New ad campaign announces D.C.’s nightlife revival

(Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) D.C. may never be Las Vegas. But with the late-night charms of H Street, U Street and Logan Circle, the District could at least compete for visitors looking to have a good time. That’s the idea behind a series of racy ads that Destination D.C. launched this week. The private, nonprofit tourism organization hopes the provocative month-long campaign, appropriately titled “Get a Room,” will spice up the District’s stodgy image and convince mid-Atlantic travelers that — oh, yeah — the city has developed quite a bit of nightlife in the past 10 years. “People think of D.C. as a more conservative destination,” said Elliot Ferguson, chief executive of Destination D.C., which has a membership of 850 businesses and organizations. “But if you live here, you know that’s not true.” The District has seen something of a nightlife renaissance in the past decade. Twice as many people live downtown now as in 1990. Between 2007 and 2011, the city gained 68 restaurants and 74 taverns. And areas like H Street, Petworth and Bloomingdale have overcome reputations for being places to avoid at night, adding thousands of apartments and plenty of lauded evening hangouts, like Toki Underground and Biergarten Haus, just in the past two years. This year, Washington’s “vibrant, independent food scene” even earned the city a spot on the New York Times’s “Places to Go” list. “It’s a really dynamic scene right now,” said Kyle Rees, a spokesman for the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington. “There’s a strong energy here.” Rees, who grew up in McLean, recalls his parents’ muted horror when he went into the city for shows at the 9:30 Club 10 years ago. Since then, the area within a block of the club has added Satellite Room, an upscale diner, and Brixton, a candle-lit bar serving $12 cocktails. In fact, so many restaurants and bars have grown up in the U Street Corridor that two neighborhood groups recently filed petitions with the city, asking it to freeze further liquor licenses there. Ferguson thinks tourists will flock to the District for those things, even though cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia are within competition range. The ads will run in major roadtrip-distance markets along the East Coast, including Richmond, Boston and New York. A Web site of date-night deals — most developed with the daily deal site LivingSocial, and some being rather salacious — accompanies


U.S. quits joint panel with Russia on civil society

MOSCOW — The panel, which was under the umbrella of the U.S-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, is neither effective nor appropriate, Thomas Melia, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, said in a statement Friday. President Vladimir Putin’s press spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the decision to withdraw is “regrettable.” But the panel, called a working group, has accomplished almost nothing in the past 18 months, said Matthew Rojansky, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, because it is clear that Putin’s government has no interest in developing the hallmarks of a civil society. “We take these things seriously,” Rojansky said, characterizing the American message. “And you have shown you don’t take them seriously.” At the same time, other working groups of the bilateral presidential commission, established in 2009, are continuing. And a new working group, on military technical cooperation, has been set up. It is the third panel, out of a total of 19 in the commission, devoted to security issues. That is emblematic, Rojansky said, of where the Kremlin’s priorities lie — and where cooperation with the United States is still feasible. The American move to withdraw from the civil society panel comes, though, in an overall atmosphere of worsening relations between Moscow and Washington, including the recent expulsion of the U.S. Agency for International Development and a requirement that nonprofit electoral and human rights groups receiving money from abroad register as “foreign agents.” In December, the United States enacted a law punishing corrupt Russian officials with financial and visa sanctions, and Russia retaliated with a ban on American adoptions of Russian children. Dropping the civil society group would seem to be a way to send a sharp notice without damaging American interests — because Russia has already made it impossible for the United States to do much in support of civil society here. The working group was established nearly four years ago to foster “peer contacts” between civic organizations in each country, and efforts went beyond official channels. In June, for example, when Melia visited Russia for a meeting of the working group, he also met with a broad array of activist groups. Since then, the Kremlin crackdown has made it increasingly difficult for civic groups to operate here, and they must keep foreign governments at arm’s length. “The U.S. government is open to an honest and open dialogue on civil


I killed people in Afghanistan. Was I right or wrong?

Marine Capt. Timothy Kudo, a graduate student at New York University, deployed to Iraq in 2009 and to Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011. Follow him on Twitter: @tkudo. When I joined the Marine Corps, I knew I would kill people. I was trained to do it in a number of ways, from pulling a trigger to ordering a bomb strike to beating someone to death with a rock. As I got closer to deploying to war in 2009, my lethal abilities were refined, but my ethical understanding of killing was not. I held two seemingly contradictory beliefs: Killing is always wrong, but in war, it is necessary. How could something be both immoral and necessary? I didn’t have time to resolve this question before deploying. And in the first few months, I fell right into killing without thinking twice. We were simply too busy to worry about the morality of what we were doing. But one day in Afghanistan in 2010, my patrol got into a firefight and ended up killing two people on a motorcycle who we thought were about to attack us. They ignored or didn’t understand our warnings to stop, and according to the military’s “escalation of force” guidelines, we were authorized to shoot them in self-defense. Although we thought they were armed, they turned out to be civilians. One looked no older than 16. It’s been more than two years since we killed those people on the motorcycle, and I think about them every day. Sometimes it’s when I’m reading the news or watching a movie, but most often it’s when I’m taking a shower or walking down my street in Brooklyn. They are not the only deaths I carry with me. I also remember the first time a Marine several miles away asked me over the radio whether his unit could kill someone burying a bomb. The decision fell on me alone. I said yes. Those decisions became commonplace over my deployment. Even more frightening than the idea of what we were doing was how easy it became for me. I never shot someone, but I ordered bomb strikes and directed other people to shoot. Many veterans are unable to reconcile such actions in war with the biblical commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” When they come home from an environment where killing is not only accepted but is a metric of success, the transition to


Pentagon’s big data strategy taking shape

The Pentagon’s adoption of an open-source database management platform signifies a major step forward for federal big data usage and provides hints at the next big data opportunities for contractors. The roots of this change became publicly known last summer, after the Senate Armed Services Committee released a draft of the fiscal 2013 defense authorization legislation. The draft noted that the Pentagon wanted to use the National Security Agency’s open-source Accumulo — a software platform based on Google’s BigTable that allows organizations to store massive amounts of data. But congressional reaction to the proposed use of Accumulo was not warm. Legislators made it clear they would prefer the Defense Department use cheaper commercial programs rather than one developed by a government entity. The final version of the authorization act, signed by President Obama in early January, prescribed that the Pentagon perform an analysis of the alternatives. Now, the Defense Department is weighing its options. To deploy Accumulo, top officials must make a case to Congress that the software platform is the best available option and provide written justification every quarter through September 2018. Despite these apparent obstacles, the Pentagon seems to be opting for Accumulo. Public comments made by Defense Information Systems Agency officials indicate work on Accumulo is moving forward. This development leaves competition for additional advanced analytics and visualization tools wide open — as long as these are compatible with Accumulo. Indeed, the Defense Department’s interest in Accumulo is only one component of its anticipated big data investments. Deltek’s report on the outlook for federal big data initiatives predicts that defense big data spending will grow from an estimated $1.9 billion in fiscal 2012 to $2.8 billion in fiscal 2017 at a compound annual growth rate of 8.3 percent. The military, in particular, appears interested in spending on technology that can optimize its network backbone, which provides the critical pipes and bandwidth required by big data. DISA also noted last year that it wants high-performance optical networking technologies to allow its network to push data at speeds of 100 gigabytes per second or higher. Building this network is a critical strategic investment for the Pentagon and presents a real business opportunity, even in an era of increased spending cuts. Alex Rossino is a principal research analyst at Herndon-based Deltek, which conducts research on the government contracting market and can be found at www.deltek.com.


Arrest made in D.C. killing of 18-year-old

D.C. police on Friday charged a 21-year-old man with shooting a Takoma Park teenager once in the head and killing her on a residential street in Northwest Washington. Authorities described the suspect as an acquaintance of the victim. They said they were still trying to determine a motive and to ascertain the relationship between 18-year-old Siobhan Nicole Lee and Alexander D. Buckley. Police would not say whether Lee had been visiting the suspect Thursday night or early Friday. Buckley, of Northwest Washington, was charged with first-degree felony murder. Authorities said they were exploring robbery as a possible reason for the killing. Lee, who graduated last year from Montgomery Blair High School, was found Friday at 3:24 a.m. by a patrol officer responding to a call of an unconscious person lying on a sidewalk in the 5700 block of Fifth Street NW in the Brightwood neighborhood. Police said she was pronounced dead at the scene. Buckley was being held Friday night pending a preliminary hearing in D.C. Superior Court. On Twitter on Friday, friends mourned Lee’s death. Her grandmother struggled to comprehend what had happened. “I don’t have a clue,” said Belinda Lee, 61, during a brief telephone interview. Belinda Lee said her granddaughter went to work Friday at the Giant food store in the Blair Park Shopping Center in Silver Spring, where she staffed the Starbucks stand. She did not know where her granddaughter went after leaving work. Lee said she did not want to discuss her granddaughter in any detail. “This is a big loss,” she said. Miki Fernandez, who has lived in a corner rowhouse at 5th and Nicholson for 18 months, said he was asleep in front of the television set in his living room when he heard police outside. He said he didn’t hear the gunshot, but saw the body when he walked onto his front porch. Lee was lying 20 feet away on an icy sidewalk between a bus stop and a trash can, according to Fernandez. She was face-up and bundled against the cold. “This is so sad,” Fernandez said. “You hear about how the murders are down, and then one happens right in front of your house.” Fernandez said crime in Brightwood consists mostly of thefts — he said his bicycle was taken from his fenced-in back yard — and violence is rare. “I have no idea what happened here,” Fernandez said. “And


‘Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam’ By Nick Turse

a very brief public outrage before subsiding into indifference or, indeed, a defense of Lt. William Calley. The Winter Soldier hearings, in which Vietnam veterans told their stories of grisly atrocities in a public forum, were covered by only one major newspaper, in nearby Detroit. Turse has the journalist’s faith that exposure will result in justice, but in the case of war, there’s little evidence that the public wants to know more about atrocities, much less act upon them. British scholar Kendrick Oliver made this argument brilliantly in his book on My Lai, showing how reactions to revealed atrocities follow a pattern that ultimately leads to a rally-round-the-troops phenomenon. One could contend that war, by its very nature — and not just in Vietnam and Cambodia, but in Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan — similarly leads to indifference to civilian suffering or even to blaming the victims. Turse forcefully argues the narrower question of how the government failed to prosecute crimes committed in Vietnam or Cambodia (apart from Calley, who got 31 / 2 years of house arrest for hundreds of murders). He provides revealing details about the years-long Pentagon coverup, such as Laird’s taking tighter control of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, “which allowed key Defense Department officials to take an even more active role in suppressing war crimes cases. Investigations could now be quashed at the highest levels — and evidence suggests that, indeed, they were.” While reading Turse’s powerful case, I couldn’t help wondering if, 30 years from now, we will see another, similarly revealing book about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The 2005 massacre at Haditha, Iraq, in which 24 unarmed civilians were killed by U.S. Marines, bears many resemblances to what Turse writes about Vietnam — a military coverup until an enterprising reporter got the facts, with no Marines paying a price for the slaughter. Is this the real code of military justice? “As I came to see,” Turse writes, “the indiscriminate killing of South Vietnamese noncombatants — the endless slaughter that wiped out civilians day after day, month after month, year after year throughout the Vietnam War — was neither accidental nor unforeseeable.” Will we ever come to terms with this shameful aspect of war? Turse has given us, at least, one step forward. bookworld@washpost.com John Tirman KILL ANYTHING THAT MOVES The Real American War in Vietnam By Nick Turse Metropolitan. 370 pp. $30


Looking behind the sightlines of an American soldier under Taliban fire

his helmet and recorded as he was caught in a firefight in Afghanistan. (Mathew Staver/For The Washington Post) Daniels scrambles across the steep hill, breathing heavily. The camera careens from side to side as he looks for cover. He is kneeling behind a small rock when an enemy round slams into his rifle, knocking it from his hands. “I’m hit,” he screams in pain and disbelief. Then louder and more desperate: “I’m hit!” He glances at his hand, checking quickly to make sure he has all of his fingers. Another burst of enemy fire bounces off the rock, peppering his arms with slivers of razor-sharp shrapnel. “Help me!” Daniels yells. “I’m hit! I’m hit” He screams the phrase six more times and falls silent. Seconds later, his camera battery died. The next day, in the safety of his base, Daniels downloaded the footage to his laptop computer. His hands and forearms were still bandaged and oozing blood. A small group of soldiers pressed in close to see. The room was hushed as they watched. For as long as there has been war, soldiers have sought to capture the unexplainable terror and thrill of combat. Previous generations snatched war trophies or snapped photos that they stored away in shoe boxes. In Afghanistan, soldiers have recorded untold hours of video with small cameras mounted on the front of their helmets. Some of the footage is officially sanctioned for intelligence-gathering purposes. But most of the videos are intended as battlefield souvenirs. Several hundred of them have surfaced on the Internet. The power of Daniels’s video lies in its ability to deliver the viewer directly to the battlefield. Viewers can hear Daniels panting, his boots crunching on rocky ground and the snap of enemy bullets as they pass by his head. The perspective is familiar — it is the same as Call of Duty and other combat video games. What the video doesn’t show is Daniels. The footage lacks context. It is an empty vessel that viewers fill with their own opinions about America’s wars, its troops, killing and combat. Daniels had a different response the first time he watched the video. His hands shook. For the next several days, he couldn’t sleep and he struggled to eat. When other soldiers at the outpost asked for copies, he turned them down. “It’s personal,” Daniels told them. ‘He was scared for me’ In August 2012,


Women say they already serve in combat roles, despite Pentagon’s announcement

to be around other men,” she said. “They’re restricted in that culture. To see a woman out there kind of being treated equally by men is unheard of to them. So they’re very intrigued by that.” As fluid as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could be, there remains a difference between direct combat and noncombat roles, she said. “Military police, you’re kind of out there,” she said. “You don’t need an escort to leave the gates. . . . Yeah, you’ll get into some firefights. You’ll have IEDs, and stuff like that. But . . . your jobs are different” from combat assignments. “Your job isn’t really to be the front lines, even though it’s kind of changed since Afghanistan. There really isn’t a front line. The road pretty much is the front lines, when you’re out there driving. “But when you’re with units that are actually getting into combat, it’s a totally different world. . . . What’s different is, you’re not going into close-quarter combat. . . . You’re not going into a home and looking through rooms looking for targeted individuals. You’re not doing that as a female.” Capt. Niki Marin, 26, of Naples, Fla., a logistician with the Old Guard who was recently deployed to Afghanistan for a year, expressed caution about the Pentagon’s changes. “It’s still in the beginning stages,” she said of the decision Thursday. “It’s a step in the right direction,” she said. “It’s definitely something that was a long time coming, and definitely something that’s essential for our military to be successful. . . . We still have a long way to go.” Asked whether she felt that she had been barred from something before the announcement, she said, “No, I did not, necessarily.” Capt. Barron Moffitt, 31, of Corpus Christi, Tex., a company commander who served two tours in Iraq, said of the decision: “It just affords more members of the military more options. . . . As long as standards stay the same in those units, then there shouldn’t be an issue.” Last week, all three soldiers were involved in presidential inauguration duty, although Dentino had an important, gender-specific task. At the Commander in Chief’s Ball, “I danced with the vice president of the United States,” she said, laughing. Representing the Army, she was the service member selected to dance with Vice President Biden, who she said was “awesome.”


Yao Ming transitions after retirement from NBA, but stays involved in basketball in China

Yao Ming spends time with Kinango, a two-week old orphaned elephant whose mother was poached for her ivory. (Kristian Schmidt for WildAid/WILDAID) That burning sensation in the chest after a series of full-court sprints; the one so intense that the lungs feel ill-equipped to withstand it and the body is pushed to the brink of submission. That’s what Yao Ming desires most since injuries to his feet and left ankle forced him into retirement less than two years ago. “It’s very painful,” Yao said in a recent telephone interview, “but I don’t know why, I kind of miss that.” Since making the last jump hook of a stellar career for the Houston Rockets, Yao has transitioned into a comfortable life that doesn’t involve the physical grind of competitive basketball. He lives in Shanghai with his wife and young daughter, has become heavily involved in wildlife conservation — recently taking a stand against elephant and rhinoceros ivory poachers — and is taking economics courses at Jiao Tong University. Yao also is the owner of the Chinese Basketball Association’s Shanghai Sharks, the team he played for before coming to the NBA in 2002 and the current home of former Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas. “Basketball is still a part of my life,” Yao said, “just in a different way.” Yao formed a partnership with NBA China last summer to continue to build upon the incredible influence that the 7-foot-6 center has had on the popularity of the game in his native country. The sides will collaborate on several development programs in a nation where the NBA estimates that the number of people playing basketball is almost the population of the United States. And, as Chinese New Year approaches, the NBA again will lean on Yao to take a yet-to-be determined role in an eight-day celebration that will include 23 live televised games and five in-arena events, tipping off on Feb. 8, when the Wizards host the Brooklyn Nets at Verizon Center. “People are always looking for something exciting,” Yao said, while promoting the NBA’s efforts to acknowledge the year of the snake. “It’s good entertainment for some people’s life.” For the first time in 12 years, the NBA is without a Chinese-born player. Wang Zhizhi was first in 2001, followed by Yao. Yi Jianlian, the sixth overall pick of the 2007 draft, was expected to carry the mantle after Yao but had


Afghan forces handle civilian casualties poorly, report claims

An Afghan police officer stands guard at a check point in Kabul, Afghanistan. A new report released on Monday accuses Afghanistan’s army and police of failing to address civilian casualties. (Musadeq Sadeq/AP) KABUL — The Center for Civilians in Conflict, a Washington-based research organization, said in its report that “the capacity of the Afghan government and security forces to prevent and respond appropriately to civilian casualties is woefully underdeveloped.” The killing of civilians in Afghanistan has been a long-standing source of tension between U.S. military leaders and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has complained that foreign troops don’t take sufficient precautions to prevent collateral damage. According to the United Nations, civilian casualties caused by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have declined over the past two years. While historically Afghan forces have caused fewer casualties than the ISAF, the report suggests that as Afghan soldiers and police take control of the country’s security, they will “likely cause increased civilian casualties as they conduct more combat operations on their own.” The report also alleges that Afghan institutions have often failed to award condolence payments to victims’ families or to properly investigate incidents in which civilians were harmed. Photos of everyday life in Afghanistan as coalition forces attempt to transfer responsibilities to Afghan troops. Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for Karzai, said Afghanistan’s military lacks the air force and weaponry that typically cause large-scale civilian casualties. When Afghan forces do cause civilian casualties, he said, the government acts promptly. “When there are such cases, it’s our responsibility to provide help to the families of the victims. We are doing that,” he said. But the report contends that “assistance from the Afghan government is rarely offered to civilians harmed by the ANSF,” or Afghan National Security Forces. Although each branch of the 352,000-strong Afghan security forces has a protocol used to handle civilian casualties, the report, which cites a number of examples, says those policies are poorly implemented. “Urgent reforms are needed to ensure a more effective and comprehensive Afghan response to civilian harm,” the report says.


Catering practices under review after 5 wounded in shooting at D.C. club

request regarding Roadside Cafe’s liquor license has not been set. The shooting occurred about 2:30 a.m. Saturday when police said a patron who had been shoved or bumped as the establishment was closing opened fire from the doorway. A police report called the shooting indiscriminate, saying the gunman was “firing a handgun into the crowd.” Two people suffered serious injuries, with wounds to the back and to the chest. No arrests have been made. Tracy Thompson, a 45-year-old part-time photographer who works for the D.C. Department of Public Works, said a bullet skirted his spine and came out his side; he said another remains lodged in his leg. Thompson said a co-worker hired him to take pictures of a birthday party at DC Soundstage on Friday night. Thompson said a fight broke out as he was packing his equipment. The fracas spilled outside, Thompson said, and then he saw a man with a nickel-plated handgun standing in the doorway “firing into the club. I took cover. One bullet hit me in my back, another in my leg.” Thompson said he doesn’t know why the fight started. DC Soundstage’s Web site includes a full menu, describing regular hours and daily drink specials, which Hager said gives the impression that alcohol is being sold “in a perpetual kind of operation.” It encourages potential customers to “hold your event here,” whether it be karaoke, a school auction or college reunion. It also advertises live bands, DJs, billiards and a spacious dance hall. Hager said the owners of DC Soundstage have applied for a liquor license, which is pending. He said bars sometimes use caterers to serve alcohol at such times, but typically for only a few days immediately after applications are approved. What DC Soundstage appears to have been doing, however, would be unprecedented, Hager said. An inquiry into DC Soundstage could be completed by Thursday, though a wider look into catering practices could take longer. The rules governing such business are not clear-cut. Although catered events must emphasize food over alcohol, there is no established ratio. And Hager said catered events are not limited to private invitees. Still, he said the intent of the regulations is not to let caterers effectually run a tavern. The alcohol regulation board said the catering company was closed for about a year before its owners reclaimed its liquor license Thursday. Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.


Washington Post food calendar for Feb. 4-12

MONDAY OYSTER CLASS: TUESDAY WASHINGTON D.C. INTERNATIONAL WINE FOOD FESTIVAL: WINE DINNER: RESERVE NOW FEB. 7 DINING IN THE DARK: FEB. 8 LES DAMES D’ESCOFFIER OF D.C. CHINESE NEW YEAR BANQUET: FEB. 9 COOKING CLASS: — Becky Krystal SEND NOTICES to: To Do, Food, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071, or e-mail food@washpost.com, 14 days in advance. To find more calendar items, go to www.washingtonpost.com/gog/dc-events.html and click on “Food Events” at the bottom of the page.


Post-Lehman, the push for global financial protections stalls

complexity in itself is a problem. In the United States, regulators have proposed limiting the funding banks use to finance themselves as a percentage of the nation’s gross domestic product, but they would need congressional support to pursue the idea. Given the polarized political climate in Washington, analysts say it is unlikely that Congress will address the issue soon. Even if legislation cleared Capitol Hill, there would be a battle to get all global stakeholders on the same page. “It would make sense to work through the debate over large banks” before imposing other rules proposed by the Basel committee, said Phillip Swagel, who served as assistant secretary for economic policy in the George W. Bush administration. “It seems like a waste to have banks spend lots of money figuring out how to deal with rules that would become irrelevant if they are broken up.” There also is no comprehensive global approach for addressing bank failures. Individual members of the Basel committee, including the United States, have established resolution plans in case their own lenders become insolvent. And the United States and Britain in December released a set of guidelines to handle a major insolvency — a potentially important agreement between two world financial centers. But determining how to coordinate the collapse of a major multinational bank is an area where the IMF and others have had limited success in pushing for a broader global agreement. The issue is important because a method to share the fallout of a bank failure across national borders would probably make countries more willing to let institutions go out of business, rather than propping them up with taxpayers’ money. Policymakers, however, seem unable or unwilling to rid the global financial system of weak banks, said Anat Admati, a Stanford University professor who calls for even tougher capital regulation in the forthcoming book “The Bankers’ New Clothes.” “Some banks in Europe, even in the U.S., are very weak, with a lot of overhanging debt and unrecognized losses. But regulators do not face up to this,” she said. “Prompt corrective action, to prevent banks from becoming distressed, would improve the system. We need better ways to handle insolvent banks.” The Basel committee The process of revamping global financial regulation got off to a strong start. In the aftermath of the Lehman collapse, the Basel committee agreed on a set of ideas its members felt would make


Russia cancels accord with U.S. on fighting drugs, human trafficking

is our course toward getting rid of some dependence on the U.S.” Pushkov said it was unlikely that the Russian action would further damage relations with the United States. “After the Americans passed the so-called Magnitsky Act, they themselves added serious tension to our relations, and negative consequences from the adoption of that act are much worse than the decision to pull out of the intergovernmental agreement on combating crime and drug trafficking,” he said. In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed the Russian decision but said the United States was seeking clarification about the scope of the change. “We obviously regret this decision because under our agreement, we’ve had very fruitful cooperation with Russia on rule of law, counter-corruption efforts, preventing trafficking in persons, counternarcotics and strengthening our mutual legal assistance cooperation,” Nuland said. She called the Russian action “self-defeating.” “Most of the work we were doing under this agreement was also involved in training Russians,” Nuland said. “But it’s obviously a Russian decision if they don’t feel they need that help anymore.” Since 2002, hundreds of Russian prosecutors and investigators, along with some judges and defense lawyers, have participated in U.S.-sponsored programs in Moscow and have traveled to the United States. Their American counterparts have, in turn, traveled to Russia to improve cooperation in fighting crime worldwide. The programs, overseen by the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, were funded to the tune of $6.1 million in 2011 and $5.6 million in 2010. They provided a framework for the United States to pay the expenses of Russian officials’ U.S. visits — the officials are otherwise prohibited from accepting money from foreign governments. Mark Galeotti, professor of global affairs at New York University and an expert on Russian security issues, said that although Russia no longer needs financial assistance like it did 10 years ago, there was no reason to scrap the agreement. “The fact that they have done this is more a symptom of Moscow trying to look for ways to signal its displeasure with Washington following Magnitsky,” Galeotti said in an e-mail, “and it also underlines the lack of practical and meaningful ways of doing so that the Russians have at their disposal.” Late Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry weighed in with a statement that put a more positive spin on the rupturing of the agreement, saying that over the years the


Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence on Jan. 30, 2013 (Transcript)

in this area, no question about it. FLAKE: Is -- is this an issue with Maryland or any other state? And I’m not trying to pick on Maryland at all. I -- I assume it’s similar with every state out there. I just had the figures for Maryland. But is that an issue of just resources? Or are there privacy concerns that prevent them from offering this information? J. JOHNSON: I think there’s confusion. Data that I’ve seen indicates some 18 states submit less than 100 records to -- to the system. I think there’s confusion amongst -- amongst the medical community and even fear. Well, how does HIPPA affect the release of this information and this data system? And I do believe, as the president’s plan has called for, incentive -- incentivize states to participate would drastically help this -- this problem. FLAKE: Mark, do you want to comment on that? KELLY: Yes, Senator. Thank you for your kind words. Gabby misses being here as well. Of those 121,800 records that Arizona has not submitted to the background check system, I -- I don’t know why. I imagine it could be something. It might be a matter of resources. You know, maybe the funding isn’t there to have the manpower to do that. Possibly -- maybe there isn’t the will. Maybe for some reason in the state of Arizona, maybe they don’t have a desire to share that information. I don’t know, but I can guarantee you after this hearing I’m going to try to find out. FLAKE: All right. KELLY: I’ll get back to you. FLAKE: And so will I. I think that that’s an area from the testimony today and what we know of this situation where we can have I think a real impact here. And so I thank you all for your testimony, especially Mark and Gabby for being here. KELLY: Thank you. LEAHY: Thank you, Senator Flake. And Senator Blumenthal, I’ll recognize you next. And I would just note, as everybody probably assumes, you and I have had a number of discussions since the tragedy in Connecticut, including one phone call I recall when you were just about to meet with some of the families. And I have relied a great deal on your -- both your expertise, your law enforcement background but also the fact that you are from Connecticut. Senator Blumenthal? BLUMENTHAL:


U.S. Speedskating’s ‘unfortunate’ error costs junior skaters shot to compete at worlds

Three of the region’s rising Korean American speedskaters were denied a chance to vie for a spot in next month’s junior world championships, a proving ground for prospective Olympians, because the U.S. federation missed a deadline with the sport’s governing body to establish the skaters’ eligibility for international competition. Moreover, the manner in which they were excluded — with U.S. Speedskating officials summoning all youngsters of Korean descent to a closed-door meeting and demanding proof of their citizenship during last week’s U.S. Junior Nationals — left some skaters and their parents in tears and others offended. “I cried until my tears didn’t come out,” said Sally Chea, 15, of Midlothian, Va., who qualified fastest and was favored to advance to the Junior World Championships, which begin Feb. 22 in Poland. “This was the competition I trained for all season, and they took it away from me.” In the wake of the controversy, the three excluded skaters, who are all Korean American green-card holders but not U.S. citizens, have filed a formal complaint to the U.S. Olympic Committee questioning U.S. Speedskating’s competence and alleging discrimination. The complaint proposes various remedies that would enable them to qualify for worlds, such as re-running the race. Such solutions seem unlikely. International Skating Union rules permit countries to send any of their citizens to international competitions. In addition, non-citizens who have status as permanent residents (commonly known as “green-card” holders) can compete if their country’s governing body (in this case, U.S. Speedskating) submits a clearance application by July 1 of each year. The ISU grants exceptions for late applications provided they’re submitted no later than 30 days before the international event in which the green-card holder intends to compete. In this case, U.S. Speedskating submitted no names of green-card holders for ISU clearance July 1, according to spokesperson Tamera Castellano. By the time officials realized green-card holders needed clearance, the 30-day window had come and gone. “The timing of this was absolutely unfortunate,” Castellano said. “These athletes must have been devastated; to know that is heartbreaking. That’s not what anybody wanted — especially juniors. Could we have handled the timing of this better, such that perhaps the situation could have been avoided? Hindsight is 20-20.” Although three Canadian American skaters were in the field, only Korean American skaters were called to the meeting. That’s because the citizenship status of the skaters of Canadian descent was


Stephen Simon, a conductor and leading Handel specialist, dies at 75

ringing in your ears — and Simon makes it all seem like so much fun,” music critic Tim Page wrote in The Washington Post of a 1996 concert that included the “Hallelujah” chorus and lesser-known Handel works such as “Semele,” “Samson,” “Saul,” “Solomon” and “Judas Maccabaeus.” Mr. Simon was an heir to the Annenberg fortune. He and his wife, Bonnie, often used their own money to keep the Washington Chamber Symphony afloat. The organization disbanded in 2002 because of major financial difficulties. Mr. Simon also cited the plummeting support for arts funding after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “Unfortunately, in the past year, changes in our world affected the orchestra to the same degree as it did other businesses,” Mr. Simon said at the time in a letter to subscribers. The Post reported that subscribers were not reimbursed until two years after the symphony disbanded and, to much outcry, they received a fraction of what they had originally paid. Stephen Anthony Simon was born May 5, 1937, in New York City. His maternal grandfather was the publisher Moses Annenberg, and his uncle was Walter H. Annenberg, the publisher, philanthropist and former ambassador to Britain. Mr. Simon graduated from Yale University with a bachelor’s degree in music in 1960. He studied with Austrian conductor Josef Krips. Mr. Simon and wife Bonnie moved back to New York City from the District in 2009. After the WCS folded, he founded the Simon Sinfonietta and L’Orchestre des Portes Rouges. In 2004 Stephen and Bonnie Simon co-founded Maestro Classics, a line of classical music CDs for children. He ran multiple music programs for children during his career. His first marriage, to Ellen Friendly, ended in divorce. Survivors include Bonnie Ward Simon of Manhattan, his wife of 35 years; four sons from his first marriage, Daniel Simon and James Simon, both of Manhattan, David Simon of Brookline, Mass., and Adam Simon of Concord, Mass.; two sons from his second marriage, Basil Simon of Boston and Sebastian Simon of Manhattan; and four grandchildren. Mr. Simon was a jazz enthusiast in college. He said he found a same exhilarating improvisational quality to classical music. “There is a close link between jazz and Baroque music because of improvisation,” he told the Times in 1972. “Knowing the style makes you feel secure and then you can do anything — even if it doesn’t always work — and that’s exciting.”


Hagel defends record at confirmation hearing

much of that today,” Clemons lamented. Hagel’s nomination has triggered sustained criticism since his name was first suggested for the job in December. Previous remarks and votes on issues ranging from sanctions against Iran to the propriety of having an openly gay ambassador became fodder for a barrage of ads and an intense lobbying campaign that has sought to doom his nomination. During his opening statement, Hagel defended his record, saying he always acted with integrity but acknowledging that it was not devoid of “mistakes.” If he is confirmed, Hagel said, he would run the Pentagon guided by a long-held philosophy: “Is our policy worthy of our troops and their families and the sacrifices that we ask them to make?” One of the first bruising lines of questioning came early, when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asked Hagel whether he regretted his opposition to the 2007 troop surge in Iraq. “Were you right?” McCain asked sternly, eliciting a response that he seemed to find inadequate. “I would defer to the judgment of history to sort that out,” Hagel said, refusing repeatedly to provide a yes-or-no answer. Hagel later said that the Iraq war, including the surge, was the “most fundamentally bad, dangerous decision since Vietnam.” Hagel faced relatively few nuanced questions about the Afghan war or terrorist threats. Afghanistan was mentioned just 27 times, and al-Qaeda only twice, while Israel got 178 mentions and Iran 169. On Afghanistan, where 66,000 U.S. troops remain deployed, Hagel said he did not have enough knowledge about the war to have an informed opinion about the ideal size for the force the United States might leave behind after its combat mandate expires at the end of 2014. He agreed with a senator’s characterization that Obama intends to draw down troops “sooner rather than later.” “I think he’s made that very clear,” Hagel said. “If I am confirmed, I will need to better understand all the dimensions of this.” Senators spent a great deal of time pressing Hagel on his views on Iran, demanding to know why he has in the past rejected unilateral sanctions and why he refused to endorse an effort to designate the Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. The question elicited one of Hagel’s most damaging missteps, as he argued that it would have been unprecedented to add a military unit of an “elected, legitimate government” as a terrorist organization. Senators took


D.C. alcohol board suspends caterer after five people were shot at night spot party

The agency that regulates the sale of alcohol in the District on Thursday suspended the liquor license of a caterer that ran events at DC Soundstage, a Northeast Washington night spot where five people were shot early Saturday. Operators of Roadside Cafe have 72 hours to request a public hearing before the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board to appeal the decision. None had been requested by Thursday afternoon. The Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration determined that the catering company had violated several regulations, including storing liquor at the night spot and failing to have “a clear catering event contract,” according to its report. Authorities took action against both the caterer and the owners of the club, in the 2400 block of Benning Road NE, after a fight broke out early Saturday during a birthday party at the club. D.C. police said one man had stood in the doorway and fired randomly into the crowd. No arrests have been made. D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier used her emergency powers to order both DC Soundstage and Roadside Cafe closed for 96 hours. The decision issued Thursday keeps the catering company closed. But the status of DC Soundstage remains unclear. It does not have a liquor license and doesn’t fall under the agency's regulations. But city officials said in the investigatory report issued Thursday that it appears DC Soundstage was operating as a bar and restaurant with daily hours, rather than a hall used for catered events. The board said that “further investigation revealed that the event site is the licensed caterer’s sole client.” The manager of DC Soundstage, Rodney Manley, declined to comment Thursday afternoon.


Justice Department sues to block Anheuser-Busch InBev merger with Grupo Modelo

planned. The company sells nearly half of the beer purchased in the United States, according to data from the trade publication Beer Marketer’s Insights. AB InBev already owns a 50 percent stake of Grupo Modelo. The company announced last June that it was acquiring the remaining half. The government’s lawsuit said that AB InBev competes “head-to-head” with Grupo Modelo now, which keeps prices lower. Allowing the deal to go through, according to Justice, would allow AB InBev and MillerCoors to charge more to consumers. Since the repeal of Prohibition, U.S. beer moves through three layers before reaching consumers: from the brewers to the wholesalers to the retailers. If the same company controlled multiple parts of this chain, it could give that firm too much power over prices. In an effort to head off antitrust concerns about the deal, Modelo said it would sell its 50 percent stake in the wholesaler Crown Imports, which has exclusive rights to bring Modelo’s brands to the United States, to Constellation Brands. But Justice attorneys said in their lawsuit this measure was “inadequate.” Constellation’s stock plummeted more than 17 percent Thursday after news of the Justice Department’s lawsuit broke. Meanwhile, shares of AB InBev dropped nearly 6 percent. Modelo’s stock fell 6.5 percent on the Mexican exchange. It may surprise some Americans that iconic brands such as Budweiser are no longer brewed by U.S. companies. In 2008, InBev acquired the St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch in a hostile takeover. After the merger, the company slashed expenses to improve its margins. Since then, some customers have complained that AB InBev has tinkered with classic formulas as part of its cost-cutting. At the same time, craft beers made by small, independent brewers have exploded in popularity. “There’s never been a broader choice of brands, choice, styles, flavors ever, certainly not in our lifetimes,” said Eric Shepard, executive editor of Beer Marketer’s Insights. “You cannot argue that there’s not choice.” Yet some antitrust watchers are worried that as AB InBev gets bigger, it can potentially assert more leverage over beer wholesalers and have a bigger say in what gets sold. “The success of craft brewers is really dependent on ‘the big two’ playing nice,” said Sandeep Vaheesan, special counsel for the American Antitrust Institute, referring to AB InBev and MillerCoors. AAI, an antitrust think tank, released a paper in November urging the Justice Department to block the AB InBev deal.


The Washington Post Co. explores the sale of its downtown headquarters

Developers have begun inquiring about The Post’s headquarters recently because a building next door, at 1100 15th St. NW, has been on the market and is on land the Post owns. Michael Darby of District-based Monument Realty said last month that he was gathering investors to try to buy the building at 1100 15th St., a purchase that could give him a leg up on acquiring the rest of the block. He said the sale of The Post’s headquarters could be used to finance space elsewhere in the region. “At that point in time we would help them relocate and then do a new redevelopment there,” he said. Other developers and landlords are likely to try to compete to lure The Post Co. to their properties. When National Public Radio, for instance, decided to sell and relocate from its headquarters near Mount Vernon Square, the broadcaster nearly opted to leave for Silver Spring before deciding to build a new headquarters in the NoMa neighborhood of Northeast Washington. The Post was not always located at 15th and L streets. In her autobiography, “Personal History,” the late publisher Katharine Graham described The Post’s original plant, on E Street a few doors down from the National Theatre: “The entire building was perilous and problematic. Everything in it was old, except some of the people.” The company financed construction of the $6 million L Street headquarters using loans provided by Graham’s parents. The new buildings had air conditioning, but Graham recounted a melancholy scene when it came time to move. “There was a very alcoholic, emotional party as everyone finally left the old E Street building behind. The party — more of a wake, actually — was, as someone put it, to ‘mourn the death of a building’ which, with all its inconvenient horrors, was still much loved.” The move in 1950, however, set the stage for the paper’s evolution into a journalistic force, and in its heyday, subjects of its coverage were known to wait outside for the first edition to roll off the presses. The fifth-floor newsroom was later canonized in the 1976 film about Watergate coverage, “All the President’s Men,” which inspired a generation of future journalists but did not feature the actual newsroom, at Graham’s insistence. Filmmakers instead constructed a Hollywood replica featuring details down to the stickers on the desk of then-Executive Editor Ben Bradlee’s secretary. “This building has


Don’t kill the deer in Rock Creek Park

As two scientists with extensive experience using fertility treatments to control wildlife populations, we want to set the record straight regarding whether the National Park Service needs to begin killing the white-tailed deer that live in Rock Creek Park — a small patch of nature in our nation’s capital. Our analysis of the data convinces us that any such measures to reduce the deer population in this park would be premature and unnecessary. To begin with, the Park Service’s own data do not show a deer population crisis. According to the agency, deer numbers have fluctuated between 50 and 90 deer per square mile since 2000; higher densities can be found in places in Maryland and Virginia. But more to the point, the Park Service’s data show that Rock Creek’s deer population has remained stable for 10 years, and some densities in recent years are actually below those of earlier years. As the Park Service also acknowledges, the telltale sign of a serious deer overpopulation problem — a “browse line” indicating that deer have eaten most of the vegetation within their reach — has not been detected in the park. The deer themselves are in good condition. They are not starving. But even if there were a problem in this park, there are far more humane — and effective — ways to control urban deer populations than killing, which can increase reproductive success within the remaining herd and create room for deer from neighboring areas to move into. As the authors of many peer-reviewed scientific studies on this issue, we know that fertility control is, over the long term, a more effective and publicly acceptable way to deal with urban deer problems. One fertility-control vaccine, porcine zona pellucida (PZP) — which can be administered by shooting the animal with a dart — is safe for deer and for predators, scavengers and any humans who happen to consume venison from a treated deer; it is a natural protein that degrades in the deer’s body after injection, and if eaten, it is destroyed in digestion. The Park Service is quite familiar with PZP (which the Science and Conservation Center manufactures and makes available at or below cost for noncommercial wildlife and zoo research and wild-horse management applications). This vaccine has already been used effectively to help tackle wildlife management challenges on at least four Park Service properties. PZP has reduced urban white-tailed


Kathleen Parker: Combat women and Congress’s wimps

that some women are more fit than some men, but it is also true that most aren’t as capable of becoming as strong as most men. As I’ve written before, women have just about half the upper-body strength as men, which is serious business when you’re hiking with a 65-pound (and often heavier) load on your back or hoisting a wounded comrade. It is no coincidence that stress fractures are significantly higher among female recruits than among males during basic training. This is no insult to women. We’re talking about muscle mass that comes with the packaging and has nothing to do with how many times a week one goes to the gym. (Or how ripped Demi Moore gets for a movie.) It’s more than clear, meanwhile, that physical standards would be lowered to allow women where they don’t belong. We know this because Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently said as much: “If we do decide that a particular standard is so high that a woman couldn’t make it, the burden is now on the service to come back and explain to the secretary, why is it that high? Does it really have to be that high?” Translation: If women can’t meet the standards, we’ll just “gender-norm” them. As to whether this is good for our military effectiveness, one can only hope that our enemies are of like mind. One rather doubts it. As for our all-volunteer military, this is true as far as it goes. In fact, men do not have the option of declining combat. How can the military justify giving women special treatment? Letting women, but not men, choose whether to enter combat duty likely would cause deep resentment among male soldiers. To make life more fair and allow both sexes to choose would be, as military sociologist Charles Moskos once put it, “the end of an effective military force.” Similarly, there could be no excluding women should a military draft be reinstated. This is unlikely in the near future — Rep. Charles Rangel’s regular call for a mandatory draft notwithstanding. Baby boomers who recall the Vietnam draft likely would protest. But others with dimmer memories — or a younger generation that has been marinated in the anything-boys-can-do-girls-can-do-better dogma of feminist wishful thinking — might find a draft more . . . egalitarian. Indeed, it would be. Once women are placed


Beer merger would worsen existing duopoly by AB InBev, SABMiller

An emerging duopoly has come to dominate the brewing, marketing and distribution of beer no less than Coke and Pepsi has done for soft drinks. (Marvin Joseph/THE WASHINGTON POST) Correction: Ah, yes, Super Bowl weekend. Football on the wide screen. Homemade chili simmering on the stove. And, of course, cold beer in the fridge. Walk into almost any supermarket or liquor store these days and you’ll find an abundant assortment of beer — the big domestic brands, along with imports from every corner of the globe and craft brands that are proliferating at the rate of one per day. In terms of quality and choice, this looks to be the golden age of beer drinking in America. But beneath this bewildering variety lurks a very different market reality. An emerging duopoly has come to dominate the brewing, marketing and distribution of beer no less than Coke and Pepsi have done for soft drinks. Once threatened by upscale imports and upstart craft brews, duopolists Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller now seek to turn variety to their advantage. And while they compete with Super Bowl-like ferocity to create products with the best taste, the most interesting packaging and most alluring brand image, like all successful duopolists they take care not to compete too fiercely on price. So it is not without significance that last week, after years of acquiescence to the beer industry’s relentless consolidation, government antitrust officials decided enough was enough. On Thursday, the Justice Department went into federal court to block AB InBev, the world’s and the country’s largest brewer and marketer, from buying Mexico’s Grupo Modelo, a rival that has risen quickly to the No. 3 position in the United States on the strength of its Corona brand. Measured by volume, the combined company (Budweiser, Beck’s, Stella Artois, Leffe, Bass and Lowenbrau, plus Corona) would control more than 50 percent of the U.S. market. That would be nearly double the market share of rival SABMiller (Miller, Coors, Pilsner Urquell, Peroni, Grolsch, Foster’s and Milwaukee’s Best) and eliminate any latent threat to the current duopoly. [list of competing brands here] Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI) must now decide whether to fight the government in court or walk away from the deal and pay Modelo a hefty $650 million breakup fee. Then there were two The extreme concentration in the beer market is a relatively recent development. In 1980, there were 48 major U.S.


February bids a brief farewell to Mars

With speed that rivals Olympian Usain Bolt, the fleet, innermost planet Mercury runs around the sun. Quick! Catch it while you can. Find Mercury lingering low toward the horizon in the early-evening western sky for the next couple of weeks. This fast planet will appear at negative first magnitude, bright enough to see from Washington. Roost in a good spot to get a clean view of the horizon. While Mars may be hard to find (first magnitude, dim), the Red Planet dances near Mercury. On Friday, Mercury hangs just above Mars. The young, razor-thin sliver of moon joins Mercury and Mars the evening of Feb. 11, if you have a clear view of the lower, western sky. By late February, the fleet planet falls out of view into the sun’s light. At dusk now, Jupiter pops out in the evening heavens very high in the southern sky. You could say it’s almost overhead. Spot the gassy giant planet easily at negative 2.4 magnitude (bright), loitering between the Hyades and the Pleiades in the constellation Taurus. It now sets around 2:30 a.m. in the Washington skies, and will set around 1:20 a.m. at the end of February. Catch the moon dash across the sky for a close encounter with Jupiter: On Feb. 14, the young moon — though distant in the sky from Jupiter — begins its approach. By the next night, the moon is chubbier and a little closer. By Feb. 17, our lunar companion (magnitude negative 10.2, very bright) embraces Jupiter in a sort of celestial snuggle, and the moon passes this king planet the next night. Mars, as seen by the NASA Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA Hubble Space Telescope/Via AP) Saturn Farewell, friendly neighbor Mars. From our earthly perspective, the Red Planet takes a long, cosmic hiatus from our night sky beginning in mid-February. The planet returns to our morning skies in early summer. Down-to-Earth events: ●Feb. 5 — ●Feb. 9 — ●Feb. 10 — ●Feb. 10 — ●Feb. 16 — ●Feb. 16 — ●Feb. 20 — ●Feb. 23 — ●March 2 — Blaine Friedlander can be reached at PostSkyWatch@gmail.com .


D.C.’s first slaying victim of 2013 was a killer in 1990

was a friend of Raasheem’s at that time. It was just four months after his 18th birthday, in June 1990, when he saw Anthony Miguel Anderson with his girlfriend at a carnival at RFK Stadium and fatally stabbed him in front of a Bank-A-Ball game booth. A jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to 12 to 36 years in prison. Rich disappeared behind bars at the peak of the District’s homicide epidemic. There were 52 slayings in January 1989 and again in January 1990, according to Washington Post records. A D.C. police study of murder from 1998 through 2000 concluded that more people were killed in the first three months of those years than at any other time of the year, confounding conventional wisdom that hot summer nights ignite passions and create killers. Over the ensuing years, the number of murders dropped not only in Washington but also in other cities. New York set a record low in 2012 with 414, and like Washington, the Big Apple is holding firm this month. Slayings are also down this year in Philadelphia and Baltimore; Boston, which had 59 slayings in 2012, is one of the few large cities other than Washington boasting single-digit homicide numbers this January, with three. Chicago is a notable exception, with at least 42 killings last month, including nine in a single weekend, making it the deadliest January there in a decade. The four killings committed in the District in January differed in type and location. Police have made arrests in two of the cases. The latest victim is Siobhan Nicole Lee, 18, of Takoma Park, who police said was shot in the head in Northwest Washington by a man she met on an Internet dating site. Before her was Tracy McFadden, 44, shot dead on Georgia Avenue, also in Northwest Washington. Dominic Anthony Davis, 27, was the second victim of 2013, found shot on 57th Street NE. Raasheem Rich, who was paroled in April 2010 from Rivers Correctional Institution in Winton, N.C., was the first person to be killed this year, stabbed about 3:30 p.m. on Jan. 10. Police said there was a dispute inside Alabama Express Liquors in the 2800 block of Alabama Avenue SE; surveillance video shows three men, two of them wearing yellow reflective vests, as possible suspects. One man has been arrested. The argument spilled outside, and police said Rich was


Home-grown analytics can give a strategic edge

Dunia Finance started with a business model offering financial services to underserved clients in the United Arab Emirates just as the worldwide financial meltdown began. The central bank licensed Dunia to offer credit cards, personal and auto loans. (David Goldman/AP) The big idea: The scenario: Ali Hurbas joined Dunia in 2008 as head of its Strategic Analysis unit. His experience at Dunia was his first working for a local company in the Middle East. Hurbas was used to analytics powered by a robust customer credit scoring mechanism using credit bureau data from a broad set of sources. He found no such financial data here, only data on infractions of law, such as bouncing a check. Banks were not accustomed to sharing financial data. In the United States, a direct-mail targeting campaign with a 2 to 3 percent response rate could translate to more than 100,000 responses. But with the UAE’s small population that response rate would be about 1,000 offers. Hurbas knew he had to build a robust analytics system under high consumer credit risk with a small population that emphasized accurate targeting. The resolution: A credit bureau was developed within Dunia. Each new customer was assigned a Dunia customer identification number and a unique file. Responses to earlier campaigns were recorded to facilitate constant feedback loops from direct marketing campaigns. This automatically improved the response rates for campaigns and the effectiveness of cross-selling efforts. If an existing Dunia customer was looking at cars, for example, and decided to buy one, he or she would probably be preapproved, so the loan transaction could be made quickly. Following one monthly cycle of payment history, the customer’s early performance data would be looked at immediately. Six months after a new account was booked, Dunia would consider increasing the credit granted to the customer. Dunia was able to succeed in a harsh time for business when 11 much larger competitor banks failed. The lesson: Bodily and Venkatesan are business professors at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Darden senior researcher Gerry Yemen also contributed.


In revamped cafeterias, USDA gets a taste of its own medicine

Asian executive chef at the Library of Congress Jimmy Quach, who will be based at the USDA as part of their new healthful food program, creates a low fat, low sodium version of a Stir Fry Chicken with fresh vegetables. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) Ken Choi, chief operating officer for I.L. Creations in Rockville, has a good idea what federal workers like to eat. The food service company runs cafeterias at the Energy Department, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and the State Department, and while I.L. Creations has been touted for its healthful offerings, Choi knows that some of his most popular items include foods dipped in a hot-oil bath: fried chicken, fried catfish and french fries. Which explains why I.L. Creations’ newest government contract presents such a challenge. The Agriculture Department — the agency tasked with, among other things, improving public health — made a groundbreaking decision last year when soliciting bids for cafeteria vendors at its headquarters: The USDA would go fryer-less. As in not a single deep-fat fryer in the department’s Whitten and South building cafeterias, which every month serve more than 40,000 people , including members of the public. And that’s just the most obvious change at the revamped USDA cafeterias, which debut today. The agency — one of the chief architects of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which counsels citizens to reduce their intake of red meat and salt — has fully embraced its own recommendations (possibly this time without alienating lawmakers from livestock states who were furious last year over the USDA’s suggestion that employees avoid meat one day a week). The new USDA cafeterias will automatically serve diners 100 percent whole-wheat breads and pastas unless customers specifically ask for white-bread slices or some other option. One station in the main cafeteria in the South Building will prepare food that conforms to the low-sodium, low-fat, low-cholesterol and low-calorie requirements of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans; the station will also display a daily MyPlate example to model the basics of a proper meal — not that anyone will be required to follow it. There will even be a full-time dietitian on-site to answer employee questions, which Choi believes is key in the transition to a fryer-less world. After all, USDA workers can easily sidestep the whole healthful-eating program; they could, for example, take a short trip down Independence Avenue to the Energy Department cafeteria, where


U.S. attempts to restart peace talks with Taliban

Afghan President Hamid Karzai gestures, as he speaks during a conference about water management in Kabul, Afghanistan on Jan. 29, 2013, during which he broke off to address the varied attempts at peace talks with the Taliban. (Ahmad Jamshid/AP) When President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced Jan. 11 that a negotiating office for the Taliban was about to open in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, optimism soared within the administration that peace talks would soon be back on track. But January’s optimism has become February’s reality check: There is still no agreement to open the office, and Karzai, back in Kabul after his Washington visit, says there will be no deal until Qatar meets his conditions in writing. As the Obama administration nears a decision on the pace of U.S. combat troop withdrawals from Afghanistan between now and the end of 2014, jump-starting reconciliation has become a key element of its exit strategy. Without some kind of political initiative underway as its forces leave, the administration fears that the United States will again be accused of abandoning the region, just as it was at the end of the Soviet Union’s Afghan occupation in the early 1990s. If another civil war breaks out, as many fear, Afghanistan’s neighbors will again feel the need to choose sides. In addition, U.S. hopes of positioning a post-withdrawal counterterrorism force in Afghanistan to continue the fight against remnants of al-Qaeda could be compromised. Photos of everyday life in Afghanistan as coalition forces attempt to transfer responsibilities to Afghan troops. More immediately, negotiations are critical to hopes for a prisoner exchange with the Taliban that could bring a homecoming for Sgt. Bowe R. Bergdahl, the only U.S. service member known to be a Taliban captive. The challenges, some of which lie within the administration, are formidable. Those who won first-term internal debates over an agreement on peace talks worry that the military, long opposed to negotiations, will dig in its heels as new members of the president’s national security team are brought up to speed. The summer fighting season in Afghanistan, always an inauspicious time for talking with the Taliban, is just months away. Taliban leaders have been stubborn, setting their own conditions for resuming negotiations with the United States, which came to an abrupt halt early last year. The insurgents are seen as divided between those who want to wait out the


Music review: China National Symphony Orchestra at Strathmore

The China National Symphony Orchestra with conductor Xincao Li (center front). (Courtesy of the China National Symphony Orchestra) The China National Symphony Orchestra, which appeared Friday at the Music Center at Strathmore (and at George Mason University the following evening) showed itself to be an efficient, professional group without a strong artistic profile. The winds were unreliable in blend, attack, and intonation, but the strings had a clean, healthy fiber to their sound. Conductor Li Xincao, who stepped in on one rehearsal to replace the group’s indisposed music director, was quite good. He was expressive when needed and stayed out of the way when not. He conducted the “Yellow River Concerto” virtually from memory, his eyes glued to his piano soloist most of the time. The program included a movement from the gentle, euphonious “Earth Requiem,” a recent work by Guan Xia; the concerto, a broth of kitsch from approximately seven composers concocted at the height of China’s infamous Cultural Revolution; and ended with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. The soloist, 20-year-old Peng-Peng Gong, was impressive in the heavily derivative, Lisztian romps up and down the keyboard, both mature and flashy. What sort of musicianship he would show in works of substance, one could only guess. In the Beethoven, Xincao offered a solid, middle-of-the-road interpretation. The famous Allegretto movement moved along nicely, and the finale had real fire. The CNS musicians don’t “self-balance” — too many chords were oddly blended — but many times they produced music of energetic beauty. Battey is a freelance writer. China National Symphony Orchestra soloist Peng-Peng Gong. (Courtesy of the China National Symphony Orchestra)


Composting efforts gain traction across the United States

The composting movement is inching forward in fits and starts, but the nation’s trash disposal system lacks the ability to process food waste on a large scale. Employees at 125 Safeway stores along the East Coast ship everything from flowers to coffee grinds and spoiled vegetables to Upper Marlboro’s Safeway Return Center, but the center must then transport the waste at least another 100 miles to be recycled into compost. Here’s a look at the composting efforts of one Safeway store in Southwest Washington. Correction: Roy Derrick maneuvered his forklift with a pallet of neatly boxed expired produce and flowers and dropped it into an industrial compactor at Safeway’s cavernous return center in Upper Marlboro. As the compactor hummed, compressed food and floral scraps spilled through a chute into a 40-foot trailer, one of five that would make the weekly trip to composting centers in Delaware or Virginia. Employees at 125 Safeway stores It illustrates composting’s complicated trajectory in the United States. The movement is inching forward in fits and starts, by entrepreneurs as well as by community activists and civic leaders, but the nation’s trash disposal system lacks the ability to process food waste on a large scale. Food scraps are also heavier than aluminum cans, making them more expensive to transport. But increasingly, local governments, entrepreneurs and community activists are experimenting with composting. Last month, District Mayor Vincent C. Gray announced that the city’s Office of Planning was awarded $600,000 in grants to build three to four compost sites for urban farms or community gardens in the city to test composting methods. Howard County has collected food waste from 1,000 households since September 2011 as part of a pilot program; officials are launching a composting site this spring at the county’s Alpha Ridge landfill in Marriottsville so that scraps won’t have to be hauled to Delaware. And a small composting operation has opened up in Baltimore in an industrial warehouse. Freestate Farms “It’s been under the radar screen until now, and seen as a boutique, West Coast thing,” said Jared Blumenfeld, who oversees California as well as two other Western states and the Pacific for the Environmental Protection Agency. “But now everyone from Massachusetts to Minnesota has programs starting up, and pretty soon there will be a critical mass.” Environmentally minded city leaders have adopted “zero-waste” pledges, noting that traditional trash disposal not only wastes material that can


Robert Samuelson: Japan’s self-defeating stimulus cycle

Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is trying to revive the country’s flagging economy, and we could all learn from the exercise. You may recall that, in the 1980s, Japan was widely anointed as the next economic superpower, displacing the United States. It’s been a long slide since. In the 1990s, the “bubble economy” of high stock and real estate prices burst. The stock market is roughly a quarter of its high. Land prices have tumbled to 1975 levels. Since 2000, economic growth has averaged less than 1 percent annually. Government debt has ballooned to 214 percent of the economy (gross national product), about double the level of most advanced countries. Some superpower. To get the economy moving, Abe has proposed a “stimulus” package of 10.3 trillion yen ($114 billion), about 2.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), and pushed the Bank of Japan (BOJ) — Japan’s Federal Reserve — to ease credit. This is familiar stuff. For years, Japanese governments have adopted stimulus plans. Since 1995, budget deficits have averaged 6 percent of GDP; that’s why debt (all past deficits) has exploded. The BOJ has repeatedly eased credit. In 1999, it cut short-term rates to near zero. It has had two episodes of “quantitative easing” — pumping more money into the economy — one from 2001 to 2006, the other from 2009 to now. None of this has restored Japan’s glory days. In the largest sense, Japan is searching for a new economic model. Until the mid-1980s, it relied on export-led growth. Toyota, Panasonic and other multinationals seemed invincible. Exports and investment in new factories provided the main engine of growth. Unfortunately for Japan, developments in the 1980s doomed this model. The yen appreciated on foreign exchange markets, making exports more expensive. And the emergence of other low-cost Asian producers — first South Korea and Taiwan and later Thailand, Malaysia and China — displaced Japan as an export platform. So the growth engine slowed. What could replace it? Japan has wrestled with this question for two decades. “Japan’s [economic] dynamism was exaggerated,” says economist Adam Posen of the Peterson Institute. “In the 1980s, people focused on a few great companies and ignored how much of Japanese business was relatively backward.” Japan’s domestic-based businesses (retailing, distribution, food production and health care, among others) have not powered the economy the way exports did. Stimulus policies have been the substitute. To combat


Beer’s hoppy-ness gets a yardstick

how much perceived bitterness comes from dry-hopping,” says Sam Calagione, president of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Del. In dry-hopping, the hops are added during or after fermentation, on the cold side of the brewery. Those late additions enhance the hop perfume but don’t add an iota to the IBU level. Breweries are also experimenting with new hop strains and new combinations. They’re adding fruit and spice. They’re barrel-aging their IPAs. Dogfish Head is about to introduce Rhizing Bines as part of a promotion dubbed “A Hop Eclipse Now” that will see the brewery host more than 50 beer dinners nationwide. The new double IPA includes a hop known only as Number 644, obtained from Sierra Nevada Brewing, which adds unusual “earthy, melon-rind, tropical notes,” according to Calagione. In March, Dogfish Head will launch still another IPA, Sixty-One, which marries hops with Syrah grape must. “It’s equal parts vinous and citrusy fruitiness,” Calagione says. Not to be outdone, Green Flash this year will roll out six new draft-only IPAs under its “Hop Odyssey” program. A black IPA with piny hops is planned for February. Coming in August is Cedar Plank Pale Ale. The wood aging adds “a peppercorn spiciness and a tannic, dry mouth feel” that augments the hops, promises the brewery’s news release. Boston Beer this month will introduce Samuel Adams Double Agent IPL, an “India pale lager” that combines the fruity blast of Pacific Northwest hops (usually reserved for ales) with the smoother finish typical of lager beers. Haphazardly elevating IBUs can create a harsh, unpleasant brew. It might also be a futile endeavor, as our sense of taste can handle only so much. Shellhammer at Oregon State can tell you the lower limits for perceiving hop bitterness: They range from about 5 IBUs to 13, depending on the individual. But he can’t peg an upper limit because the research hasn’t been done. Silva speculates that once you get past 100 IBUs, your palate loses its ability to detect further gradations in bitterness. Steele estimates that the limit is reached somewhere between 70 and 80 IBUs. Identifying that ceiling is important, insists Steele. Otherwise, “you reach a point where you’re wasting hops: You’re getting nothing out of them.” Kitsock is the editor of the Mid-Atlantic Brewing News. More from Food: Brewed on the mild side DC’s once and future brewers When beer meets rock Beer Column archives


New technology helps doctors link a patient’s location to illness and treatment

device that was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He also founded Asthmapolis, a company that has continued to fine-tune the device. The latest version of the inhaler is equipped with a smaller, Bluetooth-based device that sends usage information to a Web portal that can display when and where patients have used their inhalers. Rajan K. Merchant, of Dignity Health’s Woodland Clinic Medical Group outside Sacramento, began enrolling patients in another Asthmapolis trial last spring. He called the device the first major advance since the advent of the anti-inflammatory steroid inhaler in the 1950s. ‘Place should be a vital sign’ The Asthmapolis inhaler is part of a burgeoning field called geomedicine, which uses geographic information system (GIS) technology to correlate environmental conditions with health risks. The hope is that this data, integrated into a patient’s medical history, will help doctors and researchers fine-tune their diagnoses and treatments. “Place should be a vital sign,” says Ethan Berke, a spatial epidemiologist at Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, N.H., and a family physician. Doctors have long connected place and health, Berke says, pointing to John Snow, often called the father of modern epidemiology for his work linking London’s 1854 cholera outbreak to drinking water contaminated by raw sewage. But today, technology has given them more precise and powerful ways to understand role of location in patients’ health. “I would love it if I could bring up [a] map and see the grocery stores, parks” that patients have recently visited “right there while you are checking their blood pressure,” Berke says. Such information would allow him to better tailor his medical advice based on a patient’s lifestyle.“I can do that now, but I don’t have many GIS tools in the exam room.” Mapping health One of the chief instigators of geomedicine is Bill Davenhall, a manager at the GIS software company Esri. After he had a heart attack that he suspected was linked to environmental factors, Davenhall got Esri to build an app that integrates places a person has lived with a report of toxins found within three miles of those locations. Users can share that information with doctors. Davenhall has been working with Loma Linda University Medical Center outside Los Angeles to integrate geography into patient treatment. Dora Barilla, director of community health development at the medical center, says that it intends by early March to launch software interfaces that


outbreak to drinking water contaminated by raw sewage. But today, technology has given them more precise and powerful ways to understand role of location in patients’ health. “I would love it if I could bring up [a] map and see the grocery stores, parks” that patients have recently visited “right there while you are checking their blood pressure,” Berke says. Such information would allow him to better tailor his medical advice based on a patient’s lifestyle.“I can do that now, but I don’t have many GIS tools in the exam room.” Mapping health One of the chief instigators of geomedicine is Bill Davenhall, a manager at the GIS software company Esri. After he had a heart attack that he suspected was linked to environmental factors, Davenhall got Esri to build an app that integrates places a person has lived with a report of toxins found within three miles of those locations. Users can share that information with doctors. Davenhall has been working with Loma Linda University Medical Center outside Los Angeles to integrate geography into patient treatment. Dora Barilla, director of community health development at the medical center, says that it intends by early March to launch software interfaces that map the health status and local environments of more than a million of its patients. The medical center plans to include on its public Web site information about disease hot spots and other data that until now have been stored in unwieldy databases. The site will also show maps of public resources such as grocery stores and parks. These initiatives seek to reveal how the place where you live affects the quality of your health, and then map out ways to address problems. For instance, soon Loma Linda doctors and case managers will be able pinpoint food pantries and soup kitchens in the medical center’s service area, making it easier to suggest ones near the homes of low-income patients who need to improve their diet. Other geomedicine technologies under development include Health Begins Rishi Manchanda, the founder of Health Begins, says he became interested in geomedicine while working as a primary-care physician in a poor section of Los Angeles, where he linked a patient’s leaky, damp and moldy apartment to her allergy, sinus and migraine problems. Rich Roth, vice president of strategic innovation at Dignity Health and others say they expect to eventually see “place” tools incorporated into electronic records


Charles Lane: The evil that cats do

the study are also invasive: the house sparrow, the rock pigeon and the European starling. In my book, that means every time a cat takes out one of those winged pests, it’s a case of justifiable avicide. But never mind that. “Scientifically sound conservation and policy intervention is needed to reduce this impact,” the study notes. I don’t think they’re talking about federally subsidized tummy rubs. Some environmentalists think that euthanasia may be the only way to prevent an uncontrolled killer-cat population from ravaging wildlife, given the absence of a natural predator. Others recoil at mass cat-killing to cure mass bird-killing. Some animal welfare advocates think the solution is to sterilize feral cats and then release them. A variant is to turn the freshly neutered or spayed felines into “working cats,” who keep rats out of human hangouts, including — in one actual case — a Los Angeles police station. But it has been rightly noted that the life of a stray is pretty miserable, what with the constant threat of cars and disease. Useful as mousers may be, the supply of working cats will probably always exceed demand. Our frontier ancestors surely would have marveled at a society so civilized and affluent that it can have such quarrels. And don’t think they crop up only in the context of cat vs. bird. Controversy rages in the D.C. area about how to control Rock Creek Park’s population of white-tailed deer. The National Park Service recommends a hunt to cull the herd, but critics favor strictly non-lethal means, such as mass administration of contraceptives. For my part, I don’t have a dog in any of these fights. My only semi-serious point is that it is much easier to declare one’s concern for animals, their welfare and even their rights than to act on that concern in a logical, consistent manner. When it comes to these issues, we’re all sort of chasing our tails. Science can help describe issues and inform debate. But it still takes human judgment, leavened by instinct and intuition, to balance the interests of the various species affected — homo sapiens included. Even the Times, in an earnest editorial on the feline “superpredator” study, conceded that, while restocking suburbia with coyotes would help control cats — just as Australia got results by siccing dingos on them — “most Americans will never put up with a burgeoning coyote population.”


President of Mexico outlines plan to rejuvenate passenger rail service

pollution woes, and a way to ensure that foreign investment in Mexican industry keeps chugging along. Tracks clogged with cargo Mexico’s existing railroad network was essentially completed more than a century ago, and today the system is a backbone of the $1 billion-a-day trade partnership between the United States and Mexico. Rail lines link deep-water ports on Mexico’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts to assembly plants in the central and northern highlands, then feed directly into the United States, the world’s most lucrative export market. But with the exception of a few tourist trains, like the Tequila Express in the state of Jalisco and the Copper Canyon railway through the Sierra Madre, Mexico all but eliminated passenger rail service when it shut down the state-run Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Mexico (National Railways of Mexico) in the 1990s, selling off the right of way to private concessions. “Our country needs its trains back,” said Narciso Nava, a lifelong railroad man who got his first job in 1950 operating steam-powered locomotives for Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Mexico, retiring in 1993 as passenger service withered. “If the president puts his mind to it, he can do it.” The broader Mexican public seems to back that sentiment, but criticism of Peña Nieto’s plans might pick up later, once the costs become clearer. For now, the biggest worries come from the big freight operators that are joint ventures with U.S. railroad companies. The north-south corridors of the country’s existing rail network are jammed with doubled-stacked cargo containers loaded with U.S.-bound cars, produce and steel. The talk of adding passenger trains has spooked the companies that invested heavily to form joint ventures and secure government right-of-way concessions after the rail network was privatized. The same manufacturing export boom that is driving much of Mexico’s prosperity — and the desire to restore passenger rail service — could be hurt by having to share the tracks, operators say, with the unintended consequence of diverting more freight back onto Mexico’s highways. “We think passenger trains could be a good idea on certain routes,” said Jose Zozaya, the president of Kansas City Southern de Mexico, one of Mexico’s two largest freight operators and a subsidiary of U.S.-based Kansas City Southern. “But only if it’s not to the detriment of existing freight traffic.” Many heavily traveled rail corridors in the United States and elsewhere are used for carrying passengers and freight, moving people during


Md. ethics panel says delegate should not have tried to silence football player

Brendon Ayanbadejo #51 of the Baltimore Ravens celebrates after the Ravens won 34-31 against the San Francisco 49ers during Super Bowl XLVII on Sunday. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images) A Maryland legislative ethics committee has found that a delegate who used his official stationary to try to silence a Baltimore Ravens player who supports same-sex marriage committed a “particularly egregious abuse of public resources.” But the Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics determined that because Del. Emmett C. Burns Jr. (D-Baltimore County) has already apologized for the episode, there is no need for disciplinary action. Burns, a longtime opponent of gay nuptials, wrote last year to Steve Bisciotti, owner of the Ravens, asking him to “cease and desist” the advocacy of linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo, who spoke out for legislation and a subsequent ballot measure to allow same-sex marriage in Maryland. In a letter to Burns dated Jan. 30, the committee said that under ethics rules, delegates should not use their General Assembly letterhead to advocate for or against ballot measures. “Your use of official General Assembly letterhead to pressure the employer of a citizen of Maryland to suppress the citizen’s right of free speech was a particularly egregious abuse of public resources,” the committee told Burns in the letter, which was obtained by The Washington Post. In an interview Monday night, Burns said he regretted using General Assembly stationery. “It was never my intention to stop free speech, never, never, never,” Burns said. “But I still feel that professional football is not the place to be pushing gay rights.” The delegate’s letter did not have its intended effect. With the additional attention, Ayanbadejo appeared on national television and at a fundraiser with Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) for the same-sex marriage campaign. The ethics committee could have recommended a punishment ranging up to expulsion. But in the letter to Burns, it said further proceedings were not necessary “because you have recognized the error of your violation and have publicly apologized.”


Washington Post Co. subsidiary puts Alexandria warehouses up for sale

Since news of the possible sale of the headquarters became public, some historic preservationists said they consider the building architecturally significant and may work to protect it. The warehouses have taken center stage in a heated local disagreement over the waterfront, with some residents charging that commercial redevelopment of the properties poses a threat to the riverfront’s tranquility and the public’s needs. A new land-use plan Controversy over the waterfront plan has boiled over into the courts. Robinson Terminal sued the city in 2008 over zoning changes that it said could harm the terminals’ value. That lawsuit was resolved, but another suit challenges the area’s new waterfront plan. The Virginia Supreme Court is expected to hear that case by early March. Whoever buys the properties would be allowed to build up to 50 feet high on the south terminal site, according to Faroll Hamer, director of planning and zoning for Alexandria. The north terminal, bisected by Union Street, would have a 66-foot height limit on the western portion and a 30- to 35-foot limit on the eastern section. The city is requiring public access along the water, where both terminals now block strollers, bicyclists and passersby. “We want people to walk there, we want it to be public, maybe retail or other public use,” Hamer said. “The piers will be public.” Neighbors still have concerns. “I think there is still a question of how the sites will be redeveloped,” said Bert Ely, co-chairman of Friends of the Alexandria Waterfront. “We’ve always known and acknowledged something was going to happen there. The question is what. Open space is a form of redevelopment. We would still hope what happens on those two sites will be additive to the waterfront and not detrimental to Old Town.” The Post Co. announced the planned sale four days after saying it would consider selling its downtown headquarters and that it had hired real estate consultants including Studley Inc., which will handle the warehouse sales. Commercial real estate brokers said the properties are likely to attract developers interested in building high-end housing or luxury hotels. The city assesses the combined value of Robinson Terminal North and South at about $30 million. Jayne Shister, senior managing director at Cassidy Turley, said she expects condominium or apartment builders to be the most aggressive suitors. “It’s on the water, on a park, within walking distance to King Street,” she said.


How to lose great leaders? Ask the Army

organization. High quit rates are just a symptom of the deeper problem that too many military members are mis-matched with their jobs. In truth, military officers are only volunteers for one day: the day they sign up. Afterwards, they’re treated with the same kind of inflexible, coercive management that has defined militaries since history began. No electronic “job boards” list openings for the thousands of available jobs in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. No junior officers know where their next job assignment will be, or if it will fit with their interests, strengths and talents. And no commanders are trusted to directly hire the subordinates they feel their teams need. Rather, junior officers are generally limited to rank-ordering the base locations they prefer. Commanders are limited to making a “by-name request” of some officers, but this is more often than not ignored by higher-ups. Labor supply is coordinated with labor demand by large bureaucracies that haven’t changed much since Harry Truman was president in the 1950s. Why does this nonsensical and anachronistic approach persist? The mantra from the central planners in the bowels of the Pentagon has always been that the “needs of the military come first.” That’s dumb. Smart organizations in the private sector have learned that putting employees’ needs first—ahead of corporate ones—only seems unproductive to short-term thinkers. Just look at the way Silicon Valley companies pamper their talent because of how it helps to maximize the bottom line. Compulsion just won’t work in today’s labor market. Unfortunately, most career generals think that only coercion will get fighting men and women to enter a war zone. But that’s an insult to our troops. Many generals in the 1960s warned that without a draft, the Army would never attract enough volunteer soldiers during a shooting war. Iraq and Afghanistan proved them wrong. It is motivation, not intimidation, that wins battles. The military has changed before, and it can change again. As the Army shifted from a conscripted force to an all-volunteer one following the Vietnam War, productivity, retention, motivation and labor quality increased. Today, for example, roughly 97 percent of military enlistees are high-school graduates, which is 17 percentage points higher than the civilian average. And contrary to conventional wisdom, there are three recruits from America’s wealthiest neighborhoods for every two from its poorest ones. Since the 1950s, America’s defense budget shrank from 17 percent of GDP


Washington Post food calendar for Feb. 6-13

WEDNESDAY WASHINGTON D.C. INTERNATIONAL WINE FOOD FESTIVAL: THURSDAY DINING IN THE DARK: SATURDAY COOKING CLASS: SUNDAY CULINARY HISTORY LECTURE: LADIES’ TEA: TASTE OF THE MARKET: MONDAY DIM SUM RECEPTION: TUESDAY MARDI GRAS BLOCK PARTY: ST. JUDE GOURMET GALA: WINE DINNER: FEB. 13 CHEESE CLASS: COOKING CLASS: — Becky Krystal SEND NOTICES to: To Do, Food, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071, or e-mail food@washpost.com, 14 days in advance. To find more calendar items, go to www.washingtonpost.com/gog/dc-events.html and click on “Food Events” at the bottom of the page.


Young Afghan musicians meet American peers in D.C.

F. Kerry dropped in when they performed Monday at the State Department, calling them “ambassadors of peace.” It wasn’t until Tuesday that they met their American peers and exchanged more than songs and pleasantries. “Why was music forbidden?’ asked Timon Lawson, 9, during a question-and-answer session after the traditional ensemble’s performance. Samir Zafar, 14, explained through an interpreter that music was banned during the Taliban’s rule because the militant group believed that it went against the dictates of Islam. “Do you believe in the laws” of the Taliban? another boy in the audience asked. The Afghanistan National Institute of Music began a two week U.S. tour beginning at the State Department on Feb. 4, 2013. John Kerry welcomed the Afghan students on his first official day as Secretary of State. “No,” Samir answered in his native Dari. “Music is a universal language of the heart.” The questions may seem tough for a goodwill tour, but the children, many of whom have no memory of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks or the Taliban’s regime, asked each other questions that pushed beyond the confines of music. The children seemed to enjoy their encounter, learning about each other’s music schools along the way. “I’m very glad I made this trip,” said Samim Rafighzadeh, 19, a tabla player in the ensemble. “Our school is new, and we are just getting organized. It is good to visit a school like this and see what the next step is.” The Afghanistan National Institute of Music “It’s so new to them to see schools where people learn piano, violin and music,” said Allegra Boggess, 28, a piano teacher from Colorado who has been teaching at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music for 18 months. William E. Doar “is the same kind of music school we are trying to create,” she said. Cultural exchanges between Afghan and American youths are a priority on the tour. At the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage on Thursday, the Afghan orchestra will perform with the Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras. Members of both orchestras met at Strathmore for the first time Tuesday to practice for the Kennedy Center concert. The Afghan ensemble will perform with the Scarsdale High School Orchestra in New York and take classes with students from the New England Conservatory in Boston. The meetings give musicians from both countries a chance to compare instruments and facilities. And although thousands of miles