USDA: We will not steer people away from meat to protect the environment

Pizzuco cuts prime beef at Florence Prime Meat Market in New York on Sept, 17, 2015. (Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post) To some, the idea sounded like a fringe notion promoted by environmentalist vegetarians. Where it came from, though, was an expert panel advising the federal government on how to write the forthcoming Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and its prominence provoked immediate controversy. People, the advisory panel said, ought to eat less meat in order to protect the environment. On Tuesday, though, that proposal appears to have failed, handing the disgruntled meat industry a major victory. “Moving forward, we hope the agencies will continue to focus on the clear science highlighting the wide variety of nutrition benefits of all meat and poultry products to develop a Dietary Guidelines for Americans best suited to achieve healthy outcomes for all Americans," Barry Carpenter, president and chief executive of the North American Meat Institute, said in a statement. The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee had recommended in February that Americans be kinder to the environment by eating more foods derived from plants and fewer that come from animals. Red meat was deemed particularly harmful because of the amount of land and feed required in its production. “Consistent evidence indicates that, in general, a dietary pattern that is higher in plant-based foods, such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds, and lower in animal-based foods is more health promoting and is associated with lesser environmental impact than is the current average U.S. diet,” the panel said. The meat industry disputed the claim, and the notion that dietary guidelines ought to consider the environment. On Tuesday, in an item posted on the USDA blog, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell rejected the proposal, indicating that the forthcoming Dietary Guidelines will focus on the immediate health aspects of food, rather than how food choices impact the environment. "We do not believe that the 2015 DGAs are the appropriate vehicle for this important policy conversation about sustainability," their blog post said. Both agencies stressed that sustainability is an important issue. USDA officials said the department already spends billions annually on sustainable food production and protecting natural resources. But in coming to their decision, Vilsack and Burwell wrote, they were guided by the legislation that describes the scope of their task as providing “nutritional and dietary information and guidelines.”


Sammies bring good news to feds hit with so much bad news

Facebook, for the People’s Choice award that will go to one of the 30 finalists. It’s also the first time the ceremony will be streamed live online, at servicetoamericamedals.org, from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Eastern time. That winner is being kept quiet until the ceremony. But the names of the winners in the other eight categories are known. Steven A. Rosenberg, Federal Employee of the Year (Photo by Aaron Clamage) The top medal, Federal Employee of the Year, goes to Steven A. Rosenberg, chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute. He is being honored not only for his accomplishments this year but also for work that has extended the lives of untold numbers of people over many years. Rosenberg “spent 40 years developing life-saving treatments that stimulate the immune system to attack cancer cells,” according to the partnership. Asked about this work, Rosenberg said: “We are here not to practice today’s medicine, but to create the medicine of tomorrow.” His work has provided many more tomorrows. Mia Beers, National Security and International Affairs Medal winner (Photo by Aaron Clamage) The National Security and International Affairs Medal goes to Mia Beers and the Ebola Disaster Assistance Response Team from the U.S. Agency for International Development. This was a cross-agency operation where federal employees put themselves at risk to help stop the spread of the disease in West Africa. “I often say that I have the best job in the world,” Beers said, “a job with a mandate to save lives, alleviate suffering and reduce the impact of disasters.” Adam R. Schildge, Call to Service Medal winner (Photo by Aaron Clamage) The Call to Service Medal goes to Adam R. Schildge with the Federal Transit Administration. With only four years of federal experience, Schildge managed a $3.6 billion grant program to help state and local authorities protect infrastructure damaged during Hurricane Sandy. Even an award-winning fed can feel frustrated at Washington’s ways. “At times, it can be frustrating to sit in Washington and hear about innovative ideas for transportation solutions and the great need for transportation investment in communities across the country, and then realize we don’t have a budget sufficient to prepare our country for future growth, or even keep the transportation systems we have in a state of good repair,” Schildge said. “Our state and local transportation partners deserve a long-term federal transportation bill that recognizes those needs.”


Street closures planned Saturday for Justice or Else/Million Man March

D.C. Police and the District Department of Transportation say several downtown streets will be closed Saturday for the Justice or Else/Million Man March. The following streets will be closed from 4 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday • 3rd Street NW from Constitution Avenue NW to Independence Avenue SW • 4th Street NW from Madison Avenue NW to Independence Avenue SW • Maryland Avenue SW from 3rd Street to Independence Avenue SW All closures and times are subject to change based on conditions. Motorists could encounter delays in the vicinity of the closures and should consider alternative routes.


Peekaboo: National Zoo’s panda cub takes his first glimpse of the world

He opened his eyes! Officials at the National Zoo said the giant baby panda — Bei Bei — has opened his eyes. And he’s got teeth that are starting to develop. Bei Bei's eyes are now partially open & teeth buds are developing. Weighing in at 4.5 lbs. of adorable. #PandaStory http://t.co/GJQUr5Wwfl The panda now weighs 4.5 pounds. Or as the zoo calls it, “4.5 lbs. of adorable.” [National Zoo’s giant panda cub is officially named Bei Bei] The cub was named last month at an event involving first ladies Michelle Obama and China’s Peng Liyuan. Bei Bei’s name, which is pronounced “Bay Bay,” means “precious treasure.” He was born on Aug. 22. His sister’s name is Bao Bao (pronounced “Bow Bow.”). The panda’s mother — Mei Xiang — was inseminated in the spring with semen from a panda in China and from the zoo’s male panda, Tian Tian. Tests showed that Tian Tian was the father. In August, she gave birth to a pair of cubs. One of the cubs died when it was 4 days old after it inhaled some food product, which led to pneumonia. Bei Bei survived. [The frantic, losing fight to save a cub] The unnamed giant panda cub is scooting around its den but not walking yet, according to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. He weighed 2.95 lbs at his latest veterinary exam on Sept. 17, nearly one month since his birth on Aug. 22. For the National Zoo, the pandas are one of the main attractions and its live panda cam of the new cub is also popular. When Bao Bao’s name was being picked, more than 123,000 votes came in from around the world. China owns and leases all giant pandas in U.S. zoos, and by agreement, any cubs born here are taken to China when they reach 4 years old. Giant panda cub is growing at the National Zoo. (Courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo)


Syrian forces start offensive; potential war crimes charges in Kunduz; and nuke smugglers seeking extremist buyers

A video grab made on Sept. 30, 2015, shows an image taken from footage made available on the Russian Defence Ministry’s official website, purporting to show an airstrike in Syria. (AFP Photon/ Russian Defence Ministry) SYRIAN FORCES START OFFENSIVE. POTENTIAL WAR CRIMES CHARGES IN KUNDUZ. NUKE SMUGGLERS SEEK EXTREMIST BUYERS.


Syria’s war helped create an epic dust storm, scientists say

A pigeon sits on a wire during a sandstorm in Beirut, on Sept. 8. (Alia Haju/Reuters) Last month, a thick yellow cloud of dust blanketed parts of the Middle East and extended all the way to Cyprus. Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees were forced to scurry for shelter from the choking plume, while Israelis were instructed to stay indoors and ports in Egypt were shut. Health officials in Damascus, the Syrian capital, said more than 1,200 people, including 100 children, were hospitalized with breathing difficulties; in Lebanon, two women died as a result of the dust storm. It was an unusual, unseasonal event, as my colleague Hugh Naylor reported. And, according to a team of Israeli scientists, it may have been the consequence of extreme, man-made conditions in Syria and Iraq right now. As Israeli newspaper Haaretz notes, researchers at Ben-Gurion University's Institute for Desert Research scrutinized the storm, the likes of which are usually seen in the spring. They found that the particles of dust kicked up were larger than anything their instruments had previously recorded (since being operation in 1995) and that the dust traveled at a rather low level. This satellite image, posted online by NASA on Sept. 9, shows a sand storm blanketing the Middle East. (NASA via AP) Haaretz's report suggests this is tied to a dramatic change in the Syrian environment, where large-scale agricultural work has ceased and war has literally wracked the land: According to initial results of the study, the researchers attribute the storm and its intensity to two main factors. The first is a sharp decline in the amount of farm activity in northern Syria, largely caused by removal of dams along the Euphrates River by Turkey. “The process began during the precious decade,” said [Professor Arnon] Karnieli, adding, “The analysis shows stark differences between the Turkish side of the border and the Syrian side in terms of vegetation.” The other factor is the military activity, which has caused harm to the soil crust in Syria. It's just another sign of the impact of the country's hideous, grinding conflict, which is now in its fifth year. More than 300,000 Syrians have perished since the civil war began and more than half the country's population, nearly 12 million people, have been forced to flee their homes. The storm provided one bit of respite for opposition fighters combating the Syrian regime: It


Bombing of Afghan hospital wasn’t a ‘war crime’

aid to those who need it most and can afford it least. Its volunteers — yes, volunteers — work under horrendous and dangerous conditions when, to be just a touch vulgar, they could be making lots of money spiffing up the faces of the wrinkled rich. Still, I recoil from a statement made by the organization’s president, Joanne Liu. She has suggested that the bombing of the organization’s hospital in northern Afghanistan was a “war crime.” I can appreciate her agony. MSF, the French acronym for the organization, lost 22 patients and volunteers and 37 others were injured. The immediate culprit was an American C-130 gunship, flying close support during the battle to retake the city of Kunduz from the Taliban. It is not clear, though, who ordered the attack — American or Afghan forces — or what exactly went wrong. As is almost standard in these situations, the explanations keep changing. The BBC said Liu “has dismissed the American explanation for the attack.” “Until proven otherwise, we are working on the presumption of war crime,” she said in her statement. If that’s the case, then who is the war criminal? Liu does not say, but by implication she suggests it could be the United States. In other words, she is suggesting that the United States ordered or permitted the bombing of a hospital. Maybe the Afghan military asked for the strike, but the United States made it happen. This is deeply disturbing stuff — disturbing as well as offensive. One would think that Liu would first think the strike was an accident — the sort of thing that happens in war. But to think the United States purposely bombed a hospital is evidence of a mindset that suggest such deep hostility toward America that Liu ought to go work somewhere else. I don’t for a minute think that the United States was involved in “war crime” here — unless the definition of a crime is so stretched as to encompass a horrible accident. Besides, I can’t imagine what purpose such a crime could serve. How does the bombing of a hospital advance U.S. interests in Afghanistan? You would think it would be counterproductive. The horror of what happened to her staff and their patients may have caused Liu to say something she will someday regret. That day is now. She ought to clarify. Her organization has suffered enough already.


Why the group eBible Fellowship believes the world will be annihilated today

A blood-red moon lights up the sky during a total lunar eclipse on April 4 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Phil Walter/Getty Images) The leader of a small group outside Philadelphia has predicted that the world will be annihilated today. “It’ll be gone forever. Annihilated,” Chris McCann, founder of eBible Fellowship, told the Guardian, basing his prediction on his biblical readings. In 2011, Harold Camping, president of the Family Radio Network, drew enormous attention when he predicted that the world would end in a series of rolling earthquakes. After an initial prediction of May 21, 2011, Camping pushed the End back to Oct. 21. Then he decided to stop making predictions and resigned from his position. Camping did name dates, but he was more careful than he was portrayed in some stories. Camping warned his followers that his predictions could be wrong and told them not to sell their belongings. But Camping’s predictions were spread on billboards, T-shirts, bumper stickers and radio broadcasts, getting out his message in a way that most groups haven’t been able to, so he drew quite a bit of attention. Camping died in 2013 at 92. McCann, a father of four from Darby Borough, Pa., believed Camping’s predictions back in 2011, according to the Philadelphia Daily News. At the time, he told his 150 followers that he thought it was their last Sunday. McCann’s group is small, reporting just $94,915 in revenue to the Internal Revenue Service in 2013. The organization took in about $900,000 in contributions between 2007 and 2011, with contributions increasing leading up to 2011, the Daily News reported. The group, which meets once a month, received about $361,000 in contributions in 2011, compared with about $94,000 in 2012, according to their recent tax filings. McCann did not appear to take a salary in 2011 and 2012, but in 2013, he reported an annual compensation of $33,325. Zeke Piestrup, a documentary filmmaker who created the film “Apocalypse Later” about Camping’s ministry, said most of the excitement surrounding Camping switched over to McCann because McCann provided a specific date. “These concepts are super popular among Americans, but it’s funny how angry people can get at date setters,” Piestrup said. “There’s always human fallout and blame.” McCann believes that God used the initial date of May 21, 2011, to devote 1,600 days to decide which non-churchgoers to save, which is why he landed on Oct.


NASA is opening up hundreds of patents to inventors, for free

The International Space Station. (NASA via Getty Images) From the memory foam in your mattress to the advanced alloys in your tennis racquet, NASA is behind some of the biggest technological advances of our time. Now, the space agency is giving other inventors the chance to build on those by letting them use its patents — for free. NASA's Technology Transfer Program says it's opening up its patent portfolio and waiving the costs associated with using the patents for at least the first three years of a company's product development. Once a startup has brought the product to market, NASA will start collecting a "standard net royalty fee," but otherwise inventors will be able to use the patents however they like. Combining NASA technologies, or building on them in new ways, could lead to further advances in materials science, communications, manufacturing, heath and medicine or robotics, to name a few. NASA maintains a searchable database of all the eligible patents for licensing under its startup initiative. They cover everything from an airplane that can fly in low-density atmospheres like Mars to super-accurate lasers that can transfer data through space at the speed of light to lie-detection technology. Although we think of NASA as mainly a science and exploration agency, it's easy to forget that it designs some pretty interesting stuff in service of that mission. RELATED: How to build a Tesla, according to Tesla Airbus wants to patent the most uncomfortable airplane seats ever What government gets right in tech, according to the head of the patent office


Nobel Prize in chemistry shared by American, Swedish and Turkish scientists for DNA repair

The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Swedish scientist Tomas Lindahl, American scientist Paul Modrich and Turkish scientist Aziz Sancar for their work on the mechanisms of DNA repair. Three scientists shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for their work deciphering the mysteries of how cells repair damaged DNA, work that could lead to new therapies for everything from cancer to old age. Swedish scientist Tomas Lindahl, American Paul Modrich and U.S.-Turkish national Aziz Sancar will share in the award of roughly $960,000. [Sun damage keeps happening even after you go inside, new study says] "Their systematic work has made a decisive contribution to the understanding of how the living cell functions, as well as providing knowledge about the molecular causes of several hereditary diseases and about mechanisms behind both cancer development and aging," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement. Swedish scientist Tomas Lindahl, U.S. scientist Paul Modrich and U.S.-Turkish scientist Aziz Sancar won for their work on the mechanisms of DNA repair. Lindahl, of the Francis Crick Institute and Clare Hall Laboratory in Britain, began with a fundamental question in the late 1960s: "How stable is DNA, really?" He found that DNA decays so rapidly that the frequent changes should be devastating to life. Multiple potentially dangerous breakdowns of the genome happen every day, according to his work. Lindahl discovered base excision repair, a mechanism by which certain proteins work to constantly repair DNA. "I feel very lucky and privileged," Linahl said Wednesday in an interview posted on the Nobel web site. "It's always nice at the end of your career to have recognition that what you have done is actually important." Sancar, a dual citizen of Turkey and the United States and a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, focused on the mechanisms by which proteins repair ultraviolet damage, called nucleotide excision repair. His "ability to generate knowledge about the molecular details of the process changed the entire research field," the Nobel committee said Wednesday. Modrich, a Duke University medical professor and investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, detailed the mechanism behind how cells correct errors that occur when DNA is replicated during cell division -- a process known as mismatch repair. [Nobel Prize in physics goes to Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald for work on neutrinos] "The genetic information that governs how human beings are


NASA rocket may conjure blue and red cloud over D.C., Mid-Atlantic tonight

Map showing when a sounding rocket may be visible across the Mid-Atlantic after launch, expected Wednesday night in 7 to 9 p.m. window (NASA) Between 7 and 9 p.m. tonight, look-up and you may see “a cloud that is blue-green and red in color” as NASA launches a sounding rocket from its Wallops Flight Facility in southeast, Va. Via NASA: “The cloud in the upper left hand part of the image is due to a barium release. The purple-red part is the ionized component which has become elongated along the Earth’s magnetic field lines. The purple-blue cloud that surrounds the red ionized barium is a combination of the neutral barium and strontium. The blue and white trail in the lower portion of the image is from a TMA (Tri-methyl aluminum) vapor trail that reveals the neutral wind trails as a function of altitude.” The glowing cloud of colored vapor will form about 130 miles above Earth in the southeast sky about six minutes after launch as the rocket deploys four sub-payloads containing a mix of barium and strontium. “Residents from Long Island, New York, 235 miles north of the launch site, to Morehead City, North Carolina, 232 miles south, 165 miles west in Charlottesville, Virginia — and everyone in between — could get a glimpse of the colorful evening launch,” NASA says. The amount of chemicals being released “poses no hazard”, NASA says, and is much smaller than used in a typical July 4 fireworks display. NASA is intentionally creating this cloud to test new spacecraft technologies. Specifically, the vapor cloud is a means to test its sub-payload ejection system. NASA launched an Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Calif., on Oct. 8, in a mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office to test smaller, faster and cheaper satellite technology. “The ejection technologies will include a deployment system for forming vapor clouds in space for wind and ionosphere studies and ejectable sub-payloads testing data transmissions between sub and main-payloads during suborbital rocket flights, primarily during auroral studies,” NASA writes. For the latest status of the launch so you can know when to look, follow NASA Wallops Twitter feed or Facebook page. The launch will depend on clear weather and the absence of any technical problems. The launch window extends through October 12 if tonight’s attempt is scrubbed.


How American women fell behind Japanese women in the workplace

Other countries are pulling ahead when it comes to work-life balance. (Photo by Flickr user Stephan) About nine years ago, “All we can do is ask them to do their best per head,” he asserted in Recent data, however, reflect a startling shift: Japanese women now outpace American women in labor force participation. Sixty-four percent of working-age women in Japan are employed, compared to 63 percent of American women. The Japanese employment rate surged in recent years as the U.S. rate declined and then stagnated: The numbers may confuse casual observers, especially those who recall Yanagisawa publicly defining women by their fertility in the not-so-distant past. And for generations, American women led the developed world in female employment. So, what happened? Economists don't know for sure. The culprit could be a combination of changing attitudes toward mothers at work in Japan and relatively limited support for mothers at work in the United States. In 2013, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced he would prioritize gender equality in the workplace, calling it vital to sustained economic growth. Among his goals: raise the share of mothers who return to work after the birth of their first child to 55 percent by the year 2020, a move he believes would boost the country's gross domestic product by 15 percent. A 1999 report from Kathy Matsui, Goldman Sach's first female partner in Japan, fueled the idea, dubbed Womenomics. "Japan is a country with a shrinking population caused by a seemingly intractable decline in its birthrate," Abe wrote in a 2013 Wall Street Journal op-ed. "But Womenomics offers a solution with its core tenet that a country that hires and promotes more women grows economically, and no less important, demographically as well." Meanwhile, the recovery in the United States Roughly 8.7 million jobs vanished during the last recession. Since the downturn ended, however, men have encountered less trouble getting back to work, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Between February 2010 and June 2014, men gained 5.5 million jobs while women gained 3.6 million. Economist Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, blames this uneven rebound on a blend of forces: The United States doesn't offer family-friendly workplace policies such as paid family leave or sick days, and the gender wage gap hasn’t budged much in a decade as the cost of child care has soared. “The question is: Why didn’t we


How Tom Sietsema chose his 2015 top 10 restaurants list

by the way, are highly personal and therefore different than a round-up of 'best' places to eat." - 64 restaurants fell out of the top 10 in 2015: Mintwood Place, Red Hen, Fiola Mare, Le Diplomate, the Partisan and Boss Shepherd's. - 1 restaurant was promoted into the top 10 in 2015: Komi. The top 10 isn't merely a measure of star-power, which explains how a 2.5-star G by Mike Isabella, for example, can place higher at No. 8 than the lauded, 4-star Komi at No. 9. "What I like so much about G by Mike Isabella is how approachable and accessible the operation is: Great sandwiches by day, fine-dining at a fair price by night," Sietsema says. "Komi, on the other hand, is something you have to plan -- and budget -- for. It's a rarer treat, whereas I can enjoy G on a regular basis." - 4 restaurants made the top 10 in both 2014 and 2015: Rasika, Rose's Luxury, Inn at Little Washington and Little Serow. - 6 restaurants made the top 10 after not being in the guide at all in 2014: Rasika West End (sharing No. 2 this year with Rasika Penn Quarter), Masseria, the Riggsby, Garrison, G by Mike Isabella and the Grill Room. "What impressed me most this year was how many good new restaurants came on the scene, and how some veteran establishments worked to get even better," Sietsema says. "It’s hard to stay on the top, but Rose’s Luxury and Little Serow, among other destinations, did just that by improving on already successful game plans." "One thing is clear," Sietsema adds: "Washington has never looked or tasted better." For reference, the 2014 and 2015 top 10 lists are below. 2015 top 10 1. Rose's Luxury 2. Rasika/Rasika West End 3. Masseria 4. Little Serow 5. Inn at Little Washington 6. The Riggsby 7. Garrison 8. G by Mike Isabella 9. Komi 10. The Grill Room 2014 top 10: 1. Rasika 2. Mintwood Place 3. Rose's Luxury 4. Red Hen 5. Inn at Little Washington 6. Little Serow 7. Fiola Mare 8. The Partisan 9. Le Diplomate 10. Boss Shepherd's Correction: This post has been updated to reflect the correct number of restaurants that fell out of the top 10 for this year. Related items: 2015 Fall Dining Guide 2014 Fall Dining Guide Tom Sietsema's 2014 Fall Dining Guide, by the numbers


On Metrorail, it’s the beginning of the end of paper farecards

(Marlon Correa/The Washington Post) Metro’s long-standing plan to do away with paper farecards has finally come to fruition, the transit agency announced Wednesday. As of this week, fare machines at the Huntington, Franconia-Springfield and King Street-Old Town stations, on the Yellow and Blue lines, are dispensing only SmarTrip cards, Metro said. By Friday, the agency said, paper farecards will be gone from five more stations on the two lines: Crystal City, National Airport, Braddock Road, Eisenhower Avenue and Van Dorn Street. The agency is in the process of retrofitting more than 400 other fare machines throughout the subway. Each month, more and more of them will dispense only SmarTrip cards, until paper farecards – a vestige of Metrorail’s infancy in the 1970s – are entirely gone from the machines in January. As for those old paper cards in your wallet, “Starting in March 2016, paper fare cards will no longer be accepted,” Metro said in a statement. “After that, riders holding paper farecards will still be able to transfer the value from paper to SmarTrip at any rail station or Metro sales office through June 2016.” Metro’s fare gates, designed decades ago, were originally meant only for paper cards. Through a system of rubber belts, magnetic readers and other antiquated components, cards are pulled into machinery of the gates and instantly processed before they pop back out. Metro says that keeping the gates in working order requires a lot of expensive maintenance. When new technology became available in the late 1990s, SmarTrip card readers were installed on the gates. Still, while more than 90 percent of Metrorail passengers use SmarTrip cards these days, fare machines have been dispensing about 2 million paper cards each month, which cumulatively take a toll on the gates. Although the gates were manufactured at different times, all were made with the same 1960s technology. The agency said it will spend almost $9 million to retrofit all its farecard dispensers.


Green Beret compares U.S. military inaction in Afghan rapes to Penn State scandal

right during the Penn State football program’s child sex abuse scandal.” [Troops detail orders to ignore sexual abuse in Afghanistan] Martland added that he began facing discipline from the Army beginning in late 2011, around the same time former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky faced charges for raping numerous children and university officials were cited for failing to act on the allegations years earlier. Sandusky ultimately was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse. “Ironically, I was fighting being kicked out of the Army while watching daily public outrage about the child abuse occurring at Penn State and the leniency in dealing with that issue,” Martland said. “Legal law comes from man is fallible. Although well intentioned, it can fail us at times.” The letter marks some of Martland’s first comments made public since his case emerged in August when Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R.-Calif.) began advocating on behalf of Martland. The Green Beret has since received growing support, including from the Veterans of Foreign Wars organization and Rep. Max Thornberry (R.-Texas), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Martland was selected to be removed from the Army this year as a result of his actions in Afghanistan four years ago. Army officials said Wednesday they will give him 60 days to file an appeal with the Army Board for the Correction of Military Records after Army Secretary John McHugh met with Thornberry and discussed the issue. Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland is shown here supervising training in Afghanistan. (Photo released by Rep. Duncan Hunter) The decision, first reported by Army Times, gives the soldier a chance to make his case to a panel headed by a one-star general, as the Army faces increasing scrutiny from members of Congress and other critics about its handling of the case. Martland was selected for involuntary separation from the Army through its Qualitative Management Program, which has been used to thin the Army’s enlisted non-commissioned officer corps as the Army shrinks following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Army officials said in a statement that McHugh agreed to postpone Martland’s discharge “out of respect for Chairman Thornberry’s continued support for our military, and his personal appeal” in a meeting with McHugh on Tuesday. But the statement added that the Army has no choice but to reduce the size of its ranks, and considers the Qualitative Management Program that identified Martland


The first-ever private mission to the moon just got a lot closer to reality

The Hopper, SpaceIL's moon lander. (Courtesy SpaceIL) An Israeli nonprofit that's competing to land the first private rover on the moon took a giant leap Wednesday when it said it's secured a spot on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to be launched in the latter half of 2017. The nonprofit, SpaceIL, is one of 16 teams participating in Google's Lunar XPRIZE competition. The challenge, which launched in 2007, calls for successfully landing an unmanned vehicle on the moon, driving it a third of a mile and then sending high-definition images back to Earth. Securing a verified launch contract gives SpaceIL's rover a place inside a capsule within the rocket, which will carry other, non-SpaceIL payloads as well. The group said the contract wouldn't have been possible without the help of software billionaire Morris Kahn and Sheldon Adelson (yes, that Sheldon Adelson), whose two charities led a fundraising round that helped seal the deal. "The #NewSpaceRace is on!" Google tweeted Wednesday. The other teams in the competition have until the end of 2016 to sign their own launch contracts so that they can complete the trip no later than the end of 2017. Help SpaceIL get to the moon


Who will win the Nobel Peace Prize? These are the odds-on favorites.

winning the accolade. However, popes have apparently been considered for the prize before – a recently released autobiography from the former director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute suggests that Pope John Paul II had his award blocked by Lutheran Bishop Gunnar Staalsett and other panel members. Paddy Power: 8/1 William Hill: 5/1 Ladbrokes: 6/1 Denis Mukwege Pioneering Democratic Republic of Congo doctor Denis Mukwege founded a clinic for rape victims in the country. (Junior D. Kannah/AFP/Getty Images) Denis Mukwege is a gynecologist who has personally treated tens of thousands of rape victims in the Democratic Republic of the Congo at Panzi Hospital, which he founded in 1998. He has risked his life for his work: After criticizing the government's use of rape as a weapon of war in 2012, gunmen attempted to murder him in his own home. Mukwege has long been considered deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize – he was a favorite among bookmakers last year, and Harpviken of the PRIO considers hims a favorite in 2015, along with Jeanne Nacatche Banyere and Jeannette Kahindo Bindu, two others who work with Congo's sexual violence survivors through a church network. However, he lacks the celebrity appeal some other candidates have. “To treat women for the first time, second time, and now I’m treating the children born after rape,” Mukwege said in an interview with the New York Times in 2013. “This is not acceptable.” Paddy Power: 7/1 William Hill: 6/1 Ladbrokes: 5/1 Novaya Gazeta Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of the Novaya Gazeta newapaper, in Moscow on Jan. 26, 2009. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) Novaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper, is one of the most respected independent outlets still operating in Russia. In particular, its coverage of the war in Ukraine earned the newspaper plaudits over the past year. The publication exists under constant government pressure, and its journalists risk their lives for their work: Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, critical of the Russian war in Chechnya, was assassinated in 2006. The newspaper was thought to be one of the favorites for the Nobel Peace Prize last year. If the newspaper does win, it would be fitting: The publication was first started with Nobel Peace Prize money that Mikhail Gorbachev won in 1990. Paddy Power: 7/1 William Hill: 13/2 Ladbrokes: 6/1 Japanese people who conserve Article 9 A monk opposed to Article 9 revision holding a sign is seen between police officers outside the Japanese


CHART: The Nobel Peace Prize ignored much of the world until a few decades ago

it includes many laureates from other parts of the world, particularly Africa, Asia and the former Soviet Union. More of the recipients have also been women. "The impact of the decolonization of Africa, the Vietnam War and the fear of an atomic war made the Nobel committee more focused on conflicts outside Europe," said Oivind Stenersen, who co-authored a book about the Nobel Peace Prize. The Norway-based peace prize committee, which is to announce the 2015 winner Friday, had focused on political leaders but began including more dissidents and lesser-known figures in the second half of the 20th century. For instance, no Russian won the Nobel Peace Prize between 1901 and 1974. But in 1975, the prize was awarded to Soviet nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov. Sakharov, the mastermind behind Soviet thermonuclear weapons, received the honor "for his opposition to the abuse of power and his work for human rights," according to the committee's official Web site. Soviet leaders viewed the committee's choice as offensive and prohibited Sakharov from traveling to Norway to accept his award. But the decision reflected the growing shift within the Norway-based committee that continued in the following decades. "The prize has increasingly focused on domestic political arrangements, especially regimes' disregard of individual liberties and democratic institutions," Krebs said. He referenced the examples of Iranian lawyer and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 laureate, and Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who won in 1991. Three influential women from Africa and the Middle East received the 2011 award - Liberia's Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first elected female president in post-colonial Africa, peace activist Leymah Gbowee, also from Liberia, and Tawakkol Karman, a leading Yemeni activist. Malala Yousafzai, who has advocated for girls' right to an education in Pakistan and beyond, became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner last year, when she was 17. Whether the prize has had much of an impact on the laureates' work remains the subject of academic debate. "Though the prizewinners themselves are often spared, regimes have clamped down hard on local dissidents to demonstrate resolve and prevent local and international activists from taking heart," Krebs said. "To the extent that the Nobel Peace Prize has been successful in drawing worldwide attention to their plight - or to the extent that the regime believes it will - it has rendered insecure regimes even more anxious and thus more brutal and dangerous."


Was the U.S. attack on the Kunduz hospital a war crime?

A wounded staff member of Doctors Without Borders receives treatment in Kabul after a U.S. strike on a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images) A hospital bombed in the midst of intense fighting. Patients and staff killed and wounded, the facility destroyed. An unspeakable tragedy — and unfortunately one seen before in recent and current conflicts. The U.S. airstrike that hit the Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, on Saturday was a horrible tragedy. But was it a war crime, as the organization immediately asserted? Bombing a hospital and killing doctors and wounded or sick persons may seem, on first glance, to be an obvious war crime. If it isn’t, one might wonder, what is? MSF’s outrage is understandable and genuine. However, the reality of both the law and the facts is significantly more complicated. This incident highlights not only the challenges and tragic consequences of war in populated areas, but also the dynamic interplay between media coverage of military operations and the legal regulation of armed conflict. The law of war — also called international humanitarian law or the law of armed conflict — governs the conduct of states, armed groups and individuals during armed conflict and seeks to minimize harm to civilians as much as possible. The White House says President Obama telephoned the head of Doctors Without Borders and apologized for a deadly airstrike on the aid group's hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. War crimes are serious violations of the law of war. They include unlawful attacks on civilians and attacks on protected objects such as hospitals and religious or cultural property. Not all attacks that result in civilians dying or hospitals destroyed are automatically war crimes, however. The lawfulness of any attack will depend on both the intended target of the attack and the method of carrying it out. So what do we know — or at least potentially know — right now about the incident in Kunduz? [There will be another devastating military attack on civilian targets soon] News reports Other reports from Afghan sources asserted that the Taliban was using the hospital grounds to plot and launch attacks, including “firing rocket-propelled grenades from the property,” and the airstrikes were aimed at the perimeter of the hospital property to stop the attacks. The hospital building suffered several direct hits. Twenty-two people were killed and many more injured. The first question is whether the


The big trends in synthetic biology you need to know

DARPA has emerged as a leader in the synthetic biology space, recently awarding a $32 million contract to the Broad Institute Foundry for DNA design and manufacturing. (Credit: Len Rubenstein/Broad Institute) Both public sector agencies and private sector investors are pouring new money into the synthetic biology space, and that’s leading to a situation where we can expect a burst of new innovations impacting fields as diverse as agriculture, energy and health. According to the latest “U.S. Trends in Synthetic Biology Research Funding” report from the Wilson Center’s Synthetic Biology Project in Washington, D.C., the U.S. government funded more than $820 million in synthetic biology research programs in the period from 2008-2014. In the public sector, the role of innovation giant DARPA in funding synthetic biology projects has exploded, eclipsing the role of other prominent U.S. government agencies that fund synthetic biology programs, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the USDA. In 2014 alone, DARPA funded $100 million in programs, more than three times the amount funded by the NSF, marking a fast ramp-up from a level of zero in 2010. Given the innovation leadership role that DARPA has played in everything from self-driving cars and robots to the development of the Internet, it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on what DARPA is doing in the field of synthetic biology. Through initiatives such as its Living Foundries program, DARPA seeks to facilitate the creation of a manufacturing platform for living organisms. At the end of September, DARPA awarded an MIT synthetic biology lab, the Broad Institute Foundry, a $32 million contract for designing and manufacturing DNA. Understanding DARPA's Mission As Todd Kuiken, the senior program associate at the Wilson Center Synthetic Biology Project who authored the report, told me in a conversation, DARPA now represents close to 60 percent of all public funding in the synthetic biology field. If you add in all Department of Defense spending, he says, then nearly two-thirds of all synthetic biology funding from the federal government has a defense industry tilt to it. That could be worrisome if you consider the prospects for the weaponization of synthetic organisms and the potential to create biological mayhem in countries that are not friendly to the United States. Many of the Department of Defense programs are classified and exact numbers are difficult to come by, so there’s no real way to


D.C. charter schools serve fewer at-risk students than nearby neighborhood schools

they have greater needs and are considered harder to serve. In a report of its demographic data, the D.C. Public Charter School Board says on its Web site: “Charter schools serve a student body that is equally or at times more disadvantaged, while outperforming DCPS [D.C. Public Schools].” The Web site notes that D.C. charter schools serve a greater proportion of African American students and comparable percentages of special education students and at-risk students. While traditional and charter schools serve about the same proportion of at-risk students overall, the students are spread out differently. The share of at-risk students in traditional schools varies greatly — from 1 to 90 percent. There are very few at-risk students attending elementary schools in affluent neighborhoods in Northwest, where there are no charter schools. There are much higher concentrations of at-risk students in neighborhood schools elsewhere in the city that are more economically challenged and that directly compete with nearby charter schools. For example, at Noyes Education Campus in Northeast, 63 percent of students were considered at-risk last year. Four charter schools serving similar grades in its attendance zone had smaller numbers of at-risk students: 62 percent at Mary McLeod Bethune Day; 46 percent at DC Preparatory Edgewood Campus; 14 percent at Lee Montessori; and 11 percent at Inspired Teaching Demonstration School. Charter schools may attract certain families because of their specific philosophy or instructional approach. And families must apply and gain admission through the city-wide enrollment lottery, which requires a level of motivation and organization. Neighborhood schools, by right, must enroll any child within its boundaries starting in kindergarten. Ginger Moored, a fiscal analyst for the city who conducted the analysis, said she was interested in whether relying on a city-wide lottery would increase socio-economic diversity in charter schools, because they can draw from all different neighborhoods. But she found that was not always true. “Both DCPS and charters have some of the least economically diverse schools in the city—they’re just located in different parts of the city,” she wrote. The difference in concentrations of at-risk students between charters and DCPS was most pronounced east of the Anacostia River in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Two dozen traditional public schools had concentrations of at-risk students that exceeded 75 percent compared to just one charter school. You can find interactive maps with school-level information about at-risk populations on the District, Measured Web site.


Scientists say ‘runner’s high’ is like a marijuana high

researchers found is almost certainly intriguing enough to inspire followup studies. Researchers from the Central Institute of Mental Health of the University of Heidelberg took mice and gave them running wheels. They found that after the runs, the mice were less anxious and tolerated pain better. Then they used drugs to block the animals’ endocannabinoid system. The results were striking. The animals were as anxious after running as before running and more sensitive to pain. "We thus show for the first time to our knowledge that cannabinoid receptors are crucial for main aspects of a runner’s high," the researchers wrote. [Why running makes you happy] (Bigstock) There's been a lot of other interesting research on the subject of runner's high recently. In August, scientists at the University of Montreal published their work on a different animal study involving the hormone leptin, which is nicknamed the "satiety hormone." Leptin, which regulates energy stores, signals to the body when it has enough fuel and energy. The researchers said it's possible that when you are in the middle of a workout, your leptin levels may fall, and this could "send a hunger signal to the brain's pleasure center to generate the rewarding effects of running." In a study published in the journal Cell Metabolism, they compared normal mice with genetically engineered mice that lacked a leptin-sensitive protein called STAT3 that relays the leptin signal to release the reward chemical dopamine. The normal mice logged an average of six kilometers a day on a running wheel. But the genetically engineered mice ran nearly twice as much as the normal mice — 11 kilometers — each day. If these studies are confirmed, the big question out there is whether these beneficial effects one day be bottled to help people exercise more to improve their health. It's looking more and more like a possibility. This post has been updated. Read more: Neighbors file 'extraordinary, unprecedented' public nuisance lawsuit against family of autistic boy Here's why more sex, even on 'off' days, may up your chances of pregnancy Teens with late bedtimes may be more likely to gain weight over time, study says The problem with recess in the United States: We get 27 minutes. Finnish kids get 75, Japanese kids even more. SPECIAL REPORT: Billionaire Paul Allen's quest to build an artificial brain For more health news, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter here.


Sample local wine, beer, whiskey and rum on a trip to the Eastern Shore

him to an old pool hall in Cambridge, Md., for some quality time. “I remember spending afternoons in there with my grandmother playing pinball and smashing 50-cent hot dogs,” Brohawn says. “That place was awesome.” In 2013, when Brohawn and business partner J.T. Merryweather were searching for a home for their brewery, Brohawn found himself back inside that pool hall, which was vacant and in need of serious TLC. That August, after major renovations, RAR (an abbreviation for the brewery’s clunkier full name, ReAleRevival) opened its doors. “We both love this town and saw a ton of potential in the downtown area,” says Brohawn, a former electrician. “We honestly didn’t even talk about doing this elsewhere. It was always Cambridge.” The sleepy small town might not be the most obvious stop on the way to the Eastern Shore, but RAR is helping put Cambridge on the map. The brewery is growing rapidly — they recently bought a building around the corner to house a canning line — and in two years, RAR has made almost 20 different beers, many of which have found their way into D.C. bars. (The brewery started distributing in the city earlier this year.) Just last month, RAR canned its first beer: Nanticoke Nectar, a juicy and bitter West Coast-style India Pale Ale. Nanticoke Nectar is RAR’s first canned offering. (RAR Brewing) You can almost always find the brewery’s flagship offering and best-seller on tap at the brewpub, along with such standards as Bucktown Brown Ale, the Belgian blonde Bottom Feeder and a hefeweizen, Groove City, that Brohawn plans to can next. (RAR is in the process of experimenting with barrel-aged and sour beers.) The brewpub itself is an open space with a laid-back vibe and a view of the brewing tanks. (RAR doesn’t offer tours of the brewery, but Brohawn is planning to add them in the near future.) Food is prepped behind the bar and the menu features casual pub fare like hot dogs — a nod to the former pool hall — and tater tots smothered in cheese and meat. A custom-built shuffleboard table hosts league play on Tuesdays, and there’s usually free music on the weekends. “Cambridge is a great town with a lot to offer,” Brohawn says. “We just hope one day we can give [this town] as much as they’ve given us.” R.G. 504 Poplar St., Cambridge, Md; 443-225-5664, rarbrewing.com.


Think Usain Bolt is fast? Scientists say fish are the world’s best athletes

some of the fastest mammals on land. Fish have developed this ability for longer than humans can imagine, given their standing as some of the first organisms to form hundreds of millions of years ago. Humans run marathons. Salmon swim entire coastlines and tuna swim around the world. When they’re challenged – which generally means chased by predators – they really get on their horse, flying underwater at incredible speeds. Humans catch them easily, but advance fishing tools and methods cheat nature. A quick getaway from predators isn’t the only skill fish evolved to survive. Conditions in water can change dramatically, especially with humans around adding phosphorous, nitrogen and acidity to water. In areas of low oxygen in water, such as a problem known as dead zones that leave them sucking for air, they can double or triple oxygen delivery to their tissue. The study was published early this week in the journal PLOS One. Researchers have used rainbow trout to understand how fish deliver oxygen for the past decade. First they tested how it's done by monitoring rainbow trout muscle oxygen levels in real-time. Then they compared the results with medical studies of humans to show how much more powerful fish like trout and salmon are. [USGS study says Chesapeake tributaries are warming, and pollution might increase] “This information tells us how fish have adapted this very important process of getting oxygen and delivering it to where it needs to be so that they can live in all kinds of conditions, warm or cold water, and water with low oxygen levels,” Rummer said. Many elite runners have taken to wearing elevation training masks that reduce their oxygen intake, hoping to simulate breathing at a higher altitude to better their performance. Fish don’t need a mask. They’re born that way. “This trait may be particularly central to performance in athletic species, such as long-distance swimming salmon or fast swimming tuna,” said Colin Brauner, a University of British Columbia researcher and study co-author. “For fish,” he said, “enhanced oxygen delivery may be one of the most important adaptations of their 400-million-year evolutionary history.” Read More: This deep sea creature looks just like the Flying Spaghetti Monster Scientists might have just discovered the true origin of Hepatitis B — in a fish Seastars are wasting away in wider numbers on a larger scale in two oceans To save their depleted species, females


Draconid meteor shower peaks Thursday and Friday nights: How to watch

Via NASA: A Draconid disappears behind a tree in this image taken by a Canadian all sky camera (UWO Meteor Physics Group). Around ten meteors per hour, maybe more, will dart through the skies this evening and Friday evening, as the Draconid meteor shower peaks. This shower occurs when Earth collides with bits of debris shed by periodic comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner. The slow-moving meteors originate from the head of the constellation Draco in the northern sky, hence their name. Clear, dark conditions in the D.C.area – thanks to a lack of cloud cover and a waning crescent moon – should make for good viewing tonight in the D.C. area. On Friday night, cloud cover and possible showers likely play spoiler. The shower is a highly unpredictable one. While most years it produces only a smattering of shooting stars each hour, once in a great while the skies erupt with activity. “Close encounters with dusty filaments produced storms of more than 10,000 Draconids per hour in 1933 and 1946 and lesser outbursts in 1985, 1998, and 2005,” NASA reported in 2011. NASA predicts EarthSky offers USA Today adds


15 things to do in the D.C. area on the weekend of October 9-11

Here are this Columbus Day Weekend's best bets in nightlife, festivals, comedy, sports and music, as well as many other events around the Washington area. Kygo - Firestone ft. Conrad Sewell Thursday-Sunday: Friday-Sunday: [The Hotlist: The best of D.C. in October] Friday: Friday: Eighteenth Street Lounge celebrates its 20th anniversary this weekend with parties every night. (Photo by Allison Shelley/For The Washington Post) Friday-Sunday: [20 years later, people still line up to get into Eighteenth Street Lounge] Friday-Sunday: Saturday: Saturday: Saturday: [Beer festivals are taking over your fall weekends] Saturday: Saturday: Saturday: Saturday-Sunday: Saturday-Monday: Sunday:


Rio 2016 Olympic equestrian events might not take place in Brazil, official says

U.S. rider Jan Ebeling competes on the horse Rafalca at the 2012 London Olympics. (Alex Livesey/Getty Images) Brazil’s Agriculture Ministry needs to stop horsing around if it wants the equestrian events at next summer’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro to be held in Brazil, the head of the Brazilian Equestrian Confederation warned this week. Luiz Roberto Giugni accused the government of delaying the documentation process that would allow competitors from the United States, Canada and Europe to bring their horses into the country, the Associated Press reports. “If the problem is not resolved by the end of the month, we run the risk of not having the event in Brazil,” Giugni said (via Sao Paulo’s Folha newspaper) while speaking at an event in Sao Paulo on Wednesday. “The situation is complicated … [and] communication with the ministry is bad.” The issues reportedly holding up the process have to do with regulations pertaining to the with testing horses for disease, according to the AP. [Brazil is melting down ahead of the 2016 Olympics] Agriculture Ministry officials refuted Giugni’s claims, however, telling Folha that “Brazil is on schedule” and “not at risk of missing deadlines.” The ministry said its deadline for completing the documentation process is 120 days out from the event, which would mean they have until early April to get everything done. On Thursday, the head of the world equestrian governing body told Folha he wasn’t concerned that the ministry would miss its deadline. “We are confident that the [equestrian] events would still take place in Rio alongside the other sports,” International Equestrian Federation Ingmar De Vos said in statement. “We hope that the Olympic equestrian competitions are a success at Deodoro [sports complex] next year.”


Prosecutors say this 66-year-old Chinese woman is one of Africa’s most notorious smugglers

Yang Feng Glan. (Elephant Action League) NAIROBI — They call her the Queen of Ivory — a 66-year-old Chinese woman who became famous for her role in Africa’s illegal wildlife trade. Over 15 years, she helped smuggle more than 700 elephant tusks out of Africa, officials said Thursday. But as authorities closed in, Yang Feng Glan managed to evade arrest. Until now. Yang was detained in the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam after a high-speed chase and is apparently the most prominent Chinese national charged with wildlife trafficking in Africa. The short, bespectacled owner of a well-known Chinese restaurant doesn’t fit the image of a poaching kingpin, but that’s exactly what she is, according to Tanzanian officials. Yang was behind an illicit trade worth millions of dollars, using her ties to the Chinese and Tanzanian elite to move ivory across the world, officials said. Ivory trafficking has resulted in immense damage to wildlife across Africa, but particularly in Tanzania. Between 2009 and 2014, the country’s elephant population plummeted from 109,051 to 43,330. “She was at the center of that killing,” said Andrea Crosta, the executive director of Elephant Action League, a U.S.-based environmental watchdog group. China’s role in Africa’s poaching crisis is no secret. The country consumes tons of ivory every year, much of it mixed into holistic medicine with no proven value. That demand has driven low-level poachers across the continent to massacre elephant and rhino populations. But the role played by Chinese business people based in Africa has been hazy. The story of Yang, who will now be tried in a Tanzania court, might change the way people think about the global ivory trade. If she is convicted, it will turn out that one of Africa’s wildlife-trafficking kingpins was also one of its most prominent Chinese interlocutors. According to investigators, Yang came to Africa in the 1970s, just as China was beginning construction on a railway in Tanzania. She was a translator back then, one of her country’s first trained Swahili speakers. Yang moved around eastern Africa, becoming a well-known businesswoman, founding a company called Beijing Great Wall Investment and an eatery called Beijing Restaurant. By 2012, she was the secretary-general of the Tanzania China-Africa Business Council. She named her daughter Fei, the first character of the word for Africa in Mandarin. All the while, Tanzanian investigators said Thursday, she was smuggling millions of dollars in ivory to


Branching out: A guide to local craft cider

Lori Corcoran discusses her ciders while pouring samples in the Corcoran Cidery tasting room in Waterford, Va. (Photo by Kate Patterson for The Washington Post) First came the wineries, then the craft breweries; the distilleries followed. And now the next taste sensation has arrived: Hard cider makers are sprouting up in Virginia and Maryland, the number of bars pouring local ciders is growing and — seasonally, anyway — the timing couldn’t be better. National trends mirror local ones. Cider sales rose 75.4 percent from November 2013 to November 2014, according to market research firm IRI, and the Beer Institute reports that cider production volume tripled between 2011 and 2013. Why? No one seems to agree, exactly. Maybe it’s the growing number of beer lovers cutting back on gluten, or the farm-to-table foodies who like a tasty beverage from hand-picked fruits with local provenance. All that really matters is that cider is here and it’s delicious. To get a handle on the region’s growing cider scene, we set out to visit as many Virginia and Maryland cidermakers as we could; we made it to 14. (We ruled out Potter’s, which is on a working horse farm outside Charlottesville and doesn’t have a public tasting room, and Foggy Ridge, which we’ve enjoyed at bars in the District but sits approximately 600 miles round trip from downtown.) We sampled dry, fruity ciders crafted the way Thomas Jefferson might have enjoyed them, and sipped fizzy, sweet ciders designed to appeal to drinkers who have tried only Woodchuck. In the end, what impressed us was the breadth of ciders available: Blue Bee’s sour or dry-hopped offerings may not appeal to the same drinkers as the more traditional ciders at Albemarle or Old Hill. Winchester Cider Works serves distinct styles from counties in the eastern and western ends of England, while Millstone takes inspiration from Basque styles. Distillery Lane Ciderworks sticks closer to home, growing the same kinds of apples George Washington would have used in his cider at Mount Vernon. This time of year, a trip to an orchard is the perfect way to spend a Saturday. Virginia cidermakers are clustered in the Shenandoah Valley, around Charlottesville and throughout hunt country, making it easy to wrap a few into a day trip. Skip to: Six favorites Our six favorite cideries Seven ciders are offered during a tasting a Blue Bee, an "urban cidery" in Richmond,


Banana Republic creative director steps down amid slumping sales

The Banana Republic store at The Grove in Los Angeles, Calif. (Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg) Gap hired fashion industry darling Marissa Webb last year to help its Banana Republic brand regain its style cred and boost sales at the floundering apparel chain. Now, as Banana Republic continues to deliver deeply disappointing sales, Gap announced Thursday that Webb is stepping down from the creative director role. Company executives have acknowledged a host of major problems at the retailer known for its office-friendly attire: The fit of pants and other pieces was not quite right, the mix of trendy and classic items was confusing, and the fabrics often felt too cheap to justify their price tag. Some of Webb’s work for Banana Republic drew praise from within the fashion industry, but sales data made clear that the looks were still not winning over customers. Gap reported Thursday that Banana Republic sales fell 10 percent in September at stores open more than a year. The company’s stock plunged more than 6 percent in afterhours trading, likely a result of investors’ disappointment in both the sales slide at Banana Republic and the merely flat sales at Gap brand. (As usual, the company’s Old Navy chain performed solidly, posting a 4 percent increase in comparable store sales.) Gap said Webb will continue to be associated with the brand in a “creative advisor role.” A Gap spokeswoman said that this change will allow Webb to devote more time to her eponymous designer label. The Banana Republic creative director position will not be filled, a choice that mirrors how the company handled the recent departure of Gap brand’s creative director, Rebekka Bay. Like Webb, Bay had been brought in to revitalize a brand where the fashions felt stale and where sales were flagging. Bay came from Cos, a hip brand with a minimalist aesthetic that is owned by H&M. After being unable to energize sales at Gap, Bay left and became head of product design at Everlane. Webb vacates the Banana Republic creative director position just a week after Stefan Larsson, president of Old Navy, departed the company to become the chief executive of Ralph Lauren. This series of shake-ups at the highest ranks of Gap comes as the company is doing some soul-searching, trying to find its place in a world when fast-fashion outposts are claiming more and more of young shoppers’ dollars. In order to get


Why the Nobel peace prize was awarded to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, in one map

To understand the Nobel Peace Prize committee's decision to award the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, just look at the map above. [Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet wins Nobel Peace Prize] Out of about 273 contenders and much hype about the possibilities of Germany's Angela Merkel or Pope Francis, the committee chose the the quartet "for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011." The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet is made up of four organizations: the Tunisian Human Rights League, the Tunisian General Labour Union, the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers. The group was created in 2013 after the Jasmine Revolution in 2011, when one Tunisian man, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire, igniting a rebellion that would eventually oust the long-time President Zine Abidine Ben Ali, and set off pro-democracy movements across the Arab world. Last year, the country held democratic elections, and according to the committee: "An essential factor for the culmination of the revolution in Tunisia in peaceful, democratic elections last autumn was the effort made by the quartet to support the work of the constituent assembly and to secure approval of the constitutional process among the Tunisian population at large." To understand the quartet's accomplishments, just take a look at the other countries that participated in the Arab Spring and where they are today. Tunisia is the only country where a level of democracy endures after overthrowing an authoritian regime. Read more: Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet wins Nobel Peace Prize 5 people who seem like naturals for the Nobel Peace Prize — but never won it In birthplace of Arab Spring, Tunisia’s Islamists get sobering lesson in governing


5 people who seem like naturals for the Nobel Peace Prize — but never won it

It's Nobel Prize season! This year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee gave the prize to a quartet of groups in Tunisia for "their tireless efforts to foster democracy in the nation that gave birth to the Arab Spring." The Nobel Peace Prize awards those who "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." Notable winners include obvious choices such as Martin Luther King Jr. (1964), the 14th Dalai Lama (1989), Nelson Mandela (1993), Desmond Tutu (1984), Aung San Suu Kyi (1991) and Mother Teresa (1979). Here are some who are considered strong promoters of peace but were omitted from the list. Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas K. Gandhi, more popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, right, who eventually led India to its independence, laughs with the man who was to be the nation's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, on July 6, 1946. (Max Desfor/Associated Press) Perhaps the most famous modern nonviolent activist wasn't snubbed just once, but on several occasions. The man whose nonviolent efforts led to the independence of India was even nominated in 1947, a few days before he was assassinated. The Nobel committee not only failed to recognize Gandhi's peaceful efforts but also didn't give anyone an award that year, stating that "there was no suitable living candidate." One of the winners this year, Kailash Satyarthi, was described as “maintaining Gandhi’s tradition” by holding “various forms of protests and demonstrations, all peaceful, focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain" by the Nobel committee. Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II and South African President Nelson Mandela talk in the presidential guesthouse in Pretoria. (Gary Bernard/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) He was the third-longest-serving pope in the 2,000 years of the Catholic Church, and during his tenure, he traveled to 129 countries, promoted religious tolerance and made unprecedented apologies for what he viewed as sins committed by the Church, including the lack of many Catholics speaking out against the Holocaust, and later in response to allegations of sexual abuse by priests. In 2000, he delivered this statement: "We forgive and we ask forgiveness. We are asking pardon for the divisions among Christians, for the use of violence that some have committed in the service of truth, and for attitudes of mistrust and hostility assumed towards followers


Maryland open houses Oct. 10-11

Rd 21045 5564 High Tor Hl 9350 Sharp Antler 21046 9651 Hingston Downs 9631 Clocktower Lane 7340 Rocky Creek Dr #20 COOKSVILLE 21723 818 Hoods Mill Rd 818 Hoods Mill Rd 2026 Drovers Lane 2030 Drovers Lane 2050 Drovers Lane 2025 Drovers Lane ELKRIDGE 21075 7962 Blue Stream Dr 6016 North Meyer Dr 7304 Freebird Lane 7409 Rigby Pl 7413 Rigby Pl 7029 Joann Khan Dr 7033 Joann Khan Dr ELLICOTT CITY 21042 3055 Mullineaux Lane 2628 Queensland Dr 3327 Debra Ct 4768 Leyden Way 21043 8813 Montjoy Pl 4431 Prancing Deer Dr 2909a Montclair Dr 8582 Horseshoe Rd 122 Frederick Rd FULTON 20759 11410 Dairy St 11522 Iager Blvd 11460 Dairy St SCAGGSVILLE 20723 8261 Rippling Branch Rd WOODBINE 21797 15225 Sweetbay St 2803 Bridalwreath Ct WOODSTOCK 21163 10203 Harrison Grant Dr MONTGOMERY COUNTY BETHESDA 20814 5008 Alta Vista Rd 20817 6108 Wilson Lane 9913 Montauk Ave 9000 Seneca Lane CABIN JOHN 20818 6429 83rd Pl CHEVY CHASE 20815 4601 Park Ave N #1211l CLARKSBURG 20871 12315 Cherry Branch Dr 13261 Orsay St #608 12223 Majestic Maple Dr #c 12220 Majestic Maple Dr #b 12225 Majestic Maple Dr 22474 Newcut Rd 14918 Little Bennett Dr DERWOOD 20855 7813 White Cliff Ter 302 Picea View Ct DICKERSON 20842 21515 Dickerson Rd GAITHERSBURG 20878 229 Kepler Dr 514 Copley Pl 528 Copley Pl #. 9756 Fields Rd 534 Copley Pl 516 Copley Pl #. 119 Copley Cir 125 Copley Cir #. 332 Urban Ave 314 Chestnut Hill St 716 Beacon Hill Ter 27 Golden Ash Way #a 406 Kentlands Blvd #304 37 Longmeadow Dr 11924 Darnestown Rd #109 183 Gold Kettle Dr 20882 20000 Belle Chase Dr 24705 Halterman Rd 20886 8715 Ivyberry Way 8501 Tindal Springs Dr GERMANTOWN 20874 11824 Boland Manor Dr 11810 Boland Manor Dr 19056 Sawyer Ter 10 Duck Pond Ct #705 13608 Chrisbar Ct 12142 Island View Cir 20537 Summersong Lane 19232 Cross Ridge Dr 18213 Coachmans Rd 12009 Rushworth Ter 11812 Boland Manor Dr 11820 Boland Manor Dr 11808 Boland Manor Dr 11826 Boland Manor Dr 11806 Boland Manor Dr 20876 18960 Abbotsford Cir 12039 Panthers Ridge Dr 20807 Amber Ridge Dr 11820 Eton Manor Dr #103 11406 Locustdale Ter #370 HYATTSVILLE 20781 4411 Longfellow St 5002 43rd Ave KENSINGTON 20895 4112 Saul Rd 10001 Connecticut Ave 11100 Kensington Blvd NORTH BETHESDA 20852 6134 Lux Lane OLNEY 20832 3817 Ingleside St 133 Brimstone Academy Ct


Hillary Clinton may be ready to break up the big banks

on money they lend to the bank, confident it will be repaid no matter what. As a complement to the fee, the proposal suggests Clinton could support rules that banks hold even more money in reserve--known as capital requirements. In all, Clinton's plan "would make life very difficult for JPMorgan in its current form," said Dean Baker, a director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research and a stalwart advocate of stricter financial regulations. "She is clearly saying both that we have banks that are too large and pose too much danger to the economy, and that the financial sector has become too big and too complicated," Baker added. "It's really changed the debate." As president, Clinton would need Congress's approval to implement some important provisions. Others would depend on the Federal Reserve. And in many cases, the devil will be in the details. For example, will the criteria for "too large and too risky" be generous and allow current banking behemoths to operate as they currently do? Will the big ones indeed be forced to break up? Or will there be a compromise? Despite the Dodd-Frank financial reform that Congress passed in 2010, investors still see some banks as too big to fail. "The expectation of government support for the largest bank-holding companies is very strong," said Simon Johnson, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, adding that the largest banks were so complex and enigmatic, rational investors wouldn't trust them with their money if they weren't counting on help from Uncle Sam in a crisis. "The businesses would not exist," Johnson said. "Creditors would not take on JPMorgan exposure, with this really opaque structure, unless they believed there is a substantial probability that the government is going to step in and make them whole." If nothing else, the tone of the proposals may allay concerns among some liberals about Clinton's connections to Wall Street. Many of her advisers previously held posts in finance. Clinton, facing increasing pressure from liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Democratic primary, has advanced a range of liberal positions recently, including the tough approach to Wall Street, opposition to the Asian trade pact and opposition to building the Keystone pipeline. The aggressive proposals from the frontrunner in the Democratic primary suggest a shift in thinking about the financial industry among the party's policymakers and its rank and file, Baker said.


A group in Tunisia, rather than a single leader, wins this year’s Nobel Peace Prize

A man looks at a banner during celebrations of the second anniversary of the Tunisian revolution at Avenue Habib-Bourguiba in Tunis on Jan. 13, 2013. (Anis Mili/Reuters) The bookmakers were all wrong. On Friday morning the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, a group of four organizations in Tunisia that have worked to build democracy in the place where the Arab Spring uprising began. The committee cited the group's "decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011." The Quartet is comprised of the Tunisian General Labor Union, the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts, the Tunisian Human Rights League and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers. The committee noted that the prize was awarded to the Quartet, which was formed in the summer of 2013, rather than to the four individual organizations. The announcement marks the 26th time the Norwegian Nobel Committee has bestowed the prestigious award on a group or organization, rather than on a single leader or individual. The International Committee of the Red Cross, for instance, has won the award three times — including during both world wars, when the committee did not bestow the award for several years. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has won it twice. Other groups that have won include the International Atomic Energy Agency, Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders. In 2012, the committee sparked controversy for naming the European Union as the recipient of the Peace Prize for its "advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe," a decision that was met with everything from protests to bemusement. Yet the group's honor came as a surprise to many wagering on the high-profile individuals who'd been seen as front-runners for this year's award. Oddsmakers had put Angela Merkel at the top of this year's short list of likely winners for her moral leadership in Europe's migrant crisis. Despite opinion polls showing her approval rate at the lowest level in years, the German chancellor has thrown open her country's doors to hundreds of thousands of refugees his year and held firm that compassion rather than xenophobia is the answer to the continent's crisis. "If we have to apologize for showing a friendly face in emergency situations, then this is not my country," she has


Morning links: Texas routinely jails poor for traffic fines, despite state law

- Oklahoma halted its executions last week after an autopsy report revealed that the state had used the wrong drug while executing Charles Frederick Warner in January. Perhaps this sort of incompetence suggests that we shouldn’t entrust these governments to be killing people in the first place. - The City of North Charleston has settled with the family of police shooting victim Walter Scott for $6.5 million. - A BuzzFeed investigation finds that poor people in Texas are routinely jailed for their inability to pay traffic fines, even though doing so violates state law. - Police union official compares writing “#BlackLivesMatter” on a coffee cup to an act of war. I wonder what he might call breaking into a home and beating an innocent kid bloody over some suspected marijuana. - Donald Trump has a regrettable history of using government power to take land that belongs to other people. - More good news from California, where Gov. Jerry Brown just signed a bill that will hold wayward prosecutors more accountable, and another that establishes some of the strongest privacy protections in the country for electronic data. - A Washington Post investigation finds that of the 49 incidents in which a deadly police shooting this year was caught on video, less than half the police agencies made the video available to the public. But virtually all made it available to the officers involved. - Photo of the day: Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia. (Radley Balko)


Merkel didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize. One of her critics is elated.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivers a statement after visiting a class for migrant children at the Ferdinand-Freiligrath school in Berlin on Sept. 10. (Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images) If you'd listened to the bookmakers and a number of pundits, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was the clear favorite to win the Nobel Peace Prize. While Merkel was nominated due to her work mediating the conflict in Ukraine, many attributed her potential win to the notably open rhetoric and policy Germany has shown to the refugees over the past year – often in contrast to its neighbors. Merkel did not win the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, however: Instead, it was awarded to an alliance of four Tunisian civil society groups. And for Merkel's critics, this is undoubtedly good news. On Twitter, Danish politician Soeren Espersen described his "jubilation" that Merkel didn't win, adding that "she has thrown Europe into one of the largest migration disasters in modern times.” Jubel over at Merkel IKKE som spået fik Fredsprisen. Hun har kastet Europa ud i den største folkevandringskatastrofe i moderne tid.#dkpol Espersen is a member of the Danish People’s Party (DF), a right-wing party that offers vital political support for Denmark's one-party minority government. The DF has repeatedly supported harsher measures for refugees and migrants: After becoming the second-largest party in the country after elections in June, DF pushed for border controls with Germany and the rest of Europe to be reinstated. Before the prize had been announced, a number of other critics of Merkel's open stance on refugees had condemned the possibility of the German leader winning. Will Angela Merkel be awarded he Nobel Peace Prize this year for taking a big step toward abolishing Germany? As mass brawls break out in German refugee camps and German police woman is stabbed, Merkel is favourite for 2015 Nobel Peace Prize. Despite this criticism of Merkel's immigration policy, it seems unlikely that an openness to refugees cost her the Nobel. A more likely explanation would be that the widespread controversy surrounding Germany's role in Greece's economic crisis proved a sticking point for many judges. It's also possible that the judges felt Germany's policy on refugees was shifting – it's worth noting that Merkel's approval ratings among Germans have dropped recently. "You really need to look in the next couple of years or so to judge whether her policies are worth it or not,” Gerard Bökenkamp, head


These ‘zombie’ bees make the flight of the living dead

The bees in the above video aren't dead, but they're about as zombified as bees could be. They're suffering from just one of the many ailments putting honey bee colonies under pressure: a devastating parasite. [Norway is creating a ‘bee highway’ to protect pollinators] When the parasitic fly [These parasitic wasps turn spiders into web-building zombies] Besides being eaten from the inside out by fly larvae, the zombees will exhibit unusual behavior: They'll wander around in circles, leave their hives to fly around at night, and get disoriented by following bright lights. The attack of the zombie flies seems to be spreading. Honey bees were first recognized as targets in California back in 2008, and beekeepers in New England spotted zombified bees as well in 2014. Just weeks ago, there was a report of a parasitized bee in New York for the first time. Keep bees? Then you can help keep an eye out. Join ZomBee Watch, a Web site that lets beekeepers and nature lovers help scientists track the problem. Read More: Say hello to the dementor wasp. It turns cockroaches into zombies. Fungus turns ‘zombie ants’ into booby traps Astronomers may have found a new zombie star Watch museum bees get a shampoo and blowout before their debut Bees naturally vaccinate their babies, scientists find


Why the Defense Department is kicking the University of Phoenix off military bases

The Defense Department is suspending the University of Phoenix, a chain of for-profit colleges, from recruiting on military bases and accessing a form of federal financial aid. The for-profit chain University of Phoenix is at odds with the Defense Department after the agency on Thursday suspended the college from recruiting on military bases and accessing federal education funding for service members. The decision arrives amid allegations that the university sponsored recruiting events in violation of an executive order preventing for-profit colleges from gaining preferential access to the military. DOD chief of voluntary education Dawn Bilodeau said she was not at liberty to discuss the specifics of the case, but said the department will take action “when we are in receipt of reports on non-compliance” with a memorandum. “No new or transfer students will be permitted to receive DoD tuition assistance at the University of Phoenix,” Bilodeau said in a statement. “The institution will not be authorized access to DoD installations for the purposes of participating in any recruitment-type activities, including but not limited to job training, and career events and fairs.” [For-profit colleges aggressively target veterans for enrollment. These Democrats want it to stop.] Members of the military who are currently enrolled at the university can continue to tap funding from the department’s Tuition Assistance program to pay for school. Defense officials would not say how long the department planned to keep the university on probation as a review of the school’s actions is still under way. In a regulatory filing, Apollo Education Group, which owns Phoenix, said the Defense Department is considering on outright ban on the for-profit college’s participation in the tuition program for active-duty military personnel. The company said the department cited a series of government investigations as the basis for the suspension, including the Federal Trade Commission’s probe into the school’s advertising and marketing practices. Phoenix has also been subpoenaed by the California attorney general’s office for information relating to its recruiting of National Guard in the state. Apollo said the university has tried to resolve any concerns about sponsored events with the Defense Department. The company noted that all of the events in question were approved by base officials. A story published by the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting over the summer raised questions about the university’s recruiting tactics. It accused the school of paying the military $250,000 over the last three years to host


What Tunisia can teach Europe’s far-right movements about Islam

in an alliance to foster democracy in the country. In an interview with WorldViews on Wednesday, Ron Krebs, a Nobel Peace Prize researcher and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, said: "The Nobel Peace Prize has always been the most politicized of awards — and openly so." So what's the political message this year, and to whom is it being sent? The prize to the Tunisian groups comes after hundreds of thousands of refugees have arrived in Europe this year. Among other reasons, the Arab Spring uprisings and failed peaceful power transitions have repeatedly been singled out as the cause of the mass exodus. Tunisia might be the only country in which the Arab Spring has succeeded in a way that has paved the way for democracy. The four groups who share this year's Nobel Peace Prize have played a decisive role in those efforts. Awarding the prize to them might not only be a signal to Middle Eastern or North African countries. It could also be addressed to those in Europe who have taken to the streets or online forums to express their discontent with the influx of refugees. In a letter published Wednesday, for instance, more than 30 politicians associated with the Christian Democratic Union blamed German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her pro-refugee stance: "Many of our fundamental rights will have to be communicated to those arriving here: democracy, the rule of the law, freedom of speech which includes criticism of religions, and the equal and peaceful co-existence of people with different religions," they wrote. As The Post's Anthony Faiola pointed out, the Nobel Peace Prize highlighted Tunisia's achievements in that respect: The civil society groups provided a critical bridge for dialogue and political compromises between the Islamists in the government and Tunisia’s opposition and secular activists. The channels opened helped ease the deep polarization and mistrust that have torn apart other countries in the wake of the Arab Spring upheavals. Merkel had been considered among the favorites to win the prestigious prize this year. But whether taking in refugees qualifies politicians for the peace prize remains disputed. By awarding it to four Tunisian civil society groups, the committee might nevertheless have sent a message to Europe: If even relatively unstable countries such as Tunisia can bridge the sectarian divide, peaceful Germany, France and Britain should be even more equipped to manage the current influx of refugees.


PM Update: Showers, thunder this evening; Sunny, cooler holiday weekend

Two hour radar loop of rain and storm movement through the area. Refresh page to update. The mercury crested near 80 degrees this afternoon. I hope warm weather fans enjoyed it because there’s a chance it may not be this warm again for…months. A cold front darts through the region this evening with a round of showers and possibly a storm. On Saturday, its dries out but temperatures take a big step down before a modest recovery Sunday and Monday. Through Tonight: [Showers and perhaps a gusty storm eye D.C. area 5 to 9 p.m. Friday] More widely scattered showers may linger through around midnight, before a very gradual clearing process through the overnight hours. Pre-sunrise lows range from 50-55. Winds come in from the north at around 10 to 15 mph. Tomorrow (Saturday): Saturday night and Sunday: Columbus Day See Camden Walker’s forecast into early next week. And if you haven’t already, _http\"" href="http://www.facebook.com/capitalweather/">join us on Facebook Want our 5 a.m. forecast delivered to your email in-box? Subscribe here. Sporadic fall color emerging in D.C., October 8, 2015. (John Sonderman via Flickr)


Main Street Morning: S.C. farmers take devastating losses as floodwaters move toward the coast

infographic shows just who has the biggest piece of the small business financing pie. - A blogger specializing in bitcoin wonders why most businesses don’t accept digital currency. Start-ups - This start-up found a way to store milk in places where refrigeration is limited. - A nine-year-old girl starts a business to help pay her medical bills. Technology - More and more top tier venture firms are backing technology that tracks employees. - The Chinese government arrests hackers at the reguest Online - Verizon increases the price of its unlimited data plans by $20 a month. - Dell is in talks to buy data storage company EMC. - Amazon Web Services launches a cloud service for Internet of Things data. - Twelve irritating Windows 10 installation issues, and how to fix them. - And these are three simple cures for lingering Skype headaches. - A communications professional shares three inexpensive or even free ways to forge your business web presence. - This is a simple guide to building an online shop for your small business. - Alphabet, the umbrella corporation of Google, acquires the .com domain name. Social Media - How Facebook is enabling repair services to find new customers. - Nine ways you can boost revenue using Yelp. Around the Country - A Phoenix-based group is trying to boost the region’s international exports. - Judge refuses to throw out defamation suit against Cosby. - Local organizations are reaching out to help the 1,000 employees unexpectedly laid off by an Atlanta restaurant chain. - A Kentucky Health Insurer is shutting down. - South Carolina farmers take devastating losses as flood rolls downstream. - Ohio prison officials challenge FDA stance on execution drug. - Business Oregon has $5 million that could help state businesses expand. - Local business owners in Topeka learn the keys to good character. - IBM plans to create a free Connecticut Supplier Connection program modeled on a national online portal that helps small businesses land contracts from large corporations. Around the World - For the first time, the Chinese Government quietly arrested hackers at the request of the U.S. government. - U.S. judge sets $2 million bail in U.N. bribery case. Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd PA consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. Follow Gene Marks and On Small Business on Twitter. News we should know about? Email us here.


Pentagon denies ULA waiver on Russian engines

Atlas V rocket. The company has four of the engines in its inventory that it could use for national security launches, ULA chief executive Tory Bruno recently told reporters. But he said ULA needs at least 14 to compete to launch national security payloads, such as spy and communications satellites, before it is able to use a new, American-made engine it is developing with Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.) For the first time in years, ULA has to compete for that work after SpaceX, the space company founded by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, recently was certified by the Pentagon to compete for those contracts. But the competition comes after Congress banned the use of Russian-made engines in response to the escalating tensions with Russia. The limited supply of RD-180s has put ULA in a precarious position, and Bruno and others have said that it could lead to an unintended consequence: leaving the Pentagon yet again with a single launch provider — this time SpaceX, the only other company certified to launch military payloads into space. In a statement Friday afternoon, Lt. Cmdr. Courtney Hillson, a Pentagon spokesperson, said that the Defense Department realizes that it "cannot be in the risky position of relying on only one source of space launch for critical national security satellites that must be launched reliably and on schedule." But she said that Pentagon officials had determined that no "immediate action is required to address the future risk of having only one source of space launch services." She said the Defense Department would continue to evaluate the need for a waiver, and said that to maintain two viable launch providers, it might consider awarding some contracts on a sole-source basis, meaning ULA could still stay in the game without fear of competition. A ULA spokesperson declined to comment. SpaceX, which has won contracts to ferry cargo and eventually astronauts to the International Space Station, pushed hard for the right to compete against ULA for the lucrative Pentagon launches. It even sued the Air Force, in a case that was eventually settled, and then pressed the Pentagon to certify it. That happened over the summer. Now SpaceX plans to bid against ULA in the first competitive national security launch in a decade to launch a GPS III satellite. Bids are due next month, and the contract is expected to be awarded in March.


What happens when your end-of-the-world prediction is wrong

The moon glows a red hue during a total lunar eclipse Tuesday, April 15, 2014, as seen from the Milwaukee area. Tuesday’s eclipse is the first of four total lunar eclipses that will take place between 2014 to 2015. (AP Photo/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Mike De Sisti) On Oct. 7, eBible Fellowship recommended that everybody listen to its last-ever question-and-answer podcast with Chris McCann, because McCann believed that Oct. 7 would also Earth’s last day. On Oct. 8, the world was still here, and McCann had the unenviable task of explaining what had happened. “Since it is now October 8th it is now obvious that we were incorrect regarding the world’s ending on the 7th,” he wrote in a statement sent to the many reporters who had reached out to him about his prediction. The statement was also posted on his Web site. “There was much biblical information pointing to this date and we freely shared it with all. Yet, consistently stressing throughout the entire time period that the world ending on that date was a ‘strong likelihood,’ ” he wrote. [Why the group eBible Fellowship believes the world will be annihilated today] Oct. 8 was not McCann’s first trip back into the world after it was supposed to end: In 2011, he promoted “Family Radio” host Harold Camping’s prediction that judgement day would come May 21 of that year. Camping then said he was wrong about May, but continued to believe that God’s judgement would likely come in October of that year. It’s too early to say what is in store for McCann’s small, Pennsylvania-based ministry now that the world is still here. Although such predictions are fun to make fun of for many, the stories of past predictions, and their followers, are often filled with palpable regret and heartbreak. Camping died in 2013 after giving up the prediction business altogether. His last public statements were often laced with regret. He apologized for saying that God was no longer saving souls after May 21, 2011. His previous predictions disappeared from the Family Radio Web site. He left a number of followers behind, some of whom had sold their possessions in anticipation of his widely discussed May prediction, using their savings to buy ads on billboards to publicize the date. Religion Dispatches followed some of those who believed May 21, 2011, would be the day a series of earthquakes would herald God’s


The financial habits Americans struggle with most

(Jamie Grill/Getty Images) The rules that financial pros say people should follow if they want to build wealth are usually straightforward — pay your bills on time, have cash on hand for a rainy day and invest money for your future. Sounds easy enough, but for many people these milestones can feel out of reach. The slow wage growth we’ve seen since the recession means that for many workers, there isn’t much left from the paycheck after covering essentials such as housing, child care and food. Then there are goals such as paying off debt and saving for retirement that can take a back seat, particularly for people struggling with student loans, day-care expenses and high rent. A slew of surveys and economic reports released recently shed light on how well Americans are handling their money. Wondering where you stand? Take a look: Debt payments. Consumers are getting better about paying their debt bills, including auto loans and personal loans, on time. (Source: American Bankers Association) Credit card delinquencies rose slightly to 2.52 percent in the second quarter but were still below the long-term average of 3.74 percent. And the share of people with federal student loans who failed to make loan payments within three years of leaving school is down as more people take advantage of flexible payment options. Housing costs (Map: Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Click here for an interactive version.) The situation is a little different for people who own a home. For homeowners, monthly mortgage payments, including property taxes, mortgage insurance and home insurance, took up about 36.5 percent of the average national wage in the first quarter of 2015, down from 37.4 percent a year earlier, according to a report from RealtyTrac and Clear Capital. [The cities where Americans are most likely to spend more than half of their paycheck on rent] Emergency savings Despite the steady job growth of recent years, many Americans are struggling to save. Financial advisers and economists blame low wage growth, which might make it difficult for families to keep up with rising rent costs and growing child-care expenses. Not surprisingly, people who make more money save a bigger percentage of their pay. People in the bottom 90 percent of the income scale save close to zero percent of their pay each year, while those in the top 10 percent save close to 15 percent of their pay,