The inevitable blowback to high-tech warfare

Blowback is defined as “an unforeseen and unwanted effect, result, or set of repercussions,” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Are some modern military techniques first employed by the United States coming back to haunt us? It would not be the first time. In a speech Thursday on cybersecurity, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta described as “probably the most destructive attack that the private sector has seen to date” the Shamoon computer virus that in August virtually destroyed 30,000 computers belonging to the Saudi Arabian state oil company Aramco. Did Panetta limit his description in his talk before the Business Executives for National Security in New York to “the private sector” because he knows of the major cyberattacks against foreign governments? What crossed my mind was the Stuxnet virus, which has been described as a U.S.-Israeli collaboration that, beginning in 2009 and for at least a year, affected software associated with Iran’s nuclear program. In February, the Iranian Fars News Agency quoted a Tehran intelligence officer as saying that 16,000 computers in Iran had been infected by Stuxnet. Earlier, there was Flame, another intelligence-gathering virus that focused on Iranian and other Middle Eastern computers. International computer security companies reported that Flame had some of the same characteristics as Stuxnet and apparently the same U.S.-Israeli origin. Should we be surprised that Iran may have been behind the attacks on Aramco and probes of U.S. banks? On Oct. 6, an Israeli F-16 shot down a drone that had flown in from the Mediterranean Sea and over the Negev desert near Dimona, site of Israel’s secret nuclear weapons facility. Five days later, hours before Panetta’s speech, Hasan Nasrallah, secretary general of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, confirmed that his organization had launched the drone it had assembled from Iranian manufactured parts. Two days ago, the London-based Sunday Times reported that the Hezbollah drone spent nearly three hours in the air sending back videos to Lebanon of Israel Defense Forces bases and perhaps Dimona before being shot down. Nasrallah has made it clear that his use of drones isn’t over. “This flight was not our first, will not be our last, and we give assurances we can reach any point we want. We have the right to dispatch recon planes over occupied Palestine at any time,” he said Saturday. In short, while armed drones have for years been a growing U.S. military and CIA weapon of choice


What hot peppers do for a brew

which should be trickling across the country in 22-ounce bottles and limited draft. Preceding SXNW by several years is Theobroma, which Dogfish Craft Brewery in Milton, Del., released in 2008. Brewery President Sam Calagione perfected the recipe with help from Patrick McGovern, a biomolecular archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania who analyzes the residue on pottery shards to determine what the ancients downed for their nightcaps. Examining long-necked drinking vessels from 1400 B.C. that were unearthed in Honduras, McGovern determined that the inhabitants fermented the sugar-rich pulp of cacao pods to concoct a drink that measured 7 percent to 8 percent alcohol. When the Mayans arrived on the scene centuries later, they improved on the recipe by adding cacao seeds (used to make modern-day chocolate), chilies, honey, scented flowers and other flavorings. These sweet-and-spicy libations were “the elite beverage of the Americas, like wine in the Old World,” says McGovern. Theobroma is an attempt to unite various New World traditions, he adds. This “food of the gods” (that’s what the name means in Greek) incorporates cacao nibs (an earthy, bittersweet variety from Askinosie Chocolate, a Missouri manufacturer of specialty chocolates), ancho chilies, annatto seed (which lends the beer a ruddy color), honey and corn. The alcohol content is a winelike 9.3 percent. Calagione has used chilies in several other recipes. Positive Contact, his latest musically inspired beer (Dan “the Automator” Nakamura of Deltron 3030 collaborated on the brew), contains a pinch of cayenne in addition to Fuji apple cider, slow-roasted farro and cilantro. Last year, Dogfish Head’s brewpub in Rehoboth Beach, Del., served El Diablo Verde, an ale aggressively flavored with fresh-cut jalapenos and cilantro. “I get e-mails from craft and home brewers every month asking for technical information on how we use chilies in our beer,” says Calagione. “I think the reason this ingredient is gaining in popularity is that, when used judiciously, chilies can have a hoplike presence in the beer, adding bitterness at the end and complex aromatics upfront.” He’s working on a special beer for a December dinner at the James Beard House in New York that will meld several flavors favored by the master chef, including peat-smoked barley — Beard was a whiskey drinker, Calagione says — fresh-pressed apple juice and California peppercorns. “It’s great seeing the culinary world bleeding further into the brewing world,” he says. Kitsock is the editor of Mid-Atlantic Brewing News.


GE, Boeing to help veterans find advanced manufacturing jobs

Ramp workers stand near a Boeing 787 operated by All Nippon Airways during a maintenance delay at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Monday, Oct. 1, 2012. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren) (Ted S. Warren/AP) Returning veterans seeking employment may soon find new opportunities in the manufacturing sector. Industry giants like General Electric, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Alcoa, and the Manufacturing Institute today announced a collaboration to provide training and support to veterans to help them pursue careers in manufacturing. The initiative, called “Get Skills to Work,” aims to match 100,000 veterans to manufacturing jobs by 2015. The coalition hopes to raise awareness about manufacturing opportunities for veterans who don’t know exactly what they want to do upon returning from service, said Kris Urbauer, program manager for GE veteran initiatives. “Get Skills to Work” will feature technical training programs, online resources for veteran job seekers, and an “employer toolkit” helping manufacturing businesses connect with veterans. To connect potential employers to qualified veterans, the coalition is currently working on an online “badging” system to match certain military codes on a veteran’s resume to the occupation codes in manufacturing jobs, bringing relevant resumes to the recruiter’s attention. The badging system is slated to roll out by the end of this month. Starting in January 2013, classes of veterans will be enrolled in a technical training program at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College, and additional training sites will operate in 10 other states. The program could also help fill the 600,000 currently vacant jobs in the manufacturing sector, according to the National Association of Manufacturers President Jay Timmons. “The problem is manufacturers don’t know how to reach out to these folks, and military personnel don’t know how to translate their skills to manufacturers,”he said. One such Marine Corps veteran recently sent his resume to Mike Haynie, executive director of the Syracuse University Institute for Veterans and Military Families, who is participating in the initiative. The young job seeker had extensive experience with tanks. His resume read: “I can drive a tank, fix a rank, and shoot a tank,” Haynie said. But in reality, “that young man has highly advanced skills in electric systems and hydraulic systems.” To find an appropriate civilian job for his skills, he “needs to articulate that in a way that demonstrates his value,” Haynie said. Follow On Small Business on Twitter.


‘Lava world’ orbits nearby star

the Year contest feature images of the transit of Venus, the Whirlpool Galaxy and other cosmic wonders. Photos by winners and runners-up will be on display at the Royal Observatory’s Astronomy Center in London until Feb. 5. Alpha Centauri B is visible only from the Southern Hemisphere, so the research team studied it with instruments at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. They detected the planet indirectly, by seeing Alpha Centauri B wobble at a speed of about one mile per hour — a sign of a small planet tugging on it. Detecting it was tricky, requiring 450 nights of observation over four years. The new planet’s Earth-like mass marks it as a rocky body, not a gas planet like Jupiter, said Xavier Dumusque, a University of Geneva astronomer and the lead author of a paper published online in the journal Nature describing the find. Dumusque said it’s likely that the planet’s surface “is not solid but more like lava — like a ‘lava planet.’ ” One expert said the finding needs to be confirmed. “Only if other analyses come to the same conclusion can we be sure that this planet exists,” astronomer Artie Hatzes wrote in a companion article in Nature. Udry, in response, said there is less than one chance in 1,000 that the discovery is a phantom of the team’s data. As the closest stars to our sun, some four light-years distant, the Alpha Centauri system has long intrigued astronomers. Unlike our solar system, the system contains three stars locked in a gravitational dance. In the 1990s, astronomers listened to the Alpha Centauri system for alien radio broadcasts but heard nothing, said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in California. Any aliens on the new planet “would have to be devilish and enjoy hot weather,” he said, adding that the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project will probably take another listen across a broader range of radio channels in case other, more habitable planets also lurk in the system. Since 1995, astronomers have listed 842 planets around other stars, according to one catalogue, revealing that most stars have planets. They’ve discovered a likely “diamond” planet, possible ocean worlds and huge, Jupiter-like behemoths too hot to sustain any conceivable life. They have yet to find their biggest quarry, an “Earth 2.0” — an Earth-size planet orbiting a sunlike star at just the right distance for liquid


‘Panda ambassador’ hopefuls compete in D.C.

National Zoo last month, but died a week later. The cub, born to the zoo’s Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, died of liver failure related to an insufficient supply of oxygen. A necropsy showed that the cub’s lungs were not fully formed. “I always wanted to see a baby panda in real life,” Jaeger said, adding that she has a large collection of stuffed panda toys. “No other animal has that effect on me.” Jaeger is hardly alone in her panda fascination. Ashley Robertson, 27, from Orlando, was one of the 2010 panda ambassadors, even putting her associate’s degree in photography on hold to enter the competition. The contest prize that year was $1,000, and she said she took a loan to pay her bills back home while she traveled to China. “Honestly, I didn’t have a doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t make it,” she said, adding that she has a rescue mutt named Panda, even though it’s part pit bull and part basset hound. “I didn’t want anything anymore; that’s all that I wanted to do,” she said. This is the first year that Washington has played a part in the competition. The city was chosen because of the resident pandas at the zoo, who have charmed and entranced the community since the National Zoo received its first Chinese panda visit from Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling in 1972. The 24 semifinalists were selected after applying online and submitting videos showing their panda enthusiasm. On Tuesday, the semifinalists participated in a relay race — dressed at times as pandas — and made their way through the Woodley Park neighborhood to the National Zoo. On Wednesday, among other activities, they were scheduled to visit Georgetown and the Mall accompanied by people dressed in panda costumes. The goal is to interact with the public about conservation. In Chengdu, the contests can be more demanding. Finalists in 2010, for example, had to answer panda-related trivia questions and identify eight different types of bamboo. A semifinalist this year, Melissa Katz, 24, an assistant field hockey coach at American University, first learned of the contest in 2010 but was too busy studying at Monmouth University in New Jersey to enter. She says she has had a stuffed panda since she was born, and her entire childhood bedroom in Tinton Falls, N.J., is decorated with the bears. “My whole life I’ve loved them,” she said.


Labeling GMO food

a whopping majority. Why is this measure so popular? Maybe it’s the creepiness of alien genes being inserted into our food. Who wants to eat a tomato whose grandmother was a halibut? The fact that inserted genes enable some corn seeds to carry their own pesticides, and others to resist the herbicide sprayed on them, does not fuel the appetite. The well-documented news that those genes don’t, in the end, increase yields, that bugs and weeds become resistant to them, and that they contaminate non-GMO crops, does not inspire confidence in the Agriculture Department’s regulation of them. Not everyone believes the bromides the GMO team dishes out. “It’s no different from traditional breeding.” It is. “Organic non-GMO food can’t feed the growing Third World population.” It can. Maybe you learned that lesson from your own productive garden. And maybe you don’t believe the scare stories, either. Food costs will not skyrocket because of labeling. Big companies will take a hit, but things will settle once they give the public what it wants to eat. This label advertises no genetically engineered ingredients on a box of Erewhon Crispy Brown Rice Cereal. Proposition 37, would require labeling on all food made with altered genetic material. It also would prohibit labeling or advertising such food as "natural." (PAUL SAKUMA/AP) Meanwhile, the two sides are busy flinging millions at the issue, in classic election-year style. Corporate agribusiness, terrified by what it has to lose, outspends the pro-labeling side by more than 8 to 1. We’re a little too far east to see lawn signs for this campaign, but it’s being waged, at least, in a food co-op I sometimes visit. A poster hanging there, put out by the Cornucopia Institute, displays the logos of companies that are fighting Prop. 37 and what they have spent so far. Some are organic brands, created by otherwise conventional-ag companies, that can be found on the co-op’s own shelves. On the other side of the poster are logos of organic companies that finance the countercampaign. So you can buy Organic Valley’s milk, Eden’s spaghetti, Annie’s macaroni, Frontier’s vanilla and a Thanksgiving Tofurky to help Prop. 37 win, or you can buy Horizon milk, Kashi cereal, Gardenburgers, Knudsen juice and Cascadian Farms frozen peas to help it lose. It’s information. And with it you can make a choice. Damrosch is a freelance writer and author of “The Garden Primer.”


Montgomery County Animal Watch

These were among cases received by the Montgomery County Animal Services Division. For information on shelter hours and location, adoption and licensing procedures, rabies clinics and low-cost neutering, call 240-773-5960. Disappearing vulture: Duo on the loose: Volunteers needed to foster dogs and cats: Pets available for adoption: Derwood — Compiled by Gerri C. Marmer


2012 Fall Dining Guide: Tom Sietsema’s 40 Favorite Restaurants

The Washington Post Magazine’s 2012 Fall Dining Guide features food critic Tom Sietsema’s 40 favorite places to dine in the Washington region. The Dining Guide is available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/best-bets/dining-guide/2012-fall-dining-guide,105051.html and in the Oct. 21 issue of The Washington Post Magazine. “Readers often ask me what my favorite restaurant is, so I’ve used this fall’s dining guide as an opportunity to share my personal list of 40 places I’m fond of,” said Sietsema. The guide features a mixture of old favorites and newcomers. The Inn at Little Washington, Rasika Penn Quarter, CityZen and Komi all return and maintain their four-star status. Several restaurants in their first year of operation also made it onto the list. Standouts include Little Serow, which garnered 3.5 stars, and Mintwood Place, Rasika West End and Rogue 24, which all earned three stars. Jaleo and Woodberry Kitchen also appear in the guide, rising to 3.5 stars. Online, readers can watch a video of Toki Underground (2.5 stars), see photos of each restaurant, view a photo gallery of some of Sietsema’s 10 favorite dishes from restaurants in the guide and browse reviews by cuisine, location, price and star rating. To access the 2012 Dining Guide, visit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/best-bets/dining-guide/2012-fall-dining-guide,105051.html


Corcoran Gallery began exploring options in July 2011

sites don’t even have the necessary zoning. Not likely, I’d say. But what a kick in the pants.” When Corcoran representatives met with Alexandria officials at their most recent and comprehensive discussion July 30, city advocates described the Robinson Terminal North as an option. That waterfront warehouse and a nearby property are owned by a subsidiary of The Washington Post Co. They are operational storage facilities and are not currently available, said Rima Calderon, a Post Co. spokeswoman. “We don’t know if or when a sale or relocation might occur,” she said. “Robinson Terminal is not currently marketing the properties for sale.” Economic development officials from other jurisdictions say they have heard little from the Corcoran leadership following initial meetings. “We’re kind of waiting for them to get back to us,” said Steve Silverman, director of economic development in Montgomery County. Corcoran executives said their representatives have met multiple times with Victor L. Hoskins, deputy mayor to D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D), or Hoskins’s staff, as recently as Sept. 21. “We discussed Capitol Riverfront, Southwest Waterfront, St. Elizabeths and all of our higher-profile, larger projects as areas that they should consider if they relocate,” said Hoskins spokesman Jose Sousa. From September 2011 through July, Corcoran representatives attended several meetings to discuss a property in Fort Totten in Northeast Washington that Corcoran President Fred Bollerer declined to identify. D.C. officials confirmed that it is the Riggs Plaza Apartments, a 1950s-era complex that is home to many low-income senior citizens. It is owned by the Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, one of the area’s leading charitable institutions — which has given more than $1 million to the Corcoran over the years. The Cafritz Foundation has long planned to redevelop the apartments into a larger project called “Art Place at Fort Totten.” Jane L. Cafritz, a member of the foundation’s advisory board, declined to comment. Although officials in other jurisdictions say they feel somewhat in the dark about the proceedings, Alexandria officials seemed to have a good idea of what the competition would be by the time the Corcoran’s board took its action in early June. In a June 4 memo to Hawkins, Hamer and members of the city council, Deputy City Manager Mark Jinks wrote that he expected the Corcoran to “initiate a competitive site selection process with at least four sites (Alexandria waterfront at Robinson Terminal North, DC Waterfront along


Gart Westerhout, Dutch-born astronomer who helped chart Milky Way, dies at 85

Maryland to become scientific director at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Established in 1830, it is one of the oldest scientific institutions in the United States and was once located in the swampy area around Foggy Bottom— until “slowly but surely,” Dr. Westerhout once noted, “the astronomers were dying from malaria.” Today, the observatory is on Massachusetts Avenue NW, with the vice president’s residence located on its grounds. The institution is most popularly known for its timekeeping mission, as the home of the nation’s master clock. It also is tasked with following the positions of celestial bodies and the motions of the Earth. Gart Westerhout was born June 15, 1927, in The Hague. His mother wrote romantic novels; his father was an architect. Dr. Westerhout became interested in astronomy after seeing his father’s design for a sanitarium for tuberculosis patients. The elder Westerhout had drawn up plans for the ceiling of the recreation hall to be painted with the constellations and the signs of the zodiac so that the patients might have something to look at as they lay on their backs. Dr. Westerhout graduated from high school shortly before World War II ended. He studied mathematics, physics and astronomy at the University of Leiden and received the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in 1950, the equivalent of a master’s degree in 1954 and a doctorate in 1958. In the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen, Dr. Westerhout deepened his research through use of the Green Bank Telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia. Besides his work on mapping the Milky Way, he created a catalogue of radio sources in the cosmos, which include supernova remnants, colliding galaxies and what were later identified as quasars. Dr. Westerhout had lived for three decades in Adelphi before moving to Baltimore and later to Catonsville. Survivors include his wife of 56 years, the former Judith Monaghan, of Catonsville; four children, Magda Westerhout Mobley and Brigit Molony, both of Baltimore, Gart Westerhout of Osugi, Japan, and Julian Westerhout of Bloomington, Ill.; one sister; and six grandchildren. As a young man, Dr. Westerhout fashioned his first telescope from an eyeglass lens and a magnifying glass. It helped him find a degree of comfort during the deprivations of World War II. With the skies darkened because of blackouts, he wrote in a biographical sketch, he “had a beautiful view of the skies.”


Lance Armstrong doping allegations could leave lasting stain on Livestrong

writes: This is a charity that claims to have raised about $500 million for cancer research and services for cancer patients. It’s one that introduced the wristband ethic, which kids, in particular, embraced and have used as a model for countless charity efforts of their own. It will now be known more for it’s founder’s association with drugs and lies. It’s a sad consequence that also serves as a good lesson, for kids and their parents and coaches, too. Fred Bowen, who writes about sports for kids in The Post, said the spectacle has reminded him of a column he wrote in 2007 when Barry Bonds was closing in on breaking the home run record and Floyd Landis was accused of doping to win the Tour de France. In it, he wrote, “Sports are moving in the wrong direction these days. We all need to get our games back — honestly.” He went on to make a point that he reiterated to me today: “An honest effort that falls short must be admired as much as a victory. When we can do that, we will be on the road back to reclaiming what is best about our sports.” While the focus remains of the doping investigation remains firmly fixed on Armstrong, Spain’s anti-doping agency is seeking out those who helped supply Armstrong and his teammates with banned substances and considering retroactive punishment. As the Associated Press reports: Spain’s anti-doping agency says state prosecutors could seek retroactive punishment against those who may have broken national laws during their alleged involvement in the Lance Armstrong doping scandal. The AEA says it handed the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency dossier over to prosecutors to investigate whether charges should be invoked for crimes committed in Spain. Spanish doctors Luis Garcia del Moral and Pedro Celaya and Pepe Marti are alleged to have been key figures in what USADA calls “the most sophisticated doping program that sport has ever seen.” It allegedly helped Armstrong win seven Tour de France titles from 1999-2005 for U.S. Postal Service and Discovery Channel. Former team principal Johan Bruyneel was a Spanish resident at the time. More from Washington Post Sports: As Lance Armstrong loses sponsors, what’s next for Livestrong Lance Armtrong and cheating’s repercussions Armstrong’s former manager fears defense of doping charges could be ‘prejudiced’ Lance Armstrong steps down as head of foundation Nike drops Lance Armstrong Document: USADA’s decision on


Book review: ‘Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic’ by David Quammen

We kept a bottle of mosquito repellent right next to the back door this summer and made sure the balky screen door was pulled tight each time we came in from the garden. Firing up the grill in the evening called for long sleeves, long pants and proper shoes, not flip-flops. The mosquitoes in our corner of Washington have always been thick and aggressive. But this year, with the surge in West Nile virus infections, those critters were downright menacing. The precautions we took were familiar: They were the same ones I followed when traveling to far-off tropical locales where malaria-carrying mosquitoes were a danger. But here, literally in my back yard? This should be no surprise, according to the tale David Quammen tells in “Spillover,” his highly engaging exploration of animal infections and the perils they pose for people. This year’s West Nile outbreak, the deadliest in the United States since the virus was first spotted in New York in 1999, represents the local front in a perpetual global struggle with what are called zoonotic diseases. These are diseases that cross from animals to humans, and they are the subject of Quammen’s inquiry and his many adventures. An intrepid author, he tracks the killers — some with storied names such as ebola, SARS and HIV, others lesser known such as Hendra and Q fever — across jungles and farms to identify the animals on which the germs hide and to chronicle how they make the leap to people. These diseases merit our urgent concern. For one, they constitute the majority of all illnesses that strike humans. More than 1,400 human pathogens have been catalogued, and about 60 percent of them cross from nonhuman species to humans. An even higher proportion of human diseases that have emerged in recent decades, such as SARS and Lyme disease, have their origins in animals. And since the 1970s, the emergence of new zoonotic diseases has been accelerating. If we’re watching for the source of the next big epidemic, look to the animals. "Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic" by David Quammen (W. W. Norton) As Quammen writes, such zoonotic diseases are particularly confounding because they are so hard to eradicate. Over the generations, mankind has notched only a few victories over microbes. The elimination of smallpox was one. For years, armed with a range of vaccines, global public health officials have


author, he tracks the killers — some with storied names such as ebola, SARS and HIV, others lesser known such as Hendra and Q fever — across jungles and farms to identify the animals on which the germs hide and to chronicle how they make the leap to people. These diseases merit our urgent concern. For one, they constitute the majority of all illnesses that strike humans. More than 1,400 human pathogens have been catalogued, and about 60 percent of them cross from nonhuman species to humans. An even higher proportion of human diseases that have emerged in recent decades, such as SARS and Lyme disease, have their origins in animals. And since the 1970s, the emergence of new zoonotic diseases has been accelerating. If we’re watching for the source of the next big epidemic, look to the animals. "Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic" by David Quammen (W. W. Norton) As Quammen writes, such zoonotic diseases are particularly confounding because they are so hard to eradicate. Over the generations, mankind has notched only a few victories over microbes. The elimination of smallpox was one. For years, armed with a range of vaccines, global public health officials have been closing in on polio as well, with the virus continuing to circulate only in a few Asian and African countries. Neither virus infects animals. So when global vaccination campaigns finally eliminate polio in humans, it’s finished. But diseases such as influenza and HIV live on in animals — in water birds in the former case, chimpanzees in the latter — and as long as they do, the bug can again cross to humans and ignite a new epidemic. Identifying the species that act as reservoirs, silently sheltering the pathogens with few outward signs or symptoms, can be a challenge. Quammen accompanies researchers on their hunts time and again. In pursuit of the Nipah virus, which frequently causes fatal inflammation of the brain, he journeys to the Ganges Delta of southern Bangladesh and recounts the efforts on a moonless night to catch flying fox bats in vast mist nets for testing. In northern Bangladesh, he joins a team of researchers at a Hindu shrine atop a hillock overrun by macaques possibly infected with the herpes B virus, which can devastate the human neurological system. The team courageously corners several of the frenzied monkeys in a makeshift trap and injects them


Shrinking the nation’s biggest banks

both parties. But the idea has not fully taken hold in U.S. policy, despite the Dodd-Frank regulatory reform bill’s provisions bolstering bank capital and pushing federally insured institutions out of proprietary securities trading. As matters now stand, the assets of the six largest U.S. banks equal 62 percent of gross domestic product, compared to 18 percent in 1995. These banks service 56 percent of all mortgages and hold 35 percent of deposits. Given that their deposits are federally insured, it’s small wonder that no one quite believes the specter of “too big to fail” has been banished — and that the giants enjoy cheaper access to market funding as a result. At the second presidential debate, GOP candidate Mitt Romney made that very point. The latest call to shrink the banks came from a particularly influential source. On Oct. 10, Federal Reserve Board Governor Daniel K. Tarullo floated the idea of capping banks’ non-deposit liabilities — borrowings they use to finance themselves — at a certain percentage of GDP. Mr. Tarullo’s suggestion was quickly seconded by James Bullard, the president of the Fed’s St. Louis branch. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a Democrat, has proposed a bill that would do something similar, and he has teamed up with Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) to seek higher capital requirements for banks. In short, there is broad support for some form of restriction on the size and complexity of federally insured commercial banks. The problem, of course, is how to translate that seemingly straightforward idea into a workable law. Depending on where you set the cap, Mr. Tarullo’s idea could break up all six of the biggest banks, some of them or none. Critics of the proposal argue that the U.S. economy benefits from having at least a few big players in global finance, which can take advantage of economies of scale and thus provide services efficiently across borders. There is merit to arguments on both sides, but it should be possible to manage the trade-off between whatever benefits large-scale banking produces in the short-run and the risk of future losses to taxpayers if a large, complex institution fails. Recent experience counsels resolving that trade-off in favor of safety. Read more from Opinions George F. Will: Too big to maintain? Sen. Sherrod Brown: An end to ‘too big to fail’ Charles Lane: The Fed’s trickle-down economics Harold Meyerson: More Volcker rules might help


Bernard Kapiloff, surgeon and newspaper publisher, dies at 95

death sentences of the brothers, James and John Giles, and their friend, Joseph Johnson. The Sentinel undertook an extensive investigation of what was often called Maryland’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” case, concluding that the men were wrongly convicted. Their sentences were overturned in 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Giles brothers were freed from prison, and Johnson was pardoned by Maryland Gov. Spiro T. Agnew. Dr. Kapiloff and his brother eventually became the publishers of nine weekly newspapers in Maryland. Several major figures in journalism worked at the Montgomery Sentinel early in their careers, including Bob Woodward and Tom Shales of The Washington Post and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. Dr. Kapiloff and his wife became the sole publishers of the Sentinel papers in 1983, after Leonard Kapiloff bought Washington Jewish Week. Leonard Kapiloff died in 1993. Today, the family still owns two Sentinel papers in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. Dr. Kapiloff often visited the offices and continued to write editorials until suffering a stroke in April. “He had a fierce, independent nature,” Brian J. Karem, the Montgomery Sentinel editor, said. “He believed in informing people, giving them the facts and letting them decide what they mean.” Bernard Kapiloff was born Sept. 23, 1917, in New York City and was a graduate of New York’s City College. He received a master’s degree in pharmacology from the University of Michigan in the 1930s and graduated in 1941 from the University of Maryland School of Dentistry. He practiced dentistry while attending medical school at Howard University, from which he graduated in 1945. Dr. Kapiloff taught surgery at Howard from 1950 to 1972 and later at Johns Hopkins University. With his background in dentistry, Dr. Kapiloff developed a specialty in maxillofacial surgery and often treated babies with cleft palates. Another of his specialties was hand surgery. His daughter said one of his patients was the acclaimed pianist Leon Fleisher, who for years lost the ability to use his right hand. Dr. Kapiloff’s survivors include his wife of 51 years, Lynn Gerstenfeld Kapiloff of Baltimore; three children, Mark Kapiloff of Washington, Michael Kapiloff of Miami and Mimi Kapiloff of Baltimore; and two granddaughters. Dr. Kapiloff and his brother also owned a printing company and built housing developments in Maryland. Dr. Kapiloff was a noted fundraiser for Jewish charities and knew many of the top political and military leaders of Israel.


In Japan, need of fossil fuels pushes climate-change targets to back seat

in Western Europe, but it’s done nothing to curb global emissions, which have risen 1.5 times since 1990. That’s because Kyoto governs nations that account for only 20 percent of the world’s emissions; developing countries, such as China, India and Brazil, aren’t included, and the U.S. Senate refused to ratify the treaty. Japan has come to object to the Kyoto agreement because it doesn’t include the United States and China, which are together responsible for 40 percent of the world’s emissions. Japan produces 4 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Japan will not participate into the second commitment” period if Kyoto is extended beyond 2012, Masaru Sato, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in an e-mail, using the common term of a renewal. Even with aggressive build-up of renewable energy industry, Japan’s emissions levels in 2030 will be about 13 percent higher than they would have been at that same time with full use of nuclear power, according to a June report from the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, based in Kanagawa, Japan. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda promised last week that Japan would undergo a “green revolution,” and environmental experts — skeptical after years of the central government’s nuclear promotion — acknowledge that they see early signs of progress. Most important is the introduction in July of what is known as a feed-in-tariff, in which the government essentially guarantees that utility companies will buy renewable energy at a fixed price over the next 20 years. The policy, already used in some European countries, spurs individuals and businesses to develop solar panels, build wind farms and invest in green technology that they might previously have considered too risky. In the first two months after the tariff took effect, Japan received applications to build 1.6 gigawatts of renewable capacity, more than that generated by a nuclear reactor. In the coming decades, Japan also figures to achieve major emissions cuts with more energy-efficient machinery, smart meters, electric cars and even cleaner use of fossil fuels. Other reductions will come simply as Japan’s population shrinks, driven down by a low birthrate. Japan’s National Policy Unit said last month in a report on the country’s energy future that it still plans to achieve an 80 percent emissions reduction by 2050. “Prevention of global warming is the common challenge of humankind,” the report said. Yuki Oda contributed to this report.


Virginia Railway Express decries potential loss of funding

The Virginia Railway Express has been notified that it may not receive about $10 million in state transportation funding, a development that could mean steep increases in passenger fares. VRE, which serves about 20,000 riders daily on its lines from Fredericksburg and Manassas, was told in a letter from the state that $9.6 million in transportation funding expected from the federal government may not be coming this year. The annual allocation is generally used to pay “track access fees” charged by the CSX and Norfolk Southern rail lines. News of the funding issue came to public light Friday at a meeting of VRE’s operations board. The federal money typically comes through the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, officials said. But officials were notified that because of how federal dollars were allocated this year, the rail agency no longer has the funds available. “This is a very serious issue to our budget,” said Doug Allen, chief executive of VRE. While the money did not come through state rail agency as it usually does, the funds are elsewhere in the budget of the Virginia Department of Transportation. VDOT is controlled by the Commonwealth Transportation Board and led by Sean T. Connaughton, the state’s transportation secretary. Federal legislation eliminated the traditional source of funding the fees, Connaughton said in an e-mail. “The Commonwealth will work with VRE to find a new source of paying for track access,” he said. To ensure that happens, VRE spokesman Mark Roeber said, the agency will lobby Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R), the General Assembly and the Commonwealth Transportation Board. If the $9.6 million in funding is not supplied by the state, officials say they would face several options: reducing service; asking the local jurisdictions that control VRE to make up the shortfall; or increasing fares by as much as 28 percent. A monthly ticket for travel between Manassas and Union Station costs $241. It would jump to $308 if VRE chose to cover the shortfall exclusively through a fare increase. Manassas City Council member Jonathan Way (R) said that VRE shouldn’t push the panic button yet because the funds could be restored by Connaughton or the Commonwealth Transportation Board. “This may be a ghost as opposed to a real problem,” Way said. Fairfax County bordenj@washpost.com


Stanford Ovshinsky, innovative designer of energy-conversion devices, dies at 89

(KATHLEEN WAYT/AP) He had more than 200 patents, but the company he founded in 1960, Energy Conversion Devices, lost money for decades. For years, he was seen as as a quixotic genius who couldn’t translate his ideas from the laboratory to the marketplace. “Ovshinsky has created things that aren’t manufacturable,” a Wall Street analyst complained to Forbes magazine in 1980. “After 20 years, one gets impatient. Where is the product, and where is the profit?” Yet Mr. Ovshinsky’s scientific breakthroughs, coupled with his infectious enthusiasm, kept major industrial giants knocking on his door, checks in hand, betting millions of dollars that his inventions would transform everything from automotive design to home entertainment. As early as the 1950s, Mr. Ovshinsky was proposing hydrogen-based fuel cells as an alternative to the internal combustion engine. He designed the first nickel-hydride batteries, which are now used in hybrid automobiles. Much of Mr. Ovshinsky’s work was devoted to developing photovoltaic solar panels, which could convert sunlight to electricity. He foresaw a time when shingles could double as rooftop solar panels. He also worked extensively on amorphous semiconductor technology, in which the materials lacked a crystalline atomic structure. He developed a process for applying a microscopically thin layer of amorphous material on sheets of plastic or stainless steel, which later spurred the development of rewritable computer discs and digital video discs, or DVDs. Mr. Ovshinsky never attended college and was not affiliated with a major institution or think tank. As a result, many of his ideas were not taken seriously at first. His developments gained acceptance in Japan before they did in the United States, leading the PBS science series Nova to devote a program to him in 1987 called “Japan’s American Genius.” “We’ve tried for years to get American companies interested in our work, but we haven’t had much luck until recently,” Mr. Ovshinsky told The Washington Post in 1986. “Once the Japanese starting coming aboard, the Americans began to take a look.” Mr. Ovshinsky believed that many U.S. energy and auto companies found him a threat to their technologies and their bottom lines. “Of course the oil companies are not very happy,” he told the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1997. “And the automotive companies would like to postpone the day of change as long as they can. “I don’t relish the role of being a prophet in the wilderness. But I recognize that we’re


Deadly meningitis outbreak puts researchers in new territory

Samples of Cladosporium species, left, and Aspergillus fumigatus, two of the fungi diagnosed in the fungal meningitis outbreak sweeping the United States. (HARRISON MCCLARY/REUTERS) The outbreak of fungal meningitis linked to contaminated steroid injections represents a forced march into unexplored medical territory. Most fungal infections occur on the skin and are easily treated. Inhaling fungus-contaminated dust sometimes causes pneumonia in healthy people. Fungal infections in the brain, however, are almost always confined to people whose immunity has been suppressed by AIDS, cancer, burns or organ transplantation. What’s underway now — a new form of fungal meningitis in 281 otherwise healthy people — is an event without precedent. To date, 23 people have died. New cases appear every day; the count went up by 13 on Saturday. In all, 14,000 people in 23 states received injections around the spine or a joint with the anti-inflammatory drug methylprednisolone acetate from three contaminated lots distributed by a Massachusetts company. “This kind of fungal meningitis has not been reported in the medical literature. There is not enough data to say whether it will be more or less responsive to treatment. We don’t know what the outcomes generally are,” said Benjamin Park, a physician in the fungal diseases branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The truth of the matter is that we don’t have any experience with this,” said Arturo Casadevall, an expert on fungal infections and chairman of microbiology and immunology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in New York. Fungal infections of the brain are as feared as they are rare. They come on slowly and are hard to diagnose. They require at least three months of therapy with often-unpleasant drugs. Treatment failure is common. Survivors are often left with disabilities. As events unfold, physicians and public health officials are keeping in mind a cluster of five cases of fungal meningitis linked to contaminated injections that occurred a decade ago. One person didn’t become ill until 152 days after injection. “That’s obviously making us concerned about this outbreak,” said Tom M. Chiller, a physician also with CDC’s fungal-diseases branch. “We want patients and providers to continue to be vigilant and on the lookout for symptoms months after the injections.” The infections are rare in part because most fungi don’t grow at body temperature. Exserohilum rostratum, the organism responsible for all but a few of the current cases, is an exception.


Afghan security force’s rapid expansion comes at a cost as readiness lags

numerous conversations with Wardak. Training experience The U.S. and NATO training command in Kabul did not cut corners to reach the 352,000 goal, but several veteran U.S. officers and civilian experts involved in the force development effort contend that the rapid expansion foreclosed approaches used by the military to more successfully build armies in other parts of the world. The only U.S. troops who have extensive experience training foreign militaries are Army Special Forces soldiers, but the commanders chose not to rely on the elite Green Berets, because there were not enough available units to build such a large Afghan army. Instead, the focus on size drove the Pentagon to assemble a rump squad of National Guard soldiers, reservists and individual active-duty personnel pulled from installations around the United States. The result, said one officer involved in the effort, was “a hodgepodge of mentor teams composed of guys who had never worked together.” The need to expand the force rapidly meant jettisoning other long-held tenets of security force development: small group instruction, careful vetting to weed out infiltrators, and restrictions on creating systems and structures that cannot be sustained once foreign advisers leave. New recruits had their fingerprints and iris scans run through a database of suspected insurgents, but that was largely the extent of the screening. The Defense Ministry and the Afghan intelligence service did not have the manpower to conduct meaningful background checks on so many applicants. Had there been fewer Afghans to vet, and had there been more allied mentors within the ranks, the chances of spotting potential insurgent infiltrators and other problematic soldiers might have increased, according to the officers and specialists who supported a smaller force. “The best way to spot the bad apples is to be constantly with these guys — eating with them, sleeping with them — but we didn’t do that nearly often enough,” said the Special Forces major who worked with Afghan soldiers. Advocates of the 352,000 goal argue that slowing training or building a smaller force would have ceded valuable ground to the Taliban. “You have to start with a higher number of less-well-trained troops just to plug the hole in the dike,” said Mark Jacobson, a former top civilian adviser to McChrystal. “By the time you get those better-trained troops, it’s already over.” But proponents of a smaller force contend it would have been better to have written off


USADA stripped Lance Armstrong’s titles; sponsors fled; fans left to decide

Lampe says, the report made him feel worse for Armstrong, who he feels is being persecuted by the agency. That’s not to say Lampe believes Armstrong won his cycling titles without chemical assistance. “I wasn’t so naïve that I didn’t have an inkling that he was probably hedging,” Lampe said. “Everybody in that sport cheats, if you want to call it cheating. He was still the best; he was beating everybody else who was cheating. And he’s still a miracle with respect to beating cancer and all he has gone through. Look at what he has done with his altruistic work: That is something to be admired. He had the platform, and not everybody who has the platform takes advantage of it.” The allegations weigh more heavily on Lennie Phillips, 39, of Kensington, who has been troubled ever since Armstrong dropped his fight against USADA’s charges in August. “When you stop, it kind of makes you look guilty,” said Phillips, also a cancer survivor. “If he’s guilty, it’s sad to see. He has disappointed a lot of fans. He has done so much for the cancer community. It’s a shame to see all the good things he has done be tarnished by what he did in racing. Whether they go hand in hand — well, that’s for each person to decide.” Over the 15 months that author Daniel Coyle spent in Spain researching his 2005 book, “Lance Armstrong’s War.” He concluded there were two distinct faces of the sporting icon. “There was the way we perceived him in public, and the way he operated inside the sport,” said Coyle, who co-authored cyclist Tyler Hamilton’s recent doping confessional, “The Secret Race.” “All of his teammates regarded the world’s opinion about Lance with a great deal of puzzlement and bemusement. The guy the world saw was not the guy they saw. There was this perception gap.” What created that gap, Coyle believes, was Armstrong’s triumph over cancer after being given just a 40 percent chance of surviving upon being diagnosed in October 1996. “The strongest drug in all of this is Lance’s story: His comeback from cancer to win the hardest event in the world,” Coyle said. “The power of that story drove everything. And he was skilled at telling it. He is really good at controlling a narrative, and he understands how to connect and communicate. He is brilliant at that.”


Nash Finch lobbying for county funding to expand its facilities, services

Wholesale food distributor Nash Finch is seeking help from Prince George’s County and the state of Maryland to expand facilities for its MDV subsidiary and to add more than a hundred jobs in the county. MDV delivers food to dozens of military commissaries and exchanges across the country and overseas. The company is currently shipping 180,000 crates of groceries a week out of its 225,000-square-foot Landover warehouse, a former Giant Food storage facility that sat on the market for more than a decade before Nash Finch leased the property in May. Currently, those crates are filled solely with dry goods. With the county’s assistance, MDV plans to expand its storage and shipping capacity to include refrigerated and frozen products and expects to add an estimated 103 workers at the warehouse. Nash Finch has lined up $12 million in private equity investments and is seeking an additional $400,000 in conditional loans, split between the state and Prince George’s County. Under the terms of the proposal, so long as the company invests that $12 million and hires 100 new employees by 2016, the loans will be forgiven, converting them into government grants. Maryland’s Department of Business and Economic Development has signed off on the package, but will not disperse the funds unless the county matches its $200,000. The request has the backing of County Executive Rushern L. Baker III (D), who visited the site last week as part of a bus tour highlighting economic development projects in the county. During his visit, Baker urged council members to approve the use of funding from the county’s $50 million economic development incentive fund, noting this was the type of venture that could spur other economic development projects in the county. David Iannucci, the county’s deputy chief administrative officer for economic development, said that “this is consistent with so many purposes of the economic development incentive fund. It’s going to bring solid wages for that type of business.” 225,000 Square feet of space currently leased, in Landover, by Nash Finch.


New study suggests moon spun off Earth

A waxing crescent moon is visible in the night sky during the National Capital Astronomers Club monthly outreach event at Rock Creek Park in Northwest Washington. October, 20, 2012 in Washington, DC. (Craig Hudson/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) Two scientists are theorizing that the moon was once part of the Earth and that it formed after the Earth collided with another body. In a paper published last week in the journal Science, Sarah Stewart and Matija Cuk said their theory would explain why the Earth and the moon have similar composition and chemistry. The Earth was spinning much faster at the time the moon was formed, they said, with a day lasting only two to three hours. With the Earth spinning so quickly, a giant impact could have launched enough of the Earth’s material to form a moon, the scientists said in a separate piece published on a Harvard Web site. According to the new theory, the Earth later reached its current rate of spinning through gravitational interaction between its orbit around the sun and the moon’s orbit around Earth. The scientists noted that their proposition differs from the current leading theory, which holds that the moon was created from material from a giant body that struck the Earth. Stewart is a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard. Cuk is an astronomer and an investigator at the SETI Institute, which supports research into the search for extraterrestrial life. — Reuters


Patients should keep doctors informed of their medications and health history

syndrome or even a persistent cough — keep a comprehensive log of the frequency and intensity of their symptoms. “There are a lot of cases where people come to me and I will run a workup but nothing shows up,” he says. “What I have to fall back on is the realization that the test that we have is not sensitive enough to pick up on this malady, and often the only way to get to the bottom of it is with the patient’s symptom diary.” A detailed journal can help you understand that you seem to get blinding headaches about twice a month, and often when the weather is humid, which Montalbano says is much more useful in the diagnosis and treatment process than simply reporting that you get them “frequently” or “every so often.” What don’t you need to know off the top of your head? While being able to rattle off your blood type may provide some clues about your risk of heart disease (a recent study found that those with type AB blood may have a higher chance of problems than those with an O blood type), it’s not considered a necessary piece of information. “It’s only relevant if [you are] giving or receiving blood, “ and even then, by law, you must be tested and typed. It’s also not worth knowing your DNA profile — and shelling out the big bucks to have your DNA sequenced. “Right now, for me as a family doctor, your genetic fingerprint means very little — we just won’t know how to interpret this information for a while — but I think the day will come, and it will come quickly, especially in a place like D.C.,” says WinklerPrins. However, he speculates that personalized DNA data will eventually inform many aspects of medicine, including risk analysis for health conditions and diseases, potential responses to medications, and more. Still, for now, just bringing the basic information to the table can help your dialogue with a physician and result in better care. “Of course, we [doctors] don’t expect that people are going to be able to interpret all of this data on family history, test results and the like,” says Montalbano. “But it’s my job to help patients sift through all the information they bring to me, and then help them make decisions based on their best interest, and not anyone else’s.”


The U.N.’s tireless work gives Somalia a new chance

and hard to dislodge al-Shabab from Mogadishu. Al-Shabab is also on the run in central and southern Somalia, where it has long dominated. Just this month its members were expelled from their last stronghold, the port city of Kismayo, in a joint operation by Somali and AMISOM forces, led by Kenya. Meanwhile, Somalia’s political and clan leaders have engaged in the transition from a tenuous, transitional government to a newly elected parliament and president — the country’s first peaceful handover of power to an elected president in decades. The dramatic contemporaneous developments in the fighting and the political arena present the best potential for peace in Somalia since 1991. Getting to this point has been difficult and costly in terms of lives lost, human suffering and resources expended. The United Nations is often criticized for a raft of alleged shortcomings. I wish these critics would go to Somalia and spend time with folks like our chief engineer in Mogadishu, a Turkish woman who works endless hours to build facilities for U.N. civilian employees and African Union soldiers. The United Nations’ work in Somalia is an example of the organization at its best — years of dogged engagement, out of sight of most of the world, in solidarity with the country’s citizens, often at great risk to U.N. staff. The U.N. presence in Somalia has often made lifesaving differences. This assistance ramped up after U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon visited Mogadishu in December and instructed his special representative for Somalia, Augustine Mahiga, and others based in Nairobi to move to Mogadishu in January. Mahiga and his team played a crucial role facilitating the political dialogue that led to the peaceful transition of government. Because of the work and sacrifices by the United Nations, the African Union and other key stakeholders, and most of all because of the Somali people’s struggles, Somalia has a chance for a decent future. Any alternative is just not acceptable. As President Mohamud told me, Somalia has lost two generations; failure is not an option. At this moment of great opportunity, the world must stand by the long-suffering people of Somalia. While the future is unclear, one thing Somalis can count on is that, as in the past, the United Nations will be with them as they pursue peace and development. Read more on Somalia: Fareed Zakaria: The failed-state conundrum The Post’s View: Coming to Somalia’s aid


FDA says 1,279 providers received other NECC products

update posted Monday on the Web site of the Food and Drug Administration, officials urged health-care providers to follow up with any patient who received an injectable medication from the NECC that was shipped on or after May 21. It gave a list of 1,279 health-care facilities that had purchased products from the NECC, and a 261-page list of those facilities and the products they ordered. The FDA said the lists were based on information provided by the Massachusetts company and may be incomplete or inaccurate. An FDA spokeswoman said states received the lists last week. As of Monday, the agency had received no reports of cases associated with other NECC products. Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington said it had not received any of the tainted injectable steroid medication linked to the outbreak. But it did have other NECC products that hospital officials immediately pulled from shelves. Following the latest FDA guidelines, the hospital contacted about 350 patients who received one of three injectable drugs from the NECC. They include Nubain, a painkiller, and Reglan, an injectable medication used to treat nausea and other stomach issues. The patients were told about the potential risk of infection and were advised to contact their primary-care physicians or go to an emergency room immediately if they exhibited any symptoms of infection, spokeswoman Kristen Peifer Dugan said in an e-mail. Their physicians were also contacted, she said. George Washington University Hospital was also listed as having received NECC products. Spokesman Steven Taubenkibel said the hospital is evaluating whether products from the NECC have been used. At the George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates, a separate entity from the hospital, one doctor had ordered a pure pharmaceutical, not a compounded medication, but “the minute the news came out about the steroid, this physician threw out the drug,” spokeswoman Kathy McGriff said. “It was not administered to anyone.” Other hospitals and clinics on the list said the information was inaccurate. Melissa Ozmar, a spokeswoman for Reston Hospital Center in Virginia, said contrary to information provided by the NECC to the FDA, the hospital’s pharmacy never ordered the two prescriptions in the document. But the Reston Surgery Center, which shares a campus with the hospital, did receive drugs from the company, and those patients were notified, she said. The FDA broadened its warning to health-care providers last week about all NECC injectable drugs because of new cases


Dead deer composted to fertilize roadside plantings in Maryland

Officials say fall is the busiest time of year for crews who remove wildlife carcasses — especially those of deer — from Maryland roadways. (James M. Thresher/THE WASHINGTON POST) At this time of year, it is an unfortunate fact that a deer in the headlights often becomes a highway casualty. What happens afterward is a story of renewal involving wood chips and horse manure, and state workers, such as Tyrone Henderson, with cast-iron constitutions. Every day, Henderson hoists himself into a massive yellow dump truck and checks his list before rolling out of the State Highway Administration’s garage in Sykesville. He is a man on a mission; or, as he likes to say, it’s “time to find the stinkies.” This is the busiest time of the year for the crews who remove wildlife carcasses — especially those of deer — from the state’s roads. The season, known as the rut, is when a buck’s fancy turns to love, which tends to cloud his judgment and survival instinct. The sound of hunters’ guns echoing in the woods gets them moving, too. The first part of muzzleloader season began Thursday, and the Saturday after Thanksgiving will mark the start of the modern firearms season, when hunters will kill the bulk of the 100,000 deer taken each year in the state. “During hunting season and the rut, it’s nothing to pick up 18 deer in a day,” said John Groomes, Henderson’s boss at the Carroll County facility. Last year, local and state officials reported 14,690 vehicle collisions with deer, up from 8,296 in 2010, said Brian Eyler, a wildlife biologist with the Department of Natural Resources. Those numbers fluctuate from year to year because jurisdictions are not required to report those accidents separately. Based on claims, State Farm Insurance estimated that Maryland motorists last year struck 32,675 deer, a 2 percent increase from the previous year. The company estimated that the likelihood of a driver having a collision with a deer in Maryland is about 1 in 120, and the cost in damage and cleanup was more than $107 million. Last Thursday morning, a deer darting across Interstate 83 near Old York Road in northern Baltimore County caused a chain-reaction crash that involved three tractor-trailers and halted rush-hour traffic. All those casualties create a problem for highway officials. “Years ago, we used to dig a hole roadside and bury them,” Groomes said. “But


Japanese plan to complete reactors raises doubts about nuclear phase-out

TOKYO — The facilities — stretching from the northern tip to the southwestern part of the country — were approved years before the triple meltdown in Fukushima in March last year, but construction had been frozen after the disaster. The decision over their fate is seen as a test of how serious Japan is about abolishing an industry that had been the source of 30 percent of its electricity. In the weeks since the nuclear phase-out was announced, Yukio Edano, industry minister, has said three approved but unfinished reactors are exempt from a central provision of the phase-out policy, under which no new plants will be built. Electric Power Development, the utility that owns one of the facilities, responded by saying it plans to resume work this year, with an eye to beginning electricity production some time after 2014. Iida Tetsunari, a leading anti-nuclear activist, called the decision “insincere politics” that was “clearly against the principle” of ending nuclear power. The Mainichi newspaper, a national daily, said: “Many people must surely feel as though they’ve been tricked by a fox.” Some skeptics had already dismissed the phase-out announcement as empty pre-election rhetoric. The target date was vague, and within days the cabinet of Yoshihiko Noda, prime minister, backtracked over implementation. Under pressure from pro-nuclear business groups, it resolved to act “flexibly” and with “constant verification and revision” — hedges that might keep the nuclear industry in business indefinitely. Take a look at some of the week’s best photographs from around the globe. It remains unclear exactly how many new reactors might be completed in practice. One of the three approved units, at Higashidori nuclear station, on the remote northern tip of Japan’s main island, is owned by Tokyo Electric Power, the disgraced and financially crippled operator of the Fukushima plant. Construction is only about 10 percent complete, and Tepco’s problems make prospects for a resumption dim, according to government officials and analysts. Electric Power Development’s facility, in the village of Oma not far from Higashidori, is about 40 percent finished, while the most advanced, Chugoku Electric’s Shimane plant in southwestern Japan, is more than 90 percent built and was supposed to have started operating this year. Chugoku has not revealed its plans for the facility, but has been consulting local politicians over restarting work. In theory, it is possible to reconcile finishing the plants with the gradual phase-out envisioned by


Wal-Mart, Target battle but have much in common

founders. Sam Walton couldn’t have known his discounter would one day become the world’s largest private employer. And the brothers Dayton wouldn’t have guessed that Target would democratize design for an entire country. Instead, they possessed an intuitive sense of what drives every customer, characterized by Natalie Gutierrez, 30, as she browsed ottomans in the Columbia Heights Target a few Sundays ago. “I already have everything I need,” Gutierrez said. “But I always like to come in and see if there’s something I may want.” The booming beginnings In 1962, the Dayton Co. opened its first Target store at 1515 W. County Rd. B in Roseville, Minn. The five grandsons of company founder George Dayton hatched the idea for an upscale discount chain based on their existing low-priced Downstairs Store. “What made them so successful is that they’ve been very clever at executing on their core mandate: They are the upscale discounter,” said Laura Rowley, author of “On Target: How the World’s Hottest Retailer Hit a Bull’s-Eye.” “Bruce Dayton used that language in 1962. The family understood the department store model and made investments in customer service.” And even at inception, customers responded to Target’s friendly and modern atmosphere. “Doug Dayton first heard it called ‘tar-JAY’ in 1962,” Rowley said. The tongue-in-cheek French pronunciation would stick and further the store’s cheap-chic ethos. A few months later, Sam Walton left behind his Ben Franklin five-and-dime franchises to start Wal-Mart Discount City at 719 Walnut Ave. in Rogers, Ark. In the beginning, Walton was relatively cautious while scouting future sites, hopping into a glorified crop duster to survey small towns in the rural South. Wal-Mart wouldn’t grow with its trademark ferocity until the ’70s and ’80s. “He was paying attention to places where nobody else was,” said Alan Dranow, senior director for heritage and marketing at Wal-Mart. “Everyone thought you had to go to urban areas or towns of 50,000. Sam said, ‘I disagree.’ He wanted to serve the underserved. So Wal-Mart grew in rural areas before everyone knew what was happening.” What was it about 1962? Was it the housewives? The novelty of suburban shopping? This seemingly idyllic age would end soon after the consumer carnival began, with the first of the ’60s assassinations and the Vietnam War looming. Still, the four horsemen of discount grew fast and fastidiously, led by Kmart which had 162 stores by 1966. Target founded its


Speeding tickets: Top 10 locations in D.C. Here are the top locations where speeding tickets have been issued, from January through mid-October of this year: 1. DC-295 SW, .7 miles south of exit 1 southbound — 92,441 tickets issued 2. DC-295 SW, .3 miles south of exit 1 northbound — 68,958 tickets issued 3. 600 block New York Avenue NE, westbound — 56,493 tickets issued 4. DC-295 NE under Benning Road northbound — 46,182 tickets issued 5. 1900 block Branch Avenue SE northbound — 40,383 tickets issued 6. DC-295 NE at Benning Road northbound — 35,577 tickets issued 7. 600 block Missouri Avenue NW, northwest-bound — 31,670 tickets issued 8. 2300 block Porter Street NW, eastbound — 18,553 tickets issued 9. 7700 block 16th Street NW, northbound — 17,213 tickets issued 10. 1900 block Independence Avenue SE, eastbound — 16,313 tickets issued Top 10 revenue locations for speeding tickets Here are the top locations for total speeding ticket fines processed in 2011: 1. 600 block New York Avenue NE, westbound — $7,489,582 2. DC-295 NE, .1 mile south of Eastern Avenue — $3,169,554 3. SE-SW Freeway at 9th Street entrance SE, eastbound — $3,136,578 4. 4700 block MacArthur Boulevard NW southbound — $2,452,121 5. 3rd Street Tunnel NW southbound at 3rd Street exit — $2,307,357 6. 3rd Street Tunnel NW northbound at Massachusetts Avenue exit — $2,151,874 7. DC-295 SW .7 miles south of exit 1 — $2,085,827 8. 100 block Michigan Avenue NE, westbound — $1,914,480 9. 100 block Michigan Avenue NE, eastbound — $1,814,078 10. 3700 block Southern Avenue SE, southwest-bound— $1,787,662,662 Source: D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles


Going Out Guide for the District of Columbia, Oct. 25-31

Halloween Zombie Fest, the District’s biggest Halloween party, is Saturday night at the Fairgrounds (Melisa Ackermann) THU 25 Washington International Horse Show “Pygmalion” NSO Pops: Roberta Flack St. Etienne “The Price Is Right — Live Stage Show” Dinosaur Jr. FRI 26 Boo at the Zoo SAT 27 “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” “Platero y Yo” Halloween Zombie Fest SUN 28 Washington International Horse Show “Music of Heaven and Earth” “Invisible Man” “Reckless” Cheryl Wassenaar MON 29 Buika TUE 30 The Great Zucchini’s Halloween party Xavier Rudd WED 31 Electric Six — Compiled by Carrie Donovan from staff reports


Concerts Prices listed where available. Orchestras THE KENNEDY CENTER OPERA HOUSE ORCHESTRA SOUTHERN MARYLAND CONCERT BAND ARS NOVA CHAMBER ORCHESTRA BALTIMORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA NEW ORCHESTRA OF WASHINGTON PRINCE GEORGE’S PHILHARMONIC Wednesday at 8. Bowie Center for the Performing Arts, 15200 Annapolis Rd., Bowie. 301-446-3245. www.pgphilharmonic.org. $20, $18 seniors, age 18 and younger free. NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Chamber Groups ORGANIST CHARLES MILLER AND BRASS QUINTET Friday at 12:15. National City Christian Church, 5 Thomas Cir. NW. 202-797-0103. www.nationalcitycc.org. Freewill offering. ANTHONY MCGILL AND LURA JOHNSON U.S. ARMY STRING QUARTET AMERNET STRING QUARTET ALEXANDRE THARAUD THE AMERNET STRING QUARTET PIETER WISPELWEY AND LOIS SHAPIRO 21ST CENTURY CONSORT LOUDOUN SYMPHONIC WINDS GALLERY QUARTET CELLIST BO LI, PIANIST KUEI-I WU AND VIOLINIST RONALD MUTCHNIK LESTER-NATHANSON TRIO ANNAPOLIS CHAMBER PLAYERS FAIRFAX CHAMBER ENSEMBLE U.S. ARMY STRING QUARTET EARLY MUSIC ENSEMBLE ETHEL DALI QUARTET AVANTI ORCHESTRA OF THE FRIDAY MORNING MUSIC CLUB MARTINEZ-URIOSTE-BREY TRIO Thursday at 8. Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Gildenhorn Recital Hall, University of Maryland, Route 193 and Stadium Drive, College Park. 301-405-2787. www.claricesmithcenter.umd.edu. $40, $35 seniors, $10 students and youth. Choral Groups U.S. NAVY SEA CHANTERS HARLEM GOSPEL CHOIR SCHOLA CANTORUM CORALINA Sunday at 2. The Cuban choir performs. St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, 199 Duke of Gloucester St., Annapolis. 410-263-1906. www.liveartsmaryland.org. $20, $15 children. NEW DOMINION CHORALE THOMAS CIRCLE SINGERS CITY CHOIR OF WASHINGTON WORDS SCHOLA CANTORUM CORALINA HOMETOWNE BARBERSHOP CHORUS Recitals ORGANIST ISABELLE DEMERS ORGANIST J. REILLY LEWIS GUITARIST ZANE FORSHEE Saturday at 8. Owen Brown Interfaith Center, 7246 Cradlerock Way, Columbia. 410-381-0097. www.uucolumbia.net. www.uucolumbia.net/concerts. $20, $15 ages 15 to 23. CELLIST MATTHEW ZALKIND LEON MCCAWLEY ORGANIST SCOTT DETTRA TANYA VEGVARI PLESCIA CHEE-YUN SARAH HAUGHTON ANDRAS SCHIFF CHRISTINE BREWER ANDREJ GORICAR MIDORI JOSHUA BELL Pop|Rock|Folk|Jazz|Etc. JOHN LAMKIN “FAVORITES” JAZZ QUARTET Friday 6 to 9. Westminster Church, 400 I St. SW. 202-484-7700. www.westminsterdc.org/jazz. $5. THE AIRMEN OF NOTE CASEY DRIESSEN Friday at 8. Mansion at Strathmore, 10701 Rockville Pike, North Bethesda. 301-581-5100. www.strathmore.org. $15. LUCY KAPLANSKY NSO POPS: ROBERTA FLACK JAYME SALVIATI BARBARA MARTIN Saturday 2 to 4. Notaviva Vineyard, 13274 Sagle Rd., Purcellville. 540-668-6756. HONOR BY AUGUST BRUCE CASTEEL KURT ELLING SONIA Saturday 8 to 10. Sugarloaf Congregation of Unitarian Universalists, 16913 Germantown Rd., Germantown. 301-208-1437. www.scuu.org/coffeehouse. $15 suggested donation. DRUMLINE 2012 LIVE: BATTLE OF THE BANDS TOUR Sunday 2 to 5. Lil’ JJ hosts the show featuring Wale, Reesa Renee, the OMG Girlz and high school and college marching bands.


D.C. Animal Watch

These were among cases handled by the Washington Humane Society, which operates its shelter at 7319 Georgia Ave. NW, and the District’s, at 1201 New York Ave. NE. For information or assistance, call 202-723-5730 or go to www.washhumane.org. Deer park: Dog captured: A superficial injury: Up on a tree: Dead dog investigated: Adoptable dog: This case was handled by the Washington Animal Rescue League, 71 Oglethorpe St. NW. For information, call 202-726-2556 or go to www.warl.org. Cat allergies: No time for caring: Paws to Vote: Paws at the Park Halloween: — Compiled by Ria Manglapus


Odds of striking deer high in Maryland, Virginia

A four-point white tail buck runs across the entrance roadway to the Bay Ridge Community in Annapolis last year. (Linda Davidson/THE WASHINGTON POST) Picture yourself behind the wheel on a dark and shadowy night, watching the windshield wipers bat away the rain and wondering, “What are the odds I’m going to hit a deer?” The answer would be one in 102 if you live in Virginia. They are one in 114 if you live in Maryland. (If you live in the District, the odds are higher that you will hit a possum.) If hitting a deer never crosses your mind, check to see whether you live in a downtown high-rise, commute on the subway and work in a large office complex. Just about everyone else who drives in the Washington megalopolis gives some thought to the chance of a close encounter with the furry kind, particularly at this time of year, when the bucks and does strike out in search of romance. Sometimes amorous intent requires crossing a road, sometimes there is a collision, and often the bloody aftermath lingers to remind unscathed drivers of the danger. Deer also carry ticks, which can spread the Lyme disease infection. Maryland had 938 confirmed cases of the disease in people last year, and Virginia had 756, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. You’re most likely to have an unfortunate collision with a deer in West Virginia, which ranked No. 1 when the number of incidents were compared with the number of licenced drivers. South Dakota, Iowa and Michigan ranked just below the Mountain State. You’re best bet for deer-free driving was Hawaii, followed by Arizona, Nevada and Florida. With 52,369 deer-vehicle collisions, Virginia was ranked as 10th worst in the nation last year by State Farm insurance, which drew on Federal Highway Administration data to create the rankings. Maryland was 14th, with 34,112 incidents. The District came in 46th, with 495 collisions. After declining for a couple of years, deer collisions increased by 7.7 percent in 2011, to a total of about 1.2 million, according to insurance industry data. The industry statistics indicate that payouts for deer collision claims went up by 7.9 percent, and overall payouts dropped 8.5 percent. State Farm said the average cost of repairing deer collision damage is $3,305, a 4.4 percent increase this year over last. The Insurance Information Institute, an industry group that


Senators call for an end to Volcker rule delay

the health of the economy. Banks should be serving American borrowers, not making risky bets, they wrote. The two lawmakers drafted the legislative language of the rule as part of the Wall Street reform bill known as Dodd-Frank. “Ongoing failure to implement these important protections has left . . . our economy at greater risk of another financial crisis,” the senators wrote in a letter to the heads of five financial regulators. During the legislative debate, Merkley and Levin spearheaded the amendment banning banks from using their own capital to make trades, a practice known as proprietary trading. The provision called for stricter prohibitions than what was initially proposed by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker. Proprietary trading has produced tremendous profits for financial firms but has also been blamed for huge losses during the height of the financial crisis. JPMorgan Chase’s $5.8 billion trading loss this year brought the issue back into focus as Congress questioned whether a functioning Volcker rule could have prevented the event. But critics of the legislation argue that the rule unnecessarily limits some safe forms of trading and will severely affect profit at some of the nation’s largest banks. Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s issued a report this week the Volcker rule could reduce pre-tax earnings for the eight largest banks by up to $10 billion a year. Investment banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs stand to lose the most because a hefty percentage of their revenue is derived from trading. The people familiar with the Volcker debate said the JPMorgan trading loss was the catalyst that prompted the heads of the Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to work together to engineer a final rule. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the other agency involved in the rulemaking, has expressed little objection to the work by the banking agencies. But the SEC has been more vocal in its opposition. The market regulator is concerned about how to define the buying and selling of securities on behalf of clients. It also objects to language in the law that would ban banking entities from buying, owning, or sponsoring hedge funds, private-equity funds and other funds. Officials from two of the banking agencies and the CFTC declined to provide public comment for this story. Earlier this week, SEC Chairman Mary L. Schapiro acknowledged that the agencies oversee different industries


IG report critical of contractor work in Afghanistan, Army Corps of Engineers

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has freed DynCorp International, one of the largest U.S. contractors in Afghanistan, of responsibility for construction at an Afghan army garrison even though long-standing deficiencies remain, according to an inspector general’s report. In a 2010 audit, Pentagon inspectors identified failings at the camp in northern Afghanistan that included “poor site grading” and “serious soil stability issues.” Inspectors returned in March to find “additional structural failures, improper grading and new sinkholes,” the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said in a report issued Thursday. DynCorp, which is owned by affiliates of New York-based Cerberus Capital Management, oversaw the construction at Camp Pamir in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province. The project was part of a U.S. effort to train and house the Afghan army, which is growing this year to 195,000 personnel. “Despite the unsatisfactory performance of the contractor,” officials from the Army Corps’ District North region in Afghanistan “released DynCorp from further contractual liability,” John Sopko, the inspector general, wrote in the report. The company was paid $70.8 million under its contracts, “releasing it from any further liabilities and warranty obligations.” “We absolutely disagree with several of the report’s conclusions concerning the causes for the issues experienced at this site,” Ashley Burke, a DynCorp spokeswoman, said Thursday in an e-mail. “Further, work was completed and this contract was closed out last year, so we are unable to comment on 2012 site conditions that may or may not exist today.” DynCorp turned over responsibility for the site in 2011, and the current occupants have been accountable for maintenance and care of the facilities since then, Burke said. Other contractors were doing additional construction and grading work by the time inspectors returned, she said. The company was still reviewing the report, which it didn’t see in advance of its release, Burke said. Delays at the Kunduz complex hampered training, the special inspector general found in the April 2010 audit. Afghan troops had to be housed in temporary facilities that exposed them to mud, freezing conditions, sewage and unsafe food storage, auditors told Bloomberg News in June 2010. The contract release, in the form of a December 2011 settlement, “appears to be on unfavorable terms to the U.S. government,” Sopko said. Sopko called the settlement terms “questionable” with a “lack of adequate explanation” in a cover letter to Gen. James N. Mattis, head of the U.S. Central Command, and U.S.


Russia charges dissenter Sergei Udaltsov in crackdown

Opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov (left) is escorted from his apartment after being detained in Moscow on Oct. 17, 2012. Russian authorities launched criminal proceedings against opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov on Wednesday, accusing him of planning "mass disorder" in protests against President Vladimir Putin's 12-year rule. (MAXIM SHEMETOV/REUTERS) MOSCOW — The decision to release him surprised Udaltsov, a 35-year-old socialist, and his attorney, who had predicted Udaltsov would join two associates in jail. One supporter suggested that the authorities were hoping Udaltsov would flee the country, which would discredit him and deprive his Left Front bloc of its leadership. If convicted of plotting mass disorder, he would face up to 10 years in prison. Udaltsov and the other two activists were accused based on allegations contained in a documentary that was broadcast Oct. 5 on a Kremlin-friendly television station. One of the jailed associates, Leonid Razvozzhayev, said he was abducted last week in Ukraine, where he was asking a U.N. refugee agency for asylum. He said he was spirited into Russia, bound and chained, and threatened and deprived of food and water until he signed a confession. He disavowed the confession Thursday, as soon as he saw a lawyer. Take a look at some of the week’s best photographs from around the globe. The Ukrainian Security Service said in a statement Friday that it was investigating Razvozzhayev’s claim, which has attracted the attention of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, European officials and the United States. “We are quite concerned about allegations that he was forced to confess, that he may have been subjected to torture,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in Washington. She said the United States is also uncomfortable with Russia’s investigation of a number of activists who took part in a May 6 demonstration, on the eve of Vladimir Putin’s inauguration as president. “We have shared our concerns with the Russian government, including about the Razvozzhayev case,” Nuland said. Analysts say Udaltsov’s arrest is part of a crackdown on organizers of the street protests that began in Russia in December over allegations of rigged parliamentary elections. Udaltsov and his Left Front forces are vulnerable to prosecution, these experts say, because of their heated rhetoric and because the world community may be less sympathetic to them than to more mainstream, liberal opposition groups. Udaltsov opposes capitalism and private ownership of property. Still, liberals have rallied around him since


The Washington Post Presents the Marine Corps Marathon Healthy Kids Fun Run

The Washington Post is the presenting sponsor of the annual Marine Corps Marathon Healthy Kids Fun Run, which will be held on Saturday, October 27, 2012 in the Pentagon North Parking Lot. Over 3,600 children ages 5-12 participate in the one-mile just-for-fun event. All participants receive a t-shirt, medal and snacks at the finish line. Kids can also meet Ned the Newshound, The Washington Post’s mascot, at the race as he cheers on the young runners and participates in the mascot race. For more information on the Healthy Kids Fun Run presented by The Washington Post, including parking information, visit: http://www.marinemarathon.com/MCM_Weekend/Healthy_Kids_Fun_Run.htm


Lance Armstrong’s fall: A case for allowing performance enhancement

Cycling legend admits he doped to win all seven Tour de France races but said at the time he “viewed it as a level playing field.” In the past month, cyclist Lance Armstrong has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. His commercial sponsors, including Nike, have fled. He has resigned as chairman of Livestrong, the anti-cancer charity he founded. Why? Because the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and the International Cycling Union say he artificially enhanced his performance in ways not approved by his sport and helped others on his team do the same. This may seem like justice, but that’s an illusion. Whether Armstrong cheated is not the core consideration. Rather, his case shows that enhancement is here to stay. If everyone’s enhancing, it’s a reality that we should embrace. Look at any sport. People are running, swimming and biking faster and farther; linemen are bulkier than ever; sluggers have bigger muscles and hit more home runs. This might be due to better nutrition. Perhaps it is a result of legally prescribed drugs. Heck, it might simply be because of better training. But illegal enhancement has never been more evident or more popular. Moreover, enhancement science — pharmacology, nanotechnology, biotechnology and genetics — is more sophisticated than ever. A recent Nature article, for example, discusses oxygen-carrying particles that could be inserted in athletes’ blood and DNA therapies that could enhance muscle performance. In an earlier time, rules limiting the use of such technology may have been a brave attempt to prevent cheating. Now, they are increasingly ineffectual. Humans are becoming a design space. That athletes are on the cutting edge of this engineering domain is neither a prediction nor a threat. It is the status quo. Get over it. Professional athletes didn’t always make big bucks, so when enhancement techniques were primitive, the payoff wasn’t necessarily worth the health risks. And with less demand, there were fewer nerds in fewer laboratories creating enhancement technologies. Anabolic steroids, for example, weren’t developed until the 1930s. Can you imagine Babe Ruth using a low-oxygen chamber that simulated a high-altitude environment to increase his red-blood-cell count and improve his respiratory system’s efficiency? That’s just one new way a player can get an edge. Today, the gap between superstar athletes and almost-stars is rapidly growing. The benefits of being at the top of your game — money, sponsors, cars, houses, movie careers, book


Marine Corps Marathon runner battles brain cancer — and keeps competing

BethAnn Telford continues her marathon career despite suffering from brain cancer. She will run in this Suday's Marine Corps marathon. (John McDonnell/THE WASHINGTON POST) Just 10 days after she completed the Ironman Triathlon in Kona, Hawaii, BethAnn Telford was back at work at the U.S. Government Printing Office in Washington, where each time she emerged from her office, she earned a new admirer. Colleagues, security guards, guests in the building — all peppered the 43-year-old special events coordinator with congratulations for finishing one of the world’s toughest races. Many just stared at her in amazement. “Damn, that’s farther than a drive to Richmond,” said one woman, marveling at the 140.6 miles Telford covered in the swim-bike-run competition. “I can’t even imagine.” Telford’s joy in the accomplishment was tempered by the pain behind her left eye. The brain tumor she has lived with for eight years hurt more than usual. It had been acting up since she finished the Ironman race Oct. 13, and the cabin pressure on the flight home from Hawaii hadn’t helped. Sometimes the tumor caused wave after wave of fatigue, slurring and memory loss. But none of that will be enough to stop her from competing in Sunday’s 37th Marine Corps Marathon. It will be an emotional day for many of the race’s participants, some of them U.S. military veterans wounded overseas. It will be Telford’s 11th consecutive Marine Corps Marathon, a race that took on new meaning in 2004. That year, as she cleared Hains Point, between mile marker 18 and 19 on the course, she felt a pop in her head. Something detonated, and Telford’s vision went blurry. When she looked up at the sky to clear her head, the only image that sticks in her mind was a light post that was set alongside the path. “I wiggled my head around, almost like it was a severe headache, where you start seeing stars. I saw that light post,” she said. She finished the race, but barely. In the days that followed, she began to run into furniture in her Fairfax home because she forgot where it was. Then seizures set in. Doctors soon found a large tumor behind Telford’s left frontal lobe, an egg-shaped growth wrapped around a major blood vessel in the brain. “She was in her 30s at the time. You don’t think something this catastrophic is going to happen . .


DC Brau gets its hands on the hottest hop

master at San Diego’s Stone Brewing. “It’s a unique hop, but it still retains some of the characteristics of the classic American hop with the big citrus flavor. What seems to be particularly hot right now is the resinous, oily character, and Citra has that. It also is not harsh.” The variety, developed in 1990, didn’t become prominent until 2009, when Sierra Nevada Brewingreleased Torpedo Extra IPA, the first well-known beer to feature it. This long gestation and the sudden success that followed are hallmarks of a hop breeding industry that resembles both laboratory science and runway fashion. On one hand, commercialized hops result from field trials in Oregon and Washington, the two main hop-growing states in America, involving tens of thousands of genetically distinct specimens and often taking at least a decade. On the other, the few superstar hops that survive this process — including not only Citra, but also Simcoe and Amarillo — often become the new IPA flavor of the week (or the next several years). For now, though, the Citra craze isn’t abating. Sierra Nevada brew master Steve Dresler says his production of Torpedo, the country’s best-selling IPA, has grown by about 60 percent this year, while the brewery’s overall production is up about 8 percent. The hop is also a favorite of boundary-pushing artisans such as Gabe Fletcher of Alaska’s Anchorage Brewing, which uses the hop in its Love Buzz Saison and Bitter Monk Belgian-style IPA. Closer to home, Citra is responsible for the popularity of the Orange Whip IPA brewed by Mad Fox Brewing in Falls Church. “The Citra flavors just meld so nicely with the caramel malts,” Chief Executive Bill Madden says. Like Mad Fox and DC Brau, the District’s3 Stars Brewing has experimented with Citra. A recent batch of harvest ale included 70 pounds of the freshly picked hop, rather than the more common dried form. Citra’s tight supply relative to the outsize demand translates to a simple imperative for consumers: If you see a locally brewed beer made with Citra, pounce. It might not be available for long. The 3 Stars harvest ale features delicate notes of litchi, orange and honey. DC Brau’s For Others has a bolder aroma, with juicy citrus, mango, pineapple and even a hint of onion. Meanwhile, Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo is always available. The smell is a classic, appetizing Citra mixture of orange and tropical fruit, and


Five myths about marathons

strong. The only time Ryan came close to hitting the wall was in the last stages of the 2012 Olympic Trials Marathon. He had an upset stomach from taking strong anti-inflammatory medications for a foot injury. Because his stomach didn’t want any Cytomax drinks and he wasn’t finishing his bottles, he started getting dizzy and his muscles fatigued in the final miles. Fortunately, however, he was able to maintain second place and secure his second Olympic berth. 5.U.S.-born marathoners will never beat the Kenyans. As a whole, Kenya clearly has the most marathon talent compared with any other country in the world, based on annual top race times. However, in the past three Olympic Games, only one of the six gold medalists in the men’s and women’s marathons was Kenyan. The other champions were from Italy, Japan, Romania, Ethiopia and Uganda. There have also been winners, including Americans, in the World Marathon Majors — a series of five annual races in Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London and New York— who have beaten a strong contingent of Kenyan runners. Ryan has placed as high as third at one of the World Marathon Majors, ahead of many talented Kenyans, so it is possible to compete with even the best Kenyan runners. He hopes to learn more about what makes the Kenyans so successful when he goes to Kenya’s Rift Valley to train this winter. outlook@washpost.com Read more from Outlook: Five myths about the bin Laden raid Five myths about political polls Five myths about Latino voters Friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Ryan Hall and Sara Hall are professional runners for Asics and co-founders of the Hall Steps Foundation, which brings health care to underserved communities worldwide. Ryan is a two-time Olympic marathoner and holds the fastest American marathon time at 2:04:58. Sara is the Pan American gold medalist in the steeplechase. On Sunday, about 30,000 people will participate in the Marine Corps Marathon, a 26.2-mile race that winds through Washington and Arlington. Every marathon course is challenging for a different reason: New York’s is known for the bridges that connect the city’s five boroughs. Boston’s is famous for its tough hills. And the Marine Corps Marathon is notorious for its uphill finish. As professional runners, we’ve learned a lot about how best to train for marathons, who runs them, why they’re so popular — and which myths deserve debunking.


As candidates promise a crackdown, China’s advantage erodes in a key area

Two years after China limited its exports of “rare earth minerals,” unnerving developed countries that depended on them for industrial uses, production is expanding at sites outside China. And as new sources of rare earth minerals have appeared, that has meant new jobs — including in the tiny town of China Grove, N.C., where Japan’s Hitachi Metals is planning to produce high-tech magnets from rare earth minerals. The Hitachi plant and its 70 new manufacturing jobs are a small example of how market forces can sometimes undercut China’s trade clout. In recent years, China has dominated the production of these magnets, in part because the country has had a virtual monopoly on the mining and refining of the rare earth elements used in their production. There are 14 rare earth minerals commonly used in industrial applications. The elements are difficult to find in concentrations that can be commercially exploited. They provide, for example, the illumination in night-vision goggles. A fraction of a gram of elements such as dysprosium or Europium provide the colors that light up the screen of a smartphone. A hybrid car might contain 40 pounds or more of rare earth magnets — lighter and more powerful than traditional iron-based magnets — in the battery-based power chain or small motors that run power windows, seats and other accessories. Hitachi Metals produces magnets that it hopes to sell to the makers of hybrid and electric cars. “Just like any other supplier, we are trying not to be dependent on Chinese sources,” said Koshi Okamoto, executive director of New York-based Hitachi Metals America. “Reliable sources of supply are clearly one of the top priorities.” North Carolina Secretary of Commerce J. Keith Crisco said that when the state was in talks with Hitachi about expanding, company officials said their other option was to make the magnets in China. “We need to be good partners [with the Chinese]. Not pansies; good partners,” Crisco said. “They are a major economic force.” Alarmed over Chinese restrictions on rare earth exports, the United States, the European Union and Japan filed a World Trade Organization complaint alleging that China was using its monopoly over the minerals as a political and economic weapon — for instance, to punish Japan over its claims to contested islands in the South China Sea and to entice companies to relocate factories inside China by offering a cheaper supply of rare earth