Army to charge Robert Bales with murder in killing of Afghan civilians

The military will charge Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales with 17 counts of murder stemming from a massacre of Afghan villagers, a U.S. official said Thursday. Bales, 38, will be formally charged Friday, the official said. He has been detained at a maximum-security military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., for the past week. The killings are considered the worst U.S. atrocity of the Afghan war and have roiled relations between the United States and Afghanistan at a time when American commanders are seeking to stabilize the country in preparation for an eventual U.S. exit. President Obama has promised to hold accountable “anyone responsible” for the killings. The murder charges indicate that Army prosecutors have concluded that the slayings were premeditated and that Bales was fully aware of his actions, but Bales’s civilian attorney has said that his client does not remember much about what happened in the pre-dawn hours of March 11. Military officials have said Bales walked off a small combat outpost in Kandahar province and killed 17 villagers, most of them women and children, and later walked back to his base and turned himself in. Authorities had previously said 16 Afghans were killed and several others critically wounded. They said the death toll has since risen to 17. Although Afghan President Hamid Karzai relies on the U.S. and NATO military coalition to hold the Taliban-led insurgency at bay, he referred to foreign troops as “demons” after the massacre. He also demanded that they withdraw from villages across the country, which would upend the U.S. military’s counterinsurgency strategy. Bales will also be charged with six counts of attempted murder and aggravated assault in the woundings of six other villagers, as well as dereliction of duty, said the U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the charges were not yet filed. Bales’s attorney, John Henry Browne of Seattle, could not be reached for comment. The attacks came at a time of evaporating trust between the U.S. military and its Afghan allies. In January, an Internet video depicted U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters. Soon after, American troops burned copies of the Koran and other holy texts, an apparently inadvertent act that sparked widespread riots. Meanwhile, Afghan soldiers and others have stepped up treacherous attacks on U.S. troops, including the slaying of two U.S. officers assigned to the high-security Afghan Interior Ministry. Last week, an Afghan


As details of massacre emerge, Afghan man who lost 11 relatives says: ‘We want justice’

KABUL — Wazir, 35, said he did not believe that a military trial in the United States could ever bring justice. “This is not acceptable for us,” Wazir, said in an interview Friday from the Afghan town of Spin Boldak. “We want him to be tried in Afghanistan, in our presence.” A farmer and trader, Wazir lived in a mud home in Najeeban, one of the two tiny villages in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province that Bales allegedly targeted during the early morning hours of March 11. Also shot and killed in Wazir’s home were his brother, his brother’s wife and their child, according to Wazir and other villagers. At the time of the attack, Wazir was in Spin Boldak, about 85 miles south, with his 4-year-old son, Habib Shah. Habib is now his only surviving child. One other person was killed in Najeeban, according to accounts provided by locals. But that person’s name was not readily available. Four others apparently were killed in Alokozo, a neighboring village of 20 homes. Samisami-Ullah, a 30-year-old farmer, identified those victims as his mother, uncle and two cousins. Three others in his family were wounded, he said, along with three from his neighbors’ families. Five of the six wounded were transported to a U.S. military hospital, where three victims remain. One girl, superficially wounded, was treated at a local hospital, villagers said. To date, the U.S. military has not contacted any witnesses or those who lost relatives, said Wazir, provincial officials and others who have talked to the massacre victims’ families. “None of them have come to investigate, or to talk to us, or seen the village,” Wazir said angrily. “We want justice.” Two others from the Panjwai district said they could vouch for Wazir’s account of the staggering death toll in his family. “I saw the scene; 11 people were killed in one house, in different locations, and then brought in one room and were burnt,” said Fazl Mohammad, deputy head of the Panjwai district council. “I saw blood, flesh and brains.” Jan Agha, a farmer who along with Mohammad was one of the first to arrive at the shooting sites and talk to witnesses, said Wazir “lost all of his family, apart from his son who was with him during the killings." It remained unclear in Afghanistan why a 17th murder charge was added when the tally of dead from


neighbors’ families. Five of the six wounded were transported to a U.S. military hospital, where three victims remain. One girl, superficially wounded, was treated at a local hospital, villagers said. To date, the U.S. military has not contacted any witnesses or those who lost relatives, said Wazir, provincial officials and others who have talked to the massacre victims’ families. “None of them have come to investigate, or to talk to us, or seen the village,” Wazir said angrily. “We want justice.” Two others from the Panjwai district said they could vouch for Wazir’s account of the staggering death toll in his family. “I saw the scene; 11 people were killed in one house, in different locations, and then brought in one room and were burnt,” said Fazl Mohammad, deputy head of the Panjwai district council. “I saw blood, flesh and brains.” Jan Agha, a farmer who along with Mohammad was one of the first to arrive at the shooting sites and talk to witnesses, said Wazir “lost all of his family, apart from his son who was with him during the killings." It remained unclear in Afghanistan why a 17th murder charge was added when the tally of dead from the beginning has been given as 16. U.S. military authorities on Thursday said the toll has since risen to 17, but did not explain the discrepancy. More information was expected late Friday. Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, said none of the five people wounded in the shootings has died. He also ruled out the possibility that one of the slain women was pregnant. According to villagers, neither NATO nor U.S. forces have yet offered any compensation for the civilian deaths. As is practice when civilians are killed either by coalition or insurgent forces, President Hamid Karzai has paid families in Panjwai about $2,000 for each victim. Wazir confirmed that he had received that sum for each of the 11 in his family who died, but said he did not consider the money compensation for human loss. He said it was a charitable payment to cover burial expenses and other immediate needs. Survivors contend that the killings had to be the work of more than one soldier, a claim supported by Karzai after he met last week with relatives of those killed. Samisami-Ullah said that wounded relatives told him, “There were 10 soldiers in our neighborhood


Hawaii bird-watching: A land of unusual, and often endangered, species

which it shares a zippy pace, it actually lands to feed on the flowers. Jeffrey described watching these birds as a series of three-second sightings. The pattern, he said with a metronome beat, is: “There it is, there it is, there it goes.” Even though we were sitting in the open and chatting, the birds came closer and closer as they got used to us. Soon we spotted an ‘i’iwi with orange-red plumage. Its beak, a pale orange, curved to dip perfectly into the spray of stamens that form the blossom. The ‘i’iwi paused, then extended its neck to sing with full-bodied earnestness — operatic vigor in a tiny package. An even smaller velvety yellow-green bird appeared in an adjacent tree. Like some sort of yoga master, the amakihi seemed to effortlessly bend itself backward as it looked around. It also seemed unaffected by gravity, dashing 180 degrees around a twig to get to a blossom. When the flowers are out, the various honeycreepers spend their days working a nectar circuit, sipping from one and then moving to the next, returning when the flowers have refilled. As we ate our sandwiches and watched the midday clouds settle in, Jeffrey explained how the islands’ isolation allowed for unique evolutionary relationships. In the millions of years between the time when the Hawaiian Islands burbled up from the seafloor and the Polynesians landed (around 1,400 years ago), the pattern was that a new species of plant or animal arrived every 50,000 to 60,000 years, drifting in via air or on ocean currents. There’s something spectacular about the tenacity and durability of life that changed those lumps of cooled lava into a set of unique ecosystems, but a key element was time, which allowed for often quirky adaptations. Birds, not insects, are the key pollinators for many plants. Bats were the only mammals on the islands, so the nettles lost their spikes, not needing a defense against herbivorous grazers. Similarly, the islands’ 54 varieties of mint lost their strong mint flavor, which, ironically, given its appeal to humans, is a defense against being eaten. Nowadays 10 to 20 nonnative species are introduced to the islands every year through the everyday flow of people and goods from the rest of the world. This has left the Hawaiian ecosystems rather battered. After several peaceful hours of talking and watching, we saw one amakihi landing on a


The U.S. military doesn’t know who is fit to fight

traumatic brain injury. Since 2009, the Defense Department has spent millions of dollars on ANAM4 — Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics, Version 4 — the standard measure of brain injury for troops returning from combat. But ANAM has serious shortcomings. Developed by military researchers in the 1980s, it has been used to select pilots and astronauts, but was not intended as a diagnostic test for concussions or any other neurological disorder. ANAM and other psychological tests are useful but not definitive. They help identify particular problems, such as dementia, in up to 80 percent of cases, but the questionnaires are subjective, even when administered by professional psychologists. Clinicians should rely on psychological tests such as ANAM to supplement examinations — not to diagnose. Other factors complicate the psychological testing of soldiers. Psychiatrists at Washington’s Madigan Army Medical Center — located on Bales’s home base — may have changed PTSD diagnoses to save money. Meanwhile, the murky background of new recruits — some who have mental illness, have been on medication and had concussions we don’t know about — complicates assessment. Psychologists can’t always immediately identify a private’s ability to cope with training and combat. There are no good tools to discern predisposition to emotional stress or assess for a history of concussions. Soldiers fight a battalion of stresses: life-or-death missions, colleagues killed or badly injured, chronic aches from carrying heavy loads, disturbed sleep patterns, exposure to foreign toxins, and explosions that shake the body and the brain. No tests adequately account for every issue. Questionnaires can’t distinguish between medical problems caused by IEDs, shock, drug and alcohol abuse, or diseases that affect thinking and behavior. Using surveys to evaluate men and women before and after their service doesn’t offer a clear picture of the whole person or of the circumstances leading to their injury. What would be better than the outdated method we use? According to some, only electroencephalogram (EEG) tests, which measure brain waves, or diffusion tensor imaging, a specialized MRI, can detect specific evidence of a brain injury. EEGs are inexpensive, take less than an hour and can be done outside of hospitals. More sophisticated radiological testing is expensive and time-consuming, but can yield worthwhile information. ANAM’s subjective self-reports are no match for physiological data for diagnosing damage to the brain. Still, some may argue that the cost of definitive screening is prohibitive. That is a red herring. Refitting


Murray Lender, the man who brought bagels to the masses

Murray Lender kisses the world's largest bagel while baker Larry Wilkerson, left, and Lender's Bagel Bakery manager Jim Cudahy watch after the weight of the bagel was revealed during Bagelfest in Mattoon, Ill. (DOUG LAWHEAD/AP) Only Lender’s, with Murray Lender as chief executive, saw the future. Lender’s became the first bakery to mass-produce and freeze bagels. By the late 1960s, the company produced thousands a day to be sold across the nation. Bagels became a reality in corners of the country where they had previously been a rumor, a whisper in the wind off New York Harbor. The union tried to fight back, but it was too late. It shriveled and Lender’s kept growing, shaping the bagel literally and metaphorically. By the end of the 1970s, more than 80 percent of the million bagels made each day by Lender’s were sold to non-Jewish households. Americans of all stripes knew and loved bagels. But what about the taste? At first the bagel machine had an unintended consequence: The dough gummed up the works, so it was changed to be less sticky. Then it turned out that, to sell bagels to people around the country, it helped to make them taste like white bread. Then people wanted “flavors.” Murray Lender’s bagel was very different from what his father would have made in the old country. In 1997, Eric Asimov described in the New York Times the Lender’s Line, an “informal border” between those who eat supermarket bagels and those who know better. And just this month, when Consumer Reports announced that Lender’s Original was one of the best bagels available, the New York Post lashed out at the foolishness of such an idea. But Murray Lender is not a villain. His frozen toroids opened the door for the proliferation of bagel shops. Consumers across the world met the bagel through Lender’s and later demanded hot, fresh, New York-style bagels. And in the towns where those shops are yet to open, they still have Lender’s. New Yorkers can be proud of their bagel heritage and still recognize that Lender was a bagel big shot. Barry Ansel, a close friend of the Lender family and vice president of sales at Lender’s from 1976 to 1994, told me years ago, when I started researching the history of the bagel, that Murray Lender’s genius was to convince the world that bagels were a good alternative to


Area businesses finding opportunities south of the border

Local Business Development, started this month with $800,000 in grant money from the Small Business Administration and D.C. government. The new office is to offer technical assistance and provide support for small businesses to participate in trade missions. “Businesses that are new to exporting really need assistance with making contacts, and we can provide help through the U.S. embassies overseas,” LaCrosse said. “We do some pre-qualifications to make sure they are meeting the right business partners and buyers.” Importers score big with Latin American food Having business relationships in Latin American markets can be equally beneficial for exporting and importing, as Melissa Berthier can attest. Her husband, Alfonso, not only had family connections in Mexico, but had developed business contacts while working in sales for Mexicana Airlines. That gave the Chevy Chase couple a running start when they began importing tortillas from Mexico in 2009 to sell to Hispanic grocery stores in the Washington area. By the following year, demand was so strong that the couple began selling items online at LatinBag.com. Now, there are more than 1,000 grocery items from all over Latin America sold on the Web site. Goods are housed in warehouses in Landover and Rockville, where four workers manage logistics. “We sell products that remind people of their childhood in Peru or Mexico or Bolivia,” Berthier said. She estimates Latin Bag takes in 1,500 orders a quarter, and obtains goods from 30 distributors across the United States. While Berthier would not disclose figures, she said sales are up and the company is profitable. Revenue from the business is being used to grow operations. Pastor Payllo had to hire more people at his facility in Vienna to fulfill orders for El Ciebo products last year. The number of stores carrying the Bolivian chocolate bars and drinks nearly doubled from 40 to 75 in nine states in 2011. The El Ciebo brand already had cachet when Payllo and his wife, Carmen Segales, began distributing the products of their home country in the United States and Canada two years ago. The chocolate company has been run as a cooperative for more than four decades, with products only available in exclusive boutiques. Now, Payllo is negotiating a distribution deal with Whole Foods, after a chance encounter with a representative at the Hispanic Chamber Expo. He anticipates needing about $500,000 in financing to keep with orders, if the deal goes through.


Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales charged with murdering 17 Afghans

The U.S. military charged Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales on Friday with murdering 17 Afghans during a village massacre this month but did not shed light on a possible motive for the worst U.S. atrocity of the decade-long war. Bales, 38, a member of an infantry unit and the married father of two young children, was formally presented with the charges at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he is being held in a maximum-security military prison. In a statement from Kabul, the U.S. military said Bales was also charged with assaulting and attempting to murder six other Afghan civilians during a rampage in the early morning hours of March 11. Most of the dead were women and children, and some of the bodies were burned, U.S. and Afghan officials have said. Col. Gary Kolb, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, said Bales is alleged to have walked off base armed with a 9mm pistol and an M-4 rifle with a grenade launcher. The U.S. military released charging documents in the case but redacted the names of victims in the shootings. Military officials have not provided a timeline of the events surrounding the killings or offered a motive for the alleged crimes. The massacre, in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province, has roiled relations between the United States and Afghanistan at a time when American commanders are seeking to stabilize the country in preparation for an eventual U.S. exit. President Obama has promised to hold accountable “anyone responsible” for the killings. In its statement, the military said Bales acted with pre-meditation and that he could be subject to the death penalty if the case proceeds to court-martial and he is convicted. Bales’s civilian attorney has said his client does not remember much about what happened on March 11, when the military alleges he committed the massacre and returned to the base on his own to surrender. “This is going to be a very difficult case for the government to prove, in my opinion,” the lawyer, John Henry Browne, said on “CBS This Morning” on Friday. “There is no crime scene. There is no, you know, there’s no ‘CSI’ stuff. There’s no DNA. There’s no fingerprints. It’s just going to be interesting to see how the government’s going to prove this.” Bales had deployed three times to Iraq. He arrived in Afghanistan for the first time in December with other members of the


counts of murder. But a U.S. military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said forensic investigators subsequently determined that 17 bodies were at the scene. The dead included 10 females and seven males. The ages of the dead were not disclosed in the charging documents, but those wounded in the massacre included eight children. The decision to formally charge Bales did nothing to dampen the anger of Mohammed Wazir, who lost 11 family members — including his mother, wife, four daughters and two sons — in the rampage. Wazir, 35, said he did not believe that a military trial in the United States could ever bring justice. “This is not acceptable for us,” Wazir said in an interview Friday from the Afghan town of Spin Boldak. “We want him to be tried in Afghanistan, in our presence.” A farmer and trader, Wazir lived in a mud home in Najeeban, one of the two tiny villages in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province that Bales allegedly targeted. Also shot and killed in Wazir’s home were his brother, his brother’s wife and their child, according to Wazir and other villagers. At the time of the attack, Wazir was in Spin Boldak, about 85 miles south, with his 4-year-old son, Habib Shah. Habib is now his only surviving child. Four others apparently were killed in Alokozo, a neighboring village of 20 homes. Samisami-Ullah, a 30-year-old farmer, identified those victims as his mother, uncle and two cousins. Three others in his family were wounded, he said, along with three from his neighbors’ families. Five of the six wounded were transported to a U.S. military hospital, where three victims remain. To date, the U.S. military has not contacted any witnesses or those who lost relatives, said Wazir, provincial officials and others who have talked to the massacre victims’ families. “None of them have come to investigate, or to talk to us, or seen the village,” Wazir said angrily. “We want justice.” Leiby reported from Kabul. Correspondent Ernesto Londoño in Kabul and staff writers Mary Pat Flaherty and Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report. More world news coverage: - Syrian rebels running out of ammunition - Despite mounting criticism, Iraq’s prime minister remains powerful - U.S. soldier to be charged with 17 counts of murder in Afghan massacre - Read more headlines from around the world


“How Not to be Eaten: The Insects Fight Back” by Gilbert Waldbauer and “A World of Insects ”edited by Ring Carde and Vincent H. Resh

An entomologist is standing on the porch at a party, watching sphinx moths flit around. A guy asks him if the moths have ears. Who knows? He pulls out his car keys and shakes them at the moths. They dart away, alarmed by the ultrasonic noise the metal generates. (The chunks of plastic we carry around now are useless for party tricks like these.) Back at his laboratory, he pokes around until he finds two ear-like structures near the moth’s mouth. Its trick for evading bats at night by dodging their high-pitched cries is finally understood. Stories like this make scientists easy to love. The dashing fellow on the porch nursing a sweaty old-fashioned (I like to think he’s a bourbon drinker), casually making scientific breakthroughs by rattling his car keys? That’s a fine protagonist. Gilbert Waldbauer’s Waldbauer — a professor emeritus of entomology at the University of Illinois and author of several other popular books on bugs — won me over when he shared his recipe for bait to attract night-flying moths. He ferments molasses, sugar, canned peaches and stale beer for a couple of days, then brushes it on tree trunks at sunset. Later in the night, he returns to find slightly drunken moths sipping the nectar. Moth collectors call this “sugaring.” Although Waldbauer packs his essays with tidbits like these, the collection still reads more like a surprisingly interesting textbook than a compelling tale of popular science. Readers will certainly come away with a renewed appreciation for the ways in which insects use mimicry, deceit and poison to survive. The oleander aphid that sucks poisons from the shrub to protect itself is fascinating, as is the 11-spotted ladybird beetle that eats the aphids and takes in the poison for its own protection. But these bite-sized, easily digestible facts were at once too much and not enough to keep me turning the pages. I kept wanting to get back to that entomologist standing on the porch, jingling his car keys in the dark. ’How Not to Be Eaten: The Insects Fight Back’ by Gilbert Waldbauer (University of California Press) Waldbauer’s work also appears in a new collection, “A World of Insects,” which draws on 50 years’ worth of insect literature published by Harvard University Press. Here the editors have gathered some of the finest and most entertaining entomological writing I’ve ever read. Mark Winston, a professor at British


returns to find slightly drunken moths sipping the nectar. Moth collectors call this “sugaring.” Although Waldbauer packs his essays with tidbits like these, the collection still reads more like a surprisingly interesting textbook than a compelling tale of popular science. Readers will certainly come away with a renewed appreciation for the ways in which insects use mimicry, deceit and poison to survive. The oleander aphid that sucks poisons from the shrub to protect itself is fascinating, as is the 11-spotted ladybird beetle that eats the aphids and takes in the poison for its own protection. But these bite-sized, easily digestible facts were at once too much and not enough to keep me turning the pages. I kept wanting to get back to that entomologist standing on the porch, jingling his car keys in the dark. ’How Not to Be Eaten: The Insects Fight Back’ by Gilbert Waldbauer (University of California Press) Waldbauer’s work also appears in a new collection, “A World of Insects,” which draws on 50 years’ worth of insect literature published by Harvard University Press. Here the editors have gathered some of the finest and most entertaining entomological writing I’ve ever read. Mark Winston, a professor at British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University, offers a clever essay on killer bees called “The Creation of a Pop Insect.” His own fieldwork helped measure the spread of the bees throughout South America, where they disrupted hives of docile European bees and terrified the public. He delivers a lively critique of the media’s coverage of the phenomenon and even pulls back the curtain on the linguistic debate among scientists over terms such as “killer,” “African” and “Africanized” to refer to the bees. It’s a juicy tale, an intriguing blend of science, politics and tabloid sleaze. Forensic entomologist M. Lee Goff’s “A Fly for the Prosecution,” about a murder in which the time of death was determined through his analysis of the insects living in and around the corpse, is as exciting as any murder mystery, making it one of the high points in this collection. And the late Cornell entomologist Thomas Eisner’s “The Love Potion,” about a blister beetle known as Spanish fly, works for the same reason: Eisner was willing to put himself at the center of the story. He explored the question of whether a poison excreted by the beetles could cause priapism (prolonged and painful erections) in men who


Music: BSO performs Higdon, Tchaikovsky works

It takes a certain gutsiness to open a concert with not just one, but two big and brassy fanfares — you had better follow through with something worth the buildup. But no one’s ever accused Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Conductor Marin Alsop of not having guts, and on Thursday night at the Music Center at Strathmore she pulled out all the stops and delivered two huge, spectacular works — including a percussion concerto by Jennifer Higdon that may be one of the most exciting orchestral works of the past decade. The fanfares themselves were agreeable enough. Aaron Copland’s much-loved “Fanfare for the Common Man” was paired back to back with Joan Tower’s less well known “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman,” and they made a cute couple: Where Copland paints in broad, simple and masculine strokes, Tower rushes busily here and there, generating lots of energy if not the same luminous and stately power as Copland. It wasn’t clear whether the fanfares’ titles were meant to refer directly to the next two composers on the program — you would have a tough time selling Tchaikovsky as “the common man,” after all — but “uncommon woman” fits Higdon perfectly. One of the most imaginative and uninhibited composers on the American scene, she embued her Percussion Concerto of 2005 with so much kinetic vitality and colorful invention that it sounded at times like the entire orchestra was tumbling gleefully downhill. The half-hour work was a tour de force for percussion virtuoso Colin Currie, who bounded back and forth across the stage while manning a small arsenal of instruments — evoking everything from tribal rhythms to Buddy Rich — as Alsop led the orchestra through a musical landscape of strange and almost unearthly beauty. A brilliant performance, and huge fun, any way you cut it. Alsop also managed a minor miracle in the program’s second half, which was devoted to Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. Yes, it’s a tired old war horse. And yes, it’s awash in musty 19th-century themes of Fate and Hope and Despair and whatnot. And yes, it ends in a fit of over-the-top fist-pumping that’s caused millions of eyes to roll since its premiere in 1888. But Alsop treated it all with great respect, turning in a big-boned, perfectly paced reading that achieved both grandeur and a sense of deep human tenderness; a genuinely profound, personal and very moving performance. Brookes is a


Independent panel says federal regulators partly to blame for fatal Massey mine blast

A scathing report by an independent panel has blamed federal regulators for failing to take steps that might have prevented the disaster that killed 29 workers at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine two years ago. The 26-page report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health says that the Mine Safety and Health Administration failed to heed warning signs or implement the agency’s own regulations, leaving in place conditions that led to the explosion and fire that swept through the mine on April 5, 2010. “If MSHA had engaged in timely enforcement of the Mine Act and applicable standards and regulations, it would have lessened the chances of — and possibly could have prevented — the UBB explosion,” says the report, which was first posted online by Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward. The Labor Department released the report Friday evening. The report — which was requested by Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis — puts the focus on MSHA’s leadership, which only recently issued its own internal review blaming Massey Energy and mistakes by low-level inspectors. But MSHA did not place responsibility on senior officials in the agency, which is led by a former mine workers’ union leader, Assistant Secretary of Labor Joe Main. The new report says that while it agreed Massey had caused the explosion, the MSHA review’s “characterization of the facts underlying this conclusion understates the role that MSHA’s enforcement could have had in preventing the explosion.” Main defended the agency in a statement Friday evening. “Under the Mine Act, Congress gave mine operators responsibility for running safe mines,” he said. “Four investigations into the explosion all show that Massey Energy did not live up to that charge. Recent testimony confirmed that mine management routinely used illegal tactics to conceal violations from inspectors. MSHA cannot keep miners safe alone – mine operators must commit themselves to safety and health.” Main said that MSHA has already made “improvements” to keep miners safe and said it would review the new report. The NIOSH report, however, said that the agency didn’t need new regulations; it needed to enforce existing ones. The report singled out regulatory steps that should have been taken to reduce explosive methane and dust levels — or close down the mine entirely. The report said “the mine operator did not, and could not, conceal readily observable violative conditions such as float dust accumulations throughout the UBB


Venus, Jupiter, crescent moon meeting up this weekend

The moon is illuminated in close proximity to Venus and Jupiter, on the top, during a spectacular display of celestial rare phenomenon called a planetary occultation. (Sayyid Azim/AP) Look to the west after sunset Sunday night and, unless clouds impede the view, you’ll see three worlds. One is the moon, a thin crescent, upturned like a smiley face. The second is Jupiter, a gas giant reduced by distance to a bright dot. It’ll be just to the left of the lunar smile, like a beauty mark. Above the moon and Jupiter, about a fist’s distance away on an outstretched arm, will be Venus, beaming like a headlight. The last four weeks or so have been a spectacular time for stargazers, or, more precisely, planet-watchers. Venus and Jupiter have had a conjunction, and on March 13 passed so close to each other in the night sky that they could have exchanged business cards. Throw in the moon on Sunday and Monday nights and it’s a must-look situation. “When you get a configuration like this, people who don’t normally look up above the horizon find that their eyeballs are being hijacked,” said Alan MacRobert, an amateur astronomer and senior editor at Sky & Telescope magazine. More news is on the horizon: On June 5, Venus will transit the sun, the last such transit until 2117. With a safe solar filter, the tiny black dot of Venus will be visible as it gradually moves across the sun’s face. Meanwhile, the sun is acting up. We’re building to a solar maximum, which means lots of solar flares, coronal mass ejections, northern lights and the potential for damage to satellites or the power grid. And by the way, there’s a new theory afoot that the Titanic was sunk by an iceberg sent into the shipping lanes by tides associated with a rare arrangement of the sun, Earth and moon. Dare it be said: The solar system is trending. What’s unfolding Sunday and Monday nights is a reprise of what happened Feb. 25 and 26, when the crescent moon slipped past Jupiter and Venus. The two planets have a conjunction like this about once every 24 years, said Geoff Chester, spokesman for the U.S. Naval Observatory. This is what’s known as an evening apparition of Venus (it can be a morning star or an evening star), and it has been particularly sublime because the planet is


— too much information — even as they couldn’t name a single star in the sky. Many people would no more learn the names of the stars than figure out how to boil lye to make soap. “All this stuff was common knowledge among ancient people. Even people just a few hundred years ago, your average farmer would be keeping a very close eye on the season, they’d be keeping a very close eye on the moons,” Chester said. And yes, “moons,” plural. The moons had names. The last full moon, for example, was the Full Worm Moon, because it’s the time of year when the worms start moving around in the soil, Chester said. Owen Gingerich, a professor emeritus of astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said that the spectacle in the western sky is so beguiling that “even our graduate students are aware of what’s happening.” That’s an inside joke because graduate students in astronomy do all their work now on computers and with equations and don’t spend a lot of time acting like Galileo and looking through telescopes. In certain respects, the planets are old news. The cutting edge in astronomy is the search for extrasolar planets — which orbit distant stars — and the investigation of the mysterious dark matter that is indirectly detected through study of the motion of galaxies. Cosmologists hope to understand the “dark energy” that is causing an acceleration of the expansion of the universe. But the nearby planets still have surprises. A probe orbiting Mercury discovered evidence of ice at the poles of the little planet that is seemingly fried by the sun. And this past week, scientists announced that they’d come up with a better measurement of the width of the sun, achieved by studying two transits of Mercury. The sun is 865,374 miles in diameter, plus or minus 40 miles. Now, about the Titanic. The ship hit an iceberg late on the evening of April 14, 1912. Where did the iceberg come from? The authors of an article in the latest issue of Sky & Telescope contend that an unusual abundance of icebergs in the shipping lanes that year may have had an astronomical explanation. According to Donald Olson, a professor at Texas State University and the article’s co-author, on Jan. 4, 1912, the moon was at its closest approach to the Earth even as the Earth was


Rising concern on climate change

RISING SEA levels threaten to inundate low-lying roads in Louisiana America, meanwhile, is fixated on . . . paying an extra buck per gallon at the gas pump. A recent report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) underscores how myopic the country’s energy debate is — and, consequently, how delinquent the United States has been in leading the world. The organization calculated that the world is on course to increase its carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2050. That’s because global energy use will increase by 80 percent by mid-century, with 85 percent of the energy mix coming from fossil fuels. That would likely raise global temperatures well past the target of 2 degrees Celsius, beyond which scientists say climate change could be extremely dangerous. It would also produce lethal amounts of air pollution, manifested in more heart attacks, asthma and other maladies. Such a large problem sounds difficult to fight. It is — but more because of politics than a lack of clarity on what the right policy is. Carbon taxes or simple cap-and-trade systems encourage businesses and consumers to pollute less and to find alternatives, without the spectacle of government trying to pick which clean-energy technologies should win out. Ending fossil fuel subsidies would also save treasuries money and discourage pollution. There will still be transition costs associated with these policies, which the OECD reckoned will increase over the course of this century. But the OECD is only the latest reputable, nonpartisan organization to explain that pricing pollution is more efficient than governmental micromanagement — the current policy, explicit or implied, of both political parties — and, given the wide range of risks and high uncertainty, much more attractive than doing nothing. The report noted that global warming could reduce average yearly consumption by 2 percent to more than 14 percent across the world this century — but, a spokesperson said, the estimates on the upper end of that range are more comprehensive, and the possibility of extreme or even catastrophic events argues that policymakers shouldn’t risk finding out what the exact figure is. Timing also matters. The OECD reckons that continuing to slack on cutting emissions through 2020 — the current plan — would result in 50 percent higher costs in 2050 and could also enhance the risk of permanently damaging the environment. Yet the only energy debate America seems capable of having during


Commentary: How the Dodd-Frank Act hurts small businesses

low credit scores or a thin credit history. This process of eliminating options and/or access for creditworthy businesses and consumers is now hindering our country’s efforts to get our economy back on track. Even more concerning is the plight of the small-business owner, the true driver of America’s economic future. For small businesses, being able to secure a $300 to $2,500 loan can make all the difference to their economic survival. For example, just a few hundred dollars can mean being able to purchase the supplies to paint a house or being able to hire extra employees to cater a wedding. Obtaining that small loan can help a small-business owner make it through another week, fulfill payroll obligations and still have something left to put food on the table. It is the growth of small businesses that will help our economy rebound, but we need to create an environment that will facilitate that growth. According to the National Small Business Association, however, lending to small businesses declined in the past two years. And a recent survey reports that 60 percent of entrepreneurs say the terms on their credit cards have worsened. Small businesses are essential to the well-being of many underserved and unbanked communities. Traditionally in this country, recent immigrants and others from diverse backgrounds are overwhelmingly employed by small businesses. The banks, recently shaken by the housing bubble, are understandably reluctant about making low-dollar loans to small businesses because of the inherent risks associated with shelling out loans that yield low returns. The solution for many is non-bank lending and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is tasked with regulating that market. We hope that they will look closely at the need for non-bank credit, bringing necessary regulation to level the playing field and ensure fair terms and adequate disclosure to this important industry. It is critical that our leaders in Washington, and those in state capitols and city halls across the country, find ways to ensure that small businesses and consumers have access to credit. Whether this means incentivizing banks to make loans or preserving or expanding access to other types of credit, it is essential that something is done soon. If not, any hope of progress will be thwarted, resulting in more job losses and a serious setback to the slowly improving economy. Javier Palomarez is president and chief executive of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.


Cassidy expands non-lobbying work, partners with agribusiness consulting firm

AgriThority’s Jerry Duff, left, and ShiGui Zhang, center, discuss cotton with a plant breeder in China. (Courtesy of AgriThority) Cassidy & Associates, one of Washington’s most lucrative lobbying shops, is partnering with the Kansas City, Mo.-based food and agriculture consulting firm AgriThority to expand its services in developing countries, leaders at both firms said. It is Cassidy’s first joint venture with an entity in the agricultural business, and vice chairman Gregg Hartley said the alliance will help Cassidy tap into new clients, particularly in Southeast Asia and Africa, that are looking to modernize agriculture technology and distribution. AgriThority, a four-year-old private company with 70 consultants worldwide, works with major agricultural groups and biotech companies on food safety, quality and sustainability and issues, such as how to grow and maintain crops in developing nations to cut down on imported foods. “For almost three decades of the 37 years we’ve been in business, we’ve had a fairly sizable international practice and represented foreign governments and NGOs that work in developing parts of the world,” Hartley said. “In terms of helping a country that eats a lot of rice quit importing rice and start growing it and set up a distribution model to do it, we didn’t have an answer to give them. Now we can go back to those clients and demonstrate how to develop a more modern agrarian system.” It is the latest move Cassidy and other lobbying firms are making to diversify services beyond traditional lobbying. Cassidy, led by K Street veteran Gerald Cassidy, has seen revenue from formal lobbying decline each year since 2007, when the firm brought in $24.5 million in lobbying fees. By 2010, that figure had dropped 18 percent to $20.2 million, and in 2011 it slipped to $19.7 million — a 12-year low, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Now, the firm is more aggressively seeking consulting work that doesn’t fall under the traditional definition of lobbying. Those efforts include a 16-month contract the firm signed with public relations firm and sister company Weber Shandwick last year to consult on the Russian government’s bid to host the 2020 World Expo. Cassidy also began consulting for Korean companies selling their products to the U.S. government (through the Korean Trade-Investment Promotion Agency), and for not-for-profits on climate and environmental public policy issues. In total, between 8 and 10 percent of Cassidy’s revenue now comes from non-lobby


Former Somali president Abdullahi Yusuf dead at 78

control of the Somali capital in 2006, Mr. Yusuf invited Ethiopian troops into the country. The Ethiopian advance quickly routed the Islamist forces, but the memories of previous Somali-Ethiopian wars and the presence of soldiers from a majority Christian nation in a mainly Muslim country made the Mr. Yusuf’s government unpopular. The situation also encouraged Ethiopia’s archenemy, Eritrea, to offer the Islamists assistance, making Somalia a proxy war zone. The Islamists quickly launched an Iraq-style insurgency. Mr. Yusuf’s government also was weakened by internal struggles. Mr. Yusuf was operating far from his power base in the semiautonomous northern region of Puntland. Clan squabbles and public disagreements with his prime minister over foreign aid led many Somalis to see the government as divided, corrupt and ineffective. Somalia has not had a fully functioning government since 1991, when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown. Barre and Mr. Yusuf had been military colleagues, but Barre imprisoned Mr. Yusuf after he refused to take part in the coup that bought Barre to power in 1969. While in prison, he became friends with warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed, whose battle with U.S. soldiers in the early 1990s inspired the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.” Three years after his release in 1975, Mr. Yusuf tried to overthrow Barre but failed and fled to Kenya, where he recruited members for his guerrilla movement. Mr. Yusuf, who had studied in Italy and the former Soviet Union, was backed by the socialist government of Ethiopia. But Mr. Yusuf later quarreled with the Ethiopians over their claims to Somali territory. Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam imprisoned Mr. Yusuf in 1985, and he was released only when the Mengistu regime fell in 1991. Mr. Yusuf spent much of the 1990s in his native Puntland, where he sought semiautonomous status in an effort to save the region from the chaos engulfing the rest of the nation. Aides described his style as ruthless, and many of his opponents were jailed or killed. There also were sporadic clashes over territory with the neighboring region of Somaliland, and he was deposed for a year over his attempts to increase his term of office in 2001. Mr. Yusuf regained control of Puntland in 2002 with Ethiopian help, forging an alliance with the new Ethiopian government. Mr. Yusuf was elected Somalia’s president in 2004, having systematically undermined several other attempts at forming a government. — Associated Press


Afghan forces fatally shoot 3 NATO troops

Correction: KABUL — The gunman in the incident in the south started shooting at a group of NATO troops at the entrance of the Provincial Reconstruction Team headquarters in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, said Daud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the governor. A NATO statement said the gunman was killed when some of the foreign forces returned fire. It provided no other details, including the nationalities of the slain service members, but the British Defense Ministry confirmed that they were both British. Ahmadi said the gunman was a soldier in the Afghan army. A NATO military spokesman said officials were investigating. In the east, a member of an Afghan Local Police force fatally shot a NATO service member as a group of soldiers approached a checkpoint manned by the militia, the military said in a statement. The incident appeared to mark the first time a member of an ALP group opened fire on foreign troops. A NATO spokesman said Monday night that he could not say whether the ALP gunman was detained or shot. So-called “green on blue” shootings have become a rising threat this year, following a series of missteps that have created distrust between Afghan forces and their international coalition partners. Among the most significant was last month’s burning of Korans by U.S. troops. The episode sparked violent riots and retaliatory attacks, and prompted the Taliban to call on Afghan security forces to open fire on foreign troops. Since May 2007, at least 80 NATO troops have been killed by Afghan security forces, according to military news releases and statistics provided by the Defense Department to Congress last month. Ten of those killings were committed since the Koran burning. At a Pentagon press briefing Monday, Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said, “In most cases the relationship [between Afghan and NATO forces] is very strong. They know each other well.” But, he added, “We have taken steps necessary on our side to protect ourselves with respect to, in fact, sleeping arrangements, internal defenses associated with those small bases in which we operate, the posture of our forces, to have someone always overwatching our forces.” The death of the British troops is likely to further erode support for the war. Publicly, British Prime Minister David Cameron has sounded his determination to stay the course in Afghanistan. But the growing death toll is feeding a


NASA probe offers new view of Mercury: an alien world right in our back yard

their calculations had been muddied by the minute pressure of sunlight pushing on Messenger. “It slowed us down, but it’s a fantastic find,” said Zuber. Before Messenger, some of Mercury’s weirdness was already known: A day creeps by in six months, but a year zooms by in less than three months. A tin can would melt at noon, but deathly cold descends at night, the wispy atmosphere too thin to trap heat. Asking the right questions Mercury remained unexplored for so long due to its promixity to the sun, which makes it hard to inspect and harder to reach. Its mere existence baffled the ancient Greeks, who thought it was two planets. Seen just before sunrise, it was http://history.nasa.gov/SP-424/ch1.htm#1">Apollo; just after sunset, it was called Hermes (the winged messenger of the gods, whom the Romans called Mercury). The Hubble Space Telescope has never inspected Mercury, as it might be blinded in the attempt. Sending spacecraft to Mercury also tempts fate, as the sun’s enormous gravity threatens to suck interlopers toward a fiery death. So when NASA’s Mariner 10 craft flew by in 1974 and 1975, it couldn’t linger. In the intervening decades, two advances made the Messenger mission possible. First, space scientist Chen-wan Yen figured out that a long, spiraling trip from Earth could slow a probe enough to park it in Mercury’s orbit. That’s why Messenger’s voyage took almost seven years and covered twice the distance to Pluto (formerly the smallest planet but no longer considered a planet). Messenger flew by Earth once, Venus twice and Mercury three times, shedding speed at each encounter. The second advance was a sun shield made from high-tech ceramic fabric; the six-foot by eight-foot rectangle protects the sensitive scientific instruments. But to project scientist Ralph McNutt of the Applied Physics Laboratory, the decades of waiting were well worth it. NASA recently extended Messenger’s mission, which was supposed to last just a year, so more data will be pouring in. “Mercury was seen as sort of a backwater,” McNutt said. “It looked like the moon; it looked like this dead planet. Why would we want to go there? It turns out we didn’t even know the right questions to ask.” More of the latest health and science news: Surgery can help fight diabetes, studies find Power plants to face first greenhouse gas limits James Cameron makes solo visit to the bottom of the sea


A headache is usually a minor ailment, but it can be a sign of a serious problem

related to menstruation might benefit from taking preventive medication just before and during their period. Good choices include ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin IB and their generic cousins) and the prescription drug sumatriptan (Imitrex and generic). ●Make simple changes. Cutting down on alcohol, eating less and controlling stress with meditation, relaxation or other means can help prevent headaches. If the problem stems from a lack of sleep, take steps to get six to eight hours each night. Go to bed and wake up around the same time, and don’t watch TV or use a computer in bed. If you snore, ask your doctor whether you should be evaluated for sleep apnea. ●Consider nondrug therapies. In a 2011 study, researchers in Sweden randomly assigned 91 migraine sufferers to one of three programs. One group exercised on stationary bicycles for 40 minutes three times a week for three months. Another practiced relaxation in a weekly class and at home every day. The third group took daily doses of topiramate (Topamax and generic), an anti-epileptic medication that’s used at lower doses to prevent migraines. Researchers found that exercise and relaxation reduced the frequency of migraines and the need for painkillers as effectively as topiramate, and without side effects. Preventive drugs Beta blockers such as propranolol (Inderal and generic) and timolol (Blocadren and generic) are often the best first choice because they’re inexpensive and have a long safety record. Tricyclic antidepressants such as amitriptyline (Elavil and generic) are also an option. The anti-epileptics topiramate and valproate (Depakote and generic) are other choices. But there’s no evidence that they’re more effective than beta blockers or tricyclics, and the drugs can cause side effects including hair loss, nausea, tremors, vertigo and, in some instances, organ damage, suicidal thoughts and tongue-swelling. The Food and Drug Administration recently approved Botox injections for migraine prevention in adults experiencing 15 or more headaches a month for three months or more. The costly treatment requires about 30 to 40 injections into the forehead, temples and neck every three months. But some clinical trials have found that the injections work no better than a placebo. And one small study suggested that injections might work better for certain types of migraines, those centered behind an eye or those that cause gripping pain rather than an explosive type of pain. Several dietary supplements reduced the frequency or severity of migraines in small randomized placebo-controlled trials. Those


Apple faces Australian legal challenge over 4G label

Apple’s iPad is in faces some legal troubles in Australia where an agency has taken its objections over the tablet’s 4G label to court. According to a statement the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission released Tuesday, the agency will seek orders against Apple in federal court this week for “alleged contraventions” of Australian Consumer Law. The controversy stems from Apple’s promotion of the new iPad as a tablet with “WiFi + 4G.” The agency said that it alleges this label is “misleading” because the iPad cannot connect to the 4G networks in Australia. On Apple’s Web site, the company has a footnote that reads: “4G LTE is supported only on AT&T and Verizon networks in the U.S., and on Bell, Rogers and Telus networks in Canada.” CNET notes that the Australian version of the Apple store notes that the iPad is not compatible with Australian 4G networks. “The iPad with Wi-Fi + 4G model can roam worldwide on fast GSM/UMTS networks, including HSPA, HSPA+, and DC-HSDPA. When you travel internationally, you can use a micro-SIM card from a local carrier,” the site says. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The agency is seeking “final orders including injunctions, pecuniary penalties, corrective advertising and refunds” for consumers who have been affected. Related stories: Why heat issue won’t slow down sales of new Apple iPad Main complaints about the new iPad New iPad users slowed by expensive 4G network rates


4,000 days of war in Afghanistan? The U.S. nears its limit

Rachel Maddow is the host of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” and author of “Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power.” In this 11th year of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history, it is starting to feel as if we may be near the constraining edge of an American war’s natural life span. The massive and lethal U.S. military is theoretically capable of sustaining itself in war almost indefinitely, as long as it is given the resources and the orders to do so. But as we close in on the 4,000-day mark ahead of our own fall elections, the inertia of the war in Afghanistan seems to be giving way to concerns about the costs of sustaining it and the need to find the best way to end it. Why now? Our wars’ life expectancy has been bolstered over the past generation or so by a series of changes that eased the small-d democratic tensions that an American war abroad could cause here at home. The financial cost of war was for years taken off the books and treated as a fiscal asterisk, an “emergency supplemental” to the real and debated budget. The ranks of the deployed were bolstered with employees of private firms, obfuscating the cost associated with their services, the lines of accountability for their actions, and their number and individual humanity when they became casualties. For years, even images of U.S. military casualties were shielded from public view. Three months before 9/11, Americans were given a multitrillion-dollar tax cut. After the attacks and our invasion of Afghanistan, not only were the cuts not rescinded but we gave ourselves another giant round of tax cuts less than two years later, just weeks after we’d shipped troops off to a simultaneous war in Iraq. While military families have endured multiple year-long combat deployments over the past decade, we civilians have endured something approaching the opposite of sacrifice on their behalf. In politics, the Congress that got up on its hind legs after Vietnam, and insisted on seizing its constitutional prerogative to decide when the country went to war, dropped down to all fours and mostly ceded that authority back to the presidency. The decade-old congressional authorization to wage war in Afghanistan directs the military to go after those who attacked us on Sept. 11. Worthy as the current Afghan mission may be, the multibillion-dollar, multiyear effort to train


The D.C. stamp on beer cocktails

At Boundary Road, H Street’s new Brooklyn-esque den of exposed brick and farm-to-table hanger steaks, the Five & Dime cocktail begins with a squeeze-bottle squirt of translucent goo. When I ordered one recently, a bartender shook the egg white with artisanal root beer liqueur and maple syrup, strained the mixture into a glass, added malty Otter Creek porter and placed it on the bar. My neighbor eyed it as if afraid it might scuttle into his lap. “Beer and egg,” he said. But it tasted great: a smooth, sweet, herbal riff on a root beer float, with a milkshake-like head and lingering flavors of coffee and roasted barley. It was also a prime example of how Washington-area bartenders have been increasingly blurring the line between craft beer and craft cocktails, turning out drinks with enough creativity and variety to please the beer-obsessed while wooing the beer-indifferent. Beer cocktails aren’t new to the District. Anchored by the late great Brickskeller, establishments including Pizzeria Paradiso and Belga Cafe began serving them years ago. Since then, such concoctions have grown into darlings of the national mixology scene, served at places such as Chicago’s the Aviary and New York’s wd-50. Locally, they’ve experienced a similar ascent, appearing not only on more menus, but on swankier ones. At Rogue 24, Bryan Tetorakis has been experimenting with beer cocktails since December. For his Cherry Coffee Stout, he mixes a cherry-and-coffee-flavored syrup with coffee-infused brandy and Duchesse de Bourgogne, a Flemish sour ale that contributes tart cherry notes. Another cocktail, the Trippel Dubbel, grew out of his desire to accent the citrus and coriander notes in Saxo, a blond ale from Belgium’s Brasserie Caracole. Tetorakis adds the beer to tangerine or orange-kumquat syrup, lemon juice, rye whiskey and Gran Classico Bitter, a liqueur made with bitter orange peel and rhubarb. Pomegranate Fizz, a beer cocktail from Todd Thrasher of the Eat Good Food Group in Alexandria. (Eat Good Food Group) “It’s got the bitterness,” he says. “You can tell that there’s whiskey in there, and it’s also smooth and creamy. It’s approachable to a lot of people.” Key word: “approachable.” Although some beer lovers recoil at the thought of other ingredients tainting their sacred substance, some take delight in the fact that the beer cocktail often functions as beerdom’s Trojan horse. It’s a means of slipping the goods into enemy territory. Such is the case at the


Young beekeeper enjoys honey, helps tend hives and isn’t afraid of being stung

Sam Shapiro, 8, wears a veil to protect himself when he tends the hives at his home in Washington. (NIKKI KAHN/THE WASHINGTON POST) Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzzzzz. Through his white beekeeper’s veil, 8-year-old Sam Shapiro looks down at the delicate black and yellow worker bee that just landed on his chest. “She won’t hurt me,” Sam says. “A lot of kids go psycho when a bee gets near them. But if I just stand still, she’ll think I’m a statue.” Wearing a veil when working with bees is like wearing a helmet when riding your bike. Sam has been stung two or three times in his career as a beekeeper. According to Sam, bees make great pets. They are fun to take care of, and they make food for their owners. Sam has spent his entire life with bees in his family. When he was 2, he would stand at the window and watch his dad (experienced urban beekeeper Milt Shapiro) checking the hives in the side yard of their home in Northwest Washington. When he was 3, he and his dad would sit outside in the summer, admiring the worker bees as they delivered pollen (carried on their back legs “like little puff balls,” Sam says) to the hive. Sam Shapiro holds a comb on which his family’s bees have deposited honey. After it is removed from the hive, the comb goes into a bucket, and the honey slowly drops off. (NIKKI KAHN/THE WASHINGTON POST) For the past five years, Sam has helped his dad with beekeeping chores throughout the year. Every spring and summer, they look inside their two hives to make sure the queen is healthy and laying eggs. They also check for disease and make sure the bees (as many as 140,000 of them) have enough pollen and nectar stored to survive. As winter approaches and the temperature drops, the bees begin to cluster. Huddled together, they vibrate their flight muscles to keep the hive warm until spring. Each summer, Sam and his dad harvest the honey. “When my dad takes a comb out of the hive,” the Lafayette Elementary third-grader says, “it’s covered with honey. You don’t want to put it on the ground because leaves would stick to it, so my job is to hold it.” Next, they squeeze the comb into a clean bucket where it will drip honey through a filter for a few


Facts about bees

Bees cluster around a honeycomb seen here in an urban beehive tended by Sam Shapiro, 8, and his dad Milt Shapiro at their home in Washington, D.C. (Nikki Kahn/THE WASHINGTON POST) Facts about bees Here are four things Sam thinks kids should know about bees: 1 2 Bees sting only if they think their hive is being threatened or if someone is bothering them. Instead of saying “excuse me,” bees sting. 3 If a bee is flying around, ignore her and she’ll fly on by. 4 Bees care about their families. Worker bees collect pollen and nectar, turn it into honey and store it in the combs, kind of like stocking their pantry. For more information about bees and beekeeping, visit www.montgomerycountybeekeepers.com.


Beer Madness, Round 3: Defending champ stays strong

The judges of the Washington Post's annual Beer Madness, which takes place at Church Key, write down their comments for each beer they taste and judge to determine which one is the best. (Astrid Riecken/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) Hometown fans, take heart: You’ve still got a dog in this year’s Beer Madness fight, a tasting competition of 32 all-American craft brews. In a dustup to determine supremacy in the Hop category, DC Brau’s the Public eked out a 5-4 victory over the bigger, burlier Dogfish Head Burton Baton. Burton Baton is a blend of an imperial IPA and an English-style old ale, which spends a month mellowing in an oaken tank. Its complexity, body and high alcohol (10 percent by volume) might have worked against it. At this stage, we simply craved a lighter, snappier beer. The Burton Baton was likened to “cognac” (mixologist Gina Chersevani), “beer candy” (Komi sommelier Kathryn Bangs) and “caramelized bananas and rum with a squeeze of lime” (Palena pastry chef Agnes Chin). The Public drew such comments as “grapefruit zest” (Chin), “classic IPA” (reader/judge Halley Fehner) and “hint of sage” (reader/judge Samantha Polinik). In the Crisp category, Sword Swallower trounced Fordham Helles, 8-1. This might have been an apples-vs.-oranges matchup: Sword Swallower is almost 2 percentage points higher in alcohol and much more aggressively hopped (the brewing company’s Web site calls it “IPA style”). “Pine nose, herbal, slightly nutty” was Cork Wine Bar executive chef Rob Weland’s description. Polinik was almost apologetic about choosing Sword Swallower, calling Fordham Helles “a really great, crisp pilsner.” Defending champion Flying Fish Exit 4 once more dominated the Fruit & Spice category, handily beating Saison Rue, 7-2. Fehner commented that drinking Exit 4 was “like sipping a bouquet.” Other descriptors included “fresh grass,” “forest floor,” “tropical fruit.” Saison Rue was perhaps our most polarizing beer. “I do not like this one, it tastes like what compost must taste like,” wrote Polinik, perhaps picking up some earthiness from a secondary fermentation with the wild yeast Brettanomyces. “Love it . . . very few beers could compete with [it],” asserted Bangs. Maui Coconut Porter Commentary was fading at this point. The normally loquacious Bangs simply wrote “yes” next to the coconut porter, and “no” aside Stone’s black IPA. Next week:


Japan has lots of plutonium on hand, little way to use it

Studies. The 9/11 Commission reported that al-Qaeda had attempted to acquire nuclear materials, and other terrorist groups such as Aum Shinrikyo — the Japanese cult group that staged a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995 — have also reportedly tried to obtain radioactive materials. According to the International Panel on Fissile Materials, there are about 500 metric tons of plutonium in the world. (There are also about 1,440 tons of highly enriched uranium.) Japan has more plutonium on its hands than any other non-weapons state, according to a 2011 report from the panel. Three-quarters of Japan’s plutonium is stored in other countries, but Japan holds nearly 10 tons, enough for more than 1,000 weapons, in various storage facilities and nuclear reactors across the country. It obtained all that plutonium because it had one of the world’s most ambitious non-weapons nuclear programs. Japan not only wanted to use nuclear reactors to supply half of its energy but also wanted to reprocess the plutonium from the spent fuel produced by those reactors so the material could be used in the reactors again. Most countries choose simply to store their spent fuel — a less expensive option, but one that invites its own controversies and considerations about handling of nuclear waste. Japan, even before the Fukushima accident, had faced numerous technical problems that slowed or delayed its plans to reuse the separated plutonium as reactor fuel. The country drafted its first plans for reprocessing plutonium several decades ago, when most scientists believed that the planet had a thin supply of mineable uranium, which is fed into reactors. Separated plutonium represented an alternative source of fuel. But scientists have learned that the world supply of mineable uranium is much more abundant than thought, undermining any justification for stockpiling plutonium. “These were visions that made sense 30 to 40 years ago, when we thought there was little uranium in the world,” said Laura Holgate, an Obama senior adviser on weapons of mass destruction and nuclear threats. “But now we know that the shortage concept is antiquated. We also know more about how vulnerable separated plutonium can be from a terrorist point of view.” More world news coverage: - U.N. envoy says Syria has accepted plan to end violent crackdown - India’s college system in ‘deep crisis’ - Militant leader reported killed in Afghanistan - Read more headlines from around the world


Improving your financial literacy is a good investment

Survey after survey continues to conclude that consumers don’t have a good grasp of personal finance issues. There are good intentions behind these surveys. Their purpose is to find out how to create financial literacy programs to help people understand the importance of saving and investing, the devastating results of taking on too much debt, and how to avoid becoming a victim of fraud. In fact, April has been designated as National Financial Literacy Month. Last year, in a proclamation about setting some time aside to learn more about your finances, President Obama said: “As we recover from the worst economic crisis in generations, it is more important than ever to be knowledgeable about the consequences of our financial decisions. . . . The financial crisis was fueled by a lack of responsibility from Wall Street to Washington. It devastated ordinary Americans, many of whom were caught by hidden fees and penalties or saddled with loans they could not afford. Preventing a recurrence will require both better behavior and oversight on Wall Street and more informed decision-making on Main Street and in homes across our country.” In other words, they — the bankers — did some awful things, but individuals have to ultimately take personal responsibility for their financial decisions. Do you have any plans to observe National Financial Literacy Month? If not, I suggest you go to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Web site at www.ConsumerFinance.gov and take the agency up on its “ask us anything” new feature. It’s an interactive online tool that allows you to submit financial questions, from credit cards to debt collection to reverse mortgages. CFPB Director Richard Cordray said that “Ask CFPB” was designed to provide consumers “answers in plain language so they can make sound financial decisions.” Far too often, the people who are most readily available to answer your financial questions have an agenda because they want to sell you a service or product. It’s important to seek out a source that can provide unbiased answers. The Ask CFPB feature already contains hundreds of answers to the most commonly asked financial questions. The majority of the entries are focused on credit cards and mortgages. However, in the coming months, the bureau will expand the database to answer questions about a range of financial products and services, including student loans, auto loans, and checking and savings accounts. Another government site, www.MyMoney.gov, is dedicated


U.S. seeks more money for Afghan force

discussed the matter only on the condition of anonymity. A diplomat from a close U.S. ally said his country shares the “objective” of maintaining a strong Afghan security force. “But,” the diplomat said, “we have a very restricted budget and a very severe fiscal situation.” An Arab diplomat said his government wants more information on how the Obama administration arrived at its calculations, how much others will contribute and how the money will be administered within corruption-plagued Afghanistan. But, he said, “we’ll probably end up paying.” Still others, particularly in Europe, pointed out that although U.S. money may flow more freely from the Pentagon than from the State Department, the opposite is true in their countries. Some said they will find it easier to pledge development funding for Afghanistan — a separate appeal for post-2014 money that will be made in July at an international conference in Tokyo — than to provide more military spending. In December, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the international community that after 2014, his country will need at least $10 billion annually in combined security and development assistance until 2025. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is about $17 billion. The United States spent about $12 billion last year, 95 percent of the total cost, to train and equip Afghanistan’s army and police. Since 2009, police salaries have been paid from a $5 billion development assistance fund established by Japan that will expire at the end of 2014. The combined Afghan force is expected to reach a target strength of 352,000 in October. U.S. military officials have estimated that the force’s expenditure could be cut in half after this year once the target number is reached. The post-2014 budget also anticipates additional savings from a reduction in the size of the force of up to one-third by 2017, a projection that assumes successful reconciliation with the Taliban. “I think as people consider the past and how to protect the past into the future, they’ll make the contribution, and we will have both a sufficient and sustainable” Afghan force, Marc Grossman, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said last week during a fundraising tour in Europe. The endgame envisioned for the war calls for a gradual transition of security control from foreign to Afghan troops throughout the country by some point next year, with all coalition combat forces to withdraw by Dec. 31, 2014. The administration’s


Annandale woman specializes in caring for bats

because they grow so fast. They start eating ground mealworms once they are a few weeks old. Orphans are generally able to be released, once they are mature enough, in a few weeks to a couple of months. “The best part of rehab is release,” Keen said. “The more we release, the more that they’re hopefully going to go out there and have offspring.” Adult bats, on the other hand, “come in more broken,” Sturges said. The culprits can include car strikes, cats, high-wind nights or being trapped indoors. Many are too injured to save and have to be euthanized, Sturges said. “Whenever we can, we try to save them, even if it means surgical intervention,” she said. Bats that can’t be rehabilitated enough to be released back into the wild — generally because they can’t fly and therefore can’t feed themselves — end up in Sturges’s education collection and help her with the Save Lucy Campaign programs. She does about 30 educational programs per year for children and adult organizations. White-nose syndrome, the main focus of the Save Lucy Campaign, is beginning to affect the local migratory bat species that overwinter in caves, particularly the little brown bat. Sturges said she hasn’t had a little brown come through her door for four years, which is concerning to her. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates more than 5.5 million bats have died from white-nose syndrome since 2006. Habitat loss also is contributing to the decline in bat populations, she said. Most people generally are unaware of the threats to bats and don’t understand how important they are to human agriculture, Sturges said. Bats help pollinate plants and eat millions of bugs, reducing the number of insects feeding on plant materials. Many people also are unnecessarily afraid of bats, Sturges said, noting that the largest bat native to this region weighs an ounce and could fit in a human palm. “Bats do not attack humans,” Sturges said, adding she always is mystified when people feel they need to attack a bat with a broom or tennis racket to capture it. Only half of a percent of bats contract rabies, and those that do will quickly die, because of their small size, she said. “Education is key,” Keen said, adding she knew little about bats before she started volunteering with Sturges. “I was really surprised at how stinkin’ cute they are.”


D.C. news briefs

Lights Out project aims to help migrating birds City Wildlife has started Lights Out D.C., a campaign to save birds migrating through the District. The nonprofit wildlife rescue organization is asking owners of tall buildings to turn off unnecessary night lighting during critical bird migration periods. Urban lighting attracts and disorients migrating birds. Many birds fly into windows; others circle buildings until they fall from exhaustion. Of special concern are external and architectural lights, lights aimed into the sky, upper story lighting (third floor and higher) and lighted atria with plants behind glass. Upper story tenants are asked to draw blinds and use spot lighting, such as table and desk lamps, after 11 p.m. For information, go to http://citywildlife.org. Event celebrates tap with classes, concert D.C. Tap Fest IV, three days of classes for tap dance students of all levels and ages, will be Friday through Sunday at the D.C. Dance Collective, 4908 Wisconsin Ave NW. Highlights include a jam session, student showcase and talks on tap history. An 8 p.m. concert Saturday at the Duke Ellington Theater, 3500 R St. NW, will feature Grammy-winning singer Mya, Emmy-winning dancer Ted Louis Levy and 7-year-old dance prodigy Luke Spring, who was discovered at D.C. Tap Fest II. For prices and tickets, go to www.dctapfestival.com. Private wall space sought for street mural project The D.C. Department of Public Works and the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities are seeking donated wall space for Murals D.C., a free program that uses mural art to discourage graffiti. Mural sites should be a privately owned non-residential building that has been a target of graffiti and is visible from the street. The owner must donate the space for a year or longer. Applications must be submitted by April 30 and require three images of the site from different vantage points, the rough dimensions of the site and signed authorization from the owner. For information, go to www.dpw.dc.gov or e-mail nancee.lyons@dc.gov. St. Anselm’s student wins Poetry Out Loud contest Garrett Jansen, a senior at St. Anselm’s Abbey School in Northeast, won first place in the D.C. finals for Poetry Out Loud, a recitation contest March 13 at Arena Stage. Jansen won for his reading of Siegfried Sassoon’s “The Reedemer” and will compete in the national finals at the Harman Center for the Arts on May 13 to 15. For information, go to www.poetryoutloud.org. Rescue league hosting


Reports link heat waves, deluges to climate change

Scientists are increasingly confident that the uptick in heat waves and heavier rainfall is linked to human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions, posing a heightened risk to the world’s population, according to two reports issued in the past week. On Wednesday, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a 594-page study suggesting that when it comes to weather observations since 1950, there has been a “change in some extremes,” which stem in part from global warming. The report — from 220 authors in 62 countries — makes distinctions among weather phenomena. It shows there is “limited to medium evidence” that climate change has contributed to changes in flooding, for example, and there is “low confidence” that long-term hurricane trends over the past 40 years have been driven by the world’s growing carbon output. But the IPCC team projects that there is a 90 to 100 percent probability that sea-level rise “will contribute to upward trends in extreme coastal high-water levels in the future.” Chris Field, who co-chairs the IPCC’s Working Group II and serves as director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, said in an interview that although many uncertainties still exist when it comes to extreme weather, “We also know the risk people face is changing as a result of climate change.” Whether particular extreme weather events can be blamed on human-caused global warming is the wrong question to ask, since there is no method available to make such a connection, said Dim Coumou, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Instead, a new analysis from Coumou and a colleague, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, examines patterns of extreme weather since 2000 and asks whether the likelihood of these events was heightened by human-driven climate change. The answer is “yes” for extreme heat waves and unusual downpours, Coumou and his colleagues found. “The evidence is solid,” he said: Human-emitted greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere; warmer air, in turn, soaks up more moisture. The climate has already changed, and the sheer number of these events over the past decade reflects it, they find. Linking hurricanes, tornadoes and other storms to climate change is much harder, because records for these events are poorer than those for temperature and rainfall. Coumou pointed to heat waves in Western Europe in 2003 and western Russia in 2010, among others, as


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. Howls that for an alarm? Biting the hand that feeds: Pets available for adoption Dogs, cats and other pets will be available through the Montgomery County Humane Society at the following location. To confirm the schedule, call 240-773-5966 or visit www.mchumane.org. Rockville — Compiled by Lisa M. Bolton


Staff Sgt. Robert Bales describes PTSD-like symptoms, lawyer says

The soldier accused of killing 17 Afghan villagers this month has reported suffering from severe nightmares, flashbacks of war scenes and persistent headaches after his multiple combat tours, his attorney said Wednesday. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales told his legal team that he has long woken up with night sweats, often replaying memories of a grisly episode that he and his infantry company witnessed in Iraq several years ago, according to John Henry Browne, a civilian lawyer. Browne’s comments amounted to the most detailed public portrayal so far of Bales’s state of mind in the months leading up to an incident in which the soldier stands accused of committing one of the worst U.S. atrocities in the decade-long war in Afghanistan. Military officials and witnesses have alleged that Bales left his base in the pre-dawn hours of March 11 and methodically killed Afghan villagers — most of them women and children. He allegedly attempted to burn the bodies before returning to the base. Browne, in an interview, did not acknowledge any wrongdoing by Bales, but the lawyer said his client told him that, on the night of the shootings, he returned to his base in southern Afghanistan with only a foggy memory of what had just happened. Bales, Browne said, remembered the smell of gunfire and of human bodies but not much more. The lawyer stressed that Bales did not confess, as military officials have said, and seemed surprised when his weapon was taken away. Bales, 38, is being held at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., pending a full military investigation. He faces the possibility of a death penalty on charges of premeditated murder. Military officials have not offered any possible motive for Bales’s alleged actions, and the formal charges against him shed no light on the issue. Unnamed military officials have said that Bales “snapped” as a result of marital and financial stress and that those factors were compounded by his consumption of alcohol that night, according to news reports. Bales had recently been passed over for a promotion, and he and his wife were under financial strain. This month, they put their Tacoma, Wash., area home up for sale for $50,000 less than the purchase price. In recent years, Bales had several brushes with the law after incidents in which he was alleged to have been drinking. Browne disputed any suggestion that alcohol may have played a role in the


Sudan’s oil dispute with South Sudan turns violent

THE NEW NATION of South Sudan was on the brink of war this week with Sudan, the country it split from just eight months ago. In heavy fighting Monday and Tuesday, Sudan’s planes bombed border areas in South Sudan, while South Sudan’s troops briefly seized an oil-producing area north of the border. Tensions eased a little Wednesday, with both governments saying they wished to avoid an all-out conflict. But the two Sudans are already the site of a budding, and largely neglected, humanitarian catastrophe — one that has produced tens of thousands of refugees, an imminent famine and a boost in the world oil price. The underlying cause of the trouble is disputes over borders and resources that remained unresolved when South Sudan declared independence last July. South Sudan was left with most of the former country’s oil reserves, but its exports travel through pipelines in Sudan. The two governments have been unable to agree on how to divide the revenue, and South Sudan shut down its oil production last month — costing the global market 135,000 barrels a day and denying one of the world’s most impoverished countries 98 percent of its income. This week’s fighting erupted just as the two states appeared to be getting closer to resolving some of these disputes. A nonaggression pact was signed last month, and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was scheduled to travel to South Sudan next week for a meeting with President Salva Kiir Mayardit. The two men were to sign another deal on free movement and employment of each other’s citizens, appoint a committee to demarcate the border and discuss how to settle the oil issue. Now Mr. Bashir has suspended the meeting. That may have been the point of the fighting. Since last summer Mr. Bashir has seized one disputed territory, Abiyeh, by force and responded with characteristic brutality to lingering rebel movements in the border provinces of South Kordofan and Blue Nile. Journalists and human rights groups say his forces have indiscriminately bombed and rocketed areas in the Nuba Mountains. More than 100,000 people have been driven into South Sudan, and the United Nations says 400,000 are in need of food aid. Mr. Bashir, like his defense minister, has already been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court; the scorched-earth approach to the border regions is his standard practice. If he negotiates a settlement with Mr.


After Bo’s ouster, a mysterious death adds to Chongqing's churning rumor mill

BEIJING — Such is the insatiable appetite of tens of millions of Chinese for news — no matter how tangential or speculative — about the country’s biggest political drama in two decades that “Heywood” has joined “tanks,” “military coup” and a host of other search terms now proscribed by the ruling Communist Party as it struggles to calm a national spasm of jitters. Through Internet postings, Twitter-like messages and articles in Hong Kong’s Chinese-language media, Heywood’s death in November in the southwest megacity of Chongqing is helping to fill a massive thirst for news created March 15 when, with a single sentence, China’s official news agency announced that one of the country’s rising political stars, Bo Xilai, had lost his job as Chongqing’s Communist Party boss. Perhaps only nine men — the members of the party’s Politburo Standing Committee — really know what led to Bo’s downfall. But the sudden celebrity of a previously obscure Briton highlights how difficult it has become for the political machinery — rooted in a doctrine of intense secrecy and discipline devised by Vladimir Lenin nearly a century ago — to cope with a flood of fact and fantasy unleashed by 21st-century technology. Though almost entirely hidden from view inside the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing, the drama at the summit of the party ahead of a once-in-a-decade leadership transition is playing out as an increasingly bizarre spectator sport. The party is not without defenses. A massive censorship apparatus adds new words daily to a list of taboo topics. Even the word “Ferrari” is blocked, after a mysterious March 18 traffic accident in Beijing that may, or may not, have killed the son of a top party official. Until his sacking, Bo, the charismatic son of one of the party’s revolutionary-era grandees, was widely thought to be in line for a seat on the Standing Committee in the fall. But Bo’s ambitions crumbled when his former right-hand man, Chongqing’s then recently fired police chief, Wang Lijun, fled to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu and spent 24 hours holed up inside. Wang, hauled to Beijing by state security agents, is under formal investigation, but officials have made no comment on Bo’s exact status. Even his whereabouts are unknown. And, fueled in part by overseas media reports recycled by Chinese Web sites, there has been a storm of speculation that Heywood may have been bumped off by


D.C. TV personality Rich Massabny celebrates 25 years of rave reviews

On Monday evening, some of the region’s chefs, restaurateurs and bartenders gathered in the Ritz-Carlton’s ballroom in downtown Washington to hear the finalists for this year’s Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington’s Rammy awards. But among the most celebrated of the lot was a man who has never worked in a kitchen, never attended culinary school and doesn’t even hold a bartender’s license. Rich Massabny For 25 years, Massabny has promoted Washington area restaurants and theater companies on the Arlington Weekly News program and his local cable television shows, “Rich’s Place” and “Conversations with Rich.” He has become a beloved personality in the Washington region and was recognized at Monday night’s event. “He has been a very integral part of the hospitality, arts and cultural industries here in the nation’s capital region,” said Visit Fairfax CEO Barry Biggar in a sentimental speech before the nominations. He thanked Massabny for being “one of the longest-running cheerleaders” of local restaurants. Massabny, 75, has lived in Arlington for nearly 60 years. His two Fairfax television shows are filmed once a month and air three times the following week. “Rich’s Place,” a half-hour cooking show, features local chefs, and “Conversations with Rich,” his hour-long talk show, features personalities such as WTOP’s Bob Madigan and Virginia Ballet artistic director Tish Cordova. On his six-minute Arlington Weekly News segment, he reviews plays and opera at theaters throughout the region. Massabny was born in Brooklyn and moved to Arlington when he was 18. He attended George Washington University and spent 30 years in sales. Then, during a visit to an Arlington county fair in 1987, he was approached by someone in Arlington Cable Television’s booth who said he looked nice in their monitor. “I had a full head of black hair back then,” he said. “Hard to believe, I know.” The station was looking for someone to do theater reviews, and Massabny volunteered. He went to the station to fill out an application, and as he was leaving, a producer frantically approached him to fill in for an anchor who hadn’t shown up. “It was right out of a movie,” Massabny said. “He asked me if I could do six minutes on restaurants, and I’ve been doing it ever since.” Now, 25 years later, Massabny has been instrumental in promoting the area’s restaurants and theater. “I’ve appeared on his shows and always had a ball,” said RAMW president Lynne


Bee research details harm from insecticides

Unlike older pesticides, the neonicotinoid pesticides are most often introduced directly into the seeds of crops planted by farmers and thus permeate the entire plant as it grows — including the pollen and nectar the bees feed on. Spraying of the older pesticides could be halted when plants were flowering so bees and other pollinators would not be harmed. With the neonicotinoids, which kill pest insects by attacking their central nervous systems and are derived from the same nicotine found in tobacco, that kind of timing is not possible. Failure to thrive The initial changes in bee behavior found by the researchers may have been small, but the longer-term impact was large: Researchers found a sharp drop in the number of queen bumblebees produced, a decrease in the size and weight of beehives, and a demonstrated increase in the number of bees unable to find their way home. When the hives as a whole don’t thrive, then the individuals become more susceptible to disease and other threats. The subject became a major focus of agricultural and environmental attention in 2006 when beekeepers reported massive losses in their beehives, an escalation of a decline seen for years. The new research — one study of honeybees and the other of bumblebees — points to flaws in the way pesticides are evaluated by regulators, said the author of the study of a kind of honeybee widely used as a pollinator in agriculture. “So far, they mostly require manufacturers to ensure that doses encountered on the field do not kill bees, but they basically ignore the consequences of doses that do not kill them but may cause behavioral difficulties,” said Mickael Henry of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) in Avignon, France. Environmental toxicologist David Fisher of Bayer CropScience, which makes some of the neonicotinoids, said the studies appear to be well done, but are inconsistent with earlier results. Pesticides were an early suspect in the decline, but many other factors have been implicated as well — including a relatively new invasive mite that kills bees in their hives, the loss of open land for foraging, and the stresses on honeybee colonies caused by moving them from site to site for agricultural pollination. “We know that these agents can kill bees at high dosages, but previous studies did not show that effect at the low doses found in fields,” Fisher said. “We


Union reaches deal with Safeway and Giant

in the Washington region, confirmed that a tentative deal had been reached, but declined to comment further. The threat of a strike loomed over the final days of negotiations. The union spent the past few weeks rallying public support by holding demonstrations throughout the region. Tensions grew as Safeway and Giant hired temporary employees to man the stores in case union workers walked off the job — a tactic used in 2008 during the last contract negotiations. Company officials at Safeway said those replacement workers will remain on standby until the agreement is ratified by union members. A majority of union members in attendance must vote in favor of the agreement for it to be ratified. If rejected, two-thirds of members must vote to authorize a strike. The new contract would come nearly a year after workers at a Giant warehouse in Jessup ratified an agreement to ensure that the site would not be shuttered. Those members of Teamsters Local 730 accepted a 40 percent reduction in staff, with the assurance that employees would be offered buyouts or jobs in other parts of the company. Reducing labor costs has been a key concern of Giant and Safeway as nonunion retailers such as Wal-Mart expand. “We’re optimistic and hopeful that [Giant and Safeway] will remain successful. [We only ask] that they continue to allow us to share in that success,” Federici said. To be sure, Safeway and Giant still reign supreme in the local supermarket world. They had a combined market share of 39 percent in the Washington area in 2011, compared with 38.5 percent a year earlier, according to Food World, a local trade magazine . Safeway is based in California; Giant, based in Landover, is owned by Dutch firm Royal Ahold. Wal-Mart, with 33 percent of the national grocery market, has about a 4 percent share locally that stands to rise once it rolls out six new stores in the District in the next few years. Pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens have also upped the ante by expanding their food offerings, while other nonunion shops — such as Harris Teeter and Wegmans — are opening more locations. “Virtually everybody who is new on the block in food retailing has entered the market [as] nonunion,” said Jeffrey Metzger, publisher of Food World. Only four of the top 10 chains selling groceries in the Baltimore-Washington area, including Costco and Shoppers Food


Indianapolis Grand Prix swimming: Brendan Hansen, Ed Moses lead parade out retirement and back into pool

came out of retirement last year, but his bid to make Australia’s Olympic team failed less than two weeks ago at his nation’s Olympic trials. Libby Trickett, Michael Klim and Geoff Huegill also un-retired to compete. “When I was growing up, swimming seemed like something you did through college . . . then the rigors of adult life kind of consumed you,” said Ervin, who was in graduate school last year at the University of California when he decided to resume training with the college team. “At the turn of the millennium, there were notable differences in how it’s been professionalized.” Results here mean little as few of the swimmers are in top form and many, including 2011’s most dominant male swimmer, Ryan Lochte, are smack in the middle of heavy training. Lochte finished ninth in the 100 freestyle in 49.46 seconds as Nathan Adrian (48.62) topped Michael Phelps (48.74) for the gold medal — despite the fact that Adrian’s jammer shorts split in the back seconds before the race. Later, in the 100 butterfly, Phelps claimed the gold medal in 52.23 and Lochte got ninth in 52.32. In the women’s 400 free, Towson’s Katie Hoff claimed second in 4:07.00 and Kate Ziegler of Great Falls placed sixth in 4:12.98. One reason Hansen said he didn’t want to compare himself to his old self was that he didn’t want to finish the same way he did in 2008. After winning individual silver and bronze medals at the 2004 Summer Games in the 100 and 200 breast, he finished fourth in the 100 breast in Beijing, his only individual event. Demoralized and burned out, Hansen got out of the sport fast. He dived into triathlons and helped manage a nutritional supplement company. He had no intention of returning, but missed the competition. “A lot of the expectations and pressure I had in ’08 was from myself,” Hansen said. “How you react to yourself is really important in how successful you are. Now, I’m going out there with a clear head, a refreshed outlook.” Moses tried professional golf and a marketing job in Los Angeles. But he never found the same level of success he hit in the swimming pool just a couple years out of high school. “He’s a competitor,” Hansen said. “He’ll be there racing, no matter what. It’s just that he may run out of time.” So might they