The Grill Room review: A new reason to go, thanks to Frank Ruta & Co.

and skate wing, with heat from chilies and crunch from lemony toasted breadcrumbs. Palena was famous for its roast chicken; the entree, flavorful from its brine of sweet spices and orange zest, is a star here, too. Ruta’s support group includes a master sommelier, Keith Goldston, and a pastry chef, Aggie Chin, every bit as skilled as the top banana. All this, plus parquet floors, pools of space between broad tables and windows that push open to the C&O Canal. Next: The Top 10: No. 10: The Grill Room No. 9: Komi No. 8: G by Mike Isabella No. 7: Garrison No. 6: The Riggsby No. 5: The Inn at Little Washington No. 4 Little Serow No. 3: Masseria No. 2 Rasika No. 1 Rose’s Luxury -- This review appeared in The Washington Post Magazine on April 26, 2015. What a difference a chef makes. And a pastry maven, and a master sommelier. A year ago, anyone dining in the Grill Room of the chic Capella hotel in Georgetown probably would have pushed away from the table thinking, “nice place — for a hotel restaurant.” While the interior, with its lavender accents and curved leather chairs, made a design statement from Day 1, the menu tended to play it for flyover country. Tuna tartare, in other words, is not a dish that breaks much news anymore. Suckling pig with fig sauce and lime foam revealed a more daring side to opening chef Jakob Esko, but the dish wasn’t enough to earn the restaurant more than two stars. When Esko returned to Barcelona last summer, Capella put out the word it was looking for a local with a point of view to replace him. “We don’t want to be thought of as a typical hotel restaurant,” general manager Alex Obertop said in June. It took some time and a restaurant closing to find the right name — six months and the shuttering of Palena in Cleveland Park, to be exact — but the Grill Room now tastes like an entirely new destination with the addition of executive chef Frank Ruta. Along for the joy ride: Aggie Chin, his pastry equal at Palena, and Keith Goldston, who left Range in Friendship Heights to become the wine director for the property. If you haven’t reserved a table yet, do so, or risk missing the chance to enjoy the work of one of Washington’s


Memo to debate moderators: Ask questions about climate change this time. A lot is riding on it.

in the courts, but if it ends up proceeding, it will be key to long term efforts to reduce carbon pollution, and to meeting our commitments as part of the global deal. Trump has vowed to repeal the rule, along with untold other regulations, but that might be harder than it looks. Still, there are various ways he could undermine it. The point is that, unlike four years ago, the positions of the presidential candidates on climate change actually could have a very dramatic practical impact. Clinton has vowed to preserve Obama’s climate actions, including both the Clean Power Plan and our participation in the global accord. What’s more, as the advocacy group NextGen Climate recently pointed out, there’s also a national security angle that suggests more urgency around getting the candidates to talk about these issues. A bipartisan group of national security experts recently released a letter that argued climate change poses myriad threats to national security, and called for the U.S. to “advance a comprehensive policy for addressing this risk.” Trump keeps telling us he’ll be very tough and effective on national security. It might be useful, then, for him to explain whether he has any such comprehensive policy, or if not, why he thinks all these experts are wrong. There are plenty of good reasons for Clinton to be asked tough questions about climate, too. As David Roberts recently reported, environmentalists are skeptical her support for fracking in places where local officials back it, and are uncertain just how committed she is to various policies that would redouble our commitment to the general goal of keeping fossil fuels in the ground. The bottom line, though, is that climate is an area where the stakes are enormously high and where there are very dramatic differences between Trump and Clinton. Trump calls climate change a “hoax.” Clinton calls it the “defining challenge of our time.” As Time magazine recently put it: Climate change stands out as perhaps the most egregious area of disagreement between the two candidates, given its stakes and the significant scientific consensus that humans have caused it. The debate moderators would do us all a service by prodding the candidates to discuss and illuminate these differences. A lot is riding on them — perhaps even more than on whether Trump comes across as “presidential” and Clinton comes across as “likeable,” if such a thing is possible.


About 80 people arrested in Baltimore turmoil freed after time runs out

He said he’d never been given documents explaining his charges and was never brought before a court commissioner. He said the holding cell he stayed in was overcrowded and that many of those detained were getting angry. Torrence said that on Monday, during the protests, he was talking to police officers when another group of officers suddenly appeared and began arresting people. He said he ran, was caught and was arrested. He said he thinks that police intended to charge him with disorderly conduct, but he doesn’t know why. District courts in Baltimore were closed Tuesday because of the state of emergency put in place. But that closure did not affect the court commissioners, who continued to work at full staffing since Monday, said Terri Charles, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Judiciary. Even with their usual round-the-clock presence, many of those arrested were not presented to the commissioners on charges — leading to their release. “In order to criminally charge someone, we have to have the witnessing officer, we have to know the location and the time,” Kowalczyk said. “They have to fill out a document that details the probable cause for the arrest. As you saw Monday night . . . it was a very chaotic situation.” Outside the Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center on Wednesday, several family members and friends of people arrested in the past few days showed up, looking for answers of when they might be released. “This is ridiculous,” said Andrew Rickers, 24, who said his fiancee, Rachel Fisher, was arrested Monday afternoon. He hadn’t heard from her since. At one point, using a cellphone from a nearby bail bondsman, he spoke to officials inside the jail. He told an official he understood these were unusual circumstances but said Fisher had a right to see a court commissioner within 24 hours of arriving. “The law is the law,” Rickers told her. In Maryland, there is essentially a two-step process for setting bonds. The first is done by a commissioner. Then, defendants who cannot make their bond and continue to be held in jail get a chance to have their bond reviewed by a judge. Some of the people arrested during the protests had such bond review hearings Wednesday, offering glimpses of police allegations. They all beamed onto televisions appearing remotely for their bail reviews. Men accused of filling bags with bottles from liquor stores.


U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan was an ‘exceptional Green Beret’

Afghan security personnel prepare for combat during an ongoing battle with Taliban militants in the Nad Ali district of Helmand on Aug. 10. (Photo by Noor Mohammad/AFP/Getty Images) The service member killed in Afghanistan’s restive Helmand province earlier this week has been identified as Staff Sgt. Matthew V. Thompson, the Pentagon said Wednesday. Thompson’s patrol triggered a roadside bomb Tuesday, wounding another American and six Afghan soldiers. Army Staff Sgt. Matthew V. Thompson was killed in Afghanistan on Aug. 23. (Army photo) According to a statement released by the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan, U.S. troops were accompanying their Afghan counterparts near the province’s capital of Lashkar Gah when their unit came under attack. Thompson, 28, of Irvine, Calif., was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 1st Special Forces group, according to an Army release. The incident is under investigation. “He was an exceptional Green Beret, a cherished teammate, and devoted husband. His service in Afghanistan and Iraq speak to his level of dedication, courage, and commitment to something greater than himself,” said Lt. Col. Kevin M. Trujillo, the commander of the U.S. Special Operations task force in Afghanistan. According to the Army release, Thompson enlisted in the Army in 2011 and reported as a medical sergeant to 1st Special Forces Group in 2014. He was on his first stint in Afghanistan when he was killed and had previously deployed to Iraq in support of the U.S.-led war against the Islamic State there. Thompson was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, a Bronze Star with a V for valor in combat and the Combat Infantry Badge. Helmand province has been the site of heavy fighting in recent weeks as Taliban forces have used the summer months to launch multiple offensives across the country. The group is estimated to control well over 50 percent of Helmand, and its pressure on the provincial capital has forced U.S. and NATO troops to shuttle resources to help prop up the embattled Afghan security forces. Despite their gains around the periphery of Lashkar Gah, the Taliban has been unable to enter the city limits in the face of near-constant U.S. and coalition airstrikes. On Monday, the NATO-led mission announced that 100 U.S. troops had been moved to Lashkar Gah to primarily advise Afghan police in the area. Col. Mike Lawhorn, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said Thompson was not a part of the 100-troop detachment. U.S. Special


Bret Stephens is discovering that it’s not easy being the new conservative columnist at the New York Times

the New York Times yet, but he is already discovering that it's not easy being the paper's new conservative columnist. Since his hiring was announced last week, the former Wall Street Journal columnist has been labeled an “extreme climate science denier” by ThinkProgress and a “faux-conservative” by the Conservative Review. Stephens, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is getting hit by critics on both sides — and even by a couple new colleagues. Declan Walsh, the Times's Cairo bureau chief, and Max Fisher, who writes the Times's Interpreter column, delivered harsh criticism over the weekend of a piece that Stephens wrote in the summer. Not cool: new NYT columnist @BretStephensNYT once wrote about the "disease of the Arab mind". https://t.co/duylYvCQSd (h/t @hahellyer) @BretStephensNYT That's a fair point. Ascribing a pathological condition to an entire race of people is not. Which the column doesn't do, except in a tendentious reading of it. Anyway, thanks for sharing your take. Readers c… https://t.co/0FUltQlW4b A bit of context: As Stephens noted on Twitter, his column focused on anti-Semitism in Arab countries. It was prompted by the refusal of an Egyptian judoka to shake hands with an Israeli opponent after a match during the Olympics. The column also criticized a New York Times Magazine article — billed as “the story of the catastrophe that has fractured the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq 13 years ago” — for not focusing on what Stephens views as the important role anti-Semitism has played in said catastrophe. Here's an excerpt: The fact remains that over the past 70 years the Arab world got rid of its Jews, some 900,000 people, while holding on to its hatred of them. Over time the result proved fatal: a combination of lost human capital, ruinously expensive wars, misdirected ideological obsessions, and an intellectual life perverted by conspiracy theory and the perpetual search for scapegoats. The Arab world’s problems are a problem of the Arab mind, and the name for that problem is anti-Semitism. … So long as an Arab athlete can’t pay his Israeli opposite the courtesy of a handshake, the disease of the Arab mind and the misfortunes of its world will continue. For Israel, this is a pity. For the Arabs, it’s a calamity. The hater always suffers more than the object of his hatred. Stephens's response to Walsh on Twitter contained the perfect word to describe this entire situation: “tendentious,”


Trump administration sanctions Iran over missile test

In response to a ballistic missile test last week, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on several Iranian officials and entities involved in procurement of material for the missile testing. The Treasury Department placed new sanctions Friday on Iran, the first move by the Trump administration in response to a ballistic missile test that led the White House to announce it was putting Iran "on notice." The sanctions were imposed on 25 people and entities involved in helping develop Iran's ballistic missile program, or assisting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force in supporting groups that the United States considers terrorist, such as Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah militant group. The administration said the sanctions are not a breach of U.S. commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, that was negotiated by Iran and six world powers, including the United States. "Iran's continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide, and to the United States," said John Smith, acting director of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. "Today's action is part of Treasury's ongoing efforts to counter Iranian malign activity abroad that is outside the scope of the JCPOA. We will continue to actively apply all available tools, including financial sanctions, to address this behavior." Earlier Friday, Iranian officials responded to the Trump administration by calling the warnings and reports of new sanctions “provocative.” Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, posted on Twitter that Iran is “unmoved by threats.” The comments from Iran came before the official announcement of new sanctions but reflected the escalating tensions between the two sides over the past few days. A senior Iranian cleric, Ahmed Khatami, said Friday that if the White House expanded sanctions on Iran, it would be “a clear violation of the nuclear deal.” “We are living in a world full of wolves, like the United States, and in such a world we need arms to defend ourselves,” Khatami said, according to Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency. The sanctions are the first concrete evidence of the Trump administration's intention to take a more aggressive and confrontational approach with Iran. The action was triggered by the Jan. 29 test of a medium-range ballistic missile, in what is widely considered to be Tehran's probing of how far the new administration is prepared


Andrea Thomas, senior vice president of sustainability at Wal-Mart

Andrea Thomas I think when you’re in one of our stores and you’ve got 25 minutes — which is the average time somebody spends — and you’ve got a couple of kids pulling on your pant leg wanting to get through, and you’ve got thousands and thousands of products to choose from, it gets a little bit more complicated. And so, one of the things that we’re trying to do is just make it very simple as you walk up and down the aisles. As part of our healthier food initiative, we have created nutrition criteria. We worked with many, many external experts to help us put some criteria together to help people make choices. And we have an icon that we’re now putting on packaging . . . to give people an idea that when they go up to milk, they’re making a choice, and there’s a different nutrition choice when you buy skim milk than when you’re buying whole milk. There is access to a lot of things, but the understanding and the information behind all of those things can be overwhelming.


Kremlin spokesman vows retaliation against U.S. sanctions

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov speaks during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual end-of-year news conference in Moscow on Dec. 23. (Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters) MOSCOW — “I cannot say now what the response will be, although, as we know, there is no alternative here to the principle of reciprocity,” said Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov in a statement late Thursday reported by the Interfax news service. He said that Russian President Vladimir Putin would decide the exact response. Peskov’s remarks were the culmination of a sharply worded reaction by Russia’s establishment to the sanctions, which come at a time when Moscow is looking forward to an improvement in its ties with the United States at the start of the Trump administration in three weeks. The announcement culminates months of vigorous internal debate over whether and how to respond to Russia’s unprecedented election-year provocations, ranging from the hacks of the Democratic National Committee to the targeting of state electoral systems. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, whose comments about the Obama administration have grown increasingly hostile as the relationship has soured, dismissed the White House as “a group of foreign policy losers, angry and ignorant.” Zakharova’s colleague in the foreign ministry, Konstantin Dolgov, who holds the title of commissioner on democracy and human rights, called the U.S. sanctions “counterproductive” and cast them as having “the goal of damaging relations and complicating their restoration in the future.” Whatever retaliation Moscow is considering will have to take into account the possibility that the Trump administration will want to restore the relationship that has foundered on differences over Syria, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the Kremlin’s proxy war in Ukraine and the alleged hacking on behalf of now-President-elect Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential campaign. Peskov told reporters on Thursday that the steps showed President Obama’s “unpredictable and aggressive foreign policy.” “Such steps of the U.S. administration that has three weeks left to work are aimed at two things: to further harm Russian-American ties, which are at a low point as it is, as well as, obviously, deal a blow on the foreign policy plans of the incoming administration of the president-elect.” Konstantin Kosachyov, a senior member of the upper house of the Russian parliament, suggested that Moscow will have to weigh its response given the possible reaction of the newly elected president. The sanctions, he said in comments carried by Interfax, represented not the will of the


Support for marijuana legalization has hit an all-time high

to let states set their own marijuana laws without federal interference." Marijuana legalization is particularly popular among Democrats (70 percent support) and independents (65 percent). Nearly half (47 percent) of Republican voters support legalization as well. There is a considerable age gap on the question. Eighty-two percent of 18-to-29 year olds support legalization, compared to only 44 percent of those aged 60+. The survey comes at a potential tipping point for drug reform. Next month, the United Nations will hold a special session in New York to re-evaluate the state of international drug laws. Many researchers and public health experts have been encouraging the UN to take a less-punitive approach to drug policy. Yesterday, a group of medical and public health experts urged governments to decriminalize all drug use and experiment with regulated drug markets in some cases. Here in the U.S. it's likely that voters in a number of states, including California, Nevada, Arizona and Massachusetts, will consider whether to legalize recreational marijuana at the ballot box this fall. And Vermont's legislature may opt to legalize marijuana before then. And just last week, the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out a lawsuit against Colorado's marijuana regulatory regime brought by two neighboring states. Marijuana policy reformers say the decision gives some breathing room to other states considering legalization experiments. Still, the AP survey numbers show the support for legalization is by no means uniform. Kevin Sabet of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a group that lobbies against marijuana legalization, said in an email that given that nearly a quarter of marijuana legalization supporters only want to see it authorized with a doctor's prescription, that "does not show strong support for legalization at all." He notes that even under current medical marijuana laws, doctors aren't even able to write prescriptions for medical marijuana -- they can only issue "recommendations." Previous Gallup surveys have not delved into the limits on support for legalization in the same way, so it isn't possible to compare those numbers with previous data. But the survey is still likely to put some wind at the back of reformers hoping for victories on marijuana this year. And the growing levels of public support for legal marijuana -- up from 44 percent at the start of the Obama administration -- mean that the next president and Congress may face more pressure to make changes to marijuana law at the federal level.


Washington mall shooting suspect confesses to killings

After a 24-hour manhunt, authorities arrested a suspect in connection to the Burlington, Wash., mall shooting where five people were killed. BURLINGTON, Wash. — The suspect, Arcan Cetin, appeared in Skagit County District Court, about 60 miles north of Seattle. Cetin answered calmly as he told a judge that he understood the charges against him, which each carries a minimum of 20 years in prison. His bail was set at $2 million. The packed courthouse included tearful family members of some of the victims. Cetin’s mother, also present, was visibly distraught. Authorities said they did not yet know why Cetin shot five people dead with a rifle at a Macy’s makeup counter in the Cascade Mall in Burlington, Wash. Cetin confessed to the shooting to detectives, according to court documents released Monday by the Skagit County Superior Court. According to documents, detectives said surveillance video showed it only took Cetin about one minute to shoot all five victims — a teenage girl near some clothing racks, then four adults in the makeup department. After the shooting, Cetin left his Ruger rifle with a 25-round magazine on top of a cosmetics counter, then fled the mall in a vehicle, the documents said. Cetin was described by high school friends and neighbors as a troubled person who made vulgar comments toward women. A legal permanent resident of the U.S. who immigrated to this county as a young child from Adana, Turkey, Cetin graduated last year from high school in Oak Harbor, a rural community in western Washington state about 30 miles from the mall where he is accused of opening fire Friday night. Sheriff’s deputies apprehended him Saturday evening walking down a sidewalk in Oak Harbor, carrying a satchel with a computer inside. Since the shooting, police appeared to have found few clues to explain the violence, which killed a man and four women, including a teenager who had beat cancer and an elderly woman and her daughter who were shopping. The impact of a crime of this magnitude is “horrible” for the community, Skagit County Prosecutor Richard Weyrich said Monday. “It’s going to take a long time but we will recover.” Washington State Patrol spokesman Sgt. Mark Francis said in an interview Sunday that police were searching Cetin’s vehicle and “a residence in Oak Harbor,” a city of about 22,000 on Whidbey Island with a nearby Naval Air Station. Suspect Arcan


Why I shop for produce at ethnic markets

similar in Washington, Madrid and Amsterdam and runs from $3.18 (the District) to $3.69 (Amsterdam), average produce prices in Washington are almost double what they are in Madrid and Amsterdam: $2.20 a pound or more in Washington compared with $1.10 and less. Though many Americans might resent the idea of taking a lesson from the French, there’s at least one initiative in France that has showed success in reducing produce prices. The supermarket chain Intermarche is selling lower-grade produce in all its branches at 30 percent off, calling it the Undesirables. These ugly veggies became an instant success. Turns out consumers don’t really mind if an apple doesn’t meet the beauty standards, as long as it is priced reasonably. Intermarche’s Undesirables not only offer more reasonably priced produce to the masses but also help reduce food waste. To that end, Trader Joe’s Doug Rauch is planning to open Daily Table, a grocery store in a low-income suburb of Boston that will sell those undesirables at rock-bottom prices. As the Intermarche example shows, prices of fresh produce matter. Research published this year by the Department of Public Administration and Policy at American University indicates that policies and programs aimed at reducing the costs of fresh fruits and vegetables may be effective in promoting healthy weight outcomes among young children of low-income families. According to MyPlate, half of our daily food intake should be composed of fruits and vegetables. But is that advice at odds with USDA recommendations that we consume canned, low-sodium vegetables as a way to save money? The colorful bounty of fresh produce certainly keeps home cooking interesting and tempting while still being healthful. As it happens, many immigrant communities across the United States already know where to procure fresh produce on a budget: at their neighborhood ethnic markets. So until produce prices go down dramatically at the chain supermarkets, I’m going to keep shopping where they do. Guttman writes the Modern Manna food column for Haaretz.com and is chef an¿d owner of Cardamom & Mint Catering. Recipes: Hazelnut, Chocolate and Miso Cake Parsnip, Carrot and Turmeric Root Soup With Goat Cheese Dumplings Roasted Eggplant Noodles With Seaweed and Tahini More from Food: Ethnic Market Scout: Mediterranean around D.C. How to shop at a Middle Eastern market Ethnic Market Scout: Go for the cured meats and fish at Eastern European stores How to shop at an Eastern European market


Feds talk: How do you feel about veterans’ preference for federal hiring?

A U.S. Army officer listens to a speaker with the U.S. flag in the background at the Hiring our Heroes job fair in New York on March 27. (REUTERS/Brendan McDermid). controversial civil-service reforms Federal agencies select new employees based partly on a points system, awarding extra points to job applicants who are former U.S. troops. The partnership recommended keeping that veterans’ hiring preference in place. We wondered how federal workers feel about the existing guidelines for veterans. A Federal Eye survey last week asked federal employees to share their thoughts on the matter, in addition to other elements of the civil-service system. Not all respondents agreed with the preference policies. Peter Gamba, a Treasury Department employee from the Harper’s Ferry area, said the guidelines are “more than frustrating” and “a real road block to those of us who did not serve.” “When two qualified workers apply for the job, the most qualified should get it, not the one who was a veteran yet not as qualified,” Gamba added. Even military veterans complained about the rules. “I am totally opposed to [veterans-preference] hiring and believe it’s bad for good government and bad for the country,” said Robert Mikol, a former U.S. Marine who works in Alaska for the Bureau of Land Management. “I am seeing former members of the military and military spouses get jobs that they are truly unqualified for.” Other federal employees expressed strong support for the preference policies. “Those men and women who voluntarily served their country should be given first choice to employment with the very government they defended,” wrote Christine O’Rourke, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission employee from Pottstown, Pa. “However, rules should not be so restrictive that they make fair competition for those who did not serve.” Bill Asch, a National Institutes of Health employee from Seattle, said he supports veterans preference but wishes the application-review process worked more efficiently. “I like veteran’s preference, and my dad (USAF) did too,” he said. “No real complaints, other than how long things take to process. Need faster decisions.” It’s worth noting that the government does not make promises to hire former troops who apply for any given position. Veterans receive the extra points, but other factors — including greater experience or qualifications — could give non-veterans an edge in some cases. Keep the responses coming, federal workers. We plan to share more of them in coming days as


Everything you need to know about the Bitcoin ‘bubble’

invented the World Wide Web, allowing people to browse the Internet using a familiar point and click interface. PC makers like Apple built PCs with built-in modems and user-friendly software to help them get online more easily. Technology companies built user-friendly Web applications like Facebook and Gmail. Most recently, smart phones and tablets have made the Internet accessible to millions of users who found PC computing too complicated. Bitcoin is likely to go through a similar process. Originally, Bitcoin was exclusively a sandbox for tech-savvy nerds. Today, using Bitcoin is still a lot less convenient than conventional financial networks, but startups like Bitpay (which helps merchants accept bitcoins) and Coinbase (which helps users acquire and spend them) are making it more accessible to mere mortals. That process will continue, with startups exploring new ways to make the system more secure, convenient and user-friendly. Okay, what's the case for Bitcoin pessimism? The most serious risk is that Bitcoin never finds its killer app — that it remains a niche currency used by nerds and drug dealers. That's a very real possibility, as right now most applications of Bitcoin are still speculative. And if no killer app is developed, then eventually the value of bitcoins will collapse. Another major risk is hostility from governments. Bitcoin doesn't fit comfortably in established regulatory categories, and because no one owns the Bitcoin network, there's no one who can be ordered to modify the network to work more like conventional payment networks. There's some danger that regulators, especially in the United States, will conclude that Bitcoin is primarily a platform for illicit activities such as drug dealing and money laundering. They wouldn't succeed in eliminating the currency, any more than Hollywood has succeeded in shutting down online piracy. But they could push Bitcoin underground and prevent legitimate businesses from using the technology. But so far, policymakers have taken the opposite tack. While the government has aggressively prosecuted individuals who have used Bitcoin for illicit purposes, they've been careful to say that they have no quarrel with the underlying Bitcoin technology. Leaders of the Bitcoin community have emphasized that they're anxious to work with policymakers to comply with applicable regulations to the extent that they're able to do so. A final threat is that Bitcoin could be superseded by another virtual currency. Leading candidates include litecoin and Ripple. Right now, that doesn't seem like a major threat.


The hunt for the D.C. area’s best cheap-eats hotbeds: Laurel

LAUREL, MD - OCTOBER 26: Chicken Chettinaad is photographed at Curry Leaf October 26, 2015 in Laurel, MD. (Photo by Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) Chicken Chettinad from Laurel’s Curry Leaf restaurant. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) The second in a series. Previously: Van Dorn Station When I first proposed a cheap-eats neighborhood guide, I didn’t imagine it would include, well, you know, cities. I was aiming for more targeted locations, like shopping centers, blocks or food-truck squares, not full-blown cities, which swell with countless commercial corridors. Search a city long enough, and you’ll find plenty of good budget eats. It’s shooting fish in a deep fryer. But I also didn’t expect the entire city of Laurel to bombard my inbox with suggestions. Perhaps I exaggerate. Numerous readers, no doubt urged by a Laurel listserv, recommended more than a dozen restaurants in the former mill town in northern Prince George’s County, famous for its dinosaur fossils, horse racing and unfortunate distinction as the site where Alabama Gov. George Wallace was shot and wounded in 1972 while campaigning for president. Pizza Bianca from Pasta Plus in Laurel. (Tim Carman/TWP) In terms of dining, Laurel is perhaps best known for Pasta Plus (209 Gorman Ave., 301-498-5100), the home-style Italian restaurant established in 1983 by two brothers from Abruzzo. The strip-center pasta house is a place without time, where diners still talk about the ponies and racing forms while digging into plates of fettuccine Alfredo or spaghetti with meatballs. The pizzas, hot and puffy, are pulled straight from a wood-burning brick oven. Several of the pastas are rolled and cut in-house. This is first-wave-immigrant cooking, done with care and craft, and I adore its red-sauce soul. Helen Woods owns and manages a flight school, and as such, she has a soft spot for small businesses. To hear her talk, Helen has dined at seemingly every mom-and-pop joint in Laurel. She originally e-mailed to suggest eight restaurants, and I asked if she would meet me at one of them, Curry Leaf (13919 Baltimore Ave., 301-497-2017), a calming, minimalist dining room dedicated to Indian cooking. Diner Helen Woods poses with two dishes from Curry Leaf in Laurel. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) Helen warned me that the naan can be “tough” at Curry Leaf. She prefers the flatbread at Sapphire Restaurant and Lounge (13308 Laurel Bowie Rd., 301-490-0555), a hybrid Indian-Thai spot where the


First Person Singular: Courtney B. Wilson, 58, Director, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum

a sort of dark, dusty, cranky place, but the feeling, as I remember it, was walking into a place and feeling the past. And maybe it was because it was a little dark and dank and dusty and all that, but these great locomotives, these great cars here, gave me a sense of the past. Having a pretty vibrant imagination as a child, I took the time to allow myself to [be] transported back into time to imagine what it would have been like to ride on this train during the Civil War, or to be a worker here, where they built the locomotives. Rather than being the kind of guy whose imagination launches a thought into the future, my imagination always went in the reverse and launched me into the past. My parents took me to places like Mount Vernon, to all the Civil War battlefields, to Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell. So I fell in love with the idea of history — not necessarily railroad history, but history in general. For about 15 years, I was a ranger for the National Park Service in the historical parks. Then I launched out on my own and started an antiques business. I’m very sort of object focused. I like tangible things that relate to history, but it’s not just the things themselves, it’s the stories of who made the thing, who used the thing, what difference that thing made in people’s lives. The day I walked into work here, I took probably half that first day to just be left alone and see the locomotives again. I was recalling what I saw when I was here in 1957. I was able to begin to gather the concepts of where we should go in the future. Seeing the transition from here to here ...“Now what’s the next step for us, to take it to a place that people would love even more?” The railroad was sort of the first Internet in the nation. It connected towns together, connected people together. Before railroading, people rarely ventured more than 50 miles away from their home. Here, we have now a technology that could transport people, relatively quickly, long distances across the country and back home again. I travel on a train whenever I can. I don’t understand, living in the Baltimore/D.C. area, why anyone would drive or fly to New York City.


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Wednesday’s GOP debate transcript, annotated

here (ph). TRUMP: OK. So I will say this, though, Hugh was giving me name after name, Arab name, Arab name, and there are few people anywhere, anywhere that would have known those names. I think he was reading them off a sheet. And frankly I will have -- and I told him, I will have the finest team that anybody has put together and we will solve a lot of problems. You know, right now they know a lot and look at what is happening. The world is blowing up around us. We will have great teams and great people. TAPPER: Senator Rubio? TRUMP: I hope that answers your question. I mean, you are in the Senate, but I hope that answers your question. RUBIO: Yes, well, it does. But it's in the following way, this is an important question. I think if you're running for president, these are important issues, because look at around the world today. There is a lunatic in North Korea with dozens of nuclear weapons and long-range rocket that can already hit the very place in which we stand tonight. The Chinese are rapidly expanding their military. They hack into our computers. They're building artificial islands in the South China Sea, the most important shipping lane in the world. A gangster in Moscow is not just threatening Europe, he's threatening to destroy and divide NATO. You have radical jihadists in dozens of countries across multiple continents. And they even recruit Americans using social media to try to attack us here at home. And now we have got this horrible deal with Iran where a radical Shia cleric with an apocalyptic vision of the future is also guaranteed to one day possess nuclear weapons and also a long-range rocket that can hit the United States. These are extraordinarily dangerous times that we live in. And the next president of the United States better be someone that understands these issues and has good judgment about them because the number one issue that a president will ever confront, and the most important obligation that the federal government has, is to keep this nation safe. And today we are not doing that. We are eviscerating our military. And we have a president that is more respectful to the ayatollah in Iran than he is to the prime minister of Israel. (APPLAUSE) TAPPER: Mr. Trump? Senator Rubio seemed to


vaccines out a little bit at the very least. TAPPER: Alright, thank you so much... HUCKABEE: Jake? Jake? TAPPER: Coming up -- I'm sorry, Governor Huckabee, please. HUCKABEE: I think we need to remember that there are maybe some controversies about autism, but there is no controversy about the things that are really driving the medical costs in this country. And I would really believe that the next president ought to declare a war on cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer's, because those are the four things that are causing the greatest level of cost. John Kennedy said, "we'll go to the moon in a decade and bring a man back," and we did it. I grew up in the '50s. I remember the polio vaccine. We saved billions of dollars since that time, because we haven't had to treat for polio. Why doesn't this country focus on cures rather than treatment? Why don't we put a definitive focus scientifically on finding the cure for cancer, for heart disease, for diabetes and for Alzheimer's, a disease alone that will cost us -- TAPPER: Thank you, Governor. HUCKABEE: $1.1 trillion by the year 2050. We change the economy and the country. TAPPER: We have to take another quick break. Coming up, Ronald Reagan looming large over this debate. So how Reaganesque exactly are these Republicans? We will find out next. (APPLAUSE) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) TAPPER: Welcome back to CNN's Republican Presidential Debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. We have a few last questions for you. Two of them a little lighthearted, the other one more serious. We'll start with one of the more light questions. Senator Paul, I'm going to start with you and we're just going to go down the line. Earlier this year, the Treasury Department announced that a woman will appear on the $10 bill. What woman would you like to see on the $10 bill? PAUL: Ooh, that's a tough one. You know, I'm big on -- that we were -- and I love what Carly said about women's suffrage. I think Susan B. Anthony might be a good choice. TAPPER: Governor Huckabee? HUCKABEE: That's an easy one. I'd put my wife on there. (LAUGHTER) I've been married to her 41 years. She's fought cancer and lived through it. She's raised three kids, five great grandkids, and she's put up with me. I mean, who


Japan’s sexual apathy is endangering the global economy

Japanese women walk down a Tokyo shopping street. (Mark Kolbe/Getty Images) People in Japan are so averse to romantic relationships that the country's media even has a name for it: sekkusu shinai shokogun, or "celibacy syndrome," according to a widely circulated Guardian story on the country's low rates of marriage, childbearing and even sex. But this is more than a story about Japan and its cultural quirks: It's a story about the global economy. Japan is the world's third-largest economy, a crucial link in global trade and a significant factor everyone else's economic well-being. It owns almost as much U.S. debt as does China. It's a top trading partner of the U.S., China and lots of other countries. The Japanese economy is in serious enough trouble that it could set the rest of us back. And the biggest source of that trouble is demographic: Japanese people aren't having enough kids to sustain a healthy economy. One big reason they're having fewer kids is that they're not as interested in dating or marrying one another, in part because they're less interested in sex. Here are a few of the statistics, some from the Guardian story and others from a 2011 report by Japan's population center: • Extremely high numbers of Japanese do not find sex appealing. 45 percent of women and 25 percent of men, ages 16 to 24, are "not interested in or despised sexual contact." • More than half of Japanese are single. 49 percent of unmarried women and 61 of unmarried men, ages 18 to 34, are not in any kind of romantic relationship. • In every age group, the percentage of Japanese men and women who are not in a romantic relationship has been increasing steadily since the 1990s. • About a quarter of Japanese don't want a romantic relationship. 23 percent of women and 27 percent of men say they are not interested in any kind of romantic relationship. • More than a third of childbearing-age Japanese have never had sex: 39 percent of women and 36 percent of men, ages 18 to 34. That number hasn't actually changed much over the last decade, but it is unusually high. • The Japanese population institute projects that women in their early 20s have a 25 percent chance of never marrying and a 40 percent chance of never having kids. These trends are not new. Since 2006, Japanese


Did the National Broadband Plan spur innovation?

auctions, are also essential issues still to be resolved, and likely require Congressional action. Adoption Reviewing substantial progress over the last five years, John Horrigan of the Pew Research Center reported that low-cost programs from leading ISPs, such as Comcast’s Internet Essentials, had signed up hundreds of thousands of previously offline low-income families, helping to close the “digital divide.” Today, neither price nor availability of broadband are the factors that most determine why some groups are still behind the adoption curve. Instead, research has consistently shown that over the last five years non-users are more likely to identify a perceived lack of relevance of broadband Internet in their lives as the main reason not to adopt. To close what remains of the digital divide, community-based toolkits must be refined to make the case for how and why using broadband is relevant to the day-to-day lives of offline Americans. Winning strategies will focus on partnerships (as with libraries, schools and other, anchor civic institutions), engagement (especially with parents of school-age children), and training (a particular issue for older Americans.) Government applications Beyond the already dramatic migration of entertainment content from televisions to smartphones, tablets, and other mobile screens, the last five years has seen an explosion of new services that make the business case for broadband even more enticing. In Silicon Valley, for example, investors are pouring billions into future technologies that will connect the trillion or so items in everyday use, a phenomena known as the “Internet of Things.” And sharing economy applications, including popular services such as Lyft, Uber and Airbnb, are also drawing in new users and keeping existing users more connected. The plan, however, focused on broadband services that could improve governmental and regulated services, calling on entrepreneurs to use Internet technologies to kick start the transformation of health care, education, energy and public safety. The results here have been disappointing. While 60 million smart utility meters have been installed in the last five years, the development of a safer and smarter energy grid is still a long way off. And in health care and education, regulatory constraints provide a potent disincentive to innovate or invest. For public safety, Congress has allocated dedicated spectrum and the FCC has raised the money through spectrum auctions to fund FirstNet, a nationwide interoperable network for first responders, called for in both the 911 Report and underscored by the National Broadband


Shimon Peres, Israeli statesman and Nobel Peace Prize winner, dies at 93

family immigrated to Palestine in 1934, he joined a socialist youth movement and signed up for an agricultural school at Ben Shemen to remake himself in the Zionist ideal: as a farmer. As a young man, he changed his name to the Hebraized Peres, meaning vulture, after coming across a majestic bearded vulture while crossing the Negev. His life would be defined by his people’s conflict with the Palestinians, and he recalled fear in his early encounters with them. “We would go out hiking in the Judean Hills almost every Saturday, picking wild anemones and narcissus, and sometimes we would go over to an Arab village,” Mr. Peres wrote later. “They seemed so strange to us, so terrifying.” At school, he met his future wife, Sonya Gelman, the daughter of a carpentry teacher, and he courted her by reading aloud Karl Marx's “Das Kapital.” She died in 2011. Survivors include three children, Tsvia Walden (sometimes spelled Valdan), Yoni Peres and Nehemia Peres, all of Israel; eight grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. While still a teenager, Mr. Peres began working as a youth organizer for David Ben-Gurion, the chairman of the Jewish Agency, the Jewish government in Palestine before Israel was established. In 1947, Mr. Peres joined the Haganah, a Jewish militia, and was assigned responsibility for manpower and arms. After Ben-Gurion became Israel’s first prime minister in 1948, his young protege worked in the Defense Ministry; in 1953, he became its director general. Mr. Peres argued for the construction of a nuclear reactor at Dimona in the Negev and became intimately involved in such details as hiring engineers. In 1959, he became a member of the Knesset, and a decade later, as part of the center-left Israeli Labor Party, he became a cabinet minister. In 1974, when Rabin won the leadership of the Labor Party over Mr. Peres and became prime minister, he appointed Mr. Peres defense minister. Animosity marred their relationship. Rabin later wrote that Mr. Peres tried to undermine him by making public pleas for defense spending rather than negotiating in the closed discussions of the cabinet. Mr. Peres helped rebuild the armed forces after the 1973 Yom Kippur War and campaigned to create Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. “Settlement everywhere” was his slogan. In late June 1976, when a small group of terrorists hijacked an Air France plane en route from Tel Aviv to Paris and were


Bill Gates: ‘Death is something we really understand extremely well’

such a common issue in terms of heart attack death, the so-called polypill is so cheap that it’s one of the few non-infectious disease things that meets the dollars per DALY threshold to actually go into a poor healthcare system and say this is worth it given the extremely finite not only financial resources, but personnel resources, that you have. But here’s the good news for these countries. If you spend the less than 2 percent of what the rich countries spend, but you spend it on vaccinations and antibiotics, you get over half of all that healthcare does to extend life. So you spend 2 percent and you get 50 percent. If you spend another 80 percent you're at over 90 percent. EK: Your top priority, I’m told, for the next year is the literal eradication of polio. What’s between here and there? BG So in 1988, the World Health Organization, through the World Health Assembly, declares they’re going to eradicate polio. It's already been eradicated in North America and South America and most of Europe. Polio is paralyzing 360,000 kids a year when they start. They get it down below 10,000 by the year 2000. Then from 2000-2010 it stays flat. And they lose credibility because they're always saying “Oh, just give us two more years,” and they're just doing the same thing and it's not working. And so in 2010, the polio community got together and said, “Look, are we going to succeed or not?” And so there were a lot of improvements made, those led to finally getting done in India in 2011. And India was expected to be the hardest and the last. EK: Just a point of clarification, the functional mechanism here is a high enough level of vaccine coverage, right? When we say eradicate, we mean got it to a high enough level of vaccine coverage that the disease died out? BG EK: So what did we learn that made eradication possible in India? BG EK: A rumor that, say, the vaccine is bad, or it makes you sick? BG EK: The logistics of the operation seem basically impossible. How do you ensure you hit every tiny village in a mountainous, rural, poor country? BG Then in terms of the teams doing their job, we now put a phone with a GPS sensor in it, every three minutes it says where this team


Clarity review: A fine-tuned bistro from two pros

The following review appears in The Washington Post’s 2016 Fall Dining Guide. Veal meatballs and hand-rolled tagliatelle. (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post) Clarity EXCELLENT A first-timer has a right to be skeptical. “So, there’s a three-star restaurant next to a jewelry exchange?” my companion asks as we pull into the parking lot of a modest shopping strip in Vienna. Any doubts are erased upon the arrival of cocktails, as fine-tuned as any in the city, and hot bread, baked by the father of one of the chefs. It’s Sunday night, but everyone around us is eating and drinking as if it’s Saturday. The woman to my left is slicing into imported Kobe beef, priced at $26 an ounce; the quartet to my right is on its second bottle of wine. Since Clarity set sail with two fine-dining veterans, Jonathan Krinn and Jason Maddens, the American bistro has been serving food that’s as approachable as it is polished. Look for designer chicken presented as a roulade and flanked with light-as-can-be buttermilk biscuits, or perhaps a pristine bouillabaisse that collects sea treasures, each element tasting as if tended to by its own careful cook. Devil’s food cake proves divine. The dark accent? Chocolate pudding skin, a server explains, “just like when you make a pot of pudding at home.” Except, like everything else here, Clarity’s is finer. Previous: 3 stars Clarity : 442 Maple Ave. East, Vienna, Va. 703-539-8400. clarityvienna.com. Prices: Sound check: -- The following review appeared in The Washington Post’s 2015 Fall Dining Guide. EXCELLENT Seeing double is cause for applause when the subject is Jonathan Krinn and Jason Maddens, chefs who ditched the fine-dining scene for a neighborhood place but never forgot where they came from. So your hamburger is shaped from dry-aged designer beef, and appetizers include foie gras with brioche. (And the cocktails are ace.) Just to be clear, this spot welcomes locals; main courses average an agreeable $20. My cheat sheet would start with meaty mussels flavored with tomatoes, lamb sausage and goat cheese and continue with caramelized scallops, each sweet morsel waving a sail of smoky pancetta. Make the first course rabbit ballotine ringed in berry sauce and the entree lamb shoulder hit with harissa. Ordering dinner is as hard as picking favorites among your own kids. What’s simple is knowing where to sit: the kitchen counter and the chance to watch a couple


Amazon to buy Whole Foods Market in deal valued at $13.7 billion

management professor at George Washington University. “Now they can literally use the Whole Foods stores themselves as distribution centers,” he said. In Whole Foods, Amazon is acquiring a company that has recently come under pressure from investors for its lagging performance. The upscale merchant has found it difficult to attract more mainstream consumers as Walmart and other large chains have stepped up their sales of natural and organic products, and Whole Foods has posted six straight quarters of declining sales at comparable stores. The U.S. grocery industry, once dominated by a handful of big chains, has been struggling to keep up with new competition. Nearly 20 grocers have filed for bankruptcy in the past three years, as regional chains such as Wegmans and Trader Joe’s expand into new markets and delivery services such as FreshDirect gain popularity. The industry braced for a new threat Thursday, when German discount grocer Lidl opened its first 10 U.S. stores. Under its deal with Amazon, Whole Foods, founded in 1980, would continue to operate under its existing brand. Mackey would remain chief executive after the purchase, and the company would keep its headquarters in Austin. “This partnership presents an opportunity to maximize value for Whole Foods Market’s shareholders, while at the same time extending our mission and bringing the highest quality, experience, convenience and innovation to our customers,” Mackey said in a statement. The deal is sure to put new pressure on Walmart, which has been aggressively expanding its online business in hopes of winning over consumers. The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer announced Friday that it had agreed to buy online clothier Bonobos for $310 million, adding to its roster of recently acquired Internet companies, including Jet.com (purchased for $3.3 billion), ModCloth, Moosejaw and ShoeBuy.com. The Whole Foods deal is scheduled to close in the second half of 2017, pending shareholder and regulatory approvals. Although President Trump has said that Amazon has a “huge antitrust problem,” legal experts said the merger of the two companies is not likely to raise red flags. “Generally speaking, there is very little overlap between Whole Foods and Amazon,” said Michael Carrier, a Rutgers Law School professor who specializes in antitrust issues. “They’re not really competitors. Add to that the fact that Whole Foods doesn’t have the dominant positioning it did even a few years ago, and that makes it even more likely for this deal to go through.” The


This crowdsourcing government contest hopes to nail long-range forecasting

like ocean temperatures, El Niño and a steadily-warming planet. But forecasters then need to assemble those pieces of knowledge in a way that generates something useful. An accurate long-range forecast would be invaluable to water and land management bureaus. Cities could conserve water prudently before a dry spell instead of scrambling to reduce usage during a drought. It’s of particular interest to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, whose mission is to “manage, protect and develop” water and hydroelectric power in the West — a challenge after five years of extreme drought. This is where “sub-seasonal” forecasting comes in — the time between a 10-day forecast and an entire season. The forecasts are a few weeks into the future, and if they’re accurate, they could be a drought-management game changer. “There’s been a lot of collective interest in this topic,” said Ken Nowak, a research scientist at the Bureau of Reclamation. “Groups across the west have begun to prioritize it more. It seemed like a ripe opportunity for us to make a contribution to the field, being a water management agency.” The traditional grant process can weed out an applicant that doesn’t have the “correct” background or credentials, Nowak explained. It can prevent out-of-the-box ideas from breaking onto the scene. The bureau’s contest crowdsources the problem, utilizing more brains and perhaps some that come from different backgrounds and ways of thinking. They expect graduate students and university research groups to participate, but they hope to cast a wider net into fields that may not be directly related to weather, such as signal processing, physics and electrical engineering, Nowack said. “This [competition] awards on performance and not on potential,” Nowak went on. “Whoever gets the best idea will be the one rewarded.” The forecasting challenge “seeks to improve on existing sub-seasonal forecasts and asks solvers to develop systems that perform demonstratively better than an existing baseline forecast for temperature and precipitation over a 15-42 day time frame,” according to the Innocentive website hosting the event. The Bureau of Reclamation is partnering with NOAA — specifically the Earth Science Research Lab and the Climate Prediction Center — to evaluate the methods and results. The rules require winners to hand over their application and its code to the government agencies. Furthermore, the prize money may only be given to a U.S. citizen, permanent resident or corporation, though the contest will accept programs from anyone.


European leaders strike deal to try to keep Britain in the E.U.

had demanded, and the result was 40 hours of talks that at times were heated. The deal was originally supposed to be sealed Friday over “an English breakfast,” with E.U. leaders gathered around a table piled high with bacon and beans. But as negotiations that began Thursday afternoon hit a series of snags overnight, plans for breakfast were pushed back to an English brunch. Then lunch. Then high tea. The presumably famished leaders finally sat down to a dinner of veal fillets and polenta late Friday night — and agreed on a document that bridged the wider-than-expected gaps. The deal gives Britain a special exemption from Europe’s vow of “ever-closer union”, establishes financial protections for countries that do not use the euro, creates a national veto over E.U. legislation and, most controversially, gives Britain permission to limit benefits paid to immigrants from within the E.U. All four measures would loosen the bonds of continental integration, and each proved a difficult sell to reach the unanimous agreement that the E.U. requires. The French pushed back against attempts to weaken financial regulations. Eastern Europeans called foul on restrictions to benefits. The Germans fretted that abandoning the goal of ever-closer union could scupper the European project. Other variables also came into play. Before signing off on a deal, Greek negotiators reportedly sought a promise that the E.U. would not shut the country’s northern border to migrants and refugees. Such a move, which several E.U. members have advocated, could effectively trap thousands in Greece and prevent them from reaching the countries in northern Europe where they hope to settle. ‘People’s show’ It remains an open question whether Cameron received enough to sway his electorate. Brexit advocates insist that the country is being weighed down by its ties to the continent, particularly by the open borders to European immigration that are required under E.U. treaties. Cameron said Friday that the benefits-related changes will help limit net migration to Britain, which is at an all-time high. Despite vigorous objections from Eastern European leaders, Cameron won the right to trigger “an emergency brake,” with workers having to pay into Britain’s system for four years before they can receive certain benefits. European leaders generally played down the extent of the changes, with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker describing them as narrowly targeted. Experts agreed that the changes will not fundamentally alter the E.U. But much now depends on


Harvard researchers tested 23 online ‘symptom checkers.’ Most got failing grades. Here’s how they stack up.

(Bigstock) Ever asked the Internet what your symptoms mean and gotten a response that seemed wacky or totally off base? It's not your imagination. In an audit that is believed to be the first of its kind, Harvard Medical School researchers have tested 23 online “symptom checkers” — run by brand names such as the Mayo Clinic, the American Academy of Pediatrics and WebMD, as well as lesser-knowns such as Symptomate — and found that, though the programs varied widely in accuracy of diagnoses and triage advice, as a whole they were astonishingly inaccurate. Symptom checkers provided the correct diagnosis first in only 34 percent of cases, and within the first three diagnoses 51 percent of the time. “Our results imply that in many cases symptom checkers can give the user a sense of possible diagnoses but also provide a note of caution, as the tools are frequently wrong and the triage advice overly cautious,” Hannah Semigran and Ateev Mehrotra, researchers in health care policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School, and their co-authors wrote in the study. Symptom checkers are interactive programs that allow users to type in the aches, pains and irritations they are experiencing and that may follow up with a series of questions designed to hone in on a disease or condition. Most provide lists of possible diagnoses, usually ranked in order of how likely their algorithm believes they match up to the information provided, rather than a single answer. Early versions of programs that came out a few years ago did little more than search for key words, but many of today's symptom checkers are based on sophisticated algorithms that use branching or Bayesian inference — a way of assigning probabilities to hypotheses — that are theoretically supposed to do a better job. The researchers' evaluation, which was published in June in the BMJ, the former British Medical Journal, consisted of running 45 patient scenarios (or as many as made sense on specialty sites focused on certain types of conditions or demographics) on each of the symptom checkers. Fifteen of the cases required emergency care, 15 required non-emergency care, and 15 may have required self care but did not necessarily require a medical visit. Of the 45 cases, 26 described common diagnoses while 19 described uncommon diagnoses. The top scores were awarded when a site listed the correct diagnosis first. This rarely occurred. Less desirable


Japan’s Fukushima region rocked by 7.4-magnitude earthquake

Authorities say the earthquake was an aftershock of the 9.0 magnitude quake that struck in 2011 and warned residents that another could strike in the next few days. Updated Nov. 22. NAHA, Japan — But several hours after residents along the Fukushima and Tohoku coastlines were told to evacuate to higher ground and remain there, the danger appeared to have passed, and the tsunami warnings were lifted. The relatively shallow quake struck at 6 a.m. local time Tuesday and was centered about 15 miles off the coast from Namie, a town close to the nuclear plant. The magnitude was revised several times, but the Japan Meteorological Agency stated at 8 a.m. that it measured a 7.4. It was followed by large aftershocks measuring 5.4 and 4.8. The U.S. Geological Survey rated the earthquake at 6.9. The agency said the quake was an aftershock of the 2011 quake and warned residents that another could strike in the next few days. There appeared to be no damage or changes in the radiation level at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which suffered a triple meltdown after the 2011 earthquake and remains in a highly fragile state. But Tepco, the power utility, said it was closely monitoring activity in the area, where decontamination work continues. A cooling system at another shuttered nuclear power plant seven miles up the road shut down briefly following the earthquake, sparking fears that the fuel rods inside the reactor could heat up, but Tepco reported that normal operations had been resumed. Bullet train services were temporarily suspended, and a fire broke out at a petrochemical plant, although it was soon extinguished. The earthquakes were felt in Tokyo, 160 miles south of the epicenter. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in Argentina on Tuesday, following the APEC meeting in Peru, but he said the government was ready to respond. “I have ordered my government to immediately collect and provide information regarding tsunami evacuations and do everything to tackle the disaster,” he told reporters in Buenos Aires. The enormous 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck on March 11, 2011, caused huge damage at the Fukushima nuclear plant and the evacuation of the area around it for fear of radiation. Even today, the villages closest to the plant remain ghost towns, frozen in time. But it was the tsunami that followed that had the most devastating results. A 50-foot-high wave inundated the Tohoku region, north


Talking Turkey: How does corruption affect voting behavior?

As Turkey’s corruption scandal continues to evolve and claim the jobs of more members of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, it is worth pausing to consider the reaction of Turkish voters. After all, one reason Erdogan is likely to have accepted the resignations of members of his cabinet is because he is concerned about the effect of the scandal on voters in future elections. Is this a legitimate concern? In recently published research in the journal Electoral Studies, New York University politics PhD candidate Marko Klašnja and I used two survey experiments to examine the effect of corruption on voting behavior in a high corruption country (Moldova) and a low corruption country (Sweden). In both cases, respondents were asked how they would expect a citizen to vote in an election for a hypothetical mayor and were provided with two pieces of information. The first piece of information concerned whether economic conditions had improved or gotten worse in the mayor’s city; the second concerned allegations of either corrupt behavior in the city or actions on behalf of the mayor to fight corruption. The results were illuminating. In Sweden, our “low corruption” country, voters punished the mayor for corruption regardless of the state of the economy. In Moldova, however, voters punished the mayor for corruption only when the economy was also bad. When economic conditions had improved, however, voters appeared less concerned about corruption. We interpreted these findings as reflecting different realities. In a country like Sweden where corruption is less prevalent, any corrupt behavior is punished as unacceptable. In Moldova, where corruption is much more prevalent, voters may be more willing to tolerate corruption if the mayor can prove himself or herself “competent” along another dimension such as economic performance. Only when the mayor also proves to be a failure in terms of managing the economy do voters in our study also punish corruption. What does this portend for Turkey? While of course our experiment involves only two countries and is focused on a hypothetical mayor and not a prime minister, we can still ask where Turkey lies on the corruption scale. Perhaps the most widely used measure of comparative levels of corruption across different countries is Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. In the 2013 version of the index, Turkey (ranked the 55th most-clean country out of 177) is almost halfway between Sweden (tied for 3rd) and Moldova (tied for


Bo Xilai’s ouster seen as victory for Chinese reformers

Bo Xilai, Chongqing party secretary attends the closing session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference held in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, China, Tuesday, March 13, 2012. (Ng Han Guan/AP) BEIJING — But with the party’s internal wrangling shrouded in secrecy, the latest twist in China’s most tumultuous political drama in years has left many — from ordinary Chinese to foreign China-watchers — perplexed about what is really going on behind the vermilion walls of the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing. During his more than four years as the party chief in Chongqing, Bo — the son of an early revolutionary hero — had led a crackdown on crime and a revival of Mao-era patriotic songs and sloganeering while promoting an economic model that emphasized a more equitable distribution of wealth. His approach, known as the “Chongqing model,” attracted the support of modern-day Maoists and others critical of China’s growing income disparity. But Bo’s populism and his authoritarian manner — which prompted accusations that he and his security forces ignored laws and human rights in their anti-crime crusade — unnerved some central government leaders in Beijing. His “red revival” campaign also triggered unwelcome memories of the violence and chaos of Mao Zedong’s 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. “Basically, his political career is at an end,” said Zhang Ming, a political science professor at Beijing’s Renmin University. “The Chongqing model is also over, and the chance of [China] turning leftward is finished.” Jiang Weiping, a Chinese journalist who spent five years in jail after he published articles accusing Bo of shielding corrupt officials in the 1990s, said the Chongqing party chief’s ouster marked an “absolute victory” for more forward-looking officials after a long tug of war between rival factions. But even he acknowledged that “we don’t have any firsthand information” about decision-making at the summit of the party. During Bo’s tenure in Chongqing, neither President Hu Jintao nor Premier Wen Jiabao traveled to the province-size city of 32 million people — an omission that analysts said reflected official displeasure with Bo’s “new left” approach and what many called his media showboating. Interestingly, one who did venture to Chongqing was Vice President Xi Jinping, the apparent presidential successor who in December 2010 heaped praise on Bo’s social welfare model and his “red revival” campaign. On Wednesday, the day before Bo was fired, Wen made a spirited case for more political reform and


Death of man found on porch in Northeast Washington ruled homicide

has dropped, reflecting a trend elsewhere in the District. Violent crime in Trinidad and neighboring Ivy City is down 17 percent from this time in 2016. D.C. police also reported arrests they made this week in three recent and unrelated homicide cases. The most recent of the homicides in which an arrest was made occurred June 17, when Leonte Cox, 23, of Southeast, was stabbed shortly after 9 p.m. in a ground-floor apartment in the 1600 block of R Street SE. Police said he died Monday at a hospital. Police identified the suspect as Kimberly Shaw, 35, of Southeast, who is described in court papers as having been in a relationship with Cox. The arrest affidavit filed Wednesday says the two were arguing either over who took their last cigarette or over a crack cocaine pipe. Shaw told police that Cox attacked her with a knife and that he was stabbed when she fought back, according to the court document. Authorities also said they arrested Seth Sinquan Holmes, 23, of Northeast, and charged him with second-degree murder while armed in the May 9 shooting of Damonta Thompson, 25, of Southwest. Thompson was shot about 2:05 p.m. in the 100 block of Irvington Street SW, near the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant. He died at a hospital. An arrest affidavit says police found five .40-caliber ammunition casings at the scene and quoted a witness as saying he saw the suspect shoot Thompson in the back with a silver handgun. No motive was listed. Holmes was ordered detained pending a preliminary hearing July 20. His attorney did not respond to requests for comment. Police said the third homicide suspect arrested Tuesday was Saeed Woodall, 23, of Northwest, who is charged with first-degree murder while armed. Police said Deonta Farrar, 32, of Northeast, was fatally shot Aug. 9, 2016, in the 4500 block of Quarles Street NE. An arrest affidavit alleges that Woodall shot Farrar after Farrar accused him of stealing money he had saved for marijuana, and hit him in the face. Police said Woodall was charged after he was arrested in the District on an unrelated case in October and a .40-caliber handgun was found at a home he lived in at the time in Maryland. Police said they linked that gun to the shooting of Farrar. Woodall was ordered detained until a hearing July 14. His attorney did not


Scientists discover that the world contains dramatically more trees than previously thought

trees was Russia, with 641 billion, and 4,461 trees per person based on 2014 population estimates — statistics underscoring the the vastness of Siberia’s boreal forests. The U.S. had 319 million people in 2014, but 228 billion trees. That’s 716 trees per person. Brazil had 301 billion trees (1,494 per person), Canada 318 billion (8,953 per person), and China 139 billion (102 trees per person). Among highly populous countries, India (population, 1.267 billion) had a tree population of only 35 billion, leading to just 28 trees per person. The study emerges even as new research has highlighted alarming rates of global deforestation. Global Forest Watch Wednesday released data from the University of Maryland and Google finding that global forests lost 45 million acres last year, “an area twice the size of Portugal.” Over half of the loss occurred in the tropics — and not just in traditional deforestation leaders like Brazil and Indonesia. Brazil has slowed its deforestation, but in other countries rates are increasing, including Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Paraguay, and Uruguay, the research found. The new Nature study has myriad implications, but some of the largest are for the problem of global warming. Trees pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as they grow, and cutting or burning them down releases that carbon again. So that means that deforestation is making global warming worse — and it also means that if we were living on an Earth with close to 6 trillion trees, rather than 3 trillion, climate change would be less severe. According to Crowther, the new baseline information on the total number of trees on the planet will be crucial in better understanding how forest restoration can help battle climate change. “We can quantify the fossil fuel emissions,” he says. “Our ability to quantify the impacts of human land use change and deforestation are so minimal. We have to generate this baseline information about where the carbon is, where the trees are….before we can start generating these numbers.” Also in Energy Environment: Obama can rename Mount McKinley Denali — but he can’t stop its loss of ice In rural Alaska, Obama works to speed renewable energy revolution Wildfires have now burned a massive 8 million acres across the U.S. The surprising way that birds and wind turbines can coexist For more, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter here, and follow us on Twitter here.


Loudoun County crime report

Loudoun County These were among incidents reported by the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office and the Leesburg, Middleburg and Purcellville police departments. For information, contact your police or sheriff’s department. ASHBURN AREA THEFTS/BREAK-INS Cross Timber Dr., Cross Timber Dr., Deer Chase Pl., Goose Cross Terr., Hillmont Terr., Lucketts Bridge Cir., Portico Pl., Preston Ct., Welborne Manor Sq., VANDALISM Tillman Terr., LEESBURG AREA ASSAULTS Crestwood St., Market St. E., Mayfair Dr., Meadows Lane, Plaza St. NE, Stallion Sq., Wildman St., PEEPING TOM INCIDENT Fort Evans Rd., THEFTS/BREAK-INS Belmont Dr., Bridgette Pl., Davis Ave. SW, Fort Evans Rd., Hancock Pl., Indian Fields Ct., Market St. E., South St., Strawberry Ct., Timber Sq., LOVETTSVILLE AREA VANDALISM Light St. N., MIDDLEBURG AREA THEFTS/BREAK-INS Dover Rd., ROUND HILL AREA THEFTS/BREAK-INS Park Heights Cir., STERLING AREA ROBBERIES Fireside Ct., ASSAULTS Environs Rd., THEFTS/BREAK-INS Sterling Blvd. S., Winding Branch Terr., VANDALISM Oak Trail Sq., — Compiled by Sandy Mauck


Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize laureate imprisoned in China, dies at 61

Chinese dissident and writer Liu Xiaobo has died at 61. He suffered from late-stage liver cancer. In the days after the Chinese writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, on Oct. 8, 2010, his country cut off trade talks with Norway, home of the Nobel committee, and placed his wife under house arrest. In apparent protest of the award, a group of Chinese business and cultural leaders established an alternative to the Nobel, the Confucius Peace Prize, and later honored such human rights renegades as Vladimir Putin, Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe. Mr. Liu, who died July 13 at age 61, received the Nobel for what the award committee called his “long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights.” It was that very struggle, from his hunger strike at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to his insistent calls to end one-party rule, that also made him a marked man in China. He was in the midst of an 11-year prison sentence when he won the prize. It promoted a man whom much of the world regarded as a distinguished activist and whose own leaders considered a dangerous subversive. Foreign news reports about the Nobel honor were blacked out in China, where authorities called it a “desecration” of the prize. Text messages that included his name went unreceived, stymied by state-run cellular networks, and the news was squelched online by the censorship apparatus known as the “Great Firewall.” Liu Xiaobo in 2008. (Associated Press) At the Nobel ceremony in Oslo, Mr. Liu was represented by an empty chair. Not since the 1935 prize, when German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky was being held at a concentration camp by the Nazis, had a laureate or a family member been unable to accept the honor in person. Ossietzky died at a Nazi hospital in 1938. Mr. Liu spent much of the past three decades in forced confinement — at home, at labor camps or in prison. And his final months, after being diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer in May and granted medical parole, drew international calls for his release. His death, at a hospital in the northeastern city of Shenyang, was confirmed by a statement from the Chinese government, and it made Mr. Liu the latest in a string of Chinese dissidents whose incarceration ended in serious illness or fatality. A photograph posted July 5 on Twitter by the dissident writer Ye


For sale: ‘The Watcher’ house, where a stalker’s chilling letters scared a family into fleeing

for sale last week for $1.2 million — reduced from the purchase price of $1.3 million, according to Zillow. The site lists it as a “grand turn-of-the century home” with six bedrooms, four bathrooms and a finished basement. The new owners relisted the house once before but later took it off the market. Westfield 'Watcher' house up for sale again despite eerie threats, lawsuits https://t.co/d598Q5MrZc https://t.co/uZHARp13Er Three days after the Broadduses bought the home in June 2014, they said, they started getting letters from “the Watcher” — someone with a “mentally disturbed fixation” and claim on the home, according to the complaint. “Where are you?” the first letter read. “I will find out.” Then came two more — one in June and one in July. “Have they found out what is in the walls yet?” “I am pleased to know your names now and the name of the young blood you have brought to me.” “Will the young bloods play in the basement?” “Who has the bedrooms facing the street? I’ll know as soon as you move in. … It will help me to know who is in which bedroom then I can plan better.” One letter purportedly said the windows and doors “allow me to watch you and track you as you move through the house,” according to the complaint. “Who I am?” the letter read. “I am the Watcher.” The complaint states that the anonymous author mentioned the former owners, John and Andrea Woods, saying “it was their time to move on.” The Broadduses, a married couple with three children, filed suit in June 2015, claiming that the Woods family concealed information about the “Watcher” when they sold them the home. Since then, Westfield — a town where the former NBC TV show “Ed” was shot — has been thrust into a national spotlight, and the former owners claim they have been pulled along for the ride. In January, the Woods’s attorney, Richard Kaplow, filed a response to the lawsuit calling the “Watcher” a “fictitious” character, and filed a counter claim for defamation, arguing the publicity had caused them emotional distress. In the lawsuit, the Woods admits that before they moved out in May 2014, they did receive a note but they “deny that the note was ‘disturbing’ or in any way claimed a right of possession and/or ownership of the premises.” “My clients have gone through having


40 million years before butterflies, this creature evolved with strikingly similar looks

The modern owl butterfly next to a fossilized Kalligrammatid lacewing shows some remarkable similarities. (James Di Loreto/Smithsonian) Before butterflies, there were kalligrammatid lacewings — winged insects that took butterfly-like form at least 40 million years before the modern bugs first came on the scene. But the remarkably butterflyesque species Oregramma illecebrosa, described in a study published Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, isn't a butterfly ancestor: Other members of its lineage went on to become entirely different sorts of insects. Instead, this striking similarity is a case of convergent evolution — the same shapes, patterns and perhaps even behaviors came about twice, totally independently. The findings come thanks to some especially well-preserved fossils found in northeastern China, which allowed researchers to study the ancient insects more closely than ever before. "They've been known for about 100 years, but in the 1960s there were some specimens that made people say, gosh, these really look like butterflies," Smithsonian paleoecologist Conrad Labandeira, lead author on the study, told The Washington Post. "But we knew they were unrelated. That's where it stood for some 55 years." But once Labandeira and his team — an international collaboration of scientists — got a hold of the Chinese fossils, things got much more interesting. The resemblance is so strong that even experts were fooled at a distance: Labandeira recalls a colleague from the entomology department assuming the fossil on the table was a butterfly from 20 feet away. "When I told him to come closer, and he looked again, his jaw dropped," Labandeira said. One of the more remarkable similarities is superficial in nature: The spots seen on the Oregramma illecebrosa fossils are nearly identical to patterns found on owl butterflies today. These so-called eye spots mimic the peepers of a large bird, scaring off predators that might otherwise make a quick snack of a delicate butterfly. It's thought that Oregramma illecebrosa last shared a common ancestor with modern butterflies more than 320 million years ago. The fact that two quite unrelated insects developed these markings millions of years apart from one another is a perfect example of convergent evolution: Oregramma illecebrosa might not have shared space with owls, but plenty of big-eyed creatures — perhaps even dinosaurs, the prominent predators of the Jurassic period — could have served as inspiration for the markings. An Oregramma illecebrosa would have had a better chance of surviving


Beach Drive closed to vehicular traffic, but the challenge is keeping bikers and pedestrians out of work zone

if the problem continues the park service could close the trail, banning foot and bike access during the duration of the reconstruction project. The $32.9-million project is the first complete reconstruction of Beach Drive in 25 years, and responds to years of complaints about gaps and cracks in the road, and a trail that has become rough, root-laden and uneven. After the road is rebuilt, crews will reconstruct the trail and people will be able to run and bike on a protected space on the road, officials said. On Tuesday, heavy construction trucks were hauling materials to the fenced-in area and heavy machinery was on site as workers began to tear up the road surface. A bulldozer cruised down the road to an area where workers were installing a new manhole outside the National Zoo entrance. As the worker moved heavy pieces of concrete, the man with the dog made his way to the roadway to get across to the trail. Since the road closed to motorized traffic, crews have been getting the roadway ready for the major rehabilitation, digging holes and tearing up the surface, putting environmental protection measures in place, and digging trenches to install new drainage pipes. The project includes the installation of about 400 drainage pipes. In the northern part of the construction, crews have started work on removing the multi-use path north of Piney Branch Parkway to begin the reconstruction effort there. Some areas of the closed road appeared to be still untouched, with much of the work in the southern stretch. Park officials say the construction is on track, and crews have found a few unanticipated events, including some cables and wires under the road surface and a historic wall under the road near Tilden Street. A park archaeologist evaluated what was found and crews will work around it, Anzelmo-Sarles said. When the work is done, the popular commuter route will have new traffic safety features — such as guardrails and center-line rumble strips to keep drivers from drifting into oncoming traffic. It will also have improved storm drainage. The closure has created major traffic headaches for commuters. Nearby roads such as Connecticut and Wisconsin avenues have experienced heavier traffic and the daily traffic on Cathedral Avenue NW has increased by 70 percent, from 6,900 vehicles to 11,600 vehicles, according to the D.C. Department of Transportation. Though the new traffic pattern appears to have


Study: Smoking pot doesn’t make you anxious or depressed

not associated with increased risk for developing mood or anxiety disorders." Don't break out the celebratory blunt just yet, though. The study did find an association between marijuana use and later substance-use disorders, such as abuse of and dependence on alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and other drugs. But this isn't necessarily surprising: It's fairly obvious that if you use a substance, you're putting yourself at risk of a substance-use disorder. People who use one drug often use others — think of the classic beer-and-cigarette combo. This is as true of marijuana as it is of, say, alcohol. "The findings concerning cannabis raise the question of whether alcohol use also contributes to the risk of subsequent substance use disorders," lead author Mark Olfson of Columbia University said in an email. But that issue is beyond the scope of the current study, he added. The findings on mental health are more interesting, given the conflicting picture portrayed by previous research. But Olfson and his colleagues think some prior evidence of links between marijuana and psychiatric disorders could be due more to confounding factors than anything else. Olfson's research is "a strike against the hypothesis that cannabis uses causes mood and anxiety disorders," said Keith Humphreys, an addiction and mental-health specialist at Stanford University, in an email. He notes, however, that the new study does not address a previously observed link between heavy marijuana use and schizophrenia. But, he added, the causality of that connection is far from clear. "I don't know if we will ever know because it's just hard to predict rare events, and schizophrenia is rare," he said. The new study adds to prior research discrediting the connection between marijuana and common mental-health disorders. And it's important, because much of the federal government's current literature on marijuana includes claims about links between marijuana and depression that are inaccurate in light of the latest findings. For instance, the Drug Enforcement Administration makes these claims in its official fact sheet on marijuana. And in its 2014 publication, "The Dangers and Consequences of Marijuana Abuse," the DEA mentions "depression" no fewer than 14 times, claiming that pot is linked to depression among teens, adults and even dogs. Given that these documents are used to inform policy at the federal level and below, it is crucial that they reflect the best, most accurate research. This is especially true given the rapidly changing marijuana-policy landscape today.


University of Maryland is bringing upscale hotels, restaurants to College Park

The four-star hotel with sleek gas fireplaces and modern chandeliers where Patrick Killion and his University of Maryland colleagues gathered for happy hour recently would hardly draw a second glance in much of the Washington region. But Killion and his group were thrilled — and a bit amazed — because they were on College Park's Route 1, a strip of the Maryland suburbs better known for college bars and fast-food joints than a place where grown-ups can chat quietly over a glass of wine. "One of the challenges of adult life at the University of Maryland is finding a place to go that feels like it's for you and not for students," said Killion, as the rest of his group nodded in agreement. Killion and his colleagues are the very people whom university officials, Prince George's County leaders and developers are working to impress in a coordinated effort to spruce up the Route 1 corridor, creating a place where more professionals will want to eat out, shop, enjoy cultural events and live. University officials say they want more graduates, faculty and staff members to be able to live and start research-related businesses near campus, while local officials say they want to better tap into the area's potential to attract new jobs and make the city more livable. At the glitzy, four-month-old Hotel at the University of Maryland, the happy-hour group remarked on the MilkBoy ArtHouse, a hip new restaurant and music venue down Route 1. Just beyond it, in Riverdale Park, luxury townhouses with rooftop decks are selling near a new Whole Foods. "It seems promising when you look at where College Park is," Killion said. "There are a lot of cool things happening here." The Route 1 (Baltimore Avenue) corridor has seen gradual new development over the past five to 10 years, but it has visibly accelerated recently. In addition to the Hotel's high-end restaurants and coming spa, new apartment high-rises with restaurants and ground-floor stores are dotting the landscape. Office buildings are under construction as part of the university's Discovery District business and research park, and another hotel is being built. On the horizon are nearly 400 more apartments and 70,000 square feet of retail planned at the site of the closed Plato's Diner and a Quality Inn, two well-known businesses that sat along Route 1. North of the university's main entrance, a Lidl, the European grocery giant,


8 new restaurants to try around Washington

With so many restaurant options in the Washington area, it's good to gather intel: Here are eight spots, recently vetted by Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema, that are worth a try. Primrose Ready your Instagram before stepping into this Brookland wine bar from restaurateur Sebastian Zutant and his wife, designer Lauren Winter. The setting is dreamy, thanks in no small part to chandeliers adorned with ostrich plumes. The wine list is French-focused, with about 75 labels. The menu skews French but plays around with classics; the onion soup, for example, tastes beefy while remaining decidedly meat-free. Pommes frites for the table are a must. 3000 12th St. NE. Del Mar From Fabio Trabocchi comes a Spanish seafood-themed restaurant at the Wharf, on the Southwest Waterfront. “If you only get one dish,” writes Sietsema, “make it paella and ask for the pan with seafood.” It arrives with lobster, calamari, mussels and prawns, arranged on short-grained bomba rice featuring crispy parts that you're likely to fight for. 791 Wharf St. SW. Maydan Everything is cooked over an open fire at the second restaurant from Rose Previte and the Compass Rose team. Expect a brief but mix-and-matchable menu with food from Georgia, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey. It's all served in a space that makes you “feel like Dorothy stepping from sepia Kansas into sparkling Oz,” writes Sietsema in his two-and-a-half-star review. 1346 Florida Ave. NW (in the alley). ChiKo The food served in this 30-seat nook near Eastern Market “redefines what it means to be a fast-casual restaurant,” Sietsema writes. A tip: Try to save a seat at one of the four reservation-only kitchen counter stools, where for $50 you'll get a taste of nearly every dish on the menu, plus a few extras. 423 Eighth St. SE. La Limena Grill In this second location of La Limena in Rockville — more than twice the size of the original — restaurateur Emma Perez keeps the menu centered on Peruvian specialties. Try the leche de tigre, featuring tilapia, lime juice, onions and chiles, or the comforting pastel de choclo con carne, a savory pie of corn layered over steak tips. 1093 Rockville Pike, Rockville. Ana at District Winery If you're looking for impressive food-and-wine pairings, with views to match, begin and end your search at Ana, the 56-seat restaurant at District Winery, nestled along the Anacostia River. There's something for all appetites


The Year in Preview: Washington Post reporters predict what’s coming in 2018

And meddling in Lebanon's spring elections could disrupt the delicate balance among the country's religious groups, leading to major unrest that could ignite the Middle East. Western allies may be drawn into the conflict, too, especially if it spills into the waters of the Persian Gulf, which the United States and other Western powers count on being able to navigate. Few experts predict an outright war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Fewer can imagine any path to victory for either side. What is clear, though, is that the cost of the struggle will continue to be borne by the innocent. People will starve and kids will be blown up in places far away from Tehran and Riyadh. HEALTH | BY LENNY BERNSTEIN The opioid crisis will become even more deadly As bad as it is, the U.S. drug crisis is almost certain to get worse before it gets better. This year ended with a grim announcement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Drug overdose deaths had soared 21 percent, to 63,632, in 2016 (official statistics lag by a year). That's about equal to the population of Portland, Maine. Opioids killed more than 42,000 people, a 28 percent increase from 2015. The drug death toll is so high that it is now primarily responsible for the second straight year of decline in overall U.S. life expectancy — a trend basically unheard of in the developed world. Brace for worse news in 2018. Bob Anderson, who studies mortality statistics for the CDC, said the data through May 2017 is "at least as bad" as the 2016 numbers. People are still being killed by overdoses of pills and heroin, and in increasing numbers. But the problem now is clearly fentanyl, an illegal synthetic opioid that is smuggled from China and mixed with heroin — creating a stronger high and a greater likelihood of death. Fentanyl and similar synthetic opioids killed 19,413 people in 2016, more than double the number in the previous year. That's an incredible leap in just 12 months. (Because many users die with more than one drug in their bodies, a single death can be attributed to two or more drugs.) So what are we doing about this? Not enough, according to most authorities. The number of prescriptions for opioids is down a bit in recent years, and some doctors are trying to give each patient fewer pills.