D.C. community calendar, August 6-13, 2015

Bike clinic Architecture of the Mall A National Park Service ranger leads a walking tour and discusses the buildings visible from the nation’s front yard. 2-4 p.m. Washington Monument, 15th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. 202-426-6841. Free. Last Days of World War II “Essence of Vietnam” Showcasing the cultural diversity of Vietnam through traditional musical instruments, dance and costumes by the National Art Troupe of Viet Nam. 6 p.m. Saturday and Monday. Kennedy Center, Millennium Stage, 2700 F St. NW. 202-467-4600. Free. U.S. Marines on parade Sunday, Aug. 9 Sunday yoga at the library Jenny of Yoga Activist leads age 18 and older in a class for beginners; bring a mat or towel. Weekly at 1:30 p.m. Watha T. Daniel-Shaw Library, 1630 Seventh St. NW. 202-727-1288. Free. “Mary Poppins ” sing-along movie All Things French PAL (People Animals Love) dog visit Classical organ recital Organist Benjamin LaPrairie performs. 6 p.m. Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, 400 Michigan Ave. NE. 202-526-8300. www.nationalshrine.com . Donations requested. “Miraculous Transformation” fashion show Monday, Aug. 10 Hatha yoga Under the sea with Andrew Wilson Outdoor yoga mortis U.S. Navy Band concert Screen on the Green: “Back to the Future ” Tuesday, Aug. 11 Classical music Reptiles Alive! All things French “Maker Camp” at Deanwood Library Age 8 and older participate in experiments and projects. 3 p.m. Deanwood Library, 1350 49th St. NE. 202-698-1175. Free. Heroes of Summer “Night of Lotus” U.S. Navy Band concert Wednesday, Aug. 12 “Zemene” Gallery talk Under the sea with Andrew Wilson Reptiles Alive! “Let There Be Light: DeARTivism” Opening reception for an exhibit of artworks in various mediums by deaf artists, on view through Sept. 4. 5-8 p.m. Pepco Edison Gallery, 702 Eighth St. NW. 202-872-3396. Free. Flute jamboree Chess Club Zumba Roshaunda Jenkins teaches all fitness levels. Weekly through Aug. 26. 7:30 p.m. Southwest Library, 900 Wesley Pl. SW. 202-724-4752. Free. U.S. Marine Band Concert at 8 p.m. U.S. Capitol, west terrace, and next Thursday at 8 p.m. Sylvan Theater, on the Washington Monument grounds near 15th Street and Independence Avenue SW. 202-433-4011. Free. “Footloose ” Thursday, Aug. 13 Art Signs A volunteer American Sign Language gallery guide leads conversations about various artworks. 5:30 p.m. Smithsonian American Art Museum, F Street Lobby, Eighth and F streets NW. 202-633-1000. Free. Gallery talk: “Watch This!” — Compiled by Gerri Marmer TO SUBMIT AN EVENT E-mail: Mail: Details:


Editor’s note

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Has the bet on casino gambling in Baltimore been a bust?

state’s Education Trust Fund. So, what’s going on? Aerialist Kasumi Kato pours champagne while suspended from a chandelier as another performer dances on the wall during festivities for opening night at the Horseshoe Casino last August. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post) Industry experts say that the projections for Horseshoe were overly optimistic and didn’t fully take into account how saturated Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic had become with gambling options. It didn’t help that one of Horseshoe’s primary owners, Caesars Entertainment, was on the verge of declaring bankruptcy of its casino operations, which it did in January. And when riots broke out in Baltimore in mid-April, the ensuing curfew curtailed operations at the 24-hour facility for a week and ate into revenue and momentum. For their part, Horseshoe executives reject the notion that the casino is underperforming, saying that the early projections by others were not in keeping with their own. They point to the 5 million customers who have walked through the door since its opening and the hiring of 1,900 employees, 60 percent of whom are Baltimore residents, as signs of a vibrant first year. “Our revenues are strong for a market of this size, and they continue trending in a positive direction following the unrest that we experienced in the spring,” says Chad Barnhill, Horseshoe’s senior vice president and general manager. “There’s no question that our performance is improving in the wake of the city’s challenges, and I expect that to continue to do so.” Not everyone agrees. And some critics say that Horseshoe’s location not far from the Ravens’ M&T Bank Stadium gets in the way of a better performance. “The biggest reason, in my opinion, is that city casinos do not do as well as people think, especially when there are choices outside the city,” says Alan Woinski, president of Gaming USA and the author of syndicated newsletters on the gambling industry. “Casinos in New Orleans, Cincinnati, Cleveland all have underperformed. . . . It is not a coincidence that no city casinos have met projections.” More than 350 poker players converged on the Horseshoe Casino in February for a World Series of Poker-sponsored tournament. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post) Horseshoe has to go up against Maryland Live, the three-year-old casino next to the Arundel Mills Mall just 12 miles south of Baltimore. The state’s largest casino, Maryland Live did better than analysts expected in meeting the challenge


After 35 years, a stolen Stradivarius finds its way home

of Berlioz. But he ultimately replaced him before the big performance. “He was too late, too often,” Mercurio says. “And I said, ‘I can’t have my concertmaster be there too late. I don’t care how well you play the violin.’ ” Mobius would dissolve soon after and Fitzpatrick lost track of Johnson. The violinist did play some in California. He also got divorced and, in 2007, filed for bankruptcy. But near the end of his life, Johnson had one last wish. To record Sibelius again. A cellist called Mercurio, who in the years since Spoleto has served as principal conductor of the Philadelphia Opera and recorded with artists including Andrea Bocelli and Sting. “They said, ‘Phil’s dying. And a lot of us are going to get together because Phil’s never had a penny to his name,’ ” he said. “ ‘We’re going to give him this last wish playing Sibelius.’ ” On Nov. 11, 2011, Johnson died in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles. For a time after the theft, Roman Totenberg held out hope. He spoke about opening his case and expecting to find his violin. Then he stopped speaking about it. He cashed in his $101,000 insurance payment, sold a few other instruments and purchased a Guarneri. Johnson wasn’t forgotten. “My mom kept asking people if they would break into his apartment and look for the violin,” Nina Totenberg said. For the rest of his life, Totenberg continued to meet with students and play his Guarneri. Knowing his health was failing near the end, the sisters let his network of former students know. Some drove through the night to be with him, next to his bed in Newton, Mass., playing for him. On Thursday in New York, the media event opened with an assistant U.S. attorney, Jason Masimore, playing Bach. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said no criminal investigation was underway. The sisters spoke about their plans for the violin. They have paid back the insurance company and will have the Stradivarius repaired. It will be sold, but the buyer will be selected carefully. He or she must be someone who will play it. “Our only real sadness is that our father is not here to see this,” Nina Totenberg said. “If he were, I know he would say this is just a wonderful day. I think he’s somewhere, with my mother, celebrating, maybe drinking a shot of vodka.”


Rural Maryland sees jobs, not vice, in medical marijuana

in Western Maryland, we’ve been deprived and depressed a lot,” said Commissioner John Barr. That history has helped shape reaction to the possibilities created by Maryland’s legalization of marijuana for medical purposes. “We view it as an economic-development opportunity,” Barr said. Green Thumb representatives who briefed the commissioners before last month’s vote said the facility would employ 30 to 50 employees in its first year and predicted that it would expand to 200 workers in a new 175,000-square-foot plant in two to four years. They predicted the venture would give a $4 million-to- $7 million boost to the local economy. That is hardly an economic panacea, but it represents a significant lift for a county still reeling from 650 layoffs at a Citigroup mortgage-servicing center and the closing of Unilever’s Good Humor ice cream plant, with its 450 jobs, in recent years. The board’s action illustrates how quickly attitudes are changing across Maryland about the medicinal use of cannabis — the industry’s preferred term and one that was written into state law this year. “There’s a lot of interest all over the state,” said Hannah Byron, executive director of Maryland’s Medical Cannabis Commission. The General Assembly voted to allow medical marijuana in 2013, but under terms so restrictive that no companies offered to supply the drug. Lawmakers overhauled the law in 2014 and again this year, setting up a regulatory system that has attracted the interest of investors. The change came after lawmakers in Annapolis heard testimony from medical experts, cancer patients, parents of children with seizure disorders and others who believe cannabis products could relieve suffering for many patients. The revised law establishes two tiers of tightly regulated businesses to provide cannabis to patients who have a recommendation from a physician. Up to 15 companies will be licensed to grow the plants and use them to make pharmaceutical products. The law also allows 94 dispensaries — two for each state Senate district — for retail sales. The commission that lawmakers set up to run the program has drafted regulations that are expected to become final next month. Soon after, the panel will begin taking applications for grower-processor licenses. The commission is expected to award those licenses in December. Byron said that besides urban areas and Washington County, the commission has fielded inquiries from potential grower-processors in Harford, Frederick, Allegany and Garrett counties and several locations on the Eastern Shore.


Deadly violence has become all too common in one D.C. neighborhood

fatal shooting and the burning of a body was linked to gangs sparked days of retaliatory violence until one man was arrested. He claimed he had accidentally shot his best friend and panicked. Officer Geoffrey Napper patrols Woodland Terrace, a public-housing complex in Southeast Washington. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post) Residents across the city are struggling to find solutions. “I thought that we had turned things and they were better,” said the Rev. Clinton W. Austin, pastor of Woodland Terrace’s Emmanuel Baptist Church for the past 28 years. Austin said he and other pastors are trying to engage youths, holding outdoor services, marches, festivals and prayer groups. But he worries that the city has neglected such communities as Woodland Terrace as it builds infrastructure on the other side of the Anacostia. “What’s happening in other places in the city, while it looks positive in terms of reduction in crime and improvement of neighborhoods, is done in a way that isolates the lower-income people,” Austin said. “They’re moved out, things are upgraded and other areas are left without.” Austin called for more jobs and skills training to help residents find employment. “Then maybe we can break this chain of bad events,” the pastor said. On Sunday, the pews at Emmanuel were filled, and Austin touched on the violence during his sermon — violence “right on our doorstep.” At the vigil for Antonio McCallister, a man who led the group in a prayer praised those who came, saying, “It takes courage for people to come together at a time like this, in a place like this.” As homicide detectives looked on, the mourners lit candles and shared stories about the victim. His 24-year-old sister, She’kita, had been visiting from Atlanta when her brother was killed. She said he was shot “when he had his back turned and wasn’t paying attention.” Beyond that, she would say only: “I feel he was an honorable man. He was an intelligent man. He was opinionated.” The next night, Dandridge, the 7th District commander, rolled his unmarked SUV slowly through Woodland, saluting the officers standing guard. Officer Geoffrey Napper, right, and Officer Nick Cook patrol Woodland Terrace. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post) Dandridge then turned onto Alabama Avenue, heading to another trouble spot — Congress Heights, where a high school senior had been killed hours earlier. Another dark street. Another street-corner memorial to a dead youth. “People


If D.C.’s steakhouse days are over, why do so many new ones keep opening?

Server Eddie Kyle delivers a bottle of champagne at Mastro's Steakhouse in the District. (Scott Suchman/For The Washington Post) Mastro’s bone-in rib-eye steak weighs in at 22 ounces and costs $59. (Scott Suchman/For The Washington Post) Want to see some Washingtonians go ballistic? Just call the District a “steakhouse town,” a place where the natives’ love of politics is rivaled only by their lust for thick slabs of charbroiled beef. Almost every time an out-of-town media outlet drops the S-word about the nation’s capital, locals rip in, gleefully noting how out of touch it is. The era of expense-account steakhouses is dead, explain the guardians of the D.C. food galaxy. The District has entered a kind of post-red-meat paradise, populated by celebrity-chef restaurants (both imported and homegrown), idiosyncratic neighborhood eateries, craft cocktail bars, high-concept beer emporiums and, slated for September, a restaurant dedicated to the ingredients of the Mid-Atlantic. But since early last year, there has been a revival. No fewer than eight steakhouses have opened in the District. Most of those operations, save for Claudia’s, have one thing in common: They’re native to other locales, created by outside celebrity chefs, well-known restaurateurs or large hospitality groups such as Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises in Chicago (which opened Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab) or Del Frisco’s Restaurant Group in Texas. No matter how sophisticated Washington may think its tastes have become, outsiders still seem to view the town as a backwoods burg addicted to steak and potatoes. Except this boomlet in beef caves is not that easy to explain away. Even the experts disagree. Some say Washington’s economic boom, which has attracted more people with disposable income, has likewise drawn high-dollar, high-volume restaurants that can afford the soaring rents. Others say the resurgence has to do with the large hospitality groups themselves and their never-ending need to expand into untapped markets. And then some say it’s just endemic to Washington. Thick slabs of beef cover the plates at the posh Prime Rib, which opened downtown in 1976. (Scott Suchman/For The Washington Post) “Politics and steak and potatoes [are] kind of like peanut butter and jelly,” says Mark Bucher, co-owner of Medium Rare, a small steak-frites chain with outposts in Cleveland Park and Barracks Row. “Big American car. Big American steak. Big American politics. I don’t think there’s anything that’s going to change that.” Many of the newest steakhouses have


The GOP debate almost completely ignored America’s 45 million poor

more than when Barack Obama got elected.” It’s unclear what Bush intended to say, but his statement was innacurate. There are roughly 6 million more people living in poverty today than there were in 2008. The total number of poor Americans is about 45 million— nearly 15 percent of the country’s population, according to U.S. Census Bureau. Roughly the same number of people applied for food stamps last year. Other estimates, in fact, place the number of impoverished Americans much higher, at more than 70 million. Critics of the poverty rate point out that some measurements when calculating the poverty rate seem outdated. The federal poverty income for single-person households, for example, hovers at just $11,490. And families of four that make more than $23,550 are no longer considered in poverty. Then there’s the whole block of people — millions more — who live on the precipice of poverty. Roughly 44 percent of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck, the Corporation for Enterprise Development found last year; a demographic it referred to as “liquid asset poor.” This meant that nearly half of all households have less than $5,887 in savings and “do not have a basic safety net to weather emergencies or prepare for future needs, such as a child’s college education or homeownership.” That point bolsters recent research that shows the alarming likelihood that most Americans will experience poverty at some point in their lives. Mark Rank, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis, recently crunched the numbers and discovered that three in five Americans will eke it out in the lowest 20 percentile of income distribution at least once before they turn 60. Forty percent of Americans, he found, will spend at least a year in the bottom 10 percentile. One-fourth of the population will experience five or more years of poverty. “Relative poverty is an economic condition that will strike the majority of Americans,” Rank said. The short answer: The United States has a lot of poor people. At any moment, it could have many more, striking with maddening caprice and ensnaring those who would have never expected to collect food stamps or government benefits. No matter how you square it, Bush’s testimony on American poverty wasn’t accurate. But, inaccurate numbers notwithstanding, he did separate himself from the rest of the hopefuls in one salient way. He at least mentioned poverty. This story has been updated.


Frances Oldham Kelsey, FDA scientist who kept thalidomide off U.S. market, dies at 101

NASA’s manned spaceflight program. “In a way, they tied her to the moonshot in showing what government scientists were capable of,” said Stephen Fried, a journalist who investigated the drug industry in the book “Bitter Pills.” “It was an act of incredible daring and bravery to say we need to wait longer before we expose the American people to this drug.” Dr. Kelsey became, Fried said, “the most famous government regulator in American history.” ‘I was the newest person there and pretty green’ Dr. Kelsey had landed at the FDA in August 1960, one of seven full-time medical officers hired to review about 300 human drug applications per year. The number of women pursuing careers in science was minuscule, but Dr. Kelsey had long been comfortable in male-dominated environments. Growing up in Canada, she spent part of her childhood in an otherwise all-boys private school. She had two daughters while shouldering the demands of medical school in the late 1940s. In Washington, she joined a corps of reform-minded scientists who, although not yet empowered by the 1962 law that required affirmative FDA approval of any new drug, demanded strong evidence of effectiveness before giving their imprimatur. At the time, a drug could go on the market 60 days after the manufacturer filed an application with the FDA. If the medical officer determined that the submission was incomplete, the drug company could provide additional information, and the clock would start anew. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical drug companies commonly supplied doctors with new drugs and encouraged them to test the product on patients, an uncontrolled and dangerous practice that relied almost entirely on anecdotal evidence. Thalidomide, which was widely marketed as a sedative as well as a treatment for pregnancy-related nausea during the first trimester of pregnancy, had proven wildly popular in Europe and a boon for its German manufacturer, Chemie Grünenthal. By the fall of 1960, a Cincinnati-based drug company, William S. Merrell, had licensed the drug and began to distribute it under the trade name Kevadon to 1,200 U.S. doctors in advance of what executives anticipated would be its quick approval by the FDA. The government later estimated that more than 2.5 million tablets were given to about 20,000 patients, several hundred of whom were pregnant. The Merrell application landed on Dr. Kelsey’s desk within weeks of her arrival at the agency. “I was the newest person there and pretty green,” she


Artists works show how their gardens grow: The seeds of creativity

survived the winter; some years only one or two make it. The bees reward the artist in many ways. “Put your ear next to the hive in the middle of winter, and they’re so powerfully active inside,” she says. “Maybe that’s indicated in my art. It’s quiet yet powerful.” Nassikas describes caring for the bees and harvesting honey and wax as a kind of meditation. “It’s one of the few places where you’re using all your senses. It’s very Zen,” she says. “You can’t hurry; you’re seeing and smelling and touching. You have to be very clear about what you’re doing, or you’ll screw up.” She has been stung a few times. “Yes, there’s a little pain and suffering!” Nassikas says with a laugh. “Maybe there’s more Frida Kahlo in me than I realized.” “One man’s weed is another man’s art project,” says Janet Fry Rogers, pulling at a leafy clump with pale green pods. “My next drawing will be Chinese Lantern. It’s invasive!” Rogers welcomes mess and chaos. Her half-acre property in a quiet Annapolis neighborhood near the Severn River had a tidy Japanese garden when she and her husband bought it 20 years ago. She kept it up, though she didn’t love it. But in April 2014, the night before it was to be featured in the neighborhood garden tour, the careful landscaping was destroyed in a mini-derecho that also took down her deck and three of her poplar trees. “Rather than being devastated, I saw it as an opportunity,” she says. Rogers is 75, and her face, framed in a soft bob, has a kind, patient expression. She turned what had been a manicured plot into a meadow, with new young dogwoods and wildflowers. “It’s all going native,” she says, pointing out maple and ash saplings that popped up on their own. “Oh! There’s a butterfly — I’m so excited! This is exactly what’s supposed to be happening.” “When you plant things at 75, it’s an act of faith,” she adds with a laugh. “Our peers are moving to Florida. But this is such a pleasure to us. “I find the personality that brings me to art is the same that brings me to gardening. I truly don’t have a green thumb, but I like the before and after. The design is what I like doing in the garden, pushing these plants around and coming up with


Ask Amy: An ingrate abroad

is the height of arrogance to ask for (and accept) a free tour from a professional tour operator and then complain that the tour was truncated or not up to your standard. All the same, this man should not be pursuing you aggressively and demanding a five-star rating in exchange for sleeping on his couch. There is a lack of integrity on both sides of this terrible holiday. You should thank him for hosting you and let him know that because you didn’t receive the full professional tour you don’t feel comfortable providing a rating. DEAR AMY: I divorced my first husband for reasons primarily related to what I believed to be an addiction to sex. For years, he went into debt paying for prostitutes, sex lines, etc. He is a hundred watts of intelligent and a magnificent liar. I was naive. The last straw was when he gave me an STD. We have both since remarried. I just learned from his business partner that he is at it again. He is serially involved with prostitutes, has stolen from his clients and his professional license has been suspended. He could be facing criminal prosecution. Apparently, Wife No. 2 knows about the debt/theft situation but does not know the underlying reason. She and I have mutual friends who have first-hand evidence of his history and more recent behavior, and who are agonizing over whether to tell her. I do not know her, have never had any contact with her, and have no plans to. But do you think her friends (who include the business partner) should fill her in? -- Flashback DEAR FLASHBACK: Definitely. Then she can decide what she wants to do. DEAR AMY: Responding to the letter from “Hurt,” who didn’t acknowledge her sister’s cancer diagnosis: YES, readers, it is vital to reach out with love and support in words and actions when you know a loved one is in a tough place. Do not let your own fears or issues prevent you from doing so. Life is too short, and you only get the measure of quality out of it that you make the effort to obtain. -- Melanoma-Free Since 2006 DEAR FREE: Beautiful. Thank you. Amy’s column appears seven days a week at www.washingtonpost.com/advice. Write to Amy Dickinson at askamy@tribpub.com or Ask Amy, Chicago Tribune, TT500, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611. by the Chicago Tribune


Mexico’s economy was supposed to soar. It’s starting to flop.

headlines of economic gloom: The value of the peso has plummeted to record lows against the dollar, growth rates have shrunk to dwarfish size, and the only things that seem to be getting bigger are the poverty rate and the gap between rich and poor. “With all this financial volatility we have seen with the peso, the failure of the round-one [oil] contracts and low growth, the economy continues to suffer from the chronic anemia of the past,” said Alfredo Coutiño, director for Latin America at Moody’s Analytics. He added: “I do not see Mexico growing as the government expected at the beginning of this administration.” Peña Nieto’s strategists had predicted that the structural changes in the oil and telecom industries would produce growth rates of 5 to 6 percent, but expectations keep dropping. While preparing this year’s budget, the government predicted growth rates of 3.7 percent, although so far this year growth has hobbled along at 1.6 percent. That has taken a political toll. A poll in the Reforma newspaper found Peña Nieto’s approval rating had fallen to 34 percent, down from 39 percent in March, reaching the lowest point since he took office in December 2012. (It didn’t help morale that Guzmán, the world’s most notorious drug lord, was able to tunnel out of a maximum security facility.) “We have an economy that practically has not grown in two-and-a-half years,” said Jonathan Heath, an economics professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. “And that has bothered a lot of people, because the government promised that we were going to grow.” Economists say that part of the drag on the economy has been the low world price for oil, which has sapped revenue for the oil-producing country and dampened the initial enthusiasm from investors that they could reap big rewards by drilling in the newly accessible waters of the Gulf of Mexico. That has made for a sluggish start to the historic opening of the industry, which the government touted as a saving grace. Although reforms may have contributed to lower electricity and telecom prices, and kept inflation low, their other growth-producing benefits have yet to materialize. “To think that oil reform was the great solution to this country, that was wrong,” said Gerardo Esquivel, an economics professor at the College of Mexico in Mexico City. “It’s a sector that employs less than 1 percent


The unexplored costs of keeping great apes in zoos

The July 24 Metro article “Keeping this ape great” made light of a serious moral issue. The article, failing to consider how cognitively complex species such as orangutans fare in zoos that force nonhuman animals to live on display and don’t even come close to replicating their natural habitats, called Lucy a “diva” for not exercising and only cursorily examined her diet, which includes “Texas Pete hot sauce.” Orangutans are autonomous beings and sophisticated tool-users; they show evidence of cultural differences and have a high level of consciousness. Perhaps Lucy is depressed and bored, having spent her life confined in a zoo. Instead, the article suggested that, rather than exercising, Lucy prefers “basking in the attention of her fans.” The first and last time I visited the Great Ape House at the National Zoo, one of the gorillas vomited in front of a group of gawking tourists who proceeded to point and laugh at him. This article missed an opportunity to explore the complicated issues surrounding keeping such cognitively complex animals in captivity and what might really be going on in Lucy’s mind. Natalie Prosin, Washington The writer is executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project.


Business digest: Aug. 8, 2015

that includes auto and student loans rose by $15.2 billion. Borrowing in the category that includes credit cards rose by $5.5 billion. The Fed’s monthly report on credit does not cover home mortgages or other loans secured by real estate, such as home equity loans. Economists expect consumers to borrow and spend more the rest of the year. ● Only three of 38 U.S. railroads have provided federal regulators with plans for new life-saving safety technology systems that are supposed to be fully implemented by the end of this year, the Federal Railroad Administration said Friday. In a report to Congress, the FRA also noted that 11 railroads — or less than one-third — have said they expect to begin demonstrations of the technology known as positive train control before the Dec. 31 deadline. ● A U.S. judge on Friday barred the Food and Drug Administration from stopping Irish drugmaker Amarin from promoting its fish oil drug for off-label uses, saying the company is protected by the First Amendment. The drug industry has been watching this case because it is one of the first to raise a First Amendment argument in defense of promoting drugs for uses the FDA has not approved. The order by U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan means Amarin can promote its Vascepa pill to doctors for off-label use as long as it does so truthfully. The FDA has approved Vascepa to treat patients with very high levels of blood fats known as triglycerides that have been linked to diabetes, kidney failure and pancreatic cancer. Amarin also wants to market the pill to doctors for patients who have more moderately elevated levels of triglycerides. ● Zynga has reached a $23 million settlement to end litigation accusing the gaming company known for FarmVille of defrauding shareholders about its business prospects before and after its December 2011 initial public offering. In its quarterly report made public Friday, Zynga said the settlement in principle was reached this week and would have no financial impact on the company because insurers would fund the payout. The accord requires final documentation and eventual approval by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco. Zynga began struggling soon after its IPO from a failure to develop games as popular as FarmVille, and as customers switched to rival games played on mobile devices. In the lawsuit, shareholders led by David Fee accused Zynga


Police issue warrant for suspect in Woodland Terrace fatal shooting

D.C. police on Friday issued an arrest warrant charging a suspect in a fatal shooting that occurred July 24 in Woodland Terrace, a public housing complex in Southeast Washington that has experience a wave of violence. Eric McDuffie, 23, is charged with first-degree murder while armed. Court records show his address in the 2700 block of Langston Place SE, the same street in Woodland Terrace on which the fatal shooting occurred. Police said Antonio McCallister, 23, of Southeast, was killed in the 10:30 p.m. incident. Another man was shot and killed four days later in a nearby courtyard, and two others have been fatally shot in the compact housing complex this year. Last week, D.C. police flooded the neighborhood of 600 residents with officers who have guarded the complex in order to stem violent crime. Residents have attributed the violence to petty disputes among residents and neighbors. Housing officials say many victims and suspects are not on apartment leases, even if they list their address at Woodland. Eric McDuffie, 23, is charged with first-degree murder while armed. (Metropolitan Police Department) McCallister was featured in a Post story that examined violence in Woodland Terrace and the police presence there. His sister from Atlanta, She’kita McCallister, led a vigil on Friday at the spot where her brother was shot. He said of her brother, “I feel he was an honorable man. He was an intelligent man. He was opinionated.” Police have not disclosed a possible motive for the shooting.


3 rosés to drink with your bros, or whomever you wish

and Morrison House in Alexandria, Bistro Vivant in McLean, Café Deluxe (Tysons Corner), La Côte d’Or in Arlington, Europa in Herndon, Pane e Vino in Lorton, Yves’ Bistro in Alexandria. Vinum Cellars Red Dirt Red 2012/2013 ★ ★ Paso Robles, Calif. $20 This is a Rhone-style blend of syrah, mourvedre and grenache. I love it because it achieves a deft balance of soft, plummy fruit in a California style without the excessive alcohol that’s an all-too-common problem in the Golden State, especially with syrah in hotter areas. I tasted the 2013, which recently became available in this market; some stores might still have the 2012. ABV: 14 percent. Country Vintner: Available in the District at Ace Beverage, Arrowine and Spirits, Cairo Wine & Liquor, Rodman’s. Available in Maryland at Cork ’n Bottle in Laurel, Landover Liquor in Cheverly; on the list at Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar (Baltimore), Stone’s Cove Kitbar in Owings Mills. Available in Virginia at Arrowine and Cheese in Arlington; on the list at Stone’s Cove Kitbar in Herndon. Florette Rosé de Provence 2014 ★ ★ Côteaux Varois en Provence, France, $11 This delightful, moderately hued rosé offers straightforward watermelon flavors with a hint of mint, perfect for a patio aperitif. ABV: 13 percent. M. Touton: Available in the District at Best in Liquors, Burka’s Wine & Liquor, Cairo Wine & Liquor, Circle Wine & Liquor, Eye Street Cellars, Harry’s Reserve Fine Wine & Spirits, New H Wine & Spirits, Paul’s of Chevy Chase. Available in Maryland at Bradley Food & Beverage, Capital Beer & Wine in Bethesda; Country Boy Market in Silver Spring; Downtown Crown Wine and Beer in Gaithersburg; Old Farm Liquors and Spin the Bottle in Frederick; on the list at Joss Café & Sushi Bar in Annapolis. Available in Virginia at the Vineyard in McLean, the Wine Outlet in Vienna. La Ferla Rosato 2014 ★ Sicily, Italy, $8 What a deal! This deep pink, sappy rosé bursts with strawberry and citrus and nice acidity, leading to a slightly sweet finish. Funny thing: My bottle seemed to have a hole in the bottom. ABV: 13 percent. Stefano Selection: Available in the District at Potomac Wine & Spirits. Available in Maryland at Festival Spirits & Wine in Bel Air, the Italian Market in Annapolis, Old Farm Liquors in Frederick, Padonia Liquors in Lutherville, Twist Wine & Spirits in Lexington Park; on the list at


The government’s top workers, Group 7

align their training and military career with what they eventually want to do as civilians. Near the end date of military service, the counseling intensifies and touches on everyday issues that may not have been a concern, such as how to find a job, write a résumé and choose a health-care plan. Edward J. Ramotowski. (Aaron Clamage/Partnership for Public Service) Edward J. Ramotowski State Department Improved the efficiency of processing visas and reduced wait times for embassy interviews From 2010 to 2014, the number of tourist and student travel visas issued by the State Department increased more than 50 percent, from 6.4 million to 9.9 million. During this same period, the wait times for in-person interviews with embassy consular officers dropped from an average of 15 days worldwide to about six days. This growth and increased efficiency resulted from an initiative led by Ramotowski, the deputy assistant secretary for visa services, and his team in the Bureau of Consular Affairs. Ramotowski provided guidance and instructions to embassy officials around the world; added staff at high-volume consular posts, including retired Foreign Service officers who spoke the local languages; and privatized functions such as photography, fingerprinting and fee collection. He also expanded the use of departmental authority to waive personal interviews for repeat travelers who do not pose security risks. Tom Nides, a former deputy secretary of State, said Ramotowski helped “make it easier for people to obtain credentials to come to the United States while remaining vigilant” about security. He said this has involved using a screening system that identifies those who might pose problems, while processing low-risk travelers more quickly. Steven W. Zander. (Aaron Clamage/Partnership for Public Service) Steven W. Zander Department of the Air Force Built partnerships between bases and local communities to share services and cuts costs Zander directs the Air Force Community Partnership Program, which has helped 48 bases and their local communities initiate agreements, including programs for refuse collection, wastewater treatment, snow removal, youth activities and library services. More than 1,000 sharing arrangements have been identified so far. At Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, for example, the local community is working with the military installation to develop a shared sports complex on 63 acres of Air Force land, an enterprise that will bring $900,000 in potential benefits to the base and benefit the community. At Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, an agreement was


The mayor of Washington shares a duplex wall with Colombian refugees

and several months after the death of her longtime neighbor, the other half of her duplex went up for sale. During those frigid early days of her administration in January, city security officials were preparing to erect an elaborate guard booth in the front yard. They were also planning for a six-foot wooden fence, cameras, lights and sound sensors in the back yard. A real estate agent showing the property to Hober and his family pointed to a police cruiser outside and mentioned, somewhat casually, that the mayor lives next door. Their purchase made for a stark divide. On one side, with an appointment book filled with dignitaries, celebrities and visits to her personal trainer, Bowser has reached a pinnacle of American politics as mayor of the U.S. capital city. On the other side, Hober and Flor are chasing their own version of the American Dream. They took out a government-backed loan for nearly all of the home’s $350,000 selling price. To pay the $2,000-a-month mortgage, he works a day shift and she pulls a night shift as office cleaners downtown. Carlos contributes about half his wages from a job as a cashier. Their monthly housing bill is more affordable than the median monthly rent in the District for a single-bedroom apartment. That scares some of the neighbors in a traditionally working-class neighborhood who see change as a sign of gentrification and higher prices that could wipe out the longtime character of their neighborhood. “The neighbors, they were saying, ‘Don’t sell the house, don’t sell the house.’ But I had to,” said Alice Harrington, the daughter of Tamah Williams, who was Bowser’s longtime neighbor. Harrington said she debated the decision for months and told Bowser before she put the house on the market. No worries about security The Colombians, D.C. police and the mayor are all still feeling their way through their exceptionally cozy living conditions. A Colombian friend of the family attending a cookout stepped off the porch in the wrong direction — toward Bowser’s door — and drew a confrontation with police. It took a while to clear up, the family said, because of a language barrier with the officer stationed on the front lawn. Asked about the incident, Michael Czin, Bowser’s communications director, said the administration and D.C. police would not comment on the mayor’s security. Another friend found that lighting a cigarette is not allowed —


Washington-area obituaries of note

Potomac Telephone who worked for the company 39 years until retiring in 1990, died June 23 at his home in Wheaton, Md. The cause was cardiac arrest, said a daughter, Colleen Wilkins. Mr. Hickson, a native Washingtonian, was an Army veteran and served in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II, his family said. A high school and college football athlete, he helped establish the athletic program at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in Olney, Md., in the early 1960s and was inducted into its athletic hall of fame in 1989. He was also an honorary Xaverian brother and played basketball on a C&P league for 25 years. Yogeswari ‘Yoga’ Devarajan, psychiatrist Yogeswari “Yoga” Devarajan, 81, a psychiatrist who worked in the D.C. Mental Health Center from 1983 to 2000, died July 24 at a hospital in Silver Spring, Md. The cause was complications from a broken hip, said a nephew, Sherille Ismail. Dr. Devarajan, a Washington resident, was born Yogeswari Ponnambalam in Colombo, the capital of the Indian Ocean country of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon). In 1977, she came to the United States after having worked as a physician in Sri Lanka, the African country of Zambia and Sarawak in Malaysia. She did a psychiatric residency at Howard University hospital and had fellowships at Children’s Hospital and Georgetown University Hospital. In retirement, she worked part time at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other facilities. Kenneth L. Hallam, NASA astronomer and physicist Kenneth L. Hallam, 85, a NASA astronomer and physicist from the late 1950s until his retirement in 1992, died July 19 at a hospital in Washington. The cause was kidney failure, said a nephew, Timothy Yarling. Dr. Hallam was born in Indianapolis and moved to the Washington area in 1958. He began his NASA career at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., where he oversaw science instrument development. He helped develop early U.S. satellites, image recording devices and space-based Earth environmental studies. He also worked on the Hubble space telescope program. Jane D. Buzalski, tour guide, State Department employee Jane D. Buzalski, 89, a Foreign Service administrative assistant in the 1950s and a Washington tour guide from 1975 to 1990, died July 15 at a hospital in Arlington, Va. The cause was congestive heart failure, said a daughter, Anne Buzalski. Ms. Buzalski was born Jane Drew in Tampa, Fla., and grew


A disgrace in Baltimore, discontinued

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, center, and state prisons chief Stephen T. Moyer outside the Baltimore City Detention Center. (Patrick Semansky/Associated Press) APPROACHING ITS 157th BIRTHDAY, an occasion to be celebrated by no one, Baltimore’s jail has been a Dickensian horror for decades—dirty, dank, dangerous and a disgrace both to the city and the state, which has run it for the past quarter-century. Gov. Larry Hogan’s announcement last month that it will no longer be used to warehouse inmates, starting soon, is such an overwhelmingly good move, and so long overdue, that it overshadows other big and pressing questions facing incarceration in Maryland. It shouldn’t. The most obvious of those questions is what will happen to the approximately 750 inmates who will move out of the Men’s Detention Center. Although state officials haven’t given details, sources tell us that most of the MDC detainees will be transferred to adjacent buildings in the jail complex, which are not being closed. That’s a problem. The notorious filth, heat, decay and violence at the MDC have hogged the headlines as well as the attention of litigators such as the ACLU’s National Prison Project, which has hounded the state for years. But other facilities at the complex into which MDC detainees are likely to be moved, including the Women’s Detention Center, which has spare capacity, are also plagued by severe problems in plumbing, ventilation and climate control; they are scarcely more habitable. If the shuffle of inmates from the MDC results in overcrowding in other problem-ridden buildings, progress may start to look Pyrrhic. Unlike his predecessors, who also acknowledged that the MDC was ripe for demolition, Mr. Hogan was able to act mainly because the state’s dwindling inmate population has made the problem somewhat more manageable. Still, he would be ill-advised to wash his hands of other problems generally in the state’s troubled corrections system or specifically at Baltimore’s jail. Both are sorely in need of deep reform. In the case of the jail, the reform agenda should include not only physical upgrades to the remaining facilities, but an overhaul of what advocacy groups have documented as a terrible health-care system. When detainees, many of whom suffer from mental-health problems, are shuttled between buildings at the complex, their medications and medical records are often left behind. That’s inhumane. In the case of Maryland’s prison system, Mr. Hogan’s agenda should include an unstinting reassessment of the


Beekeepers try to keep bees — and livelihoods — from going extinct

with a new queen. Beekeepers can also turn to packaged bees, which cost about $55 for 12,000 workers and a fertilized queen. “Beekeepers know what to do,” Rucker said in an interview. After 2006, “they adjusted and they adjusted quickly.” Research suggests that beekeepers are being at least partially compensated for that effort with higher honey prices and higher pollination fees. For California almonds, which require the pollination help of 1.6 million hives per year, beekeepers earn roughly $175 per hive. Other crops pay significantly less, however. For example, blueberries, cherries and pears pay around $40 per hive in Oregon. Then there are the long seasons and constant travel. In Oregon, commercial beekeepers work from January to October, pollinating not only crops of fruits and vegetables but also the multibillion-dollar Willamette Valley seed and wine industries. And beekeepers who avoid big colony-collapse losses face other potential disasters. In late June, a truck filled with hives tipped in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, sending the load tumbling off the highway. Hundreds of thousands of bees perished. “It is hard, and it costs a lot of money,” said George Hansen, past president of the ABF and a beekeeper in Oregon for 35 years. “There’s a certain toll you have to pay for when things go wrong. . . . How many times can you take those kinds of hits and still get up and do it again?” Henry Storch shoes horses for a living, but took up beekeeping with the thought that he could breed a better bee. (Leah Nash/For The Washington Post) “I’m trying to create something with a certain set of traits that’s more resilient, that provides a solution to world problems,” he said. (Leah Nash/For The Washington Post) Henry Storch, 32, does it because he felt a calling to beekeeping. A farrier by trade, Storch said he could make more money shoeing horses. But five years ago, he became obsessed with the notion that he could build a better bee. “I put some out in the middle of nowhere, and the bees were doing really good,” Storch said, popping open a hive with his bare hands. He barely flinched as a bee stung him on the upper lip. Storch’s mountain-bred “survivor” bees are like open-range cows: tough, hardened and less in need of close management than the bees he trucks to the California almond fields. Storch compares the effort to growing


Beer of the Week: Stillwater Yacht

(Scott Suchman/For The Washington Post) As craft beer in cans becomes more common, breweries have realized that what’s on the outside of the can is just as important as what’s inside. Cans have far more real estate for design than the paper label on a bottle, allowing them to become true works of art. One of the most striking examples of can design comes from Stillwater Artisan Ales, the gypsy brewery run by Baltimore’s Brian Strumke. Yacht, a “dry-hopped session lager,” is packaged in a sleek tallboy with a matte-silver front and soft blue-and-gold racing stripes. The nautical colors and sans-serif font make the package seem elegant, almost regal. It’s an eye-catching piece of marketing: I ordered one at a Capitol Hill bar last week, and a guy a few stools down leaned over to ask what I was having. That almost certainly wouldn’t have happened if my beer had arrived in a pint glass. The beer itself is fantastic for a summer afternoon: a dry, biscuity lager with a nose of lime and citrus. Flavors are relatively mild, though the earthy, grassy hops stand out before a quenchingly bitter finish. At 4.2 percent alcohol, it’s a very easy-drinking beverage, and it’s very easy to have more than one. Stillwater Yacht. www. stillwater-artisanal.com. Four-pack of 16-ounce cans around $11. — Fritz Hahn More from Food: Beer Column


Marijuana law creates confusion but finds growing acceptance in District

and purchase of marijuana remains illegal here, unlike in the four states that have fully legalized both recreational and medical marijuana. Instead of being sold at shops and generating new tax revenue, marijuana in the District can be grown at home and shared. Smokers and growers said they can be more open about their passions, but local politicians, activists and businesspeople said pot continues to be sold illegally at homes, on park benches or in the street. The illegal market is as robust as ever — perhaps more so with D.C. residents curious and talking about marijuana. As written, the law allows for dozens of scenarios that cause residents and police officers to shrug their shoulders. You can’t buy or sell marijuana, but what exactly constitutes a transaction? The line between legal and illegal is fine and blurry, confusing many and creating loopholes that some growers and dealers hope to exploit. The people who helped put legalization on last year’s ballot said this will be the reality for the city for at least two or three years. The federal government still classifies marijuana as an illegal and dangerous drug. Lawmakers’ positions on marijuana have not evolved as quickly as the public’s, and Congress has blocked the District from creating a system to tax and regulate pot sales. “D.C. is kind of like the Alice in Wonderland of cannabis. The Queen of Hearts is Congress,” said Alex Jeffrey, the executive director of the D.C. chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). “Recreation and regulation should go hand in hand. We are an exception to the rule.” The city also has a medical marijuana program, which the D.C. Department of Health regulates. More than 3,800 residents were enrolled in the program in mid-July. Keith Stroup, the founder and former executive director of NORML, hopes that the success of the District’s medical marijuana program will help change lawmakers’ minds. Members of Congress drive by the District’s medical marijuana dispensaries “and they realize that marijuana is legal here and the sky didn’t fall,” Stroup said. Even if Congress — which approves the city’s budget — steps out of the way, it could take more than a year for the local government to implement a system for regulating and taxing pot sales unless the D.C. Council passes emergency legislation. After voters approved a ballot initiative by almost 70 percent to


Taking a long view on corporate reform

firm that tries to stand out by offering especially attractive family leave benefits, job security or an egalitarian wage structure may attract a disproportionately risk-averse workforce. So there is a strong case for using mandates to level the playing field. Profit-sharing has proven benefits in terms of increased productivity, but a firm that stands out by offering profit-sharing may encounter difficulties in recruitment among wary workers. So there is a strong case for providing companies with incentives to choose this option. Matters are not as clear as is often suggested regarding short-term-driven “quarterly capitalism,” and I believe skepticism is appropriate toward arguments that horizons should be lengthened in all cases. A generation ago, Japan’s keiretsu system, which insulated corporate management from share price pressure by tying large companies together, was widely seen as a great Japanese strength; yet even apart from Japan’s manifest macroeconomic difficulties, Japanese companies lacking market discipline have squandered leads in sectors ranging from electronics to automobiles to information technology. Managements of companies that are dissipating the most value, such as General Motors before it needed to be bailed out, have often been the most enthusiastic champions of long-termism. Market participants who willingly place huge valuations on many Silicon Valley companies that lack any profits and have little revenue may be placing too much, not too little, weight on the distant future. That, at least, is the implication of the technology bubbles we have seen. Corporations that are hoarding cash earning nothing in the bank or in Treasury bills would be cheered, not jeered, by the market if they could be persuaded to put those funds to productive use. Most corporations are in this situation. The challenges are usually that companies do not have productive uses available for the cash or that they do but can’t convince investors of those projects’ validity. Pushing corporations to invest without having projects that are good candidates for investment is wasteful. And stopping or discouraging them from distributing funds to shareholders is dangerous if it results in mindless takeovers. The real need is for a cadre of trusted, tough-minded investors who can credibly commit to strong management teams and provide assurances to a broader range of investors so that productive investments can get made. How that can best be accomplished while maintaining market discipline is the crucial challenge going forward. Read more about this topic: Fareed Zakaria: Economy needs both reform


Curbing global warming: Mission impossible?

The American Electric Power Co. Inc. coal-fired John E. Amos Power Plant in Winfield, W.Va., in July 2014. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg) On climate change, we need to go beyond the tired story line of “deniers” vs. the “scientific consensus.” Until it’s discredited by falling temperatures, global warming is a reality. We can still debate how much has occurred and the share attributable to human activity, but the more relevant question is what — if anything — can be done about it. President Obama’s plan to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from electric power plants, accounting for roughly one-third of U.S. greenhouse emissions, shows the practical limits in a democratic society. Let’s assume, for simplicity’s sake, that the plan works perfectly. It achieves its goal of reducing carbon emissions from power plants in 2030 by 32 percent from a base year of 2005. Other problems fade. Court challenges to the regulations are rejected. The expansion of solar and wind generation does not lead to less reliable electricity supplies. Greater efficiencies and cheap natural gas avoid sizable consumer rate increases. Even under these favorable assumptions, Obama’s plan won’t immediately depress global temperatures, which — if the logic of climate change holds — will be higher in 2030 than today. A refresher course in global warming explains why. What counts are the amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It’s these concentrations that are said to trap heat and raise temperatures. The concentrations have gone from roughly 280 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in preindustrial times, around 1800, to about 315 ppm in 1960 to 400 ppm now. As long as concentrations increase, so does the potential for more warming. Obama’s plan doesn’t reduce these concentrations. It just cuts — but does not eliminate — the annual emissions into the atmosphere. These emissions raise concentration levels, which are now growing by about 2 ppm per year, says Princeton climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer. True, Obama’s plan might slow this a tad. However, the larger point is that ongoing power plant emissions, though diminished, would continue to boost concentration levels. Here’s the dilemma. Eliminating fossil fuel emissions from coal, oil and natural gas would presumably stabilize most human impact on global warming. But if done now, it would also destroy modern economies because fossil fuels provide four-fifths of the world’s primary energy. There’s no quick way of finding substitutes for all the


Some Afghans mourn Taliban founder, though they’re reluctant to admit it

what the government says. We should mourn him because he was a man of good character who served Islam. He did not have bank accounts abroad like many of the leaders today.” Nearby, in a truck repair shop, a group of men mumbled and fell silent when asked what they thought about the death of Omar. But one, a government employee who gave his name only as Hotak, said the government had no right to ban mourning ceremonies. “I cannot say if he was a good leader or a good Muslim, but he was a Pashtun like me, and we should commemorate his life and death,” Hotak said. He noted that several late militia leaders from other ethnic groups, known for abusive and cruel behavior during the civil war of the 1990s, are officially mourned as martyrs and have had public monuments erected to them. “These are men who drove nails through people’s heads and cut off women’s breasts, and they have been commemorated by the current officials,” he said angrily. “In the Taliban time, we had peace and security. We should have the right to mourn someone whose only aim was to bring sharia to the country.” At least one government official, former finance minister Omar Zakhilwal, has expressed similar views. Zakhilwal, now an adviser to the president, wrote on Facebook that he was “not delighted or sad” about Omar’s death but was “utterly against” preventing people from participating in mourning ceremonies. “This goes against the traditions of Afghans and our holy religion,” he wrote. Zakhilwal added that Omar was only one of the individuals responsible for the civil and religious conflict that devastated Afghanistan in recent years. Without naming names, he noted that “many controversial figures, some considered the main cause of Afghanistan’s tragedy and accused of war crimes, have their death anniversaries officially celebrated.” In neighboring Pakistan, religious groups openly organized numerous mourning prayer services for Omar last week, some attended by hundreds of people. Pakistan originally backed the Taliban and sheltered many of its leaders, including Omar, after the Islamist regime in Kabul was overthrown in 2001 by Afghan and U.S. forces. But in today’s Afghanistan — even two years after his death and amid a nationwide terror campaign by his armed followers — the undercurrent of religious and ethnic loyalty inspired by Omar, a long-reclusive former village mullah, appears too threatening to allow public voice.


How this chemist unwittingly helped spawn the synthetic drug industry

piled up. One Iowa kid in 2010 smoked too much synthetic marijuana, told his friends he was “going to hell,” then shot himself. An Indiana woman’s death that same year was blamed on Spice. The number of calls to poison-control centers involving synthetic cannabinoids soared from 112 in 2009 to 6,549 in 2011, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers. During that same period, national statistics show forensic laboratories turned up JWH-018, JWH-073, JWH-200 — as well as two other synthetic compounds — 5,450 times. So the DEA in 2011 banned a list of synthetic cannabinoids. Three of the five were Huffman’s. David Nichols, a chemist at Purdue University, knows what it is like to publicize a substance now associated with death. Before MDMA (also known as ecstasy) was popular, he studied it in the hopes that drugs like it could help in psychotherapy. He published three papers on a structurally similar molecule called MTA. But then, he says, some European chemists got their hands on the work and produced MTA for consumption. By 2002, six deaths were linked to MTA. Those deaths haunt Nichols, who has since declined to publish a synthesis he feared underground chemists could exploit. “The fact that this killed a bunch of people, I was like, ‘Oh my God, how did this happen?’ . . . It’s a tragedy if they end up having an accident or overdosing. I don’t think they’re dumb. I think it’s a tragedy.” Huffman, too, feels a tinge of regret. But not because of the havoc his synthetic cannabinoids unleashed. He derides synthetic-drug users as “idiots” for getting into something never tested on humans. What discomforts him, rather, is all the unwanted attention he has since gotten. “I don’t want pest calls,” he said. “I get a number of them that are nut calls. You know, ‘Why did you make the compound that murdered my son?’ and this sort of stuff. I’ve had e-mails like that. There’s a reason I’m so difficult to reach. I want it that way. . . . It’s a nuisance.” Thankfully, he said, those calls have decreased in number over the past few years. His elusiveness helps explain that. But forces beyond Huffman also have diminished his stature in today’s synthetic marijuana industry. When authorities banned his compounds, a rush of new ones filled the void. The progression has worked like an evolutionary


Panda pregnancy watch is on at Washington’s National Zoo

Mei Xiang, the female giant panda at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, eats breakfast in this file photo. (Susan Walsh/AP) The National Zoo’s adult female giant panda has entered a critical phase in her months-long reproductive cycle, the zoo said Monday, suggesting that the cycle may conclude in a few weeks. The zoo said it doesn’t know if Mei Xiang is pregnant, because female pandas exhibit signs of pregnancy even when they are not pregnant. But zoo experts have detected the rise in Mei Xiang’s hormone levels that marks the final part of her cycle. Her hormone levels should rise for the next few weeks, and then come down, at which point she will either deliver a cub or have had a false pregnancy, the zoo said. The giant panda was artificially inseminated twice — on April 26 and 27 — with semen collected from the zoo’s male giant panda, Tian Tian, and from a male giant panda at a research center in Wolong, China. The panda in Wolong, Hui Hui, was picked because he was a good genetic match for Mei Xiang, the zoo said. The sample from Hui Hui was frozen and flown from China to the zoo’s cryopreservation bank. If Mei Xiang has a cub, a DNA test can be used to see which male sired the cub. The gestation period for a female giant panda is between three and six months. Panda experts have conducted several ultrasound scans on Mei Xiang this summer and will continue to do so, but the tests have revealed little. The only way to determine conclusively whether a giant panda is pregnant is to see a fetus on an ultrasound, the zoo said. A giant panda fetus does not start developing until the final weeks of gestation. The slow rise in hormones started July 20, the zoo said, and the process should conclude in 30 to 50 days. Mei Xiang has also begun nest-building, spending more time in her den and sleeping more, the zoo said. The area of the giant panda habitat closest to her den will soon close, because she shows extra sensitivity to noise during the final weeks of the cycle. Researchers say Mei Xiang is showing signs of pregnancy, though it is still too early to know for certain. Mei Xiang’s popular female cub, Bao Bao, turns 2 on Aug. 23. Bao Bao and her brother


center in Wolong, China. The panda in Wolong, Hui Hui, was picked because he was a good genetic match for Mei Xiang, the zoo said. The sample from Hui Hui was frozen and flown from China to the zoo’s cryopreservation bank. If Mei Xiang has a cub, a DNA test can be used to see which male sired the cub. The gestation period for a female giant panda is between three and six months. Panda experts have conducted several ultrasound scans on Mei Xiang this summer and will continue to do so, but the tests have revealed little. The only way to determine conclusively whether a giant panda is pregnant is to see a fetus on an ultrasound, the zoo said. A giant panda fetus does not start developing until the final weeks of gestation. The slow rise in hormones started July 20, the zoo said, and the process should conclude in 30 to 50 days. Mei Xiang has also begun nest-building, spending more time in her den and sleeping more, the zoo said. The area of the giant panda habitat closest to her den will soon close, because she shows extra sensitivity to noise during the final weeks of the cycle. Researchers say Mei Xiang is showing signs of pregnancy, though it is still too early to know for certain. Mei Xiang’s popular female cub, Bao Bao, turns 2 on Aug. 23. Bao Bao and her brother Tai Shan, who was born at the zoo in 2005 and is now in a breeding program in China, were sired by Tian Tian. Unlike in humans, where the egg is fertilized and the fetus starts to grow and can be measured, it isn’t so obvious with a panda, zoo officials said. A female panda can have what is known as “delayed implantation.” She can have a fertilized egg float in her uterus for weeks before it attaches to the wall of her uterus, according to zoo officials. In addition, a female panda’s hormones and behavior are the same whether she’s pregnant or not. If she does not give birth at the end of the cycle, she has experienced what is a called a false pregnancy or pseudopregnancy. Mei Xiang had five consecutive false pregnancies between 2007 and 2012. That year, she became pregnant and successfully gave birth, but the week-old cub died due to liver abnormalities and fluid in the abdomen.


Wanted man arrested for homicide at troubled apartment complex

A man wanted in a murder at a violence-plagued public housing complex turned himself in to D.C. police on Monday. Eric McDuffie, 23, who was wanted in the fatal shooting of Antonio McCallister, 23, appeared at a police station Monday, police spokesman Hugh Carew said. McCallister became one of four people killed this year at the Woodland Terrace apartments, when he was fatally shot July 24 on the 2700 block of Langston Place SE. McDuffie, who lives on the block where the shooting happened, according to court records, is charged with first-degree murder. Peter Hermann contributed to this report.


Mexican who led search for mass graves found shot to death

Relatives and friends attend the wake of Miguel Angel Jimenez Blanco in Xaltianguis, Guerrero State, Mexico, on Sunday. (Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images) MEXICO CITY — For the past year, Miguel Ángel Jiménez Blanco had led relatives through the forested hills around Iguala, collecting discarded clothes and spent shotgun shells and probing the earth with metal rods, looking for mass graves. These spontaneous family search-parties, often done without the authorities’ knowledge, were one of most poignant displays of the consequences of drug violence in the state, where many families were too afraid of the government to report their disappeared relatives to the police. Jimenez, 45, was found fatally shot Saturday in a taxi he owned near his home town outside the beach town of Acapulco. He worked for the politically active group called the Union of Towns and Organizations of the State of Guerrero (known as UPOEG), as well as a community police group. Last winter, the tree-shaded courtyard of the San Gerardo Catholic church in Iguala had been transformed into a bustling triage center for desperate families of the disappeared. There were tables for people to report how their relatives went missing and a mobile lab to donate blood for DNA testing. Jiménez and his fellow volunteers provided a safe space for families to come forward. “All the authorities were participating [in the criminal activity], and that’s why nobody could come forward to report the crimes,” Jiménez said in an interview in December. “We are talking about hundreds and hundreds of disappeared.” The public outcry after the Ayotzinapa case — when 43 teachers college students were abducted and presumably executed — created a space for other frightened families across the state to come forward. What started in November with just seven parents in a church basement quickly swelled to more than 300, as relatives filled out reports and hiked the surrounding hills looking for unmarked graves.There are an estimated 20,000 disappeared across Mexico. At the time, Jiménez seemed hopeful that a corner had been turned, as the mayor and corrupt police had been ousted from Iguala and residents felt freer to stand up for themselves. His group of volunteers has found 129 missing bodies, The Los Angeles Times reported. “The environment in the city is now sane,” Jiménez said. “But there are many parents who are still afraid to come forward.” And now they may have even more reason to be.


Japan switches on first nuclear reactor since Fukushima disaster

TOKYO — The reactor is the first to be restarted under strict new regulations governing safety at nuclear power plants in this earthquake-prone nation, and its operation advances a key goal of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. At 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, workers at Kyushu Electric Power’s Sendai plant pulled the control rods out of reactor No. 1, triggering nuclear fission for the first time since it was taken offline in May 2011, Kyodo News reported. The reactor is expected to start generating power by Friday, and the plant’s second reactor is set to be turned on in October. “We prioritize safety more than anything,” Abe told reporters the day before the restart. “Based on the harsh experience of Fukushima, we will not restart any plants unless they are approved as they meet the world’s strictest standards.” After a devastating earthquake and tsunami caused a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Japan’s east coast in March 2011, the country idled all of its nuclear reactors while it conducted safety checks and drew up new regulations. A protester shouts slogans during an anti-nuclear rally in front of the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo. (Shizuo Kambayashi/AP) This led to skyrocketing electricity prices as Japan had to import oil and gas for energy, further straining public finances and family budgets. Household electricity bills rose 25 percent over four years through March, Kyodo News reported, citing government data. As he tries to kick-start the economy, Abe has been promoting a return to nuclear power as a critical way to boost growth and help Japan become more efficient. Tuesday’s move could pave the way for the country’s 42 other workable reactors to come back online, although safety inspections and legal challenges may delay the process. Only five reactors at three sites have been cleared for restart under the new rules, and a court has blocked one of those. With memories of the Fukushima disaster — the world’s worst nuclear accident since the 1986 catastrophe at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine — still fresh, polls show that a majority of Japanese oppose returning to an energy source they consider unsuitable for such earthquake-prone islands. Anti-nuclear protesters gather daily at an intersection near government ministries in Tokyo, and they have been rallying outside the heavily guarded plant in Kyushu for several days. “I cannot understand why operations are resuming,” Tatsuya Yoshioka, director of rally


Throwing a lifeline to bees

Lowe’s, which is phasing out its sales of neonicotinoids? A commendable effort, in response to pressure from activist groups, who represent — I do believe — the majority view. Perhaps if we all asked stores whether their products contained imidacloprid, clothianidin, thiamethoxam, dinotefuran or acetamiprid before we bought, it would encourage them not to sell these products. We are an enormous hive, and we can swarm together when it is necessary to take a new path. One thing I’ve learned about the readers of this column is that they feel warmly toward the wild co-workers in their gardens, even unlikely ones such as spiders, snakes and toads. With bees the feeling can be quite intense. When I go out to cut flowers to bunch and sell at the farmers market, my hands are right in there with the bees. We don’t bother each other. Once in a while I reach for a blossom without seeing the bee inside. It feels trapped, it stings, and my finger swells up as big as a cow’s teat. Nothing personal, though. I encourage wildflowers to bloom all around our farm, for a good nectar supply, not just the true natives such as asters and goldenrod, but also the European invaders such as daisies, clover, hawkweed and vetch. Bee vision is most drawn to the purple-blue-violet part of the spectrum, which is why clumps of blue salvia, catmint and lavender are always humming and quivering with the bees’ work. I would even forgive purple loosestrife its takeover of our waterways, edging out more timid natives, if its blossoms could save the bees. The sunflowers I pick are a special case. I’ll find bees, a dozen of them, in a perfect ring around a flower’s central disk, so absorbed in their feeding that I must gently flick each one off with my finger before I cut the thick stems, put them in buckets, and bring them indoors for bunching. I always miss a few bees, which I find buzzing on the windows, so I pick them up carefully with Kleenex and send them out the back door. It’s a negotiation. We share the garden. It’s not just my flower, and it’s not just my world. Damrosch is author of “The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook. Tip of the week Clear tired summer garden beds and sow seeds of kale, collard greens and kohlrabi for a fall-long


Atrocities on both sides in Colombia

Demonstrators supporting members of the Colombian army. (Luis Eduardo Noriega/European Pressphoto Agency) The Aug. 5 news article “Colombia peace settlement could be in reach, experts say” expressed what is certainly a shared sentiment among those involved in and familiar with the ongoing conflict between the Colombian state and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC: Finally, a glimpse of hope in a conflict that has left thousands dead or displaced. The article, however, portrayed the conflict and subsequent violence as produced by antagonistic actions of a radical leftist organization but omitted the equally egregious and antagonistic actions of the Colombian state. For example, there exists a preponderance of extrajudicial executions, known as false positives, in which the Colombian military murdered innocent civilians, dressed them as rebels and passed their bodies off as examples of the state’s effectiveness in combating FARC. This tactic was being used as recently as 2008 and has allegedly involved top-ranking military officials within Colombia’s forces. It is important to avoid framing this conflict as one-sided when each side shares in the loss of life and the continued violence. And mentioning that could challenge the apparent impunity that high-ranking state officials have enjoyed during this conflict. Mark Cameron, Washington The writer is a research associate for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.


The cat-sized rodent who escaped at the National Zoo has died

Macadamia, as he was in life. He was the size of a large house cat. (Smithsonian National Zoo) Macadamia, the bold young rodent who escaped his cage at the Smithsonian National Zoo last month, has died. The zoo said that he might have injured himself running around his habitat. In a statement, the zoo said that Macadamia’s July 13 adventure, in which he chewed his way through the stainless steel mesh of his cage and spent about 30 minutes roaming before zookeepers caught up to him, did not play a role in his death. Macadamia was an agouti — a South American rodent about the size of a large house cat. He was relatively new at the National Zoo when he bust out of his cage in July. He had not yet been introduced to his mate, a female agouti named Hazelnut. He did get to meet Hazelnut before his death — after zookeepers reviewed his enclosure to prevent him from escaping again. But on Aug. 10, zookeepers realized something was wrong with Macadamia, and he died during veterinary treatment. The zoo said in a statement that Macadamia’s habit of running quickly around his habitat seems to have led to a fatal head or neck injury. Zoo officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Related: Rusty the red panda escapes from the National Zoo into Adams Morgan Rusty’s mate Shama dies Snowy owl that captivated Washington dies


In Good Spirits to raise funds for D.C. Central Kitchen

One Eight Distilling hosts In Good Spirits on Aug. 13. The event will raise money for D.C. Central Kitchen, an organization fighting hunger and poverty in the District. (Evelyn Hockstein/The Washington Post) THURSDAY CRAFT BEER TASTING: GARDEN TOUR AND TEA: IN GOOD SPIRITS: WINE DINNER: FRIDAY BREWMASTER'S DINNER: FARM TO TABLE DINNER: SATURDAY BEER AND MUSIC FESTIVAL: COOKING CLASS: SUNDAY FERRAGOSTO PICNIC: HISTORY OF SUGAR AND DESSERT: MASON DIXON MASTER CHEF TOURNAMENT: TUESDAY BEER DINNER: RESERVE NOW AUG. 20 FOOD IN THE GARDEN: WINE DINNER: — Kara Elder Submit event listings at www.washingtonpost.com/gog/talk-to-us.html at least 14 days in advance.


Killing an example of chilling violence in D.C.’s Woodland Terrace

She'kita McCallister, the sister of Antonio McCallister, a 23-year-old killed in Woodland Terrace, a public housing complex in Southeast Washington, holds a vigil for him in late July. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post) They came to 2743 Langston Place in the District to mourn a brother, a godchild and a friend. Community members gathered late last week at a makeshift memorial on the spot where 23-year-old Antonio McCallister had been fatally shot in the troubled Woodland Terrace complex. A suspect in the case later surrendered to D.C. police. The arrest affidavit unsealed Tuesday offered a telling detail about the violence in this Southeast Washington community: The accused assailant lived 10 doors from the shooting. After McAllister fell to the ground, witnesses told police, the suspected gunman simply ran home. But it would take two weeks before a witness came forward, police said. A second witness at first lied about what he saw, police said in court papers, because he said he was plotting revenge. A visit in early August revealed a tightknit community torn by violence, in which four people have been killed this year. McCallister’s July 24 death and another homicide four days later that claimed the life of Melvin Williams, 31, in a nearby courtyard, prompted D.C. police to take extraordinary action. They flooded the complex of 600 residents with round-the-clock protection — officers standing guard on every street and hidden cul-de-sac. Those who were interviewed refused to talk about any reason behind the bloodshed — part of a 28 percent increase in homicides across the District that has leaders worried. Many who live in Woodland Terrace — and police — suspect an internal battle among residents and others who live in adjacent apartment buildings rather than a deadly feud between rival gangs or over drugs. Housing Authority officials blamed the violence on outsiders who routinely commit crimes and victimize the people who live there. They say many of the suspects and victims are not on official leases. But many once lived in Woodland Terrace, or still claim to. Police list home addresses for two of the four victims as Woodland Terrace. And two suspects arrested in two of the killings also claim to live in the complex, according to D.C.police. That includes the man arrested in the shooting of McCallister — Eric McDuffie, 23, who is charged with first-degree murder. The arrest affidavit filed in D.C. Superior


D.C. breweries are transforming seedy office parks into a hopping scene

Street NE before closing in December.) From the get-go, “everyone was really worried what the neighbors and residents would think about creating an entire other class of people who could serve alcohol,” says DC Brau co-founder Skall. The brewers argue that offering tastes of their wares is crucial to hawking their brand. They were initially allowed to offer samples and to take visitors on tours. But it wasn’t until a year ago, after the city allowed them to sell their beer by the pint like any bar, that the scene really began to pick up. Before the law changed, “people would do their four samples, and you’d be like, ‘Hey, you want to buy a T-shirt? A growler to go or something?’ ” recalls Will Durgin, head brewer at Atlas. “We knew if we could just sell them some beer in the format and size it’s intended to be consumed — which is a pint — and get them to hang out for a little bit, then the revenue would follow.” From left, Shilpa Coorg, Nayan Patel, Adam Herder, Amy Levelle, Neha Gujarati, Rahul Ram and Kishan Patel gather in the tasting room of DC Brau for a birthday brewery tour. (Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post) It’s a novel thing. It’s different than going to a bar,” offers Sam McCadney, who’s squatting at one of 3 Stars’ picnic tables with his wife and their newborn and a gaggle of friends who’ve arrived by bike. It’s like going to a beer garden, he says, “but everything is made on-site.” The weekend culture arising around these isolated warehouses is “not a get-drunk culture,” says DC Brau’s Skall. “It’s a get-everybody-together culture.” The breweries’ drinking hours are far shorter than an average bar’s, too: They’re open just a few days a week, rarely later than 8 p.m. But the visitors, he acknowledges, are “massively important” to the city’s nascent brewing scene. This year, with pints for sale in the tasting room, DC Brau’s revenue is up 62 percent. “Selling a pint? That’s where I make the most profit per ounce,” Skall says. Now, the crowds that come to see the breweries and take a tour often stay to order a flight, and then perhaps a pint. And then, frequently, another. When they’re going for $5 a pop, why not? At DC Brau on Saturdays, it’s not unusual for visitors clutching plastic cups


does not exactly afford a picturesque view). Ratcheting up the interest is that there are more breweries and distilleries across the board. This week, the D.C. brewers, along with those in Maryland and Virginia, are calling out to customers with D.C. Beer Week, giving the uninitiated a chance to try the goods in bars and at multicourse dinners with beer pairings. The opening bash alone featured 20 brewing operations. In the early days of Washington brewing, beer geeks didn’t trek to the corners of the city for such quaffs as a peppercorn saison. There were no beer geeks. Because the beer was terrible. When physician Cornelius Coningham opened the Washington Brewery, the capital’s first brewing operation, in 1796, it and the breweries that followed churned non-potable D.C. water exclusively into ale. It was an English-style brew that was hoppy, bitter and heavy — not the ideal cooler for the humid climate in which the city’s denizens had insisted on settling. (Also, it turns out, the city mostly had a thing for whiskey, anyway.) Beer’s fortunes turned when a wave of German immigrants in the 1850s brought their brewing ambitions and lager-style beer with them. Lager, says historian Garret Peck, the author of “Capital Beer: A Heady History of Brewing in Washington, D.C.,” was more palatable. It was better with food. By the end of the Civil War, fueled by the sipping habits of soldiers, there were more than two dozen breweries in and around Washington, each of which had its own social scene. “We had huge beer gardens around the city, the biggest of which could seat a thousand people,” says Peck. That was the Alhambra Summer Garden at Fourth and E streets NE, where men and women gathered nightly for live music, dancing and sweet, golden-hued beer from the Washington Brewery. Hosting your own kegger was the easiest way for the breweries to distribute their suds, a fact that remains true to this day. Sometimes, the brewers admit, the party gets a little out of hand. In February, after learning that customers were heading to their cars, changing clothes to disguise themselves and returning to game bartenders into giving them more free beer, DC Brau’s Skall, by all accounts a laid-back guy, announced that the brewery was nixing its free samples. Skall ended his little missive with the following: #THISISWHYWECANTHAVENICETHINGS. What happened to civility? That’s what Sundays are for.


Nature vs. nurture in the back yard

Sparrows and a house finch share a feeder in a back yard. (John Kelly/The Washington Post) Regarding Sarah Baker’s Aug. 9 Outlook essay, “Sorry, neighbors. I refuse to mow my ‘nuisance’ lawn ”: Why can’t Ms. Baker find a third way between her extreme practice and that of her neighbors? When my upwind neighbor lets her weeds run rampant, seeds drift onto my property, where they produce a lot of extra work. It is a nuisance, as Ms. Baker’s downwind neighbors must surely agree. There’s a difference between a wild yard and a “naturalized” one. In the latter, a mix of perennials is grown instead of turf, which requires carefully selected plantings, proper spacing and grouping, plus a good deal of cultivation — more work maybe than an ordinary lawn. It isn’t true, as Ms. Baker argued, that lawns are incompatible with wildlife. I get good results without a lot of fertilizer or extra water. My yard is friendly to insects, which attract birds. Robins flourish on conventional lawns, where they browse for food. Hawks love lawns, where prey have no cover. My garden, with a mix of turf, shrubs, trees, etc., is an agreeable place for much wildlife. There’s no need to choose between nature and nurture. A balance exists, if we make an effort to find it. I can play God in my little corner of the cosmos and still be a friend to nature. If she made that effort, Ms. Baker might get along better with her neighbors. Bill Coe, Washington ● Instead of letting my lawn go completely “natural” and irritating my neighbors, for the past 10 years I have been reforesting my back yard with low-maintenance trees (mostly nuts), fruit shrubs and wide swaths of ground covers to replace large areas of my lawn. In my quarter-acre lot, I have 25 trees, many figs, purple wintercreeper, pachysandra and vinca minor, and way down yonder is my pawpaw patch, which is loaded with fruit this year. The fruits and nuts make the wildlife very happy. I over-seed my lawn once a year with drought-resistant shade seed so I will still have some grass as the tree canopy develops. I fertilize twice a year, but I do not use herbicides or insecticides. I do not water. The ground covers do need weeding as they grow in, but eventually they will crowd out the weeds; they don’t need


CSC to acquire two companies to grow commercial business

Computer Sciences Corp. is preparing to split up its government and commercial arms later this year. (Brent Lewin/Bloomberg) Falls Church-based Computer Sciences Corp. which is preparing to spin off its government contracting enterprise into a new publicly traded company, is making two acquisitions to bolster its remaining commercial business, the company said Tuesday. CSC is planning to acquire London-based Fixnetix, a provider of front-office management services and Chicago-based Fruition Partners, a cloud service management company, for undisclosed sums. Both purchases will add to the company’s portfolio of commercial work as it repositions itself to tackle a changing software market, executives said in an earnings call with investors Tuesday. “We’re creating a strong balance sheet, and a well-capitalized company that can take advantage of the opportunities that are out there,” said Mike Lawrie, the company’s chief executive. “The message we’re sending here is, we’re beginning to really position the commercial business post-separation. And we think the business can grow.” The question of growth lingers over CSC’s commercial business as it prepares to split. Under Lawrie’s leadership, CSC has executed a turnaround, forging new partnerships with technology companies to grow its presence in areas such as cloud computing and cybersecurity, even as its government work grows slowly. But the company was late to embrace the new IT model of software-as-a-service and is still playing catch-up. Lawrie, who is to be the CEO of the commercial business, will also serve as executive chairman of CSC’s public sector company. He named Larry Prior, who led CSC’s federal division, the new president and chief executive of the government business. More announcements about the public sector company’s board members and leadership are set to follow in the coming months, Lawrie said. Sales in the latest quarter Both acquisitions are slated to be completed in the fall. CSC’s split is scheduled to be finalized in October.


Wanted man turns himself in to D.C. police

D.C. police have arrested a man wanted for first-degree murder, two days after telling the public that he might be armed and dangerous. Matin M. Flythe, 21, turned himself in on Wednesday, police spokesman Hugh Carew said. Flythe has been charged with the murder of Michael Toland, 22, on Aug. 1. Toland was fatally shot in the back and leg at the intersection of 46th Place and G Street SE at about 3:30 a.m.


To medicate with marijuana or not, that’s the question

(Astrid Riecken/The Washington Post) Susan Okie is an assistant clinical professor of family medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine, a poet, and a former medical reporter and science editor at The Washington Post. Stoned A Doctor’s Case for Medical Marijuana By David Casarett Current. 289 pp. $27.95 ‘Does medical marijuana ‘work’?” That question, posed in an illuminating new book by David Casarett, a hospice physician and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, sounds simple and turns out to be anything but. The short answer is that it depends on the symptom or problem being treated, on the physiology of the patient using it, on the mode of drug delivery (a joint? a brownie? a vapor pen? a beer?) and on various other factors. A small but growing trove of research suggests that for some symptoms — insomnia, nausea, certain kinds of pain, muscle spasms, perhaps even the disabling anxiety of post-traumatic stress disorder or the agitation often experienced by people with Alzheimer’s — medical marijuana does work. And for some other conditions, marijuana or drugs based on some of its active ingredients appear promising. “It’s starting to look to me like marijuana might offer real medical benefits,” Casarett acknowledges halfway through “Stoned,” noting that he embarked on the book project believing he’d find little evidence of weed’s effectiveness. That’s potentially good news for people living in states where medical marijuana is legal — currently 23, plus the District — but it’s only half the picture. Research has also identified risks clearly associated with marijuana use. Casarett reports worrisome evidence of a link between marijuana use and psychosis, and somewhat weaker findings suggest that it may increase users’ chance of developing schizophrenia. It can also cause addiction in some people, since it lights up the brain’s pleasure circuitry in essentially the same way as alcohol, cigarettes or cocaine — although a user’s risk of becoming addicted probably depends on her genetic makeup, frequency of use and the strength of the marijuana product being inhaled or ingested. Much of the marijuana sold in the United States today contains five to 10 times more THC (short for tetrahydrocannabinol, the ingredient that makes people high) than the weed smoked in the 1970s. Smoking or “vaping” potent marijuana or hashish delivers a rapid bolus of THC into the bloodstream, and the resultant swift rise, crest and fall of the drug’s level in the brain


A call for tips: Help me find the area’s best cheap-eats destinations

a work in progress. Lotte Plaza in Chantilly has eateries and food stalls throughout the supermarket, including Big Mama Korean Cuisine. (Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post) As you might surmise, I don’t want to limit the guide to well-known neighborhoods or suburbs or corridors such as H Street NE or 14th Street NW. I want to include any destination with something special to offer. It might be Lotte Plaza, a shopping center and multicultural bazaar in Chantilly, where you can bite into a blisteringly hot cheese-and-loroco pupusa or dig into a donburi bowl brimming with lacquered eel and freshly steamed vegetables. Or it could be the Dupont Circle FreshFarm Market, where customers shop for local produce while noshing on seasonal vegetarian tacos or wood-fired pizzas. So what makes a spot a cheap-eats destination? Obviously, it needs restaurants that offer cheap meals, or at least cheap-ish meals. You shouldn’t walk away from a restaurant content with the food but fretting about the cash you just dumped on dinner. Yet price limits are tricky. I rarely order an entree that demands more than an Andrew Jackson from my wallet, but even with a $15 entree, a $5 appetizer and a cheap beer, I start pushing the $30 boundary when tax and tip are included. Eating well is an increasingly pricey proposition, even on this blue-collar beat. The destination should also feature more than one good dining option, preferably three or more. As much as I like Chez Dior, the Senegalese restaurant in Hyattsville, I don’t think there are enough quality eateries in the immediate area to recommend the strip along Baltimore Avenue. And if the destination has a bargain-priced watering hole nearby, all the better. Diners often prefer to extend their evening with a drink before or after a meal (or both). Chez Dior, a Senegalese eatery in Hyattsville that serves cuisine with mix of comforting grill smoke and funky West African flavors, could use some quality neighbors. (Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post) Why compile this guide? Because after 2 1/ 2 years as the $20 Diner, I have come to the conclusion that the metro area is packed with generic strip centers and bustling suburban corridors where delicious meals can be had at bargain prices. Three years ago, I would have rarely ventured to Beltsville; now the Maryland community is home to a few of my favorites things: the refined fast-casual


A climate problem that’s understated

The lignite-fired power plant of German energy supplier EON in 2010. (Johannes Eisele/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) In his Aug. 10 op-ed column, “Mission impossible?,” Robert J. Samuelson said he wants to go beyond the “tired story line” of deniers vs. the scientific consensus and recognize that even with President Obama’s Clean Power Plan initiative, global temperatures will continue to rise. He concluded that Mr. Obama’s modest plan may be the best a democratic society can do and that our best hope is for a technological breakthrough or that our current models may overstate the problem. Rather than throw in the towel on democracy, I wish Mr. Samuelson had expanded his global warming primer to include the fact that Earth is about 50 degrees warmer than it would be without the natural greenhouse effect and then pointed out that ignoring a 40 percent increase in carbon dioxide since the Industrial Revolution — unprecedented in 800,000 years of ice records — is playing with fire. We should celebrate the Clean Power Plan for the limited good it does and focus our criticism on the climate change deniers who think they can know all the answers by ignoring all the evidence. Mike Zasadil, Silver Spring


Prince George’s County Animal Watch

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY These were among cases received recently by the Prince George’s County Animal Management Division. Call 301-780-7200 for directions to the county animal shelter, hours of operation, and adoption and licensing procedures. The department Web site is www.princegeorgespets4us.com. Dog in traffic: Raccoon in bathroom: Panting stray: Snake on patio: Two birds left behind: adoption clinic and NEUTER services The SPCA/Humane Society of Prince George’s County is sponsoring cat and dog adoptions from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday at Petco, 2319-D Forest Dr., Annapolis. The pets’ foster owners will answer questions and accept adoption applications for the animals. Adoption fees are $75 for cats, $180 for dogs. For information, call 301-262-5625 or visit www.pgspca.org. The Prince George’s County Department of the Environment’s Animal Management Division The Prince George’s County Animal Management Division is offering free spay/neuter services to residents in low-income neighborhoods. For information, call 301-780-7200 or visit www.princegeorgespets4us.com. Volunteer needs The SPCA/Humane Society of Prince George’s County, Prince George’s County Animal Management Division The Partnership for Animal Welfare — Compiled by Jillian S. Jarrett