said it is too early to discuss whether a civil lawsuit will be filed. “First we’re going to read the report and then decide what, if anything, to do,” he said.


How the Black Guerrilla Family gang took root in Maryland’s prisons

A prisoner transport van departs from the Baltimore City Detention Center earlier this month in Baltimore. Allegations of sex, drugs and access to contraband cellphones are roiling the jail. (Patrick Semansky/Associated Press) Five years ago, next to the chapel in a Maryland prison, the Black Guerrilla Family kept its own office with desks, chairs — even computers. The group’s ranking members met there with community leaders, including a former Maryland state trooper, to talk about reducing gang activity in prison and beyond. They wrote a manual filled with self-help rhetoric that they distributed to hundreds of inmates. All the while, according to court documents and interviews, BGF, a prison gang from California, was methodically taking root in Maryland, plotting an audacious criminal enterprise controlled largely behind bars. Under the noses of Maryland correctional officials, the enterprise grew and flourished into a vast and violent smuggling operation that has spilled onto the streets of Baltimore. Five years later, there is growing concern that Maryland’s gang problem is as intractable as ever. Arrests of more than a dozen correctional officers and alleged BGF leaders this spring at a state-run detention center in Baltimore revealed what federal prosecutors said was a brazen operation to smuggle in prescription pills, tobacco and cellphones. The alleged ringleader also impregnated four prison guards, investigators said. Some officials say those arrests did little to slow BGF’s rise. The arrests shook the gang’s leadership at the city jail. But the violence has continued on Baltimore’s streets, and police say cracking down has helped increase the gang’s ranks by delivering new recruits behind bars. “We’re arresting people and sending them right into the den of that gang haven,” Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts said in a recent interview. “We’re basically helping them recruit by arresting people.” Several state officials rejected Batts’s view that BGF has not been contained — and accused him of trying to deflect attention from a recent surge in city killings. But these officials are in the hot seat, too; the latest federal indictment trained a bright light on the Maryland prison system’s failure over many years to thwart BGF — and has prompted recriminations, public hearings in Annapolis, and tough questions for prison officials and Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) about their oversight of inmates. A spokesman for the department, Rick Binetti, said prison officials have worked closely with Baltimore police in recent years, including Batts, to


World Digest: July 15, 2013

MEXICO Leader of Zetas cartel captured, official says Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, the notoriously brutal leader of the Zetas drug cartel, has been captured in the first major blow against an organized crime leader by a Mexican administration struggling to drive down persistently high levels of violence, a U.S. federal official said Monday. Several Mexican media outlets reported that Treviño Morales was captured by Mexican Marines in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, long the Zetas’ base of operations. The U.S. official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. Treviño Morales, known as “Z-40,” is uniformly described as one of the two most powerful cartel heads in Mexico. He was indicted on drug trafficking and weapons charges in New York in 2009 and Washington in 2010, and the U.S. government issued a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest. — Associated Press SYRIA Assad’s forces on offensive in north Syrian government troops pounded rebel-held villages around the northern city of Idlib with rockets, artillery and airstrikes, killing at least 29 people, including six children, activists said Monday. After seizing the momentum in recent months in Syria’s civil war, President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are on the offensive against the rebels on several fronts, including in Idlib province along the border with Turkey. Government forces are in firm control of the provincial capital of the same name, while dozens of rebel brigades control the countryside. The Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights said government shelling overnight targeted five villages near Idlib city. Eight women and six children were among the 29 people killed, according to the Observatory. The group, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria, said the deadliest attack was in the village of Maghra, where a rocket slammed into a row of houses, killing 13 people. Three nearby villages — Bara, Basamis and Kafr Nabl — were hit by artillery shells that killed another 13 people. Three others died in an airstrike on the village of Iblin, the Observatory said. In central Syria, a car bomb exploded near a police headquarters in the town of Deir Atiyeh, about 50 miles north of Damascus, killing 13 people, including 10 policemen. A child was among the dead, the Observatory said. Syria’s state news agency confirmed the attack late Sunday, but said a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden car in a


Purported Zetas kingpin’s arrest boosts Peña Nieto’s anti-crime credentials

on both sides of the border, had a reputation for extreme brutality, allegedly butchering rivals and orchestrating some of the Zetas cartel’s most loathsome crimes, including mass killings of Central American migrants in 2010 and 2011. By arresting Treviño and pointing to a decline in drug-related killings, Peña Nieto’s team can claim that the government is making progress on two fronts: breaking up cartels and reducing violence. The latter was a campaign promise made by Peña Nieto when he ran last year amid widespread frustration in Mexico with Calderón’s drug war strategy, which emphasized “capture-or-kill” missions, fed by U.S. intelligence, targeting cartel kingpins. Treviño lasted less than a year as an alleged cartel leader. He assumed control after the previous Zetas commander, Heriberto “El Lazca” Lazcano, was killed in a gun battle with Mexican troops in October, officials said. Lazcano’s body was promptly stolen from the morgue, fueling speculation that he may still be alive. Security analysts say Treviño’s brother Omar, alias “Z-42,” is in line to assume command of the Zetas, which operates a sprawling smuggling-and-extortion empire across eastern Mexico that reaches deep into Central America. The syndicate’s stronghold is the busy border crossing of Nuevo Laredo, and some observers warn that Treviño’s capture could unleash a power struggle for control of the city — either with other cartels or within the Zetas hierarchy. “Treviño’s arrest could change Mexico’s criminal landscape substantially if Los Zetas begin to unravel in his absence,” said Scott Stewart, an analyst at Texas-based private intelligence firm Stratfor. Enemies of the Zetas gang, such as the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels, Mexico’s most powerful, could attempt a push into Nuevo Laredo if they smell weakness, he said. “The places where cartel-related violence could rise as a result of Treviño’s capture will depend on the ability of Los Zetas to replace their top leader as well as the strategies of Los Zetas’ rivals,” Stewart said. A question now is whether Treviño will be extradited to the United States for prosecution. He faces federal U.S. drug trafficking and weapons charges for allegedly shipping hundreds of pounds of cocaine and other narcotics across the border each week. Extraditions of Mexican cartel suspects to the United States reached record levels under Calderón, but the Peña Nieto administration said it wants more crime lords convicted at home to strengthen the country’s justice system. “We’ll have to see to what extent the


Two to share Rep Stage’s artistic director job

Director and Playwright Suzanne Beal. (Harriet Wise/HARRIET WISE) Rep Stage, the professional Equity theater in residence at Howard Community College, is filling the vacant artistic director position with two people: Suzanne E. Beal and Joseph W. Ritsch. Beal is the board chair of the Maryland Ensemble Theatre in Frederick. Ritsch is a co-founder of Iron Crow Theatre Company in Baltimore, which focuses on work related to the LGBT community. They’ll each work part time and hold the titles of co-producing artistic directors. Valerie Lash, the founding and acting artistic director of Rep Stage who chaired the nine-person search committee, said she oversaw a nationwide search and received close to 100 applicants. “I did not go into this thinking that I was looking for two co-artistic directors,” Lash said. “I went into it looking for the best person.” Neither Beal nor Ritsch was expecting the call that the job would be going to two people instead of one and that their partner would be someone they had yet to meet. “It’s like a blind date,” Beal said. “There’s a little anxiety about it, and yet excitement at the same time.” Head shot of Joseph Ritsch. (Steven Duarte ) Turning the full-time job into two part-time positions made things “a little more expensive,” Lash said. But she’s excited about the opportunities the job sharing can open up for Rep Stage and for Beal and Ritsch, who will be able to continue working elsewhere. Rep Stage is entering its 21st season. Michael Stebbins, who guided the theater for 7 1 / 2 years, stepped down in April. He and Lash are the only two artistic directors Rep Stage has ever had, and both worked full time. When Stebbins spoke with Backstage in April about his decision to leave Rep Stage, he said: “Because I’m first and foremost an actor and a director, I thought it time to continue on my — not to sound selfish — but my artistic journey again. . . . It was time to step into more of the artistic waters than the artistic and administrative. [Doing] the administrative [work], at times, you get tired.” Lash called the artistic director gig “a big burnout job.” She held the position for 12 years. “It was killing me. It’s a drainer.” It’s a gamble to pair up Beal and Ritsch who, at press time, had yet to meet (a lunch is


To prepare New York for next Sandy, move to higher ground

The Post reported July 15 [“New York works to be ready for the next Sandy,” news] on New York authorities’ plans to spend $19.5 billion on a blueprint for addressing climate change. Perhaps this money would be better spent moving peoples’ homes back from vulnerable coastal areas. Cities such as New York and New Orleans were understandably built on the coast in an era in which most travel and communications were conducted by sea and large rivers. A similar problem exists in Ireland for similar reasons, but this was compounded during Ireland’s boom years, when far too much building occurred on coastal flood plains. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is no more likely to be successful than King Canute of old in holding back the tide. Canute-type coastal barriers cannot hold back the rising sea levels. The solution in the United States and in all coastal regions is to move to higher, dryer ground and prevent all further building on coastal flood zones. Edward Horgan, Newtown, Ireland


Potomac’s ‘Bill the Barber’ is a marathon man

join marathons by his customers. His wife, Terry, schedules his races and their trips. “The only way to see the country, a little bit everywhere, is to have a goal,” Stayeas said. Sometimes he runs 13 marathons in one year; other years, he does six. Some of Stayeas’s customers also are runners, such as Trevor Myers. He’s been coming to Seven Locks Barber Shop for more than a decade. “It’s a very friendly place,” Myers said. “Bill greets you by name.” Stayeas said he enjoys interacting with people on the job. Customers call him “Bill the Barber.” Myers, a physician at the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington County, learned they both were runners when he saw a picture in the barbershop of Stayeas finishing a race. Myers runs with the Montgomery County Road Runners Club. “I’ve only done 19 marathons,” Myers said. “I’m not in his rarefied air.” Myers helped Stayeas find a physician for heart surgery. During a Marine Corps Marathon three years ago, Stayeas was running very slowly and looked terrible, according to Myers. Myers told him to see a doctor for a tightening feeling in his chest. “He needed to have emergency heart surgery,” Myers said. Stayeas’s family often makes vacations out of his races. He and his family spent a few days in Hawaii, the last state he needed to complete his runs in all 50. He said it is hard to pick favorite marathons, but New York is special and always crowded, with about 42,000 runners. Stayeas said he also likes smaller races of 5,000 to 6,000 people, such as the Scranton, Pa., Steamtown Marathon, which he has completed eight times. “For them, it’s like a Super Bowl day,” he said. “It’s something they look forward to every year as a small town. They’re proud of it.” At home in his basement, Stayeas has 101 medals — not all were from marathons — hanging by a pool table. It would be 102, but a race in Cheyenne, Wyo., doesn’t give out medals, Stayeas said. Stayeas is the first in his family to run marathons. “I’m the crazy one,” he said. Now his son and daughter run 10Ks. His next goal is to run three more by the Marine Corps, giving him a total 20 of those races. And in the next few years, Stayeas wants to return to Greece — to run the original marathon.


D.C. news in brief

Avenue Streetscape construction is complete The D.C. Department of Transportation recently completed the Sherman Avenue Streetscape Project, a $13 million project that began in October 2010. Mayor Vincent C. Gray and city officials held a ribbon-cutting July 9. The project has reshaped Sherman Avenue NW between Park Road and Florida Avenue into a residential street by reducing traffic lanes to one in each direction and widening sidewalks and the lanes shared by cars and bikes. Other improvements include upgraded wheelchair ramps and crosswalk markings, a new water main installed under the roadway, green medians, traffic signals and street lights. For information, go to www.shermanavenuenw.com. Day of Archaeology Festival is scheduled for July 27 The second annual Day of Archaeology Festival is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. July 27 at Turkey Thicket Park, 1100 Michigan Ave. NE. Archaeologists will discuss their work and volunteer opportunities in the field. Children can enjoy mock excavation, hands-on artifact displays, crafts and lectures. The program will highlight the archaeology of local prehistoric and historic inhabitants of the area. The festival will include live music, face painting and food trucks. Archaeology in the Community, a District-based nonprofit educational organization, will host the event. For information, call 202-442-8800, e-mail historic.preservation@dc.gov or ajones@archaeologyincommunity.com, or go to planning.dc.gov. City and nonprofit group offer small-business mentoring The D.C. Department of Small and Local Business Development and SCORE, a nonprofit association that promotes small-business education, are offering mentoring and workshops at the agency office, 441 Fourth St. NW, Suite 970 N. The mentoring program is confidential and will focus on the needs of start-ups and other small businesses. The workshops introduce key business management topics and offer courses for government contractors. Workshops targeted at specific needs of D.C. small businesses are planned for later in the year. For information, go to dslbd.dc.gov. Public meeting scheduled on Virginia Avenue project The D.C. Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration are holding a public meeting on the draft environmental impact statement for a project to reconstruct the Virginia Avenue tunnel from 6 to 8:30 p.m. July 31 at Capitol Skyline Hotel, 10 I St. SW. Public comments will be accepted until Aug. 26. Written comments can e-mailed to contact@virginiaavenuetunnel.com or mailed to Faisal Hameed, Virginia Avenue Tunnel DEIS, DDOT, 55 M St. SE, fourth floor, Washington, D.C. 20003. To view the statement, go to www.virginiaavenuetunnel.com. — Compiled by Terence McArdle


Carpenter bees and woodpeckers

of the year. One solution is to spray into the bee entry holes with an aerosol labeled for use against wasps, hornets and bees. Or puff a little insecticide dust labeled for use against carpenter bees into each hole. Do this in early spring when you first spot the bees flying about, or in late summer, when the adult bees emerge. Wait a week after you apply the insecticide so there’s time for the bees to come in contact with it, then plug the holes with wood putty or stainless steel wool. Another solution is to remove and replace all boards that the bees have infested. Do this during the summer, when the larvae are within the boards. In the spring, there’s too much risk that the adults will already be out and about. Carpenter bees are considered “solitary bees” because they don’t create the elaborate social structure of a hive. But generations do go back to where they were born. It’s common for offspring to extend branch tunnels from ones that their mother created. So the trick is to wipe out an entire generation fixated on your trellis. Once you’ve gotten rid of the bees and restored the trellis, consider painting the wood. Carpenter bees are much less likely to tunnel into wood that’s painted or varnished. Soft, weathered wood is a lot easier to chew. We intend a move to Santa Fe, N.M., and want to take pieces of furniture, including some antiques, that have spent their life on the humid East Coast. We’ve had friends tell us that wood furniture that’s not used to New Mexico’s arid conditions will split and warp. Are we doomed? Should we sell everything and start over, or is there anything we can do (besides running humidifiers all the time)? Vienna You’re wise to be concerned. Wood continues to expand and contract as it absorbs or dries in response to humidity, no matter how long ago it was crafted into furniture. In the Washington area, the air is naturally quite humid, with average humidity of 83 percent in the morning and 55 percent in the afternoon. In Santa Fe, the air is dry, dry, dry. The morning average is 45 percent, and the afternoon average is just 18 percent. This means that wood joints that have been intact in your current house are likely to spring open as the wood shrinks once


Arlington’s Lyon Village morphs to Wild Kingdom with roaming foxes, rabbits

There’s plenty of wild life in Arlington County’s Lyon Village. During a recent organized pub crawl through neighboring Clarendon, the neighborhood newsletter reported, police made 13 alcohol-related arrests, including two for assault on a police officer and one for a man who attempted to throw a chair through the front window of a business. Car break-ins happen periodically, and, earlier this month, teenagers banged on front doors in the middle of the night. Added to the discussion mix this summer are the neighborhood fox — or foxes — and the explosion of rabbits that seem to have turned the affluent enclave into a Wild Kingdom. “I was coming back from a midnight movie with a friend, and when we came past the park, it was like a horror movie — there were over 100 rabbits on the playground and we saw hundreds of pairs of eyes lit up by our headlights,” said Lyon Village resident Kevin Edds. “It freaked us out.” Bunnies are one thing. But foxes are another. Edds said he heard a “loud shrieking sound, like a woman in distress, about midnight” a few years ago. He got in his car and began looking for the source. It didn’t take long to find a fox lying in a neighbor’s yard, apparently in heat, issuing a call of the wild. More recently, “I’ve seen it when I take my kids to school,” Edds said. “I saw one Friday night in the middle of the intersection on Harvard Street, warming itself. Then it walked down the sidewalk, where two teenage boys were sitting on the curb. “If somebody was walking down the street with a toddler running ahead of them, and the fox and the toddler surprised each other. . .” Arlington’s wildlife control officers are familiar with the foxes — and the rabbits, opossums, snakes, deer, baby birds, feral cats and other animals that share the 27-mile-square community with other suburbanites. “Right now, we’re in full swing, working 24-7,” said Kim Corcoran, animal control officer with the Animal Welfare League of Arlington, the contractor providing those services to the county government. “It’s hard to determine if there’s been an increase in calls. It certainly feels that way.” That doesn’t help settle the nerves of homeowners and visitors who spot the reddish, pointy-eared critters meandering through yards, walking down sidewalks and sunbathing on streets midday. That’s not unusual, Corcoran said.


Origin of gold is likely in rare neutron-star collisions

about once every 100,000 years, Berger said. But the universe is big, containing many billions of galaxies, and so astronomers doing an all-sky survey will occasionally see one of these rare events. So it was that on June 3, NASA’s Swift space telescope observed a flash of light called a short gamma-ray burst (GRB) in a galaxy 3.9 billion light years away in the constellation Leo. The burst lasted only two-tenths of a second. Astronomers scrambled to reobserve that tiny patch of space with a powerful telescope in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope. They saw something glowing where they’d earlier seen the GRB. After comparing their observations with theoretical models, the astronomers concluded that they were seeing the radioactive afterglow from a huge quantity of heavy metals formed in the explosion caused by merging neutron stars. The observation potentially explains this type of short-duration GRB. These flashes of light can briefly outshine an entire galaxy. Over the past 12 months, scientists have captured stunning images of the planets, a galaxy, a planetary nebula and more from space. Although neutron-star collisions had been proposed as a source of such GRBs, now there is a direct observation. “We now have kind of a smoking gun,” said Berger. A pair of neutron stars can orbit each other for a billion years before colliding, and then, Berger said, “several exciting things happen very quickly.” Most of the material collapses to form a black hole. Some of it is spewed into space. That material is rich in neutrons, which drives the formation of heavier and heavier elements, the way mud piles up on an off-road vehicle. “You need a lot of neutrons to throw at some seed nucleus to build it up to something heavy like gold or lead or platinum,” said Daniel Kasen, a University of California at Berkeley astrophysicist. These explosions make an astonishing amount of heavy atoms. Kasen did a back-of-the-envelope calculation for the June 3 event and found that it produced about 20 Earth-masses worth of gold. That’s enough gold to fill 100 trillion oil tankers, he said. And if platinum is your thing, then rejoice: These collisions create seven times as much platinum as gold. “I’m partial to the name ‘blingnova’ to describe this kind of event, since what we are seeing is basically an ostentatious glimmering of riches,” Kasen said. A lingering question: Does this mean gold and


Photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev makes controversial Rolling Stone cover

The cover of Rolling Stone’s Aug. 1 edition features a photograph of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing in April. Many have responded angrily to the magazine’s treatment of Tsarnaev’s image: Rolling Stone editors said in a statement that the story falls within the traditions of journalism and the magazine’s commitment to serious and thoughtful coverage. Opinion writer Erik Wemple argues that the cover image was the best the editors could have done, given the story: *Presumably the protesters would have a tabloid treatment in which Rolling Stone would place horns on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Perhaps that would have made this nonsense go away. Alexandra Petri offers other suggestions for Rolling Stone covers: – The Eye of Sauron in a bathrobe Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty to charges including murder using a weapon of mass destruction. He and his family immigrated to the United States in 2002, as The Washington Post described in an extensive profile in April. America, the golden door, had already welcomed two of his brothers when Anzor Tsarnaev crossed the ocean with his family in 2002. Anzor’s brother Ruslan, who had immigrated just a few years earlier, already had a law degree and was on his way to an executive job and a six-figure salary. And at first, Anzor, his wife, Zubeidat, and their two sons, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, seemed as energetic and brimming with initiative as their relatives had been. Anzor, a mechanic, fixed up cars. His wife turned a cut-rate apartment in affluent Cambridge into an improvised salon, offering facials at attractive prices. The boys — who authorities believe are the Boston Marathon bombers, responsible for killing four people and injuring more than 250 — took to their new home with gusto. The older one, Tamerlan, was sociable, even showy, dressing sharply, honing his body to become an Olympic boxer. He married an American WASP, daughter of a well-to-do Rhode Island family.The younger boy, Dzhokhar, was almost instantly as American as they come: He fell for a blond beauty and won her over. He made the high school wrestling team and was popular and empathic enough to be named captain. He partied hard and studied when he had to. Read the Rolling Stone profile of Tsarnaev here.


The XpressWest train project’s deserved demise

WE’VE SEEN some bad policy ideas but not many more awful than the proposal to extend a $5.5 billion low-interest, 35-year federal loan to a West Coast start-up for a high-speed rail connection between Southern California and Las Vegas. This time, though, we are happy to report, common sense has prevailed: The Obama administration has stopped the project. Backed by wealthy casino moguls, who in turn enjoyed the support of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), a company called XpressWest wanted to lay tracks between Vegas and lonely Victorville, Calif., some 81 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. Several times larger than the largest amount ever loaned under the obscure federal Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing Program, the federal money would cover 80 percent of the project’s costs. The supposed public benefits were reduced carbon emissions, less auto traffic and, of course, more jobs. What XpressWest struggled to explain was why taxpayers should bet on a proposition that private investors apparently found too risky: hordes of travelers driving to Victorville, parking their cars and then boarding the train for an 80-minute ride to Vegas — as opposed to driving the whole way, flying or taking “My Party Ride,” a limo-like bus trip for up to 30 passengers at $99 each, including food and drinks. The whole thing had the makings of a boondoggle, for which taxpayers would eventually end up paying. Yet multiple federal and state agencies had given environmental and regulatory approvals, leaving the crucial matter of the loan up to the Transportation Department. Given the project’s political connections, DOT’s thumbs-up seemed inevitable — until June 28, when then-Secretary Ray LaHood, as one of his final acts in office, sent XpressWest Chairman Anthony Marnell II a letter saying that the department had decided to “suspend further consideration” of the loan. The company, and Mr. Reid, issued statements asserting that the “review” would continue. Given Mr. LaHood’s allusions in his letter to “serious issues” and “significant uncertainties” — which “numerous meetings and telephone conferences” failed to settle — the project sounds pretty dead. If it ever got revived, it might face a Government Accountability Office inquiry, which House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Jeff Sessions (Ala.), ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, ordered in March but dropped last week in light of Mr. LaHood’s decision. We’d like to think that cost and feasibility concerns ultimately derailed this


●The First Bite column in the July 17 Food section, about the new restaurant Teddy & the Bully Bar, incorrectly said that President Theodore Roosevelt won a Pulitzer Prize. He won the Nobel Peace Prize. ●●A chart in the July 16 Sports section on the results of the MLB All-Star Game Home Run Derby incorrectly listed Bryce Harper’s opponent in the final, Yoenis Cespedes, as playing for the Nationals. Cespedes plays for the Oakland Athletics. ●●●●A July 16 Sports article about Hereford High School not hosting this fall’s Maryland state cross-country meet incorrectly said that no male had broken 16 minutes on the Hereford course. Three boys have cracked the mark since 2008, including Sherwood’s Solomon Haile (15:43), who set the course record at the 2008 state meet. ●● The Washington Post is committed to correcting errors that appear in the newspaper. Those interested in contacting the paper for that purpose can: E-mail: Call: The Washington Post is committed to correcting errors that appear in the newspaper. Those interested in contacting the paper for that purpose can: E-mail: Call: The Washington Post is committed to correcting errors that appear in the newspaper. Those interested in contacting the paper for that purpose can: E-mail: Call:


Global attitudes reflect shifting U.S.-China power balance, survey concludes

a better image abroad. On the question of which country they view as a partner, more nations had a majority naming the United States rather than China. The survey on global attitudes was the largest that Pew has conducted since 2007. China was widely admired by respondents — especially in Africa and Latin America — for its scientific and technological advances, according to the survey, but Chinese ideas and popular culture were less well-received. The positive views of China in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa reflect heavy Chinese investment in those regions in recent decades. Meanwhile, several of China’s nearest neighbors, including the Philippines, South Korea and Japan, view their U.S. ties as far more important than their relationship with China — a feeling fostered by their increasingly hostile territorial disputes with China. Outright anti-China sentiment was mostly limited to respondents in Germany, Italy, Israel and Japan. Hostile attitudes were especially notable in Japan, where they have reached a new watermark after heated nationalist rhetoric in recent years in China and Japan. Only 5 percent of respondents in Japan expressed a positive view of China, and 93 percent had a negative view. Both U.S. and Chinese military capabilities worry other countries. The United States’ drone program, however, proved especially unpopular in the poll, with a majority of respondents in 31 of the 39 countries surveyed disapproving of U.S. airstrikes on extremists. According to the report, attacks by unmanned U.S. aircraft drew majority support in only three countries: Israel, Kenya and the United States. Meanwhile, President Obama remains popular in many parts of the world, especially Europe, Africa and some countries in Asia, but his overall ratings have slipped since 2009, along with confidence in him and approval of his policies, the survey found. He enjoys the least confidence among people in the Middle East, with about 30 percent or fewer in most countries in the region saying that “they trust Obama to do the right thing in global affairs.” With regard to personal freedoms and human rights, however, the United States did much better overall than China — although the survey was conducted from March to May, before recent disclosures about the scope of U.S. government surveillance, including the collection of far-reaching data on phone calls and e-mails. Notably, the only country surveyed where positive views of the U.S. government’s record on personal freedoms had declined was the United States.


D.C. community calendar, July 18 to July 25, 2013

Thursday, JULY 18 Space-age family activities, hands-on activities and special film screenings in conjunction with the display in the Public Vaults exhibit depicting the space program under presidents Nixon and Ford. 10 a.m.-2 p.m., National Archives, Boeing Learning Center, Constitution Avenue and Seventh Street NW. Free. 202-357-5000. Science spectacular with Eric Energy, Pacific rhythm family dance troupe, Blue Sky Puppet Theater, National Garden Tour, Behind the scenes cathedral tour, Gen. “Black Jack” Pershing and World War I, Designing for texture: beyond flowers, Storyteller Sharon Gaston, Albus Cavus: Urban Microworld, Classical music concert, The Looms of Southeast Asia, Cathedral gargoyle tour, “Apples Oranges,” U.S. Marine Band concert, 7:30 p.m., Yards Park, 355 Water St. SE. Free. 202-433-4011. “Shear Madness,” “Rabbit Hole,” “The Rocky Horror Show,” U.S. Army Band concert, “Thor,” Friday, JULY 19 AARP Driver Safety course, 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., Iona Senior Services, 4125 Albemarle St. NW. $14. Registration: 202-362-0704. American Flavors Tour, “Still Mine,” Summer stones cooking demonstration, U.S. Air Force Band concert, Living Earth Festival, Museum Jazz in the Garden, euphonium jazz and rock fusion by Euphonasia. 5-8:30 p.m., National Gallery of Art, Sculpture Garden, Seventh Street and Constitution Avenue NW. Free. 202-737-4215. Celtic rock music, “Watershed: Exploring a New Water Ethic for the New West,” a film that highlights Jeff Ehlert, a fly fishing guide in Rocky Mountain National Park, and six others living and working in the Colorado River basin, and how we balance the interests of cities, agriculture, recreation, wildlife and indigenous communities with rights to the water. 7 p.m., National Museum of the American Indian, Rasmuson Theater, Fourth Street and Independence Avenue SW. Free. 202-633-1000. “Advise and Consent,” “A Chinese Ghost Story,” Ching Siu-tung’s 1987 film based on a famous Pu Songling tale, a supernatural fantasy starring Leslie Cheung as a traveling tax collector who meets and falls in love with a beautiful woman who is a ghost, in Cantonese with English subtitles. 7 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. Sunday, Freer Gallery of Art, Meyer Auditorium, Jefferson Drive and 12th Street SW. Free. 202-633-1000. U.S. Marine Parade, U.S. Marine Silent Drill Team, Drum and Bugle Corps, Color Guard, Silent Drill Platoon and Ceremonial Marchers; visitors with reservations are admitted at 7:15 p.m.; attendees must arrive no later than 8 p.m. Parade, 8:45 p.m. Marine Barracks, Eighth and I streets SE. Free, reservations required. 202-433-4011, 202-433-6060 or www.barracks.marines.mil. Saturday, JULY 20 Bright Star Theatre - Greece Lightning!,


Tyson Gay is refreshingly honest; another PED scandal is tiresome

the current climate. The joy of the McGwire-Sosa home run battle? Those days are gone. There is no joy in Mudville — Mighty Casey has too much muscle mass, his head has gotten bigger over the years and his home run-to-strikeout ratio is out of this world. MLB is holding its breath about Davis even as it prepares to announce penalties from the Biogenesis scandal. Those will be closely examined and hotly contested, one assumes, because they don’t involve popped drug tests. Still, USADA got Armstrong with a case that was long on testimony and short on physical evidence; it proved it can be done. (And to be clear, I no longer have any doubt that Armstrong was a doper and is a liar.) Baseball is waiting for its shoe to drop, but track and field already is having a bad summer. Sprinters Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson tested positive for the stimulant oxilofrine at the Jamaican championships; three other Jamaicans tested positive for banned substances there as well. The World Anti-Doping Agency, to its credit, felt it was odd that Powell and Simpson — who had passed dozens of tests — had those positive results not long after hooking up with trainer Chris Xuereb. It tipped off the Italian police, who raided the hotel where Powell and Simpson were staying, reminiscent of the raid on the hotel of the Austrian cross-country skiing and biathlon teams during the Turin Games in 2006. That, too, was the result of a WADA tip. Paul Doyle, agent to Powell and Simpson, admitted he and his clients should have been more vigilant in what supplements they took. Doyle said he didn’t want to throw Xuereb under the bus, then did, saying he asked Xeureb for a list of supplements he was giving his athletes and instead got an invoice showing Powell was given 19 supplements. That’s 19 too many. But “I didn’t know what I was taking” is no longer a valid excuse, not in 2013. There is ample evidence that supplements, while not the root of all evil, are keeping USADA, WADA and a lot of other acronyms in business. Why athletes continue to take them is beyond me, but at least they could be honest about it when they inevitably get caught. Sadly, unlike supplements, the truth seems to be in short supply these days. For more by Tracee Hamilton, visit washingtonpost.com/hamilton.


‘More Than Honey’ movie review

Director Markus Imhoof’s documentary “More Than Honey” takes viewers in for frequent close-up shots of bees feeding and flying — while stoking fears of their demise. (Kino Lorber) The bee documentary “More Than Honey” is filled with gorgeous cinematography and fascinating details about bees’ complex behavior and anatomy. Did you know that bees can taste with gustatory hairs on their legs? Or that they “see” smells in three dimensions, with a stereophonic olfactory system? Living in communities of tens of thousands, they’re never told what to do, yet each bee — worker, drone or queen — knows exactly what job to perform. It’s an informative, if slightly unstructured, narrative, yet it plays more like a horror story. And it’s not because of the frequent close-up shots, often in slo-mo, that show the film’s hairy, bug-eyed subjects writhing in heaps one minute and swarming the camera the next. They actually start to look kind of beautiful after a while, even when they’re copulating in midair or sticking their long tongues out of alienlike mandibles to feed. What’s really frightening about “Honey” isn’t what a hive of angry bees might do to us, but what we’ve done to them. Director Markus Imhoof, who comes from a long line of Swiss beekeepers, looks at the mysterious phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), which is killing honeybees around the world, and concludes that it’s no mystery. If the scientific world is still undecided about whether bees are dying from the use of agricultural chemicals and antibiotics, destructive mites, careless interbreeding or stress — each of which has been posited as an explanation for CCD, and each of which Imhoof considers — the filmmaker is certain of one thing: It’s our fault. Why is this a problem? Can’t we just switch to sweetening our tea with Stevia? As the title suggests, we need bees for their pollination, not for honey. Bees play such a critical role as pollinators that entire crops — almonds, cherries, apricots and many other forms of produce — would disappear without them. In a dire prediction attributed (perhaps apocryphally) to Albert Einstein, the filmmaker notes that if bees vanished, man would have only four years left to live. Whether Einstein said that, and whether it’s true, it’s still a sobering thought. Imhoof makes it visible by showing us the drastic lengths to which we now must routinely go in order


Panda twins born in Atlanta zoo

Twin panda cubs were born this week at Zoo Atlanta to giant panda Lun Lun, the first twin pandas born in the United States since 1987. (Adam K. Thompson/Associated Press) The mother of the first giant panda twins born in the United States in more than 25 years is getting extra parenting help. Lun Lun, who gave birth Monday “They’re doing well. The trick with panda twins is that the female typically only cares for one and abandons the other,” said Dwight Lawson of Zoo Atlanta. “That’s normal; they’re just not able to raise twins on their own.” An ultrasound confirmed Lun Lun’s pregnancy in June, but officials say they were unaware she was having twins until the second cub emerged minutes after the first. The father is another giant panda at the zoo, Yang Yang. The cubs are the first giant panda twins born in the United States since 1987. Each came into the world hairless and taking on a pinkish color. Lawson said one weighed about 3.5 ounces and the other just a little more than five ounces. Lawson said both cubs appear healthy, but zookeepers are taking precautions because a large number of panda cubs die when they are infants. The cubs will be named when they are 100 days old, in keeping with Chinese tradition, Lawson said. Zoo officials said they’ll probably learn the cubs’ sex this week.


On Patterson Mansion’s wish list: A buyer

The 36,470-square-foot, four-story white-marble-and-brick mansion was designed by architect Stanford White is on the market for $26 million. (Photo by Sean Shanahan) Patterson Mansion’s wish list: A buyer The Washington Club, the oldest women’s social group incorporated in the District, has not received an acceptable offer for the Patterson Mansion since it put the property up for sale in March. So it has turned to TTR Sotheby’s International Realty to sell the 112-year-old, neoclassic Italianate-style building at 15 Dupont Circle. The 36,470-square-foot, four-story white-marble-and-brick mansion was designed by architect Stanford White for Robert Patterson, editor of the Chicago Tribune, and his wife, Nellie, daughter of Joseph Medill, the Tribune’s owner. The home passed to their daughter, Cissy Patterson, the first American woman to lead a major daily newspaper and one of Washington’s social doyennes. Cissy lent the home to President Calvin Coolidge and first lady Grace Coolidge in 1927, when the White House underwent renovations. During this time, the Coolidges hosted Charles Lindbergh following his memorable transatlantic flight. After her death in 1948, Patterson bequeathed the property to the American Red Cross, which sold it to the Washington Club in 1951. The mansion was designated a D.C. historic site in 1964 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. In addition to a banquet hall, a ballroom and an auditorium with a stage, the building features fireplaces with antique limestone, cast-iron banisters, a white marble fountain on the central landing, crystal chandeliers and tiger-oak flooring in the upper foyer. Jonathan Taylor, a TTR Sotheby’s International Realty managing partner, says the property is ideal for an embassy, foundation or association headquarters, or a social club. It is listed at $26 million. More information about the mansion can be found at www.ThePattersonMansion.com. Abe Pollin-inspired community unveiled One of the dreams of the late Abe Pollin was to provide affordable housing for moderate-income District residents who work for the city. Now the efforts of the builder, philanthropist and sports-and-entertainment impresario best known for developing the Verizon Center are coming to fruition. D.C. officials this week announced the opening of MetroTowns at Parkside, a development by Enterprise Homes of 83 townhouses and 43 rental homes at 3614 Grant Place NE near the Minnesota Avenue Metro stop. “Abe and Irene Pollin wanted to build a true workforce community for people who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to live in the city,” says


Garrett County, Md., beyond Deep Creek Lake

make 24 four-pound wheels. After 10 minutes of gravity settling, each wheel is flipped by hand, then again in three hours, and again the next morning before being stored for aging. In the meantime, a similar process started in another 140-gallon vat — this time to make Merry Goat Round brie. Stabilizing the milk, cutting and agitating the curd, flipping each of 240 10-ounce rounds and moving all into aging rooms is seamless choreography. Every step taken and each person involved becomes part of a batch’s written “birth certificate” ensuring product consistency. Even seasonality is a variable in making goat cheese. The deepest part of winter makes for the best goat milk, with the highest protein and fat content, said Dan. Another “I had no idea” moment came as we visited Husky Power, just 10 minutes south. If you only think Iditarod when you hear “dog-sledding,” Linda and Mike Herdering, owners of what they say is the nation’s southernmost dog-sled touring kennel, will expertly broaden your knowledge through year-round, information-packed two-hour presentations. Husky conditioning, weight training, commands and care are just some of the topics covered during these appointment-only sessions. “Many people learn about dog sledding through books and movies,” said Linda, which she called “a very incomplete picture.” We were surprised to learn that many mushers use wheeled carts (gigs) for training, touring and racing. “There are more dry-land mushers in the world than snow mushers,” Linda said. “These dogs are genetically predisposed to pull, and they don’t care what they pull.” The most important factor in dog sledding is keeping the lines taut by having an alert musher and excellent brakes on one end and a competent lead dog on the other. Slack lines can get tangled, creating a deadly situation, especially for canines. I was curious about what makes a first-rate lead dog. The selection begins in puppyhood. The dogs are observed while jogging along trails, said Linda. “You look for one that doesn’t wander off — one that keeps going and doesn’t look back.” Sled dogs usually join a team when they turn 2. The team’s shaded gravel yard is practical, not scenic. Wooden boxes serve as shelters, and each dog is tethered by a precisely measured chain to allow exercise room apart from the others. “They’re happier knowing that they have their own space and no other dog can get into it,” said Linda. My


Leggett wants Fillmore to cancel band’s performance over anti-gay lyrics

Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett has asked the Fillmore Silver Spring to cancel next month’s booking of the Mexican rap-metal band Molotov because of homophobic lyrics in one of its songs. “I have serious concerns about this booking,” Leggett wrote in a letter Thursday to Stephanie Steele, general manager at the Fillmore. “I am personally offended.” The title of the 1997 song is a Spanish slur against gay men. The county owns the Fillmore building on Colesville Road and leases it to Live Nation, the concert promoting giant, for $90,000 a year. The rental agreement gives Montgomery officials no say in the content of bookings, and Leggett acknowledged in his letter that controversies over extreme song lyrics are nothing new. “I understand that the First Amendment provides for freedom of speech, and that even distasteful speech may be protected speech,” he wrote, but he argued that the song in question “verges on hate speech or completely crosses that line.” Leggett asked Steele “to reconsider the Fillmore’s decision to book the band.” Steele did not return a phone message Friday. Jim Yeager, a spokesman for Live Nation, said Molotov has performed numerous times in the United States, including a 2011 appearance at the 9:30 Club without protest. He said the booking would not be canceled. “The Fillmore presents a wide variety of music, comedy and other entertainment for a demographic that makes up a diverse community,” Yeager said in a statement. “The views expressed by all of our acts are not necessarily shared by the venue or staff.” Questions about the group’s Aug. 26 appearance at the Fillmore, the last stop in a 23-city U.S. tour, first surfaced in the Washington Blade and Maryland Juice, a site focusing on state and local politics. Leggett was prompted to write to Steele after reading the accounts, said his spokesman, Patrick Lacefield. Equality Maryland, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights group, said that if the booking is not canceled it might stage an information picket at the venue. “A lot of people don’t realize that lyrics are not harmless and that they impact people,” said Carrie Evans, executive director of the organization. “I think it’s a good opportunity if the concert goes ahead to have this discussion.” The Fillmore has hosted other acts with questionable lyrics that drew no protest from Leggett. Guns N’ Roses has drawn allegations of racism and homophobia,


As Dodd-Frank turns 3, it remains a work in progress

Council designated GE Capital and American International Group as systemically important. The move ushered in a new era of oversight for firms that play in the financial markets but have largely escaped federal supervision. Life insurers, hedge funds and private-equity firms now can be regulated by the Federal Reserve. It is still unclear, however, exactly what the Fed will require of the firms. At the New York conference, Lew attributed the recent activity to a shift in the way stakeholders now view financial reform. Some of the “alarmist thinking” about Dodd-Frank has faded, he said, and a consensus has emerged that “a coherent framework of rules will provide needed certainty.” What has also emerged is sentiment that the 848-page law failed to end “too big to fail,” the perception that some big firms will always be bailed out by the government. Myriad bills from unlikely pairs, including Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and David Vitter (R-La.), have been introduced to force mega-banks to hold more money in reserves or to simply break up. There may be little chance of Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) reinstating Glass-Steagall — the Depression-era law that prevented commercial banks from using customer deposits to trade securities. But their effort seems to be placing pressure on regulators. “If we get to the end of this year and we cannot, with an honest, straight face, say that we have ended too big to fail, we are going to have to look at other options,” Lew said. Officials at the Treasury declined to discuss exactly what those “other options” would be. Industry groups insist that regulators must finish putting Dodd-Frank in place before piling on more regulation that could destabilize the fragile economic recovery. Some of the congressional proposals “can undermine the innovative capacity and competitiveness of our financial system,” said Rob Nichols of the Financial Services Forum, a trade group representing the largest banks. He said industry and regulatory initiatives have already gone a long way to improve the safety, stability and security of the nation’s financial system. There is one provision that many proponents of financial reform point to as a clear success: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Americans now have an independent consumer bureau to protect them from mortgage, credit-card and other lending abuses that ran rampant before and during the crisis. It did, however, take two years to confirm the agency’s director.


Gainesville family gets new neighbors — the Le Pews

When Stacey Credle noticed holes in the dirt near the front porch of her house in Gainesville, she thought a rabbit had made them. Then she thought it might have been a mole. For about a month in the spring, Credle and her husband, Cliff, bought dirt to fill the holes. The elusive animal made new ones. Although the family includes two small children and two small dogs, the critter was undeterred. Early one morning, her husband saw something dart into the ground. At first he thought it was a black cat. Then he realized it was a skunk. “After that, I smelled it every day,” Credle said. When she realized the animal she affectionately refers to as “Le Pew” (after the cartoon character Pepe Le Pew) had moved in, Credle called Prince William County Animal Control and several wildlife trappers. But the county doesn’t handle nuisance wildlife unless it’s inside a home, and hiring a private company is expensive. So she began to research do-it-yourself pest removal. They bought commercial critter repellant and fox urine, which costs about $20 a bottle and smells “atrocious,” Credle said. They also consulted Burt of Ark Trapping, who recommended putting a plastic bag just inside the hole to confirm that the animal was still in residence. “If the bag disappears, the animal is there. If it moves the bag more than three times, then it is established and unlikely to move on its own,” said Burt, who goes by his first name. They waited for the skunk to leave the hole, poured fox urine into it and placed a plastic bag inside. “Well, she didn’t go back to that hole. She made a new one,” Credle said. “So, we got more fox urine and tried to do it again. We did it three or four times. We spent way too much money on fox urine.” To no avail. They gave Burt another call. Ark Trapping covers all of Northern Virginia. Burt said he receives calls every day, mostly for skunks and copperheads but also for raccoons, opossum and coyotes. “Everything’s a little out of whack,” he said. Because of the recent mild winters, the copperhead and coyote populations have exploded. Some animals are mating more than once a year. When he arrived, Burt discovered that the Credles’ new neighbor was not alone. She had had babies — eight of them. He set up


Security technology makers now looking to speed the process

from a European aviation body, the company said. Both companies are hoping to sell their technology abroad. Kant said he sees potential work in India, Korea and Brazil, among others. Rapiscan just completed work at the Confederations Cup soccer tournament in Brazil and will be supplying security technology to the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, next year. Lance Roncalli, managing director and vice president of sales for the Americas at Smiths Detection, pointed to Africa, the Middle East and Latin America as potential growth markets. “These aren’t products that people are going to necessarily stop buying,” he said. In particular, he said, security breaches tend to drive growth. “When we have an event like the Boston Marathon, there’s always a big focus on, of course, not allowing that to happen,” Roncalli said. “I wouldn’t say [security technology is] a fast-growth market, but it’s a growing market,” said Timothy Quillin of the financial services firm Stephens. “I would’ve thought that there would be some kind of a lull or decline off of those relatively high levels of spending post-9/11, but I think security spending just continues to go up.” Still, it isn’t an easy business. Company executives say they’re under constant pressure to improve their offerings so they don’t miss new threats. Roncalli said this has meant Smiths Detection must ensure that its technology can be improved over time. “If you deliver it today and you can’t add to the library of substances it can detect, it becomes obsolete very quickly,” he said. Rapiscan found itself party to controversy after building body scanners used by TSA to screen travelers. After Congress and the public complained that the technology was too intrusive, the standards for the scanners were altered. After Rapiscan said it couldn’t retrofit its technology to meet the new requirements in time, the TSA and the company agreed to end the deal — canceling about $5 million in remaining work — and to send the company’s scanners to other federal agencies. Quillin said the debate over privacy hasn’t taken a significant toll on the outlook for security technology companies. The balance “between security and liberty [is] an ongoing discussion, but I don’t think the discussions that we’ve had about privacy and liberty have changed in aggregate spending on security,” he said. “I don’t think that we as a society . . . have decided that we want to reverse course.”


Japan’s ruling bloc cruises to victory in parliamentary election

Japanese Prime Minister and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Shinzo Abe celebrates his party's win after he placed a red paper rose on a LDP candidate's name to indicate an election victory at the party's headquarters in Tokyo on July 21, 2013. Voters gave Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a resounding victory in upper house elections exit polls showed. (Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images) TOKYO — Sunday’s vote, for seats in the upper house of parliament, gives Abe’s ruling bloc control of both chambers — and it provides Abe with a mandate unmatched by any Japanese leader in nearly a decade. How Abe uses that political power will help determine the long-term health of Japan’s economy and its relations with Asian neighbors. Analysts say Abe could pursue a largely economic agenda, one that includes difficult but needed reforms and austerity measures. But Abe, known as a strong nationalist, also could feel emboldened to speak more openly about his revisionist view of Asian history, one that rejects the idea of Japanese imperial invasion and infuriates China and South Korea. In this election, only half of the 242 seats in the upper house were up for grabs. According to final results announced early Monday, the LDP and coalition partner New Komeito together claimed 76 seats — giving them total of 135 in the chamber, a comfortable majority. The LDP won 65 of those seats, just shy of the 72 it would have needed to form a majority on its own. “We received so much support from the people of Japan,” Abe said in a victory speech at his party’s headquarters. “We now have to move politics forward.” Japan isn’t required by law to hold another parliamentary election for three years, and pundits say Abe could go as long as that without a challenge to his power, provided he maintains support from his own party. Such stability would mark a fundamental shift for a nation that has cycled through seven leaders since 2006, none lasting longer than 481 days in office. Abe was one of those short-term leaders, holding power for a scandal-filled year before resigning in September 2007 because of an intestinal ailment, his approval rating below 30 percent. Abe says he has learned from that stint, and in his second chance at the job — beginning seven months ago — he has spent less time on nationalist pet projects, devoting himself instead


Safeway executive completes 100th marathon

“People ask me all the time what my favorite marathon was — and there’s just nothing like the Boston Marathon,” he said. “It’s the mecca.” Neibergall, who began working as a trainee at Safeway in 1989, currently oversees 125 grocery stores in the region. Running, he said, has helped him become a better manager at work. “It’s my strategic planning time,” he said of his morning runs. “I do a lot of thinking then and plan out my day.” When Neibergall took up marathoning, he and his wife, Debra, had just finished a decade-long quest to visit every baseball ballpark in the country. “She was very supportive, but she was also like, are you sure?” Neibergall said of his goal to complete 100 marathons. Eventually Neibergall’s wife took up running as well, accompanying him on many trips and running half-marathons along the way. In Kenya, the couple spent six days on wildlife tours and game drives before the June 28 race. In China, Neibergall spent about a week in Beijing and ran a marathon at the Great Wall of China. Other trips required more extensive planning. The trip to Antarctica, for example, involved a days-long journey, first to Buenos Aires and then to Ushuaia, on the southern tip of Argentina. After that, he traveled two days on a boat before reaching Antarctica. “It was a challenge to get there, but the environment was pristine,” he said. “I mean, the fact that there were penguins on the course — it was just amazing.” Neibergall eats the same breakfast before every marathon — a bagel with peanut butter and a banana. After each race, he sits in a 10-minute ice bath, a practice he says is almost as painful as the marathon itself. “Those 10 minutes are awful, but it really helps with swelling in my legs,” he said. Now that his marathon days are behind him — at least for now — Neibergall said he plans to spend more time with his five children and six grandchildren, all of whom live on the West Coast. But first, he and Debra are taking one more trip: a Mediterranean cruise. It will be their first vacation in years that hasn’t been planned around a race. “I owe her this,” he said. “There are no marathons on the cruise — although I did calculate how many laps it would take around the ship.” China