hero. He served for a time (and served well) as president of Columbia University and wrote a wartime memoir, “Crusade in Europe,” that Smith deservedly praises for its lucid prose and “complete record of the war in Europe.” He really didn’t much like or understand academia, though, and was receptive when “I Like Ike” fever got underway. His progress to the 1952 Republican nomination was not exactly a victory march, but he got there, won the general election in a landslide and settled in at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Smith’s account of Eisenhower’s stewardship is astute, with only a couple of exceptions — Ike was no leader on civil rights and, contrary to legend, was not “personally responsible for the interstate highway system” — and, again, Smith’s judgment is deserved: “As president, Eisenhower restored stability to the nation. His levelheaded leadership ensured that the United States would move forward in measured steps under the rule of law at home and collective security abroad. His sensible admonition upon leaving office to be wary of the military-industrial complex was the heartfelt sentiment of a president who recognized the perils of world leadership. . . . As with FDR, politics came naturally to Eisenhower. Bismarck once observed that political judgment was the ability to hear the distant hoofbeats of the horse of history. Ike possessed that talent in abundance. As historian Garry Wills put it, Ike was a political genius. ‘It is no mere accident that he remained, year after year, the most respected man in America.’ ” Ike did have a private life, and it was more interesting than those of many presidents. Smith does not scant it. He paints a full portrait of the long marriage to Mamie Doud, with its frequent ups and downs, and as best he can he portrays the relationship between Ike and Kay Summersby, the attractive and much younger British woman who was, throughout the war, his driver and much more, though precisely what “much more” means is in dispute. “Whether he and Kay were intimate remains a matter of conjecture,” Smith writes. “But there is no question they were in love.” It was with Mamie, though, that Ike lived out his last years at the farmhouse in Gettysburg, Pa. They seem to have been happy years, which both of them manifestly deserved. EISENHOWER IN WAR AND PEACE By Jean Edward Smith Random House. 950 pp. $40


Returning military members allege job discrimination — by federal government

Chris Matthia with his wife, Lindsay and 11-month-old son Christopher, pose for a photograph Jan. 18 in Mt. Airy, Md. Matthai was fired from his job with the Social Security Administration when he notified them that he was being deployed to Afghanistan. His son was born while he was deployed. (Katherine Frey/THE WASHINGTON POST) Every year, more than a thousand National Guard, reserve and active-duty troops coming back from Iraq, Afghanistan or other military duties complain of being denied jobs or otherwise being penalized by employers because of their military obligations. The biggest offender: the federal government. It is against federal law for employers to penalize service members because of their military service. And yet, in some cases, the U.S. government has withdrawn job offers to service members unable to get released from active duty fast enough; in others, service members have been fired after absences. In fiscal 2011, more than 18 percent of the 1,548 complaints of violations of that law involved federal agencies, according to figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. “On the one hand, the government asked me to serve in Iraq,” said retired Army Brig. Gen. Michael Silva, a reservist who commanded a brigade in Iraq and was fired from his job as a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol contractor on his return. “On the other hand, another branch of government was not willing to protect my rights after serving.” The federal government is the largest employer of citizen-soldiers. About 123,000 of the 855,000 men and women currently serving as Guard members and reservists, or about 14 percent, have civilian jobs with the federal government. Over a fourth of federal employees are veterans. The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), enacted in 1994 to ensure that members of the military do not face a disadvantage in their civilian careers because of their service, calls on the federal government be “a model employer” for service members. But critics contend that the federal government has been far from perfect, and they fear that with troops back home from Iraq and more on the way from Afghanistan, violations of the law could increase. Obama “priority” The problems persist even though the Obama administration has made a priority of cutting the rate of veterans’ unemployment, which is significantly higher among post-9/11 veterans than in the population as a whole. Advocates for veterans say the system set


agreed to represent only three, but helped settle nine other cases. The department declined to represent 18 service members, despite Labor’s conclusion that their cases had merit. Another dozen cases were still being considered by Justice at the end of the fiscal year. The Justice Department’s decisions “are always based on a careful consideration of the case from a litigation and merits standpoint,” said spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa. Service members who have been refused reemployment or denied new jobs say the consequences often extend to their personal lives. First Lt. Christopher Matthai, 31, enlisted in the Army at 18 after graduating from high school in Baltimore, and in 2006 he joined the Army Reserve. In May 2009, shortly before he married, Matthai was hired for a two-year internship by the Social Security Administration as an information technology specialist. Soon after he started, however, the Army Reserve selected Matthai for a commission. After missing much of his first year at work for officer training, Matthai informed his civilian supervisors in April 2010 that he would be sent to Afghanistan in the fall for a year. A few days later, he was fired for “poor performance” and for being absent without leave. “I was shocked,” Matthai recalled. “I told them, ‘At least let me resign so I can walk out of here with a clear name.’ ” Instead, he was escorted out by a guard. Matthai filed a complaint with the Labor Department. An investigation stretched on for months, and Matthai deployed to Afghanistan with the situation unresolved and his wife, Lindsay, pregnant with their first child. Stress from the case “was destroying my marriage,” he said. “I’m sitting overseas, banging my head against the wall.” The Labor Department’s investigation, completed in March 2011, found that Matthai had been “wrongfully terminated” because of his military obligations and falsely accused of being absent without leave. There was no evidence of poor performance. No enforcement power Matthai was entitled to get his job back with lost wages and benefits and have his record cleared of any wrongdoing, according to the Labor Department. Matthai, then midway through his tour in Afghanistan, only wanted the SSA to clear his record and pay his attorney fees. But the Labor Department’s findings carry no enforcement power. The SSA offered to pay only a small portion of his attorney fees and insisted that Matthai not seek reemployment with the SSA


In D.C., a push for better restaurants east of the Anacostia River

out to colleagues. “This is something we’ve never had.” For decades, the main arteries east of the Anacostia River have been dominated by carry-out joints and fast-food chains, their menus catering to an African American population that is the city’s most impoverished. In wards 7 and 8, with 140,000 residents, District officials and community leaders say they’re aware of just six restaurants that provide waiter service, including a Denny’s and an IHOP. The dearth of choices fuels the sense among residents that theirs is a forgotten part of Washington. District officials say they hope to bridge the culinary gap. In recent weeks, they have invited restaurateurs and real estate brokers on two bus tours through the wards, talking up the professionals moving into new condominiums and showing off projects recently completed or planned, including the Department of Homeland Security’s pending move to the St. Elizabeths Hospital campus. “People are a lot more open to hearing the story about east of the river,” said Keith Sellars, president of the Washington D.C. Economic Partnership, a nonprofit group that promotes development and helped lead the tours. On the cusp of change Domenico Cornacchia, owner of the Bethesda-based Assaggi Mozzarella Bar, took the tour, his interest inspired by a vision of opening a restaurant in Anacostia that serves pastas and salads and where he could train local residents in the dining business. Cornacchia said he needs to raise $1 million and has his eye on a vacant property at MLK Avenue and Good Hope Road, across from a recently built office building. “You have to come with the right concept, the right prices,” said Cornacchia, who also owns a restaurant in McLean, one of the region’s wealthiest suburbs. “We’ve seen all the changes in D.C. over the past 10 years. I don’t see why it won’t happen here.” But Joe Englert, who has made a career of opening bars in gentrifying neighborhoods, including the H Street corridor, is skeptical it will happen anytime soon. Opening east of the river, he said, is daunting because the population lacks “the expendable cash” to guarantee success. “You’d have to have a lot of money and a lot of patience,” Englert said. Comparing the area to H Street NE, which was desolate when he arrived, he said, “H Street abuts Capitol Hill, and many people have lots of money.” Paul Cohn, who owns Georgia Brown’s, said he dropped


New writings about science, technology

Astronomy Keeping interest alive in outer space “Space Chronicles,” Norton Books In this new essay collection, astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson lays out a series of arguments for NASA’s continued relevance. The space program drives technology, he says. It cultivates a sense of national pride. And it might give talented foreign scientists and researchers a reason to come to the United States and stay put rather than head back to China or India, both increasingly interested in space exploration. Possessing both a keen scientific curiosity as well as an appreciation of pop culture, deGrasse shows he can titillate the public’s imagination when it comes to the stars. In other words, he spends a lot of time writing about aliens. Do they exist? Will they come in peace? In his essay “Extraterrestrial Life,” he offers an unexpected nomination for the dumbest fictional extra-solar being: V’ger, from 1979’s “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” which was really the U.S.-built space probe Voyager, spruced up with alien technology. “What irks me is that V’ger acquired total knowledge of the cosmos, yet remained clueless that its real name was Voyager,” he explains. Technology Artful dodgers in the digital era “The Chilling Story of Genius in a Land of Chronic Unemployment,” Tech Crunch Computer technology is prevalent enough that brilliant coders can come from anywhere, even a third-world slum. But denied other recourse, they may wind up expending their genius as digital pick-pockets. In a recent article posted on Tech Crunch, writer Sarah Lacy traces an inbox-clogging e-mail scam letter back to its source in an Internet café in Lagos, Nigeria, where teenage boys spend hours upon hours diligently working to part people from the cash in their PayPal accounts. She compares them to the bright young coders that crowd Silicon Valley — smart, innovative and adept with a computer. Only, they’re driven to crime by lack of opportunity. Lacy interviews several alleged scammers, one who claims to have spent the better part of his youth hacking bank systems, and others who ply more traditional scams, such as posing as virtual girlfriends for lonely Western men. “We use our brains to get what we want. For us it’s the only way to live and survive,” one of them tells Lacy. “As long as technology keeps advancing, there is no way to stop us.” — Aaron Leitko


A massacre at Mexican prison, then an escape

Relatives of inmates at Apodaca prison pull the security fence following a riot inside the prison, on Sunday near Monterrey where 44 inmates were killed. (Julio Cesar Aguilar/AFP/Getty Images) MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials said Monday that it appears all of the 44 inmates stabbed and beaten to death at a state prison in northern Mexico on Sunday were members of the same crime syndicate, known as the Gulf Cartel. They were murdered by their arch enemies, members of Los Zetas, a sensationally violent group that appears to have staged the massacre, in part, as a diversion. About 30 members of the Zeta cartel escaped from the overcrowded Apodaca prison near Monterrey in the hours after the killings. Officials called the escapees “especially dangerous.” What was initially characterized as a melee among rival gangs appears to have been a well-planned and -executed attack, followed by a successful getaway, accomplished with the help of the jailers. The governor of Nuevo Leon, Rodrigo Medina, told reporters Monday that the prison's director, three top officials and 18 guards are under investigation and may have aided in the escape. The governor called the prison officials “a group of traitors” and said that it appeared they were corrupted by the powerful Zeta syndicate. “The most important thing is to make sure that the people working on the inside are on the side of the law, and that they not be corrupted and collaborate with the criminals,” Medina said. The governor also used his press conference to complain that his state prisons are overcrowded with inmates facing federal charges for drug and weapons trafficking, kidnapping and extortion. He said that in Nuevo Leon state, 60 percent of all inmates are incarcerated for federal crimes. Mexico is engaged in a prison building boom, and new guards are being trained by the U.S. government. But the handful of new maximum security federal prisons cannot keep up with the flow of criminals. The Mexican government has been overwhelmed by huge numbers of arrests in its five-year, military-led, U.S.-backed war against organized crime. Prisons are now jammed with inmates, including many who await convictions in poorly run, antiquated, dangerous state prisons, where many criminals continue to run their operations via courier and cellphone. According to the Associated Press, all 2,500 inmates in Apodaca prison were incarcerated for federal crimes, and as many as 70 percent had yet to be convicted.


Nuclear power entrepreneurs push thorium as a fuel

nuclear plants. Sorensen says he has talked with Pentagon officials about using thorium for such reactors in hostile areas. Since thorium is less adaptable for weapons purposes, the reactor would be safe enough to leave behind for civilian use when U.S. troops pull out. “Thorium potentially would offer some way to mitigate that challenge of security and safety if we do convince ourselves to put nuclear plants in these locations,” said Col. Paul E. Roege, chief of the Army’s operational energy cell at the Pentagon. Roege said the Pentagon is considering the pros and cons of thorium. One drawback, he said, is that engineers aren’t familiar with it. “We have lots of uranium reactors, people are comfortable with them, and we have a mature technology,” Roege said. “That’s not the case with thorium reactors.” Ingersoll, the Oak Ridge scientist who is skeptical of thorium as a new fuel, agreed that it cannot practically be used to make a nuclear weapon. He cautioned, however, that it is still a radioactive material: “It doesn’t eliminate the [nuclear waste] product. It’s just not as bad.” Ingersoll said that thorium-powered reactors make more sense for countries that don’t have access to the plentiful reserves of uranium that exist in the United States. Chinese government officials announced in February 2011 that they are developing a thorium-based reactor and will have it operating within the next 15 or 20 years. India has plans to use thorium in some of its existing reactors. Kutsch argues that the United States could be losing out on developing an important technology. He has been lobbying members of Congress to introduce legislation that would reclassify thorium as a special industrial material, rather than a nuclear material. “Our legislation would say thorium is not like uranium and plutonium,” he said. “It can be safely and handled and stored, like ammonia or fertilizer.” Kutsch is also pushing for another bill that would direct the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to develop rules for the use of thorium. That would give U.S. companies an opening to start using thorium in existing reactors. Rep. John Shimkus, the Illinois Republican who chairs a subcommittee that oversees nuclear waste disposal, says he will be introducing thorium legislation this year. “For those who hate the [problem of] high-level nuclear waste,” Shimkus said in a phone interview, “thorium is a great response.” Niiler is a freelance writer based in Chevy Chase.


The man who retrieves the Taliban’s dead

he wants to keep the old anguish from resurfacing. But the families often grab him before he drives off, he said, to thank him through tears. “When we saw my brother’s body, the bullet holes in his chest, it was terrible. But we saw his face. It was the same as always. We got to say goodbye,” said Ahmad, whose brother joined the Taliban several years ago and was killed in a firefight with Afghan police. It was Hakim who returned the body. Sorting carnage of war Hakim receives the second round of phone calls — this time, from the ICRC — days or weeks after fits of violence. The organization draws on its vast network of Afghan elders to identify unclaimed bodies in the Mirwais morgue: men killed in such remote locations or uncertain conditions that Taliban commanders and family members don’t come looking for them. Not all of the bodies are those of insurgents — about two-thirds are those of civilians and government security officials, mostly police officers. Hakim transports all of them: 107 government employees in the past three years and 28 civilians, in addition to the 127 insurgents. He gets a signed letter from local officials giving him permission to pick up each body; he stores copies in a black suitcase at home, so he can keep a precise count of the bodies he has transported. Last year, he picked up the remains of 14 suicide bombers on a single day, trucking them to families across Kandahar province. Once he carried five Afghan intelligence agents from a district largely controlled by the Taliban to their agency’s headquarters. He has hauled the bodies of children and the elderly, he said, sometimes on the same day. Across the country, men like Hakim assist civilians and Taliban commanders, even slipping into Pakistan to return the bodies of insurgents. Their efforts have had a pronounced effect in recent times: The number of unclaimed bodies in Afghanistan decreased by 50 percent last year, according to the ICRC. But none of those crisscrossing the front lines have devoted as much time as Hakim to sorting the carnage of war. “There’s no one who sees as much of the dead,” said Sardar Mohammed Niazmand, director of the Red Crescent in Kandahar. Because members of the Taliban and Afghan security forces are often sent to fight in provinces far from their homes, the family


Renato Dulbecco, who won a Nobel for virus research, dies at 97

Baltimore, then of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and cancer researcher Howard M. Temin of the University of Wisconsin for what the Nobel committee termed “their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of the cell.” Temin, who died in 1994, had studied under Dr. Dulbecco at Caltech. He and Baltimore conducted breakthrough research on how some viruses carry their genetic information in ribonucleic acid, or RNA. Dr. Dulbecco’s work had a profound impact on cancer and genetic research, fields in which he continued working for years to come. From 1972 to 1977, he worked at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund laboratories in London. Dr. Dulbecco was president of the Salk Institute from 1988 to 1992, after which he helped organize a short-lived genome project in Italy. Renato Dulbecco was born Feb. 22, 1914, in Catanzaro, a town in southern Italy. His father, a civil engineer, resettled the family in the northwestern community of Imperia. At 16, he entered the University of Turin and befriended two other precocious students and future Nobel laureates: Salvador Luria, a microbiologist, and Rita Levi-Montalcini, a neurologist who is now 102. Dr. Dulbecco received his doctorate of medicine in 1936 and joined the Italian army. He was seriously wounded in the Soviet Union in 1942 and came home. He subsequently became a physician for local partisan fighters during the German occupation after Italy left the Axis camp. In 1947, Dr. Dulbecco joined Luria at Indiana University and shared lab space with Watson, who went on to win a Nobel for co-discovering the structure of DNA. Dr. Dulbecco was recruited to Caltech in 1949 and developed a research specialty in animal virology after a wealthy donor gave the school funding in that area. He became a U.S. citizen in 1953. In addition to the Nobel, Dr. Dulbecco received the prestigious Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 1964 for his work on cancer cells. Dr. Dulbecco was a classically trained pianist. When he retired from the Salk Institute at 92, he said he would spend his days performing opera. Dr. Dulbecco’s first marriage, to Giuseppina Salvo, ended in divorce. In 1963, he married Maureen Muir. Besides his wife, of La Jolla, survivors include a daughter from his first marriage, Maria; a daughter from his second marriage, Fiona; a brother; and four grandchildren. A son from his first marriage, Peter, died in 1984.


Asian American soldier’s suicide called a ‘wake-up call’ for the military

else didn’t speak up?” asked Kim, who now lives in Queens. The Asian American presence is small in the military, as it is in the U.S. population. The most recent data showed 43,579 Asian Americans were on active duty in 2010, making up 3.7 percent of enlisted men and women. Most were in the Army or Navy. In the officer corps, a little more than 8,400 were Asian American in 2010, or 3.9 percent. They’re people like Anu Bhagwati, 36. The Indian American woman spent five years in the Marines, and said that she left in 2004 largely because of the discrimination and harassment she faced, even as an officer. In her case, gender was the big issue, but she said she saw racial discrimination against others, including the few other Asian Americans she saw in the service. “The great American myth about the U.S. military is that racism doesn’t exist,” she said. “It’s alive and well.” In Chen’s case, while his parents are immigrants, he was born and raised in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He enlisted in the military after high school. Chen told his family and friends, and wrote in his journal, that he was teased about his name and repeatedly asked if he was Chinese. He said the bullying and abuse worsened in Afghanistan and racial slurs were used. At one point, when the soldiers were putting up a tent, Chen was forced to wear a construction hat and give instructions in Chinese, even though none of the other soldiers spoke the language, investigators told his parents. On Oct. 3, Chen was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a guardhouse, the Army said. Eight soldiers in Chen’s unit were charged in his death. In January, the military said that one should be court-martialed on charges including assault, negligent homicide and reckless endangerment — but not for involuntary manslaughter. On Wednesday, the Army said two other soldiers should face courts-martial. One is charged with dereliction of duty; the other is charged with violations including assault and maltreatment. Asian Americans played a role in the major American conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries, and there’s some anecdotal evidence that Chinese Americans fought on both sides in the Civil War, said K. Scott Wong, a professor of history and public affairs at Williams College. In World War II, Japanese Americans instantly fell under suspicion and their loyalties


Smoked beer in the barbecue sauce? Yes, please.

Beer-Braised Beef Shanks get an infusion of smoke flavor from the beer. (Deb Lindsey/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) A flight of glasses is lined up in front of me, for what might be called a liquid smoke tasting. No, it’s not a sampling of that bottled stuff you find on the barbecue sauce aisle. Greg Engert is walking me through a field of smoked beers at ChurchKey. He is beer director for the Neighborhood Restaurant Group, which includes this Logan Circle hot spot. The beverage was new to me, but with grillers chased indoors even in this mild winter, it seems as if smoked beer could be another way to keep smoke flowing in our veins till we go from 40 degrees to 68. At ChurchKey and its downstairs sister restaurant, Birch & Barley, Engert carries several bottled versions and at least one on tap. In November, Birch & Barley hosted a four-course tasting menu beer dinner with the owner of Bamberg, Germany’s, Tavern Schlenkerla, the world’s most famous producer of rauchbier, or smoked beer. Schlenkerla’s method is a long-standing tradition. For regular beer, barley is dried through an industrialized process. At Schlenkerla, run by the Trum family for six generations, the germinated barley is spread over wire netting and dried over smoldering beechwood logs. The process gives the beer its characteristic aroma. American craft brewers have discovered smoked beer. The Ithaca Beer Co. in upstate New York produces a smoked porter. Rogue turns out what it calls a Smoke Ale and a spicy-smoky Chipotle Ale. “People are really experimenting with smoke in their beers,” Engert says. “It’s something that’s almost kind of comically mundane to the history of beer brewing because open flame was the way you created heat, and we know that beer was being produced at least 6,000 years ago. Smoke would have been in the beer for fermenting the grains to get the sugars.” Before going further, let me say that I have only a vague idea what Engert is talking about. I’m the barbecue guy, not the beer guy. My interest isn’t in the brew so much as it is in the smoke. After my tasting, I was certain of just one thing: I wasn’t going to be drinking a smoked beer with smoked food. I like my smoked foods complemented, not suffocated. Wondering if I could cook with it for some semblance of barbecue until


Craft brewer with a cult following

(Courtesy of The Farmers' Cabinet) “I’m a bug collector,” Terry Hawbaker says, referring to the wild yeasts and bacteria swarming in the two oak barrels in his Alexandria storefront. At 39, with a divot in his forehead from a recent bike accident and a love of punk-inflected rock-and-roll, he has been maturing his sour beer since September, tasting it as it slowly grows tarter, funkier and more complex. It’s the brewing equivalent of a baker’s sourdough starter. Colonizing barrels of unfermented beer, the bugs will work their slow alchemy over months and years, enabling Hawbaker’s Cabinet Artisanal Brewhouse to make creative “wild ales” that connoisseurs will sniff and savor. His own rise to fame, however, is likely to be quicker: Cabinet Artisanal Brewhouse, he says, just signed a major distribution deal. It could transform the startup into a shrine for beer geeks practically overnight. The brewery, which also will specialize in Hawbaker’s avant-garde riffs on saisons and other European farmhouse styles, wasn’t created with such grand ambitions. Last summer, when it took over the former strip-mall home of Shenandoah Brewing, near the Van Dorn Street Metro station, it was intended to be primarily a place where the partners behind the Philadelphia restaurant the Farmers’ Cabinet would brew house beers to accompany dishes such as roasted marrow bones and duck confit sandwiches. But three weeks ago, according to Hawbaker, the brewery agreed to a distribution contract that will place its beer in 35 states and Europe in the coming months. Production will be tiny by industry standards: only about 50 barrels per month at first, or roughly 1,500 gallons. Still, for a brewery that hardly exists — Hawbaker has brewed only a handful of test batches, on equipment left behind by Shenandoah — such a deal is unusual. This rapid expansion is largely a bet on Hawbaker’s talent. He previously spent seven years at central Pennsylvania’s Bullfrog Brewery, where his beers — especially sour ales like his Beekeeper, aged for 21 / 2 years in cabernet sauvignon barrels — acquired a cult following and were honored with medals at the prestigious Great American Beer Festival. Now, with the Farmers’ Cabinet team backing him and providing a guaranteed market for much of his output, Hawbaker has even more freedom to brew what he loves. Hawbaker calls Cabinet Artisanal Brewhouse an “urban farmhouse brewery,” a label that captures both the rustic realities of


Consumer watchdog launches overdraft inquiry

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is expected to launch an inquiry Wednesday into banks’ overdraft practices, which have been in regulatory crosshairs in recent years. The bureau said it will look into whether banks are reordering customers’ debit-card charges to maximize overdraft fees. Reordering transactions can double or triple penalties, and the practice has been the target of several class-action lawsuits against the nation’s biggest banks. The CFPB’s inquiry also will focus on bank overdraft policies, how they market the plans, and their impact on low-income and young consumers. The agency will solicit feedback from the public. “Overdraft practices have the capacity to inflict serious economic harm on the people who can least afford it,” CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in a statement. “We want to learn how consumers are affected, and how well they are able to anticipate and avoid paying penalty fees.” Overdraft fees have long irked consumers, who have complained that withdrawals of as little as $3 from their bank accounts have resulted in penalties as high as $37. As the recession squeezed Americans’ budgets and anger at the financial industry reached fever pitch, regulators and lawmakers began moving to curtail banks’ fees. In 2010, the Federal Reserve began prohibiting banks from imposing overdraft charges unless a customer had signed up for the service. The rule only applies to debit-card transactions, not to checks or recurring withdrawals such as automatic bill pay. Meanwhile, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. issued guidelines calling for the smaller banks it oversees to set limits on the number of times customers can be charged overdraft fees in one day and offer alternatives to those who overdraw their accounts more than six times in a year. Its guidelines encompass checks and recurring payments. As a result of the new regulations and consumer uproar, several banks, including Bank of America, ended their overdraft programs all together. A poll by Consumer Reports shortly after the Fed’s ban went into effect found that only 22 percent of customers had opted into the service. Of those customers, more than half had experienced an overdraft in the past six months, the poll found. One thing regulators left unaddressed, however, was the order that banks processed charges. That issue has been winding its way through the nation’s court system instead. In 2010, a California judge ordered Wells Fargo to return $203 million in overdraft fees to customers whose transactions


George Huguely trial highlights alcohol abuse among college students

some educators are now cautioning against sending teens away to school, where they can't be easily watched over. "For the first time in my career," said Gimbel, "I'm advising parents not to send their kids off to college, because it's nothing but a big party." Disturbing statistics While some campus education and prevention initiatives, like those offered by U.Va.'s Gordie Center, have helped reduce alcohol abuse and the associated consequences among college students over the past decade or so, the national numbers are still disturbing. An NIAAA report released in 2009 shows that alcohol-related deaths of people ages 18 to 24 were up 14 percent to 1,825 in 2005, compared with roughly 1,605 in 1998. And the number of students reporting a DWI arrest skyrocketed 46 percent during the same time period, to 3.36 million from 2.3 million. Who's doing the drinking varies, but there are representatives from all groups, educators said: jocks, Greeks, nerds and socialites alike. Athletes, along with fraternity and sorority members, tend to be considered the stereotypical abusers, however, with each falling prey to peer pressure. "The thing about athletes is the team is so important," said Bruce, and that puts a lot of stress on students to fit in. Studies, including a 2001 examination by the Harvard School of Public Health, have shown that athletes tend to drink more than their non-athlete peers and to experience more negative effects. And among athletes, lacrosse players are among the biggest partiers, according to a National Collegiate Athletic Association report published this year looking at substance use among college athletes. The report was based on responses to the association's 2009 survey of 20,474 student athletes in 23 championship sports. The survey found that male and female lacrosse players are more likely than any other kind of athlete to take amphetamines like Adderall, which many at U.Va., including Love, were prescribed for attention deficit disorder. And roughly 95 percent of the country's male lacrosse players drank, the study claimed. Among women players, 85 percent consumed alcohol. Both Love and Huguely were lifelong lacrosse players, and they traveled among a tight-knit crew of other athletes, many of whom grew up together in the same Mid-Atlantic prep school circles. Several witnesses during Huguely's trial said they had known Love for years. Chris Clements, one of Huguely's team members, met Love when they were pre-teens. Both attended private schools in the Baltimore


drowned on her own bloody nose. When Love's roommate found her, she reported a possible alcohol overdose to 911 operators, not knowing what else to immediately make of Love's unconscious, though bruised, state. Love's death stunned the U.Va. community and campuses across the country, which were suddenly faced with the reality that even prestigious universities and privileged students aren't immune to alcohol abuse and violence. The University of Virginia quickly launched a bystander action program that trained students and staff to intervene if they're concerned about someone. Roughly 10 percent of the school's 14,000 undergraduates volunteered for the program that first year, said Bruce, of the Gordie Center. Her institution is now named after Lynn Gordon Bailey Jr., an 18-year-old who died during a 2004 hazing incident at the University of Colorado in Boulder, after merging with the Gordie Foundation recently. But it began in 1987 as the Institute for Substance Abuse Studies. At one point, the university was outpacing the national average numbers when it came to drinking, Bruce said, but that's changed in the past 10 years, with fewer drinking-and-driving incidents and negative consequences being reported. "Most students are drinking in a moderate way," Bruce said. And even those who drink to excess are generally taken care of, U.Va. students say. "They're going out with friends who take care of them," said Chris Leslie, a 20-year-old from Vienna, Va., who was having a pizza dinner with friends last week. "There are obviously aberrations, which is why there's this story (about Love and Huguely)," he added. Getting parents involved Emily Sears, who coordinates Towson University's substance abuse counseling center, said many young people don't know how to drink responsibly. "There's a complete lack of understanding and knowledge about how to measure a drink ... how to measure a shot out instead of just pouring alcohol out of a bottle into a red Solo cup," she said. Towson students call their plastic cup concoctions "jungle juice," Sears said. And when she was in college at Loyola in the early 1990s, her peers called it "the trash can." Towson students are required to take an online alcohol education course as freshmen, like many other students at campuses around the country, including U.Va. But Gimbel thinks there should be more done, "especially with freshmen and getting parents involved." There should be "more education, mandatory education," he said, "not just something on a


D.C. news in brief

increase in foreign language outreach efforts, a 7 percent increase in written translation services and a 19 percent increase in agency staff training on language access were also reported. According to the 2010 Census, more than 13.5 percent of D.C. residents are foreign born and 14.5 percent of residents 5 and older speak a language other than English. To read the report, go to www.ohr.dc.gov. Job fair for veterans, spouses is Thursday A job fair for veterans and military spouses is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday at the Washington Hilton, 1919 Connecticut Ave. NW. Confirmed employers with tables will include Microsoft, Home Depot, the U.S. Department of Energy, Allstate and Kaiser Permanente. The event is sponsored by RecruitMilitary, a military-to-civilian recruiting firm, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Admission is free to veterans. For information, go to www2.recruitmilitary.com. Parks and recreation offices to move The D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation is moving from 3149 16th St. NW to two locations next month. The central office, 1250 U St. NW, will include the director’s office and offices for permits, customer service, communications and human resources. The agency’s program offices, including camps and aquatics, will relocate to the Columbia Heights Community Center, 1480 Girard St. NW. For information, go to www.dpr.dc.gov. Free women’s health symposium is March 10 Woman to Woman: Mind, Body and Spirit, a free health symposium, is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. March 10 at the George Washington University Marvin Center, 800 21st St. NW. The program includes health seminars with doctors on new treatments and technology, fitness tips, cooking demonstrations, workshops and free health screenings. To register, e-mail gwuhwb@gmail.com or call 301-893-4443. Cherry Blossom Regatta planned for April 21 DC Sail is holding its annual Cherry Blossom Regatta, a race of Flying Junior sailing dinghies on the Potomac, on April 21. The proceeds benefit DC Sail’s sailing education programs and youth scholarship fund. DC Sail is a community sailing program of the nonprofit National Maritime Heritage Foundation. Registration for a two-person sailing team is $50. Only eight racing boats are available. For information, call 202-547-1250. Shaw library to close next week for sewer work The Watha T. Daniel-Shaw Neighborhood Library will be closed from Sunday to Wednesday for sewer work. Patrons can pick up holds at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, 901 G St. NW. — Compiled by Terence McArdle


Formerly secret telexes offer window into Iran’s nuclear deceit

telexes confirm what IAEA officials believe was a lavish, global shopping spree that continued throughout the 1990s and beyond. Besides the fluorine gas, Iranian officials ordered mass spectrometers, crucial for analyzing the enrichment level of uranium hexafluoride gas, as well as highly specialized types of motors, pumps, valves and transducers used in manufacturing gas centrifuges. “The fact that so many items are of the type used in centrifuges, and organized under one specific heading, stands out in the data,” ISIS said in a report analyzing the documents. Privately, Iranian leaders have responded to evidence of duplicity and deceit by blaming the West, saying the United States and its allies unfairly sought to block Iran from its rightful pursuit of nuclear technology, said George Perkovich, a nuclear expert who has met with senior Iranian officials responsible for the country’s nuclear policy. “The only way they could get what they need is to keep things secret and use duplicity,” said Perkovich, director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Iranian view, he said, is “if we didn’t use these tricks, we wouldn’t get the technology we needed, and to which we have a right.” Many of the telexes were ostensibly orders from Sharif University of Technology, a prestigious school in the Iranian capital. Yet, the fax number and post office box on the return address belonged to the PHRC, ISIS said in its analysis. An Iranian scientist who headed the military research center, Abbas Shahmoradi-Zavareh, also kept an office at Sharif University. The president of Sharif University at the time was Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s current foreign minister and the one-time head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. One series of telexes that apparently raised eyebrows at spy agencies involved an attempt by Iran to obtain tens of thousands of highly specialized magnets used in gas centrifuges. Fearing perhaps that some of its efforts would be thwarted, Iranian officials sent requests to multiple companies at once, asking for as many as 30,000 magnets made from unusual alloys and cut to precise dimensions. “Snd us a few samples for testing,” one order, written in the typical abbreviated English used by telex operators, began. “We are looking forward to yr early rply.” It is clear from the telex exchanges that many of the orders were filled, though in some cases the Iranians were turned down when European


Montgomery County Animal Watch

These were among the cases received by the Montgomery County Animal Services Division. For information on shelter hours and location, adoption and licensing procedures, rabies clinics and low-cost neutering, call 240-773-5960. Dog digs out and kills, returns home: Rascally raccoon flees through flue: Goat roams from home: Pets available for adoption Rockville Germantown Milestone PetSmart 20924 Frederick Rd. Noon to 3 p.m. Sunday Shelter has adoptable felines Gaithersburg Animal Welfare League of Montgomery County no-kill shelter12 Park Ave.Noon to 3 p.m. Saturday6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday Kentlands PetSmart218 Kentlands Blvd. Noon to 3 p.m. Saturday Germantown Lucky Dog Animal Rescue Germantown Spaniel group’s adoption show — Compiled by Lisa M. Bolton


Study raises concerns about pot smoking, teen drivers

about another factor: Kids may be stoned on marijuana. New data compiled by Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) and the insurance industry indicates that pot smoking is up among teens, and use is higher among high school kids than it has been in three decades. Nineteen percent of teens said they’d driving a vehicle while stoned, according to a survey done by SADD and Liberty Mutual Insurance. The information released Wednesday comes a week after the Governors Highway Safety Association reported teen highway fatalities increased in the first half of 2011, reversing an eight-year downward trend and contradicting data that showed overall fatalities continued to decrease. About a third people who die during their teenage years in the United States are killed in vehicle accidents, the single leading cause of teenage death. SADD and Liberty Mutual have surveyed teens about their driving habits for a dozen years. Responses collected last year showed that the number of teens who believe smoking pot distracts their focus on driving declined by 8 percent. More than one-third said marijuana use causes no distraction to their driving. And 19 percent of teens who say they have driven after drinking believe alcohol doesn’t result in distraction. “What keeps me up at night is that this data reflects a dangerous trend toward the acceptance of marijuana and other substances compared to our study of teens conducted just two years ago,” said Stephen Wallace, senior adviser for policy, research and education at SADD. Most teens said, however, that they would stop driving after smoking or drinking if their passengers asked them to, and almost as many said they would speak up if they were passengers in a car driven by someone who was impaired. “Teens are faced with potentially destructive decisions every day and don’t always make the best ones,” said Dave Melton, a driving safety expert with Liberty Mutual Insurance and managing director of global safety. “It’s our job as mentors, parents, role models or friends to effectively communicate with them to ensure they are armed with the right information and aware of the dangers of marijuana and other substances, especially while driving.” The survey of teen drivers began with four teenage focus groups, followed by questioning of 2,294 11th- and 12th-grade students from 28 high schools nationwide. The poll was done by ORC International, which said the results had a margin of error of 2.02 percent.


competition in late 2010, but a series of appeals and threatened court actions by prospective bidders delayed the final offering. The result was the latest extension for MEP. Meanwhile, as the Army said in its justification document, “the need for linguists in theater evolves on a daily basis while remaining critical to current and future operations.” Afghanistan’s population is spread out, with a high illiteracy rate and “dozens of languages and dialects.” The number of linguists needed by U.S. troops far “exceeded the number of locals that could take jobs,” according to the Army. In addition, there are three types of interpreters needed — locals and others who have no security clearances; U.S. citizens who have secret clearances; and U.S. citizens with top-secret clearances and “capable of supporting continuous operations on a 24/7 basis in austere/hostile locations throughout Afghanistan,” according to the Army. Salaries can range from as low as $900 a month for an Afghan to $200,000 or more a year for an American working at forward operating positions. It is a dangerous business, and even more so for Afghans, who become special targets for the Taliban. MEP in September said that over the years 73 of its employees had been killed, with 312 injured and 10 missing. In January 2010, one of its interpreters, Nasir Ahmad Ahmadi, went on a rampage and killed two U.S. soldiers at a fire base and wounded another. Ahmadi, a 23-year-old Afghan who had immigrated to the United States in 2009, was in turn fatally shot by a U.S. Army sergeant. A wrongful-death lawsuit was filed last year against MEP by relatives of the dead soldiers who claimed that Ahmadi had been hired without proper vetting. The company said that Ahmadi had been thoroughly vetted and that his actions were “entirely unforeseeable.” The case is pending. Meanwhile, MEP is rising on Washington Technology’s list of the 100 biggest defense contractors. It was No. 42 last year, up from No. 62 in 2010. The company was even mentioned at a July 26, 2010, hearing of the Commission on Wartime Contracting. Former representative Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), co-chairman of the panel, noted that MEP got its interpreter contract increased without competition. Although Shays said that MEP had received at that point more than a billion dollars and “was a great American success story,” he added that it hadn’t had any audits. “Whatever your costs are, you


of its employees had been killed, with 312 injured and 10 missing. In January 2010, one of its interpreters, Nasir Ahmad Ahmadi, went on a rampage and killed two U.S. soldiers at a fire base and wounded another. Ahmadi, a 23-year-old Afghan who had immigrated to the United States in 2009, was in turn fatally shot by a U.S. Army sergeant. A wrongful-death lawsuit was filed last year against MEP by relatives of the dead soldiers who claimed that Ahmadi had been hired without proper vetting. The company said that Ahmadi had been thoroughly vetted and that his actions were “entirely unforeseeable.” The case is pending. Meanwhile, MEP is rising on Washington Technology’s list of the 100 biggest defense contractors. It was No. 42 last year, up from No. 62 in 2010. The company was even mentioned at a July 26, 2010, hearing of the Commission on Wartime Contracting. Former representative Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), co-chairman of the panel, noted that MEP got its interpreter contract increased without competition. Although Shays said that MEP had received at that point more than a billion dollars and “was a great American success story,” he added that it hadn’t had any audits. “Whatever your costs are, you get something plus,” he said, meaning that the company gets a fee and whatever its operating costs are. MEP’s then-chief executive Chris Taylor responded that the Defense Department’s auditors were at the company’s offices and that the firm was current on its invoices to the Army. One element in MEP’s growth that imitates what other big defense contractors have done is to create a “board of advisers” and stock it with former government officials. Among the current advisory board members are retired Adm. Eric T. Olson, former head of the U.S. Special Operations Command; Michael Chertoff, former secretary of homeland security; John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security and a member of the Defense Policy Board; and David Kilcullen, senior counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus during the 2007 surge and adviser to the Afghanistan International Security Assistance Force in 2009 and 2010. According to the Army, there are five applicants for the new Afghanistan interpreter contract, which is scheduled to run for another five years, from 2012 to 2017. MEP is one of the bidders. It will be interesting to see who wins. For previous Fine Print columns, go to washingtonpost.com/fedpage.


In Kabul, Afghan police sympathize with protesters angry over Koran burning

Taliban issued a harshly worded statement encouraging Afghan security officials to take up arms against Western forces. On the streets of Kabul, police officers said they didn’t care about the flurry of U.S. apologies, including the one from Obama, or the demands of Afghan politicians. The offense felt was personal, most said, not diminished by contrition or inflamed by hostile rhetoric. “It is difficult sometimes to convince people not to resort to protest,” said Qaseem Jangalbagh, the police chief of Panjshir province. Asked whether that included his own officers, he said, “It is a problem.” Junior officers spoke more bluntly, saying they would shirk their duties rather than quash demonstrations and referring often to their own violent impulses. “We should burn those foreigners,” said a police officer in his early 30s who has been in the force for almost 2 1 / 2 years. Like most of the country’s security officers, he was trained by NATO troops. Anger within Bagram base Police officers weren’t the only Afghans assumed to be U.S. allies who spoke of mounting friction. The first early morning protests Tuesday were led by Afghan employees of Bagram air base, where the religious materials were burned. NATO military officials have said in public statements that the incineration was accidental. Some Bagram employees — who often face threats for aiding the United States — waved the charred books in the air, demanding a response. Those employees, among the 5,000 Afghans who support the base’s operations, chanted “Death to America” and lobbed rocks at gates that some had entered for years. Some cursed their bosses and promised never to return to work at Bagram. “How could we ever work for someone who could do this?” asked a 21-year-old man who said he had worked for two years in a warehouse on the base. “This couldn’t have happened by accident. This was meant to offend us.” Taliban officials, who are in the middle of tenuous peace talks with the United States, had initially condemned the burning but stopped short of advocating violence — an uncharacteristically muted response. But in the written statement released Thursday, the insurgent group took a tougher stance. The statement described the burning as a “deliberate” act, despite repeated statements by top U.S. officials that the books were sent to the incinerator by mistake. The Taliban statement said Afghans and Muslims should not be placated by the U.S.


The Impulsive Traveler: In Florida, a taste of tropical fruits

Chris Rollins, who has been director of Fruit and Spice Park for 30 years. Browsing the park’s Web site on a gray November day, I’d had visions of sipping fresh-squeezed juice in the sunshine and decided to make a trip to the Redland area the next time I was in Miami. So on a 75-degree day in mid-January, my husband and I headed to the Redlands, making a warm-up stop first at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables. The 83-acre garden’s walking paths wind among lakes, tropical flowers, palm trees and other plants. But our destination was a small greenhouse at one end of the park. The Whitman Tropical Fruit Pavilion houses a display of fruit species from around the world — mangosteen, durian, rambutan and many others — with informative signs describing their origins. Without a guide, though, it was hard to find the fruit on the mostly bare trees and bushes. (This was our first clue that perhaps January was not the best time to take a tropical fruit tour, even in South Florida.) Luckily, the outdoor “edible garden” next door proved more accessible. The Fairchild runs a farm in the Redland area that houses an extensive seed collection and hosts fruit research and public education programs. The farm also supplies the raw materials for two weekend-only smoothie bars, one at the farm and one at the main garden. Taylor Carman, the helpful smoothiemaker manning the bar, showed us around the small outdoor garden and gave us a few tastes of in-season fruit there: a super-sweet, cinnamony sapodilla and a bright yellow canistel (also called eggfruit). Half an hour later, we found ourselves making a quick transition from the strip malls and gas stations of suburban Miami to acres of avocado orchards. In the middle of them sits Fruit and Spice Park, on 37 acres of land purchased by Miami-Dade County in 1944 to build an educational botanical garden. The park “is really a reflection of the community,” Rollins says. “The very first European inhabitants here, around 1900, the first thing they did was plant guavas, mangos, avocados.” Today, avocados are the biggest commercial crop grown nearby, covering nearly 8,000 acres, according to Rollins. Growers also produce smaller numbers of longan, lychee, sapodilla, mamey, star fruit and other exotic tropical fruits, which they ship to specialty markets, resort chefs and ethnic grocery stores across the country.


An outrageous deal to release a senior al-Qaeda terrorist

the opportunity to begin using signals intelligence to track the entire JI network. Thanks to the information Khan provided, Zubair was captured in June 2003 and taken into CIA custody. Under questioning, Zubair revealed that he worked directly for a JI leader named Hambali, KSM’s partner in the West Coast plot. He provided information that was used to track down and capture Hambali as well as another key player in the JI plot — a terrorist named Bashir bin Lap (a.k.a. “Lillie”) who, according to the office of the director of national intelligence, “was slated to be a suicide operative for an al-Qaeda ‘second wave’ attack targeting Los Angeles.” Agency officials informed KSM that both Lillie and Hambali has been captured and confronted him with detailed questions from their debriefings. When presented with this information, KSM finally provided more specific information on al-Qaeda’s operational plans with JI and the identities of JI operatives. KSM also provided information that helped lead to the capture of Hambali’s younger brother, Rusman Gunawan, whom KSM identified as the leader of the JI cell that was to carry out the West Coast plot. Once in custody, the brother identified a previously unknown cell of JI operatives — the Ghuraba Cell — that was hiding out in Karachi, Pakistan, awaiting orders. When confronted with his brother’s revelations, Hambali gave U.S. officials information that, together with intelligence from his brother, led to the capture of more than a dozen members of this cell. The disruption of the Hambali network shows both the effectiveness and the unique value of the CIA detention and interrogation program. It was only because Majid Khan, KSM and other captured terrorists were held together in secret prisons that CIA officials were able to “triangulate” the detainees — using information from one to elicit more information from others and ultimately to track down and unravel the Hambali network. The story also shows that Majid Khan was at the center of some of al-Qaeda’s most dangerous post-9/11 plotting. Khan worked side-by-side with KSM, vetted terrorist operatives for the 9/11 mastermind, delivered funds for a deadly terrorist attack in Indonesia and volunteered to be a suicide operative and to personally conduct terrorist attacks in the United States. The idea that the Obama administration would release this murderous man from Guantanamo Bay is astounding. Read more on this topic News article: Majid Khan offered a plea deal


Offering a little of everything in art

that are unabashedly erotic. Rendered in bronze, the women’s physical intimacy feels a little less immediate yet still palpable. Cronin’s sculpture is a rare example of a memorial that’s more about life than its loss. Ian Whitmore It’s common practice for artists to redo other people’s work, whether in the spirit of homage or mockery. That’s what Ian Whitmore does, except that the artist he remodels is himself. The pictures in his “A Devil, the Shadow, the Notice of a Small Falling Leaf,” at G Fine Art, are doubly diverse. Not only does Whitmore work in various styles, but he often returns to a long-ignored painting to complete it in a different mode than he began. A George Washington University graduate who moved to Brooklyn in 2008, Whitmore takes perverse inspiration from radical 16th-century Protestant reformer Andreas Karlstadt, the source of the show’s wordy title. Karlstadt considered religious paintings and sculpture idolatrous and wanted them removed from churches. Whitmore’s goal isn’t religious, but he seeks the iconoclasts’ boldness to destroy art — even if it’s only his own. This process, which Whitmore calls “detuning,” makes for some lively contrasts. “Grey Gardens” is half realist rendering of a classical building, half abstract-expressionist freakout. The punning “Short Trip” subverts the tradition of the sacred triptych by assembling three unrelated canvases. The book-size “My Copy” is designed to look as if the artist has painted over a real tome; its title, barely visible, includes the phrase “master forger.” There’s a crucifix in one of these pictures, but Whitmore is just as a likely to refer to science as to theology. One canvas shows a rocket blasting off (among other things); another is modeled on early 20th-century industrial efficiency studies. “Keyhole,” painted on a jaggedly shaped canvas, is derived from photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope; it plays on the way the telescope’s finished photos are edited and composited from many individual shots. One of the strangest and most striking pieces in the show, “Keyhole” is a rare case in which Whitmore tries to find, rather than lose, a coherent image. Jenkins is a freelance writer. Select: WPA Exhibition and Art Auction Gala on view through March 2 at 1801 L St. NW; 202-234-7103; www.wpadc.org. Patricia Cronin: Bodies and Soul on view through March 10 at Conner Contemporary Art, 1358 Florida Ave NE; 202-588-8750; www.connercontemporary.com. Ian Whitmore: A Devil, the Shadow, the Notice


Japan grows uneasy about earthquake forecasts

Japan is vulnerable to huge quakes, some experts say, but that’s about all we know for sure. The skepticism is shared by seismologists worldwide, but Japan is the world’s earthquake capital, and no country spends more on forecasting temblors. A search for clues For decades, researchers in this island nation have studied historical data, dug through fault lines, attached instruments to the sea floor and pulverized rocks in laboratories — all in a search for clues about how the earth behaves before it slips, shifts and shakes. Unlock that mystery, scientists say, and they could make predictions (“Tokyo will have a 7.0 quake tomorrow”) with enough warning time to allow a city to be evacuated. They could also make broad and accurate forecasts (“There’s a 70 percent chance Tokyo will have a 7.0 quake within the next four years”) that could influence everything from building codes to government planning. Experts have spent decades looking for earthquake precursors by examining changes in the levels of water and radon gas, electrical current and animal behavior. They have frequently had their hopes raised. In the laboratory, for instance, rocks under pressure show small signs of rupture before a dramatic slip, suggesting the possibility that “pre-slip” deformations could signal a developing earthquake. But most scientists say that pre-slip movement, if it exists in real life, is too inconspicuous to serve as a clue. There’s also the common but fraught practice of forecasting earthquakes by using apparent historical patterns. In some regions of the country, major quakes usually happen every 100 or 150 years. But even those areas can remain calm for three centuries. In Tokyo, which had its last major quake in 1923, centuries of records produce no clear pattern. Sometimes, most notably with last year’s 9.0 magnitude temblor, the problem is history itself: Scientists either lack enough data to see the pattern, or they don’t see one until it’s too late. According to the government-issued earthquake hazard map that Japan updates annually as part of its public safety efforts, the northeastern coast of Japan was thought to be among the least likely places in the country to experience a major jolt. Then, March 11, miles off the northeastern shoreline, the earth slipped 100 to 160 feet. In the weeks after, Japanese seismologists looked for missed signals. The northeastern coast, it turned out, was indeed susceptible to major quakes. But the region hadn’t seen


Two NATO soldiers killed inside Afghan interior ministry, officials say

KABUL — The deaths prompted Marine Gen. John R. Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, to recall all NATO personnel working in Afghan ministries in the Kabul area. The step was taken “for obvious force protection reasons,” Allen said in a statement that capped a week marked by escalating distrust between NATO and Afghan forces. “We are investigating the crime and will pursue all leads to find the person responsible for this attack. The perpetrator of this attack is a coward whose actions will not go unanswered.” Fratricide has been a growing problem between Afghan soldiers and their foreign counterparts here. In the past, Western military advisers have been advised to operate cautiously after such attacks. But this incident marks the first time a commander has publicly withdrawn his personnel from their posts for fear of attacks by men in Afghan uniforms. “This afternoon, two of our international counterparts were killed inside the compound of the ministry. An investigation into the incident has already begun,” said interior ministry spokesperson Siddiq Siddiqi in a statement. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force also confirmed the deaths of “two service members” in a statement. Their bodies were discovered by another western official on the ground of a command center meeting room, at the heart of the fortified compound, according to Siddiqi, who said the specifics of the killings are still unclear. The Taliban promptly claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the shooter was an insurgent infiltrator in the Afghans’ security forces. At least three people were killed and dozens wounded on Saturday when protests turned violent in Kunduz, a province in northern Afghanistan. One crowd tried to storm the United Nations compound, but were resisted by armed guards. “Although caused by legitimate defense, the United Nations also regrets the casualties among the demonstrators and expresses condolences to the families of those who lost their lives,” said the United Nations Assitance Mission in a written statement. Four NATO service members have been killed in the last week, since the U.S. military burned a pile of Korans at a military base here, inciting five days of violent protests across Afghanistan. In the wake of that incident, the Taliban issued a statement asking Afghan soldiers and police to target their western counterparts. Western military advisers were warned of an escalated risk of fratricide this week, and told to stay out of Afghan ministries unless their


At the Monroe Institute, a spiritual experience could just be a beat away

cushioned vaults we are encouraged to ask ourselves questions we might not during the course of otherwise busy days. The woman whose husband cheated on her can’t decide if she should divorce him. During one exercise, she sees herself and their three children appearing happy at their old house, a place she told herself she would go if she left him. “How many are getting something out of this?” Kortum asks, referring to the overall program. Eighteen of the 20 hands go up. “And how many feel nothing at all is happening for you?” Krishnan Chary and one other man raise theirs. Rademacher says those who come here with the highest expectations usually find the least success. By Monroe’s estimates, 15 percent of participants will have an out-of-body experience, but Rademacher says people can focus so much on that that they fail to perceive other developments. On a sheet of general guidelines for the program, the first line reads: “Most importantly . . . don’t try, don’t force anything.” *** A bell rings, indicating another exercise. We slip on our headphones as usual, and, per Monroe’s instructions, try to feel vibrations flowing through us. “Follow the sound, let yourself follow the sound and the change in the pulse,” Monroe tells us. “Now let the vibration move upward more and more. . . .” When we meet later to discuss the exercise, Broadman speaks first. Until now, he has said little during group discussions. “The vibe flow for me was almost a shattering experience,” he says, sounding both awed and bewildered. “I vibrated. I don’t vibrate. It started at my toes and went right through my body.” “Besides feeling shattered, was there any other emotion it brought up for you?” Stone, the facilitator, asks. Broadman holds his empty palms upward. Before meeting with the group, he tried to analyze what happened. How could putting on a set of headphones make him vibrate? Broadman looks at Stone and Kortum. They have been telling the group for days that there is more than can be seen, more than logic can prove. “Just, thank you,” he says. The next day, the group takes a silent walk. Kortum explains that the purpose is to show us how states beyond our everyday consciousness can be accessed from anywhere. We don’t need a bed cut into a wall. Several people walk slowly down the gravel road, aware


Should you hire a social media person?

our social media presence part-time, but we learned quickly that in order to go from just having a presence to actually building and maintain high-value relationships on several different platforms, we needed a full-time social media manager. So yes, we do have a full-time person on social media. “Our social media channels allow us to communicate in real-time with a much broader audience than we would otherwise have access to. We reach several very distinct groups — language teachers, language learners, education policy aficionados, education bloggers and more. Managing, leading and participating in all these distinct conversations on a wide variety of platforms require a full-time manager.” Erin Blaskie, CEO of BSETC in Ontario, Can.: “Within our team of 20 subcontractors, we have two that focus entirely on social media activities for our company and for our clients’ companies. One reason is because we also incorporate specific tracking techniques to help us measure effectiveness and reach. While tracking techniques are used in traditional marketing also, it is helpful to have someone already well-versed in this specific area. “The other reason is because we want the tone across these platforms to be less marketing speak and more conversational. The messages shared on social media outlets should be equally matched by outreach and ongoing conversation to allow relationships to be built and cultivated. While using social media is different than traditional marketing, we do consider it all part of our communications and marketing activities because it still requires sharing a message across a form of media.” Emerson Spartz, CEO of Chicago-based Spartz Media: “We do have dedicated social media people — it’s far too important to our business to lump under a macro category like ‘communications.’ However, an integrated team approach to social media is critical. “Social media is about the give-and-take between your company and your users. The authenticity and personality of those interactions are critical to increasing customer loyalty. Therefore, we have a dedicated community team who continually experiments with various social media strategies and explores ways of tapping into the potential of new social media platforms like Pinterest. “When platforms like Facebook make changes to their sharing functionality or to their user interface, it can have a significant effect on our users’ sharing habits. By having a team dedicated to improving our social media influence, we’ve been able to dramatically ratchet up the number of conversations about our content.”


Is the fight against global warming hopeless?

IS THE FIGHT against global warming hopeless? It can seem so. The long-term threat to the climate comes from carbon dioxide, which lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, locking in higher temperatures for generations. After decades of effort, only about one-tenth of America’s energy mix comes from renewable sources that don’t produce carbon dioxide. But two policies can buy the world more time to allow carbon-free technologies to catch up. One is aimed at greenhouse substances that clear out of the atmosphere after a few years, months or even days. Cutting back the emission of soot and ozone gases such as methane would reduce the world’s warming by as much as a half degree Celsius over the next few decades, according to a study in last month’s Science. Adding hydrofluorocarbons — another class of short-lived pollutants — to the list would help even more to delay the approach of temperature thresholds beyond which global warming could be catastrophic. Reducing these emissions is relatively cheap, especially when the benefits to health are factored in. For example, primitive cooking stoves in developing countries produce much of the world’s soot; using more efficient ones would prevent perhaps millions of deaths from respiratory illness. Methane, meanwhile, is the primary component of natural gas — a commodity that pipeline or coal-mine operators could sell if they kept it from escaping into the atmosphere. Researchers have even concluded that global crop yields would rise. Coordinating an effective international effort to cut so-called short-lived climate forcers will be the hardest task. The Group of Eight and the Arctic Council have acknowledged the need but have moved slowly. On Feb. 16 Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a new international initiative, along with $12 million for the program. It will take more than American money. Regulators in the developing world must enforce stronger air-pollution rules. Since many of the health benefits will be immediate, though, some may be more eager to do so than they have been to cut carbon dioxide emissions. Nations may also add hydrofluorocarbons to the substances regulated by the Montreal Protocol, the treaty responsible for slashing the use of a related class of chemicals. Another development that promises to provide time for clean technology to scale up — America’s natural gas boom — faces a challenge of a very different sort: environmentalists. Innovative drilling techniques have made huge amounts of fuel


Karzai urges Afghans to avoid violent retaliation over Koran burnings

Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a news conference in Kabul February 26, 2012. (MOHAMMAD ISMAIL/REUTERS) KABUL, Afghanistan — Karzai also voiced his support for NATO’s decision Saturday to recall its personnel from Afghan ministries after two U.S. service members were killed by an Afghan security official in the country’s heavily protected Interior Ministry earlier in the day. Karzai described the move as “temporary” and justifiable in the face of the attacks and spreading protests. Meanwhile, officials in the northern Kunduz province said residents took part in fresh demonstrations Sunday, attacking a police station and a U.S. military base. At least 16 policemen and a half-dozen U.S. service members were wounded in the attacks, in which protesters used a hand grenade and small arms fire, according to Sarwar Hussaini, a spokesman for Kunduz’s governor. Several protesters were wounded during clashes with police, he said. The deaths at the ministry in Kabul — by a man wearing an Afghan police uniform — follows Thursday’s assassination of two U.S. troops by an Afghan soldier during protesters’ attack on a U.S. base in the east. More than 25 Afghans have died in the demonstrations, and the service members’ killings prompted London to pull its civilian advisers from Afghan ministries, according to British media. During days of demonstrations across the country, many protesters pushed for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan and chanted slogans against the United States and Karzai. Protesters and Afghan Islamic clerics have demanded the parliament and government to put those responsible for the Koran burnings on trial. The resurgent Taliban has urged Afghans to ignore apologies from U.S. authorities over the apparent inadvertent act and urged retaliation against Western installations and military personnel. However, Karzai, while pushing for the punishment of those responsible for Koran burning, has called on his countrymen to not resort to violence because he said the insurgents and their foreign backers would manipulate their protests. “Now is the time to return to calm and not let the enemies of peace and development to use this situation,” Karzai said in a news conference Sunday. “We have asked for justice and punishment for those who have done this act,” he said of the culprits behind the Koran burnings. The week’s events have exposed a core vulnerability of the Obama administration’s strategy for winding down the decade-long Afghan war and are seen as a blow to the West’s


The federal government needs to lead — not lag — the private sector in tech

The government’s $80 billion budget for IT spending tops that of any organization in the world. And yet for many workers in the public sector, sharing information often takes archaic forms: exchanging physical hard-drives, mailing CDs, using outdated computer systems and software or scavenging for critical information stuck in data silos and legacy platforms. What’s so remarkable about today’s sleepy pace of innovation is that the government served as both the benefactor and beneficiary of technology progress for decades in the 20th century. Many of IBM’s major developments sprung from government-led orders, such as the Defense Department using its early mainframes during the Cold War. Oracle famously got its start by building a database for the CIA. ARPANET, the first network resembling today’s Internet, came out of research funded by the Defense Department. Once the chief adopter of some of the most groundbreaking technologies in history, the government is often seen as a laggard in the most recent wave of innovation. The capital is mired in a swamp of legacy technologies (using 2,094 data centers, some of which have closed). Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), who chairs a subcommittee on federal financial management and government information, said, “We have seen hundreds of millions of dollars wasted by the federal government on poorly planned and poorly managed IT projects and through unnecessarily duplicative IT investments.” The federal government’s “cloud first” policy, championed by the Obama administration’s former Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, is starting to see progress in its attempt to address the technology problem by using third-party services that deliver software over the Web. The General Services Administration announced last year that it was moving its e-mail services to Google, which costs roughly half as much as its previous architecture (saving about $42 million over the next five years). The Army Experience Center found a cloud customer relationship management solution that resulted in a 10th of the cost of maintaining and upgrading its previous technology. Cutting costs and increasing efficiency are just the start. The need for more clouds With cloud technologies, we have the opportunity to do far more than eliminate redundancies and save billions of dollars. We can create a new culture of information sharing in the capital, one that breaks down data silos to promote better decision making, cross-agency collaboration and an overall gain in government productivity. There’s still a ways to go, but many of the


There’s an association for that app

said Pete Snyder, a founding member of ADA and chief executive of Disruptor Capital. Eat your Veggies Mom’s Organic Market Don’t look for processed carbs such as mac-and-cheese or mashed potatoes. Owner/founder Scott Nash tells us the organic lunch and dinner offerings will include salads, steamed veggie bowls with brown rice and whole grains, sandwiches and vegetable juice. “The concept is a throwback to the old health food store lunch counters,” said Nash, who is hiring extra staff to man what he is calling the Naked Lunch. Nash said he plans to add counters at other stores, such the ones in Waldorf and Merrifield. “We’re optimistic,” he said. And if it flops? “We’ll use it as an employee cafeteria.” High-end travel Steve Case Absentee owner When we heard Jim Garland, chief executive of Dulles-based Sharp Details, was scheduled to speak today at Ingar Grev’s National Capital Region Entrepreneurs Forum luncheon at the Tower Club in Tysons Corner, we were curious to know the topic. Garland, 43, said he planned to discuss how he was able to establish his $3 million business cleaning and maintaining corporate jets while taking a year off to travel the world with his wife and four children. The quick answer? “I hired well,” said Garland, who checked in monthly on his operations, which employs 65 people across seven states. “At the end of the day, systems are great, but if you have poor people running them, it doesn’t work. I had the right people in the right place.” Garland traveled the world from August 2010 to June 2011, starting with a 10-day trip across the United States and then on to Costa Rica, Spain, South Africa and China. He finished up in Fiji before returning to home. And the cost? “Let’s just say I will be cleaning airplanes for a long time,” he said. The Buzz Hears: Columbus, Ohio-based Bravo Brio Restaurant Group is expanding into the Washington-Baltimore area. Brio Tuscan Grille opens in Rockville on Feb. 29 and another unit opens in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in mid-March. Brio is already in Tysons Corner and Annapolis. Former NBC correspondent Brooke Salkoff, founder of CampEasy, the McLean-based search engine for parents planning camps for their kids, sold $3,000 in subscriptions in one 24-hour period last week to camps looking to market their summer programs. The site, which went live a few weeks ago, has generated more than


Composer helps arrange a concert for people who, like him, use hearing aids

Composer Richard Einhorn found that a “hearing loop” at the Kennedy Center improved the sound picked up by his hearing aids. (Kevin Rivoli/ASSOCIATED PRESS) In 2010, the composer Richard Einhorn suddenly lost most of his hearing. He could still write music, but wearing hearing aids made it frustrating to attend a public performance: The sound typically was blurred with static and ambient noise. Then he attended a musical at the Kennedy Center that used a “hearing loop” — a wire that beamed sound to the telecoils built into many hearing aids and cochlear implants. Einhorn was delighted with the result. This weekend, he’s working with Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Hearing Loss Association of America to introduce other people to the same pleasure. Most of the seats in Baltimore’s Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall will be looped for performances Friday and Sunday of Einhorn’s 1995 composition “Voices of Light,” an oratorio that will accompany the classic silent film “The Passion of Joan of Arc.” HLAA members get a 20 percent discount on tickets and are invited to meet Einhorn at a reception after Friday’s 8 p.m. show. For information, e-mail nmacklin@hearingloss.org or go to www.bsomusic.org. — Nancy Szokan


Like a Stradivarius, conductor Leonard Slatkin just gets better with time

“As I get older, I do not even think about the technique anymore ,” says conductor Leonard Slatkin. (Kevin Clark/THE WASHINGTON POST) When Leonard Slatkin turned 60 seven years ago, his manager told him that his music career now would really begin. Slatkin had already won seven Grammys and a National Medal of Arts award, but that was all a dress rehearsal. Unlike aging athletes, whose abilities wind down as their bodies grows older, musicians often get better with age and experience, and audiences appreciate them more. A 2010 compilation of the world's busiest conductors found an average age of 62. Since Slatkin’s 1968 debut at age 23 with the St. Louis Symphony, he has conducted major orchestras and opera companies on three continents. He served as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra from 1996 to 2008 and is currently the music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre National de Lyon in France as well as the principal guest conductor for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Slatkin returned to Washington last fall to conduct French cellist Gautier Capucon playing Saint-Saens’s Concerto No. 1 in A Minor. He conducted Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3 and the NSO premiere of 31-year-old composer Anna Clyne’s “Rewind.” Via e-mail, he discussed how growing older affects musicians and their artistry, and his in particular. Does aging help you as a conductor? I think that not only is there a more emotional understanding but a structural one as well. It more than likely comes from repeated study and many years of performing. There is no “perfect” in music. If I ever came off the stage and felt it could not be better, it would then be time to quit. What do you mean by “more emotional understanding”? Is that like Beethoven writing his best symphonies late in life, after he wrestled with his failing health? Do you have a richer sense of life because of things that have happened to you? When one is young, the focus of attention is on the technical matters: how to beat time, where to cue in the different instruments, et cetera. As I get older, I do not even think about the technique anymore and only consider how to get closer to the intention of the composer. Is there music you loved when you were younger that you don’t anymore and, vice versa, music you once loathed and


Virginia Senate approves contentious ultrasound bill

that perform abortions, told reporters that he will review the legislation but supports the concept. “I think women have the right to know all of the medical information before they make a very important choice,’’ McDonnell said. The Senate amended the bill to exclude women who have reported to law enforcement agencies that they are victims of rape and incest, but it did not exempt women who know that their babies would suffer from birth defects. “The purpose of the bill is to make sure the mothers have more information as to the gestational age and physical development before making a decision as to the abortion,’’ said Sen. Stephen H. Martin (R-Chesterfield), who spoke during the debate. A series of other amendments died that would have forced insurance companies to cover the cost of the ultrasounds or required the state to pick up the tab for women without health insurance. Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R), who presides over the equally divided Senate, cast three tie-breaking votes on the amendments. Opponents of the bill, including Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia, NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia and the American Civil Liberties Union, said they have not decided whether to challenge the legislation in court should McDonnell sign it. Seven other states have similar laws. Republicans, who control both chambers of the General Assembly, have considered several abortion-related measures in the 60-day legislative session. But most, including those ending state subsidies for low-income women to abort fetuses that have serious birth defects and giving rights to fertilized eggs, have been killed. The House and Senate had already approved versions of the ultrasound legislation. But a national uproar over the measure and opponents’ graphic detail of the ultrasounds in early pregnancies led McDonnell — an abortion opponent — to intervene. An abdominal — or “jelly-on-the-belly” — ultrasound before an abortion would still be required. Both abdominal and transvaginal ultrasounds are already used by most abortion providers. Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax) described the original version of the bill as “state rape’’ and said the new version is tantamount to “state assault.” “Very rarely do I get angry, but I am angry about this bill,’’ she said. “It reflects an attitude that is demeaning to women. It presumes the legislature — which as we look around is virtually all male — knows better what should happen to a woman’s body than the woman herself and her physician.’’


The U-Va. murder case

I agree with Alexandra Petri’s lament about the lack of adult supervision for Yeardley Love and George Huguely V, whose lives were once so promising [“Murder at U-Va.: Where were the grown-ups?” op-ed, Feb. 25]. Some of the blame for this tragedy must fall upon society. One is led to believe that the young and able are sent to institutions of higher learning to study and mature in order to become individuals who can make a contribution to society. But this tragedy calls all that into question. And where were the “friends” of this young couple? Are we sending our youth to universities hoping that these institutions will solve issues that we as parents did not monitor? This is a sad comment on society as much as it is a tragedy for the Love and Huguely families. Ana Maria Balfour, Kensington ● ●


I take strong issue with Alexandra Petri’s column on the University of Virginia murder case. College students George Huguely V and Yeardly Love were the adults in this tragedy. This type of incident also involves, all to often, young adults who are in the workforce or in the military, and no one asks, or should ask, “Where were the adults?” Parents who send young adults (they are not children anymore) off to college and expect the college to play a parenting role are badly misinformed about a university’s role in society. The university’s role is to provide an education for its students. The university is not a substitute parent. Duncan Nixon, Palmyra, Va.


Maryland moves to limit school suspensions

BALTIMORE — Drawing a link to achievement gaps, the board also endorsed findings that out-of-school suspensions disproportionately affect minorities and special education students. A detailed written plan the board unveiled would redefine the vocabulary of suspension — what is short, what is long — and require Maryland’s 24 school systems to pay far closer attention to whom they suspend and why. The state would require close tracking of racial disparities in each school system. In some cases, local officials would be required to create plans to reduce disparities in one year and eliminate them over three years. “What we’re trying to do is to prompt people to think differently about discipline, with an eye toward achievement for all students,” board President James H. DeGraffenreidt Jr. said in an interview. In the 36-page document, the board said it aimed to keep students in school as much as possible and require educational support for those who do get removed. Now, about 23 percent of suspended students in Maryland get services to help them keep up while they are out of school. Tuesday’s action followed lengthy study. Several discipline cases figured in the deliberations, board members said, including the suicide of a student disciplined in neighboring Virginia and the suspension of a Maryland student involved in a fight who languished for most of the school year with no educational services. The board will allow public comment on the plan until March 30. It will take up the issue again April 24, with final action on proposed regulations expected at some point afterward. Under the plan, the state also would require school systems to keep detailed data on campus arrests, citing a federal initiative to address the so-called “school-to-prison pipeline.” But walking a careful line, the board sought to shift thinking on discipline across the state without being too prescriptive. “The superintendents and local boards have asked that we leave the imposition of appropriate discipline in their hands,” the report said. “We agree.” No reforms would specifically address which offenses could lead to out-of-school discipline, it said. Suspensions for nonviolent offenses, such as insubordination or classroom disturbance, account for more than 63 percent of all out-of-school suspensions in the state. “We would hope to reduce that number to as close to zero as possible,” DeGraffenreidt said. The plan envisions that disciplinary offenses would be coded, to distinguish violent infractions from those that are nonviolent.


Stomach-virus cases increasing

If it seems as though everyone you know has been sick or has a child who is vomiting or has diarrhea (or both), that’s probably because of an increase in the number of acute gastroenteritis outbreaks in the region the past several weeks. In Virginia, the number of outbreaks is about 20 percent higher than during the same period last year, health officials said. Maryland health officials said that so far, the overall number of outbreaks in that state is comparable with recent years, but since January and February are peak times for the nasty and highly contagious bug, they are asking residents to take simple precautions, like washing their hands, to avoid infection. The most common cause of acute gastroenteritis, or inflammation of the stomach and intestines, is a virus called norovirus. Symptoms can include vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, a low-grade fever, headache, muscle aches, chills and fatigue. (Norovirus: How to stay healthy) During peak season, outbreaks are common because the illness is easily spread, person-to-person, through contaminated food or water or by touching contaminated surfaces. People with norovirus are contagious from the moment they begin feeling ill to at least three days — and perhaps as long as two weeks — after recovery, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most people recover within a day or two. The illness is especially common in schools, child-care centers, nursing homes, assisted living facilities and other closed environments where people are in close contact. At Willow Springs Elementary School in Fairfax County, students began complaining last week of vomiting and diarrhea, and more than 100 students and several teachers were absent Friday. The school canceled all events Friday evening and over the weekend, and the building was thoroughly cleaned with a bleach solution, a spokeswoman for the county school system said. More than 100 students were absent Monday, but by Tuesday all but 16 had returned. The illnesses have not been confirmed as caused by norovirus, but doctors and health officials said it is the most likely culprit. Earlier this month, about 85 students were infected by norovirus at George Washington University. Last week, several had the bug at Howard University. In Montgomery County, health officials said that norovirus-like outbreaks have affected child-care facilities, nursing homes and schools. In Maryland, there have been 87 outbreaks of norovirus-like illnesses, up from 58 last year. But the number of


20 years later, George Mason professor finally gets a telescope

Surrounded by Girl Scouts on the roof of George Mason University’s Research Hall, professor Harold Geller uses a laser pointer to identify stars in the night sky. “You can see Orion’s belt there,” he said. Then, circling other stars in the Orion constellation using the pointer, Geller said: “And there’s Rigel, Betelgeuse, which sounds a lot like Beetlejuice . . . and Bellatrix. And if you follow the belt all the way down, you can see the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius.” Immediately, whispers break out among the dozen or so fifth-graders from Herndon-Sterling Troop 920. “It’s Sirius? Why does it all sound like Harry Potter?” Sakina Ahmad, 10, and a student at Herndon Elementary School, whispered to a friend. Both recognized that two of the stars in the Orion constellation — Bellatrix and Sirius — share names with characters in author J.K. Rowling’s popular Harry Potter books. Having identified a constellation of literary interest to the students, Geller then led the Scouts into George Mason’s observatory, showing them the best view on campus. It is a view that Geller made possible. In May, Mason added a 4,500-pound, $350,000 telescope to its Fairfax campus observatory, reachable through a walkway that links the observatory tower to Research Hall. “When I first came to George Mason in the 1980s as a graduate student, . . . I started a petition for an observatory,” Geller said. “We were promised a telescope on top” of two now-built science buildings on campus. Despite these promises, however, administrators told those promoting the addition of a telescope that the funding was not available. More than 20 years later, Geller — who has gone from grad student to professor — finally got his telescope. “This was a long-term effort by many people over many years, from amateur astronomers to people [living] next door who wanted to see us get a telescope. . . . The main point here is education.” The telescope serves as a tool to not only get astronomy students excited about research and their studies but also to bring in students — on and off campus and of all ages — interested in the study of the stars. Mason’s observatory opened in 2007. The telescope was added in May. Before the addition, Mason relied on a telescope from Virginia Tech, which it used from 1991 to 2001. “This is a much larger telescope,”


Fairfax magnet school focuses on educating ‘the whole child’

Music technology teacher Tara Hofmann’s lab buzzes with the sounds of young composers. Third-graders in the class perch in front of computer screens, plugging in music notes onto digital staves and playing back their work on recorders, a woodwind instrument all students at Bailey’s Elementary School for the Arts and Sciences learn to play. “This is college-level stuff,” Hofmann said of the composition, adding that although students are working on music, the applications of composition reach into their other classes, such as reading and writing. “Right now, what they are doing is the same process they would learn in [writing] classes. It’s about coming up with an idea, writing it, revising it, editing and then publishing it. It’s the same process.” Hofmann’s lab is a good example of the collaboration the school’s arts- and science-enhanced curriculum offers students as a means to teach the Standards of Learning required by Virginia, Assistant Principal Rachel Charlton said. “It’s amazing to see how the kids respond when they’re able to use these integrated skills,” she said. Bailey’s, which serves students in kindergarten through fifth grade, is one of two magnet elementary schools in Fairfax County currently accepting applications from students who live outside of the attendance area in Falls Church. Hunters Woods Elementary School for the Arts and Sciences in Reston is the other magnet. Students applying to Bailey’s are required to be proficient in English, entering grades kindergarten through fourth, and on or above grade-level status in math and language arts. About 250 to 300 students each year apply to Bailey’s, said Debbie Jones, the school system’s magnet school lottery coordinator. Jones said about 50 students each year are accepted. “About 80 percent of our applications are for kindergarten,” Jones said. “Each year, I ask the principals to tell me how many spaces are available at each grade level.” Student applicants are separated by grade level and compete in a computer-generated lottery for seats available for their grade. Parents who apply for their children can expect to learn the results in early April. A waiting list is maintained until August in case winning students decide against attending. The school system provides transportation to students living outside of Bailey’s and Hunters Woods schools’ attendance areas, with centrally located pickup spots, Jones said. Although Bailey’s draws parents interested in its focus on arts and sciences, the school also supports a Spanish-language immersion program, in


Montgomery County Animal Watch

These were among the cases received by the Montgomery County Animal Services Division. For information on shelter hours and location, adoption and licensing procedures, rabies clinics and low-cost neutering, call 240-773-5960. Horse wanders over yonder: The magical, vanishing cat Owl hits midflight snarl Free workshop for dog owners Pets available for adoption Rockville Germantown Shelter has adoptable cats Gaithersburg — Compiled by Lisa M. Bolton