Montgomery County crime report

Roost Dr., Esmond Ct., Esmond Terr., Frederick Rd., Frederick Rd., Frederick Rd., Frederick Rd., Frederick Rd., Gallop Terr., Great Park Cir., Greensboro Dr., Hawkes Rd., Jump Dr., Kingsview Village Ave., Kingsview Rd., Lark Song Dr., Magnolia Park Pl., Middlebrook Rd., Newcut Rd., Olney Laytonsville Rd., Partridge Wood Dr., Quiet Oak Lane, Ridge Rd., St. Johnsbury Lane, Steeple Pl., Stone Hollow Dr., Waring Station Rd., Waters Point Lane, Waters Rd., Wims Rd., Wims Rd., Winged Elm Dr., Wisteria Dr., Wisteria Dr., Wisteria Dr., VEHICLE THEFTS Bent Willow Cir., Summer Oak Ct., VANDALISM Boland Farm Rd., Breezedale Lane, Century Blvd., Circle Gate Dr., Circle Gate Dr., Damascus Rd., Eagles Nest Ct., Frederick Rd., Kilmarnock Way, Locbury Cir., Longford Glen Dr., Middlebrook Rd., Observation Dr., Ridge Rd., Twinflower Cir., District 6 Gaithersburg Station Telephone: 240-773-5700 ASSAULTS Blackwell Rd., Broschart Rd., Christopher Ave., Clopper Rd., Copley Pl., Deer Park Rd. W., Docena Ct., Harmony Hall Rd., King James Way, Lost Knife Cir., Marathon Cir., Mountain Laurel Lane, Park Ave., Racine Ct., Research Blvd., Russell Ave., Russell Ave., Stedwick Rd., Summit Ave. N., Summit Ave. N., Teachers Way, Washingtonian Blvd., Watkins Station Cir., ROBBERIES Frederick Ave. S., Washingtonian Blvd., West Side Dr., WEAPONS Crestwood Dr., Midcounty Hwy., Russell Ave., Russell Ave., THEFTS/BREAK-INS Bell Bluff Rd., Bookham Lane, Canebrake Ct., Centerway Rd., Crabbs Branch Way, Frederick Ave. N., Frederick Ave. S., Gaither Rd., Guildberry Dr., Ivoryton Pl., Potters Mill Ct., Prairie Rose Lane, Pruitt Ct., Summit Ave. N., THEFTS Argosy Dr., Autumn View Dr., Badger Dr., Boysenberry Way, Briardale Terr., Brookridge Ct., Calabar Dr., Cove Ledge Ct., Crestwood Dr., Diamond Ave. E., Elioak Terr., Fence Line Dr., Frederick Ave. N., Frederick Ave. N., Frederick Ave. N., Grand Corner Ave., Kentlands Blvd., Kentlands Blvd., Kestrel Ct., Mayapple Ct., Olde Towne Ave., Olde Towne Ave., Russell Ave., Russell Ave., Russell Ave., Russell Ave., Russell Ave., Russell Ave., Shady Grove Rd., Shady Grove Rd., Shady Grove Rd., Summit Ave. N., Travis View Ct., Washington Grove Lane, Washingtonian Blvd., Washingtonian Blvd., Washingtonian Blvd., White Surf Dr., Wye Mill Ct., VEHICLE THEFTS Beechcraft Ave., Brighton Dr., Carousel Ct., Laytonia Dr., Spiceberry Lane, Stream Valley Way, Thomas Lea Terr., Watkins Station Cir., VANDALISM Airpark Rd., Argosy Dr., Booth St., Brian Ct., Cherry Laurel Lane, Crabbs Branch Way, Cross Country Pl., Ellington Blvd., Forest View Pl., Frederick Ave. N., Frederick Ave. N., Granite Pl., Hadley Farms Dr., Lost Knife Cir., Mills Choice Rd.,


Maryland governor declares state of emergency for opioid crisis

after taking office, he formed a task force headed by Rutherford that has made nearly three dozen recommendations on drug policy. The governor has proposed bills that include measures to limit prescriptions of opioid-based painkillers and to increase prison sentences for dealers. Hogan said he would submit a supplemental budget request to lawmakers for the five-year, $50 million expenditure. He did not say where the money would come from. Although some parent activists and other advocacy groups have applauded Hogan’s efforts, others say he should do more — including devote more resources and attention to long-term residential treatment. “We don’t need education, and we don’t need more law enforcement,” Mike Gimbel, a former Baltimore County drug czar and a recovering heroin addict, said in a statement on Wednesday. “We need treatment on demand. Ten million new dollars is a drop in the bucket.” Carin Miller, president and co-founder of Maryland Heroin Awareness Advocates, saluted Hogan for the high profile he has given the crisis, saying the governor has “been wonderful since he got into office.” But Miller, whose grass-roots organization works to draw attention to opioid abuse and place addicts in treatment, echoed Gimbel’s call for increased focus on detox, medical and counseling programs. “When people reach out to us, we are beside ourselves,” she said. “Nine of 10 times, we are sending them to Florida or other states for treatment.” Hogan said at the announcement Wednesday morning that the state cannot shoulder the entire burden by itself and that federal and local governments, along with the nonprofit sector, have to step up. One idea the governor categorically rejected: a proposal by Del. Dan K. Morhaim (D-Baltimore County) to create “safe” sites for heroin users, where trained professionals could protect them from overdose and unsanitary needles. Morhaim, a physician, calls the idea part of a “harm-reduction strategy.” He proposed legislation to make it happen last year and has introduced a similar bill this year. “I think it’s absolutely insane. . . . Maybe he wants to get a license to sell heroin,” Hogan said, referring to the lawmaker’s role as a consultant to a prospective medical marijuana dispensary and his advocacy of laws that allow medical cannabis. The Maryland General Assembly is examining whether Morhaim’s involvement in the medical marijuana company poses ethical issues. Morhaim’s opioid bill echoes recommendations by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health


Pickup lines: What’s the best etiquette when it comes to your dog’s droppings?

go from there: Try not to let your dog do his business in someone’s yard. If the dog does need to go, don’t let it range high up the lawn. To me, pee is the lesser evil, but try to keep the dog to the curb for this function, too. The communal median/bus stop? Hey, poop happens. Pick it up, of course, but there’s a reason kids need to learn to wash their hands. How do things work in your neighborhood? Bug “Mike in Bethesda” writes in with a question about brown marmorated stink bugs. Remember them? Around 2009, most of us could count on finding a few on our windowsills. There were also reports of thousands of the bugs — an invasive species from China — filling rooms and crawl spaces. “Seems we were overrun a few years ago, but then something happened,” Mike wrote. “Did birds learn to eat them?” University of Maryland entomologist Mike Raupp — keeper of bugoftheweek.com — said there are three likely reasons for the decline in Halyomorpha halys. His personal favorite is that the “indigenous natural enemies have switched over and are now eating stink bugs.” I like that one, too, as it suggests that our animal comrades have joined forces to muster a defense against these alien invaders, sort of “Red Dawn” mixed with “Independence Day.” Mike said such insects as wheel bugs, which enjoy dining on stink bugs, and parasitic wasps, which lay their eggs in stink bug eggs, have taken a toll. (Birds might be eating them too, but Mike hasn’t seen any data on that.) Another reason: Stink bugs can’t survive extreme cold snaps. “If temperatures drop into single digits, we see ever greater levels of mortality,” Mike said. Recent winters haven’t been cold, but we did get polar vortices in 2013 and 2014. Finally, Mike said that when the mother stink bug lays her eggs, she coats them with symbiotic microbes. The first thing stink bug nymphs do when they hatch is suck up the microbes, which are like the beneficial human gut flora we hear so much about these days. High temperatures, like we’ve had the last few summers, can destroy or disable the microbes. When the microbes can’t colonize a stink bug’s gut, the bug can’t process its food correctly. Mike said all three of these factors probably work in concert. But be warned: Since this


A raid in remote Yemen and a SEAL’s death still reverberate for Trump

the raid with his apparent attempts to distance himself from the criticism it has generated. According to current and former officials, the discussions leading up to the Jan. 29 raid, intended as the first step in a major expansion of U.S. counterterrorism operations in Yemen, marked a departure from the more hands-on, deliberative process used by the previous administration. The raid, the product of a more abbreviated White House process, has been followed by confusion within the U.S. government over how operations against al-Qaeda in Yemen will proceed. It has also generated friction with a key counterterrorism ally, smarting from the lack of adequate notice about the raid and, according to local reports, up to 31 Yemeni civilian deaths. The raid, which took place just over a week into the Trump administration, came as U.S. military officials sought to restore their counterterrorism capability in Yemen, severely damaged in the country’s ongoing civil conflict. In 2015, the United States was forced to suspend a long-standing program that partnered Special Operations forces with Yemeni troops on the ground, severely limiting the U.S. government’s ability to track and disrupt a feared militant adversary, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Long seen as a particularly threatening branch of al-Qaeda, the group has used the chaos that followed the 2011 Arab Spring to expand its influence, seizing territory and recruiting supporters from Yemen’s tribal society. It has also demonstrated an ambition to strike the U.S. homeland. Hoping that expanded operations would provide an opportunity to recover information that would increase their understanding of AQAP’s network and goals, military officials last fall developed proposals to resume a more robust counterterrorism program. Colin Kahl, a former official who oversaw Middle East issues at the Pentagon and was national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, said a proposal put forward by the Pentagon in the final weeks of the Obama administration would have expanded military authorities to conduct partnered ground operations and placed additional Special Operations and aviation assets in the region. “This was a big piece of business,” Kahl said. A tearful Carryn Owens, the widow of U.S. Navy SEAL William "Ryan" Owens who died in a raid in Yemen, received a standing ovation from Congress when President Trump acknowledged her husband's bravery. In early January, White House officials examined the military request but decided to table a decision for the new administration, recommending to incoming


Do vigilantes see Trump giving them a wink and a nod?

Muhammad Ali’s son was detained at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport earlier this month. Muhammad Ali Jr. said immigration agents asked him which religion he was and then detained him. You can float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, but you can’t come in if your name is Ali. That’s the way it was looking for Muhammad Ali Jr., son of the late boxing legend, when he returned home to the United States last month from a black-history event in Jamaica. Ali, who is American born and an American citizen, was detained for hours by Customs and Border Protection and interrogated about being a Muslim. But if border officials have gained newfound zealotry under President Trump, they appear to have lost all sense of irony. Also last month, they detained Australian Mem Fox, who writes children’s books about — wait for it — tolerance and acceptance. She told the Guardian that she was treated with “shocking insolence” and “monstrous” and “horrible” behavior by people “gone mad.” Henry Rousso knows about monstrous and horrible: He’s a leading French scholar on the Vichy regime and its collaboration with Nazi Germany. And Rousso, an Egyptian-born Jew, said he was detained for more than 10 hours after arriving in America last month to give a lecture. “The United States is no longer quite the United States,” Rousso wrote in the French Huffington Post. A lot of Americans feel the same way. Civil liberties groups report a broad increase in harassment by border officials. The ACLU says there has been a spike in hours-long detentions, interrogation about religion and the like. Though such practices predate the Trump administration, ACLU staff attorney Hugh Handeyside said border agents are “pushing the envelope” lately because “word has spread” that an aggressive posture is welcome. This apparently isn’t related to Trump’s travel ban, which has been blocked in court, or any other explicit instructions. Rather, it appears that border officers, feeling emboldened by Trump, are taking it on themselves to act more aggressively. And where would they get such an idea? Well, perhaps from the president’s tweet saying “I have instructed Homeland Security to check people coming into our country VERY CAREFULLY.” Or White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s claim that Trump wants to “take the shackles off” deportation officials. A CBP spokeswoman told me that fewer people underwent secondary processing and phone searches last month than


Cellphones at the Iditarod? The race, like Alaska’s climate, is changing.

Bejna said it will be a comfort knowing he might be able to call for help if necessary. (Kyle Hopkins/Photo by Kyle Hopkins) Racers say this is an unenforceable rule. Four-time winner Dallas Seavey, who turned 30 on Saturday, ran the fastest-ever Iditarod in 2016. Other mushers can still imagine defeating him, but Seavey will be the clear favorite again this year. Known for clear thinking at the end of many sleepless days of racing, Seavey led opposition to the cellphone rule. His father and 2016 runner-up, Mitch, says that along with receiving clandestine calls or texts about other front-runners, mushers could gain an unfair advantage simply by phoning loved ones, a spiritual pick-me-up for a musher fighting darkness and doubt in the skin-splitting cold. “The most challenging part is dealing with the sleep deprivation both physically and mentally,” Mitch Seavey said. “Being able to manage those emotions.” ‘ … false sense of security’ Relying on phones could be a mistake for veterans and rookies alike. Tactical errors can lead to dog injuries or deaths, fueling criticism from animal rights advocates. Twins Kristy and Anna Berington, 33, often travel in tandem using hand signals and headlamp flashes to communicate. They said they plan to leave their phones at home. “It’s kind of a false sense of security because it’s not going to work everywhere,” Anna Berington said. “The thing will freeze up. You have to keep it charged and keep it warm.” For Charley Bejna, a 43-year-old Type 1 diabetic who carries an insulin pump in his dog sled, an iPhone security blanket doesn’t sound so bad. “Let’s say that I had severe low blood sugar. I just think it’s a sense of comfort for me,” Bejna said. And then there’s the matter of cell coverage. Satellite phones, though costly, offer reliable communication along the far-flung towns and icy tundra. Cellphones often work only in and near village checkpoints. Only a few dozen miles of trail have reliable cell service, Nordman estimates. “This idea of a cartoon of the musher going up the Yukon with a cellphone in his ear — not going to happen,” Nordman said. “But there are places and communities where you’re taking your breaks, yeah, you could call up.” Still, racers say, rural Alaska only has so many electrical outlets. “It’s really hard to recharge all this crap that they’re letting us take now,” Jonrowe said.


4 ways to put some French class in your wineglass

The 2015 white is available in the District at Cordial Fine Wine & Spirits. Available in Maryland at Mills Fine Wine and Spirits in Annapolis, House of Liquors in Westminster. Available in Virginia at Wine Source in Baltimore; on the list at Lyon Hall in Arlington. Domaine Berthet-Rayne 2013 Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Rhone Valley, France, $38 This is a classic Chateauneuf, with earthy flavors of blackberries, prunes and that appealing southern Rhone herbal character known as garrigue. Organic viticulture helps keep the alcohol in balance. ABV: 14 percent. Distributed by Elite: Available in the District at the Bottle Shop, Cork & Fork, Rodman’s, Paul’s of Chevy Chase, Whole Foods Market (Georgetown, P Street, Tenleytown); on the list at Bistro Bis, Bistro Cacao, Convivial, Et Voila, Tabard Inn. Available in Maryland at Annebeth’s and Wine Cellars of Annapolis; on the list at Corner Bistro and Fork & Wrench in Baltimore, La Ferme in Chevy Chase. Available in Virginia at Arrowine and Cheese and Grand Cru in Arlington, Balducci’s (Alexandria), Foods of All Nations, Market Street Wineshop (Uptown) in Charlottesville, Whole Foods Markets (various locations); on the list at Bistro l’Hermitage in Woodbridge; Brabo, Hunting Creek, Restaurant Eve and Yves Bistro in Alexandria; Goodstone Inn in Middleburg; Idylwood Grill in Falls Church; Le Mediterranean Bistro in Fairfax; Mele Bistro in Arlington; Passionfish in Reston; TenPenh in Tysons Corner. Domaine Besson Givry Premier Cru Le Petit Prétan 2014 Burgundy, France, $34 A premier cru Burgundy is hard to find at this price. This wine shows dark berry fruit — think blackberries, currants and the darkest cherries you’ve ever tasted, then add attitude. Fans of Russian River pinot noir from Sonoma County should enjoy this charmer. ABV: 13 percent. Distributed by Dionysus: Available in the District at Arrowine and Spirits, Rodman’s, Whole Foods Market (Foggy Bottom, P Street). Available in Maryland at Balducci’s and Bradley Food & Beverage in Bethesda, Finewine.com in Gaithersburg. Available in Virginia at Arrowine and Cheese in Arlington, Balducci’s (Alexandria, McLean), Planet Wine & Gourmet in Alexandria, Unwined (Alexandria, Belleview), Whole Foods Market (Alexandria, Tysons); on the list at L’Auberge Chez Francois in Great Falls. Availability information is based on distributor records. Wines might not be in stock at every listed store and might be sold at additional stores. Prices are approximate. Check Winesearcher.com to verify availability, or ask a favorite wine store to order through a distributor. More from Food: Wine


ISIS militants accused of using ‘blistering chemical agent’ in attacks in Mosul

A mother reacts as her daughter Ranmea is treated for possible exposure to chemical weapons agents in a hospital west of Irbil, Iraq. (Azad Lashkari/Reuters) IRBIL, Iraq — The patients, who were being treated in a hospital in the northern Kurdish city of Irbil, displayed symptoms of a chemical attack, including blisters, burns, respiratory problems, irritation to the eyes and vomiting. They described three separate attacks with rockets carrying gas over the past week on neighborhoods in eastern Mosul recaptured by government forces. “There was a hiss of gas, and then we were suffocating,” said Zeina Fawzi, who was sitting in the kitchen with her husband when a rocket exploded outside the door. She and her husband said it dispersed black oily droplets through the air, covering the kitchen walls. She pulled down her dress to reveal a blister on her shoulder. The militants, who still control much of the western side of the city, have regularly bombarded the eastern side with mortars and rockets, causing misery for civilians living there. More than 1 million civilians were still in the city when the offensive to retake it began nearly five months ago. Iraqi security forces have attempted to keep people in their homes, but the number of those fleeing has escalated in recent days as those forces make inroads into the packed western neighborhoods. Twelve people, including women and children, are being treated for possible exposure to chemical weapons agents in Mosul following a possible chemical attack by ISIS. About 10,000 people are fleeing each day, according to Jassim Mohammed al-Jaff, Iraq’s minister for migration and displacement. A total of 43,806 people have fled western Mosul since Feb. 25, including 15,400 people in the past two days, the United Nations said. More than 200,000 people have been forced from their homes since the operation began. The use of a “blistering chemical agent” in a densely populated city is “completely unacceptable” and constitutes a war crime, said Lise Grande, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq. She said tests are being conducted to determine the nature of the agent. Some of the victims were told that it was probably mustard gas, which was used on the battlefield for the first time during World War I. Among the most severely injured were a mother and her five children in an attack Thursday on Mosul’s northeastern Giraj al-Shimal district. The children were between 2


Breaking: Bei Bei the panda cub is weaning

Giant panda Mei Xiang and her cub Bei Bei at the Smithsonian National Zoo in August 2016. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post) Bei Bei the giant panda cub is going through all the childhood angst that comes with weaning from one’s mother, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo reports. The zoo said Saturday that Washington’s youngest panda is going through the traditional panda life stages and officially weaning from his mother, Mei Xiang. Pandas are solitary animals, and cubs typically separate from their mothers at about 18 months. Bei Bei was born on Aug. 22, 2015. The zoo said that while this is a natural process, there “have been some stressful moments.” “Bei Bei is a resilient bear who is learning to be independent, and the animal care team is supporting his efforts,” the zoo posted in a “Giant Panda Bulletin.” The timeline of Bei Bei’s weaning is similar to that of Bao Bao, the zoo’s previous cub. China owns and leases all giant pandas in U.S. zoos — including Bei Bei — and by agreement, any cubs born in the United States are sent to China when they are 4 years old.


Animal Watch: Kittens in storage

HYATTSVILLE, Among cases received by the Prince George’s County Animal Management Division.


Pot laws under scrutiny in Maryland General Assembly

bills, expressed concern that authorizing additional marijuana businesses would prompt more lawsuits from companies that, as a result of the change, would face increased competition. He repeatedly said his top priority was patient access. “I want to see patients have this medication yesterday, not in a year, not in three years,” Zirkin said. “They’ve waited long enough.” Several parents of children with medical disorders and veterans with amputated limbs also pleaded with lawmakers to not further delay the program. They included Carey Tilghman of Boonsboro, whose 6-year-old daughter had a stroke and 1½-year-old has intractable epilepsy. “I’m not trying to get my kid high as a kite. I’m trying to relieve her symptoms. Don’t delay. I can’t wait anymore,” Tilghman told lawmakers as she held her sleeping toddler. “We are not going to do anything to delay any part of this program; that I can assure you,” Zirkin told her. While cannabis commissioners have not objected to lawmakers expanding the number of licenses, they are fighting bills that would restart the licensing process or dissolve and revise their agency. “We’re on the 10-yard line, first and goal, and the sideline is telling us to punt the ball and start all over. That’s crazy,” Broccolino said. While the fights over the medical marijuana program continue, committees in the House will consider bills to legalize recreational marijuana, while a Senate panel is examining a proposal to tax it like alcohol. Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (D-Montgomery), one of the sponsors of the legislation, says he does not expect his bills to pass this session because of uncertainty over how federal marijuana policy may change under President Trump (R). White House press secretary Sean Spicer said last month that states should expect “greater enforcement” of marijuana laws. The Justice Department has so far not interfered with legal recreational sales permitted in several states, but that may change under Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Madaleno and other lawmakers behind the legalization push say they want to continue debating how marijuana sales would work in Maryland in preparation for future legislative sessions. Sen. Brian J. Feldman (D-Montgomery) is offering an alternative measure to refer the matter to voters, as lawmakers did with same-sex marriage and casinos. Some have speculated that adding marijuana legalization to the 2018 ballot could help turn out young and other Democratic-leaning voters when popular Republican Gov. Larry Hogan is up for reelection.


Lovely, well-meant fiction of seven new planets, illustrated

This artist’s conception shows a size comparison of the planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system. Their surfaces are portrayed with an artist’s impression of their potential features, including water, ice, and atmospheres. But scientists don’t know for sure what they look like. (Robert Hurt and Tim Pyle /European Southern Observatory/NASA via Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) At 13, I wanted to be an astronomer. I never got further than reading science fiction, but I dreamed of the stars and was a finalist in the Journalist in Space competition until it was discontinued after the 1986 Challenger disaster. So I greeted with adolescent excitement last month’s announcement of seven planets circling the dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, just 39 light years away. They were all roughly Earth’s size. Three might be habitable. The pictures were astonishing — orbs of blue, green and orange, with clouds and oceans. Then I read the stories and became suspicious. As Washington Post reporter Sarah Kaplan wisely noted, scientists know those planets only as “tiny dips in light” as they pass across the face of their sun. “We won’t be able to directly image the solar system with current technology,” she reported. All we have are their radii, masses, orbital periods and distances to the comparatively cool little star. How can we know what they look like? We journalists crave attention. Our livelihoods these days depend on how many people click on our stories. Nothing grabs readers better than compelling pictures. The known data about the new planets are dull. But digital images of new worlds in lovely colors are irresistible, even if they are just guesses. Newspapers, including this one, described the pictures in captions as “an artist’s conception,” “ a rendering” or “ an illustration.” Reporters such as Kaplan don’t write the captions. Editors do. I don’t think the captions give sufficient warning to readers that these are works of imagination. Most news consumers don’t bother to seek the precise definitions of those vague Latinate nouns. To many people, particularly children, the pictures look real. Who knew our telescopes could see so far? We need better captions, something like: “These pictures are imagined. Scientists don’t yet know the planets’ colors and surface features.” Thankfully, it’s not as bad as school textbook illustrations. In her book “Tyranny of the Textbook,” veteran editor Beverlee Jobrack said, “Content may be sacrificed to accommodate design concerns or writers are forced into


Air pollution around the world takes a staggering toll

staggering 7.6 percent of all deaths. “Studies of long-term exposure to air pollution demonstrate that people living in more polluted locations die prematurely, compared with those living in areas with lower levels of pollution,” the report explained. The other side of the coin is that “when air quality improves, so does population health.” Fine particulates from fuel burning, among other things, penetrate the lungs and enter the bloodstream, encouraging heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, chronic lung disease and respiratory infections. The researchers concluded that exposure to particulate pollution was the fifth deadliest health risk of all 79 they studied, ranking behind high blood pressure, smoking and high blood sugar, and about matching high cholesterol — conditions many people upend their lives in order to mitigate. Air pollution exposure was deadlier than having high body mass index or alcohol use. No wonder the EPA has cited reductions in particulate matter to justify many Obama-era clean air regulations. Decades of environmental rules have resulted in relatively low — though not necessarily comfortable — particulate pollution levels in the United States and other developed nations. American air could still be cleaner; the researchers found that the nation’s levels of ozone — which also contributes to respiratory disease — were about the same as Nigeria’s and higher than China’s. Yet Americans do not know how good they have it. Fully 92 percent of the world’s population lives in areas where fine-particulate levels exceed World Health Organization guidelines. The misery is concentrated: Half of air pollution’s death toll was in China and India alone. Some particulate pollution is natural. But humans burning things — such as coal — is also a principle driver. Some of the pollution, such as that from archaic cooking and heating stoves, might abate with economic development. Yet if that very development relies on ramping up coal burning, people’s health will still be threatened. Beyond appreciation for effective environmental enforcement, there are at least two lessons. First, major developing nations such as China and India must find a way to grow their economies without substantially degrading their air quality. Second, if world governments continue to press major developing nations on cross-border pollution matters, they will be aided by popular internal demand for cleaner air. Read more here: Letters to the Editor: Environmental protection shouldn’t be a partisan issue The Post’s View: If Trump wants to gut climate regulations, he’d better have


The PEN/Faulkner finalists: A sign of new diversity in books?

●“What Belongs to You,” by Garth Greenwell, a gay American who worked in Bulgaria. ●“Behold the Dreamers,” by Imbolo Mbue, a native of Cameroon who lives in New York. ●“Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist,” by Sunil Yapa, the son of a Sri Lankan father and a Montana mother. These writers are the United States, and they tell this country’s experience with a dazzling range of voices and styles. In some cases, their books sound as relevant as this morning’s newspaper. Mbue describes an African immigrant struggling to establish legal residence for his family in New York. Yapa’s explosive novel re-creates the protest of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999. Dinh’s and Greenwell’s novels follow Americans abroad. “After Disasters” is based on relief efforts in India after an earthquake. “What Belongs to You” tells the haunting story of an American teacher in Bulgaria who finds himself entangled with a homeless prostitute. In Erdrich’s “LaRose,” a man accidentally kills his neighbor’s son, a tragedy that is addressed with fairness and compassion according to tribal custom. In addition to the diversity of these finalists, their relative youth speaks to the new vibrancy of American fiction. All the writers except Erdrich are debut novelists. The PEN/Faulkner Award, which bills itself as “America’s largest peer-juried prize for fiction,” is administered by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation in Washington. The winner, who is to be announced April 4, will receive $15,000. The other four finalists will receive $5,000 apiece. This year’s judges are Chris Abani, Chantel Acevedo and Sigrid Nunez. They selected the five finalists from almost 500 works of fiction by American authors published in the United States during 2016. The awards ceremony May 6 at the Folger Shakespeare Library will be the year’s most elegant and enjoyable literary event. With the winner already known, no one has to endure the suspense of the horse race or the rictus grins of disappointment. Instead, all five authors will be in attendance to read from their work in a happy celebration of great books. A buffet dinner follows. Tickets can be purchased for $100 by calling the Folger box office at 202-544-7077 or online at folger.edu/penfaulkner. Ron Charles Read The Post’s reviews ‘LaRose,’ by Louise Erdrich ‘What Belongs to You,’ by Garth Greenwell ‘Behold the Dreamers,’ by Imbolo Mbue ‘Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist,’ by Sunil Yapa


Amid the beautiful, strange treasures of the U.S. Botanic Garden, a young painter blossoms

conservatory. The coffee plant, with its bean seeds, by Mara Menahan for the U.S. Botanic Garden. (U.S. Botanic Garden) If you want an example, she said, of the gap between a fruit and its blossom, you need look no further than the ubiquitous banana. Menahan leads me to the conservatory’s displays of wild banana plants to explain their weird floral architecture. From a single, pendent stalk, pollinated female flowers are forming the familiar bunches of bananas, but they’re small and green. At the end of the stalk, a purple, grenade-shaped inflorescence houses hidden male flowers. At night, it lifts one of its plates to reveal clusters of pollen-bearing flowers. This is for the benefit of a passing bat, which the banana uses as a pollinator. There are no bats in the conservatory, and commercial bananas are propagated by cloning, not seed production, but the point is clear — the banana is among plant species that have developed astonishingly intricate ways of reproducing and luring pollinators. Menahan moves to a more central display bed in the Garden Court to look at another bizarre economic plant doing its thing. The conservatory’s somewhat celebrated cacao tree is festooned with the large, golden-yellow seedpods containing the beans that give us chocolate. The oddest aspect of its reproductive life is that the blossoms emerge directly from the bark of the trunk, much like the flowers of the common redbud tree. So the cacao’s football-shaped seedpods ripen right on the trunk as well. She is struck by how large a seedpod grows from so small a blossom. She used a microscope to discern its parts before rendering it magnified several times. “I think it’s amazing that every chocolate bar begins with a flower, not just any flower but a tiny flower the size of my pinkie fingernail,” she said. Her finished plate also shows the cross section of the ripened fruit, the goopy white covering over the beans and the naked seed, which, as it turns out, is purple. With only the odd accidental pollinator in the conservatory, the flowers are hand-pollinated by the Botanic Garden’s arborist, and the journey from bloom to fruit takes several months. This progression of life-cycle stages, in turn, kept her juggling her subjects. “Often, I would have to stop what I’m doing to sketch something that’s ephemeral,” she said. That might be the swelling of a young pomegranate fruit or


Even in middle age, your best running days may still be ahead of you

decrease. This means our ability to maintain high-intensity exercise also begins to diminish. As we age, we tend to reduce the volume and intensity of training because of these factors. Or perhaps we never trained hard at all because it was too uncomfortable. This new study offers hope for recreational runners who are running to finish instead of racing for time. Continuing the full-tank analogy, we are each given one tank of gas. That tank empties slowly in our 20s and 30s, but once we hit 35, it starts emptying at a faster rate. The goal is to slow that emptying. Elite runners, because of the intensity and duration of their training, will probably empty their tank faster. But recreational runners don’t empty their tank as quickly. Gerald Zavorsky, associate professor in the Department of Respiratory Therapy at Georgia State University and one of the authors of the study, says that these runners have more gas because they’ve never pushed themselves like elite runners. “The average runners might push themselves much later in life even though their physical peak has passed,” says Zavorsky. “Because they never pushed themselves when they were younger, they can hold themselves longer.” James Smoliga, associate professor of physiology in the Department of Physical Therapy at High Point University and another co-author of the study, is similarly optimistic about the recreational runner. The median runner in the 25-to-34-year-old group in their study ran about a four-hour marathon. Smoliga says that “the median runner, if healthy, is physiologically capable of running a lot faster. Many people in this group could likely run three hours or less, but they don’t, simply due to lack of training.” What it comes down to is that many recreational runners don’t train as intensely as they should. The reason? Intense training is hard. There’s an element of suffering, which is why Smoliga says that “it’s easier to maintain suboptimal performance year after year than it is to maintain peak performance.” But a 35-year-old who starts intense training tomorrow will perform better than ever for the next 10 years because she’s never pushed her physiological limits. For example, she might be genetically capable of running a 3:30 marathon, but her fitness level might allow her only to run a 5:00. In 10 years, while her genetic capability may diminish to allow her to run only a 4:00, increased training may get her close


Montgomery County Animal Watch

Montgomery county These cases were received by the Montgomery County Animal Services Division. For information, call 240-773-5900. This number provides recorded information on topics such as the new animal services and adoption center’s hours and location in Derwood, adoption and licensing procedures, and lost-and-found and field services. GAITHERSBURG False report: GERMANTOWN Dog calms down: Cats at no-kill shelter Cats and kittens will be available for adoption through the Animal Welfare League of Montgomery County’s no-kill shelter at the following location. For information, call 301-740-2511 or visit awlmc.org.Animal Welfare League of Montgomery County no-kill shelter, 12 Park Ave., Gaithersburg. Hours: 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, noon to 3 p.m. Saturday, 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday. Humane Society adoptions The Montgomery County Humane Society’s private rescue shelter has dogs, puppies, cats and kittens available for adoption. Call 240-252-2555 or visit mchumane.org.MCHS Adoptions and Education Center, 601 S. Stonestreet Ave., Rockville. Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, except holidays. Reduced FEES FOR CATS Cats and kittens will be available for adoption at the next open house of Friends of Montgomery County Animals at the following location. Call 301-977-4833 or visit fmca.org or facebook.com/fmcainfo.PetSmart at Milestone Center, 20924 Frederick Rd., Germantown. Hours: 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday. — Compiled by Ria Manglapus


Montgomery County crime report

Cabana Dr., Century Blvd., Cider Barrel Dr., Clarksburg Rd., Clarksburg Rd., Clarksburg Rd., Country Ridge Dr., Crystal Rock Dr., Dunstable Cir., Eagles Roost Dr., Esmond Ct., Foreman Blvd., Frederick Rd., Frederick Rd., Frederick Rd., Frederick Rd., Frederick Rd., Frederick Rd., Frederick Rd., Gallop Terr., Gateway Center Dr., Great Park Cir., Highstream Dr., Jump Dr., Kingsview Village Ave., Kingsview Rd., Lark Song Dr., Magnolia Park Pl., Middlebrook Rd., Neelsville Church Rd., Newcut Rd., Observation Ct., Olney Laytonsville Rd., Olney Laytonsville Rd., Partridge Wood Dr., Quiet Oak Lane, Ridge Rd., St. Johnsbury Lane, Steeple Pl., Stone Hollow Dr., Waring Station Rd., Waters Point Lane, Waters Rd., Weybridge Lane, Wims Rd., Wims Rd., Winged Elm Dr., Wisteria Dr., Wisteria Dr., Wisteria Dr., Wright Rd., VEHICLE THEFTS Bent Willow Cir., Cypress Spring Rd., Peridot Lane, VANDALISM Boland Farm Rd., Breezedale Lane, Century Blvd., Circle Gate Dr., Circle Gate Dr., Damascus Rd., Eagles Nest Ct., Endora Cir., Frederick Rd., Kilmarnock Way, Larentia Dr., Locbury Cir., Longford Glen Dr., Middlebrook Rd., Ridge Rd., Schoolfield Ct., Twinflower Cir., District 6 Gaithersburg Station Telephone: 240-773-5700 ASSAULTS Blackwell Rd., Broschart Rd., Christopher Ave., Clopper Rd., Copley Pl., Deer Park Rd. W., Docena Ct., Girard St., Harmony Hall Rd., King James Way, Lost Knife Cir., Marathon Cir., Mills Choice Rd., Montgomery Village Ave., Mountain Laurel Lane, Park Ave., Racine Ct., Research Blvd., Russell Ave., Russell Ave., Russell Ave., Stedwick Rd., Summit Ave. N., Summit Ave. N., Teachers Way, Washingtonian Blvd., Watkins Station Cir., ROBBERIES Frederick Ave. N., Frederick Ave. S., Horizon Run Rd., Washingtonian Blvd., West Side Dr., WEAPONS Crestwood Dr., Midcounty Hwy., Russell Ave., Russell Ave., THEFTS/BREAK-INS Bell Bluff Rd., Bookham Lane, Canebrake Ct., Centerway Rd., Frederick Ave. N., Frederick Ave. S., Gaither Rd., Guildberry Dr., Ivoryton Pl., Potters Mill Ct., Prairie Rose Lane, Pruitt Ct., Summit Ave. N., West Side Dr., THEFTS Argosy Dr., Autumn View Dr., Badger Dr., Bell Bluff Ct., Bell Bluff Ct., Boysenberry Way, Briardale Terr., Brighton Lane, Brighton Lane, Brookridge Ct., Cove Ledge Ct., Crestwood Dr., Dalamar St., Diamond Ave. E., Elioak Terr., Fence Line Dr., Fields Rd., Frederick Ave. N., Frederick Ave. N., Gold Kettle Dr., Grand Corner Ave., Kentlands Blvd., Kentlands Blvd., Kestrel Ct., Mayapple Ct., McCausland Pl., Olde Towne Ave., Quince Orchard Rd., Russell Ave., Russell Ave., Russell Ave., Russell Ave., Russell Ave., Shady Grove Rd., Shady Grove Rd., Shady Grove Rd., Summit Ave. N., Travis View Ct., Warfield Rd., Washingtonian


‘The Impossible Fortress,’ by Jason Rekulak

As the publisher of Quirk Books, Jason Rekulak has brought the reading public a fan favorite: “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,” by Ransom Riggs. Riggs’s book — along with all its sequels — has soared in popularity through the combination of whimsy and stagy nostalgia that fuels so much of the young-adult lit craze. And now Rekulak has taken off his publisher’s hat and written a novel of his own, “The Impossible Fortress.” Although it’s being marketed as adult fiction, it’s full of clueless boys, consequence-free adventures and generous helpings of adolescent humor, all served up with a kind smile. (Simon & Schuster) “The Impossible Fortress” has a questing narrative at its heart. The year is 1987, and in the small town of Wetbridge, N.J., 14-year-old Billy Marvin’s life is pretty good. His doting mother works a late shift at the grocery store, leaving him free to invite his friends Alf and Clark over to his house for Pop-Tarts, marathon sessions of Monopoly and endless hours of TV. The three are high school misfits, but their world is fairly satisfying . . . until the new issue of Playboy arrives at Zelinsky’s Typewriters and Office Supplies. On the cover of that new Playboy is America’s sweetheart: “‘Wheel of Fortune’ was one of the most popular shows on television, and hostess Vanna White was the pride of our nation, a small-town girl from Myrtle Beach who rocketed to fame and fortune by flipping letters in word puzzles.” Author Jason Rekulak. (Courtney Apple) The boys aren’t old enough to buy the magazine, and Mr. Zelinsky is a fierce upholder of the rules, and so begins “Operation Vanna,” as Billy, Alf and Clark devise one plan after another to get their hands on their new Holy Grail. They pay a smooth-talking adult to buy three issues for them (he pockets their cash); they try to bluff their way past Mr. Zelinsky’s vigilance (“This isn’t a toy store,” he growls); and they let high school bad-boy Tyler Bell talk them into a roof-hopping plan to break into the shop by night. As Alf says, “Zelinsky finds some extra money in his cash register. We bring home Vanna White. It’s win-win.” Of course, all these plans quickly go wrong, but you don’t read this novel for its plot twists. Rather, you relish the book’s countless callbacks to the 1980s: Every TV show, Hollywood star,


Plainclothes policing in Baltimore is over, commissioner says

Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said Wednesday that he is effectively ending plainclothes policing in Baltimore in the wake of the federal indictments of seven officers last week. Known on the streets as “knockers” or “jump out boys,” the units became synonymous with policing in Baltimore. They were the officers most likely to be seen wearing tactical vests, jeans and backward hats, prowling the city for guns and drugs. But Davis said they have also been the officers most likely to be the subject of complaints, and he said he became increasingly concerned that their style “accelerated a ‘cutting corners’ mind-set.” On Tuesday night, he ordered 46 officers from the agency’s centralized intelligence unit back into uniformed patrol. An additional 100 officers in “operations” squads in districts were also ordered into uniform last week. “I’m not a big fan of these modified uniforms, these tactical vests, the T-shirts, the jeans, the baseball caps,” Davis told the Baltimore Sun on Wednesday morning. “I don’t think it represents our profession the way it should, and I’m doing away with it.” The moves come a week after seven members of the agency’s Gun Trace Task Force were indicted on federal racketeering charges, accused of robbing and extorting citizens, filing false police reports and receiving fraudulent overtime pay. One of the seven officers was also charged with being part of a drug conspiracy. A federal drug investigation in 2015 that authorities say ensnared the officer charged in the drug case expanded to other officers and involved wiretaps and recording devices placed in police cars, which federal prosecutors say picked up the officers discussing an array of crimes. Davis said in an interview that there are still officers who will do plainclothes work, such as the officers assigned to federal task forces. He is also not doing away with undercover units, which are distinct from plainclothes officers. The reassigned officers will also be asked to do the same type of proactive police work, except in uniform and marked cars, Davis says. “There’s nothing that these guys do in plainclothes that they can’t do in uniform,” Davis said. “You can still be in uniform and a marked car and get guns and get bad guys.” Such plainclothes squads have existed in a variety of capacities and names over the years. During the administration of former Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld, when in 2011 Baltimore saw fewer than


Notable deaths in the Washington area

and served on a Navy transport vessel during the Vietnam War. He spoke at Alcoholics Anonymous sessions, and was formerly an officer with the U.S. Capitol Police and a food broker who created produce displays at grocery stores. Beth Schucker, NIH behavioral scientist Beth Schucker, 79, a behavioral scientist who spent 27 years at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute doing heart disease-prevention research before retiring in the early 2000s, died Feb. 8 at a hospice center in Easton, Md. The cause was breast cancer, said a daughter, Rachel Dokholyan. Mrs. Schucker was born Beth Holmes in Camp Dix, N.J., and grew up in Hempstead, N.Y. She was part of the management team of the landmark 1984 NIH study that showed the first conclusive evidence that lowering blood cholesterol can prevent heart attacks. Over the years, she hosted exchange students. She moved to Easton from McLean, Va., in 1994 and contributed freelance articles about food, history, music and art to many regional publications. Gloria Parloff,journal editor Gloria Parloff, 94, who for 24 years was the managing editor of Psychiatry, the scholarly journal of the Washington School of Psychiatry, died Jan. 20 at a hospice community in Saddle River, N.J. The cause was cancer, said a son, Roger Parloff. Mrs. Parloff, a former resident of Bethesda, Md., was born Gloria Harnick in Chicago. She was a cartographer for the CIA and other federal agencies before joining Psychiatry as associate editor in 1959. She was named managing editor in 1967. Her husband, Morris B. Parloff, was an authority on psychotherapy who spent 30 years at the National Institute of Mental Health; a brother, Sheldon Harnick, wrote the lyrics to “Fiddler on the Roof” and other Broadway musicals. Joseph Connors, union board chairman Joseph Connors, 92, who served as a board chairman of the United Mine Workers of America, died Jan. 19 at a medical center in Annapolis, Md. The cause was a stroke, said a daughter, Patricia Carpenter. Mr. Connors, a native of the Bronx, settled in the Washington area in 1947 and joined the union as a health and retirement funds division staff lawyer. He left the union in 1963 and then helped start two now-defunct companies that focused on employee benefits administration. He was a past board president of the University Club of Washington, and his memberships included the International Association of Approved Basketball Officials. — From staff reports


Don’t let Big Marijuana prioritize profits over public safety

Strains of marijuana are displayed in a marijuana shop in Salem, Ore. (Andrew Selsky/Associated Press) Patrick Kennedy is a former U.S. representative from Rhode Island and an honorary adviser of Smart Approaches to Marijuana. Kevin Sabet is a former White House drug policy adviser and president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana. Last month, White House press secretary Sean Spicer sent shock waves through the nascent — but growing — marijuana industry when he indicated that the Trump administration intends to pursue “greater enforcement” regarding non-medical marijuana. The comments drew quick rebuke from elected officials in several states that have begun experimenting with pot legalization. Certainly, we shouldn’t lock people up for marijuana use or low-level offenses, or revert to a “Reefer Madness”-style war on drugs. But we should also recognize legalization for what it is: the large-scale commercialization and marketing of an addictive — and therefore highly profitable — substance. Many marijuana advocates have one goal in mind: to get rich. What we need, therefore, is a federal enforcement strategy that not only promotes human rights and social justice, but also actively targets and deters the special interests driving Big Marijuana. Simply put, the current fragmented patchwork of laws governing marijuana in states is unsustainable. Despite the oft-repeated refrain that marijuana enforcement is an issue of “states’ rights,” the consequences of legalization are not confined by geographic borders. Since Colorado legalized, marijuana has streamed into neighboring states and emboldened drug trafficking organizations there. In fact, in Nebraska and Oklahoma, the inflow of marijuana trafficking has been so dramatic that the states sued Colorado. Interstate drug tourism is thriving, with companies in states with legal pot advertising across state lines and online. The courts also agree that marijuana is not a “states’ rights” question. In 2005, the Supreme Court examined this issue in Gonzales v. Raich, where the federal government had enforced the law concerning marijuana plants in someone’s yard. The highest court ruled 6 to 3 that federal law supersedes state law when it comes to enforcing drug statutes — even in states where marijuana is legal (in this case for medicinal purposes) — because marijuana sales affect interstate commerce. If that is true with pot plants in someone’s yard, then surely large, industrialized pot growers catering to out-of-state tourists also affect interstate commerce. Issues of federalism aside, federal enforcement would serve as a needed check against an exploding for-profit


D.C. community calendar, March 9-16, 2017

Thursday, March 9 Gentle yoga classes Garden tour with parents and kids in snugglers Washington Cathedral behind the scenes We the people: Cooking demonstration: Irish cuisine, staples: Income Tax Assistance Income Tax Assistance Afterschool Lounge Lego Club Homework Help After-School workshops with Asian American LEAD Words, Beats and Life Academy Stone-carving demonstration with Nizette Brennan Art Signs: Gallery talks in American Sign Language Luce unplugged: The Galaxy Electric Neuroscience discussions Women’s History Month heroines “Everyone” yoga “Shear Madness” Yoga at Northwest One NSO concert: “Salute to Slava” Friday, March 10 Income Tax Assistance Children’s safety seat and belt inspections Preschool story time Preschool Story Time Move, Dance, Create Yoga in the Galleries Income tax assistance “Plants With an Attitude” Classical organ recital Global Kids Explore the exhibition For the Love of Gene Davis: The Legacy of Color Field Painting Saturday, March 11 USBG Production Facility open house Used Library book sale Income Tax Assistance Practice with love yoga gatherings Citizenship classes Saturday Morning Yoga Museum edit-a-thon Family story time 2nd Saturday STEM Storytime Yoga at Your Library Lego Club Portrait Story Days: Marian Anderson Chess for all ages “Parade” Sunday, March 12 Palisades farmers market Flying in the Great Hall America InSight Family Funday Sunday Fei Fei Dong, classical Chinese pianist Shaw Knitting and Crochet Circle Classical music concert Monday, March 13 Children’s safety seat and belt inspections Yoga Mondays Medicinal and poisonous plants Income tax assistance Reader’s Theatre Mandala Mondays Wii game night Yoga in Takoma Park PEN/Faulkner fiction Tuesday, March 14 Children’s safety seat and belt inspections Pop of the Tots Chair yoga classes Classical music concert The Carya Ensemble and pianist Sonya Sutton perform Debussy’s rarely performed Cantata L’Enfant Prodigue. 12:10-1 p.m. Church of the Epiphany, 1317 G St. NW. 202-347-2635, Ext. 20. $10. Tuesday yoga Sketching: Draw and Discover “Ice Edge: Wild Canada” Lego playtime and engineering challenge “Creative Capital: DC Art Then and Now Pajama story time “Water and Power: A California Heist” Yoga classes ESL English conversation club Zumba For teens and adults who want routines that are aerobic with fitness interval training within a combination of fast and slow rhythms that tone and sculpt the body. Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Through March 28. Bellevue/Lockridge Library, 115 Atlantic St. SW. 202-243-1185. Free. Washington Jewish Literary Festival Opening Night Noa Baum speaks about her memoir “A Land Twice Promised: An Israeli Woman’s Quest for Peace,”


‘Madame President’: The rise of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

their families campaigned hard for Sirleaf and did not rely only on her résumé to persuade others to support her. Some young men were too macho to vote for a woman. Sirleaf’s supporters went to bars and called out: “You want beer? Just gimme your voter ID card, and I will buy you beer.” Duped into handing over their voter cards for free beer, the men were unable to vote against Sirleaf. After Sirleaf won the 2005 election, defeating a soccer star named George Weah, she used her status and connections to deal with a $4.7 billion foreign debt load. She managed the government as a technocrat and with the help of her international friends got Liberia’s debt forgiven. Cooper expertly dissects the tangled financial situation, pointing out that its resolution was vital to the country’s very existence. Sirleaf’s second campaign was a bit easier, though she faced charges of nepotism for appointing relatives to powerful government jobs. In 2011, she was one of a trio of women who won a Nobel Peace Prize; four days later she was reelected president. Cooper, a New York Times Pentagon correspondent who was born in Liberia and won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the Ebola crisis there, writes vividly and with authority. In the book’s closing chapters she captures the poignant — and sometimes difficult to read — tales of mothers dying because they had cared for their sick children, and adult children contracting Ebola as they cared for their mothers. Cooper has an understandable admiration for her subject, who, now in the 12th year of her presidency, has overseen a time of peace. She has a special appreciation for Liberian culture (“anyone with a single taste bud knows [jollof rice] is best made by a Liberian cook who knows what she’s doing”) and a bone-deep understanding of the importance of the woman known as “Madame President” or “Ma Ellen.” Cooper immigrated to America at age 13, as a refugee, after the 1980 coup that caused the small country to spiral out of control. The opportunity to chronicle Sirleaf’s presidency returned Cooper to her birthplace, and her book is impressive for both its detail and the insight it provides into a historic figure. Throughout, she offers an unflinching look at the reserved Sirleaf’s personal life and presidency, which comes to an end this year, while also telling of Liberia’s pain and


Purple Line construction faces more delays as deadline approaches to clear trees

aren’t considered to be part of “forested” bird habitat. Construction also would begin in nonforested areas along the alignment. A ruling from U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon is expected any day, but the decision is expected to be appealed either way. That makes it highly unlikely, if not impossible, for tree-cutting to be completed in the next three weeks. The Purple Line will run single-vehicle trains mostly aboveground between Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. State officials say it will improve east-west transit in the Washington suburbs and spur investment around stations in older communities. The MTA agreed to the seasonal tree-cutting ban in 2014 as part of the mitigation measures required to secure federal environmental approval and $900 million in federal construction grants. The bird protections, which were suggested by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, also cover a colony of great blue herons in the Coquelin Run stream valley, about a quarter-mile from the trail in Chevy Chase. Purple Line opponents involved in the lawsuit have seized on the nesting restrictions as an example of the environmental damage they say the project will cause. The lawsuit also argues that construction will harm the Hay’s spring amphipod, a tiny shrimplike creature listed as a federally protected endangered species. Albert Manville, a former senior wildlife biologist for the federal Division of Migratory Bird Management and a consultant for the plaintiffs in the Purple Line lawsuit, said hundreds of species of migratory birds nest along the trail. Although the seasonal ban protects them during spring and summer, he said, the trail will lose critical bird and other wildlife habitat once the trees are gone. That leads to declines in species, such as owls that eat rats and birds that remove insects from plants. “When we fragment habitat and fragment species, we weaken ecosystems,” Manville said. “Whether you like birds or not, they play an integral role in maintaining sound, healthy systems.” John M. Fitzgerald, a plaintiff and lawyer on the lawsuit, said several Montgomery residents began hearing the hoots of the barred owl in February. The owl gained notoriety in 2015, when runners on the Capital Crescent Trail reported being attacked by a large bird divebombing their heads. “We’re not just trying to stop the Purple Line,” said Fitzgerald, a Chevy Chase resident. “We’re trying to steward these natural resources and conserve the environment for people in the national capital area.”


NFL abuse of painkillers and other drugs described in court filings

declined to comment. The Colts did not respond to a request for comment. The former players also allege in the complaint that they weren’t always sure what medicines they were taking and weren’t advised of the risks, because team doctors and trainers failed to inform them and keep proper records. A January 2008 memo from the Vikings’ head trainer documented how sloppy the record-keeping could be. “Here is week 17’s fiasco,” he wrote, according to the sealed documents, before detailing how the team’s logs didn’t match the inventory. And a May 2010 email cited in the court filing showed that the Falcons’ logs didn’t match the league’s audit report for at least four medications. The team was also on the DEA’s “radar” for the large amounts of controlled substances it had ordered, according to court records. Lining up for the ‘T Train’ One drug in particular is highlighted throughout the lawsuit as a staple for NFL teams. Toradol is available only with a prescription. Though not addictive, it is powerful enough that many countries only administer it in hospitals and only after surgery. The lawsuit claims teams would freely offer it each Sunday to numb existing injuries but also in anticipation of the inevitable aches and pains accrued each Sunday. A 2002 study found that 28 of the 30 teams that responded to a questionnaire administered Toradol injections — 15 players each game day on average. Though team physicians have been aware that such use was “off label,” the practice continued for more than a decade. In the 2013 Post survey of retired players, 50 percent of those who retired in the 1990s or later reported using Toradol during their careers, including seven out of 10 who retired in 2000 or later. In 2012, an NFL Physicians Society task force was formed to study the drug and to “formulate a ‘best practice’ recommendation,” according to an email cited in the court filings from Matt Matava, the St. Louis Rams’ team doctor and the society’s former head. The task force was funded by the league office, and the lawsuit cites emails obtained during discovery that show Matava met with league Commissioner Roger Goodell in New York to discuss the task force in January 2012. Though Matava’s task force recommended that Toradol not be used in anticipation of pain, it cited “unique clinical challenges of the NFL” and stated that each physician


Can supermarkets save dying suburban malls?

Kroger Co., the nation’s largest grocer with close to 4,000 locations, recently bought a former Macy’s space at Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington, Ohio. (Sean Proctor/Bloomberg News) For decades, department stores like Macy’s and Sears have anchored sprawling suburban malls. Now as their business has languished and they board up shop, another sort of tenant is trying its luck in their place: grocers. “There has been a real acceleration of anchors closing their operations,” said Mark Ordan, who knows both sides of the equation as former chief executive of Fresh Fields and a former chief executive of a leading mall operator. “As traditional anchors leave, it’s an opportunity for both the mall owner and the supermarkets.” Just last month, shares of mall real estate investment trusts tanked after J.C. Penney announced plans to close up to 140 stores this year. The mall-quake followed a spate of bad news in recent months from Macy’s and Sears, two traditional mall anchors who said they plan to close hundreds of underperforming stores. Ordan said malls are great locations for big grocery stores because of their parking, the visibility and the large format they provide. “It makes it very attractive for the tenant,” he said. It also suits the millennial shopper, who prefers the efficiency that combines a visit to the mall with retrieving that week’s groceries. The grocery store inhabiting the mall isn’t exactly new, but “it’s certainly an emerging trend,” said Tom McGee, chief executive of the International Council of Shopping Centers. “Part of it is convenience, the ability to do things in one location. Millennials value convenience.” Kroger Co., the nation’s largest grocer with close to 4,000 locations, recently bought a former Macy’s space at Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington, Ohio. At the Natick Mall in Massachusetts, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Wegmans Food Market is leasing 194,000 square feet of space vacated by J.C. Penney. 365 by Whole Foods is set to open this year at College Mall in Bloomington, Ind., the report said. And other negotiations are underway. Groceries or not, the traditional mall is looking different. Higher-end malls with underperforming anchors such as J.C. Penney, Macy’s, Bon-Ton and Sears are renting to movie complexes, food courts, restaurants and fitness centers instead, emphasizing experiences and fun over shopping. “Part of it is a survival tactic,” said Calvin Schnure, an economist with the National


he said. It also suits the millennial shopper, who prefers the efficiency that combines a visit to the mall with retrieving that week’s groceries. The grocery store inhabiting the mall isn’t exactly new, but “it’s certainly an emerging trend,” said Tom McGee, chief executive of the International Council of Shopping Centers. “Part of it is convenience, the ability to do things in one location. Millennials value convenience.” Kroger Co., the nation’s largest grocer with close to 4,000 locations, recently bought a former Macy’s space at Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington, Ohio. At the Natick Mall in Massachusetts, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Wegmans Food Market is leasing 194,000 square feet of space vacated by J.C. Penney. 365 by Whole Foods is set to open this year at College Mall in Bloomington, Ind., the report said. And other negotiations are underway. Groceries or not, the traditional mall is looking different. Higher-end malls with underperforming anchors such as J.C. Penney, Macy’s, Bon-Ton and Sears are renting to movie complexes, food courts, restaurants and fitness centers instead, emphasizing experiences and fun over shopping. “Part of it is a survival tactic,” said Calvin Schnure, an economist with the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts. “E-commerce is changing people’s spending patterns. But in the process, they are changing the shopping experience in a mall.” Grocery store experts say supermarkets would rather be the main attraction in a strip mall than take the anchor position in a suburban mall. “The fact that there’s vacant mall space at the old-school, indoor malls and the hit they are taking from online companies is really significant,” said Jeffrey Metzger, publisher of Food World, a publication covering the grocery industry. “If you talk to Giant, Safeway or Kroger, the old-world mall is not their target. They would still like to be on Main Street.” Jeff Edison is chief executive of Phillips Edison & Co., which owns 339 shopping centers across the nation, nearly all of which are anchored by a grocery store. “The traditional grocers are going to continue to be three miles from people’s houses as opposed to the more regional locations like the malls,” he said. “It’s all driven by convenience.” Edison said shopping centers allow grocery customers to park closer to the store and give easier access by being closer to their communities than malls. “You may get your nails done


After impeachment, South Korea may reset relations with China and North Korea

Korea and would go to Pyongyang for talks with its leader. “If Moon wins the general election, he will emphasize South Korea’s alliance with the U.S. and a strong defense posture,” said Lee Chung-min, a professor of international relations at Yonsei University. “But his heart will lie in fostering deeper engagement with the North and negotiating an early summit with Kim Jong Un.” Moon has also signaled an openness to reviewing the Park government’s agreement to host the United States’ Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) antimissile battery. The agreement was reached last year to protect against North Korean missiles, and the system was due to arrive in South Korea this summer. But in a surprise announcement, the Pentagon said the first shipment arrived in South Korea on Monday. This has sparked widespread speculation in South Korea that the United States expected Park to be impeached and wanted to make the deployment more difficult to reverse. The U.S. military command in South Korea said the deployment was being carried out according to schedule. China has vehemently objected to the arrival of THAAD in the region, viewing the deployment as a U.S. attempt to keep China, not just North Korea, in check. To prod Seoul to change its mind, Beijing has imposed painful restrictions on South Korean imports ranging from toilet seats to pop music. “We are all very clear that the crux of the problem between China and South Korea is that South Korea is ignoring China’s concerns and is deploying the THAAD antimissile system with the United States,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Friday. “We once again urge South Korea to focus on the interests of the Chinese and Korean people,” he said. But analysts say that even if the progressive Moon becomes South Korea’s next president, he will face difficulties in backtracking on THAAD or returning to the sunshine policy. “While China might expect a U-turn over THAAD if Moon becomes president, it will be extremely difficult for Moon to do that, since THAAD is being placed primarily for the defense of the United States forces in Korea,” said Lee, the Yonsei professor. Trump could seek to dissuade Moon by making South Korea pay more for its defense costs and speeding up efforts to renegotiate the Korea-U.S. free-trade agreement. Likewise, it would be difficult to go back to the kind of sunshine policy of previous liberal


NFL’s medical structure puts profits before players’ health. That must change.

Wunsch was already on anti-inflammatories. Wunsch played until halftime, when the meds wore off. The trainer allegedly gave him a second 750 mg dose of Vicodin, saying, “Don’t sue me personally for this.” It’s understandable that NFL doctors and trainers might have difficulty sorting out what’s best for an injured player worried about losing his roster spot. But some of the worst material in the lawsuit turns on evidence of deception, whether NFL teams willfully hid the risks, side effects and toll of their painkiller practices from players intentionally, not just negligently, to hurry them back on the field for the sake of business. Federal court Judge William Alsup remarked on this in a ruling he made in July, when he rejected the NFL’s request to dismiss the case: “When asked about side effects of medications, club doctors and trainers responded, ‘none,’ ‘don’t worry about them,’ ‘not much,’ ‘they are good for you,’ or, in the case of injections, ‘maybe some bruising,’ ” Alsup wrote. “These answers misrepresented the actual health dangers posed by these drugs.” There is no provision in any collective bargaining nor employment contract that covers such conduct. Players did not sign up for this. Ex-players still in their 30s are complaining of kidney and liver damage. Young men in their early 20s are consuming the same number of painkillers as elderly people with chronic arthritis. In 2011, according to a team memo cited in the suit, the New York Jets went through 1,564 doses of Vicodin and 1,178 doses of Toradol. Do the rough math. It’s a 20-week season, and there are 53 men on a roster. And none of this is counting the pills that were never written down. Sensational as some of the drug logs and memos contained in the lawsuit are, it’s what’s not in the record that’s most disturbing. For years, I’ve heard from workers’ compensation lawyers who say NFL teams systematically undercut claims by withholding drug and injury notations from players’ medical records. But I’d never seen firm evidence to back up that contention, until now. The suit reveals a survey of medical records from 745 players used by clubs in workers’ compensation claims. Of those, 164 had no records at all. To repeat: no records at all. Another 196 contained no mention of any drugs. None. A total of 64 mentioned drugs — but not dosages. And 321 mentioned only


Judge unseals documents, as NFLPA expresses alarm at painkillers report

The average NFL team distributed nearly 8,000 doses of prescription-strength non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and controlled medications in a single season, according to the report. (Sue Ogrocki/AP) A U.S. District judge unsealed documents Friday in a lawsuit filed by former NFL players against their former teams alleging improper administration of powerful pain medication. The documents make public details the NFL Players Association categorized as alarming. Most of the information made public Friday had been reported by The Washington Post in a story published Thursday that revealed details and communications involving team and league officials related to the handling and administration of pain medication. That information was initially redacted in a court filing related to the lawsuit because the lawyers for both sides agreed to a protective order in the case. The Post was able to view the full complaint — but not the attached exhibits — because of a technical error in the filing. The lawyers representing the NFL teams faced a deadline earlier this week to file an argument with U.S. District Judge William Alsup as to why the information should remain sealed. When they didn’t, Alsup unsealed the entire filing, including the exhibits. The attached exhibits include information on prescription drugs administered by the Steelers, Colts and Jets. It also includes an eight-page chart documenting multitudes of occasions when teams traveled with and dispensed controlled substances on the road, in violations of federal regulations. The chart cites team drug logs and travel inventories of doctors’ kits containing Vicodin, Ambien, Codeine and the like. “The NFLPA is alarmed by the revelations in the lawsuit filed by former NFL players on the abuse of prescription drugs,” the players’ union said in a statement Friday. “While we are not a party to the case, the reporting by The Washington Post and Deadspin are cause for our continued concern and vigilance for holding the league accountable to its obligations. We will monitor this case closely and take all steps necessary to ensure the health and safety of our players.” The filing was made by lawyers representing 1,800 former players suing the teams in federal court, claiming they suffer organ and joint damage as a result of improper treatment they received during their playing careers. Much of the material was collected by the ex-players’ attorneys as part of the discovery process in the case, which included depositions with at least 11 team and league


Severe morning sickness — known as HG — can leave women starving

“In Italy, it was a nightmare. It was like they kept saying it was all in my head.” Now living just outside Toronto, Bahen recently gave birth to her fourth baby, noting that her current doctor was “literally my saving grace. He was calm and knew, after my history of extreme HG, that I needed medication. I swear that because we attacked HG early this time, it was managed and stable by 19 to 20 weeks.” Medication often seems to be the stumbling block for doctors who are concerned about birth defects. “There are issues to treating someone who is pregnant, so safety is an issue,” says Fejzo, “but there are interventions that have proven to be safe.” Among the interventions recommended by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology are the combination of doxylamine, an over-the-counter antihistamine, with vitamin B6, which has shown a 70 percent reduction in nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, and Zofran, an anti-emetic drug commonly used to control nausea in chemotherapy patients. “Zofran is a miracle drug for some people,” Bunnell says. Although lawsuits have been filed against Zofran manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline, citing birth defects such as cleft palates and heart defects, a study published by Fejzo found no correlation between the drug and birth defects. Although Zofran is approved for treating nausea caused by chemotherapy, doctors also prescribe it off-label to pregnant women. The Food and Drug Administration classifies it as a Category B drug, which means it has been tested in animals but not people, and warns that “this drug should be used during pregnancy only if clearly needed.” Bunnell prefers to start with non-pharmacologic interventions, such as adjusting the woman’s diet, providing intravenous fluids and shortening the workweek. “My goal is not to make you feel well,” she says. “My goal is ‘Can we get you to vomit less?’ ” For Erick, the key is in looking for patterns among the triggers. “You’ll hear common themes,” she says, “and women usually end up hiding away in a dark room as far from the kitchen as they can get. No light, no smells, no noise.” Any HG patient is naturally reluctant to eat after weeks of nonstop vomiting, Erick says, so the key is to listen and not be judgmental: If the patient is willing to nibble a candy bar and sip some soda, she’ll happily provide it. “I once had a patient who


Trump, with NASA, has a new rocket and spaceship. Where’s he going to go?

have already put down deposits. Musk said that he could do the moon flyby with his own new rocket, still under development, called the Falcon Heavy. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lands at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Feb. 19. SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced that he intends to send two tourists next year on a figure-eight joy ride past the moon and back to Earth. (SpaceX /European Pressphoto Agency) Another wrinkle: Musk told reporters that SpaceX would be willing to bump the rich tourists from that first flight and let NASA astronauts take their place. There are reasons to view such a scenario as extremely unlikely. Powerful people in the space world would be unhappy to see Musk and SpaceX steal any thunder from the SLS and Orion. Huge aerospace corporations, including Boeing and Lockheed Martin, have contracts for this hardware. The Alabama factor comes into play. The SLS is based at NASA Marshall, in Huntsville, the historic center of American rocketry. The Trump administration has a number of influential Alabamians, starting with Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Two former Sessions senate staffers, Stephen Miller and Rick Dearborn, work in the White House. There are practical issues, too: Musk has a reputation for overpromising on timelines. SpaceX has never launched anyone into space. The Falcon Heavy has never flown. Moreover, NASA officials would be unlikely to embrace a SpaceX moon flyby unless it clearly fit into the agency’s long-term plans for deep-space exploration. “What does Elon want to do with this — is it just a one-off tourist flight?” said NASA’s top official for human spaceflight, William Gerstenmaier, in an interview with The Washington Post. “I don’t see it as advancing human presence in the solar system.” At the annual Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium this week in Greenbelt, Md., a student from Purdue University asked a panel of space experts a pointed question: What’s harder in spaceflight, the technical engineering or the political engineering? Mary Lynne Dittmar, executive director of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, which represents aerospace companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, found that one easy to answer: “Political engineering is always more challenging.” * * * Things were so much simpler in the 1960s. The United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a Cold War and racing to the moon in government-owned rockets. The United States won that


NFL doctors are on the wrong team

Washington tight end Niles Paul leaves the field on a cart after an injury during an NFL preseason game against the Cleveland Browns in 2015. (David Richard/Associated Press) “ARE THE physicians looking out for the health of the players, or are they just trying to keep them on the field?” That was the question posed by a leading medical ethicist in light of allegations that team doctors for the National Football League engaged in questionable, and possibly illegal, use of prescription drugs to manage player pain. It is not a new question; it’s also been asked in connection with the league’s lagging response to concussions and other injuries suffered by players. That the subject is still being raised exposes the fundamental problem with how NFL players are treated: Doctors who decide whether a player is healthy enough to play are employed by teams that have a stake in the game. A review by The Post’s Rick Maese of sealed court documents in a federal lawsuit against NFL teams by former players painted a disturbing picture of the use of powerful painkillers and anti-inflammatories. The account included descriptions of teams violating federal prescription drug laws, disregarding guidance about controlled substances from the Drug Enforcement Administration and giving medication to players without telling them what they were getting. A spokesman for the NFL dismissed the allegations as “meritless.” NFL teams and their medical staffs, Brian McCarthy told The Post, “continue to put the health and safety of our players first, providing all NFL players with the highest quality medical care. Any claim or suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong.” So why did only 47 of 100 players who were surveyed by the Associated Press say they thought the league’s clubs, coaches and team doctors have the athletes’ best interests at heart? Even more damning were the results of a two-year player health study by researchers from Harvard University, which found “an undeniable conflict of interest” in the league’s current system. “The intersection of club doctors’ dual obligations creates significant legal and ethical quandaries that can threaten player health,” according to the 493-page report released in November. The Harvard report noted that players and teams have a shared interest in health, but there are areas when those interests diverge, such as when a player wants to return to play from an injury more quickly than recommended in order to avoid termination of


Traffic woes continue as part of Beach Drive to remain closed through summer

for completion in the projected three-year period. There haven’t been any major storms to disrupt work and just a few unanticipated events, such as the discovery of some cables and wires under the road surface and a historic wall under the road near Tilden Street, officials said. A bigger challenge has been keeping foot traffic out of the construction zone. A few near-misses between construction vehicles and pedestrians and cyclists last fall prompted the Park Service to step up enforcement to keep the foot traffic from veering off the designated path. Construction crews installed additional fencing and signage to prevent people from entering the closed area, officials said. Nanci Link, a retired nurse who lives in Northwest Washington, said the closure has made it more difficult for her and her husband to get around. The couple, for example, has cut back on volunteering from five times a month to twice a month, she said. “The park closure also makes it difficult — very stressful — to get to doctor appointments in Foggy Bottom,” said Link, 73. She’s also noticed more traffic on neighborhood streets and longer backups near the zoo, she said. “Many people used Rock Creek Parkway to get into the zoo which now has not been an option,” she said. Over the Presidents’ Day weekend, when springlike weather drew thousands of visitors to the zoo for a send-off for the panda Bao Bao to her new home in China, delays of more than 30 minutes were reported along Connecticut Avenue, the zoo’s other entrance. As spring and summer roll in, Link says the area needs to prepare for similar traffic nightmares near the park. But, she said she hopes the timeline for completion of the work isn’t extended even more. Shutting down an entire road for months at a time is rare and D.C. officials said they do so only as a last resort. In this case, the Park Service said a closure was necessary because the road is too narrow to accommodate traffic plus all the construction, staging and equipment needed. “This isn’t just filling potholes and repaving it,” Barnum said. “We are excavating the entire area, putting down the new gravel base, working on the trails and in some cases on storm drainage issues.” When the work is done, the popular commuter route will have new traffic safety features — such as guardrails and centerline rumble


into the zoo which now has not been an option,” she said. Over the Presidents’ Day weekend, when springlike weather drew thousands of visitors to the zoo for a send-off for the panda Bao Bao to her new home in China, delays of more than 30 minutes were reported along Connecticut Avenue, the zoo’s other entrance. As spring and summer roll in, Link says the area needs to prepare for similar traffic nightmares near the park. But, she said she hopes the timeline for completion of the work isn’t extended even more. Shutting down an entire road for months at a time is rare and D.C. officials said they do so only as a last resort. In this case, the Park Service said a closure was necessary because the road is too narrow to accommodate traffic plus all the construction, staging and equipment needed. “This isn’t just filling potholes and repaving it,” Barnum said. “We are excavating the entire area, putting down the new gravel base, working on the trails and in some cases on storm drainage issues.” When the work is done, the popular commuter route will have new traffic safety features — such as guardrails and centerline rumble strips to keep drivers from drifting into oncoming traffic. City transportation officials meanwhile say a new traffic pattern appears to have stabilized. Data in the month following the closure showed modest increases in congestion along Connecticut Avenue, with two minutes of additional travel time in the southbound lanes and four minutes northbound, according to the District Department of Transportation. Similar patterns were recorded for other alternate routes such as 16th Street and Georgia Avenue NW, officials said. Officials are still urging commuters to travel via other modes or outside peak hours if possible. Traffic control officers are still being deployed to ensure good traffic flow, and officials continue to monitor and adjust traffic signal timing to reduce the queuing conditions. The city also added new signs and markings. Maura Danehey, a DDOT spokeswoman, said the extra two months of closure near the National Zoo will benefit the District because it will mitigate future traffic impacts that would have resulted from building the trail separately. Some of the work, she said, will also be done during the summer when traffic tends to be lighter. “While these changes have resulted in some disruption and delays, the overall system has been resilient as


At 26, a daughter lost her mother to a serial killer. In her memory, she ran 26 miles.

so maybe a marathon. She’d completed one before, at 23. Nancy had come to support her then, finding five spots along the route to give her daughter orange slices and shout the same words of encouragement: “Run, Lizzie. Run.” After Christmas, Liz searched for upcoming races. And there it was: On March 11, her mother’s birthday, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon in Washington. She soon connected another two dots. A marathon covers 26 miles; she and her mother had together shared 26 years. Liz Dunning, center, is embraced outside an Alexandria courthouse in 2015 after reading her statement in the trial of Charles Severance, who was charged with her mother’s murder. Severance was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) “Oh,” she thought, “I have to do this.” She launched a blog to share memories of her mother and raise money — more than $28,000 — for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Now, before dawn Saturday, Liz was riding in a Lyft car from her home in upper Northwest Washington to the starting line on Constitution Avenue. She stepped out into a wind chill of 17 degrees. She slipped on a snowcap and found a spot in front of the National Museum of American History as Eminem boomed from nearby speakers. She bounced and stretched. She grew quiet. It was time. Liz found her place amid hundreds of runners who didn’t know who she was or why she’d come. As the 10-second countdown for her group began, she glanced up at the clear, blue sky. *** Each morning, Nancy’s voice rose from the kitchen. In a silly, operatic tone, she would sing to her sleepy-eyed son and daughter — about the raisins in their oatmeal, the spelling test at school, anything at all. They’d roll their eyes. They’d giggle. To the public, so much of Nancy’s legacy was defined by details about her death and the years of uncertainty that followed before the serial killer who took her life was caught. To Liz, she has never been defined by any of that. Nancy, at just over 5 feet tall, was the striking, compassionate, fiercely optimistic woman with light blue eyes and blond hair who sang to her kids about oatmeal. She was, to Liz, her dearest friend. Mother and daughter seldom argued, but not because they didn’t disagree, especially in Liz’s teenage years.


In BSO debuts, young pianist Jan Lisiecki stumbles as conductor Paul Goodwin shines

Guest conductor Paul Goodwin paired works by Beethoven with a shorter piece. (Ben Ealovega ) Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto may be the closest thing there is to an indestructible piece in the classical piano repertory. The work’s hum-along grandeur and surefire pyrotechnics were no doubt the main attraction for many in the audience at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Saturday evening concert at Strathmore. Yet in the wayward hands of young soloist Jan Lisiecki, the concerto proved to be the most disappointing part of an uneven night. Lisiecki, 22, last performed in the Washington area in a solo recital in 2015 that brimmed with unformed potential. Making his BSO debut, the Polish Canadian pianist showed little sign of having made artistic progress in the intervening years. In the “Emperor” Concerto, Lisiecki veered between two dominant modes: undisciplined bombast and bland understatement. Lisiecki’s passagework in the outer movements was disrupted by odd hiccups and ugly accents, and he frequently hurtled dangerously ahead of guest conductor Paul Goodwin’s beat. In the slow movement, Lisiecki was ploddingly metronomic, with no effort to impart inflection or shape to the lyrical line. More than anything, Lisiecki sounded like a former child phenom whose musical development had stalled. Goodwin, also making his BSO debut, comes from the world of historically informed performance. It is perhaps a sign of just how thoroughly some elements of period practice have been incorporated into modern orchestras that Goodwin’s taut, bracing reading of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony sounded almost conventional. Enforcing lean textures, brisk tempos and restrained vibrato, the British maestro led a meticulously shaped performance whose joyous energy was the evening’s highlight. In each half of the program, Goodwin paired the works by Beethoven with a shorter piece for scaled-down forces. The effect was more curious than illuminating. The BSO players who were assembled for Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks” Concerto sounded unconvincing as a chamber ensemble, as it took a movement for the Bach-influenced rhythms and lines to snap into focus. In Henryk Gorecki’s “Three Pieces in Old Style,” the BSO’s strings offered emphatically shaped, atmospheric playing, but the work had little to say to the rest of the program. It was one of those nights. Pianist Jan Lisiecki, 22, veered between undisciplined bombast and bland understatement. (Mathias Bothor)


The Marines’ nude photo scandal is a sorely needed wake-up call

Female Marine recruits listen to instructions during boot camp at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, S.C., in 2013. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) SPARE US the feeble platitudes about boys being boys. The revelation that thousands of Marines, active-duty and veterans, used social media to solicit and share nude photographs of Marine Corps women cannot be minimized or excused. Their actions, which included calls to stalk and harass women in the photographs, are a stain on the Marines that underscores ongoing issues of sexual harassment within the armed forces. It is, again, a wake-up call for a military that too often views — and treats — women as inferior. Defense Department officials announced that they have opened a criminal investigation into the activities of a group called Marines United, which used a private Facebook page to circulate without their permission nude photographs of Marine women, identified by their full name, rank and military duty station and often accompanied by obscene comments. “Take her out back and pound her out” read one comment quoted by the news website Reveal, which first disclosed the group’s existence. Some have suggested there has been an overreaction to the site and that the behavior is merely a normal outgrowth of the rough ethos that Marines boast as tradition. They would do well to listen to Marine veteran Thomas Brennan, who wrote the Reveal article. “I’m no angel,” he told the New York Times. “I have deployed just like these Marines. I’ve sat around a fire in Afghanistan and shared that dark, dark Marine humor. . . . But this is different. It has gone too far. We are hurting other Marines.” Good order demands respect for one’s comrades. This aberrant, if not criminal, behavior must not be tolerated. The decision of officials to order an investigation is insufficient but encouraging; let’s hope they are serious about holding those responsible to account. Not to be overlooked, though, is that 30,000 Marines, many on active duty, are said to have participated in this site. And there are reports that other branches of the military may also be implicated. That suggests this is not a case of a few bad apples but of deep-seated issues in the military. Of all the armed services, the Marines have been the most resistant to integrating women into the ranks; the service persists in segregating recruits by sex during basic training and puts


John McCain and Lindsey Graham: Why we need more forces to end the stalemate in Afghanistan

Survivors walk after a blast in Kabul. (Mohammad Ismail/Reuters) John McCain (R-Ariz.) is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is a member of the committee. On Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists murdered 3,000 innocent civilians on American soil while under the sanctuary of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. In response to that attack, U.S. and NATO forces deployed to Afghanistan to hunt down those responsible and ensure that Afghanistan would never again be a haven for terrorists. Since then, more than 2,000 Americans and more than 1,000 troops from our NATO allies have given their lives to that mission. But after more than a decade-and-a-half of war, Gen. John W. Nicholson, commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that the war in Afghanistan is in a stalemate. President Trump and his administration must treat Afghanistan with the same urgency as the fight against the Islamic State, or this stalemate risks sliding into strategic failure. Army Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr. tells members the Senate Armed Services Committee, Feb. 9, he needs several thousand more international troops in order to break a stalemate in the war with Taliban insurgents. This month, two simultaneous suicide attacks by the Taliban in Kabul killed at least 16 people and wounded more than 40. In northern Afghanistan, the Taliban overran another district. These setbacks came on the heels of disturbing losses across the country. Nicholson recently confirmed an inspector general report that the Afghan government controls or influences just 57 percent of the country’s districts, down from 72 percent just over a year ago. Make no mistake: Afghans are fighting ferociously to defend their country from our common enemies. At the same time, we must recognize that the United States is still at war in Afghanistan against the terrorist enemies who attacked our nation on Sept. 11 and their ideological heirs. We must act accordingly. Unfortunately, in recent years, we have tied the hands of our military in Afghanistan. Instead of trying to win, we have settled for just trying not to lose. Time and time again, we saw troop withdrawals that seemed to have more to do with U.S. politics than conditions on the ground. The fixation with “force management levels” in Afghanistan, as well as in Iraq and Syria, seemed more about measuring troop counts than measuring success. Authorities were


Richard Solomon, Kissinger aide involved in ‘Ping-Pong diplomacy’ with China, dies at 79

seen as an important step in reciprocal trust-building. A 1988 photo of writer and activist Bette Bao Lord; her husband, Winston Lord, U.S. ambassador to China; Chinese Ambassador to the United States Han Xu; and Henry Kissinger; Richard Solomon is in the background. (Gerry Herbert/Associated Press) Dr. Solomon continued to organize cultural and academic exchanges with the Chinese until leaving the council in 1976 to lead the political science department at the Rand Corp. think tank. One of his most consequential works at Rand was a study commissioned by U.S. intelligence agencies on Chinese political negotiating behavior. In many instances, Dr. Solomon drew directly from his close-up dealings under Kissinger and with the Chinese. The study, published years later for a general audience, assessed what Dr. Solomon called “a range of manipulative strategies, enticement tactics and pressure tactics” that anyone negotiating a business contract or treaty with the Chinese government would need to understand. James Mann, a journalist and author who has written extensively about China, called it “a landmark study and a brilliant one” that laid out a “series of cautions” about how China managed frequently to come out ahead in diplomacy. Among the concepts were negotiating on one’s own turf, creating a sense of grandeur and managing personal relationships with opponents in ways to serve Chinese interests, such as exploiting their rivalries and insecurities. Dr. Solomon noted that the Chinese were deft at enticing the other side to make an opening bid in bargaining — even when they were the guests of a host country. “We have two sayings,” he quoted Foreign Minister Qiao Guanhua telling Kissinger at one meeting in New York in 1976. “One is that when we are the host, we should let the guests begin. And the other is that when we are guests, we should defer to the host.” Kissinger laughed off the quip, then proceeded to volunteer: “I will be glad to start.” Richard Harvey Solomon was born in Philadelphia on June 19, 1937. He was 8 when his father died of a pulmonary embolism and his mother took over his job as a furniture salesman. He was from a Jewish family but attended a nearby Quaker boarding school, where he excelled in the sciences. He majored in chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but, on a campus teeming with academics who doubled as high-level scientific advisers to the government amid