– which means that the lager could ferment "in tanks without holding up any of our other beers." The can is based on a 1930s label from the Heurich House archive, but designed by artist Graham Jackson, who also did DC Brau's Solar Eclipse and Smells Like Freedom cans. "The cool thing about this is that it says it was brewed for the Christian Heurich Brewing Company by DC Brau," explains Heurich House's Bender. "We're bringing back the name." The Heurich House, one of the best-preserved Victorian homes in America, frequently uses beer as a way to reach out to the public, whether it's at the monthly History and Hops gatherings, which bring beer lovers to the mansion for meet-and-greets and tastings with local brewers, or the annual Oktoberfest held in the house's garden. "Anything we can do to educate people about who Christian Heurich was, and his importance to this city, we're going to do that," Bender says. "The history of the beer and the existence of the historic beers are really important to us. We're trying to make history interesting to people, more than just walking through a museum as someone talks at you. [Heurich's Lager] is living history." [History and Hops: History collides with local beer at the Brewmaster’s Castle] The official release of the beer is during a 1916-themed party at the Heurich House on Thursday, March 24, which features live jazz, hors d'oeuvres and DC Brau brews. Tickets are $100, which benefits the museum; a $150 VIP ticket includes an hour-long private tasting with the brewers. After the party, DC Brau will sell Heurich's Lager at the brewery in cans and growlers during its regular public hours. Hancock says there will be around 150 cases of cans, but "It is by no means a large enough release to make it to all corners of the city." Translation: Try it soon, or you might be waiting for a while. Bender says that the Heurich House, which owns the trademarks to the names of Heurich's brewery and beer, is open to collaborating with local breweries about recreating other Heurich brands in the future, such as Old Georgetown and Senate ales and Champeer Malt Liquor. "I think it will grow organically. But what's exciting about this is that the Christian Heurich Brewing Company is back." A 1930s label for Heurich's Lager Beer. (Courtesy of the Heurich House Museum)


Homes of notable Washingtonians

Where presidents and celebrities made history — or still do. While it may not have the mega-celebrity cachet of Hollywood, the Washington area — with its socialites, politicians, TV news personalities, business people and, yes, even former presidents — has its share of bold-faced names living among us. Here are a few of the homes of some notable Washingtonians. For more, click on the gallery above: Six years after a devastating fire destroyed her mansion in upper Northwest Washington, arts patron Peggy Cooper Cafritz is putting the finishing touches on her Dupont Circle home. (April Greer/For The Washington Post) • Peggy Cooper Cafritz, Six years after a devastating fire destroyed her Upper Northwest Washington mansion, arts patron Peggy Cooper Cafritz is putting the finishing touches on a DuPont Circle condo filled with provocative art. Cafritz, who moved into the $3.25 million condo in 2011, describes her furnishings as eclectic with a mark of vintage. NBC4 anchor Wendy Rieger owns a condo in the CityCenter DC complex on the grounds of the former convention center. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) • Wendy Rieger, Washington NBC4 news anchor Wendy Rieger was one of the first to move into CityCenter DC, the largest mixed-use development project in the District, which is constructed on the former convention center site. Rieger chose a clean, mid-century modern style for her D.C. pied-a-terre. “This is my white period, she said. “My father is Swiss-German. I feel like this is my Swiss-German DNA coming out.” President Lyndon B. Johnson lived in this home in the District’s Forest Hills section for 18 years. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)) • President Lyndon B. Johnson, Washington President Lyndon B. Johnson lived in a brick Colonial home in Washington’s Forest Hills neighborhood for 18 years. Linda Porter, who bought the home, preserved much of its original layout. Porter said she found several Johnson-era mementos during the renovation, including postcards and baseball cards. “People will stop every now and then and say, ‘Is this where Johnson lived?'” said Porter. “It’s fine. No one’s been a problem. They are just kind of curious to see.” Sheila Johnson bought the estate in Fauquier County in 1996 because of the mountain views. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)) • Sheila Johnson, Fauquier County, Va. Billionaire Sheila Johnson — part owner of the Washington Mystics and ex-wife of Robert Johnson, co-founder of BET — owns a 100-year-old farm in Fauquier County


6 things you need to know about Côte d’Ivoire in the wake of Sunday’s attack

Côte d’Ivoire, and we hesitate to draw too strong a link between the two. We can, however, provide some background on Christian-Muslim relations in the country. Côte d’Ivoire’s population is split nearly evenly between Christians and Muslims, with a sizable minority of the population practicing traditional religions. Ivoirians are generally tolerant, and a prime example of interreligious peace included Muslim and Christian women working together during the crisis period to call for peace. More recently, in a new report by the Afrobarometer, Côte d’Ivoire led 33 African countries in religious tolerance, with 98 percent of a nationally representative sample reporting willingness to have neighbors from a different religious group. There is, however, research from Bouaké, a northern city at the heart of the civil war from 2002-2010, that shows an implicit Muslim-Christian bias persists. John McCauley at the University of Maryland found in that study that Christians tended to be more biased against Muslims than Muslims were against Christians. He also found that these interreligious biases could be reduced through calls for peace from public figures. 6. What does all of this mean for Côte d’Ivoire going forward? This terrorist attack disrupts the country’s self-image as a paragon of economic growth and newfound stability. Côte d’Ivoire has been promoting a narrative of “emergence,” both out of conflict and as one of the African continent’s premier places to invest. Prior to the Bassam attack, the country had been untouched by Islamist violence or terrorist attacks. One question is whether emerging inequality — the new money pouring into flashy projects rather than being more equally distributed to combat food insecurity and improve limited social services — could be a trigger for some to join AQIM. Some women’s groups with membership that crosses ethnic and religious lines have been pushing for national attention to poverty and access to food and health care in order to improve community cohesion and address local security risks across the country. Ouattara’s government will have a long road ahead to stabilize the security sector and make Ivoirians feel safe again. Nongovernmental organizations like the Forum for Civil Society of West Africa – Côte d’Ivoire Section (FOSCAO Côte d’Ivoire) will probably play a role in countering any anti-Muslim rhetoric throughout the country via civic education and awareness-raising campaigns, although this may be an uphill battle, as many citizens do not trust these local actors to be neutral. Justine Davis


Main Street Morning: Some top Chipotle executives are getting paycuts

peeing incident on a Kellogg assembly line sparks a criminal investigation. Entrepreneurs - 23-year-old’s water bottle makes her a million. - An amazing 10-year-old girl creates chemo kits to help kids with cancer. - How necessity spurred this founder’s entrepreneurial spirit. - Jerry Seinfeld sells his Porches and Volkswagens for $22 million. Retail - How J.C. Penney pulled off the retail turnaround of the century. Restaurants - Chipotle’s top executives are getting a big pay cuts. - How this restaurant has successfully dished up hot dogs and more for over 60 years. Sales Marketing - How the Wahlbergs are using reality TV to turn their burger business into a global brand. - UPS shoots for more small business customers during March Madness. - This EKG business card will warm your customers’ hearts. Travel - These are five new travel start-ups that approach booking from different angles. Start-ups - An Oxford grad and a JP Morgan intern are building a start-up that helps pre-school children learn English - An Israeli start-up takes on the “grand challenge” of beating the Zika virus. - This start-up wants to fix the big farm food waste problem at its source. - A program in Vermont gives a local student the chance to start a business, Technology - Watch how it easy it is for a thief to turn a regular credit card reader into a skimmer in three seconds. - Skype for Web can now call landlines and play embedded YouTube videos. - A new projector from Sony can turn surfaces into an interactive tabletop. - A $20,000 self-driving vehicle hits the road. - A Google patent filing should keep its driverless car from running into buses. Online - Google adds support for Microsoft Office, Facebook at Work, Slack and others to its single sign-on solution. - The Microsoft Store no longer accepts Bitcoin. Ideas and Opportunities - These are five nascent technologies that will radically shape the future. - The rise of sea levels is predicted be anything from bad to awful. - Ekg Business Card Warms Our Hearts - Google beefs up its ads, analytics, and updates for Android game developers. Around the Country - Danbury, Connecticut’s mayor celebrates the town’s Small Business Day. - Colorado’s unemployment is at its lowest since 2001. - A Massachusetts city’s use of tax breaks is called “necessary” to attract business. - A hearing will soon be


Aaron Silverman and Peter Chang are among D.C.’s finalists for 2016 James Beard Awards

The James Beard Foundation today announced the finalists for its 2016 Restaurant and Chef Awards, and based on sheer number, the Washington area had a better showing than last year. Left: Aaron Silverman in the kitchen at Rose's Luxury (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post) Right: Chef Peter Chang with a finished plate of mapo tofu at his Arlington restaurant. (Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post) After being shut out in 2015, D.C.-area chefs nabbed two of the six finalist slots in the Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic category: Peter Chang (Peter Chang) and Aaron Silverman (Rose's Luxury). Baltimore chef Cindy Wolf (Charleston) also is among the nominees. Rounding out the competition is a trio of chefs from Philadelphia: Eli Kulp (Fork), Rich Landau (Vedge) and Greg Vernick (Vernick Food & Drink). On the national level, Mark Furstenberg of Bread Furst made it into the shortlist for Outstanding Baker. Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery was also a finalist, for Outstanding Wine, Beer, or Spirits Professional. The Outstanding Restaurateur category featured two nominees with locations in the District: Michael Mina (Bourbon Steak) and Stephen Starr (Le Diplomate). Local-boy-made-good David Chang received a nomination for Outstanding Restaurant for his Momofuku Noodle Bar in New York. (A D.C. location of Momofuku opened in CityCenterDC last year.) Also of interest in Washington: chef, cookbook author and culinary educator Patricia Jinich earned two nods in the broadcast category for her public television series, "Pati's Mexican Table": Television program (fixed location) and outstanding personality/host. Washingtonian food critic Todd Kliman received a nomination for his column. And The Post's Tom Sietsema earned a nomination in the James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards for his year-long package on the best food cities in America. The finalists were whittled down from a long list of semifinalists, announced last month. You can check out the entire rundown on the James Beard Foundation site. The winners will be honored at a gala May 2 in Chicago hosted by Carla Hall. Related items Washington chefs and restaurants make a good showing as James Beard Award semifinalists 2015 Fall Dining Guide D.C. restaurants are all over the list of James Beard Award semifinalists Mark Furstenberg and Erik Bruner-Yang were nominated for James Beard Awards, but other locals were shut out Rasika chef Vikram Sunderam wins James Beard Award


The Washington Post and Whole Foods Market present the 2016 Beer Madness Taste-Off

Whole Foods locations in the greater Washington, D.C. region to find a selection of the 32 craft beers featured in the 2016 Beer Madness bracket. Beer Madness Taste-Off Each year in March The Washington Post’s Weekend, Bars and Food columnists celebrate Beer Madness, a bracketed taste-off of 32 craft brews that selects a single champion through a series of expert tastings along with online votes submitted by readers. This year’s competition is unique in that it features craft brew matchups from each of the four regions of the United States: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest and West Coast. See the 2016 Beer Madness bracket here: Beer sponsors of Beer Madness include Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Epic Brewing Company and Lagunitas Brewing Company. About Chef Benjamin Nola Chef Nola joined Whole Foods Market in December, 2015, as an Associate Prepared Foods Coordinator focused on bringing culinary excellence to the Mid- Atlantic Region, with specific focus on 11 of our stores in the Washington, D.C., metro area. Chef Nola brings experience from Rose’s Luxury (2014-2015), which Bon Appetit named “Best New Restaurant in America, 2014,” and Daikaya (2012-2014), as well as several other local restaurants and executive kitchens. He is passionate about elevating our prepared food menus and establishing direct partnerships with local producers and leaders in the sustainable food movement. He graduated magna cum laude, with a Bachelor of Arts in Food Service Management and an Associate of Arts in Culinary Arts from Johnson & Wales University. Chef Nola lives in Maryland with his wife Nicole Davarpanah. About Whole Foods Market® Founded in 1978 in Austin, Texas, Whole Foods Market (wholefoodsmarket.com, NASDAQ: WFM), is the leading natural and organic food retailer. As America’s first national certified organic grocer, Whole Foods Market was named “America’s Healthiest Grocery Store” by Health magazine. The company’s motto, “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet”™ captures its mission to ensure customer satisfaction and health, team member excellence and happiness, enhanced shareholder value, community support and environmental improvement. Thanks to the company’s more than 85,000 team members, Whole Foods Market has been ranked as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in America by FORTUNE magazine for 19 consecutive years. In fiscal year 2015, the company had sales of more than $15.4 billion and currently has more than 435 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. For more company news and information, please visit media.wfm.com.


As temperatures soar, new doubts arise about holding warming to 2 degrees C

be installing the equivalent of 485,000 5 megawatt windmills annually by 2028. That would represent “a 37-fold…expansion in the annual installation rate in only thirteen years.” “That rate of expansion, to go from like 9 percent to 50 percent….we’ve never seen that in the history of the world’s use of energy,” says Jones. The study argues that coal, oil, and natural gas each required “35 + years to increase from 5 % to 25 % of total global energy production.” The authors therefore bluntly conclude that “it is unlikely that the < 2 C goal can be met.” Granted, unlikely is not the same as impossible. “Not that it can’t happen, but I don’t see the world or governments or officials getting together in the timespan it would take to make a difference,” says Jones. “Hopefully it comes as a wake-up call to people,” he says of the study. The study does not contemplate the removal of carbon dioxide through the air through advanced “negative emissions” technologies that, all of a sudden, seem likely to be essential to meeting climate goals. But the calculations provided by the authors certainly support that conclusion. And as if all of this is not enough, the so-called “carbon budget” of 1,000 additional gigatons of carbon dioxide, which has been used until now to determine how much humans can emit and still keep warming below 2 degrees C, may have been too generous, recent research has suggested. The budget, as of last year, could be as low as 590 – 1,240 gigatons of carbon dioxide, when current emissions are around 40 gigatons per year, a recent study in Nature Climate Change found. A great example of how much the world is turning to renewables, and yet how it could still fall short of climate goals, comes in the form of India, one of the top countries to watch when it comes to the energy future. As of 2014, India had 249 gigwatts of installed electricity capacity, according to the Energy Information Administration, roughly one quarter of what exists in the U.S. And this is to serve a population more than three times as large. Thus, India will greatly expand its provision of electricity to its people in the coming years. There is simply no doubt of that. At a recent gathering of India energy experts hosted by the World Resources Institute, Ajay Mathur, the director-general


CDC warns doctors about the dangers of prescribing opioid painkillers

this critical public health issue, while also ensuring access to these medicines for patients with legitimate medical needs.” Such policies include expanded provider education and training on pain management and access to treatment options, she said. Nearly 28,700 people died from overdoses of prescription opioids and heroin in 2014, according to the most recent data available. Since 1999, 165,000 people have fatally overdosed on prescription painkillers, the CDC said. In just the past month, it said, 4.3 million have diverted the drugs for nonmedical uses. “We know of no other medication routinely used for a nonfatal condition that kills patients so frequently,” Frieden and Debra Houry, director of the agency’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, wrote Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The guidelines, which were delayed a few months by disputes with drug industry groups, are aimed predominantly at primary care physicians. These doctors prescribe many of the opioids but complain that they have insufficient training in how to do so. Frieden agrees that many doctors need a refresher course on how to approach prescribing pain medications. “When I went to medical school I had exactly one lecture on pain, and the lecture said if you give an opioid to a patient in pain, they will not get addicted,” Frieden said. “Completely wrong, and yet a generation of doctors grew up being taught that.” The recommendations are not intended for doctors managing pain after cancer or surgery or during end-of-life care. [‘We can do more,’ FDA says in announcing overhaul of approach to opioid painkillers] The CDC recommends that patients seeking help for pain first try non-opioid medications such as ibuprofen and acetaminophen whenever possible, as well as exercise and weight loss. If opioids are prescribed, low doses and less than a week’s supply should be provided. Currently, many doctors write prescriptions for oxycodone, hydrocodone and others to last patients several weeks or even a month. “Three days or less will often be sufficient; more than seven days will rarely be needed,” the guidelines state. The CDC advises clinicians to conduct urine tests of patients before starting opioid therapy and to test patients’ urine for the presence of controlled substances and illicit drugs at least annually. Not many years ago, doctors were sometimes criticized for undertreating pain. But in 2012, after years of aggressive marketing by some drug companies, health-care providers wrote 259 million prescriptions


Chinese website publishes, then pulls, explosive letter calling for President Xi’s resignation

Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks with media in a press conference with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani after their meeting at the Saadabad Palace in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi) Two weeks after China’s President toured state media offices and called for absolute loyalty from the press, a website with links to the government published an explosive letter asking him to resign “for the future of the country and the people.” The letter was reportedly posted in the early hours of March 4 by a website called Wujie News, which claimed to be jointly owned by SEEC Media Group, Alibaba and the government of Xinjiang, in China's far northwest. The Washington Post found a cached version of the document that shows the post live on the site. (A spokesperson for Alibaba said the company "never had an equity stake in Wujie," but did sign a "memorandum of understanding" with the company at a government-sponsored event.) The letter, signed "loyal Communist Party members," lambasts China's president for "abandoning the principle of collective leadership," for concentrating power in his own hands and "indulging" flatterers. Xi's declaration that the press should serve the party, not the people "dismayed the whole nation," it charges. The strident but anonymous critique was printed amid a string of three other high-profile rebukes of the Xi and his media policy. Taken together these incidents hint at anger and frustration within China's elite — and show a willingness to speak out despite the risks. Their message to the government: We won't go quietly. Questions about Xi’s press policy surfaced soon after his “inspection tour” of China Central Television (CCTV) and People’s Daily last month. While visiting the outlets, Xi said the media ought to “reflect the will of the Party, mirror the views of the Party, preserve the authority of the Party, preserve the unity of the Party and achieve love of the Party, protection of the Party and acting for the Party.” A retired property developer and blogger named Ren Zhiqiang was not impressed. “When did the ‘People’s Government’ turn into the ‘Party’s Government?’” he asked. “Once all the media is part of one family and stops representing the interests of the people, then the people will be cast aside and left in some forgotten corner.” Ren’s comments made a splash online but were quickly purged from the Web. Party-backed media soon swarmed, lambasting


The show trial of Ukrainian Nadiya Savchenko is Putin’s latest form of bullying

no less brutal to his own people. Ask Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former Russian billionaire and oil tycoon who was jailed for 10 years in what many believed was a show trial after the businessman started financing Putin’s political opponents. Then there is Alexei Navalny, who has been jailed countless times on trumped-up charges after challenging Putin’s power. After Russian liberals protested the 2011 parliamentary elections for nearly two years, the Duma, dominated by Putin’s United Russia Party, passed stiff anti-protest laws that fine violators more than $28,000 and up to five years of forced labor. Ukrainians are calling on leaders in the West to maintain pressure on Moscow. Some countries seem to be listening. At least 57 European Union lawmakers have called for personal sanctions against Russian officials — including Putin — over Savchenko’s trial, including property forfeitures, asset freezes and visa bans. Such a move would finally show Putin that his attempts at playing de facto president over sovereign nations whose internal conflicts he starts and then manipulates don’t go unnoticed. Savchenko is not unique. Anyone could have ended up in her predicament, which makes her case even more terrifying. When Putin uses hybrid warfare like he does in Ukraine, it is easy to pluck random people out of the chaos that results and use them as propaganda tools. This time, it just happened to be Savchenko. Putin took advantage of decades-old ethnic tensions in eastern Ukraine, where a Russian majority has long felt marginalized, simply to advance his political agenda; he pulled an already struggling nation down to near-collapse in the process. But shaming the Kremlin likely wouldn’t do much good anyway, as Putin seems incorrigible. He is even attempting to threaten the Baltic states, which are NATO members and could, unlike Ukraine, respond with the force of the world’s leading military alliance. Lithuania reports that Russian fighter jet incursions in Baltic airspace increased by 14 percent last year. Putin is fear-mongering there, but his actions reveal how petulantly he reacts to neighbors whom, unlike Ukraine, he can’t invade for fear of military retribution. Nadiya Savchenko’s verdict is expected to be announced any day now. Russia’s faux legal system and propaganda-driven media will likely declare her inevitable guilty verdict as a sign of justice. But everyone will still know the true purpose: utter psychological terror. He wants Ukrainians to feel that anyone who dares to challenge him could


Why Metro’s shutdown might be a good thing

the decision– along with Metro’s board– to shut the system down for at least 24 hours in the name of safety. Metro general manager Paul J. Wiedefeld pauses during a news conference to announce that the Metro system will be shut down for a full day at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority headquarters, on Tuesday, March 15, 2016, in Washington. Wiedefeld said the system would be shut down for an emergency inspection of the system’s third rail power cables. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) It’s a gutsy move, and maybe something his predecessor should have thought of. But you get the sense that for too long, Metro’s management has been like the feckless mayor in “Jaws” who insists on keeping the beaches open despite the threat of shark attacks because it’s the height of the tourist season. If you live anywhere near Washington, you understand the impact of the closure. The effect is startling on the federal workforce alone, not to mention private businesses, hospitals, schools, and universities – even the museums in the nation’s capital– which decided to open at noon. It’s inconvenienced thousands and thousands of people and enraged at least as many more. The best you can say is it brought out a predictable and welcome amount of gallows humor on Twitter. Three hours into the #wmata shutdown: https://t.co/R2kT026X9Z RT @bailsdc: DC tomorrow #wmata https://t.co/U06x3YfYFe Preview of #dcmetro commute #WMATA https://t.co/pDQKMnvdzR hahahahaha guys remember when #wmata was named the best transit system in the U.S. LAST MONTH?https://t.co/HQx1m0zzqq Arguably, the decision could have been handled better. Metro should have announced the decision earlier in the day, to allow institutions and commuters more time to plan workarounds for the closure. And if it wasn’t such an emergency that it put people in immediate peril – and Metro reassured customers that it would be safe to ride home Tuesday night — couldn’t the shutdown have waited until the weekend? But it was the right call to ensure rider safety. And maybe it’s a cry for help to the people that are really to blame for this mess: the leaders of the District, Virginia, Maryland and the federal government, who have short-changed Metro’s funding for years and passed the buck on oversight. It’s taken how long for the governors and the mayor to set up the Metro Safety Commission? And they, arguably only made it as far as they have because U.S.


Germany has highways for bikes. You can learn from that, America

visit near the town of Sedrun, Switzerland, on Thursday. (REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann) According to the World Economic Forum, Switzerland has the world's best infrastructure, even though everyone who has been to the country in the center of Europe knows that its mountainous landscape is far from being perfect to build modern infrastructure systems. For every highway or train line, construction workers need to tunnel through mountains and hills. Having one of the world's highest transport system densities, Switzerland primarily proves that it is governmental commitment to infrastructure that makes the difference. 3. Money matters — and banks aren't much interested in long-term projects Given the United States' size, developing countries like India or China might be a better comparison than Switzerland. Writing in the Financial Times, Patrick Jenkins argues that it's all about money. Infrastructure projects often face financing gaps because banks have abandoned the idea of financing such long and massive projects. "This is partly a result of a shrunken risk appetite across banking. It is also thanks to tougher capital charges on such assets, imposed by global regulators," Jenkins writes. 4. In Copenhagen, you can travel on a driverless metro running 24/7 One does not have to change the entire banking and financing system to improve American infrastructure, though. The example of Copenhagen shows that smaller steps might be equally helpful. The Copenhagen metro runs 24/7 because it operates without drivers. 5. This Japanese train could get you from San Francisco to New York City in seven hours The Maglev (magnetic levitation) train is seen on an experimental track in Tsuru, west of Tokyo, in May 2010. The train set a world speed record on April 21, 2015, in a test run near Mount Fuji, clocking 375 miles an hour. (KATORU YAMANAKA/AFP/Getty Images) Japan's magnetic-levitation trains set a new world record last year when they reached 375 miles per hour on a test run. That means travelers could go from San Francisco to New York City in only seven hours because the trains do not touch the steel tracks because of magnetic power. The "bullet" trains are primarily a prestige project. Critics have said the expensive investment makes little sense for a country like Japan that has a rapidly aging and declining population. Last year, U.S. officials appeared to show interest in implementing a similar system between Washington and Baltimore. There's still hope for commuters in and around D.C.


Apparently, some people didn’t get the ‘Metro Closed’ memo

Swathi Siris was stranded. She had no idea that Metro was completely shut down and was taken by surprise when she showed up at the Vienna Metro station. She stopped a Metro worker for an explanation. “What’s happened?” she asked. Siris, who usually takes the Orange line from Vienna to New Carrollton, did what a lot of folks might do in her situation: she panicked. “I thought only one single lane was going to be closed so I figured it would be running less frequently, but I didn’t think it was totally shut down,” she said. She had no more time to talk, she said as she started to rush out of the station. She had phone calls to make, plans to rejigger. “My mind is blocked,” she said, her eyes betraying her expression of shock. For infrequent riders like Khaled Orebur, Wednesday’s closure also came as a shock. Orebur looked despondent and confused when he arrived at the Vienna Metro station at 6 a.m. and was turned away at the fare gates by the station manager. He had planned to take Metro to Union Station and had already purchased advance bus tickets to New York to visit friends. “I won’t be able to catch the bus,” he said. “I’ll have to cancel the trip.” And then there was Trevor Maurer. The 28-year-old bopped into a nearly deserted Shady Grove station just after 10 a.m. Wednesday and stopped dead in his tracks. His orange head phones dropped out of his ears and nearly fell to the ground as he stared at the closed sign above in disbelief. “My heart sunk and then I got really nervous,” said Maurer, who lives in Gaithersburg and works as a waiter at a country club restaurant in Bethesda. “How am I getting into work.” When Maurer rode the Metro on Monday, he didn’t see any postings about a closure. And while he believes in safety he said he really wishes Metro officials “got the word out to everybody a little bit better than they did.” “I don’t regularly check the website and I assumed on a nice day like today there’s no reason to check it for weather outages or anything,” he said. Maurer takes the Metro pretty much every day. But he was off yesterday, so he didn’t ride. And he won’t be riding today. “Now I guess I have to get an


Apple defends Ireland tax arrangement; tech firms urge national self-driving rules; feds bust celeb photo hacker

(Carlo Allegri/Reuters) ‘EVERY CENT’: TIME FOR REGS? GOT HIM:


Meet the teen who just won $150,000 for inventing a device to diagnose lung disease

Maya Varma won the First Place Medal of Distinction for Innovation at the Intel Science Talent Search. (Courtesy Intel STS) California student Maya Varma has won the top prize for innovation at one of the nation’s largest and most prestigious high school science competitions, taking home $150,000 for inventing a new device to diagnose chronic lung diseases. “I’m so excited. I didn’t expect to receive an award, and it was such a surprise,” Varma said Wednesday in Washington, host city for the competition. “I’m so happy I can share my research with the world and hopefully make a difference.” The 17-year-old built her device out of $35 worth of basic electronics, but it is as accurate as hospital-grade versions that cost hundreds and even thousands of dollars. She hopes it will save lives in developing countries where such a device — called a spirometer — might otherwise be inaccessible. “People can’t afford this expensive equipment, and I decided to do something about it,” said Varma, a high school senior from Cupertino, Calif. (Her middle school was virtually next door to the world headquarters of Apple.) Maya Varma’s pulmonary function analyzer. (Maya Varma) Physicians can use data from Varma’s invention to diagnose and manage chronic pulmonary illnesses such as asthma or emphysema. Patients blow into the device, and a smartphone app analyzes the results. Varma developed the app: She is proficient in five programming languages. She has applied for a patent and is planning to test the device on a wider scale. Eventually she’d like to take it to market. Varma plans to study biomedical engineering in college. She was one of 40 finalists who came to Washington to present their research in the Intel competition, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. Previous winners have gone on to win the Nobel Prize, Fields Medal and MacArthur Foundation Fellowships, also known as “genius” grants. Winners were announced Tuesday night at a black-tie gala at the National Building Museum. Besides Varma, two other teens also won top $150,000 prizes. The three top winners were Amol Punjabi, left, Paige Brown, center, and Varma. (Courtesy Intel STS) Amol Punjabi, 17, won first place for basic research for developing software that can help pharmaceutical companies develop new drugs to treat cancer and heart disease. He is from Marlborough, Mass. Paige Brown, 17, won first place for projects dedicated to the global good. She is


Our alarmingly polluted environment is killing 12.6 million each year, WHO warns

Chan said. The report is part of an effort by world leaders over the past year to inform the public of the close link between seemingly theoretical issues like climate change to something an individual can relate to -- their own health. In March of last year, the director of China's meteorological administration gave a speech that was widely shared on social media in the country warning of the "severe threat" of climate change on the spread of mosquito-borne diseases and those that afflict children who play in infected waters. In the United States, President Obama convened a summit on health and climate change in June. "We know climate change is not a distant threat, we are already seeing impacts in communities across the country," the White House said, citing the rising rates of asthma in the United States. In December, these and other countries joined together to ratify a universal pact to slow global warming -- the most ambitious ever undertaken. While every corner of the world has been impacted by changes in the environment, those in low- and middle-income countries in Asia that are manufacturing hubs are the worst affected. The WHO's South-East Asia Region, which includes India and Bangladesh, and its Western Pacific Region, which includes China, had 7.3 million of the total deaths. [Beyond Zika: The map of things that keep NIH’s infectious diseases director up at night] (World Health Organization) Most of the deaths were in children under 5 years of age and the elderly. In the young, it was mostly due to respiratory infections and diarrheal diseases and in the old it was due to cardiovascular diseases, including stroke and heart disease. Below is a breakdown from the report for leading causes of environment-related deaths for all age groups: - Stroke – 2.5 million deaths annually - Ischaemic heart disease – 2.3 million deaths annually - Unintentional Injuries (e.g. road traffic deaths) – 1.7 million deaths annually - Cancers – 1.7 million deaths annually - Chronic Respiratory Diseases – 1.4 million deaths annually - Diarrheal Diseases – 846,000 deaths annually - Respiratory Infections – 567,000 deaths annually - Neonatal Conditions – 270,000 deaths annually - Malaria – 259,000 deaths annually - Intentional injuries (e.g. suicides) – 246,000 deaths annually This post has been updated. Read more: Global cancer hotspots: Burden of disease is shifting to developing world Beyond Zika: The map of things that


Washington has 12 hours of sunlight today. Why doesn’t that happen on the equinox?

The sun rises on March 16, 2016, in Washington’s Capital Hill neighborhood. (Jim Havard via Flickr) On just two days per year, daylight lasts almost exactly 12 hours. One of those days happens to be today — March 16, 2016 — which, at first ponder, is a little confusing. Isn’t the vernal equinox the day we’re supposed to have equal day and night? Yes, the Latin equinox literally translates to “equal night.” But the day when the sun is above the horizon for exactly 12 hours comes a few days before the vernal equinox, and after the autumnal equinox in the fall. On those days, the sun is actually above the horizon for a little over 12 hours in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere. Sunrise and sunset times in Washington, D.C. (timeanddate.com) The Capital Weather Gang’s Justin Grieser explains what’s going on: What’s behind this? Blame atmospheric refraction. This optical phenomenon bends the sun’s light as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere and causes the sun to appear slightly higher on the horizon than it is in reality. Another factor is how we define sunrise and sunset. Sunrise is defined as the moment the sun’s upper edge appears on the horizon, while sunset occurs when the upper edge disappears from the horizon. Together, these factors add a few extra minutes of daylight to the equinox. In the Northern Hemisphere, the exact 12-hour day occurs a few days before the spring equinox, typically March 14-18, depending on one’s latitude. Mystery solved. Now we can get back to enjoying the ever-increasing amount of daylight in our lives!


Kyirisan will open in Shaw next week with Tim Ma’s Chinese-French bistro fare

Kyirisan is Tim Ma's first restaurant in the District. (Becky Krystal/The Washington Post) Name: Tim Ma and Joey Hernandez have opened restaurants before. Three, in fact: Maple Ave Restaurant in Vienna in 2009, Water & Wall in Arlington in 2013 and Chase the Submarine in Vienna just a few months ago. (They've since stepped away from daily operations at Maple Ave and will be phased out as owners.) Kyirisan, however, is their newest and most personal, on a number of levels. "I wanted one place that was all my own," Ma said. He and Hernandez are the sole owners of their first restaurant in the District -- no investors, no partners, as was the case in their other ventures. "I'm literally raising money to buy the food." The name itself (pronounced kyr-i-sahn) is significant to their family, too. Because the couple has three young children, they combined the "k" from "kun," the name assigned to the children's generation by a Ma ancestor, with the phonetic spellings of the Chinese words for "one," "two" and "three," or "yi," "er" and "san." The food is also a product of Ma's story. The menu will blend Chinese and French cuisine, the former a nod to his heritage and the latter to his training at the International Culinary Center (formerly the French Culinary Institute). Ma thinks the combination is an unexplored one, too. Tim Ma in the kitchen at Kyirisan. (Becky Krystal/The Washington Post) The former electrical engineer enrolled in culinary school at age 30 when he decided he was more interested in owning restaurants. His restaurant-owning parents and uncle couldn't understand why: "They worked so hard so I wouldn't be in the restaurant business." But after seeing his parents left scrambling in the kitchen when their chef left to open a place across the street, Ma decided he should at least know a little about cooking in case he ever ended up in the same situation. "I didn't know how to cook," Ma recalled. On his first day at school, he couldn't even hold a knife correctly. Oh, how things can change. Ma, 38, has unabashedly embraced cooking and his family's history, this time with a good luck charm from his uncle's former restaurant -- a set of gorgeous bird-adorned antique panels imported from China that will grace one of Kyirisan's corridors. Still, Ma isn't letting his Chinese background hamstring his menu. Dishes


Top 10 questions D.C. area residents asked about the Metro shutdown, according to Google

Gridlock breaks down the best options for your commute. 2. How to commute in case of Metro shutdown? (Answer: Here’s how, via Post reporter Luz Lazo.) 3. Why is the D.C. Metro shutting down? (Answer: A fire broke out in a subway tunnel near McPherson Square Monday morning, fouling up the commute on three lines and raising questions about the “jumper cables” used to supply third-rail power in the tunnels. Monday’s incident was similar to cable problem that caused last year’s deadly Yellow Line smoke incident. The system was shut down so workers could inspect 600 electrical cables identical to the one that caught fire Monday. 4. Will the government be open with Metro shutdown? (Answer: The Office of Personnel Management gave federal workers the option to take unscheduled leave or telework. And judging by the hectic, but not disastrous commute, it appears many took up the offer. Officially, the government stayed open.) 5. Is the Metro closed tomorrow ? (answer: Yes. Unless you’re asking about Thursday, in which case the system is expected to open at 5 a.m. Metro says there may be single-tracking and shuttle service at some stations due to ongoing repairs.) 6. When was the last time the whole D.C. Metro shut down? (Answer: The weekend of Jan. 23 and 24, after a historic snowstorm dumped nearly two feet of snow — more in some areas — on the region. This is the first non-weather-related complete shutdown of the system.) 7. How much is Uber going to surcharge during the Metro shutdown? (Answer: Uber’s surge pricing averaged 1.7 times the normal fare during the Wednesday rush hour, the company said. It imposed a 3.9x cap on its fare ahead of the shutdown.) 8. Will Amtrak be affected by the D.C. Metro shutdown? (Answer: Amtrak service was not affected. The shutdown centered around safety concerns with the Metrorail system itself. Neither Amtrak nor commuter rail services such as MARC and VRE were directly affected, though MARC said yesterday its service could be adjusted due to rail and road capacity issues.) 9. Is D.C. Metro shutting down for 24 hours? (Answer: Yeah.) 10. When does D.C. Metro open? (Answer: Most weekdays? 5 a.m. When does the shutdown end? Metro said it would be in place at least until the system opening Thursday, but ongoing repairs could impact service beyond that. Try Googling it.) This post has been updated.


The violin thief

moved into a second home she had purchased, refinanced it and eventually had to sell. He filed for bankruptcy. The new owner would rent him back a room, a space so small he was embarrassed to invite friends over. In early 2011, Johnson learned he had pancreatic cancer. As his condition worsened, he began to get back in touch with his siblings. Late at night, on the phone, he talked to his older brother and asked Robert to read him the Bible. He also reminded Carol about one of his old violins. The one worth, oh, $30,000. And Johnson told his friends about one last wish. The last roundup The Sibelius. Thatâs the concerto he loved so much, the work he played back in Boston so long ago. Johnson didnât just want to play it. He wanted to create a new recording. One more thing. This time, Johnson would play the Stradivarius. On a Wednesday night in July 2011, a group of local musicians packed First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica. They were joined by an outsider from Johnsonâs past. Mercurio flew out from the East Coast. Ben Maas, a local engineer, cut his usual daily session fee from $1,000 to $650. âHe was not in particularly good shape,â says Maas. âHis fingers werenât working the way they had in the past. He was getting frustrated. The goodwill from the orchestra, it didnât disappear, but people were getting kind of annoyed they had to do take after take for somebody who was obviously not going to have the perfect product.â Recording wrapped and the musicians went home. Johnson, exhausted, eventually returned to talk with Maas about how to mix the session. He and the engineer bickered about the recording fee. Eventually, the violinist lost his temper. âHe said, âLook, Iâm dying, come after me,â â Maas says. Four years later, Maas is asked about the last recording. He doesnât have it. When Johnson berated him and refused to pay, Maas got frustrated. He decided the files were taking up too much space on his hard drives. He deleted them. âHad I known the story behind the violin,â he says today, âI absolutely would have kept it. The guy was cranky and not a nice person to deal with, but never, in a million years, would I have thought he had a Stradivarius.â To sing again On that August afternoon


Scientists expose vaccine volunteers to dengue virus and find 100 percent were protected

estimated completion date of 2018. In a conference call with reporters this week, researchers — who tend to pepper their description of studies with talk of limitations and caveats — were uncharacteristically optimistic that the vaccine will be successful. "Knowing what we know about this new vaccine, we are confident that it is going to work," said Anna P. Durbin, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which led the small study. Her colleague, Beth Kirkpatrick, a professor of medicine at the University of Vermont, which also participated in the trials, said that "the results of this work are very straightforward and quite conclusive." "The bottom line is that the vaccine appears to be 100 percent efficacious," Kirkpatrick said. The promising results bode well for efforts to develop a Zika vaccine. Zika and dengue are in the same family of viruses, and NIH officials have said they hope to cut the timeline for having a Zika vaccine by building on their work on dengue. Teams of researchers from both the government and industry have been working on developing a vaccine for the mosquito-borne virus for nearly 100 years. Dengue fever is one of the world's virulent infectious diseases, with more than 400 million people becoming infected each year. While most develop only few or no symptoms, 2 million develop the most dangerous form of the virus and 25,000 die from it. Dengue has been a particularly tricky target because of unique characteristics of the pathogen. There are four strains circulating in the world, and antibodies for each of the strains interact with each other in such a way that if a vaccine does not protect against all forms simultaneously, it could backfire and put a patient at risk of severe disease if exposed to the other types. In the worst case scenario, those receiving a faulty vaccine could go into dengue hemorrhagic shock, which is marked by bleeding, low levels of platelets and leakage of blood plasma, and die. Human challenge trials like this one are an extremely efficient way for scientists to tell whether a particular vaccine is effective, but they are rarely conducted because of the ethical dilemma of the risk it places on volunteers who are purposely exposed to a virus. Steve Whitehead, a scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a co-author of the dengue paper, said


ULA executive resigns after committing the gravest sin: speaking his mind

An Atlas V rocket carrying the Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft is rolled from the Vertical Integration Facility to a launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida late last year. (United Launch Alliance via AP) UPDATE, March 18: The IG said it is "reviewing the matter for appropriate action." Along with standing on the left side of the Metro escalator (if it's working), one of the biggest faux pas in Washington is making the mistake of speaking your mind. And so when an engineering executive at a top defense contractor let loose for an unfiltered hour in comments that were recorded and posted on the Internet, his employer suddenly found itself in crisis management mode, forced to follow a familiar script. First the United launch Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, disavowed the comments as "ill advised." Then came the notice that the executive, Brett Tobey, had resigned. Speaking at a forum, Tobey was decidedly off script, saying that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) "basically doesn't like us" and that the Pentagon was "trying to figure out, how do we silence McCain." That juicy tidbit came as he was talking about the fight over the ULA's use of a Russian-made engine, which McCain had been trying to limit. The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee had been successful--until, as Tobey correctly pointed out, Sen. Richard Shelby, of Alabama, where ULA has a manufacturing site, "parachuted in in the middle of the night" and eased the restrictions. For years, ULA had a monopoly on launching Pentagon and intelligence community satellites. But then along came Elon Musk's SpaceX, which offered the government a much more affordable way to space and was suddenly able to compete with the ULA for the lucrative launch contracts. Faced with its first competition late last year, ULA declined to bid for the most recent contract, saying it did not have the necessary engines or the accounting structure in place. ULA also said that it feared the Pentagon would place a premium on price, as opposed it its successful launch history, giving SpaceX an advantage. And Tobey amplified that point by saying bluntly, "we saw it as a cost shootout between us and SpaceX.” He also said that government officials were not pleased when ULA decided to bow out, “because they had felt they’d bent over backwards to lean the field to


Before Flying Dog could brew a beer with real clovers, they had to deal with the FDA

(Courtesy of Flying Dog Brewing) Adding four-leaf clovers to a beer brewed for St. Patrick's Day is a novelty, and an easy way to get people talking about local craft beer on a day dominated by black stuff from Ireland. But for Frederick's Flying Dog Brewery, it also meant having to tangle with the Food and Drug Administration. When Flying Dog came up with the idea for its Lucky SOB Irish Red Ale back in 2012, the staff thought it would be "a fun little thing" to add some four-leaf clovers during the brewing process, says Flying Dog Director of Communications Erin Weston. There's a large field outside the building, and four-leaf clovers are regularly found among the shamrocks there. But when Flying Dog submitted the beer for approval to the Food and Drug Administration, they learned that four-leaf clovers aren't on the FDA's Generally Accepted As Safe list, which governs the ingredients that can be added to food and beverages. (Once an ingredient is approved, it can be used by any producer without having to be resubmitted.) As a result, Flying Dog had to submit their four-leaf clovers to the FDA for analysis "to make sure there weren't any pesticides or mutations that could be harmful," Weston explains, and then had to submit evidence to show "how we planned on using the four-leaf clovers in the brewing process." Flying Dog doesn't dump pounds of four-leaf clovers into the beer; only about four or five dried clovers are added to each 50-barrel (1,575 gallon) batch while hops are boiling. Luckily, the FDA granted approval fairly quickly, Weston says: "All in all, it was a fairly fluid process." If if the extra ingredients hadn't been approved, Flying Dog probably would have brewed the beer anyway, but the brewers appreciate the idea of adding four-leaf clovers, even if they don't add to the flavor of the beer. "My dream," Weston says, "is to go out to a bar and have someone order one, smell it and say, 'Ahhh, I got the clover!'" Lucky SOB, a malty Irish red, is available at bars around D.C. and Maryland, including Nanny O'Brien's, Ri-Ra and the City Tap House.


10 things to do in the D.C. area on the weekend of March 18-20

Here are this weekend's best bets in nightlife, movies, museums, sports and much more around the Washington area. - Capital Weather Gang forecast: A cold and stormy weekend - Watching the NCAA tournament? Here are best sports bars in the D.C. area - More March Madness: Vote for your favorite fast-casual restaurant The fountain on the South Lawn of the White House is colored green in honor of St. Patrick's Day. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images) For starters, it's St. Patrick's Day. My colleagues Fritz Hahn and Becky Krystal have rounded up some of the best bars, events and meals to help you celebrate on Thursday and throughout the weekend in D.C. (For instance, that crazy Guinness-braised corned beef sandwich will be at Taylor Gourmet through Sunday.) So click here if you're looking for St. Patrick's Day and weekend ideas. Through March 26: Friday through April 17: Friday-Sunday: One of the Chinese dragon kites at the National Air and Space Museum. (Eric Long/National Air and Space Museum) Saturday: [Music on Saturday: Tortoise plays the Black Cat] Saturday: Saturday-Sunday: Sunday: Atlas Brew Works hosts its first Bluegrass Jam Sunday: Sunday:


The Hubble Space Telescope just spotted a gang of ‘monster’ stars

The image shows the central region of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The young and dense star cluster R136 can be seen at the lower right. (NASA, ESA, Crowther of University of Sheffield) It's the biggest gaggle of massive stars we've seen since the Academy Awards: New images from The Hubble Space Telescope show a cluster of nine monster stars — each one more than 100 times more massive than our sun. One of them is the previously discovered R136a1, which is the most massive, luminous star in the known universe "Together these nine stars outshine the Sun by a factor of 30 million," according to a statement from the European Space Agency, which operates the telescope with NASA. In addition to those nine headliners, the young star cluster R136 — located about 170,000 light years away in the Tarantula Nebula — also contains dozens of stars of at least 50 solar masses. "Because they are so massive, they are all close to their so-called Eddington limit, which is the maximum luminosity a star can have before it rips itself apart; and so they've got really powerful outflows. They are shedding mass at a fair rate of knots," the University of Sheffield's Paul Crowther told the BBC. Crowther is the lead author of a study on the newly imaged stars, set to be published soon in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. According to Crowther and his colleagues, these stars are shedding an Earth's mass worth of gas and dust each month — so they won't live for very long. Stars as massive as these only live for a couple million years or so, which is why they're so rare in older galaxies like our own. With so many of the massive, fast-dying stars in close proximity, the researcher say it's likely some of them will form black holes that will eventually merge — like the pair observed during the first detection of gravitational waves. It's possible that one day this very star cluster will send some of the same signatures careening our way. Little is known about stars of this mass — in fact, when the first four stars in R136 were discovered in 2010, researchers were shocked to find that stars could even get so massive. But probing more clusters like this one will help scientists puzzle out their origins. “There have been


‘It was too late to return.’ New glimpse into Bowe Bergdahl desertion case emerges in documents

told Dahl, who has since been promoted to lieutenant general. “However, I knew what I had set myself up for. Definitely, fear is a very general word. I had mixed feelings about what I was doing. Of course, there was going to be fear of doing it and there was going to be all these — my mind is always going to question what I was doing because I knew how dangerous it was. And I knew, basically, by that point, it was too late to return because I knew I was going to try to get back on.” Bergdahl, now 29, was captured by the Taliban the following morning and held hostage in Pakistan by the Haqqani network, a brutal group affiliated with the Taliban, for the next five years. He was recovered in late May 2014 by a U.S. Special Operations team in Afghanistan as part of a controversial swap in which the White House approved releasing five Taliban officials from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, into supervised release in Qatar. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl arrives for a pretrial hearing at Fort Bragg, N.C., on Jan. 12. Bergdahl, who was held by the Taliban for five years after he walked off a base in Afghanistan, faces charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. (Ted Richardson/AP) Bergdahl now faces a court-martial at Fort Bragg, N.C., scheduled in August for charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. Many of the details of his case have emerged either in an Army hearing in which Dahl testified last year or in Bergdahl’s interviews with the “Serial” podcast, but this marks the first time that the full Army interview has been released. Bergdahl faces up to life in prison if convicted. Bergdahl’s civilian attorney, Eugene Fidell, told The Washington Post that he and his fellow lawyers on Bergdahl’s case decided to release the full transcript after the Army recently disclosed a couple pages of it in a legal filing and as Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump continues to call Bergdahl a traitor while campaigning. Getting a fair trial for Bergdahl will be difficult, Fidell said. “Clearly, we have believed from the very beginning that transparency was a very important interest in this case, and the more the American people know about this case, the better,” he said. After interviewing Bergdahl, Dahl recommended during a hearing last September that the


soldier should not receive a prison sentence despite the dangerous months-long manhunt for him by U.S. forces afterward. There is no evidence that Bergdahl was sympathetic to the Taliban, Dahl argued, in part citing his interview with him. Bergdahl, who was a private first class when captured, told Dahl he will “happily talk about what a joke” the Taliban are, rejecting that he ever planned to join them. He was captured while looking for evidence of what they were doing after having some misgivings about his initial plan to cause a manhunt for him to draw attention to trouble in his unit, he said. “Sympathizer to the Taliban is a complete joke and you can talk to me all day about it and I will happily rip it up one side and down the other, and leave it completely lacking in any theories,” Bergdahl said. The transcript also shows that the Army considered charging Bergdahl with fraudulent enlistment, a crime in which someone typically misrepresents who they are to join the Army or secures a separation from the Army by knowingly misrepresenting his eligibility to leave the service. That appeared to center on whether Bergdahl disclosed that he had previously washed out of Coast Guard recruit training for what he called in the interview with Dahl a panic attack. Bergdahl said that although parts of his enlistment paperwork didn’t reflect it, he did tell his recruiter about his problems in Coast Guard training and the recruiter typed up a statement that Bergdahl signed. It read as follows, according to Dahl’s interview with the soldier: “I joined the Coast Guard in January of 2006. While in recruit training I had a hard time adapting to change. I had a lot going on with things at home and I do not feel that I was prepared on my own. I couldn’t take care of issues at home and was able to obtain a discharge to do so. They did discharge with a reentry code of 3L. I have no ties to home anymore that would hinder my performance while in the military. I have matured and know that I am prepared to go into the Army. Please do not allow my past record to prevent me from coming into the Army.” The recruiter did not do anything wrong, Bergdahl said. He ultimately was not charged with fraudulent enlistment. More coverage: U.S. soldier


The mysterious infection that might be behind 17 deaths in Wisconsin has spread to a second state

The biggest outbreak of Elizabethkingia in recorded public health history just got bigger. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) confirmed Thursday that an older adult from the western part of the state has died after contracting the obscure blood infection, which has sickened more than 50 in Wisconsin. Seventeen of those patients died, though it’s not clear whether the infection was to blame. All of the victims were people with underlying health conditions, including the latest one in Michigan. Now, Michigan health officials are trying to figure where the person came in contact with the bacteria. Elizabethkingia anophelis is commonly found in soil, rivers and reservoirs, and usually has not been dangerous to people — until last November, when people in Wisconsin started falling ill. When they do occur, most cases of Elizabethkingia (named for Elizabeth O. King, the Centers for Disease Control microbiologist who first isolated the bacterium) happen in ones and twos, usually in hospital settings, in people whose immune systems are already weak. An outbreak like this one is thought to be unprecedented — according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, most prior outbreaks had fewer than 10 patients. Officials don’t know where this outbreak is coming from, or why it’s so deadly. “It’s one of the largest [Elizabethkingia outbreaks] that I’m aware of, and certainly the largest one we’ve investigated,” Michael Bell, deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, told The Washington Post last week. In those it sickens, Elizabethkingia causes fever, chills and shortness of breath. Though strains of the bacterium have been found in all 18 fatalities linked to the outbreak, officials can’t say for sure whether the disease itself is responsible for the deaths. Wisconsin health officials have been investigating the outbreak in the state since early January, and the following month they issued a call for other health providers to review their own records for signs of the illness, according to MDHHS. On February 29, a Michigan lab identified Elizabethkingia in a recently submitted blood sample from a deceased patient. Workers sent it on to the CDC for further testing, which confirmed the diagnosis. All of the bacteria samples isolated from the more than four dozen patients share a particular genetic fingerprint, suggesting they may be coming from the same source, Bell said. But finding the source can be difficult. The cases are


Traffic, transit tips for blossoms and snow weekend

as the Capital Weather Gang says we may see snow. What’s a traveler to do? With the blossom festival starting, many tourists will be adding to the weekend crowds. That’s why Metrorail is going into the first of five weekends without any significant track work to disrupt service. Saturday, especially early, will be the better of the two days for outdoor activity. The Gang says this is a tricky forecast and advises travelers to check back. Both the National Park Service and the Capital Weather Gang predict an earlier than normal peak for the cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin. Long-distance travelers make their plans far in advance, but an early bloom will will bring out thousands of locals. The park service’s most recent prediction is for a peak bloom Tuesday and Wednesday, which rates a traffic alert from me for downtown crowding. The Gang’s Angela Fritz warns that this Sunday chill and snow won’t do the blossoms any good. A Sunday snow should not create a problem for Monday morning’s commuters, but we’ll monitor this. D.C. United’s regular season home opener is at 5 p.m. Sunday in RFK Stadium. (Fans, remember there’s no Metrorail work to slow trips to and from the Stadium-Armory station.) At Verizon Center in the Chinatown-Gallery Place area, the Capitals play at 7 p.m. Friday, the Harlem Globetrotters play at 1 p.m. Saturday, and the Wizards move in at 7 p.m. Saturday. Old Georgetown Road, Bethesda Rolling Road/Fairfax County Parkway VDOT said there will be similar closings in coming weeks as part of the $14 million interchange construction project, scheduled to be done in May. Coming up … Branch Avenue, Prince George’s County The Branch Avenue project near the Green Line station is seen here in January. (SHA photo) The lane closings are planned in this sequence each night: One northbound lane will close at 8, two northbound lanes will be closed at 9. Then all the northbound lanes will be closed at 11, and the detour will be in effect. On Wednesday and Thursday nights, a lane in each direction will close at 8, then two lanes at 9 and a full closing at 11. On those last two nights, workers will place a pre-fabricated pedestrian bridge over southbound Branch Avenue while continuing work on the steel beams. The pedestrian bridge won’t open till later in the project. Arlington Memorial Bridge George Washington Parkway


Why diseases like Zika could unfairly target America’s poor

has seemed to thrive in discarded-tire “habitats” in Baltimore. “We find way more mosquitoes in the lower-income neighborhoods,” said Shannon LaDeau of the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies. Since 2012, LaDeau and other scientists have been carrying out urban ecology studies of mosquitoes in the Baltimore and Washington areas. And they’ve reached some pretty dismaying preliminary conclusions. “We see cases where there’s persistent trash and abandoned buildings, and it just creates this surface where there are lots of small bodies of water, which are just great for this mosquito,” said Dawn Biehler, a University of Maryland Baltimore County geographer involved in the work. At a time when the water crisis in Flint, Mich., has raised awareness of the vulnerabilities of low-income or minority communities, the scientists say the recent Zika virus scare is exposing another looming form of environmental injustice. The Sandtown-Winchester/ Harlem Park neighborhood is 96 percent African-American, and nearly half of children here live below the poverty line. “We have rampant economic, rampant health disparities,” said Baltimore City Health Commissioner Leana Wen. “And for us, the preparation for Zika brings to light even more acutely the disparities that are faced by our neighborhoods.” Wen is heading a Zika preparedness group, convened by Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, that is working across city agencies to prepare for the summer mosquito season. Other urban areas are wrestling with the same combination of poverty and mosquito-borne disease risks. Research in New Jersey, conducted by Dina Fonseca and colleagues at the Rutgers Center for Vector Biology, similarly found that economic disparities were a good predictor of the abundance of the Asian tiger mosquito. Comparing the wealthier and more suburban Monmouth County with the poorer and more urban Mercer County, which includes the city of Trenton, the study found that “poverty was positively correlated with number of [Asian tiger mosquitoes] captured and accounted for over half the variation.” Fortunately, the climate in Baltimore and points north is not as hospitable for Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that poses the biggest threat for spreading Zika and other such diseases. But its fierce relative Aedes albopictus, or the Asian tiger mosquito, is here in force, at least in summertime. The species got its U.S. foothold in Texas in 1985 and has since colonized much of the southeastern United States — with its range expected to further increase because of climate change. And it is also capable of


International Red Cross official sees ‘disturbing trend’ in attacks on hospitals in conflict zones

a five-day visit. ICRC runs its third-largest humanitarian operation in the country. “We see a pattern in conflict now where medical facilities have become an area of combat.” In Afghanistan — where the United States maintains roughly 10,000 troops — the ICRC each week records about three to four incidents involving attacks on medical facilities or health workers, Maurer said. In 2015, health workers and institutions were subjected to searches by government forces, threats from armed groups, looting and abductions, according to the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). The most devastating attack was in October, when a U.S. AC-130 gunship bombarded a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz province. The strikes, which took place over several hours, killed 42 people and likely constituted a war crime, the nongovernmental organization said. Last month, elite Afghan special forces summarily executed two patients and a caregiver at a Swedish-run clinic in Wardak province. And in Baghlan province earlier this month, the government raided a local medical NGO and confiscated its equipment, reports said. In all three instances, government officials blamed either the NGOs or the medical facilities for treating patients they said were Taliban fighters. “The fact that soldiers and arms-bearers are getting treatment in medical facilities is now being accepted as an argument to attack those facilities,” Maurer said. The Geneva Conventions, which the ICRC follows, require that war wounded be treated without prejudice, whether or not they participated in the conflict. As such, they are protected from being attacked. Also in Afghanistan, militants loyal to the Islamic State stepped up attacks on health clinics in areas under their control in the east. The jihadists confiscated medicine and equipment and warned medical staff to stop working for the government, according to the United Nations. Despite these attacks, the ICRC has been in contact with Islamic State fighters in eastern Afghanistan to negotiate access to the local population. “While a couple of years ago, we could safely say this is a conflict between the Taliban and the government, it is now more multifaceted,” Maurer said, referring to the rise of the Islamic State in Afghanistan. “We see that the conflict has now spread all over the country,” he said. “But it’s not getting much attention.” Read more: Top U.S. general in Afghanistan: Hospital was ‘mistakenly struck’ Doctors Without Borders says U.S. airstrike hit hospital in Afghanistan; at least 19 dead


Main Street Morning: Google puts its robotics unit up for sale

Depot deal to launch its office supply business. - More than 100,000 cans of tuna are being recalled due to spoilage. - Uber is making it possible for some drivers to be paid instantly. - Fidelity joins a list of companies that are paying off the student loan debt of employees. Entrepreneurs - How this entrepreneur built a $16,000-an-hour private jet business. Sales Marketing - Nike unveils a self-lacing sneaker and its CEO says it will be as big as self-driving cars. - Uber’s Family Profiles let a customer foot the bill for loved ones. - BMW says people are buying luxury cars online as it plans first marketing push its for e-commerce site. Retail - FedEx thinks that retailers should be paying more for web delivery. Restaurants - Free burritos are helping to bring Chipotle customers back. Start-ups - With 33 employees, this start-up hopes to succeed in ways that smartphone giants can’t. - A new start-up investment program is coming to Philadelphia. Technology - How technology can be a tonic for late business payments. - Intel introduces new products aimed at small business owners. - A college student saves thousands of dollars by 3D printing his own braces. Online - How Google’s recent changes are affecting publishers and search engine optimizers. - A new email-based attack campaign is targeting key employees from companies in the U.S., Middle East and Asia with the goal of compromising their computers and email accounts. - Alibaba is working to bring virtual reality into its e-commerce services. - Apple will move part of its cloud business from Amazon Web Services to Google. - Cloud accounting service Xero expands its integration with Gmail and Google Apps. Social Media - These are the 12 types of people you hate on LinkedIn. - A study finds that most marketers are still eager to increase their spending on Facebook and Google. On This Day in 1850 - Henry Wells and William Fargo start American Express. Around the Country - Pennsylvania could soon legalize medical marijuana. - Chicago’s City Council voted unanimously to get rid of the sales tax on tampons and pads, becoming one of the first major U.S. cities to do so. - How a Midwestern potato farm became the world’s first nuclear waste site. - Twenty-two suburban Illinois businesses are honored for excellence. - Why Oracle refuses new business from Oregon’s government. Around the World


Army protests in court after Bowe Bergdahl’s legal team releases documents online

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, right, arrives for a pretrial hearing at Fort Bragg, N.C., in January. (Ted Richardson/AP) Army lawyers have protested a decision by the legal team of accused deserter Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl to release the entire 373-page transcript of his interview with a general officer, saying the document’s disclosure includes sensitive information in the controversial case and raises questions about whether Bergdahl’s attorneys will appropriately handle classified information. The objections were included Thursday in a court filing with the Army Court of Criminal Appeals. Army lawyers argued in it that they should be granted an extension until March 29 to respond to an appeal in the case “due to recent actions by the trial defense team and the immediate need to protect the unauthorized release” of information. Bergdahl, 29, is expected to face court-martial in August at Fort Bragg, N.C., on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy in what has become one of the most sensitive situations involving the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Bergdahl walked away from his base deliberately, late on June 29, 2009, and was captured within hours by the Taliban. He was released in May 2014 in a controversial swap in which the White House approved the release of five Taliban officials from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Army lawyers wrote in the filing this week that Bergdahl’s attorneys, led by civilian defense counsel Eugene Fidell, violated a protective order issued in the case that prohibits the dissemination of all information and documents available to Bergdahl and his legal team. It covered all personally identifiable information (PII), which can include Social Security numbers, phone numbers, financial information and “any other PII which is linked or linkable to a specific individual,” according to the order. “Defense counsel’s unwillingness to abide by the terms of a protective order dealing with only PII and sensitive information underscores the legitimate concern as to their access to classified information and whether they will comply with a protective order dealing with classified information,” said the filing, signed by three Army lawyers and obtained by The Washington Post. Then-Army Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl is shown in captivity in a video released by the Taliban in 2009. (Reuters TV) The lawyers add that to prevent further disclosures of information, the Army intends to file a request for a writ of prohibition under the All Writs Act, a 1789 law that


Why more than 200 new dams will be a disaster for the Amazon

or not scientifically described at all. And the ways that all of these organisms coexist and depend on one another is still being explored. A dead, flooded forest caused by the Balbina Dam in Brazil. (Image credit: Alexander Lees) ONE-TIME USE 2. Harming flying animals like birds and bats. As Lees explained, undisturbed rivers in southern Amazonia are subject to seasonal rising and falling with the wet and dry seasons. At certain times of the year, water levels will fall and expose a series of rocky islands, which provide important habitat to many animals. Free-tailed bats and black-collared swallows, for example, use these areas as breeding grounds. Damming, however, can disrupt the seasonal cycle and flood out these important habitats. Other birds — white-collared swifts, for instance — nest on waterfalls. But dams can eliminate these waterfall habitats entirely by stopping the flow of water, leaving their inhabitants exposed and vulnerable to predators. 3. How dams harm people and communities. “It’s gone from this small Amazonian town to this megalopolis with…all the social ills you can imagine with unconstrained growth and no plans,” Lees said, citing an increase in crime and rising prices as examples. Dams frequently bring floods of people into previously remote areas — and in addition to the problems this can cause for indigenous communities, it can also lead to an uptick in illegal deforestation. And the expansion of hydropower also aids in the expansion of mining and smelting, which draw even more human activity into the rainforest, are highly energy-intensive processes and can also introduce heavy metals and other pollutants into the environment. So the environmental problems associated with damming are becoming increasingly clear. The solutions, on the other hand, remain murky. If hydroelectric power continues to be the energy source of choice in the Amazon basin, a great deal of work and some significant policy changes will likely be required to prevent catastrophic future impacts on the environment. Most important is the need for a complete, basin-level analysis — beyond a review of the existing literature, which is still incomplete in many ways — of the impact of dams throughout the Amazon, said David McGrath, deputy director and senior scientist at the Earth Innovation Institute and a professor at the Federal University of Pará in Brazil. But there are currently many hurdles to doing so that need to be overcome with time and the adequate


Wolves and hyenas hunt together, prove Middle East peace is possible

relatives of cats than canines). They’re “highly intolerant of other large carnivores” and have been known to kill big, mean dogs, the study said. Grey wolves travel in packs and occasionally go hunting with other dogs, but usually prefer to kill them. Coyotes and jackals who get in their way are also dead meat. In southern Israel’s Negev Desert, both hyenas and wolves hunt and scavenge animals, insects, plants and trash. Those things aren’t abundant, so the beasts are by definition competitors. A grey wolf. (iStock) So Dinets was surprised when he came across overlapping, nearly-intact footprints of three grey wolves and one hyena in the Negev Desert near Eilat, Israel. They showed that the hyena was sometimes following the wolves and sometimes was being followed by them. A few years later, Beniamin Eligulashvili, a zoologist in Israel, witnessed a pack of seven wolves and one hyena cruising together in the same general area. “The hyena was not following the wolves, but moving in the middle of the pack,” said the study, which both men authored. The most likely reason for the unlikely friendship, they think, is that the hyenas benefit from the wolves’ stronger hunting skills, and the wolves benefit from the hyenas’ superior sense of smell and other talents, such as breaking large bones, excavating garbage and ripping open tin cans. While both species are found in many spots in the Middle East, Dinets said in an interview that he thinks this is probably a behavioral trait that exists in the Negev animals because there are so few other large mammals around. The wolves and hyenas “just need each other to survive, because food is so, so limited.” Interspecies cooperative hunting, as that sort of union is known, is “much more common than people thought,” Dinets said. Coyotes and American badgers do it. So do coral trout and moray eels, and moray eels and grouper. And humans, for a long time, hunted alongside dogs. They’re the exceptions, of course. But prosperity, they have all seemed to agree, depended on peace. Read more: Your cat is a lot deeper than you think Scientists don’t really know how dogs became dogs — but they might be close to finding out Someone dressed a horse in a designer suit — so we asked Tim Gunn to weigh in Once upon a time, poodles raced in the Iditarod. They weren’t half bad.


This lab is ground zero in the U.S. fight against Zika

visiting the homes of pregnant women without symptoms. They hope to learn more about Zika's link to a range of birth defects, including microcephaly, in which children are born with abnormally small heads and underdeveloped brains. Researchers expect to see an uptick in Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that may be triggered by Zika. So far, there is only one case. But epidemiologists are scouring three hospitals' patient records going back to 2012 to establish the syndrome's prevalence before the Zika outbreak. With a baseline, Sharp said, they'll know the point at which additional cases represent a true increase. The CDC wants to address another key question, too: "How long is Zika detectable and infectious in blood, semen, saliva, and vaginal secretions?" Sharp said. Cases of the virus are expected to rise on the island in coming months. And that raises the likelihood of transfer to the mainland. What is learned in Puerto Rico should benefit the several dozen countries and territories in the Americas that are battling Zika. Cuba is the latest, as signaled Saturday when the CDC added it to the agency's travel-advisory list of places with active Zika transmission. One of the biggest challenges in halting the spread of the virus is figuring out if someone is infected. It’s complicated because 80 percent of people don’t show symptoms. More than a year ago, lab scientist Gilberto Santiago helped to develop a new diagnostic that simultaneously tests for Zika, dengue fever and chikungunya, related viruses that tend to spread in the same regions. Known as the trioplex, it has been used in Puerto Rico since January. On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration gave emergency approval to the three-in-one test, and on Monday, the CDC plans to start shipping hundreds of kits to labs in the United States and other countries. “This will help the public in the most affected countries,” said Jorge Munoz, CDC director of diagnostics and research. Another major hurdle is eliminating mosquitoes outside homes without using insecticides. Some of the lab's past research, led by entomologist Roberto Barrera, suggests one answer. Barrera's team designed a low-tech trap — a 5-gallon black plastic bucket filled with water and hay. On top is a small, round chamber lined with special adhesive paper. Female mosquitoes looking for containers of water to lay their eggs are attracted by the odor of the hay decomposing, Barrera said. They


China’s advice to Cuba: Good luck, but beware of American motives

leaders to proceed carefully. Washington may be trying to “foment” an Arab Spring-style “revolution,” it said. While it's not uncommon for China's state-controlled press to zoom in on real or perceived U.S. hypocrisy, the tone of today's coverage is telling. Clearly, they see a U.S.-Cuba thaw as a threat — and a bit of a betrayal. The ruling Chinese Communist Party has long seen Cuba as a Communist comrade-in-arms. Former President Jiang Zemin visited in 1993 and 2001 and his successor, Hu Jintao, stopped by in 2004. When Xi Jinping visited the island in July 2014, he rounded out his trip with a stop at the barracks where Fidel Castro launched the first armed assault of the 1953 revolution. "China and Cuba, as fellow socialist countries, are closely linked by the same visions, ideals and goals," Xi said at the time. The bonds of Socialist brotherhood found expression that summer in the signing of some 29 bilateral trade agreements, with deals in fields ranging from finance, to agriculture, to energy and — naturally — golf. China is Cuba's second-largest trading partner, after Venezuela, and a key source of credit to the island's embargo-choked economy. But the total volume of trade remains, particularly by Chinese standards. Both sides seem keen to change that. Trade between the two countries rose 57 percent in the first three months of 2015, according the Chinese embassy in Havana. In December of that year, Air China launched a thrice-weekly direct flight to Havana — an effort they hope will see ever-more Chinese tourists strolling along the Malecón. There are already more than a dozen Chinese-linked resort projects in the works, according to Xinhua, representing about $460 million in Chinese investment. Of course, the United States also wants in on the action. Obama was accompanied on Air Force One by the CEO of Starwood Hotels and Resorts. Starwood this weekend became the first U.S. hotel chain in decades to sign a deal in Cuba. That, clearly did not please Beijing. The editorials published Monday urge Cuba to stick with the socialist set rather than side with the capitalist newcomers. "Yes, Obama's visit is commendable for indicating the possibility of communication and collaboration between countries with divergent ideologies," said one of the Xinhua editorials. "But Washington needs to offer substantive and sufficient compensation to the island country to pay for its past wrongdoings." As if to underscore the


The U.S. has ‘worst elections of any long-established democracy,’ report finds

electoral integrity, with Scandinavian and Western European nations topping the lists. The report was particularly critical of nations in sub-Saharan Africa. Even amid those already low standards, Ethiopia stood out, according to the report. Last May, the country's ruling party won all seats in parliament "following harassment of opposition parties, censorship of the media and repression of human rights." Syria, Afghanistan and Bahrain were described as having performed only slightly better in elections between 2012 and 2015. Syrian elections during that time were considered the fifth worst -- only Equatorial Guinea, Djibouti, the Republic of Congo and Burundi ranked lower. A map showing electoral integrity worldwide. Shades of green represent high integrity, whereas red or yellow symbolizes lower integrity. Founded with the goal of improving government accountability, the Electoral Integrity Project provides "new evidence to compare how national contests around the world are meeting international standards of electoral integrity," the American Political Science & Politics Journal recently said. The project is based at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and at the University of Sydney's Department of Government and International Relations but operates independently as a nonprofit scholarly research project. Worldwide, vague campaign financing rules and the quality of media coverage were identified as the most frequent problems. In the United States, "experts expressed concern about the quality of the electoral laws, voter registration, the process of drawing district boundaries, as well as the regulation of campaign finance," the report states. "In the United States, the 2012 Presidential election and the 2014 Congressional elections were ranked worst of any long-established democracy, especially on campaign finance and electoral registration," the report's authors concluded. "It remains to be seen how experts assess the 2016 US presidential contest,"the expert commission assesses. "But the overall country ranking seems unlikely to improve given persistent problems of campaign funding, heated partisan polarization over registration and balloting procedures, claims of fraud in the Iowa GOP primaries, and an early primary campaign season characterized by the politics of personal attacks, dissatisfied voters, and populist appeals." The authors also singled out Britain for a surprisingly low 39th spot in the ranking. They criticize Britain's majoritarian electoral system as preventing the representation of smaller parties and minorities. Read more: Americans don’t like roundabouts, but they should Germany has highways for bikes. You can learn from that, America. Why Norwegian parents are sending their kids to live in fake refugee camps


A migrant worker posted a tearful video about his life in Saudi Arabia. Then things got worse.

accused of the "spread of misinformation," a criminal act in Saudi Arabia. Srivastava said that he was then contacted by Makandar's employer and told to remove the original video and replace it with an apology, which he did. Yes! I'm a human rights activist, believe a human is my family member and humanity is my family. I apologies on behalf...Posted by Kundan Srivastava on Tuesday, March 15, 2016 The company Makandar works for, Al Suroor United Group, has denied the accusations against it, saying that their employees are free to resign if they wish and that the company has been paying Makandar. A representative for the recruitment agency that found Makandar his position also told the BBC that he was being paid on time. Srivastava said that the apology did get Makandar released — but the truck driver was swiftly rearrested the next morning on unknown charges. Makandar's mother has also failed in her attempts to contact her son, the Hindu reported. “The last I spoke to him was five days ago, his friends informed me he is in prison,” she told the Indian newspaper. Srivastava is now appealing for help from India's minister of external affairs, Sushma Swaraj, but said that he has not received a response. Makandar "is still under arrest and no government is helping me," he said in an email, adding that messages he received from Makandar suggest the migrant worker thinks his life is in danger. Saudi Arabia is one of a number of oil-rich Gulf states that have relied on foreign workers for decades. Indian government figures suggest that there were over 2.8 million Indians living in Saudi Arabia last year. Many are attracted by the possibilities of relatively good wages for unskilled labor, but activists say that migrant workers in Saudi Arabia can be exploited under the country's visa sponsorship system, known as kafala. Saudi Arabia implemented a number of reforms to the system last year, and in 2014 the government set up a website to inform migrant workers of their rights. A request for comment on Makandar's case was not immediately returned by the Saudi ministry of culture and information. More on WorldViews Saudi Arabia’s ‘Islamic military alliance’ against terrorism makes no sense What Saudi Arabia is (and isn’t) doing in the fight against the Islamic State More people died taking selfies in India last year than anywhere else in the world


A peek inside the D.C.-area’s most expensive home listings

with a butler’s pantry and breakfast room. The master suite has a sitting room, a fireplace, a walk-in closet and a luxurious bathroom. The grounds include a heated four-car garage with a guest apartment above, lush gardens, a swimming pool and a glass and stone cottage. (HomeVisit) • $4.995 million Agent: Penny Yerks, TTR Sotheby’s International Realty Built in 1985 and recently renovated, this home rests on more than two acres with views of the Potomac River. The home has five bedrooms, 10 baths and three fireplaces. Features include eight-inch wide white birch flooring, French antique chandeliers and sconces, stone floors and counters in the kitchen, a finished basement with a second full kitchen and an upper-level master suite with separate dressing rooms and bathrooms. (HomeVisit) • $4.395 million Agents: Kara Sheehan and Mark McFadden, Washington Fine Properties This penthouse condo at Washington Harbour overlooks the Potomac River, Washington’s monuments, Rosslyn, Georgetown and the Key Bridge from multiple floor-to-ceiling windows and more than 1,000 square feet of outdoor terrace space including an arched pergola for outdoor entertaining. A $3 million renovation on this home by BOWA was finished in 2009. The condo has two bedrooms, four full baths, a powder room and 4,200 square feet of living space. Building amenities include parking for two cars, concierge services, a swimming pool and a gym. (HomeVisit) • $4.3 million Agent: Mark McFadden, Washington Fine Properties This newly built custom-designed residence rests on a nearly one-acre lot that backs to parkland. The home has more than 8,600 finished square feet on three levels with six bedrooms, nine baths and four fireplaces. The main level has a large family room open to the kitchen and a study with Alder wood paneling, while the lower level has a recreation room, a wine cellar, a wet bar, a home theater, a gym and a guest bedroom. (BTW Images) • $4.288 million Agent: Jonathan DeHart, Long & Foster Real Estate Built in 2000, this custom-designed home rests on nearly two acres in the Langley Forest neighborhood. The home has been designed with high tech and green features including a special lighting package, solar panels and video surveillance. The main house has 9,000 finished square feet with an open floor plan, five bedrooms, eight baths, a fireplace and a wraparound porch. The grounds include a three-car garage and separate two-bedroom house for an au pair or nanny, in-laws


Women are still getting Toxic Shock Syndrome, and no one quite knows why

buffet, the fluid in the tampon acting as a surfeit of food available for both native and introduced microbiota. Enter toxic shock syndrome. In May 1980, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 55 cases of TSS, an illness characterized by high fever, a sunburn-like rash, low blood pressure, failures or abnormalities in multiple organ systems, and, at the end of the illness, a dramatic desquamation, or peeling, of areas such as the hands and feet. Cases continued to mount. A follow-up report in June identified continuous usage of tampons during the menstrual period as a risk factor for developing TSS, and further study identified a link between the ultra-absorbent Rely tampon and the outbreak of cases. The public was alerted to the dangers posed by using Rely tampons, and in September, Rely was removed from American store shelves, and the sharp spike in TSS cases that started its climb when the products came to market two years earlier dropped as steeply as it’d risen. That year, there were more than 800 cases of TSS reported to the CDC. More broadly, from 1979-1996, there were 5,296 cases of TSS reported; today, the incidence of TSS hovers at around 1 per 100,000 people annually. 1980 Procter and Gamble TV commercial on the stopping of Rely Tampons But all this begs the question: WTF if TSS? There are, generally speaking, two routes to developing menstrual TSS: Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pyogenes. The former is a fairly ubiquitous Gram-positive bacteria, commonly found in the nose, respiratory tract and skin; it’s not always pathogenic, but the bacteria gets the name “aureus” thanks to the abundance of gold-colored pus that it is wont to cause in the cases when infection does occur. Streptococcus pyogenes, on the other hand (also known as group A strep or GAS) is an uncommon but usually pathogenic member of the skin’s microbial community. In addition to causing TSS, severe, invasive GAS infections can also lead to necrotizing fasciitis, a condition more commonly known as “flesh-eating disease.” Streptococcus pyogenes. (CDC) The role these bacteria can play in the development of TSS begins with simple opportunistic eating. If these bacteria are lucky enough to be blessed with an abundant food source — say, a super-absorbent tampon filled with the nutritive refuse of a womb that has been preparing for baby — they will gladly feast upon it. But the reality