Getting to know Alexandria’s Del Ray neighborhood

Ray neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post) Taqueria Poblano 2400-B Mount Vernon Ave. 703-548-8226. www.taqueriapoblano.com. The dining room is cramped, but the margaritas are stiff at this festive Cal-Mex restaurant from chef Glen Adams. Inspired by the food trucks he encountered growing up in Santa Monica, Calif., Adams serves L.A.-style tacos that are slightly smaller and served in a crunchy shell. The Baja fish taco is a must, made with beer-battered and fried mahi-mahi with slaw, pico de gallo and crema. House-infused vodkas are available in such flavors as habanero or jalapeno. See also: Evening Star Cafe 2000 Mount Vernon Ave. 703-549-5051. www.eveningstarcafe.net. The Evening Star Cafe is the Neighborhood Restaurant Group’s first restaurant. (Matt McClain/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) Maybe it’s the subtle touches, such as complimentary sweet potato biscuits and corn bread. Maybe it’s the fresh-from-the-rooftop-garden herbs. Or maybe it’s chef Jim Jeffords’s Georgia drawl. Whatever it is, fans are smitten with this Southern-pointing restaurant — the first from Neighborhood Restaurant Group, which later went on to open Bluejacket, Red Apron and ChurchKey, among others. Menu mainstays include the grilled Blue Point oysters and crispy poppadews — peppadew peppers stuffed with pimento cheese. See also: Cheesetique 2411 Mount Vernon Ave. 703-706-5300. www.cheesetique.com. A selection of cheese is pictured at Cheesetique in the Del Ray neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post) This boutique-meets-bistro is overflowing with gourmet chutneys, raw honey, craft beers, more than 40 wines, cured meats and rare cheeses. Until the FDA lifted its ban on mimolette (a hard French cheese whose rind is aged with the help of harmless mites), Cheesetique was one of the only places to find it. The adjoining cafe serves artisanal grilled cheeses, mac-and-cheese and mixed boards. Show a receipt from your meal to the market cashier and knock 10 percent off your market purchase. See also: The President Obama Tour of Del Ray The commander-in-chief has made multiple visits to Del Ray since taking office. Trace his footsteps with this mini-tour. President Obama greets patrons after having lunch during his unannounced visit to FireFlies restaurant in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria on June 10, 2014. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP) Dairy Godmother: Del Ray Pizzeria: Fireflies Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of a local business and its director. Pamella Shaw, not Shawl, is the director of SewLab LLC, not Sew Lab LLC.


Local Digest: Man charged in fatal shooting; death of ex-D.C. treasurer confirmed

THE DISTRICT Man charged in killing of 27-year-old woman D.C. police have charged a Northeast Washington man in the fatal shooting this month of a 27-year-old woman in Southeast Washington. Raheem Jones, 33, was arrested about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday by members of the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force. He faces charges of second-degree murder in the killing of Deandria Conyers. Conyers was found suffering from a gunshot wound about 8:45 p.m. Sept. 14 in a home in the 2000 block of Ridgecrest Court SE, a D.C. police spokesman said. She was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. — Victoria St. Martin MARYLAND Police confirm death of ex-D.C. treasurer The body of a man found in a Chillum Hills park has been confirmed to be that of a former D.C. treasurer who had been reported missing for several days, authorities said Thursday. Prince George’s County police said the body of Lasana K. Mack, 51, was found Sept. 20 along a trail near Chillum and Sargent roads, about two miles from his home in Northeast Washington. Police said earlier this week that they believed that the body was Mack’s but were awaiting confirmation from the medical examiner’s office. Police suspect that Mack committed suicide and added that there did not appear to be any signs of foul play. — Lynh Bui $10 million road work set for Branch Avenue The Maryland State Highway Administration is kicking off a $10 million road project that will enhance access for pedestrians and cyclists along Branch Avenue in Prince George’s County. The work on Branch Avenue (Route 5), between Curtis Drive and Southern Avenue, includes the construction of nearly two miles of sidewalk, improved medians and islands, upgrades to the drainage system and road widening to allow for bike lanes. Some lane closures will be necessary during the more than two years of work in the busy commuter corridor bordering the District. The work is expected to be completed in spring 2017. — Luz Lazo


National Zoo reopens after gas leak in administrative building

A gas leak near an administrative building temporarily closed the Smithsonian National Zoo on Friday, a spokeswoman said. Devin Murphy said a gas line ruptured shortly after 10 a.m. The zoo reopened to new visitors at 12 p.m. Murphy said animals were not affected by the gas leak, and authorities evacuated employees from the building. Zoo officials closed entrance gates just after the leak, she said, but visitors who were already at the zoo were allowed to stay.


Through art, creating a dialogue between Palestinians and others

“Spring Flight.” Installation of 12 gouache paintings by Helen Zughaib. (Courtesy Helen Zughaib and Gallery Al-Quds) The path to Dagmar Painter’s office at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery Al-Quds leads past a crimson wall, painted that color in mid-August as a backdrop for a piece in the current show, Helen Zughaib’s “Fractured Spring.” To explain her responsibilities as gallery director, Painter refers to the wall. “I just finished the three coats,” she says. “I got it all off my fingernails, too, which is nice.” The Foggy Bottom gallery, whose name pairs the Hebrew “Jerusalem” with the Arabic “Al-Quds,” was Painter’s idea. With the exception of a break in 2001, she has run it since its founding in 2000. “I do everything here. I pretty much sweep the floors, do the publicity, design the cards. If it has to be done, I do it.” “She’s just very devoted and very motivated,” says Painter’s friend Sylvia Ragheb, who has exhibited Egyptian and Arab art at Syra Arts in Georgetown since 2012. “She’s pulling in absolutely fabulous artists and works relentlessly. ” To Zughaib, Painter is a partner as well as a patron. “I’ll talk to her about my concepts and what I want to do. And she’ll listen to me and interject certain things. That sort of collaboration is quite unusual,” says the Lebanese-born Washington artist. “She is quite realistic about the space and the limitations of things and yet somehow lets us have our freedom to do what we want to do.” Dagmar Painter at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery. (Mark Jenkins) The exhibition space Painter runs is one of three divisions of the Jerusalem Fund, which was created in 1977 to raise money for philanthropic projects — mostly medical and educational — in the Palestinian territories. Later came the Palestine Center, a think tank. Painter arrived after a two-year stint as gallery director at the Embassy of Tunisia. “I thought it would be interesting to, quasi-independently, run a gallery that would concentrate on contemporary art from the Middle East, the Islamic world, Arab Americans — I defined it very, very broadly,” she recalls, “with an emphasis on Palestinian art, but not solely.” When Painter says she’s quasi-independent, she’s referring not only to her status as a consultant rather than an employee, but also to her lack of supervision. “I answer to the board in the greater scheme of things, but I don’t


Marin Alsop and Michael Tilson Thomas on why Leonard Bernstein and his music live on

. . . It’s the flavor of how much it’s swung, how much in front of the beat or in back of the beat it’s supposed to be: That’s a different thing depending on whether it’s swing, mambo, or all the other dance music in that piece.” Classically trained musicians aren’t always the best exponents of Bernstein’s music: Tilson Thomas chose to use singing actors, rather than classically trained singers, for his “West Side Story” recording. One wonders whether future recordings will increasingly tend to sound like Kristjan Jarvi’s account of the sprawling, genre-bending “Mass” with an Austrian orchestra — slightly too obedient and scrubbed and careful. But perhaps the very process of performing Bernstein’s music forces people to find their own answers — in a very Bernsteinian spirit. “He was somebody who loved to ask questions,” Tilson Thomas says, “and follow those questions with still more questions.” For her part, Alsop remembers the stories he would tell about pieces, some of them completely fabricated and unrelated to any intention of the composer’s. “The first story he ever told me was the story of Roy Harris’s Third Symphony,” she says. “There is no story. But he made up a fantastic one” involving a grandfather sitting in a rocking chair with his grandson, in front of a fire — this about a movement the composer referred to as “tragic.” Trite? Maybe. But who cared. “I fell in love with the piece,” Alsop says. It’s clear that Lenny remains all things to all people. A couple of generations of music lovers — musicians and listeners alike — can recount their own Bernstein experiences and name their favorite Bernstein moments, and the disparity of the responses demonstrates something important about the artist. Bernstein’s genius was the genius of music: to forge a personal connection, ignite a spark that no one else can share, because it is so vital to the individual listener who treasures it. The question, or the story, of Lenny’s legacy turns out not to be how he is remembered by posterity. It’s how he is remembered by you. The Washington Master Chorale’s Choral Tribute to Leonard Bernstein takes place at 4 p.m. Oct. 5 at the National Presbyterian Church. www.washingtonmasterchorale.org. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Bernstein & Beethoven program takes place Nov. 21-23 at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and the Music Center at Strathmore; “Candide” follows in June, 2015. www.bsomusic.org.


Mapping the Milky Way: An 11-year project to catalogue the stars in our galaxy

Astronomers used the huge Isaac Newton Telescope in the Canary Islands to take photos for their catalogue of the northern part of the Milky Way. (Max Alexander and the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, La Palma, Spain) Imagine getting to work just as the sun is setting. You’re in a big observatory on an island, and your only companion is a gigantic telescope that weighs as much as three cars and can see stars 1 million times as well as a human eye. Using the telescope, you take a picture of a small area of the sky, then move it ever so slightly and take another one. You do the same thing over and over, all night long, and for almost 400 other nights, until you have pictures of every part of the sky. That’s what Janet Drew, a professor at the University of Hertfordshire in England, and her team of astronomers have been doing each fall for the past 11 years. And this month, they finally achieved their goal: They published the most detailed catalogue ever made of the stars in the northern part of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Their catalogue is called the INT Photometric H-Alpha Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane, or IPHAS. The name is long and confusing, but the catalogue works in much the same straightforward way as the catalogue at a library. Drew and her co-workers used the pictures they took to identify all of the stars that could be seen from their observatory in the Canary Islands, a Spanish-speaking territory off the coast of North Africa. Now, other scientists can search through the catalogue to find certain stars, the same way a librarian can look through the library catalogue to find specific books. The Necklace Nebula, which looks like you could almost wear it around your neck, was discovered by astronomers working on the project to catalogue every visible star in the Milky Way. (Nick Wright/IPHAS) But this catalogue is a lot bigger than your local library’s: It lists 219 million stars, along with other important objects, such as nebulae (clouds of dust and gas). There are so many items that not all of them have been given a name: Many are identified only by a long list of numbers. “You end up with a telephone number type of name,” Drew said. The astronomers discovered a few objects that were unusual enough


Mexican army officer and soldiers face discipline in shooting deaths of 22 people

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican Defense Department said that the eight were involved in the June 30 incident in San Pedro Limon, an encounter that the military initially reported as a shootout but that a witness has described as a massacre. The National Human Rights Commission has requested a report on the arrests, investigator Marat Paredes said Friday. The army’s statement did not reveal the names of those detained or their unit. They were being held at a prison in Mexico City on charges of crimes against military discipline, disobedience and dereliction of duty. The statement issued Thursday night said the military charges are being pursued “independently of the investigations that civil authorities are carrying out under their jurisdiction,” leaving open the possibility of charges in civilian courts. President Enrique Peña Nieto said this week that the federal attorney general’s office is also investigating the incident. FILE - In this Thursday, July 3, 2014, file photo, state police stand inside a warehouse where a black cross covers a wall near blood stains on the ground, after a shootout between Mexican soldiers and alleged criminals on the outskirts of the village of San Pedro Limon, in Mexico state, Mexico. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP) Shortly after the confrontation, the army reported that 22 suspected criminals had been killed in a firefight with troops. One soldier was wounded. The official version came into question when the Associated Press visited the scene days later and found no sign of a prolonged battle. At least five spots inside a warehouse where the bloodshed occurred showed the same pattern: One or two closely placed bullet marks, surrounded by a mass of spattered blood, giving the appearance that some of those killed had been standing against a wall and shot at about chest level. Last week, a woman who says she witnessed the events told the AP that only one person died in the initial confrontation and the rest were shot after surrendering. The witness said the dead included her 15-year-old daughter, who had been wounded in one leg and was on the ground when she was killed.


Local digest: Former Prince George’s officer found dead in apparent suicide

MARYLAND Police: Ex-Pr. George’s officer commits suicide A former Prince George’s County police officer facing child sex abuse charges was found dead in an apparent suicide Friday morning, authorities said. About 10:45 a.m., officers were called to Sands Road Park in Lothian, said Lt. T.J. Smith, a spokesman for Anne Arundel County police. When they arrived, police found John Warhurst, 43, suffering from apparent gunshot wounds, Smith said. Warhurst was pronounced dead at the scene, Smith said. Warhurst, of Chesapeake Beach in Calvert County, was charged in November with rape and other sex offenses involving a girl. The charges stem from alleged incidents dating between 2008 and 2012. Warhurst’s trial was set to begin Oct. 28. Prince George’s police spokeswoman Nicole Hubbard said Warhurst had retired from the force. Lynh Bui VIRGINIA Woman dies after being hit by bus A 41-year-old woman died late Thursday after being struck by a bus in the Huntington Metro station’s parking lot, Fairfax County police said. A bus hit Lorena Gimenez about 10:45 p.m. as she walked in a section of the lot where passengers are dropped off, said officer Roger Henriquez, a police spokesman. Gimenez, who lived in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County, was later pronounced dead, authorities said. The bus is owned and operated by Fairfax County as part of the Fairfax Connector service. Authorities said it was unclear whether other passengers were on the bus at the time of the crash. Police said there is no indication that the bus driver was speeding or that alcohol was a factor in the collision. A police department news release said no charges had been filed. The Metro station roadway was closed until about 2 a.m. Friday, Henriquez said, and the incident was under investigation. Victoria St. Martin THE REGION Gas leak at National Zoo administrative building A gas leak near an administrative building temporarily closed the National Zoo on Friday, a spokeswoman said. Devin Murphy said a gas line ruptured shortly after 10 a.m. The zoo reopened at 12 p.m. Murphy said animals were not affected by the gas leak. Authorities evacuated employees from the building. Zoo officials closed entrance gates just after the leak, she said, but visitors who were already at the zoo were allowed to stay. Victoria St. Martin


Football: Marshall ends 25-game losing streak; Dunbar wins a thriller

its head coach this past offseason, he was an assistant the past six years. But Masten said he has seen a new energy develop with his players, dating back to spring practice. One team-building exercise Masten did was to print 200 t-shirts with the words “preparation, dedication, determination” printed on them. He handed them out to his players, their parents, their siblings and to the coaching staff. Something that simple, Masten said, began the process of what transpired Friday night. “Those simple little things really help the kids buy in,” Masten said. “Losing so many games, it seemed so much for what they can handle.” On Friday, all three phases of the team came to play. Marshall jumped out to a 7-0 lead in the first quarter by recovering a bad snap on a Jefferson punt play in the end zone. Senior quarterback Dallas Dudding rushed for two touchdowns, one from three yards out and the other from 17. Running back Jelani Murray scampered for a 55-yard score in the third quarter. The Statesmen had been on the cusp of a win the past two weeks. In Week 2, they lost to McLean 21-20 and came up just short 30-27 against Freedom-South Riding a week ago. Though those two games were losses, Masten said the team was able to use those near-wins to get over the hump Friday night. “This past week we had the best practice we’ve had so far,” he said. “They really wanted to win this game.” ● DUNBAR 18, BALLOU 14: With 45 seconds remaining in the game, Crimson Tide backup quarterback Davon Matthews scored the game-winning touchdown with a one-yard rush that sent the capacity Dunbar crowd into celebrations in Northwest Washington. Dunbar “What I learned today is that we have a solid group that we consider backups that stepped up,” Crimson Tide Coach Jerron Joe said. “Our guys were resilient and they fought back.” The Knights have not beaten Dunbar since 2010, when Joe, the third-year Crimson Tide Coach, was on the Ballou coaching staff. “It was electric,” Joe said of the atmosphere at Dunbar. “The stands were packed. It was one for the ages. I thought it was a classic because Ballou hasn’t played us this tough in four years.” Matthews, a senior who is usually the team’s leading receiver, finished with 159 yards passing with one rushing touchdown and one passing touchdown.


Al-Qaeda-linked militants in Yemen fire rocket toward U.S. Embassy

SANAA, Yemen — The rocket landed about 650 feet from the heavily fortified embassy, which lies in a compound surrounded by high walls, hitting members of the Yemeni special police force who guard the site. At least two were injured, police said. The attacker fired the rocket from a M72 light anti-tank weapon from a car before speeding away, a police source told Reuters. The U.S. Embassy has been a frequent target of attack. The compound was stormed in 2012 by demonstrators angry at a film made in the United States which they saw as blasphemous. And in May, the embassy said armed individuals had attempted to kidnap two of its officers at a small commercial business in Sanaa. Several hours after Saturday’s attack, Ansar al-Sharia, an affiliate of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, said on its Twitter account it had targeted the embassy with a rocket, injuring several guards and damaging a vehicle. The group said the attack was revenge for a drone strike on Friday that had seriously wounded children in the northern al Jawf province. Tribal sources confirmed that a drone strike killed two al-Qaeda members and wounded two more in al Jawf on Friday, and that there were reports of some children having been wounded. The United States regularly uses drones to attack Islamist militants in countries such as Yemen as part of a strategy to combat al-Qaeda militants without committing troops on the ground. Washington acknowledges using drones in Yemen but does not comment publicly on the practice. Al-Qaeda in Yemen, including AQAP and its affiliates, are among the most active wings of the network founded by Osama bin Laden. Saturday’s attack came a day after the United States told its citizens to leave Yemen and said it was reducing the number of U.S. government staff there due to political unrest and fears of a possible military escalation. Recent weeks have seen regular clashes between Shiite Houthi rebels and government forces in Sanaa. The Houthi, who overran much of the capital last week, signed a security deal on Saturday that stipulates disarmament and withdrawal from areas they have seized in recent months. The deal is part of a comprehensive agreement brokered by the United Nations. The Houthi’s political rivals, the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islah party, and other parties signed as well. It remains to be seen whether the Houthi will abide by the deal. Earlier on


Costar: Bank branches getting smaller while online retailers turn to brick and mortar

PNC Bank branch at Seventh and I streets NW. (Courtesy of CoStar) Add banks to the list of retailers adjusting their brick-and-mortar strategies to adapt to the new times. Some predicted bank branches would be among the first to be displaced in a digital age. And while recent research by Accenture found that one-in-four customers would consider patronizing a branchless digital bank, many bank customers still value the store. In fact, 66 percent of customers still prefer to “talk to a person” rather than purchase a banking product online according to Accenture’s survey. Even with online banking becoming more convenient and easier for customers, branches still remain the pre-eminent sales channel and will for some time, according to Accenture, which found that nearly 60 percent of traditional bank products are sold through banks’ branch networks, which helps explain why the 25 largest retail banks spend more than $50 billion annually to maintain more than 43,000 branches across the nation. One noticeable change is that bank branches are getting smaller. A recent analysis of average space leased by banks in the Washington region found banks are leasing an average of 4,000 square feet, down from an average of approximately 6,500 square feet before the recession. Like other retailers, banks are making changes to their stores, replacing traditional teller-based services with more consultative ones. Banks are also starting to open up more micro-branches. Meanwhile, the trend of formerly Internet-only based companies expanding into a brick-and-mortar presence continues. This November, Rent the Runway will open its first standalone store in the Washington area at 3336 M St. NW. Bonobos, another clothing retailer located in Georgetown, doesn’t actually sell anything in their stores. They have a try-before-you-buy model that other retailers such as Warby Parker and Gap’s Piperlime have also adopted. As the changing size and role of bank branches demonstrates, as well as the long lines of shoppers lining up every time Apple releases a new product, it is becoming increasingly more evident that there can be a successful marriage of e-commerce and brick and mortar. Sean Goldberg is a research manager with CoStar Group in Washington, D.C. More from Capital Business: For a daily rundown of Washington area business news, sign up for the “CapBiz A.M.” e-mail newsletter.


Washington Nationals woo season-ticket fans with photos, autographs, discounts

I am a longtime season-ticket holder for the Washington Nationals baseball team, but this season I’ve really gone goofy over the franchise, which this week launches its playoff run toward — hopefully — the World Series. I can tell you that sitting through 40-odd games at Nationals Park, I’m not just following the team’s performance on the field but thinking about its business off of it. The team, according to Forbes magazine, is worth $700 million and in 2013 earned revenue of $244 million. Player salaries eat up $125 million of that revenue; the Nats have the 10th-highest payroll in Major League Baseball. When I look around the stadium, I see and think of the sources generating that $244 million. Television, radio, in-stadium advertising, luxury suites, hot dog and beer sales, sweatshirts and cap purchases. There are also concerts, corporate affairs and other in-park events such as the National Hockey League’s Winter Classic, scheduled for January. But the holy grail for any team is its season-ticket revenue, a number that most sports franchises guard like a state secret. The business of the team pretty much lives and dies by the number of its season-ticket holders. Why? They pay in advance, so that is money in the bank. It’s a predictable revenue stream. It’s also a poll, of sorts, on how popular your team is in the community. Season-ticket holders are passionate. The strongest and most historic franchises — think Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox and Cardinals — have the most season-ticket subscribers. Nowadays, season tickets are digital. My two season tickets are red, credit card-sized passes that get me in the game when I wave them under an electronic reader. They also double as a debit card, allowing me to buy food and merchandise. Digital tickets are like credit cards, leaving a trail of information for the issuer. They can tell from my digital tickets which gate I enter through, what time I arrive, where I eat, where I am from and what I buy, from a sweatshirt to bottled water to a sub sandwich. Armed with plan-holder data and other behavioral information, sports teams such as the Nationals paint a demographic portrait of the typical fan. The team takes that profile and matches it against prospective customers, allowing it to pinpoint prospects for its sales staff. The average Nationals fan is wealthy and suburban, with the vast majority coming from


Women in the federal workforce: From FEW to fewer

that the active-duty military is more than 80 percent male. Overreliance on too few hiring mechanisms, such as those that give preference to veterans, “may not be healthy for an organization’s culture, as those authorities may not result in a workforce that is representative of society,” the MSPB said. “Agencies should take care when hiring the majority of their employees through just one or two authorities that limit eligibility to a particular segment of society.” In certain occupations, including information technology, engineering and policing, men were 80 percent or more of new hires. “This certainly is an ominous trend,” Kopenhaver said, “and is further proof that women still are not breaking into those non-traditional female jobs like IT technology.” Whistleblower settles case Stories about federal whistleblowers often are tales of seemingly endless and sometimes nonsensical reprisals against employees trying to do the right thing by exposing waste, fraud and abuse. This time, the good guy is winning. After many years, Franz Gayl’s story has reached a happy settlement. Although it is a victory for Gayl, it’s not quite a fully happy ending, at least not yet. Gayl is the Marine Corps civilian scientist whose widely reported complaints about lax efforts to provide protective equipment to U.S. forces in Iraq were met with reprisal. Through an Office of Special Counsel (OSC) mediation program, he and the service have agreed to settle charges that the Marines retaliated against him. The settlement “not only vindicates me but also my loyalty and dedication to the Marines, which never wavered,” said Gayl, a retired Marine Corps major. When the special counsel moved in 2011 to stop Gayl from being suspended without pay, the agency said Gayle “blew the whistle on the failure of the Marine Corps to timely provide Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles to our troops in Iraq.” Rather than thanking him for taking action to save U.S. lives, the Marines treated him almost like an enemy. “Gayl paid a nightmarish price for his MRAP disclosures, even though he was acting at the direction of America’s top field general in Iraq, who had been unable to secure delivery of the lifesaving vehicles for well over a year,” said a statement from the Government Accountability Project (GAP), which represents him. “From 2007-2014 Gayl endured a reprimand, several suspensions, a criminal investigation, threats of removal for unacceptable performance, removal of duties, partial loss of his


World Digest: Sept. 28, 2014

MEXICO At least 18 killed in shootout, clashes Eleven men died in a gunfight in northern Mexico and at least seven people, including an opposition politician, have been killed in violence in the country’s southwest, authorities said Sunday. State prosecutors in the northern border state of Chihuahua said a shootout between rival gangs late Friday near the town of Guachochi, in southwestern Chihuahua, left 11 suspected gang members dead. The gunfight was one of the bloodiest in recent months to hit northern Mexico, an area hotly disputed by drug gangs seeking control of smuggling routes where violence has eased since scaling record heights in 2010 and 2011. Separately, a series of clashes extending from Friday into Saturday involving students, police and armed men in the southwestern town of Iguala killed at least six people and left some 20 injured, the government of Guerrero state said. Some were shot, but the state government could not immediately say how all the victims had died. Local media said as many as eight people may have been killed in Iguala. Guerrero’s government said 22 police officers had been arrested for investigation over the deaths in Iguala. Also in Guerrero, Braulio Zaragoza, the local secretary general of the opposition conservative National Action Party (PAN) was shot dead in the beach resort of Acapulco on Sunday, a local government official said. The motive was unclear. — Reuters RUSSIA Lavrov says ties with U.S. need ‘reset 2.0’ Moscow called Sunday for a new “reset 2.0” in relations with Washington, saying the situation in Ukraine that had led to Western sanctions against Russia was improving thanks to Kremlin peace initiatives. The United States and European Union accuse Moscow of supporting a pro-Russian rebellion in eastern Ukraine and have imposed sanctions, which they have repeatedly tightened since Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea in March. The conflict has brought relations between Moscow and the West to their lowest level since the end of the Cold War. President Obama said last week that the sanctions could be lifted if Russia takes the path of peace and diplomacy. In television interviews, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it was time to repeat the “reset,” a word Washington officials used to describe an attempt to mend ties early in Obama’s presidency. But he also lashed out at NATO’s “Cold War mentality,” criticized Washington for excluding Russia’s ally President Bashar al-Assad from its campaign against Islamic


Good: sturgeon return. Bad: rockfish fall. Ugly: a killer plant comes back to the bay

(Dan Powers/AP) There are far more striped bass, also known as rockfish, than sturgeon, but still there aren’t enough. Stripers, as they’re also called, are Maryland’s state fish, as symbolic as the iconic blue crab. The number of females of spawning age has fallen and is close to a threshold where the species is considered “not recovered.” And the reason for that, said Tom O’Connell, the director of the Fisheries Service at Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources, is cause for concern. Fishery experts have noticed that the stock falls during winters with little rain or snow. Little striped bass eat plankton, which feed on nutrients that run off wetlands in precipitation. Baby fish can’t become big fish when they starve. On top of that, big rockfish eat menhaden, a species that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission said was in danger of depletion when it greatly limited the menhaden catch in 2012. Finally, many rockfish are stricken with a disease that attacks their internal organs. In other words, they are being hit from all sides. “Looking at the Chesapeake Bay specifically, striped bass prefer menhaden, which is really low,” O’Connell said. So they start eating crabs, “but they’re not as nutritious as menhaden,” he said. “Striped bass are more susceptible to get diseased when they’re distressed, and that’s happening.” But, O’Connell said, commercial watermen and recreational fishermen who are afraid the population is about to crater are overlooking important factors. The number of female rockfish in the bay today is about the same as the population in 1995, when officials declared that the species was back from being nearly wiped out a decade earlier. The lady fish are capable of incredible things — including producing tons of juveniles, O’Connell said. Biologists following trends offered a projection: The population might drop “for maybe two years, but the trajectory starts to go up again because of expected better production — not as good as managers want, but up,” he said. The one thing the bay’s managers want to completely die off is the invasive water chestnut. It shoots up from the river bottom, flowers in a way that blocks sunlight from native plants, and dies, forming muck that contributes to oxygen-depleted dead zones. A small water chestnut patch was spotted on the Potomac in July at Pohick Bay Regional Park in Virginia. “It was kind of alarming, considering what was needed to


National digest: Sept. 29, 2014

Oklahoma Tractor-trailer hits bus, killing four The driver of an 18-wheel tractor-trailer that collided with a bus and killed four members of a Texas community college softball team told investigators he had been distracted by something in his cabin before the accident, authorities said Sunday. Other investigators at the site said Sunday that there were no signs of the driver braking or taking evasive action as the truck veered through the median for 820 feet before smashing into the oncoming bus. The truck was northbound on Interstate 35 near Davis, Okla., on Friday night when it hit the bus carrying 15 members of the North Central Texas College women’s softball team and driven by their coach. The truck, driven by Russell Staley, 53, of Saginaw, Tex., continued off the interstate. Staley was treated for injuries and released. There were no charges pending against him. Staley “said he was distracted by something in the cabin,” said Oklahoma Highway Patrol Capt. Ronnie Hampton, who declined to say what the distraction was. He said investigators do not necessarily agree with Staley’s explanation. The highway patrol will eventually give the results of its investigation to the local district attorney, who will decide whether to pursue criminal charges. — Associated Press Illinois Sen. Durbin calls for inquiry at air center Sen. Richard J. Durbin said Sunday that he will seek an investigation of how a contract employee was able to sabotage a regional control center and bring Chicago’s two international airports to a halt. The Illinois Democrat said he will ask inspectors general at the U.S. Transportation Department and the Federal Aviation Administration to investigate whether there was a security breach when the employee entered the building early Friday with a suitcase without causing suspicion. He is accused of starting a fire in the basement telecommunications room before attempting to commit suicide by slashing his throat. Brian Howard, 36, of Naperville, Ill., who had access to the control center in suburban Aurora via a swipe card, entered about 5 a.m. Friday, and about 30 minutes later he posted a suicide note on Facebook, according to a federal criminal complaint. Durbin said he is grateful that the FAA was able to ground all planes safely. He said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta told him that 23 of 29 computer racks were damaged, and the FAA said Sunday that it decided to replace the entire central communications network


BSO at Strathmore: A well-balanced ensemble that hits right at the surface

Violinist James Ehnes. (Benjamin Ealovega) If there was a thread that tied together the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program on Saturday, it would have something to do with Hollywood, and the ideas of surface beauty, little depth and emotional cliches. Two of the program’s composers, John Williams and Erich Korngold, are best known for their film scores, but both owe an immense debt to Rachmaninoff, whose rarely heard Symphony No. 1 took up the second half. And Jennifer Higdon’s anodyne “Blue Cathedral” certainly sounds like a film score. In short, everything wafted by, easy to listen to (and mostly well played), but with only a mimesis of the kinds of experience that the great masterworks provide. Rachmaninoff’s symphony is famous for its failed premiere, and for the deep depression into which it sent its 22-year-old creator; he stopped composing for two years and had to undergo formal psychoanalysis before he could resume. And yet, although the work is overstuffed and unruly, its fingerprints are all over the more successful Symphony No. 2. There is the same unabashed emotionality, the same episodic rhetoric (little sense of disparate events gradually culminating) and the same dark, growling orchestration. Perhaps he wouldn’t have needed a psychologist if instead he’d just had an editor. The BSO played the Rachmaninoff well; the score’s unfamiliarity elicited some smudged passages, but also a different energy level, as everyone concentrated on the challenge. Conductor Marin Alsop’s leadership was generic (more about traffic than balance or musical detail), but the performance drew a sustained, sincere ovation from the sizable audience at Strathmore. Korngold’s violin concerto was this Hollywood fixture’s first piece of concert music after more than a decade of film writing, and it borrows liberally from his catalogue. I don’t understand its appeal, given the competition — the trite, corny final movement really sinks the piece for me — but such artists as Heifetz, Perlman and Hahn have championed it. Saturday’s soloist, James Ehnes, is my kind of musician — fastidious, conscientious and unconcerned with showmanship. The difficult double-stops rang out thanks to his pinpoint intonation. His tonal palette is somewhat limited because of a vibrato motion that rotates rather than pulsates, but he is still a world-class fiddler. The concerto’s turgid post-Straussian orchestration often buries the soloist, but Alsop is a strong accompanist and did a good job here. Ehnes ended his evening with “Theme From ‘Schindler’s List.’ ”


The year’s first monarch butterflies are entering Mexico earlier than usual

summer. “This year, we are seeing them present in Mexican territory earlier than usual,” Fueyo said. By November, they settle in mountaintop forests where they spend the winter. Fueyo said authorities will wait to make a definitive count after the butterflies have settled in completely, something that usually occurs by December. In February, Mexico, the United States and Canada agreed to form working groups on the conservation of monarch butterflies, after steep and steady declines in the previous three years. Last year, the black-and-orange butterflies covered only 1.65 acres in the pine and fir forests west of Mexico City, down from more than 44.5 acres at their recorded peak in 1996. Because the butterflies clump together by the thousands in trees, counting individuals is near impossible; instead, they are counted by the area they cover. The head of international affairs for Mexico’s Environment Department, Enrique Lendo Fuentes, said the three nations “will probably have a joint plan of action before the end of November.” The plan, experts said, would be to create a corridor of milkweed-friendly areas along the entire three-nation migratory route. That is important, because the butterfly has to reproduce along the way; the same generation doesn’t make the entire trip. Mexico has already taken a number of steps, such as setting up a network of observers to track monarchs from the time they enter the country, to try to identify milkweed patches that the butterflies might use along their way to their wintering grounds. Activists have launched a Web site where Mexicans can report and share sightings. Monarchs lay eggs on milkweed leaves; the eggs hatch into caterpillars, morph into chrysalises and transform into butterflies. The butterfly’s dramatic decline is being driven by widespread planting of genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant crops that tend to drastically decrease the amount of milkweed available. Mexican writer and environmentalist Homero Aridjis said the butterflies face a number of challenges, including climate change and illegal logging in Mexico, in addition to the loss of habitat in the United States. “We are alarmed, because we don’t yet know what is going to happen” with butterflies, whose migration — but not the existence of the species — is considered at risk of disappearing. “We don’t know what size population is going to come” to Mexico, “so we are a little alarmed.” Read more: Ten things in nature that could vanish before your kids see them


Trying to limit the number of deer, with surprising results

Keeping deer from degrading an Ivy League campus is no easy task. (Paul Tessier/Getty Images) A few years ago, the central campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., was facing a problem familiar to the Washington area. An infestation of white-tailed deer had pushed the community to the limits of its tolerance. Without natural predators, the deer reproduced until their numbers were limited only by the availability of food. Gardens were being eaten. Lyme disease was spreading. Collisions with cars threatened human lives. Ecologists warned that the proliferation of deer was probably changing wild habitat enough to place songbirds at risk. Invasive plants began to fill the voids left by excessive grazing. By 2009, Cornell needed to find a solution that would satisfy everyone, including animal rights activists. Typically, a deer boom is dealt with through hunting. Often, sharpshooting riflemen or archers are brought in to bait the animals into zones where shots can safely be taken. Cornell’s administrators took a different approach: They chose to experiment with sterilizing many of the wild deer on campus while allowing periodic hunting on nearby land — and the result was something that nobody anticipated. Washington’s deer population Surgical sterilization of wild animals has worked in some cases. Small bands of wild horses in Montana and Nevada have been reduced by choosing the most dominant stallions and performing vasectomies on them. Because horses maintain harems, in which a dominant male fights to maintain an exclusive ability to mate with many females, only a few stallions needed to be neutered to significantly reduce the birth rate. However, white-tailed deer do not maintain harems. Bucks and does form temporary pairs for a few days in order to mate. Bucks can travel for miles to seek out does in heat, which means that a large number of females would need to be targeted for sterilization. By sterilizing dozens of does through tubal ligation, Cornell accidentally drew in new bucks from the surrounding area. (Bigstock) The method of contraception chosen by Cornell was tubal ligation, in which a doe’s fallopian tubes are either blocked or severed. This prevents egg cells from reaching the uterus. Unlike chemical forms of birth control, tubal ligation is typically permanent and avoids the expense of capturing the same deer each year to maintain their infertility. At a cost of roughly $1,200 per deer, 77 does were captured and sterilized though tubal ligation.


The Secret Service opens door to ridicule

Administration’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R Series — which monitors, among other things, space weather — organized a “team-building” activity in the middle of the day: lunch, then a 2 p.m. showing of “Star Trek Into Darkness.” Many who attended assumed that since it was a work-organized event, they could charge the time as work hours. But the Commerce Department inspector general said in a report released this week that, no, going to the movies is not work. “Unlike training events, which are designed to develop professional skills and therefore may be counted as work hours, watching a Star Trek movie offered no professional development opportunities,” the report said. “Therefore, even if such an event resulted in greater unity or cohesion, the hours spent at the event should not have been billed to the government.” The event was planned to boost morale, and 21 people, including government workers and private-sector federal contractors, attended. Thirteen of them, including six federal employees (three at NASA, two at NOAA and one from the Commerce Department general counsel’s office), failed to deduct the time from their timecards, and seven federal contractors billed the hours spent at lunch and the movie to the government. A whistleblower alerted the inspector general to the event, saying it “created the appearance of disregard for tax dollars.” Once the inspector general began investigating, the employees’ timecards were adjusted to reflect the non-work hours. And the contractors who worked for Noblis, Booz Allen Hamilton and Aerospace Corp. eventually all credited the money back to the government. The inspector general concluded that the supervisor should have been clearer about timekeeping but added that the report was not intended to discourage team-building activities. “However, events like the matinee viewing of the latest Star Trek movie . . . should not be conducted at the expense of taxpayers,” the IG wrote. The art lives on Much has been written about former nine-term congressman James Traficant of Ohio, who died Saturday after a tractor accident. The media called him flamboyant, colorful and eccentric (that’s code for “crazy”). They talked about his great hair — talk that naturally segued into noting that it was a toupee — and dredged up the former Mahoning County, Ohio, sheriff’s unfortunate eight years in prison after his 2002 bribery conviction. They referred to his signature “Star Trek” phrase, “Beam me up.” But Loop fans recall Traficant fondly as a budding


DBGB Kitchen and Bar in DC: Dinner and an evolving show

On star chef Daniel Boulud’s brag wall at the new DBGB Kitchen and Bar: plates signed by fellow chefs. The restaurant’s name is a play on CBGB, a shuttered punk-rock club in New York. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) No out-of-town chef in recent memory has tried as hard as Daniel Boulud to win over Washington. Best known for Daniel, his refined French dining experience in New York, Boulud threw a party for the local chef community three months before his DBGB Kitchen and Bar even opened in CityCenterDC in September. To distinguish the menu here from the original DBGB in the Big Apple, the Michelin-starred chef created a few dishes with nods to the Mid-Atlantic, foremost the Crabbie, a hamburger topped with a crab cake. Also revealing is the way Boulud chose to decorate the main dining room of his 15th restaurant, “where the French brasserie meets the American tavern,” according to the slogan. Flanking diners on two sides are shelves holding more than 100 white plates, signed by chefs as diverse as Cristeta Comerford of the White House and CNN’s Anthony Bourdain. The display acknowledges both Boulud’s lofty perch in the culinary firmament and the market’s affection for brag walls. The one-sheet menu reads, at first glance, like a lot of other bistro lists. Steak tartare? Check. Coq au vin? Oui. The most enticing real estate on the list celebrates the wares of the charcuterie maven for the Boulud empire, Aurélien Dufour. My multiple tastes of his handiwork included a springy boudin blanc with pork jus and an earthy blood sausage set on buttery whipped potatoes. The samples have me anticipating excursions to Vermont (pork fused with cheddar), Beaujolais (pork flavored with red wine) and other ports of call. Among the “Bites to Share” is ouefs mimosa, a boring, if glittery, riff on deviled eggs garnished with caviar. Calamari fried in beer batter is stiff eating, but I appreciate the fillips of lime cream and pickled peppers. Sails of chickpea socca decorate a pleasant appetizer of sweet and sour eggplant, a vegetarian and gluten-free option. DBGB’s signature hamburger is a letdown, not because of the juicy beef patty or the potato bun, but because of the damp, barely-there pancake of seafood in the high-rise. Everyone wants more of the fried chicken with collard greens, however. Sweet with honey and biting with cayenne, the juicy, brined chicken gets an extra


NOAA scientist on the cutting-edge of weather forecasting

(Photo: James Murnan/NOAA) Growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, Adam Clark experienced his fair share of extreme weather events that included the Great Flood of 1993, which left the city without clean drinking water for two weeks. This experience piqued Clark’s interest in meteorology and ultimately led him to the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma, “the severe weather capital of the world.” “Seeing first-hand the huge impact weather could have on people’s lives motivated me to work somewhere that I could improve the prediction of high-impact weather,” said Clark. The 34-year-old Clark, a research scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is a pioneer in the development of next generation weather prediction models to improve the lead time and accuracy of severe weather warnings and forecasts that are designed to save lives and protect property. “I want to improve the products that the NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center uses. Anything that I can do to help make their products timely, accurate and reliable has a huge impact on the country,” said Clark. As part of this work, Clark is a lead planner and facilitator for the Storm Prediction Center and National Severe Storms Laboratory’s annual Hazardous Weather Testbed Spring Forecasting Experiment. This five-week forecasting experiment brings together scientists and forecasters from across the country to test new and innovative severe weather prediction tools in a collaborative environment. If the tools are found useful, Clark said, they eventually get implemented for use by operational severe weather forecasters. Jack Kain, chief of the National Severe Storms Laboratory’s forecast research and development division, noted what makes the experiment so groundbreaking “is that it is the one place where we have the country’s best front-line forecasters, severe weather forecasters and scientists all here in the severe storm laboratory, and we get to work with them to guide our research.” “That is the glue that holds this experiment together,” he said. Clark said that one of the biggest challenges to this work is data overload. With the huge gains in computer power, forecasters today are able to access and utilize more data than five years go. However, the time constraints in generating their forecasts remain the same. As a result, Clark and his team are constantly trying to figure how to effectively extract useful information from the large datasets of weather forecast models and most efficiently visualize the data for the forecasters who


Joshua Bell’s Metro encore draws a crowd

Acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell played an incognito concert at the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station in 2007 as part of a Washington Post experiment, and the world has not let him forget it. He returned to the Metro on Tuesday for a free concert at Union Station. “Hi, does your camera make a clicking sound? You have to shut it off. He’ll hear you. And he’ll stop playing.” It was three minutes before Joshua Bell took the makeshift stage, and his press representative was prepping the front row. The world-famous violinist always plays in almost perfect silence — in concert halls, grand ballrooms and even in palaces. But Tuesday, for the second time, he was playing near a D.C. Metro station. Gene Weingarten, a Washington Post writer who asked Bell to take his $3 million violin under ground for the first time in 2007, introduced Bell to the crowd of hundreds who packed the main hall of Union Station. Back then, Weingarten explained, there were no cameras to be clicked. He hadn’t told anyone that Bell was playing. So, instead of fans arriving two hours early to get a good view, more than 1,000 commuters in L’Enfant Plaza rushed by Bell without stopping to hear the music. The popularity of the resulting story, “Pearls Before Breakfast,” is what brought so many people out to hear Bell perform Tuesday afternoon in an event sponsored in part by The Post. This time, he would play with the help of younger musicians he had mentored, in dress clothes, and although technically still in a Metro station, he wouldn’t be underground. He hoped people wouldn’t want to miss it. Violinist Joshua Bell's hair flies as he gives a performance at Union Station. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post) He was right. The hall was so packed that when the students who accompanied Bell performed an opening set, people in the back of the crowd kept clapping after the students left the stage, not realizing that the music they were then hearing was a recording. But when the violinist himself finally stepped out, the applause was thunderous. “Wow,” Bell said into a microphone. “This is more like it!” Beneath signs that read “GARAGE” and “BUS,” Bell played for just under 30 minutes. He bent and swayed with the music in the energetic manner for which he is known. The sounds of his violin and the other string


Momentum for the Trans-Pacific Partnership needs to be revived

Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister. (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg) THE TRANS-PACIFIC Partnership is a proposed free-trade agreement that will knit the United States and 11 nations of South America, North America and Asia more closely together, while providing a geopolitical counterweight to a rising China. The pact would be especially valuable because Japan is willing to join, which would require a long-overdue opening and restructuring of its protected but lackluster economy. Indeed, without Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, the TPP loses much of its strategic significance. So it was disappointing to learn that a Sept. 24 meeting between American and Japanese trade negotiators in Washington broke up after only an hour over the same old issue, Japanese resistance to U.S. farm exports, that has plagued the two nations’ dealings for decades. The Japanese departed without touching a sandwich buffet that had been laid out in anticipation of an extended working session, according to the Wall Street Journal. This is only the latest troubling development for the centerpiece of what was once meant to be President Obama’s foreign policy “pivot” to Asia. As 2014 began, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was promising to join the U.S.-led free-trade agreement as a spur to his own structural economic reforms. A bipartisan, bicameral group of senior U.S. lawmakers had agreed on a plan for “fast track” legislative authority to expedite a congressional vote on the TPP, once the 12 would-be members hammered out a final deal. Bucking resistance from trade skeptics in his own party, Mr. Obama had offered a friendly reference to that proposal in his State of the Union address on Jan. 28. But Mr. Obama’s call was received coolly by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and by key Democratic constituencies such as organized labor. Foreign crises in the Middle East and Ukraine occupied the White House and Congress. Two champions of the bipartisan trade-promotion measure, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), retired or planned to retire from Congress. For all of Mr. Abe’s talk of bold steps and confronting special interests in Japan, his negotiators have not yet backed up the prime minister’s talk with concrete proposals, even though the prime minister has said repeatedly that opening agricultural markets is in Japan’s interest. The upshot is that momentum behind the TPP seems to be flagging and the administration’s goal of a tentative agreement by the end of 2014 is


D.C news in brief

next year and 2017 are National Mall and National Cathedral. A Convention Center-Southwest Waterfront route and a line serving NoMa are being considered for 2018 to 2020. Dupont-Southwest and Columbia Heights-Washington Hospital Center-Brookland-NoMa routes are proposed between 2021 and 2024. Additionally, four extensions to existing routes are planned for completion by 2017. DDOT will have an open house to solicit feedback on the plan from 6 to 8 p.m Oct. 20 at Pinstripes restaurant, 1064 Wisconsin Ave. NW. To view the plan, go to www.dccirculator.com. Print copies are available at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, 901 G St. NW; Anacostia Library, 1800 Good Hope Rd. SE; and Georgetown Library, 3260 R St. NW. The deadline for comments is Nov. 7. Cancer society to hold charity walk for breast cancer The American Cancer Society has scheduled Making Strides Against Breast Cancer, a 5K noncompetitive fundraising walk, for 9 a.m. Sunday at the Sylvan Theater, 15th Street and Independence Avenue NW. To register, call 301-982-2130, e-mail jessica.peterson@cancer.org or visit www.makingstrideswalk.org/washingtondc. Donations may also be made at the Web site. Meeting on transportation projects in Ward 8 is Monday The District Department of Transportation is having a public meeting from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Monday at Matthews Memorial Baptist Church, 2616 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE, to provide updates on various transportation projects that will affect Ward 8. Project engineers will give presentations and solicit feedback on the 11th Street Bridge, the South Capitol Street Corridor/Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, the St. Elizabeths campus infrastructure, the South Capitol Street Trail and other projects. For information, visit ddot.dc.gov. D.C. human rights office appoints general counsel The D.C. Office of Human Rights recently appointed Sunu P. Chandy as general counsel. The office investigates discrimination cases in housing, employment, public accommodations and educational institutions. She will head the agency’s legal team, make recommendations on probable cause and review D.C. Council legislation related to discrimination. She previously served as an attorney with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s New York District Office for 15 years, litigating discrimination cases and leading a nationwide training on how gender identity and sexual orientation claims may be covered under federal law. Chandy has a JD degree from Northeastern University School of Law and a bachelor of arts in peace and global studies and women’s studies from Earlham College in Richmond, Ind. For information, visit ohr.dc.gov. — Compiled by Terence McArdle


How often are D.C.’s top chefs actually in the kitchen?

Daniel Boulud, owner and chef at the recently opened DBGB Kitchen and Bar in the District, and Ed Scarpone, who will be the head chef when Boulud is not there, work together on coq au vin on Sept. 24. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) The chef’s name graces the door, the awning, the menu. His image is everywhere. After all, he is the main draw. Celebrity chefs, almost all of them men, tower over our food landscape, with restaurant empires that dot the continent and often the globe. Las Vegas has become a grand buffet of chef outposts. And Washington has joined in, long ago graduating beyond Duke Zeibert’s pickles and strip steaks to a capital now served by culinary royalty. In recent years, local titan José Andrés and frequent “Top Chef” contestant Mike Isabella have been joined by out-of-towners Jose Garces (Rural Society), Wolfgang Puck (The Source) and Michael Schlow (Tico DC). And Daniel Boulud, with multiple Michelin stars for his Manhattan restaurants (although his Daniel lost one this week), opened DBGB Kitchen and Bar in downtown Washington last month. With all these brand names in Washington, what reasonable expectation should diners have of enjoying a harissa spiced lambchop seared by the big cheese himself? Short answer: very little. Which may rankle diners, who are hungry for a star sighting as well as sustenance. “Went to DBGB hoping to get a glance of DB and asked our server if he was there. The server said that he is only there for events and if VIPs are planning to go,” a patron noted in a recent Washington Post Web chat. “From all the press I thought he would be sticking around for longer than a few days, but it seems that it’s a lot of smoke and mirrors. The food was great but why does the group promote the place with him if he is never going to be there?” Interesting question. No man can be everywhere, not even a celebrated blowtorch-wielding Gallic chef whose gastronomic empire consists of 16 restaurants that spread out, like so much bechamel, across 10 cities, four countries and three continents. The key to managing the multi-city star chef experience, it turns out, is to manage expectations. What a star chef promises is that the cuisine will meet his high standards. What he will not guarantee is how often he will actually be in a specific


The autumnal annual named dahlia

salmon-orange petals and yellow centers. “Good color, orange in the backs of the petals and a huge petal count,” he said. In a discrete bed between his garage and rear deck, he grows his single-flowered dahlias — this is to minimize the risk of bees pollinating them with the fuller types — and here he points out Bloomquist Sweet, a strong pink collarette with a showy central disc, and the size of a saucer. “It’s a great show flower and a great garden flower,” Spangenberg said. Because of the sheer number of dahlias, he grows them through the six-inch netting — taut, strung in three layers a foot apart, and perfect for securing stems against a bullying wind. Other growers use tomato cages or individual rebar stakes. The dahlias simply grow through the net; without it, he wouldn’t have time to grow so many, he said. Another growing tip? Lateral buds erupt from lower-leaf axils. By pinching them out when small, you avoid congested flowering and weaker blooms. This also makes for long, straight stems that you need for cutting. Disbudding “is a big hurdle for people to get over, but it’s so much better of a flower for it.” November and December are the months serious dahlias fans harvest the tubers. After the frost, Spangenberg uses a lopper to cut off most of the damaged stems. You can leave the tubers in the ground for a couple of weeks to harden off a bit, and then lift them carefully with a garden fork. You will find that your single tuber has multiplied a dozenfold. You can either separate the tubers then or wait until after winter storage, though Spangenberg likes to sever them in the fall when they are easier to cut. Each one is dusted with cinnamon — it acts as a fungicide — and placed in a sealed plastic bag filled with vermiculite rather than peat moss (too damp). Stored indoors, most tubers will make it through and be ready for potting up in April. You are then faced with the problem of finding homes for them. A lot of people who like dahlias are scared off by this digging, cutting and storing regimen. If you’re one of them, he says, simply don’t bother. Treat the $5 dahlia for what it is, a cheap and cheerful annual that rewards a little care with a lot of heart.


World Digest: Oct. 1, 2014

MEXICO Alleged cartel leader Beltrán Leyva seized Military special forces grabbed alleged cartel leader Héctor Beltrán Leyva in a lightning raid at a restaurant Wednesday, Mexican federal officials said, announcing the latest in a string of high-profile drug arrests. The purported head of the Beltrán Levya drug gang was captured in a seafood eatery in San Miguel de Allende, a city in the central state of Guanajuato that is a popular enclave for foreigners. No shots were fired in the brief operation, which culminated an 11-month investigation, federal criminal investigations chief Tomás Zerón said. The arrest comes just months after the capture of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the elusive boss of the Sinaloa cartel, which is considered the most powerful drug gang in Mexico. He was caught in February after more than a decade on the run following his escape from prison. Beltrán Leyva, 49, is said to have become leader of the Beltrán Leyva cartel after his brother Arturo was killed by Mexican troops in a shootout in late 2009. Two other brothers are behind bars for their involvement in the cartel. — Associated Press AUSTRALIA Journalists condemn new anti-terror law The Australian Parliament on Wednesday passed a raft of counterterrorism laws that extend secret service powers despite concerns about their effect on press freedom. The measures, including one that grants greater search and surveillance powers to the nation’s spy service, are designed to better equip security agencies to deal with extremist networks such as the Islamic State. The most contentious section of the legislation carries a potential 10-year prison sentence for anyone who discloses information that relates to a “special intelligence operation.” The national union for journalists — the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance — called the law “an outrageous attack on press freedom in Australia.” Attorney General George Brandis said an operation had to be “unusual” and “covert” before he could classify it as a special intelligence operation with secrecy protections. — Associated Press SYRIA Chemical arms sites to be destroyed soon The dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons facilities is expected to begin this month, and the first of the 12 sites should be destroyed by the end of November, the organization tasked with eliminating the program said. The report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has been sent to the U.N. Security Council, which last year unanimously approved destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons


Are there signs of a thaw between China and the exiled Dalai Lama on Tibet?

opening of a new railway line last month that will give greater access to its rich natural resources. Foreign travel is still greatly restricted. And more than 130 people have self-immolated to protest the Dalai Lama’s exile and press for freedom for Tibet since 2009, including two during Xi’s recent visit to New Delhi. Dalai Lama in 'informal' talks to return to Tibet Elsewhere in China, the streets of Hong Kong have been filled in recent days with thousands of pro-democracy protesters. The Dalai Lama said he had been closely watching the events unfold in that city. “I’m seriously watching the situation, but it’s very, very complicated and it’s difficult to say why,” he said. “My wish is that the problem be solved peacefully with mutual benefit. That’s the only thing I can do — prayer, hope.” Despite the recent tensions, speculation about improved relations between China and the Dalai Lama have been fueled by remarks from a Chinese Communist Party deputy secretary who said discussions on the spiritual leader’s return to his homeland were underway. In September, a popular Chinese Web site briefly displayed an article that said that the Dalai Lama might return for a visit to a Buddhist shrine and to meet party leaders. The Dalai Lama also contributed to the media hubbub, praising Xi as more “realistic” and “open-minded” than his predecessors while Xi was on a high-profile trip to India in September. On Thursday, the Dalai Lama again praised Xi for having “courageously tackled” the problem of government corruption. But he voiced concern over China’s imprisonment of dissidents. “The thing to say is that he’s approached these problems more realistically” than other leaders in the past, the Dalai Lama said of Xi. The Dalai Lama’s belief that the Chinese leader respects Buddhism gives him hope they could find common ground. “This is something new for a Communist Party leader to say something about spirituality,” the Dalai Lama noted. “We’ll see. I have some optimistic view. Still too early to say.” Some Tibet experts have scoffed at reports about an improvement in the relationship between China and the Dalai Lama, noting that China’s strategy has long been to wait until the Dalai Lama dies to resolve the Tibet issue — as well as that of the holy man’s successor. The Dalai Lama has said that his successor should be chosen by the Tibetan people, a desire


Montgomery County Animal Watch

This case was received recently by the Montgomery County Animal Services Division. For information, call 240-773-5900. This number provides recorded information on topics such as the new animal services and adoption center’s hours and location in Derwood, adoption and licensing procedures, and lost-and-found and field services. Pushy cat bites woman Fundraiser and calendar launch The Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind Adopt or foster rescue dogs: Rockville Reduced fees for cat adoption: Germantown Adoptable cats at no-kill shelter: Gaithersburg — Compiled by Lisa M. Bolton


NSO offers “Lobgesang,” but highlight is organist Paul Jacobs playing Bach

was capable; and the tenor Paul Appleby, a veteran of Wolf Trap and a more recent Vocal Arts DC recital, took me by surprise with the volume and power of what I had thought of as an essentially lyric — which is to say lighter — voice. But for all of the musical muscle on display, the evening as a whole felt oddly routine, as if we had been plunged into the middle of the season. This was partly because of the conductor, Matthew Halls. Halls is an early-music specialist who is gradually taking on a wider range of musical assignments; his past outings with the NSO were a “Messiah” and a program that included Dutilleux. He is calm and competent, and the performance was clean and together, which is saying something. But the “Lobgesang” symphony, in particular, required a clearer vision and a stronger hand to pull off. The symphony itself, in fact, was the appeal and the drawback of the evening. Its size is cited as one reason it’s not done more often, but many equally large works are repertory chestnuts, notably Beethoven’s Ninth, to which it owes a large and obvious debt. A clearer obstacle is that it is so much a relic of its time, and like many works that epitomize a particular period, it flourished when it was written and has proven less visionary, less enduring to those who came after. It’s a large-scale Romantic piece with a lot of lovely music but little that is actually breathtaking, and it’s unsure whether it wants to be a symphony or an oratorio, changing horses halfway through with its extended vocal conclusion. Simply letting it go isn’t enough, it turns out, to sell it to a contemporary audience, although it is a nice piece to have heard, and there are some compelling accounts of it on the market (including Dohnanyi’s). The NSO is coming out of the gate energetically, with no fewer than four new players announced at the start of this season: Abel Pereira as principal horn; William Gerlach as principal trumpet; Leah Arsenault as assistant principal flute; and David Murray, who has been playing with the NSO for a couple of years on one-year contracts, as a section trombone. The orchestra sounded athletic and willing on Wednesday night. Next week, David Zinman will put it through its paces. The program repeats at 8 p.m. Saturday.


Martin L. Perl, Nobel Prize-winning physicist, dies at 87

University of California at Irvine who was credited with leading the discovery of the neutrino, another infinitesimally small component of matter. Together, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences declared, the scientists had “discovered two of nature’s most remarkable subatomic particles.” A look at those who have died this year. Martin Lewis Perl, the son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, was born June 24, 1927, in Brooklyn, N.Y. His mother was a secretary and bookkeeper, and his father, after working as a clerk and salesman, opened a printing business that allowed the family a degree of financial security during the Depression. His sister, the late Lila Perl, became a noted children’s author. After serving in the Merchant Marine and the Army during and after World War II, Martin Perl received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 1948 from what is now the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering. He began his career working for General Electric on matters including television picture tubes, a field that required additional studies at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. There, he wrote in his Nobel biographical sketch, a professor told him, “Martin, what you are interested in is called physics not chemistry!” In 1955, he received a PhD in physics from Columbia University, where his mentors included I.I. Rabi, a Nobel Prize-wining physicist. Before joining Stanford, Dr. Perl taught and did research at the University of Michigan. He shared the 1982 Wolf Prize in physics, a $100,000 honor that is bestowed by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. Dr. Perl joined scientists who at times weighed in on public affairs, supporting an atomic test ban in 1999 and opposing the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. His marriage to Teri Hoch Perl ended in divorce. Survivors include four children, Anne Bernard of Palo Alto, Joseph Perl of Oakland, Calif., Matthew Perl of San Diego and Jed Perl of New York; eight grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter. As a mentor to younger scientists, Dr. Perl encouraged them to think in unconventional ways. “There are books on how to find the Higgs particle,” he told Science in 1992, two decades before scientists made the sensational announcement that they had discovered the Higgs, or something very much like it. “The thing to do if you are young is not look for the Higgs particle. . . . I would try to look for things other people consider to be trash.”


One gene is crucial to monarchs’ migration

Monarch butterflies migrate to Mexico every year from distant parts of North America. (Marco Ugarte/Associated Press) The 3,000-mile migration of monarch butterflies in North America is one of the insect world’s fantastic feats, and a single gene may be the reason they are able to do it. Scientists studied the complete genetic material, or genome, of monarchs — both those that migrate and those that don’t. They found that a gene related to flight muscle efficiency plays a big role in their migration. “One gene really stood out from everything else in the genome,” said ecology professor Marcus Kronforst. It was a gene related to collagen, the main ingredient in connective tissue, that was essential for flight muscle function. The researchers were surprised to find that the gene was less active, not more active, in migratory butterflies. But rather than making them big, powerful fliers, the gene made them efficient. Kronforst said it was like “the difference between marathon runners and sprinters.” Kronforst suspects this example of divergent selection came about because more efficient flight benefited migrating butterflies, while outsprinting competitors for flowers and mates helped the butterflies that stayed close to home. The study, published last week in the journal Nature, also identified the gene behind the butterfly’s orange-and-black pattern. Scientists say the monarch’s orange color — produced by chemicals from the milkweed plants that nourish them when they are larvae — tells potential predators they taste awful and are toxic to eat. — Wire reports


Book review: ‘How We Got to Now’ by Steven Johnson

Steve Jobs holds up the new iPod during the introduction of the device in 2005. (Paul Sakuma/Associated Press) Fred Vogelstein, the author of “Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution,” is a contributing editor for Wired magazine. We all know how important the printing press has been to human history. Invented in the 1400s, it allowed the mass production of books, newspapers and magazines. That fueled rapid increases in literacy and spawned new industries such as publishing. It also laid the foundation for colossal changes in how citizens expected to be governed, leading to more open and democratic societies. But did you know that the printing press also ignited a revolution in glassmaking? Europeans wanted eyeglasses to help them read all the material that printing presses were producing. When there was little to read, few cared about the farsightedness that hits us in middle age. Eyeglasses were hard to find and expensive. But because of the printing press, an entire industry of lens crafters was born. Soon these artisans discovered that spectacles were just one kind of lens. By 1590 they had figured out a way to use lenses called microscopes to see the tiniest of things and, a generation later, lenses called telescopes to see big things that were very far away. Telescopes helped change our understanding of how humans and the Earth evolved. Microscopes helped drive quantum leaps in medicine. Eventually, new kinds of lenses changed the definition of media, too — to include photography, movies and television. “How We Got to Now,” “How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World” by Steven Johnson. (Riverhead) This is helpful advice today. Smartphones and tablets, along with the software and cloud computing growing up around them, are turning the world on its ear. And the industrialized world is in the midst of massive global hand-wringing to figure out how much of this progress is good and how much is not so good. Johnson’s book reminds us that not only has modern society dealt with these problems before, these issues are endemic to progress. Johnson professes not to have an opinion about the relative goodness or badness of the six innovations he highlights: glass, cold, sound, cleanliness, time and light. But his presentation is reassuring and provides welcome context. I’d argue that Silicon Valley is becoming as dominant a place in the


Book review: ‘The Innovators,’ on the digital revolution, by Walter Isaacson

Finally, though he demanded that Homebrew Computing Club members “pay up” for pirating his software, their free distribution helped make it the industry standard. The first moral is that individual genius and teamwork go hand in hand; the second is that conflicting ideological styles and institutions can be mutually beneficial. Three intersecting patterns of collaborative creativity emerge from the book’s collection of digital lives. First, from World War II until the end of the Cold War, coordinated government funding in the military-industrial-academic complex fostered the electronic computer and the Internet. Second, the profit motive gave rise to corporate research centers, venture capital firms and patent lawyers, which in turn led to “breathtaking innovation in transistors, chips, computers, phones, devices, and Web services.” Finally, loosely coordinated networks driven by non-monetary rewards blossomed during the late 1960s and the early days of the open Internet, generating open-source, self-managing products such as GNU/Linux and Wikipedia. An ideal innovation policy, Isaacson suggests, fosters all three modes despite their sometimes conflicting value systems, and it rewards the impresarios that transgress each. A motif of “The Innovators” is the challenge of establishing priority for complex innovations. Who, for example, “invented” the electronic computer? Was it John Atanasoff, the lone tinkerer working in an Iowa basement; John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, the ENIAC’s patent-seeking academics; the “all-hands-on-deck” naval crew of Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper; or the polymath John von Neumann? Isaacson favors those who convert ideas into realities and influence the most people. “When people take insights from multiple sources and put them together,” he concludes, “it’s natural for them to think that the resulting ideas are their own — as in truth they are.” This sharing of credit is not just for the reader’s edification. “The Innovators” is the most accessible and comprehensive history of its kind, but it draws on and synthesizes ideas and evidence from decades of first movers. These include such classics as Steven Levy’s “Hackers,” literary competitors such as James Gleick’s “The Information,” academic tomes such as Fred Turner’s “From Counterculture to Cyberculture,” oral histories conducted by the Smithsonian, and a proliferation of technology journalism from Wired and other sources. Isaacson diligently attends to this syllabus, but it curbs his trademark enthusiasm, and many of his anecdotes are well-worn. The closer the book approaches the present, the more electric it gets. Its insider interviews reveal compelling tales of the intimate


Islamic State beheads second Briton, threatens to kill ex-U.S. Army Ranger

decisive action to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL.” Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, Kassig does not speak in the video. He served in Iraq in 2007 for about four months before receiving a medical discharge. Later that year he returned to the United States to pursue training as an emergency medical technician. In a statement, his parents, Ed and Paula Kassig, said: “We ask everyone around the world to pray for the Henning family, for our son, and for the release of all innocent people being held hostage in the Middle East and around the globe.” In a 2012 interview with CNN “We each get one life and that’s it,” Kassig said in the interview. “The way I saw it, I didn’t have a choice. This is what I was put here to do. I guess I am just a hopeless romantic, and I am an idealist, and I believe in hopeless causes.” Former hostages told the Kassig family that their son converted to Islam in captivity and had changed his name to Abdul-Rahman. “The family understands from speaking to former hostages that Kassig’s faith has provided him comfort during his long captivity,” a family spokeswoman said. Lisa Monaco, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, said that if the video purportedly showing an Islamic State militant beheading British hostage Alan Henning is verified, it is a "very clear example of the brutality of this group." The Islamic State is holding another American, a woman who traveled to Syria on a humanitarian mission. The woman’s family and the FBI have asked the news media not to identify her for fear of putting her at greater risk. The FBI says it thinks Henning, a taxi driver from the northern English city of Manchester, disappeared in Syria nine months ago while delivering aid as part of a charity convoy. Henning’s wife, Barbara, had made several appeals to the Islamic State to let her husband go, asking for mercy based on “Alan’s humanitarian motives for going to Syria.” News of Henning’s apparent killing came just after the father of another British hostage, journalist John Cantlie, pleaded for his release “to those he loves and who love him.” Cantlie has appeared in three videos in which he speaks from behind a desk, with a black backdrop, and criticizes U.S. and British policies in the Middle East. Julie Tate contributed to this report.


Global agenda must include mental health

Access to mental health and psychosocial support must be an integral part of the global health agenda [“Newest crisis of the Syrian war: Traumatized children,” World, Sept. 29]. The war in Syria has taken an unspeakable toll on children. We see its debilitating effects at our site in Jordan, where many children refugee survivors are receiving rehabilitative care. Their painful experiences, such as the death of or separation from family members, can have long-term impacts on their development and well-being. These children need basic necessities, counseling and psychosocial support. Global leaders recently convened in Washington to advance the Global Health Security Agenda on infectious diseases. Moving forward, we hope this important initiative will help bring government focus to psychological concerns and make mental health a priority. Prompt action by the international community is vital to stem the horrific tide of more children becoming part of the lost generation of Syrian children. Annie Sovcik, Washington The writer is director of the Washington office of the Center for Victims of Torture.


Forgotten ‘Hamlet’ at BCO shows missing link in 19th-century Italian opera

Alex Richardson as the lead in the Baltimore Concert Opera’s “Amleto.” (Angela Ferguson) In 1865, the composer Franco Faccio led the premiere of his opera “Amleto” — Hamlet — in Genoa, Italy. Faccio and his friends, including the writer/composer Arrigo Boito, who wrote the libretto, wanted to challenge the status quo and create an opera that moved past conventions. “Amleto,” though anticipated dubiously, was received well — enough to be revived at La Scala in 1871. That performance, however, was a disaster. Faccio went on to become a major conductor and champion of Verdi’s, leading the first performance of “Otello” — another Shakespeare work with a Boito libretto. “Amleto,” however, was largely forgotten. It was not performed again, in fact, for 143 years — until the Baltimore Concert Opera did so at the Engineers Club in Baltimore on Thursday night. Anthony Barrese, a conductor and composer, started trying to track down the “Amleto” score in 2003, and he laboriously transcribed the music from a microfilm of a badly faded copy. The production that he led Thursday was akin to a MIDI file: played on a single piano, with variable levels of singing, it required a lot of imagination to make out the outlines of a proper orchestral performance. For Barrese and some of the singers, the evening was a kind of dress rehearsal: they are giving a staged production at Opera Southwest in Albuquerque at the end of this month. For me, at least, it was tantalizing. I would be happy to hear “Amleto” again. At the very least, Faccio represents a missing link between Verdi and the verismo composers of the century’s end. “Amleto” is filled with melody, but freed from the ironclad traditions of arias and cabalettas; the “Essere o non essere” scene (you knew there had to be a “to be or not to be” moment) is as much dramatic monologue as aria per se. There are, to be sure, ensembles (including a trio for Hamlet, Gertrude and his father’s ghost) and there are more conventional arias. There are Italian-opera moments of bouncy party music and sad funerary music. But Ofelia’s mad scene, in its wistful tuneful simplicity, presages the final scene of Verdi’s Desdemona far more than it derives from the histrionics of Donizetti’s Lucia. Also good sport, for opera fans, is watching Boito embarking on the first of his Shakespeare projects (he adapted two more


Family moved from home where Ebola patient stayed

family members’ request for privacy. They were to be moved as soon as Friday and were expected to spend the rest of the incubation period in the new location, officials said. “It is not so much a concern that we need to get her (Troh) out of here because it’s dangerous or anything like that,” said Sana Syed, public information officer for the City of Dallas. She said that Troh “is scared. People in this complex are scared.” The potentially infectious items will be transported to a secure storage location before they are destroyed, the fire marshal said. Duncan is in isolation at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where he is in serious condition. He stayed at the Ivy Apartments complex, which is part of a broader community known as Vickery Meadow — a diverse neighborhood of immigrants and ethnic groups. Neighbors have peered from their windows and looked on from their porches as throngs of media surrounded the community beginning Tuesday. (The Washington Post/Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Public health officials say “approximately 10 people” who had contact with Duncan are considered at higher risk, though they emphasized Friday that none of these people had exhibited Ebola symptoms. “All of those individuals are doing well,” David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, said in a conference call with reporters. “There’s no additional individuals who have symptoms consistent with Ebola at this time.” Another 40 people are also still being monitored, including health-care workers and other members of the community who encountered Duncan, but these people are considered at low-risk for Ebola, Lakey said. The overall number of those being monitored has been cut in half since Thursday, when authorities said they were tracking 100 people. “We’ve cast a wide net,” said Beth P. Bell, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s center for emerging and infectious diseases. The process of figuring out who to track, called “contact tracing,” involved interviewing Duncan, as well as anyone who had gone into the Dallas apartment. “Everyone who worked in the ER that night, all the way down, were at risk,” said David Kuhar, an infection control medical officer at the CDC. “You cast as wide a net as possible and then you just whittle down, whittle down.” Duncan had been staying with Troh at her apartment since arriving in the United States from Liberia


Skywatch: October is a tale of two eclipses

Early risers across much of the world witnessed a total lunar eclipse overnight as the coppery, reddish “blood moon” passed through Earth’s shadow. Editor’s note: this video contains no audio. For October, it’s a tale of two eclipses: an early-morning total lunar eclipse and a late-afternoon partial solar eclipse. Get up before the sunrise for the total lunar eclipse on Wednesday morning. With clear skies, you’ll see a reddish moon. It’s safe to watch a lunar eclipse, since the Earth stands between the sun and moon, and we’ll watch our own planet’s shadow cross the surface of the moon. The partial phase starts at about 5:15 a.m., when that Earth shadow begins encroaching the lunar surface — or enters the umbra, according to Geoff Chester of the U.S. Naval Observatory. As the partial phase turns into the full eclipse phase, the moon will turn a noticeable red shade. At 6:25 a.m., the full lunar eclipse starts, but it will be low on the western horizon, so be sure to find a good view of that part of the heavens. The middle of the eclipse happens at 6:54 a.m., but the sky will have started to lighten as sunrise (in the eastern sky) occurs at 7:11 a.m., and the moon sets at 7:16 a.m. in the west. This event is the second of four total lunar eclipses in a row — and that’s called a tetrad. We had one last April and we get two more in 2015. This lunar eclipse is part of Saros 127, which is a family or series of eclipses. The last lunar eclipse in this saros was Sept. 27, 1996 and the next will be Oct. 18, 2032. The Washington area can see a partial solar eclipse — where our moon steps in front of the sun — at day’s end on Thursday, Oct. 23. Never look at the sun or a partial eclipse directly, and never use unfiltered binoculars or an unfiltered telescope to see the sun. The partial solar eclipse will be in progress as the sun heads toward the horizon. With a good, western horizon view, we may see the eclipse begin at about 5:51 p.m., according to Chester. The moon and sun set concurrently at 6:19 p.m. “We’ll get to see about 28 minutes of partiality,” he says. This eclipse is part of Saros 153, a young series that started in 1870


Family of former U.S. Army Ranger held hostage by Islamic State plead for his life

The parents of Peter Kassig, an American aid worker being held hostage by Islamic State militants, released a statement pleading for their son's release. The parents of an American aid worker taken hostage by the Islamic State released a video Saturday pleading with their son’s captors to show mercy and free the young man. Peter Kassig’s family said he was in the region doing humanitarian work when he disappeared a year ago near the city of Raqqah in eastern Syria. “We implore those who are holding you to show mercy and use their power to let you go,” said Kassig’s mother, Paula, holding a picture of their 26-year-old son. The Islamic State revealed for the first time in a separate video Friday that it was holding Kassig, a former U.S. Army Ranger who served in Iraq in 2007. In the same video, a militant dubbed “Jihadi John,” beheaded a British hostage named Alan Henning, a taxi driver from Manchester. The militant then threatened to kill Kassig, a Muslim convert, because of U.S. bombing of Islamic State targets in Syria. This undated photo provided by Kassig Family shows Peter Kassig standing in front of a truck filled with supplies for Syrian refugees. (AP/AP) Henning was the fourth Western hostage the Islamic State has executed, deaths portrayed in a series of gruesome videos that the group began distributing in August. British Prime Minister David Cameron called Henning’s death “absolutely abhorrent. It is senseless. It is completely unforgivable.” He called the Islamic State “repulsive and “barbaric.” In three earlier videos, the same militant appears to have decapitated American journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley as well as British aid worker David Haines. The group is also holding British journalist John Cantlie and an American woman who traveled to Syria for humanitarian purposes. Kassig’s family, speaking from their home in Indianapolis, said the United States’ decision to attack the Islamic State is beyond their control. “We asked our government to change its actions, but like our son, we have no more control over the U.S. government than you have over the break of dawn,” Ed Kassig said. “We implore his captors to show mercy and use their power to let our son go.” A former hostage, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Kassig had been abused by his captors like other Westerners held by the Islamic State. Kassig is a native of


U-Va. seeks to cope with trauma after sophomore Hannah Graham vanished

Baltimore and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. They also are seeking to reassure parents, alumni and the wider world that Charlottesville remains not only a premier college destination, but also a secure one. Like 78 other U.S. schools, U-Va. is facing federal scrutiny for its handling of sexual violence reports amid a national focus on sexual assault on the nation’s campuses. Last year, the university police force recorded 15 reports of rape or forcible fondling, according to a 2013 Clery Act report. Charlottesville police have investigated 28 cases of rape or fondling so far this year, according to city data. The school hosted a national conference on the issue in February. “U-Va. is as safe as we can make it,” university President Teresa A. Sullivan said in an interview with The Washington Post. “We continue to try to learn ways that we can make it safer. We are learning all the time.” Sullivan, who teaches a class on labor markets that ends at 6:15 p.m. in Madison Hall, said she is keeping an eye on the autumn dusk. As days grow shorter, she has told her students: “I want to be sure you have a good way to get home.” The president of a school founded nearly 200 years ago, famed for its architectural grace, cautioned against “overly romanticizing the idyllic aspects” of the U-Va. setting. “Let’s be real,” Sullivan said. “There are incidents that happen.” Indeed, Sullivan organized a dialogue on campus safety in September 2010 within weeks of taking office. That event was prompted by the Love murder. But the conversation has never really stopped. Before Graham disappeared in September, many students were nonchalant about safety, said sophomore Morgan Phelps. “People think that they are invincible and that ‘bad things are not going to happen to me’ and ‘I’ll be fine walking two blocks home alone at night,’ ” said Phelps, 19, of Chesapeake, Va. She lives in the same off-campus apartment building as Graham. “An event like this has really opened our eyes.” Others, though, were already mindful of safety this fall because of a groundswell of national attention on prevention of sexual assault on campus. Graham’s disappearance “has made students more conscious and aware of the ways that we can look out for one another,” said Sara Surface, 20, a junior from Richmond who is active in a campaign against sexual violence called Hoos Got