Russia cracks down on U.S.-linked NGOs

MOSCOW — The Kostroma Center for the Support of Public Initiatives has run afoul of a new law requiring organizations that receive funds from abroad and engage in political activity to register as foreign agents. The center’s chairman, and civic activists across Russia, says his group is neither political nor in the pay of foreign governments. The law, they say, is being used to silence advocacy groups and frighten supporters, and it reminds some of the Cold War era, especially since many of the targets have U.S. connections. “You know, Kostroma is a small city,” said Nikolai Sorokin, the historian, “and everyone’s talking about this, and everyone’s shocked by what’s going on. Some people say we shouldn’t even talk to foreigners, it’s dangerous. It’s like in Soviet times when you could go to jail for that.” Howard Solomon, the U.S. Embassy’s political officer, had gone to Kostroma, a 12th century city on the Volga River, mainly to tour a plant where a Houston company is investing about $100 million in an oil rig factory, creating an estimated 500 jobs, the kind of project courted by the Russian government. Solomon met with regional officials, including representatives of the ruling United Russia Party, visited the National Oilwell Varco plant in Volgorechensk, admired medieval frescoes and gave a long interview on local television. On Feb. 28 he participated in a roundtable with about 30 people, including activists, retirees, students, journalists — and a priest who gave him a hard time about American culture and Coca-Cola. “Prosecutors believe that since we organized this roundtable with Solomon,” Sorokin said, “this is automatically political activity and that means that we are automatically foreign agents.” The U.S. Embassy saw the visit differently, telling Russian media it was the kind of public diplomacy practiced around the world to increase mutual understanding. Election monitor fined In Moscow on Thursday, in the first case brought under the law, the nonprofit election monitor Golos was fined $10,000 and its director $3,300 for failing to register as a foreign agent. Golos was formed 13 years ago with help from the National Democratic Institute and received various U.S. grants over the years, but stopped accepting assistance when the law went into effect in November. The case against Golos focused on the money it received as part of the Andrei Sakharov Freedom Award given by the Norwegian Helsinki Committee — although Golos said it


How did Maryland lose control of a jail?

ONE FEMALE corrections officer had the name of an inmate tattooed on her wrist. Another had the same inmate’s name tattooed on her neck. Both guards, who worked at Baltimore’s main jail, were in long-term sexual relationships with the inmate, Tavon White; he is described in a federal racketeering and drug indictment as the kingpin of a ruthless gang that ran roughshod over the jail, peddling contraband in collusion with corrupt guards. The indictment, unsealed Tuesday by U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein, paints a troubling picture of inmates, the Black Guerrilla Family, who literally took over the asylum — the Baltimore City Detention Center. And it raises unsettling questions about policies, procedures and personnel at the Maryland Department of Corrections, which lost control of the facility and was forced to appeal to the feds for help. Seven inmates, 13 officers and five outside accomplices were charged in the indictment, which described a wide-ranging conspiracy dating from 2009 to smuggle into the jail and distribute narcotics, cell phones and other contraband. Gang members allegedly bribed female corrections officers with cash, jewelry and other items and ran things in the jail while engaging in robbery, assault, extortion, witness retaliation, money-laundering and obstruction of justice. As Mr. White put it in a conversation with one of the indicted jailers, which was secretly recorded by the FBI, “My word is law.” Gary D. Maynard, the Maryland corrections secretary, turned to the feds in 2011. That was the right call. But how did things spin so badly out of control before that? Although corrections officials were aware of problems for some time, they appear not to have taken effective steps to discipline guards or tighten security procedures to stop the flow of drugs and other contraband into the facility. Guards allegedly smuggling the goods easily eluded detection at the jail’s entrances. Given that failure, it’s reasonable to expect that senior figures at the jail, and possibly higher-ups in the corrections department, should also be held accountable. Senior lawmakers in Annapolis Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), having won virtually every major legislative initiative on his agenda, says he is turning his attention to making state government work better in his last two years in office. He should start with a thorough review of the corrections department. Marylanders deserve to know whether the corruption that enveloped the jail in Baltimore has infected facilities around the state.


Jupiter, Venus and Mercury gather for Memorial Day party

Contemplate a crowded sky at dusk in the west-northwest toward the end of May. Like Ocean City sunbathers, Jupiter, Venus and Mercury jam-pack the sundown heavens for Memorial Day weekend. In the present, Jupiter commands our western evening heavens. You can’t miss Jupiter since it is a negative 1.9 magnitude (very bright), and you’ll spy it from the urban parts of the metro area. On May 11, a youthful sliver of a moon hangs under the bright Jupiter, but by the next night, the waxing moon has hopped over the large gaseous planet. While the moon plays hopscotch with Jupiter, check toward the low, western horizon for Venus. After a hiatus from our heavens, the effervescent Venus climbs away from the sun. At dusk, it’s emerging day by day from the sun’s glare, and it gets closer to Jupiter night by night. When the fleet Mercury joins the Jupiter-Venus frolic in mid-month, sky-gazers will be set for the treat — a planetary triple play. By May 20, Jupiter, Venus and Mercury form a line in the sky. Mercury and Venus even up around May 22-23. On May 25, the planets form a triangle: Venus takes the bottom point, Jupiter grabs the top left position and Mercury holds at top right. By Sunday, May 26, Mercury takes the upper right position. The planets form a scalene-style triangle May 27. Then, over the next few days, the triangle breaks up. Mercury and Venus climb in the sky, as Jupiter walks off into the sunset. And so it goes. Find Saturn in the east-southeastern sky at dusk now, at zero magnitude, which is bright enough to see through urban light pollution. By mid-May, our favorite ringed planet hangs high in the southeast when dark falls, and the planet will be very high in the south in the evening’s later hours. On May 10, an annular solar eclipse occurs on the other side of the world in Australia and the Pacific Ocean. A penumbral lunar eclipse occurs May 25, but the Earth’s penumbral shadow casts such a razor-thin, imperceptible shade that we probably won’t see it. Down-to-Earth events: ●May 4 ●May 4 ●May 5 ●May 5 ●May 7 ●May 11 ●May 11 ●May 16 ●May 20 Blaine Friedlander can be reached at PostSkyWatch@gmail.com


U.S. role at a crossroads in Mexico’s intelligence war on the cartels

take control of drone operations. An agreement was reached that would temporarily give operational control to Mexican authorities during such flights. U.S. pilots sitting in the States would control the planes remotely, but a Mexican military or federal police commander would be able to direct the pilot within the boundaries of a Mexico-designated grid. By late 2010, drones were flying deeper into Mexico to spy on the cartels, as they did during the two-day gun battle involving 800 federal police that resulted in the death of Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, head of the ultra-violent La Familia Michoacana cartel. By then, Mexican authorities had grown so enamored with drones that they were requesting more flights than the United States could deliver, given that most of the aircraft were being used to support operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Pakistan. So Mexican authorities bought their own drones. The first public indication of this development came when one crashed in El Paso in December 2010. “Eventually, when they got better at using their own, they would fly more missions than we would,” said one former law enforcement official involved in drone operations. Mexico’s new approach Four months and many conversations after the Dec. 15 meeting, the new Mexican government is still fleshing out the details of its counterdrug approach. In a visit to Washington two weeks ago, Mexico’s top security team shared the broad outlines of the plan with U.S. agencies, according to U.S. and Mexican officials. It contains many changes. The president will not be nearly as directly involved in counterdrug efforts as Calderon was, the officials said. The interior minister will coordinate the relationships between various Mexican and U.S. agencies and other Mexican units. The director of the Mexican intelligence agency will decide which Mexican agency should receive and act on sensitive U.S. information. Given the corruption of Mexican law enforcement and armed forces, U.S. officials said privately they would be unwilling to share sensitive information until they have vetted the people involved and understand how their information is to be protected. The Mexican government also plans to create five regional intelligence fusion centers, staffed with federal and state officials, and to build a 10,000-member super police force. This force would be steeped in military discipline but would use police tactics, rather than overwhelming military force, to keep violence to a minimum. Medina Mora, the Mexican ambassador, said in an interview that


Victims in recovery: Patrick Downes, 29, and Jessica Kensky, 32

Newlyweds and avid runners Patrick Downes and Jessica Kensky were standing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon when the bombs exploded. They each lost a leg, and Kensky’s right foot was badly hurt. Their families said in a statement that the event shook many people’s faith in humanity but that the outpouring of support that followed restored their own. Friends quickly set up a Web page that has raised more than $600,000 from 10,900 donations for Downes and Kensky. Others uploaded video tributes to YouTube from as far away as Istanbul, and a Facebook page filled up with wishes from friends and strangers alike. Downes ran in the Boston Marathon in 2005. The couple had gone to the finish line this year to reminisce about that run. He, a Boston native, is finishing a doctoral degree in psychology. She is originally from California and is an oncology nurse. They met in 2006 in Washington, where Downes was working on Capitol Hill. Downes was nicknamed “Jesus” in high school for his goodness, friends wrote on the fundraising page. Kensky, slightly older and sassy, did not seem like the most likely choice at first, they said. But they clicked. — Justin Jouvenal


Brown-Vitter banking bill aims to address an unhealthy situation

NO MATTER how you measure them, the four largest U.S. banks — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo — are big. At $7.8 trillion, their combined assets are half the size of the entire U.S. economy, and they hold more than half of the nation’s $7 trillion in deposits. This huge economic footprint makes them “too big to fail.” Markets believe, probably correctly, that the U.S. government would never let one or more of them go bankrupt, even though depositors enjoy bank-financed protection from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Certainly Washington intervened massively to prop up megabanks during the financial panic of 2008. The perception that taxpayers ultimately stand behind the banks’ balance sheets persists in spite of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. Consequently, the banks enjoy cheaper funding than they otherwise might, enabling them to outcompete smaller banks, and thus get bigger still. Now come two senators, liberal Democrat Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and conservative Republican David Vitter (La.), with a left-right fusion bill aimed at this unhealthy situation. Its core provision requires that all banks with more than $500 billion in assets hold a safety cushion of at least $15 in equity capital for every $100 in assets. The bill would not only require more and better capital but also limit the “risk-weighting” of assets, on the grounds that banks can manipulate such calculations to make their balance sheets seem artificially safe. This would likely force the Big Four to spin off much of their current business, defusing systemic risk that Mr. Brown and Mr. Vitter believe they now pose. Big banks protest that they have already deleveraged more than their critics generally admit and that shrinking them will restrict credit, thus slowing economic growth. Both are plausible points, though the latter needs a grain of salt: The Brown-Vitter bill would inevitably reduce megabanks’ return on equity, to which executive pay has historically been linked. The bill would put the United States at odds with the international bank regulation process known as Basel III. Basel III is less aggressive about capital requirements but has the advantage of being a global approach to a globally interconnected sector. Big banks’ reliance on debt financing reflects not only the too-big-to-fail phenomenon but also the favored treatment of interest payments under the U.S. tax code. Forcing them to shift to equity would therefore increase their tax burden, a real cost


A possible new way to manage water and snow in thirsty California

while a spectrometer maps the area it covers. Also critical is the snow’s “albedo,” or reflective quality, which dictates how much sunlight it absorbs and helps determine how quickly it will turn to water. Albedo varies considerably; freshly fallen snow reflects 90 percent of the sunlight that hits it, while older snow, which forms larger crystals, reflects only 60 percent. Dust and black carbon carried to the snowpack by winds also can change the percentage. The spectrometer measures that as well. The information is fed into powerful computers and combined with historical measures and models of snow density, Painter said. The end product, the scientists hope, will be the best estimate of water volume and flow ever developed, a truly new generation of snow science and snowpack measurement. Satellites can map the snow’s area, but they provide huge snapshots, compared with the aerial surveys, which can show a patch of snow a yard or two square, and a patch of bare ground next to it, Painter said. And the satellite images can take weeks to arrive. A sparse network of underground sensors, known as “snow pillows,” provides some idea every few hours of the snow’s depth, but they weigh everything that lands on them, including tree branches and the occasional bear, Painter said. They are small and there are far too few of them, none in the higher elevations of a mountain range that reaches more than 13,000 feet. There is no method to calculate snow albedo. “We are massively undersampling the snowpack,” Painter said. Climate change has begun to make the historic data that snow scientists use less reliable, McGurk said. “Our predictive tools get noisy,” he said. “What that means is you have to hedge more.” Attempts at aerial snow measurement have been made for the past five or 10 years, said Ethan Gutmann, associate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who has mounted a single, fixed laser in the Rocky Mountains near Boulder, Colo., to measure the snowpack there. The aerial survey can cover a huge area once a week, while Gutmann’s laser provides continuous, precise information but for a much smaller swath. It is much less expensive than the $1 million aerial project and not subject to days when planes can’t fly, he said. But the ASO, he said, is “the future of snow science and resource management for mountainous areas” and probably beyond.


Defense cuts pose an economic quandary for liberals

relations at American University and a former national security official in the Bill Clinton administration, said the conflicts are explained by basic politics — and have been present during every major military drawdown since World War II. “In either party, there’s going to be a tension for the members between wanting to cut defense and wanting to save jobs in their district,” Adams said. “We’re in one of those big 20-year cycles where the budget goes up with a combat and then comes down. It always brings these politics to the surface.” Mixed feelings on the left Liberals say they feel deeply divided. They welcome the fact that the military — after so many years of growth — is adjusting to tighter spending controls. But they acknowledge that the cuts are happening at the worst possible time, when the economy is already growing slowly and could use a lift from the government. “I don’t want to see anybody lose their jobs,” said Sen. Bernard Sanders (Vt.), an independent who caucuses with Democrats. “We are in the midst of a terrible recession. When you cut military spending you lose jobs, and that’s a terrible thing.” On the other hand, Sanders said, military spending should not be preserved just because it keeps people employed. “You can hire millions of people digging ditches and hire millions of people to fill the ditches,” he said. The money should be redirected toward better sources of employment, he said, such as investing in construction projects that benefit the economy — building roads and bridges, for example — or education. Former congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), one of the loudest advocates of sharp military reductions over the years, argued against making immediate and dramatic cuts to military spending. But he said there will still be a positive lesson. “This is the wrong time to be making government cuts to any form of expenditures,” Frank said. But, he added, “the fact that we’re doing the reductions now in military spending will have zero negative impact on American security.” While pained by the consequences for the economy, several liberal lawmakers defended the cuts, especially given that other nonmilitary programs are facing the ax in an age of austerity. “When you look at what sequester’s done to Head Start and unemployment benefits, this is a very terrible period,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). “Defense can handle an across-the-board cut. Head Start


Human mission to Mars is no longer just a sci-fi dream

the space shuttle to the Hubble Space Telescope three times to fix and upgrade it, Grunsfeld has firsthand experience with the capabilities that only astronauts can bring. The same would be true on Mars, he said. “In a matter of a week, astronauts could probably complete the entire [two-year] Curiosity mission.” The upcoming Mars conference — co-sponsored by the nonprofit group Explore Mars and the GWU’s Space Policy Institute — is designed to examine the feasibility and rationale for a human mission to Mars and to highlight the public’s seeming embrace of the idea. A recent poll commissioned by Explore Mars and Boeing questioned 1,101 people about sending humans to Mars; the public’s views were overwhelmingly positive. About 75 percent of respondents either “agreed “or “strongly agreed” with the statement that it was worthwhile to increase NASA funding to 1 percent of the federal budget (in other words, to double NASA’s share) in order to fund a mission to Mars. More than 84 percent said that if the rover Curiosity found evidence of past or current life on Mars, NASA should send a human crew to try to verify the finding. Nonetheless, getting past the question of why the United States should some day send astronauts to Mars won’t be easy. The country’s support for the Apollo moon program was driven in significant part by the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union, and there are no similar rivals now. Some people are also wary of a human mission to Mars because of the inherent risk and others because they believe robotic missions can answer the important scientific questions at a much lower price. But NASA has a unique connection with Mars: All seven of the vehicles that have landed on the planet and succeeded in their missions have been sent by the United States. That will, no doubt, change in the decades ahead, however, as Europe, Russia, India and China expand their Mars programs, with landing a human team as the ultimate goal. “It will be done, regardless of U.S. leadership,” Aldrin said of an eventual manned Mars landing. “The real question is: How long does the exceptionalism of the United States last?” Kaufman, a former Washington Post editor and the author of “First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth,” is writing a book about the first months of the rover Curiosity’s exploration of Mars.


Washington’s Civil War madam could keep a secret

prostitutes. Hall’s brothel was ranked by the city’s provost marshal as one of the best and biggest, with a peak of 18 “inmates.” “All who were rich and important went to Mary Ann Hall’s,” said Robert S. Pohl, author of the 2012 book “Wicked Capitol Hill.” An 1864 article in the Washington Evening Star referred to Hall’s business as the “old and well established house” on Maryland Avenue. The brothel “in question has had — it is no exaggeration to say — a national reputation for the last quarter century,” according to the paper. Seifert said an inventory of Hall’s home shortly after her death catalogued its opulence. Hall had plush red furniture, carpets from Belgium, oil paintings, feather pillows, marble-topped tables and an icebox. Judging by the quality of the decor, Hall must have had high-profile clients, she said. Moreover, Seifert said, unlike other brothels, Hall’s establishment rarely came under official scrutiny. “She ran the kind of house that didn’t cause trouble,” Seifert said. “It was a place of serious discretion. She ran a pretty straight business.” Records indicate that Hall retired in the late 1870s. She later rented her home to a women’s clinic. “The whole prostitute with a heart of gold — that was pretty much Mary Ann Hall,” Pohl said. Hall died of a cerebral hemorrhage Jan. 29, 1886, according to her death certificate. Her net worth was about $90,000, equivalent to $2 million in today’s economy. Her home later served as a YMCA before it was demolished during the 1930s. The government eventually bought the property as part of an expansion of the Mall. Hall’s legacy lives on at Congressional Cemetery on Capitol Hill, where her remains are buried. Her plot is one of the cemetery’s largest, according to cemetery archivist and docent Dayle Dooley. Hall rests in the northeast section of the cemetery, next to her mother and sister. Their plot is yards from the grave of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Hall’s headstone is a large, pale monument with a somber, female figure sitting on top. Her Evening Star obituary gave no hint of Hall’s profession. But its eloquence reflected the influence she had in Washington’s public and private circles. “With integrity unquestioned, a heart ever open to appeals of distress, a charity that was boundless, she is gone but her memory will be kept green by many who knew her sterling worth.”


Overlooked stories of the Civil War

University It was not an easy matter deciding just what the role of black men was to be in the Federal military. When President Abraham Lincoln promulgated the final Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, he dealt with the issue. He legalized the use of African Americans in the U.S. Army. The motion picture “Glory” chronicled the bravery that black soldiers demonstrated in battle, showing the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Colored) charging to their deaths at Battery Wagner, S.C., on July 18, 1863. Black troops, doubted by white soldiers, proved their valor and martial abilities by facing heavy fire and unflinchingly suffering terrible losses for the Union cause. The question whether African Americans made good soldiers had already been demonstrated earlier, however, although no motion picture has ever been made of these efforts. It was during the campaign of Ulysses S. Grant against Vicksburg, Miss., that recently recruited black slaves, with little military training and supplied with inferior equipment, proved their mettle at Milliken’s Bend, La., on June 7, 1863. Confederate officers had convinced themselves that the only way to stop Grant’s siege and ultimate victory at Vicksburg was to destroy his supply line some 15 miles north, at Milliken’s Bend on the Mississippi River. They did not realize that Grant had already moved his supply line from the west side of the River to the eastern side. Confederates launched an all-out attack against the original supply base. Black troops, guarding this area, fought off the Confederate attackers despite facing overwhelming numbers and having received little training. The black soldiers received withering fire, but they courageously kept fighting. This battle was a small one, as Civil War battles go, yet it was one of tremendous importance. Milliken’s Bend proved to skeptical Federal officers and soldiers that black men could indeed fight. Although an unknown battle, it opened the way for a fuller use of black manpower. By the end of the war, nearly 200,000 blacks fought in the Federal military. Charles A. Dana, whom Secretary of War Edwin Stanton had sent to Mississippi to spy on Grant, reported back to Washington after this engagement: “The sentiment in regard to the employment of negro troops has been revolutionized by the bravery of the blacks in the recent battle of Milliken’s Bend.” From that day forward, through Fort Wagner to the end of the conflict, African Americans played a major role in


Kentucky Derby: Doug O’Neill doesn’t deserve his bad reputation

saying that O’Neill has been maligned. He rose to prominence in California a decade ago, at a time when “milkshakes” — a baking-soda solution used to enhance horses’ performance — were being used illicitly at many tracks. O’Neill claimed the previously undistinguished Lava Man for $50,000 and turned the gelding into one of the country’s top stakes horses, winning more than $5 million in purses. It was the kind of miraculous turnaround that makes the racing community believe that a trainer is cheating. The industry finally adopted a test for milkshaking — it measures the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in a horse’s system — and while Lava Man never exceeded the legal limit, other O’Neill horses did so on four occasions. O’Neill said, “I am adamant that we don’t milkshake, and we haven’t milkshaked,” but he carried a shady reputation into last year’s Triple Crown. In the spring of 2012, the New York Times was running a series of articles about abuses in horse racing, particularly the high fatality rates at many U.S. tracks and the connection between drugs and those deaths. When O’Neill stepped into the limelight, the Times had a face to put on these issues. Citing his record of drug violations and the distressing breakdown rate of his horses, the Times wrote: “O’Neill’s Derby victory places him — and his troubled record — center stage at a time when thoroughbred racing is facing perhaps its greatest ethical reckoning.” When O’Neill was making headlines last spring, I analyzed the records of his horses over the previous five years, and my findings contradicted his reputation. The hallmark of most cheaters is an outlandish win percentage — sometimes as high as 40 percent — after they have acquired horses from other trainers. O’Neill’s win rate with his new acquisitions was a modest 18 percent. When they did win, his horses almost never displayed the sudden, implausible improvement that suggests a trainer is using illegal drugs. Nor were there suspicious-looking performances in the cases when O’Neill was punished for medication violations or CO2 above the limit. The trainer received a 45-day suspension after Argenta showed a CO2 overage in a 2010 race, a penalty that was cited in virtually every article about O’Neill’s nefarious record. But Argenta was a hopeless case who went off at 20-to-1 and finished next-to-last, and it seems inconceivable that the trainer would have been using


Smithsonian to close some exhibitareas because of sequestration

The Smithsonian Institution will be closing small exhibit area sections in the African Art Museum, the Smithsonian Castle and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden beginning Wednesday due to the across the board budget cuts known as sequestration. The closures, announced by Secretary Wayne Clough after a Board of Regents meeting Monday, are part of $42 million in cuts that began March 1 and extend through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. They are part of a reduction in a security contract that supplements the Smithsonian security force and will affect “The Commons” on the first floor of the Castle which includes such items as a Panda video and a helmet worn by Gen. Charles Yeager. An education room adjacent to the “African Mosaic” permanent exhibit in the African Art Museum along with some sections of the third floor which houses some permanent collection items in the Hirshhorn. Initial cuts to travel and building maintenance as well as a hiring freeze were announced when the sequester first took effect. Gallery closures on a “rolling basis” were announced earlier this month, but Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas said the three closures, which will remain in effect until the end of the fiscal year or until Congress enacts new legislation, are easier to understand and involve no major exhibition areas. We did “what we could do to adjust and what would affect the public the least,” St. Thomas says. Planning for the next fiscal year, which could involve larger cuts, will begin in the summer if the sequester continues, Clough said.


FBI visits home of Boston bombing suspect’s widow

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, an FBI spokesman said. Special Agent Jason Pack said the agents visited the North Kingstown house as part of their investigation of the bombing. Russell has been staying at her parents’ home. “The FBI is there as part of our ongoing investigation, but we aren’t permitted to discuss specific aspects our case,” Pack said. Russell has not spoken publicly and said nothing to reporters when she left the home shortly after the agents departed. Her attorney said last week that Russell had no involvement in the bombing that killed three and injured more than 250 during the marathon on April 15. “She is doing everything she can to assist with the investigation,” Amato DeLuca, Russell’s attorney, said in a statement . “The report of involvement by her husband and brother-in-law came as an absolute shock to them all.” Two law enforcement officials said that investigators found female DNA on a piece of one of the bombs from the marathon. The DNA could have come from a woman who helped the suspects make the bombs or from a person in a store who handled the materials the suspects bought, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation. The DNA may have also come from someone in the crowd of people at the marathon, one of the officials said. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a shootout with the police four days after the bombing. His brother, Dzhokhar, 19, is recovering from gunshot wounds and he has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction. Judith Clarke, a defense lawyer, was appointed by a magistrate Monday to represent Dzhokhar. She has represented high-profile defendants, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Jared Loughner, who wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six people in Tucson. The FBI has interviewed Mikhail Allakhverdov, known as “Misha,” after relatives of Tamerlan Tsarnaev said that someone named Misha was responsible for radicalizing Tsarnaev. Allakhverdov, who also lives in Rhode Island, told the New York Review of Books that he was a convert to Islam and he had known Tsarnaev. But he said he was not Tsarnaev’s teacher and denied any part in the bombings. He also said he is cooperating with the FBI investigation. Attempts to reach Allakhverdov by phone were unsuccessful, but a lawyer for his family told reporters that he expects the inquiry to be closed soon.


Federal Faces: Kenneth Linthicum

Name: Position: Best known for: Working with NASA scientists, Linthicum developed a model that uses global climate data and vegetation changes to predict conditions that will lead to floods. Flooding hatches mosquito eggs in the soil, resulting in the emergence of the virus in adult mosquitoes and the spread of Rift Valley fever. USDA’s Kenneth Linthicum, one of the nation’s leading experts on insects and disease prevention. (Courtesy of Wrenn Pacheco/Kansas) His data now provide governments and international organizations with early notice and an opportunity to deploy resources in advance of an outbreak. Linthicum also is responsible for developing techniques to protect U.S. military personnel overseas from debilitating afflictions caused by sand flies. He helped halt the spread of leishmaniasis, a sometimes deadly disease that was a problem for U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. He developed new approaches for pesticide applications, including treating the camouflage netting that the troops use in the field with an insecticide that resulted in a significant reduction in sand flies that could bite U.S. troops. Government work: Motivation for service: Biggest challenge: Quote: “ — From the Partnership for Public Service For a full profile, go to The Fed Page at washingtonpost.com/politics/federal-government.


Article: U.S. Foreign Service marginalized by political appointees

the nine briefing officials). The article also unveiled a workplace tension unique to State — the sense among some Foreign Service employees that they are being overtaken by their civil service colleagues. But the encroachment of political appointees seems to be the bigger problem for Johnson, Neumann and Pickering. Since 1975, the number of top leadership positions, including deputy secretaries, undersecretaries and assistant secretaries, rose from 18 to 33, according to the authors. Meanwhile the share of those slots filled by Foreign Service officers dropped sharply, to 24 percent last year from 61 percent. So what, you ask? Part of their reply carries a lesson that generally could apply to many federal agencies: “For all their merit, political appointees are short-term officials, subject to partisan, personality-specific pressures. They do not notably contribute to the institution’s longer-term vitality, and their ascension creates a system inherently incapable of providing expert, nonpartisan foreign policy advice. “When the bulk of its leadership positions are held by transient appointees, the Foreign Service is undermined. This situation spawns opportunism and political correctness, weakens esprit de corps within the service and emaciates institutional memory.” That esprit de corps remains strong, said one official who briefed journalists. Indeed, according to this line, State is just one big happy family, at least most of the time. There’s probably some truth to that, but not so much that the points in the op-ed should be minimized. In the countries he covers, “there are foreign service and civil service and foreign service limited and private personal security contractors and all manner of employee and I will tell you that in my experience, nobody in my offices, in my missions, knows or cares what the employment type is,” said Alex Thier, a political appointee who is assistant to the administrator for Afghanistan and Pakistan programs in the U.S. Agency for International Development. “What you have is a cadre of people who are incredibly dedicated to purpose,” he added. “I have never heard anybody once complain about the mix, the type of officials.” The point involving Foreign Service and civil service workers is a little trickier for the article’s authors to make. Foreign and civil service folks toil side by side, and the authors don’t want to sound like they are picking on their co-workers. At the same time, they say the “civil service personnel system must be adapted to conform more closely


An expert in preventing insect-borne diseases

years of unusually heavy rainfall. Working with scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Linthicum developed a model that uses global climate data and vegetation changes to predict conditions that will lead to floods. Flooding hatches mosquito eggs in the soil, leading to the emergence of the virus in adult mosquitoes and the spread of the disease. Before this technique was developed, there was no way of knowing when an outbreak would occur. Today, his predictive data provides governments and international organizations with early notice and an opportunity to deploy resources appropriately. “We now use data to give countries three to five months to prepare and mitigate disease transmission,” Linthicum said. “We also share risk information with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Defense Department (DOD) that have personnel in these areas.” In the Horn of Africa in 1997, before Linthicum’s predictive method was developed, there were 100,000 human cases of Rift Valley fever and an estimated $100 million in economic losses in Kenya alone due to the devastation of livestock. In 2006-2007, when Linthicum’s model was first used to predict an outbreak, only 1,000 human cases were reported in the same region, and the economic loss was down to $65 million. Linthicum also made a major contribution by helping halt the spread of leishmaniasis, a debilitating and sometimes deadly disease spread by sand flies that adversely affects the liver and pancreas and causes fever, and severe weight loss, fatigue and anemia. The disease affects some 12 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, and struck hundreds of soldiers in Iraq who developed red bumps on their skin that swelled for weeks before rupturing into oozing wounds. It also has been a problem for American troops in Afghanistan. “There was little the military could do to control the insects or stop the biting from occurring,” said Linthicum. Linthicum and his team, along with DOD, developed new approaches for pesticide applications, including treating the camouflage netting that the troops use in the field with an effective insecticide. “We saw a very significant reduction in sand flies that could bite our deployed troops,” Linthicum said. Linthicum found a study area in the deserts of California where temperatures get nearly as high as they do in Iraq, and conducted trials over four years. “Ken looked at different residual insecticides and devices that worked under different conditions and sought


O’Malley expresses confidence in Maryland’s prisons chief

Gov. Martin O’Malley talks to reporters in Annapolis earlier this month. (AP Photo/Brian Witte) Gov. Martin O’Malley on Tuesday voiced full confidence in the head of Maryland’s prison system and argued that the federal indictments of 25 inmates and guards at a Baltimore jail last week was “a very positive development” in rooting out corruption. “We’ll be looking back on this as one of the more positive achievements in the fight against gangs,” O’Malley told reporters in his first public remarks on the scandal, which emerged as he was on an eight-day trade mission to Israel and Jordan. O’Malley (D) said he first learned of the ongoing problems at the Baltimore City Detention Center last spring, at which point he directed Gary D. Maynard, the head of Maryland’s prisons, to fully cooperate with a prison task force led by federal officials. That investigation led to last week’s sweeping indictment accusing 13 female guards of colluding with the Black Guerilla Family gang, which authorities said had essentially taken over the institution. According to the indictment, officers smuggled in cellphones and drugs for gang members and even had sex with them. Four officers became pregnant as a result of trysts with one detainee, prosecutors said. “I share the public’s revulsion at these allegations,” O’Malley said at the outset of a 20-minute give-and-take with reporters in the Maryland State House in Annapolis. The governor’s generally positive assessment of the situation was quickly ridiculed by some Republicans, who said he was trying to play down the seriousness of the problem. The indictments have generated national attention, some of it highly critical of O’Malley’s management ability. “This governor is completely out of touch, and his phony positive spin on this disgraceful failure of leadership is completely unacceptable,” said Larry Hogan, chairman of the grass-roots organization Change Maryland. “Secretary Maynard screwed up. He needs to go,” said Hogan, a possible Republican candidate for governor in 2014. While there have been only scattered calls among lawmakers for Maynard’s resignation, Del. Patrick L. McDonough (R-Baltimore County) suggested that course Tuesday, saying he fears that the gang problem is far more widespread that in one Baltimore jail. “The horse is already out of the barn, and the problem goes way beyond Baltimore City,” McDonough said. O’Malley, who is weighing a 2016 presidential bid, largely sidestepped a question about how the scandal might affect his political future. “We’re all responsible,


Innovation: The jackpot for American manufacturers

At the dawn of the 19th century, dockyard engineers in Portsmouth, England, came up with a better way to build pulley blocks for sailing ships. They replaced skilled craftsmen, whose final products often were uneven, with machines that produced the same-sized block every time and did it faster. This was bad for dockyard workers: Suddenly, 10 unskilled men using machines could beat the output of 110 skilled workers. But it was a boon to the Royal Navy — and similar innovations did the same for economies across the industrial world. Over the next 100 years, manufacturers achieved huge production gains by adopting machine-fabricated, interchangeable parts. The 20th century brought the same: Breakthrough after breakthrough welled up on a factory floor, spread through an industry and rippled into other sectors. This process of experimentation leading to widespread advances in efficiency is “one of the oldest dynamics we know of in economics,” said Mark Muro, policy director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, and it yields “major gains for production sectors and society.” Muro is an unabashed booster for public policies that encourage advanced manufacturing across the United States. Like many such cheerleaders, he’s making his case these days by talking a lot about innovation and less about jobs. “Mass employment is not the fundamental reason we need a healthy and vibrant manufacturing sector,” Muro and co-author Scott Andes wrote in a blog post this month — new products and productivity are. Touting a new Obama administration initiative to promote advanced-manufacturing programs in cities across the country, Rebecca Blank, the acting Commerce secretary, struck a similar chord. “There are a lot of reasons to want more advanced manufacturing located in the United States beyond just job creation,” she said in an interview. “And the most important one is, advanced manufacturing is often on the cutting edge of research and development.” It’s a counterintuitive case to make in the current economy. America has 12 million unemployed adults — people who are looking for work but can’t find a job. Lost factory employment is a huge reason why. Despite adding a half-million jobs since the end of the Great Recession in mid-2009,the U.S. factory sector employs nearly 2 million fewer people today than it did in 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. University of Chicago economists recently found that declines in manufacturing employment account for half of the increase


First Bite: Le Diplomate in Logan Circle

Le Diplomate in Logan Circle puts you in a French frame of mind with its ambiance and its food. (Marge Ely/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) I recently spent three days eating around Paris, yet I can’t stop thinking about the food I dispatched before takeoff: at the new Le Diplomate in Logan Circle. In significant ways, the sweeping brasserie from Philadelphia restaurateur Stephen Starr speaks with a more convincing French accent than much of what I encountered abroad. Starr’s 30th establishment isn’t even a month old, but already many of its 200 inside seats are claimed on a regular basis. Part of the allure is its design, which puts you in a Parisian frame of mind with a bakery’s worth of fresh breads on display, curved lipstick-red banquettes, golden lighting and a zinc-topped bar. The Garden Room, off the main dining area, lets you pretend you’re dining alfresco, thanks to a tented glass roof and shiny green tiles. (The French script on the wall translates as “the whitening of the shirts,” a reference to the dry cleaning service the building once housed.) Less Gallic is the service: knowledgeable and brisk, genial and efficient. Are competitors nervous? They ought to be. The garlicky steak frites at Le Diplomate alone is worth a detour. The beef is thick, ropy and juicy; the twice-fried french fries taste truly of potato. There’s more where that came from. Foie gras “parfait” brings a fluffy scoop of emulsified chicken liver, foie gras, butter and spirits served with thick toasted brioche and a spread of prune and fennel on a slender board. The starter is tres bon. Grilled loup de mer comes with strips of silky-soft bell peppers that are so good, the grace note ought to be offered as a side dish. Plats du jour run from lavender roast duck (Monday) to Dover sole meuniere (Saturday, and count me in). Only a small cast-iron pot of flat-tasting snails interrupts one night’s dream of a dinner, which ended with a light and lovely grapefruit sorbet dressed up with cinnamon whipped cream and lacy cookies. Executive chef Adam Schop, 37, was one of a dozen cooks interviewed for the top job. He beat out three French chefs in the process. Poor them. Lucky us. And good luck landing a table. 1601 14th St. NW. 202-332-3333. www.lediplomatedc.com. Main courses, $12 to $27.


Eat healthy and stay on a budget

five-pound bag (or about 80 cents per pound) and celery at $3.49 per pound. But let’s face it, one cannot live on mirepoix alone. “Then I would look for items on sale. Kale can be quite reasonable. Look for beans and brown rice and barley,” Sosna says. “Look at the perimeter of the grocery store and you will find the less processed foods.” The same local grocery store had dried black beans at $1.69 per pound (13 servings) and two pounds of brown rice (22 servings) for $2.69. Still, it means preparation. “It’s true there is no way around that. It takes more time than heating up a pizza,” says Kathy Pugh, a D.C. holistic health coach. “But if you want to be efficient, take one hour a week to chop up vegetables and prepare a big pot of brown rice and a big pot of quinoa, and you are set for the week.” Both quinoa and brown rice are great basics that can be dressed up with raw or cooked vegetables and proteins for an easy meal, says Pugh. “I see them as the basic black dress. You can jazz them up with accessories — in this case, veggies, nuts, avocado. The possibilities are endless.” And to really stretch your dollar, practice proper food prep to ensure that produce doesn’t go bad, says Ebeth Johnson, a D.C. plant-based culinary nutritionist. “Many people say one of the reasons they find healthy eating expensive is due to produce spoilage,” says Johnson, who teaches wellness and healthful cooking. But, she says, you can get around this issue by buying “fresh fruits and vegetables on sale, cook them and then freeze them.” Packaged frozen veggies and fruits are another often cheaper option, especially in the winter, Sosna says. (Even on a recent trip to the store, I found fresh spinach for $3.29 for 16 ounces, compared with $1.99 frozen.) But with summer coming, frozen options might be less appealing. Instead, look to farmers markets, Pugh says. Here, too, there are tricks of the trade. Arrive late, and, though you might get a slimmer selection, prices are often cut significantly. “You can get some great deals that way,” Pugh says, all while supporting local farmers. Which brings us to the question of local and organic foods. Is it important to buy organic? Johnson and Pugh say yes, but Sosna, who “eats what she preaches,”


Pickle producers ride a new wave

diced cucumbers, bell peppers, garlic and onions in a brine that exquisitely balances sweet, salty, sour and spicy flavors. When they first started making the relish, they would cut each vegetable by hand into tiny cubes called brunoise, no doubt producing calluses along with all those diced cukes. It would take a day to turn out four cases of relish, or four dozen 16-ounce jars, which is not exactly Heinz-level production. The owners have since moved on to a DynaCube, a hand-cranked device that neatly dices vegetables in seconds flat. There was just one problem for Fain, clearly the perfectionist of the pair: The dice was not small enough. So she runs the vegetables through the DynaCube twice for every jar of sweet pepper relish. Even with the new equipment, Gordy’s can pickle and can only 10 to 12 cases day, each by hand, which begins to explain that $10 price per jar. Between the equipment upgrades and the company’s first part-time employee, Mike Karamanov, who helps prep Gordy’s line of seven pickled products, “it’s now a possibility to have a dinner together,” says Gordon, who is also Fain’s partner outside the confines of the stainless-steel kitchen. The key word here is “possibility,” given the 15-hour days the women work, markedly more than what either Fain and Gordon were logging previously as a Dolci Gelati sales rep and a branding/communications consultant, respectively. In the 17 months since Gordy’s launched in November 2011, the operation has mushroomed into a local pickle powerhouse, if you’ll excuse the mixed produce metaphor. Its products can be found in 40 stores, including Whole Foods Markets and MOM’s Organic Markets, and they’ve made cameo appearances at restaurants, bars and even Peregrine Espresso. What’s more, Gordy’s sweet chips copped a Good Food Award this year. The owners are loath to surrender much control over a company that has already exceeded their expectations, even if such success requires the women to spend their days pickling and canning at the Montserrat House and their evenings affixing labels at their apartment office. The pair hasn’t ruled out outside investors, even if they don’t see themselves ever working with a manufacturing company, commonly known as a co-packer. But they would take outside investment only if they could maintain control over the operation. “The quality of the product is the important thing,” says Fain. “In growing the company, we’d rather bring in


White House musters U.S. firms to hire veterans, spouses

The White House announced a significant new effort Tuesday to reduce unemployment and improve job prospects among veterans, enlisting the support of U.S. companies to hire 435,000 veterans and military spouses over the next five years. Retail giant Wal-Mart, the Blackstone private-equity firm and shipper UPS are among the major American brands that are committing to hiring hundreds of thousands of veterans and spouses, officials said. Wal-Mart previously announced that it would find a job for any veteran discharged honorably in the year he or she leaves the service. About 1 million new veterans are expected to enter the labor force in the coming years with the end of the war in Iraq and the ongoing withdrawal from Afghanistan. But many veterans are having a tough time finding jobs. There are 207,000 unemployed veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hundreds of thousands more are not looking for work because of injuries or other reasons but could enter the labor market over time. “When they hit the job market, employers don’t always recognize the high-quality, high-tech skills our newest veterans have gained in the military. They don’t understand the leadership that they’ve shown under extraordinary circumstances,” President Obama said Tuesday. “So, too often, just when these men and women are looking to move forward in the next chapter of their lives, they’re stuck in neutral, scraping together odd jobs just to pay the bills.” The White House announcement — coordinated by the offices of first lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, the wife of Vice President Biden — is part of the administration’s “Wounded Warriors” program. The jobs program began in August 2011 and has resulted in the hiring of 290,000 veterans or military spouses, the administration says. One of the biggest challenges in the program is making it easy for veterans to capitalize on the skills they have gained in combat when they return to the private sector, according to program officials. “What’s really been challenging is we’re dealing with folks who have done jobs under the most difficult conditions,” said Tina Tchen, Michelle Obama’s chief of staff. They drive “a truck to deliver supplies in a war zone, but they can’t get the licensing they need to drive a truck down I-95.” Another example, she said, are spouses who may be experienced nurses or paramedics but lose their license to


Harold Meyerson: How to ease economic anxiety

government continuing to promote such agreements? The terms on which we globalize — who benefits, who gets clobbered — aren’t as inexorable as the sunrise. The public might just alert Congress that it expects its representatives to look out for its interests. Most American workers, however, are not in competition with their counterparts in Mexico and China — not if they work at Wal-Mart or McDonald’s, on construction sites, at college campuses or behind the wheel of a truck. The downward pressure that globalization exerts on wages spills over to other sectors, but it’s no more than a secondary cause for pervasive income stagnation. The primary cause is that, with collective bargaining nearly as dead as the dodo (just 6.6 percent of private-sector workers belong to unions), there is no pressure on American employers to share their productivity gains with their workers in the form of higher wages. But there’s considerable pressure to boost payouts to stockholders. The age of shareholder capitalism, most notably proclaimed by General Electric CEO Jack Welch in the early years of the Reagan presidency (while Welch was furiously off-shoring much of GE’s manufacturing), has, like the age of globalization, also coincided with the age of wage stagnation. But moving from a shareholder capitalism that has diminished most Americans’ share of the national pie to a stakeholder capitalism that distributes a greater share of company revenue to the workers who produce it will require major changes to our political economy. It will require our remaining unions to organize millions of workers whom they won’t enroll as members but who can nonetheless agitate for better pay and working conditions. It will require Congress, state legislatures and city councils to set the kind of wage standards — and not just minimum-wage standards — that workers once were able to win for themselves before the advent of shareholder capitalism. It will require the rebirth of the kind of economic left in the United States that gave us the New Deal and the four ensuing decades of broadly shared prosperity. Tall orders all, but the alternative is just more anxiety, and all its attendant pathologies. Read more from Harold Meyerson’s archive or follow him on Twitter. Read more: Harold Meyerson: It’s not the left that’s changed, it’s the economy Workers struggle as corporate profits increase. Ro Khanna: Five myths about manufacturing jobs Robert Shapiro: Weak job creation is the new


In Germany, a U.S. beer invasion

German beer enthusiasts tried Firestone Pale 31 beer at a recent tasting in Berlin, Germany. The California craft brew is sent via airfreight to Germany in special coolers. (Michael Birnbaum/The Washington Post) BERLIN — The beer is being flown in as part of a new surge of German interest in American brewing, upending a centuries-old relationship in which German beer defined the golden standard for brewing and Americans emulated it. Now, with craft brewers in the United States capturing an ever-greater share of their home market, they are expanding in Germany as well. German consumers, intrigued by unfamiliar flavors, are purchasing more imported beer and are increasingly copying American efforts with their own small-scale brewing operations. In the last year in Berlin, high-end U.S. beer — including one from California that is flown over in coolers — has become available in some grocery stores, and several U.S.-style craft breweries have opened. The efforts are aimed at challenging the dominance of plain-old pilsner, the mild lager that dominates more than half of beer sales in Germany. Beer consumption is slipping in Germany, and some brewers say their only salvation lies in fostering a drinking culture less constrained by a 1516 purity law that they say crimps innovation. “What we’ve found in the United States is this amazing variety of styles and the openness of customers to new things,” said Marc Rauschmann, who is importing beer from California-based Firestone Walker Brewing Co. in airfreighted coolers. Other beer is shipped by sea. “We were really impressed.” American flavor Rauschmann has started an aggressive effort to sell imported beer and to brew his own German beer in flavorful styles that are popular among craft brewers in the United States but rare in Germany, such as hoppy ales and zesty lagers. The turnaround is shaking big German brewers, many of whom like to brag that they are the best in the world. Upstarts are using another b-word, boring, to explain why consumption has been sliding from its 1976 heights. Back then, every person in Germany drank, on average, three liters of beer a week. Now that is down by a third and expected to keep dropping as older, beer-loving customers die away. But unlike the United States, where in recent years many supermarkets have expanded their beer selection to include dozens of styles from the far reaches of the globe, most German stores have remained


O’Malley signs death penalty repeal, medical marijuana bill and other measures

including NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, who supported the repeal of the death penalty, and Ray Rice, a Baltimore Ravens running back who campaigned for the anti-cyberbullying bill. O’Malley has lobbied lawmakers for seven years to pass legislation to end capital punishment, arguing that it is costly and an ineffective deterrent. Under the new law, death sentences will be replaced with life in prison without the possibility of parole. In order to put the issue to voters, MDPetitions.com would have to collect 55,736 signatures by June 30. The same group was instrumental in petitioning three laws to Maryland’s ballot last year, including the legalization of same-sex marriage. Del. Neil C. Parrott (R-Washington), chairman of the group, would not confirm its intentions Thursday. But he and Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger (D), a death penalty supporter who was vocal during the legislative battle, plan to appear at an announcement being staged at Camden Yards in Baltimore. Jane Henderson, executive director of Maryland Citizens Against State Executions, said she was surprised by the possibility of a petition drive, and she questioned whether the group will have the funding and organization to run a ballot measure campaign next year. “I would think it would be a challenge for them,” she said. The medical marijuana legislation signed by O’Malley limits distribution to academic medical centers, which will be required to monitor patients and publish their findings. Legislative analysts say it is unlikely the drug would be legally dispensed before 2016. It is also unclear how many institutions might choose to participate. Another new law allows the state to issue second-class driver’s licenses to immigrants without proof of lawful status. Supporters say the legislation will help immigrants improve their lives and will make Maryland roads safer. Opponents say they fear it will lure more illegal immigrants to the state. Early voting will be expanded from six days to eight days under another measure. In addition, the new law increases the number of early voting sites and allows same-day registration for the first time during early voting periods. The legislation that makes cyberbullying a crime was introduced after the suicide last year of a 15-year-old Howard County girl. The girl’s family said she took her life after being harassed online. Maryland has been leader in implementing the federal health-care law, and O’Malley signed a measure Thursday that facilitates the establishment of health exchanges and expands the


Three new Md health laws offer more patient protection

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley signed three laws Thursday that will give more protection for patients. The measures provide more state oversight of cosmetic surgery centers, pharmacies that make sterile medications and staffing agencies that find temporary jobs for health-care professionals. The bills, pushed by the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, were proposed after several patient injuries and deaths were linked to those providers. One measure requires companies and practitioners who make or distribute sterile compounded medications — or custom-mixed — to get a permit from the Maryland Board of Pharmacy. The law was proposed in response to last fall’s fungal meningitis outbreak. The Massachusetts company that made the tainted steroid shots that caused the outbreak shipped them to 23 states, including Maryland. Twenty-six people were sickened in Maryland, and three died. The law takes effect July 1. Another measure requires all health-care staffing agencies operating in Maryland to be licensed by the health department. Currently only nurse staffing agencies must be licensed. The legislation was introduced because a health worker who is accused of exposing thousands of patients in Maryland and elsewhere to hepatitis C repeatedly lied about his background to obtain licensing and credentials. Staffing agencies continued to recommend him for jobs at hospitals after he had been fired elsewhere, according to a Maryland health department report. David Kwiatkowski, a traveling temporary health-care technician who worked in 16 hospitals in eight states — including four in Maryland — is accused of stealing drugs and infecting patients with the blood-borne viral infection through contaminated syringes. Seven Maryland patients have been found to be infected with a virus closely related to the infections linked to the Kwiatkowski case. The report highlighted regulatory gaps and weak licensing procedures by the Maryland Board of Physicians and by staffing agencies that find temporary jobs for health-care professionals. The new law takes effect Oct. 1. The third measure authorizes the health department to oversee cosmetic surgery centers, including “medical spa” facilities, after three patients contracted serious infections from liposuction procedures at a Baltimore County facility. One patient died. A health department investigation found the facility lacked adequate infection control procedures. The new law, which takes effect Oct. 1, allows the department to license such facilities and investigate complaints.


Is a down payment essential for a solid mortgage? Two credit unions suggest no.

and services them on its own. As you might guess, there are some key qualifications: You have to be a member of the credit union or an immediate relative of a member. (Membership is open to people in all branches of the military, active and retired, along with defense-related contractors.) The credit union estimates the total potential reach of eligibility nationwide is 12 million people. You need to pass underwriting muster in terms of income and reserves, and you need moderately good though not perfect credit scores. Delinquencies on the program to date: well under 1 percent, according to Katie Miller, vice president for mortgage products. Meanwhile, NASA Federal Credit Union has started marketing its own version of zero down. It is restricting loans to qualified members buying homes in the Washington area, but it might expand to other areas, depending on local housing market conditions. The maximum loan amount is $650,000. Seller concessions are capped at 3 percent. Underwriting is rigorous, and preferred FICO credit scores start in the mid-700s. Delinquencies over the past year and a half: zero, according to Bill White, NASA Federal’s vice president for real estate lending. Foreclosures: also zero. So what’s the significance of these two programs for the down-payment debates underway on Capitol Hill and among banking regulators? Should the government mandate 20 percent down for everybody? Ten percent? Should zero down ever be permissible? Tom Lawler, head of Lawler Economic and Housing Consulting, says that as a general matter, “zero down payment is just bad public policy.” Frank Nothaft, chief economist for Freddie Mac, maintains that “the more equity [cash upfront] you have, the better” the loan is likely to perform. Both Lawler and Nothaft agree, however, that with strict underwriting at application and intensive servicing — getting in touch with borrowers at the first hint of trouble and working with them — zero-down loans can perform well in healthy housing markets. The Department of Veterans Affairs has offered zero-down loans for years yet has a lower default rate than FHA, which requires 3.5 percent. Although the Navy Federal and NASA Federal programs are relatively young, their minimal delinquencies could have an important message for regulators: The size of the down payment is just one piece of the puzzle. Smart underwriting and hair-trigger servicing that intervenes with solutions when borrowers hit rough patches may be just as important. Or more. Ken Harney


Md. House and Senate to coordinate inquiry into prison gang scandal

The Baltimore City Detention Center. (Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post A legislative inquiry into Maryland’s prison system is broadening to include a coordinated effort between the Senate and House of Delegates. Plans are in the works, State House aides confirmed Thursday, for a joint hearing in the aftermath of a federal indictment that accused 13 guards at a Baltimore jail of colluding with a prison gang that authorities said had essentially taken over the institution. The House Judiciary Committee has announced a hearing for Wednesday on the “corruption” at the Baltimore City Detention Center. But that meeting could now be put off, given emerging plans for the House and Senate to work together. Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), meanwhile, met Thursday with House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) to brief them on the scandal at the Baltimore City Detention Center, a state-run institution. “It was an opportunity for the governor to bring them up to speed and make sure they have the information they need,” said O’Malley spokesman Raquel Guillory. O’Malley this week voiced full confidence in the head of Maryland’s prison system and argued that the federal indictments of 25 inmates and guards at the Baltimore jail last week was “a very positive development” in rooting out corruption. According to the indictment, officers smuggled in cellphones and drugs for members of the Black Guerilla Family gang and even had sex with them. Four officers became pregnant as a result of trysts with one detainee, prosecutors said.


Sequester takes its toll on Mall, park police and Smithsonian museums

in the National Museum of African Art, the Smithsonian Castle and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. All were victims of a scaled-back security contract. The District’s most high-profile cut took effect as soon as sequestration took an $85 billion hatchet to the government: the cancellation of White House tours because of reduced Secret Service staffing. With no budget deficit deal between Republicans and Democrats on the table, no one can say when the public will get inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. again. Only 3 percent of the 18 million visitors to Washington every year go on a White House tour, because they must be arranged well in advance with members of Congress. But the visitor experience is facing other indignities. The National Archives — home of the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence — has slashed evening hours. The National Arboretum will close to the public Tuesday through Thursday starting May 13, and it will charge rental fees. In the grand scheme of things, these are nicks rather than gouges. As Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas put it, we are still talking about free, world-class museums. “Three rooms inside the 16 Smithsonian museums will be closed,” she said. “Millions of objects will still be available to see.” But others say the closings have a symbolism that goes deeper than three small exhibits. “You have to wonder, what is the impact when the Washington Monument is closed and the bathrooms are kind of crummy?” asked John Garder, a budget expert for the National Parks Conservation Association. “Will people want to come back?” Outside downtown D.C., many of the 14 parks in the region are scaling back services from seasonal rangers to Park Police officers. Visitors to Robert E. Lee’s former home in the Arlington National Cemetery or the Catoctin Mountain Park near Camp David will find the visitor centers closed on weekdays. Carter Barron, Rock Creek Park and Fort Dupont are scaling back summer concerts and theater programs. Antietam National Battlefield cut its living-history program by half. And tourists are not likely to find closely mowed grass there or at many parks, although the Mall’s mowing contract is holding on. They won’t find a regional communications office there, either: Its six full-time staff now stands at one, a fire information officer on detail from Omaha. Ten percent of the Mall’s maintenance staff jobs are vacant and


Michael Gerson: The stakes of being too late

O But Obama has firmly resisted such advice, preferring instead to gradually (and, so far, ineffectively) increase training and nonlethal support for the rebels. During his recent news conference, he again urged patience. Why has the president been so resolutely inactive on Syria? To start with the obvious: Obama was reelected on the promise of winding down difficult foreign commitments, not making new ones. Both his presidential campaigns assumed and encouraged American war weariness. And any action in Syria, no matter how limited, carries heavy historical baggage: Another confrontation with a Baathist dictator concerning weapons of mass destruction? All this can be chalked up to Iraq War Syndrome. But Obama seems to have a larger strategy in staying on the sidelines. Insofar as there is an Obama doctrine, it is this: America has overinvested resources and attention in thankless Middle Eastern conflicts and underinvested in other places, particularly Asia. Obama’s goal is to rebalance the portfolio. And Syria doesn’t fit. AsVali Nasr of the Brookings Institution wrote in the New York Times last month, “Syria challenges a central aim of Obama’s foreign policy: shrinking the U.S. footprint in the Middle East and downplaying the region’s importance to global politics.” If true, Obama’s tactical timidity is also the expression of a kind of strategic boldness. He is challenging the post-World War II foreign policy consensus on the geopolitical priority of the Middle East. Presidents of both parties have accepted a major U.S. role in ensuring regional stability, allowing the flow of resources, defending Israel and, more recently, countering the rise of extremism. (The Carter Doctrine, for example, pledged the use of military force to defend U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf.) Obama’s pivot to other priorities may help explain his generally passive reaction to the Iranian Green Revolution in 2009, to the Arab Spring and to events in Syria. Syria has been a test of the Obama Doctrine But having missed the moment — through indecision or ideology or indecision reinforced by ideology — Obama is left to limit the damage. His own foreign policy goals — improving the image of America in the Islamic world, focusing on Israeli-Palestinian peace, pivoting to Asia — have been badly undermined. And the moral and strategic consequences are much broader. Obama’s inaction has helped create an outcome with a familiar historical ring: a civil war at the heart of the Middle East that destabilizes


National Zoo to get new Asian elephant

we are going to keep elephants here, we need to keep more than two,” Frost said. He said the two elephants had been together for more than 15 years. “Our plan all along had been that once Judy did pass on, as quickly as we could we would be moving Bozie to another zoo,” he said. “We felt it was best for her to be able to be put in a situation where she could be with multiple Asian elephants in a small herd.” Frost declined to say when she will be moved but noted that there will be a farewell party for her May 18. “She’ll be leaving here a short time after that,” he said. The National Zoo said she will be in Washington by the summer. “She’s a great elephant. We are going to miss her tremendously,” Frost said. “She’s got a wonderful personality,” he said. “Plus, she can paint. We bring her canvas and a brush, and she’ll paint.” A spacious, sunny indoor Elephant Community Center is the final piece of the zoo’s $56 million project to build a state-of-the-art “Elephant Trails” exhibit and increase the size of its herd. He said the zoo recently auctioned off one of Bozie’s paintings to raise money for tsunami relief in Sri Lanka. “It was kind of a way of helping the folks back home,” Frost said. He said the National Zoo is a “great facility, one that the folks there can be extremely proud of.” “We hate to see her go, but we know she’s going to have a great life there at the National Zoo,” Frost said. National Zoo spokeswoman Pamela Baker-Masson said “it is big news that we are getting an elephant.” The zoo has spent years and millions of dollars creating a habitat for a large group of elephants. It has two female elephants, Ambika, 65, and Shanthi, 38, and a male, Kandula, 11, Shanthi’s son. Bozie will go into quarantine for a minimum of 30 days once she arrives at the zoo, officials said. Afterward, she will be gradually introduced to the other elephants. “It’s exciting to partner with Baton Rouge,” said Senior Curator Brandie Smith, “because we both want the best for Bozie. “It’s a great first step to grow our small elephant herd. We know that our staff and elephants will love Bozie, and I’m certain that Washingtonians will welcome her, too.”


Five myths about Guantanamo Bay

the harsher form of incarceration. 4. The military commission system offers the best chance of convictions in the war on terror. The commissions were well-intentioned, but the trials, including those of the Sept. 11 defendants, are taking forever. In federal court, they would have concluded long ago. Since the military commissions process began in 2006, only seven individuals have been convicted. All of those convictions are being challenged, two have been overturned and some of those remaining could still be in jeopardy. Meanwhile, hundredshave been convicted of terrorism-related crimes in the federal court system since 2001. At Guantanamo, only six of the remaining 166 detainees are in the process of being tried. In recent months, several incidents of governmental impropriety have further eroded the legitimacy of the commissions system, including the discoveries of secret listening devices made to look like smoke detectors in attorney-client meeting rooms, a “kill switch” that allowed the CIA to turn off the courtroom’s public audio feed, microphones that could pick up conversations between defense attorneys and their clients in court, and the hacking of 540,000 defense e-mails that were “mistakenly” sent to prosecutors. All that’s left is blind faith in a system that is becoming increasingly unstable. 5. Guantanamo has indelibly stained America’s reputation. If the hunger strikers die, Guantanamo will become an even stronger terrorist recruitment tool. While Obama missed the chance at the start of his presidency to show that detainees can be treated more justly and compassionately than they were under his predecessor, any positive change could begin to repair the damage to America’s reputation. The administration’s one-person-at-a-time approach to closing Guantanamo has proved fruitless. Bold gestures are needed — for starters, the cleared detainees should be sent to their home countries, even to Yemen. Additionally, paying restitution to detainees and helping them reintegrate into their home countries or new locations would go a long way toward eliminating the stain of Guantanamo. Time is of the essence. Of the 100 hunger-striking detainees, four are hospitalized, and 23 are being force-fed. The best option is to release the inmates who can’t be tried, end the policy of detention outside the laws of war and restore the sense of moral dignity that has withered with every day of Guantanamo’s existence. As Obama said this past week, “It needs to stop.” karen.greenberg@law.fordham.edu Read more from Outlook, friend us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.


Md. legislative leaders announce joint briefing on Baltimore jail scandal

The entrance gate to the Baltimore City Detention Center. (Photo by Washington Examiner) Maryland legislative leaders on Friday announced a joint House and Senate briefing next month prompted by the recent indictments of 25 inmates and corrections guards at a Baltimore city jail. With the larger meeting planned, the House Judiciary Committee has postponed a hearing on the corruption probe that was scheduled for Wednesday. In a statement, House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) commended Gary D. Maynard, the state’s corrections secretary, for working with federal officials to root out corruption at the state-run Baltimore City Detention Center. “But it is the responsibility of the legislature to ask the tough questions about what is working and what is not working in our prison system,” Busch said. Busch and Miller said they would set up a special task force following the briefing to look at legislative and budgetary measures that can be put in place during next year’s session, which starts in January. The task force, they said, will examine hiring, training and disciplinary processes, as well as efforts to combat gang violence. According to last week’s indictment, the Black Guerilla Family gang essentially took over the institution. Officers smuggled in cellphones and drugs for gang members and even had sex with them. “This is a critical issue that warrants our immediate attention,” Miller said in the statement. “While we have to be very careful not to impede or interfere with the integrity of the legal process surrounding these indictments, we have to seriously evaluate what can be done to combat this kind of insidious criminal activity in the state’s correctional system.” The statement said the briefing would be in June but did not identify a date. In an email Friday to House Judiciary Committee members, Del. Joseph F. Vallario Jr., the chairman, said he and several other members had met with Maynard on Wednesday. “In a meeting lasting over two hours, we had an open, candid, and informative discussion,” Vallario (D-Prince George’s) said, adding that he is “satisfied” that Maynard and others are taking steps to address the “immediate problems” at the Baltimore jail.


Loss of honeybees has many causes

Bees are essential to life because they pollinate plants. (HEINZ-PETER BADER/REUTERS) Honeybees are disappearing in United States, and there’s new information on the reasons why. A recent government report puts the blame on a parasitic mite (a tiny spiderlike creature that feeds on other species), viruses, bacteria, poor nutrition, genetics, loss of living areas and pesticides. The many causes make it harder to do something about what’s called colony collapse disorder, experts say. The disorder has caused as many as one-third of the nation’s bees to die each winter since 2006. Bees, especially honeybees, are needed to pollinate crops. They are a necessary link in the food supply. The federal report, issued last week by the Agriculture Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, said the biggest culprit is the parasitic mite, called Varroa destructor. Colony collapse disorder has also hit bee colonies in Europe, where government officials are considering a ban on a type of pesticide that some environmental groups say is to blame. The U.S. report puts some blame on pesticides but ranks them near the bottom of the list of factors. Federal officials and researchers advising them said there’s not yet enough scientific evidence to warrant banning the pesticides. The report is the result of a large conference of scientists that the government brought together last year to figure out what’s going on. Participant May Berenbaum, a top bee researcher from the University of Illinois, said there is no proof that the group of pesticides known as neonicotinoids is the only culprit in the bee loss. Berenbaum said she doubts that banning neonicotinoids would have any effect on bee health. She was the chairwoman of a major National Academy of Sciences study on the loss of pollinators. Dave Gaulson of the University of Stirling in Scotland, who conducted a study last year that blamed the chemical, said he can’t disagree with the overall conclusions of the U.S. government report. However, he said, it should have emphasized pesticides more. Agriculture Department bee researcher Jeff Pettis said modern farming practices often leave little area for bees to find food. Berenbaum said that there’s no single solution to the problem and that scientists and government agencies aren’t able to tackle all of the causes at once. — Associated Press


NRA lobbyist, arms dealer played key role in growth of civilian market for military-style guns

Vos’s business was the retail sale of guns. He ran a well-known store in Alexandria that did business as Old Town Armory. In September 1985, Vos formed a new company, Blue Sky Productions. Virginia incorporation records list his only partner in the enterprise as LaPierre. A month later, Vos submitted a firearms license application to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and listed LaPierre as “secretary treasurer” of Blue Sky. The application, signed by Vos, said Blue Sky would engage in “importation of surplus weapons, plus items of current manufacture.” LaPierre later told his boss, Cassidy, that he had been asked to join Blue Sky by Vos “and that he did sign some papers, but he said he did not really know anything about it,” Cassidy recalled. LaPierre said in the 1988 Post interview that he thought Blue Sky Productions was set up to organize rock concerts. In June 1986, Vos traveled to South Korea to negotiate a contract to import the M-1 rifles. Murphy, Whitner and others in Washington monitored the effort from afar, Murphy said, and they grew concerned when they received reports from Seoul that Vos was changing the agreed terms of the deal to further benefit himself. Two months later, a deal with the Koreans was signed and the first shipment of weapons was sent from Seoul, bound for Vos’s gun store in Alexandria, according to federal records. But before they arrived, U.S. Customs officials seized the shipment of 40,000 rifles at the port of San Francisco. Federal records show that an anonymous tipster had reported that the weapons had been acquired through bribery and that the import records were inaccurate. Customs officials found no evidence to support the bribery accusation. But they concluded that, even if the weapons were “curios and relics” under terms of the 1984 Dole amendment, their shipment to the United States would violate another law, the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which prohibited the import of weapons provided to a foreign country under a U.S. military aid program. A deputy ATF counsel in Washington, Jack Patterson, sided with customs officials and revoked the Blue Sky import permit. The weapons were seized. In response, members of Congress and Blue Sky’s other influential allies in Washington sprang into action, pressing on behalf of the deal. It was the strongest political pressure Patterson said he had ever seen during more than


Baltimore’s detention center a victim of bad management

at the main entrance; in other words, the same guards who patrolled the cellblocks took turns working as gatekeepers. This ensured that bad apples — and it may turn out that there were more than 13 — periodically or frequently controlled what came inside the walls. The result was that the guards now under indictment, who are female, could allegedly pass through the main entrance with contraband tucked into their hair orunderclothes or concealed internally. As the indictment noted, they underwent pat-downs that were cursory at best, and much of the contraband, especially the drugs, did not trigger the metal detectors at the entrance. It‘s a rudimentary precaution, and sound management, to require that guards at the gate are among the most trusted and carefully monitored of the jail’s 450 employees and that they do not rotate with guards inside the cellblocks. Equally important is that the state establish a workable regime under which corrections officers are disciplined or fired when they flout the rules. According to the federal indictment, the guards who teamed up, and bedded down, with inmates in Baltimore faced no realistic prospect of punishment. Even though their actions were clearly prohibited and illegal, the indictment said, red tape “made the prospect of actual punishment very remote. Often suspected corrections officers were merely transferred to another facility in the immediate vicinity.” The absurd situation described in the indictment took root at least partly because of a “bill of rights” for corrections officers, backed by Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and enacted by the Maryland legislature in 2010 at the behest of the guards union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. This bill of rights grants extraordinary protections to guards, including shielding them from threats of prosecution, transfer, dismissal or even disciplinary action during questioning for suspected wrongdoing. Aides to Mr. O’Malley have downplayed the role of the guards’ bill of rights in the jail scandal. But the FBI recorded at least one indicted officer, Kimberly Dennis, saying she had been transferred from one facility “basically because I’m dirty.” Dirty officers should be fired, not transferred. At the least, state lawmakers should revisit the guards’ bill of rights. Read more from The Post: The Post’s View: Exoneration but no justice for wrongly imprisoned man in Va. The Post’s View: Virginia’s ‘21-day rule’ needs to go News story: With few other outlets, inmates review prisons on Yelp


U.S. military deaths in the Afghanistan war

Afghanistan war deaths Total number of U.S. military deaths since 2001 and names of the U.S. troops killed recently in the Afghanistan war, as announced by the Pentagon: 2,192 In hostile actions: In non-hostile actions: Fatalities 1,731 461 Tallies may be incomplete because of lags in reporting. Pfc. Barrett L. Austin Capt. Aaron R. Blanchard 1st Lt. Robert J. Hess The two soldiers were assigned to 2nd Aviation Battalion, 10th Combat Aviation Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum, N.Y. They were killed April 23 in Logar province. Capt. Brandon L. Cyr Staff Sgt. Richard A. Dickson Staff Sgt. Daniel N. Fannin Capt. Reid K. Nishizuka The four airmen were killed April 27 when their MC-12 aircraft crashed near Kandahar Airfield. Staff Sgt. Michael H. Simpson Pfc. Charles P. McClure Spec. Trinidad Santiago Jr. The two soldiers were assigned to 4th Battalion, 42nd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, based at Fort Carson, Colo. They died May 2 at Camp Buehring, Kuwait, of injuries suffered in a vehicle accident. All troops were killed in action in Afghanistan unless otherwise indicated. Total fatalities include three civilian employees of the Defense Department. They also include service members killed in other locations involved in Operation Enduring Freedom, including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Djibouti; Eritrea; Ethiopia; Jordan; Kenya; Kyrgyzstan; Pakistan; Philippines; Seychelles; Sudan; Tajikistan; Turkey; Uzbekistan; and Yemen. A full list of casualties is available online at 6 washingtonpost.com/nation SOURCE: Defense Department’s www.defenselink.mil/news The Washington Post


Baltimore jail case depicts a corrupt culture driven by drugs, money and sex

but not by his appeal to so many of the female corrections officers. “He’s a hunk,” she said. “He’s got a mean-looking body, a body that’s all that, that says, ‘Catch me if you can.’ ” ‘I’m dirty’ Jennifer Owens had her diamond ring and her flashy cars and the name of the man who had provided them tattooed on her neck, according to the indictment. The 31-year-old corrections officer, who lives in Randallstown, drove around in two Mercedes-Benzes — one black and one white — allegedly financed by the gang leader. In return, she gave him two children in two years. “Like really, who the [expletive] does that?” Owens said in an intercepted call to an unidentified woman in October. She called herself dumb but also said, “I don’t regret it.” Several former detention center guards said White could not have run such a large criminal enterprise without the help of higher-ups, tacit or explicit. But none have been implicated. Maynard, the prison system chief, said that may change. State corrections officials are interviewing everyone to “cleanse” the detention center’s officer ranks. Some people will be polygraphed. “They need to dig deep” to hold jail managers accountable, said Patrick Moran, president of Maryland Council 3 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the union that represents the corrections officers. The challenge will be changing the culture of a place where, according to the affidavit, the names of 14 female guards were scrawled on a wall along with the price they allegedly charged for sexual favors: $150. It is an environment, former corrections officers said, where it is hard to know whom to trust among the keepers and the kept. When corrections officers report to work, they have to pass through a metal detector and receive a pat-down from a colleague, the affidavit noted. But they could simply wait for a friendly face before bringing in contraband. At the detention center, corrections officers also had little fear of losing their jobs if they were caught smuggling. In one wiretapped call, an officer told an inmate about getting transferred from the jail to the intake center next door: “It ain’t nothing new. I got moved over there basically because I’m dirty.” At least one of the 13 officers charged had been accused of gang ties at the detention center before. In 2008, inmate Tashma McFadden sued officer Antonia


As Baltimore jail corruption case unfolds, cellphone-penalty legislation returns to spotlight

the most recent version of the legislation this year. Cluster argued that the prospect of additional incarceration would have swayed some inmates, who often get away with “a slap on the wrist” now, and given pause to more guards considering involvement. Law enforcement officials say cellphones enable inmates to plot assaults and escapes. And they make it possible for inmates to practice a form of telecommuting from prison to coordinate drug and gang activity and to harass witnesses and order killings on the outside. Under the legislation, inmates caught with a cellphone for a second time would have faced felony charges that could result in up to five additional years being tacked onto their sentences. Under current law, cellphone possession is a misdemeanor, regardless of how many times inmates are caught, and the punishment does not automatically lengthen their incarceration. The legislation also would have increased penalties for guards, visitors or anyone else who delivers or attempts to deliver a cellphone to an inmate. As the problem has grown nationally, states are trying a variety of strategies to fight back, including tougher penalties. Mississippi, for example, is cracking down this year using a contraband law that carries felony sentences of up to 15 years in prison. And Idaho passed a law last year that makes the crime a felony with a potential five-year sentence. Maynard said that the bill would not have cured the problems at the Baltimore jail — “I am not blaming this on that,” he said — but that “it would have been one step in a number of steps.” He said the threat of stiffer penalties could have affected correctional officers, whom the department can place on leave without pay when charged with a felony. An aide explained that the loss of a paycheck can be “the breaking point” for guards considering going astray. Testimony in favor of the bill this year by Baltimore police cited the operation of the Black Guerilla Family in several Maryland correctional institutions as one reason to pass the bill. Over the years, the legislation has also drawn the backing of Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler (D), the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office, the Maryland Chiefs of Police Association, the Maryland Sheriffs Association and the Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention. In testimony last year, the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office said “the use of cellphones in correctional facilities has proven to


Surge in valley fever blamed on climate change

FRESNO, Calif. — The fever has hit California’s agricultural heartland particularly hard in recent years, with the incidence dramatically increasing in 2010 and 2011. The disease — which is prevalent in arid regions of the United States, Mexico, Central and South America — can be contracted by breathing in fungus-laced spores from dust disturbed by the wind as well as human or animal activity. The fungus is sensitive to environmental changes, experts say, and a hotter, drier climate has increased the dust carrying the spores. “Research has shown that when soil is dry and it is windy, more spores are likely to become airborne in endemic areas,” said Gil Chavez, deputy director of the Center for Infectious Diseases at the California Department of Public Health. Long-standing concerns about valley fever were heightened last week when a federal health official ordered the transfer of more than 3,000 exceptionally vulnerable inmates from two San Joaquin Valley prisons where several dozen have died of the disease in recent years. A day later, state officials began investigating an outbreak in February that sickened 28 workers at two solar power plants under construction in San Luis Obispo County. Although millions of residents in Central California face the threat of valley fever, experts say that people who work in dusty fields or construction sites are most at risk, as are certain ethnic groups and those with weak immune systems. Newcomers and visitors passing through the region may also be more susceptible. Nationwide, the number of valley fever cases rose by more than 850 percent from 1998 through 2011, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2011, there were more than 20,400, with most cases reported in California and Arizona. — Associated Press


World Digest: May 5, 2013

the attack and said “suspects” had been arrested. In a separate incident Sunday, four Somali soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb struck a government vehicle in Mogadishu’s northwest, said Ali Jimale, a police captain. The car bombing falls into a pattern of attacks blamed on the Islamic extremist group al-Shabab, which has been pushed out of much of the areas it occupied in South and Central Somalia by African Union troops. — Associated Press Pakistan Clashes, bombing kill six troops Military operations and insurgent attacks Sunday in lawless districts of Pakistan killed six troops and nearly 30 militants, officials said. Two soldiers and 16 militants were killed in clashes in the Tirah Valley area of the Khyber tribal region in the northwest, the military said in a statement. Three soldiers were wounded in the mountainous district near the Afghan border. In the North Waziristan tribal region, another northwestern district, a roadside bomb attack on a convoy killed two soldiers and wounded three, two Pakistani intelligence officials said. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The tribal region is home to both Pakistani and Afghan militant groups, including al-Qaeda-linked organizations with significant numbers of foreign fighters. Also Sunday, two members of the paramilitary Frontier Corps were killed in clashes in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, said government official Waheed Shah. He said the fight also killed 13 people suspected in kidnappings and robberies. Baluchistan has for years experienced a low-level insurgency by nationalist groups who want a greater share of regional resources of oil and gas. Lawlessness in the region has also allowed sectarian groups and criminal gangs to operate. — Associated Press Afghanistan German troop’s death ends bloody week A member of Germany’s special forces was killed Saturday in Afghanistan, the army said Sunday, the first German soldier to die in the country in almost two years. Violence is intensifying across Afghanistan, and there is growing concern about how Afghan security forces will manage once foreign troops withdraw by the end of next year. Last week, 22 foreign troops died in Afghanistan and three American soldiers died supporting the Afghan mission in Kyrgyzstan. The toll included the deaths of seven U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan on Saturday in two attacks. — Reuters Malaysia’s ruling coalition holds on to power: Libya passes ban on Gaddafi-era officials: — From news services