U-Md. Symphony Orchestra gets out of its chairs, giving music a visual life

Jennifer Forni, soprano; James Ross, conductor; and Yvette Smith, mezzo-soprano practice during a dress rehearsal for the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra and the University of Maryland Concert Choir's performance of “Auferstehen.” (Andrew Blais/Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center) We often hear that orchestral music’s problem in the modern world is that it lacks a visual element. And we often see attempts to address this involving video screens, animations or even the computer-generated geometric forms you can play along with your music on iTunes. But what the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra and choreographer Liz Lerman offered Friday night to open a program titled “Auferstehen” (“revive” or “resurrect”) blew all that out of the water. The piece was Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.” It began when a group of young musicians, barefoot, in street clothes, holding their instruments, walked out onto a stage that was empty but for a couple of harps and a few strategically placed stools for the cellists. They lay down, sleeping, frozen; until the solo flute made her entrance, walking out from the wings and moving through the silent ranks like the Pied Piper, stirring the others awake, drawing them into the music after her. If you saw this on video, you’d assume it was dubbed; orchestra musicians can’t play and move at the same time. Never assume; these Maryland students could. Having memorized the score, they walked around the stage with naturalistic ease, grouping in small constellations or moving en masse, eddying and flowing with the music. Now everyone massed into two antiphonal groups that took turns driving each other back; now the crowd parted to release a solo clarinet who crossed center stage for her few phrases in the sun before melting back into the throng. The other reason you’d think it was dubbed is that the playing was so good: increasingly confident, vividly expressive, and without the kinds of balance problems you might assume would result from letting musicians wander all over the stage. Freed from the black-clad anonymity of the orchestral status quo, allowed to assert their own identities, the musicians took responsibility for one of the most remarkable collaborations I’ve seen. You probably couldn’t do this with a professional orchestra. The Maryland program’s “Music in Mind” series, of which this concert was a part, deliberately explores different ways of approaching the experience of concert music, often with collaborators from


Feinstein, Rogers say Taliban ‘stronger’ since surge

The leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees said Sunday they believe that the Taliban has grown stronger since President Obama sent 33,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in 2010. The pessimistic report by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) challenges Obama’s assessment last week in his visit to Kabul that the “tide had turned” and that “we broke the Taliban’s momentum.” Feinstein and Rogers told CNN’s “State of the Union” that they aren’t so sure. The two recently returned from a fact-finding trip to the region, where they met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. “President Karzai believes that the Taliban will not come back. I’m not so sure,” Feinstein said. “The Taliban has a shadow system of governors in many provinces.” When asked if the Taliban’s capabilities have been degraded since Obama deployed the additional troops two years ago, Feinstein said: “I think we’d both say that what we’ve found is that the Taliban is stronger.” More than 1,800 U.S. troops have been killed in the decade-long war. About 88,000 service members remain deployed, down from a peak of more than 100,000 last year. More troops are expected to leave by the end of summer, with all combat troops gone by the end of 2014. Persistent violence has threatened to undermine Obama’s effort to show progress in stabilizing Afghanistan at a NATO summit later this month in Chicago. On Sunday, an Afghan soldier killed a NATO soldier before being fatally shot by return fire in southern Afghanistan, the latest in a series of attacks against foreigners blamed on government forces within their own ranks. NATO confirmed that one service member was killed by an attacker wearing an Afghan army uniform in the country’s south and that coalition forces returned fire and killed the gunman. But the alliance provided no details, saying an investigation was underway. Feinstein said she would like to meet with Pakistan’s leaders to discuss the need for more help to break up the Haqqani insurgent network on the Afghan border. Congress has passed various restrictions on U.S. aid to Pakistan after Osama bin Laden was found hiding within its borders. A recent defense policy bill would withhold 60 percent of military aid if the defense secretary can’t show that the money will be effective in fighting the Taliban and ensuring that Pakistan helps with efforts to counter roadside bombings. Rogers said he


Manassas post office building in limbo

is definitely worth more than what it fetched at auction recently. The stately brick building on Church Street has been home to the Old Town post office since the 1930s, provides easy access to downtown businesses and is a place where friends can run into one another. But the building was part of a mortgage Ponzi scheme when Linda Sadr bought the property in 2006 from the city. Sadr was convicted in June of making false promises to help homeowners having mortgage troubles, and the building was seized as a part of her assets. The post office is housed in the front of the building, but other areas can be utilized for purposes such as office space. Manassas residents Miguel Pires, owner of Carmello’s restaurant, and Chris Salisbury, who owns construction-related businesses, weren’t sure what they would do with the building if they were able to buy it. They placed a winning bid of $385,000, well below the listed price of about $700,000, and thought they had gotten a great deal. But there was one thing Pires and Salisbury didn’t count on: The feds rejected their bid. They offered to go up to $400,000, but that was also deemed too low. Pires said that the building’s interior has fallen into disrepair and needs a lot of work. He said the asking price was too high. “We just want to see something go in that building,” Pires said in an e-mail. “It is disappointing that it will stay empty even longer now.” Lynzey Donahue, a U.S. Marshals Service spokeswoman, said sale proceeds go toward paying back Sadr’s victims. A low sale price “is not doing any favors to the victims,” she said. The property remains listed for $674,900, she said, adding that “the auction was an additional method to try to sell the property.” The deed stipulates that the space for the post office must stay with that agency and that the city has the right to buy the property first. Manassas officials have said that they might do so, if they feel the post office is threatened. Pires and Salisbury say they have no problem with the post office staying put. Authorities have a lot of leeway to negotiate in this situation, Donahue said, and plan to take their time. “They’re not in a huge rush,” she said. “They want to do the best they can for the sale price.”


Federal Faces: Jacob M. Taylor

Jacob M. Taylor Position: Physicist, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Best known for: Government work: Motivation for service: Biggest challenge: NIST physicist Jacob Taylor (Curt Suplee/NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY) Quote: “ — From the Partnership for Public Service For a full profile, go to The Fed Page at washingtonpost.com/politics/federal-government.


Where are the jobs? Ask the patent trolls.

patent assertions. This isn’t based on the strengths of the patents; many of these are among the weakest and least defensible. When the most-litigated patents go to trial, slightly fewer than 11 percent of patent holders win their cases, compared with 47 percent of those that were litigated just once. And most-litigated patents aren’t also filed by the original inventors: nearly 64 percent are by what academics call “non-practicing entities”—in other words, patent trolls. These win an even lower percentage of their cases, coming in at 8 percent. Technology industry heavyweight Brad Feld says that software patents represent a destructive force in the startup world. Companies have to worry about being sued the moment they have achieved first success. Instead of focusing on building their startup, they worry about hiring lawyers. Public corporations are also paying a heavy price. To quantify this, in Sept. 2011, Boston University School of Law professors James Bessen, Michael Meurer, and Jennifer Ford analyzed stock market data and patent lawsuits. They determined between 1990 and 2010, the victims of these lawsuits, which were mostly technology companies, lost half a trillion dollars in wealth, forcing companies to divert substantial resources from production to litigation support. They found that software patents, including those on “business methods and financial processes,” were the most litigated because they have “fuzzy boundaries.” They are written in vague language and their scope is not clear. So technology companies can’t easily find them or understand what they claim. This gives the trolls an opportunity to extort money. Clearly, the laws need revision. Feld says that software patents should be completely abolished—that in the modern era of computing, the best defense is speed to market, execution, and continuous innovation. But Lemley says that things aren’t so clear cut. It’s true that most of the problems in the patent system can be traced to software patents, he says. But, in a world where electronics are integrated into most everything, it’s not clear we can simply eliminate them, in part because it’s hard to know what a “software patent” actually is. A better approach is to stop patentees from broadly claiming to own any program that performs a particular task, rather than patenting the actual program they developed. Lemley explains that patent law was meant to promote innovation by giving inventors the exclusive right to their inventions. But lawyers, he says, have been broadening the claims


China expels al-Jazeera reporter as media relations sour

Higgins, a Chinese speaker and former student at Shandong University, who was nominated in 2009 to become Beijing bureau chief. Last fall, three Republican congressmen, complaining about constraints on U.S. media expansion in China, introduced the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act, which would limit the number of visas the State Department is permitted to issue to journalists working for Chinese state media. The bill is currently with the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration policy and enforcement. There has been a sharp rise in the number of Chinese journalists, nearly all employees of state media, working in the United States at a time when Beijing has been delaying or rejecting applications by journalists for U.S. media wishing to work in China. The Voice of America, which gets government funding and falls under the supervision of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a bipartisan panel, has been waiting for more than three years to expand its Beijing bureau from two to four reporters. “There is a very alarming disparity between the number of Chinese state media workers whom we grant visas to and the number of visas the Chinese grant to their American counterparts,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), one of the sponsors of the proposed legislation, said when the bill was introduced. Rohrabacher said that during the 2010 fiscal year, about 650 Chinese citizens working for party-controlled news organizations entered the United States on journalism visas, while only two American journalists working under the Broadcasting Board of Governors had received permission to work in China. Tara Setmayer, a spokeswoman for the congressman, said Tuesday that reciprocity has not improved since then. Also Tuesday, the Associated Press quoted Chen, the rights activist, as saying that the Chinese government had quietly promised him that it will investigate abuses he says he and his family suffered at the hands of local authorities. Chen told the AP on Monday that an official has visited him in his Beijing hospital four times, including to take a statement last Thursday. “After he took my statement, he said they would launch an investigation as long as there are facts, and that if there are facts about the illegal actions, then the issue definitely would be openly addressed,” Chen said. Correspondent Andrew Higgins in Hong Kong and staff writer William Wan in Washington contributed to this report. More world news coverage: - Syrians vote in parliamentary elections - Clinton asks India


Senate panel investigates drug companies’ ties to pain groups

As the Senate Finance Committee launched an investigation Tuesday into the relationship between makers of narcotic painkillers and the groups that champion them, a leading advocacy organization said it was dissolving “due to irreparable economic circumstances.” The American Pain Foundation, which described itself as the nation’s largest organization focused on patients’ pain, was the subject of a December investigation by ProPublica in The Washington Post that detailed its close ties to drugmakers. The group received 90 percent of its $5 million in funding in 2010 from the drug and medical-device industry, ProPublica found, and its guides for patients, journalists and policymakers had played down the risks associated with opioid painkillers while exaggerating the benefits from the drugs. It is unclear whether the group’s announcement Tuesday evening — that it would “cease to exist, effective immediately” — was related to letters senators Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the finance panel chairman, and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) sent earlier in the day to the foundation, drug companies and others. In the letters, the senators cited an “an epidemic of accidental deaths and addiction resulting from the increased sale and use of powerful narcotic painkillers.” That class of drugs includes popular brand names like Oxycontin, Vicodin and Opana. Growing evidence, they wrote, suggests that drug companies “may be responsible, at least in part, for this epidemic by promoting misleading information about the drugs’ safety and effectiveness.” The American Pain Foundation’s Web site carried a statement Tuesday night saying its board voted May 3 to dissolve the group because it couldn’t stay “operational.” The foundation did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday. The senators are targeting a who’s who of the pain industry, seeking extensive records and correspondence documenting the links, financial and otherwise, between them and the makers of the top-prescribed painkillers. The senators’ letters also cite reporting by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and MedPage Today that found the companies’ close ties extended to physician societies and academic research groups. The letters went to three pharmaceutical companies — Purdue Pharma, Endo Pharmaceuticals and Johnson & Johnson — as well as to five groups that support pain patients, doctors or research: the American Pain Foundation, the American Academy of Pain Medicine, the American Pain Society, the Wisconsin Pain and Policy Studies Group, and the Center for Practical Bioethics. The Federation of State Medical Boards, the trade group for agencies that license doctors, received a letter, as


Japan to provide $12.6 billion to Tepco, operator of tsunami-ravaged nuclear plant

An employee stands in front of Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Kawasaki Thermal Power Plant in Kawasaki City. Bailout gives government control of the massive utility company as it continues recovery from tsunami disaster. (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg News) TOKYO — The move, which had been widely expected, will prevent the Tokyo Electric Power Co., known as Tepco, from collapsing. With the newly authorized public funds, the company can decommission the stricken reactors at the plant on Japan’s northeastern coast, pay compensation to the tens of thousands of people who fled as radiation spread and provide electricity to its 45 million customers. The bailout also gives the government a majority share of the former monopoly, a change that will formally take place after Tepco’s annual shareholders meeting next month, according to the Kyodo news agency. Tepco will be forced to follow a restructuring plan that includes electricity rate increases, management changes and $41.4 billion in cost-cutting measures over the next decade. “Without the state funds, [Tepco] cannot provide a stable supply of electricity and pay for compensation and decommissioning costs,” said Industry Minister Yukio Edano, who approved the takeover plan. Tepco fell into financial crisis last year after a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, where primary and backup cooling systems were knocked out by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami of March 11, 2011. The company, much-criticized for its safety oversights at the plant, will need decades to decommission the now-stabilized reactors, as well as trillions of yen for cleanup. The government, policy experts say, could use its control of Tepco to spearhead changes in Japan’s traditional system of electricity distribution, long dominated by regional monopolies whose charges are among the world’s highest. The government could open the electricity grid to competitors, a step Edano has advocated. The industry minister had also threatened to allow Tepco to fail if it did not agree to a management overhaul. Tepco has selected a new government-approved chairman, Kazuhiko Shimokobe, a bankruptcy lawyer and corporate restructuring specialist. Shimokobe recently oversaw the Nuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Fund, a public body created to help Tepco pay compensation to nuclear evacuees. Tepco remains the sole provider of electricity for a large swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo. The utility, according to its government-submitted recovery plan, wants to restart seven idled reactors at its Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant, on Japan’s western coast. In the aftermath of the March 11


D.C. wellness calendar, May 10-17

HIV testing Art therapy for seniors Affordable Care Act and Health Benefit Exchange update “Aging in the Community” Tracking disease through DNA research BodyWise Dance program Whitman-Walker programs open house “Hand, Wrist or Elbow Pain?” Legal planning for Alzheimer’s Red Cross needs volunteers — Compiled by Gerri Marmer Submit an item


Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng, confined to hospital, awaits word on his fate

BEIJING — In a brief telephone interview Wednesday, Chen also said that he is still waiting for the Chinese government to keep a promise that he said it made to him to investigate and prosecute the local officials who had held him unlawfully in his farmhouse in Dongshigu village, in the eastern province of Shandong. Chen said he expects to be allowed to leave the country for a time to study in the United States, according to the tentative deal reached by Chinese officials and U.S. diplomats during a visit here last week by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Chen said that the passports he and his wife hold have expired and that he has not been told whether they can be renewed. He said no Chinese officials have come to discuss the matter with him. “Changing a passport should be easier than applying for a new one,” Chen said. The activist also said that he has not seen any U.S. Embassy staff members since Friday. “I can’t say I’m not worried,” he said, but added: “I’m just letting nature take its course on whether I can go abroad. As long as things don’t move too slowly.” Chen left the U.S. Embassy, where he took refuge after a dramatic April 22 flight from Shandong, a week ago. Since then, he has been confined to Beijing’s Chaoyang hospital, where he is being treated for broken bones in his foot, an injury he suffered while escaping. Police and plainclothes guards have blocked U.S. diplomats, friends, supporters and journalists from entering the hospital to see him, and his wife, Yuan Weijing, and their children have mostly been barred from leaving his room. On Wednesday, Chen reported some small signs of progress. He said that since Monday, his children have been allowed to play in the hospital’s outdoor courtyard for half an hour each morning and afternoon. He said his wife “still has trouble going out, but she has made it,” noting that she has periodically been allowed outside to meet with U.S. diplomats. He has been permitted only one brief visit with the diplomats Friday, despite Chinese officials’ earlier assurances of regular access to him. U.S. diplomats have been able to speak with Chen by phone. Journalists have been warned that they risk expulsion from China if they try to enter the hospital to see Chen. Hospital authorities said Chen is under


Tick spraying at Loudoun parks alarms beekeepers

Higgins, who co-sponsored the Lyme disease campaign along with Vice Chairman Janet Clarke (R-Blue Ridge) and Supervisor Kenneth “Ken” Reid (R-Leesburg), said at the March 20 meeting that many constituents identified Lyme disease as a critical issue during his campaign in the fall. Higgins said that he had recently heard from residents concerned about the spraying and that the county planned the insecticide application carefully to minimize environmental impact. The total sprayed area was also very small, he said — 196 acres — and Loudoun’s total acreage is about 333,000. “We believed that our careful approach would protect citizens and their children while having a minimal impact on honeybees and other insects, given the size of Loudoun County,” Higgins said. The spraying at county parks — including Franklin, Woodgrove, Lucketts Community, Ashburn, Conklin, Phil Bolen, Neil Boone, Mickie Gordon Memorial and Claude Moore parks — was completed this week. The application took place during a seasonal time frame that beekeepers described as “peak nectar flow,” when local bees are gathering nectar that will later be harvested for honey. The spraying at all county parks took place in the early hours, and that is when bees are most likely to be foraging on flowering plants, said Richard Fell, a professor of entomology at Virginia Tech University who specializes in bees and beekeeping. “Those are lousy times to spray,” Fell said. “Normally, what we recommend is to spray in the late afternoon or early evening, when your foraging bee numbers are way down.” Fell said that parks filled with blooming plants and weeds such as dandelions and clover would be a natural foraging ground for bees. “If they’re spraying blooming plants, there’s a very good chance that they’re not only going to be killing honeybees, but other bee species, as well,” he said, adding that there are more than 400 species of bees in Virginia. Higgins noted that the spraying took place in mowed areas, rather than meadows, although beekeepers expressed concern that the wind could carry the insecticide to neighboring plants. Bundy said the application of the insecticide could have a significant impact on the broader agricultural community. Beyond fueling honey sales, bees play a vital role in Loudoun’s rural economy by pollinating many crops, he said. Just as beekeepers work with farmers to coordinate the timing and application of pesticides, Bundy said, the same relationship should exist with the county.


Family lobbies for soldier to be included in Taliban prisoner swap

The parents of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, an American captured by the Taliban nearly three years ago, have made an emotional appeal for the Obama administration to make a deal with the insurgents to release him in exchange for Afghan prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “Everybody is frustrated with how slowly the process has evolved,” Bob Bergdahl said in a newspaper interview in the family’s home state of Idaho. “I’m pushing it hard. We started out by trying to encourage the Taliban to take care of our son. . . . Now, we’re worried that the government isn’t concerned enough to put him on the [negotiating] table.” Hours after the appeal was published in Wednesday’s Idaho Mountain Express, the administration broke its own silence on Sgt. Bergdahl, detailing what it said were nonstop efforts to locate and free him, through negotiations or other means. “I wouldn’t rule anything in or out,” said Col. Dave Lapan, director of the Defense Department press office. Late last year, State Department negotiators put together a tentative deal in which five Taliban prisoners would be transferred from Cuba to house arrest in Qatar, where their families could join them. Bergdahl was to be released after the first two insurgents arrived. But the deal fell apart, and U.S-Taliban peace talks have been stalled since January. The appeal from Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s parents has induced the administration to make public its efforts to win his release in U.S.-Taliban negotiations that have been stalled since January. (Anonymous/AP/IntelCenter) The Washington Post had withheld information on the Bergdahl aspect of the negotiations since last year at the request of White House officials, who said publicizing them could endanger his life. Those Taliban members opposed to negotiations, they said, might kill him to stop the talks. Bergdahl’s parents, Bob and Jani, are scheduled as featured speakers at the annual Rolling Thunder Memorial Day demonstration on behalf of missing and imprisoned U.S. service members this month in Washington. Administration officials, who anticipated the family might choose that moment to speak out, appeared surprised at the Idaho interview. “We had concerns about the security situation,” said one U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. “But this is now a different scenario. If they want to talk about it,” the official said of the parents, “we can’t ask for it to be withheld.” A senior U.S. military


What about trying to free Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl?

It is appalling that the United States is releasing high-level detainees from a prison in Afghanistan, in a “strategic release” program [“U.S. frees high-level Afghan detainees,” front page, May 7], while the Taliban still holds a U.S. soldier as a prisoner of war. Bowe R. Bergdahl What is being done to gain this forgotten soldier’s release? Jack M. Sands, Waldorf


The May 6 front-page article “Psychiatrists seek new name, and less stigma, for PTSD” touched on the shame that soldiers associate with having a mental disorder, but it skirted the importance of protecting them from recurrent exposure to combat. A 2008 Army surgeon general’s study “found that more than 25 percent of soldiers who completed three or four tours of duty in Iraq showed signs of mental-health problems such as PTSD, compared to 11 percent after a first deployment.” My Universal National Service Act, aka “the draft bill,” will help reduce the burden of our soldiers, who make up less than 1 percent of the American population. By requiring 30 million Americans from ages 18 to 25 to perform two years of national service in either the armed services or in civilian life, we will be asking for shared sacrifice from all citizens. Charles B. Rangel, Washington The writer, a Democrat, represents New York’s 15th District in the U.S. House.


Roman Totenberg, violin master and teacher, dies at 101

Totenberg said in an interview, “he would play on the street, and people would give him bread and butter. He said it was the first time he realized the power of music, because people paid him with what was most valuable to them.” In 1921, Mr. Totenberg’s family moved to Warsaw, where he studied at a conservatory and made his solo debut with an orchestra at 11. He received a gold medal from the Chopin Conservatory before moving to Berlin in 1928 to study with renowned teacher Carl Flesch. As the Nazis consolidated power throughout Germany, Mr. Totenberg moved to Paris, where he studied mathematics at the Sorbonne and music with conductor Pierre Monteux and violinist George Enescu. In 1935, after several private performances in Washington salons, Mr. Totenberg appeared at DAR Constitution Hall with the National Symphony Orchestra. A Washington Post review noted the “rousing welcome to the young Polish violinist,” who was called back to the stage for six curtain calls. “His playing is pervaded with a continuous glow,” critic Ray C.B. Brown wrote, “a steady radiance of timbre which indicates his emotional identity with the music.” Mr. Totenberg toured South America with Rubinstein in 1937 and performed at the White House, where Eleanor Roosevelt personally served him dinner. Through the 1940s, Mr. Totenberg was an itinerant virtuoso, performing as a soloist and chamber musician around the globe. He performed works from every period of the violin repertoire and premiered new pieces by many 20th-century composers, including Paul Hindemith, Darius Milhaud and William Schuman. Mr. Totenberg, who was 11 when he had his first violin student, began teaching in earnest in the 1940s at conservatories in New York and Baltimore and at summer music festivals in Colorado, Massachusetts and Maine. In 1961, he joined Boston University and took on select private students. “One of the joys of teaching,” Mr. Totenberg said in 1995, “is that you open . . . doors to students. It’s very gratifying to open a new door and have them say, ‘Oh, what a beautiful room!’ ” Botstein, who was 13 when he began studying with Mr. Totenberg, said he could be an imposing, if quietly encouraging teacher. “I remember distinctly after about eight months of exercises and scales, he smiled at me and said, ‘Not bad.’ ” Botstein said. “That was the highest praise. I was on cloud nine for months.” Mr. Totenberg’s


Aspiring D.C. pot dealers challenge rejections to sell medical marijuana

they have decided not to pursue legal action. For nearly a year, the women have used their retirement savings to lease a dispensary location in Shaw, hoping to provide medical marijuana to people with glaucoma, AIDS, cancer and multiple sclerosis. They want to know exactly where they fell short in their months-long application bid. “We don’t want to waste their time or our time,” Rice said. “It’s confusing even to us.” The health department, which is overseeing the roll-out of the medical marijuana program, relied on a panel of experts to score each application. The agency told one applicant that much of the proposal was “adequate,” but denied it anyway. It dinged at least three of the unsuccessful applicants for not providing a sample label even though the application didn’t require one. Rice’s group asked to see its scores through a request under the District of Columbia Freedom of Information Act. But the agency refused to release the scores or other material that would shed light on the panel’s decision-making process, arguing that a final announcement has not yet been made, and that such documents contain trade secrets. The scores are also part of confidential deliberations by government officials that the city is not legally obligated to disclose, said health department spokeswoman Najma Roberts. That explanation troubles the applicants who were turned away. “I don’t understand why this is so secretive, especially for something so high-profile,” said Tom Lindenfeld, a local political consultant working with Compassion Centers, which is affiliated with an established dispensary operator in California. The two other groups that have filed appeals are the Health Company, which is led by Michael Duplessie, a Bethesda ophthalmologist, and the Free World Remedy, led by Jonathan Marlow, a competitive bass fisherman from Northern Virginia whose mother suffers from multiple sclerosis. The legal challenges are the latest wrinkle in a selection process marred by glitches from the start. Since passing a medical marijuana law in 2010, the District has taken a go-slow approach in an effort to avoid some of the mistakes that have been made in other jurisdictions, such as Colorado and California, where critics say medical marijuana has become little more than legalized drug dealing. The District’s regulations are among the toughest in the country, with strict limits on how many plants can be grown, how much the dispensaries can charge and who can buy it. Only people with


Civilization V: Gods and Kings hands-on preview

their religions from scratch. Adding shrines and temples to your empire gains you Faith, which in turn can be spent to found a religion or build missionary units. You can mix and match aspects of religion to get different bonuses that fit your personal style before sending missionaries out to convert other cities to your faith. Combat has also changed in the expansion — particularly for naval units — which requires a bit more strategy from the player. Your navy now has ranged and melee units, meaning that it’s probably best to move in fleets. The same is true of your land units, which fight on a much more nuanced scale that makes you more likely take the time to send out a few units to flank an enemy rather than just sending one out with the hope that your luck will carry the day. If you like to be a little sneakier, the game also gives you the option of stealing research from your neighbors by training spies. The espionage element isn’t sketched out quite as well as most other aspects of Civ, mainly because you never see your recruits’ faces or hear their voices. Maybe that’s normal spy protocol, but it’s honestly it a little less fun to steal if you can’t see your agents sneaking around. Still, it’s great to see the espionage dynamic included in the expansion. The game also adds a handful of new rulers vying for global dominance — including Dido, Gustavus Adolphus and Boudicca — and has some great additions to the technology tree that give even veteran players something new and exciting to work toward. The game preview ended too early to take advantage of a few of the options listed, but they included improved weapons units such as World War I tanks and awesome new wonders like the Hubble Space Telescope or the City of Petra. (That was for you, “Indiana Jones” fans.) The deep changes to the gameplay and new twists on old features make Gods and Kings a great follow-up to Civilization V, and well worth a look. If the hours I sunk into the preview alone are any indication, this is an expansion that was worth a two-year wait . Related stories: Xbox bundle would be next step in console price wars Wonkblog - End the Fed: The video game Diablo III out for open beta this weekend


Records: Suspect in tourist’s death sought gun

The 19-year-old District man charged with killing a 66-year-old tourist sought to buy a gun in the week before that attack, according to court documents. Police on Wednesday said they charged Michael W. Davis, brother of professional football players Vernon and Vontae Davis, with first-degree murder in the death of Gary Dederichs of Denver. Davis has also been charged with two counts of assault with intent to kill while armed for allegedly sneaking up on people in his Petworth neighborhood in Northwest Washington and hitting them on the head with a hammer. According to court documents released Thursday, Davis asked a person in his neighborhood how he could buy a gun on at least five occasions in the week leading up to Dederichs’s April 24 death from a head wound in an alley in the 800 block of Emerson Street NW. The documents did not indicate whether Davis acquired a gun. None of the attacks in which he is charged involved firearms. The witness who told police that Davis asked about guns did not say he sold him one, according to the documents, although he did tell Davis he knew someone who could. Gary Dederichs, a 66-year-old tourist from Denver who was killed in Petworth in April. (AP) The same witness, who told police he knew Davis from the neighborhood for several years, said Davis had a history of PCP use, according to court documents. It was unclear from the documents how recently the witness said Davis had used the drug. Davis was held for psychiatric evaluation a year ago after his teachers and guardian became fearful of his behavior, according to other court papers. Davis was held for approximately 10 days, according to those documents. The court papers do not indicate whether Davis displayed any violence last year, only that he needed treatment. They also do not say what happened while he was held. During a hearing Thursday in D.C. Superior Court, defense attorney Dana Page said that the witness came forward after Davis had been arrested and only provided information that had already been in the media with regard to the alleged attacks. Police were investigating five total attacks, including the fatal beating of Dederichs, in the same area. Another hearing was scheduled for Friday. Davis has been held and evaluated since his arrest, and the hearing is expected to cover details of his mental condition. Page, from


Afghan commanders show new defiance in dealings with Americans

in a stronger position to stymie the American strategy. The transition will continue in the coming months. This summer, a number of districts and provinces will be formally entrusted to Afghan security forces, the third round of regional transitions. In September, Afghans will assume responsibility for the U.S. military prison at Bagram, with about 3,000 detainees. In the past, Western officials questioned whether Karzai’s opposition to night raids and other U.S.-led operations was politically driven — aimed at proving to his people that he was capable of resisting American demands. Now, with more transitional milestones looming, Afghan political and military leaders say their growing responsibility has made the issue of civilian casualties even more delicate. “Most of the people will say, ‘I don’t blame the foreigners if they kill us, but why do you kill me?’ ” Karimi said. “We have to be concerned. We have to have people on our side.” Each time civilians are killed in either a NATO or Afghan operation, Karzai or one of his advisers calls the Defense Ministry for an explanation. Karimi said the president’s involvement in military affairs centers largely on reducing civilian casualties rather than on dictating troop levels or strategy. NATO officials say they have greatly reduced the number of civilians killed in operations in recent years. The United Nations last year attributed 400 civilian deaths to NATO and Afghan forces, a slight decrease from 2010. “We have significantly improved attention to detail when it comes to targeting,” a U.S. official said. Human rights organizations say they fear that the methods and institutions developed by NATO to both track and prevent civilian casualties will not be replicated by the Afghan security forces. “Right now, Afghan forces don’t have systems in place to prevent and respond to civilian casualties they may cause. International forces evolved their thinking over a decade, realizing they needed a civilian casualty tracking team and policies to investigate civilian harm caused by their own forces,” said Sarah Holewinski, executive director of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict. “Without those systems in place, verbal commitments from the Afghan government to not harm civilians are likely to fall flat as Afghan forces take over.” More world news coverage: - Only fear can enter Chen’s village - Pentagon to expand cybersecurity program for defense contractors - Attack in Syria shreds U.N.-backed ceasefire - Read more headlines from around the world


In Atlantic City, the Revel resort brims with celebrity-chef restaurants

chefs would in turn attract their big-city regulars to that infamous boardwalk — the one so bleakly depicted in Bruce Springsteen’s “Atlantic City” (“Down on the boardwalk they’re getting ready for a fight . . . ”). (Gene Thorp/The Washington Post) While Wiedmaier may not be a celebrity on the level of Jose Garces and Marc Forgione, a pair of media-savvy Iron Chefs who also have restaurants at Revel, he’s a bankable name in the Washington market, where he owns and operates five restaurants, including Marcel’s, his elegant, high-end exercise in French-Flemish cooking, which topped the local Zagat ratings for food in 2011. The guy has more than Old World cooking chops; he has the ability to translate those chops into an approachable, affordable experience like the Mussel Bar. Those expecting a replica of Wiedmaier’s Mussel Bar in Bethesda will be in for a surprise. The Atlantic City version is a Mussel Bar on steroids. It’s essentially a mash-up of Mussel Bar and his Brasserie Beck, with a more expansive menu (including a 52-ounce porterhouse for $110!), a wine list that exceeds 250 bottles, a live music stage and a lengthy bar whose focal point may not be the wall of beers behind the counter but the Harley-Davidson chopper that hangs over it. The bike is Wiedmaier’s. “He has a couple more Harleys, and this is the most uncomfortable,” says Ramon Narvaez, food and beverage director for the Mussel Bar. If there’s any theme to the restaurants at Revel, it’s this: Like some philosophical exercise in how context changes an object, Revel seems to alter the nature of the eateries and the chefs invited to the oceanfront spot. The Mussel Bar is different, yes, but so is the still-unopened Central Michel Richard, the third in the Washington chef’s budding chain of casual American-influenced bistros. (The Revel version is scheduled to open around Wednesday.) While many of the design elements remain the same at the Central in Atlantic City — the circular light fixtures, the decorative stack of dishes, the open kitchen — there’s something unmistakably different about the New Jersey spot. It has to do with Central’s location in Revel. It’s situated near the elevators in a hallway leading to the casino floor. The restaurant has been designed with low walls to allow diners to watch the passing foot traffic. It gives Central the feel of an airport eatery. More


Bluejacket brewery gets a head start

taste of their first collaboration beer, an imperial porter, at Birch & Barley and ChurchKey on June 7, before the SAVOR craft beer festival that weekend, along with other hard-to-find beers from the Florida breweries. Thick, dark and about 10 percent alcohol, it was inspired by the Funky Buddha head brewer’s recent love affair with salted chocolate. The end product will be a movie-snack-themed beer laced with Florida sea salt, cacao nibs, vanilla beans and dry-roasted peanuts. Parisi brewed two other collaboration beers this week during her trip to California for the 2012 Craft Brewers Conference. Outside Los Angeles, she worked with Patrick Rue’s the Bruery on a syrupy Belgian-style quadrupel with rosemary and local plums. In San Diego, at the Pizza Port Ocean Beach brewpub, she helped brew a Scotch ale containing house-smoked malt. Even though what Bluejacket is doing is rare, it isn’t entirely unheard of. The District’s 3 Stars Brewing, for example, released several collaboration beers during the past year while its brewery was under construction. But 3 Stars was working with relatively low-profile regional breweries, whereas Bluejacket’s approach is set apart by Engert and Parisi’s ability to leverage their many relationships with talented brewers farther afield. (They also have more financial and logistical support than many brewing start-ups, thanks to NRG.) Later this year, Parisi will brew at Dogfish Head’s Rehoboth Beach brewpub and at Peekskill Brewing, in New York, where the head brewer from Maine’s Allagash Brewing also will participate. Of course, Parisi and Engert intend to collaborate with breweries closer to home. Engert says he has had promising conversations with the brewers behind DC Brau, Alexandria’s Cabinet Artisanal Brewhouse and Baltimore’s Stillwater Artisanal Ales and the Brewer’s Art. What accounts for Bluejacket’s early fervor? Parisi cites one factor, which has helped make collaboration beers a fixture of the U.S. craft beer scene: They give brewers opportunities to hang out with friends and learn from one another. “That’s the most fun thing about these collaborations,” she says. “You really see how these other brewers think. How would they approach it differently?” Bluejacket, however, isn’t just pursuing collaborations because they’re fun. Engert says the strategy will allow him to start selling Bluejacket-branded beers as soon as possible, with regular releases coming out over the course of the summer and beyond. Many of the beers also will be appropriate for cellaring or barrel-aging, enabling him to save


JPMorgan is embarrassed, but not endangered

accounts. I’m all in favor of reining in banks that hold federally insured deposits. I opposed repealing Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law that separated commercial banking involving insured deposits from investment banking, which is a much riskier business. But Congress, in its wisdom, repealed Glass-Steagall to allow Citibank and Travelers Insurance to combine, a merger that has since largely been undone because management of what became Citigroup had no idea how to run such a large and complex organization. In an ideal world, we would unscramble this egg by forcing institutions to shrink until they were no longer too big to be allowed to fail. However, we’re not going to do that — instead, we’re trying to solve the problem by instituting new and more competent regulation than we’ve had. The Volcker Rule, named for former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, is an example of the problem involved in regulating giant companies in a complex world. The principle sounds wonderful and simple: Don’t let banks use federally insured deposits for risky trades. But implementing it is proving to be incredibly difficult, as realists, including me, predicted would happen. Once bank lawyers finish finding loopholes in the detailed provisions, whatever they prove to be, the rule will probably have little meaningful impact. So bash Morgan all you like for its trading losses, and feel free to snicker at the spectacle of Jamie Dimon losing his swagger and having to eat crow. But don’t confuse Morgan’s mess-up with the supposed need for the Volcker Rule. The Volcker Rule would have symbolic impact, by appearing to rein in Wall Street. But it will prove to be more useful as a full-employment act for loophole specialists than for reining in the banks. Disclosure: I own about $1,400 of Morgan stock, an insignificant portion of my investable assets. It’s the result of bank consolidations and decades of reinvested dividends. The holding stems from my purchase of one share of National Bank of Detroit about 40 years ago, when I was the Detroit Free Press’s banking reporter and wanted guaranteed access to shareholder documents and the company’s annual meeting. More from Post Business: Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson explains false bio, report says Apple’s rumored iPad mini to be under $300, report says Extended jobless benefits cut in eight states Spain’s bank crisis weighs on recovery With new Bing, is Microsoft the first to get ‘social search’ right?


Faded maps from library’s vaults reveal buried treasures of Washington history

failed, and the exposition went to Chicago. Perhaps the most interesting maps are those that show what the area was like before the city was born. One newer map, researched by Priscilla W. McNeill and published in 1991, depicts tracts like Widow’s Mite in what is today Foggy Bottom, Flint’s Discovery, northeast of Dupont Circle, and Hamburg, north of what is now the Mall’s Constitution Gardens. Notley Young’s plantation was along the water in the area of what today is Maine Avenue SW. A map dating from the late 1700s depicts the footprints of the riverfront mansion, two graveyards, the “overseers garden” and an 11-structure complex designated “houses occupied by negro’s.” One of the presenters at the conference, Dan Bailey, director of the Imaging Research Center at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, has built a high-tech visual re-creation of Young’s vanished spread. Walking in the footsteps of the old map makers, Bailey said: “We picked Notley Young’s plantation for a variety of reasons. . . . He was a major slaveholder. . . . He was also Catholic.” Bailey said his team studied the map, talked to experts and researched local history. “We [virtually] rebuilt the buildings,” he said. “We positioned the buildings in space. One of the maps gave us clues as to where gardens were, where tobacco fields were.” The conclusion, he said, was that this was “a pretty classic plantation, with the long driveway coming up, trees on both sides.” Indeed, a 1912 presentation before the District’s old Columbia Historical Society by a former resident of the mansion, George C. Henning, paints just such a picture. Henning, who had lived there as a child in the late 1830s, described the locust trees along the river bank and the yellow jasmine that grew north of the house, which had a pillared front porch. Young died in 1802. His house was demolished in 1856. But his plantation lives on in the virtual universe, and a map vault in the Library of Congress. The conference, titled “Visualizing the Nation’s Capital,” runs Friday and Saturday. It’s free and open to the public, but reservations are required. They can be made at specialevents@ loc.gov or by calling 202-707-1616. Read more from The Washington Post: Legislators in Va. face much work on last day Customers split over Pepco tree pruning Area churches grapple with same-sex marriage Sign-spinning business has ups and downs


Culture war looms as Israel pledges to end ultra-Orthodox military exemptions

Netanyahu suggested when he vowed Thursday to make reforms “without setting public against public.” Some say it is too late. Resentment against the ultra-Orthodox, known as Haredim, is intense among Israel’s secular majority and a growing number of officials. Although the current debate is focused on the military — universal conscription is central to Israeli identity — many say the issue is more broadly about spreading the burdens of citizenship to a subsidized, insular group that is expanding in size and influence. An Israeli soldier from an ultra-Orthodox Jewish unit in the Israeli army holds a gun during a training session in 2005. Military exemptions for ultra-Orthodox religious students have fueled resentment among Israel’s secular majority. (Abir Sultan/AP) “There is internal turmoil. It’s social, it’s economic, and it goes to the soul of Israel,” said Uri Regev, a Reform rabbi who is president of Hiddush, a religious freedom organization that is critical of ultra-Orthodox military exemptions. “The way of life that the Haredim adopt challenges our stability.” Expanded political clout Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, granted military exemptions to what was then a group of a few hundred Haredi students, in part because it was assumed that their lifestyle would fade over time. Today, the ultra-Orthodox comprise one-tenth of Israel’s 7.8 million citizens, and 63,000 received exemptions for religious study in 2010. In February, Israel’s Supreme Court annulled a decade-old law created to increase ultra-Orthodox participation in the army, saying it had largely failed. Last year, 15 percent of recruitment-age Haredim enlisted, compared with 75 percent in the rest of the Jewish population. The government pledged last week to craft a replacement that also drafts more Arab Israelis, who are not required to serve. “This issue where some serve and others do not is a moral stain on Israeli society,” said Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz. The ultra-Orthodox, while a varied group, are resistant to military service, some zealously so. Most believe the Jewish state should not exist before the Messiah’s arrival, and they insulate themselves from what they regard as the impious influences of the secular world. Their views are increasingly sparking controversies, including over Haredi demands for gender segregation on public buses. For Haredi men, life centers on the revival of Torah scholarship, which was decimated during the Holocaust. Yitzhak Goldknopf, a prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbi in Jerusalem, said that makes study at religious academies, or yeshivas, as important


Emil de Cou, associate conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra. (Scott Suchman) This weekend, the Virginia Chamber Orchestra is giving a couple of premieres. What’s notable about them is they’re by Claude Debussy, whose 150th birthday is this year. Debussy’s sole opera, “Pelleas et Melisande,” remains a distinctive standout in the operatic canon, but the composer took a few stabs at dramatic vocal writing before it, including the unfinished opus “Diane au bois,” about the god Eros’s seduction of the chaste Diana. With “Diane,” as later with “Pelleas,” Debussy started writing at a point that interested him, the love duet — “something,” says Paul Meecham, the president and CEO of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, “that he could get his teeth into.” Meecham is not usually concerned with the Virginia Chamber Orchestra, but he has a direct interest in the premieres. One of them, an orchestration of the opera’s overture, is by his old friend Emil de Cou, who when he’s not leading the National Symphony Orchestra’s summer concerts at Wolf Trap and the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra is the VCO’s music director. And the other, an orchestration of the love duet, is by Meecham himself. Orchestral administrators are not generally known for having this level of musical ability. Nor are they noted for their diffidence. “You don’t often run across modest people in the music world,” observes de Cou, who found out about Meecham’s Debussy work when the two overlapped at the San Francisco Symphony in the 1990s, where Meecham was general manager. But Meecham, who trained as a pianist and violinist, downplays his musicological past. He did his master’s thesis on Debussy’s unpublished vocal works, and orchestrated the love duet as a part of the project. “I must have told Emil in a weak moment,” Meecham now says of the events that led to his first — and, he insists, last — American orchestral performance. “Years later, he called me up and said, ‘What about “Diane”?’ I said, ‘You can’t be serious,’ and dug the thing up.” De Cou is no stranger to Debussy reconstruction. His “Debussy: Rediscovered” recording, made in 2000, includes his own orchestration of the odd “Printemps — Suite Symphonique,” which he subsequently performed at the Washington National Cathedral with the NSO in 2003. “Printemps,” written, like “Diane,” while Debussy was living in Rome as a recipient of the Prix de Rome in 1885 and 1886,


Review of Steve Coll’s ‘Private Empire’: How ExxonMobil bent Washington to its will

end of Raymond’s ridicule sometimes referred to him darkly as ‘the Lip,’ ” Coll writes, a reference to a childhood cleft palate. Raymond’s reforms “would turn one of America’s oldest, most rigid corporations into an even harder, leaner place of rule books and fear-inspiring management techniques,” Coll explains. The introspection and internal reforms triggered by the Valdez spill, plus the new markets in oil and gas that opened up around the world following the collapse of the Soviet Union, propelled the company to new heights, with revenue and profits multiplying to record levels. By 2005, the company’s profits reached $36.1 billion, more than any corporation had ever made before. The company’s size, its profits, internal discipline and the critically important product it sold — energy — gave ExxonMobil inordinate power, which it used ruthlessly. “Compromise was not Exxon’s way” Coll states wryly. That conclusion is borne out by Coll’s detailed examination of many instances where the company had to confront rivals, critics, governments or any group it felt could threaten it. A classic example was the company’s successful lobbying of the U.S. Congress to continually change obscure provisions in the tax code that would yield billions in savings. “A sardonic line among ExxonMobil lobbyists in the Washington office held that the corporation’s number-one issue of concern was taxation; its number two-issue was tax; its number-three issue was tax; and its number four-issue varied from year to year,” Coll writes. The number-four issue that quickly became as important as taxes — and that did not change from year to year — was ExxonMobil’s crusade against efforts to lower carbon emissions. The company aggressively fought initiatives aimed at slowing the increase of global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels. It did everything from funding congressional campaigns to supporting think-tanks, “climate coalitions” and so-called experts who would spread doubts about the science behind global-warming concerns. It did not matter that these “experts” were often not climate scientists, Coll notes. “The books authored by members of this movement included titles such as ‘Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception To Keep You Misinformed’ and ‘The Global Warming Deception: How a Secret Elite Plans to Bankrupt America and Steal Your Freedom.’ ” At the 2000 annual meeting of ExxonMobil shareholders, an activist confronted Raymond and demanded a long-term solution to global warming. “If the data were compelling I


A compelling plan for Iranian talks

authors propose special procedures for dual-use technologies that are near the dividing line. A big selling point for the Iranians is that this approach is based on the pledge by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that Iran won’t build nuclear weapons. Khamenei’s most explicit statement came on state television in February: “Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.” President Obama sent a back-channel communication to Khamenei in March that his fatwa banning nuclear weapons would be a good starting point for negotiations. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivered the message when he met Khamenei on March 29. Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman reiterated Obama’s theme during the first round of negotiations with the Iranians in Istanbul on April 14. So how could Iran fulfill this pledge in a way that reassures Israel and other nations that fear a nuclear-armed Iran? The Carnegie experts propose a red-yellow-green system, like a nuclear traffic light. In the “green” approved category would be nuclear power plants, medical research reactors and basic academic and scientific research. Forbidden “red” activities would be those directly related to weaponization, such as warhead design and procurement of items used in making and testing bombs. The “yellow” dual-use activities would be the trickiest problem, and the firewall would have to be carefully constructed. Some enrichment of uranium might be permitted, for example, if it were verifiably limited below 5 percent — so it could be used for only peaceful purposes. So-called “neutron triggers” would be banned, since they could be used to initiate a bomb’s explosion, except for those configured for oil exploration, which would be supplied to Iran. Any real reduction of tensions with Iran will also require greater openness and transparency about past as well as present activities, so that each side is confident it isn’t being cheated, and that its basic security hasn’t been compromised. That’s part of the Carnegie proposal, too. “This approach is not a zero-sum game,” argue Perkovich and Levite. “It would require commitments and concessions from both sides.” And by defining the activities that are part of building a nuclear weapon, it would fill a gap in the existing Non-Proliferation Treaty — and could be applied to other nations, not just Iran. The negotiations that


The triage commander: Gen. John Allen hastily transforming U.S. mission in Afghanistan

a night — and he sets aside several hours each week “to think about big ideas.” When he was a brigadier general, he told Naval Academy students in a letter that he had been profoundly affected by reading classic military historians, among them Stephen Ambrose, John Keegan and Barbara Tuchman. “If my house were on fire and we were all running for our lives,” he wrote, “I would first save my family, and then all my volumes by these writers.” He has not yet informed Obama, who has indicated that he wants to keep withdrawing forces next year, how many troops he believes should stay in Afghanistan through 2013, but he is not digging in his boots to maintain all of the 68,000 troops that will remain after the current drawdown phase is completed at the end of September. By the end of the year, he predicted, “we could find that the operational environment for ’13 could be pretty significantly different,” although he said he will still need Special Operations forces, trainers for the Afghan troops and some conventional units to operate in areas not yet ready for transfer to Afghan control. It is a very different method from that taken by Petraeus, who sought to push Obama, during war cabinet discussions in 2011, to delay the drawdown until the end of this year so that U.S. forces could continue large-scale counterinsurgency missions. Petraeus failed. But Allen did manage to persuade Obama, in private discussions, not to announce any additional troop cuts until he provides a range of options to the White House in late fall. To those in the two-story yellow building that houses the NATO headquarters in Kabul, Allen’s approach to the troop reductions reflects his leadership style. Under Petraeus, “it was much more of a one-man show. There was much less oxygen for debate,” said a senior NATO official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the two generals. “John Allen listens a lot more carefully to what people are saying to him.” When Allen arrived in Kabul last July, the U.S. and NATO war plan called for a gradual transition of territory to Afghan control by the end of 2014, the point at which NATO’s combat mission will end. Based on the assumption that the United States would maintain substantial combat power in the country until then, the strategy envisaged the most violent, Taliban-saturated


Robert J. Hoage, spokesman for National Zoo, dies at 66

Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville. He had complications from amyloidosis, a disease of the blood and bone marrow, his son Neal Hoage said. Dr. Hoage joined the staff at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoological Park in 1974 as a researcher. He participated in studies of wild animals around the world. He became chief of the office of public affairs in 1981 and served in that capacity until retiring in 2003. He also taught animal behavior and ecology at colleges, including Montgomery College and Prince George’s Community College. Robert Jay Hoage was born Jan. 30, 1946, in Washington. He was a 1964 graduate of Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and a 1969 graduate of the University of Maryland. At the University of Pittsburgh, he received a master’s degree in anthropology in 1971 and a doctorate in biological anthropology and primatology in 1978. Robert J. Hoage was former director of public affairs for the National Zoo. (FAMILY PHOTO) As a researcher, his subjects of study included an endangered South American monkey. While working at the National Zoo, he received a grant from the Fish and Wildlife Service to explore the establishment of a tropical primate studies program at several U.S. universities. As the National Zoo’s chief spokesman, his duties included explanations of the zoo’s conservation and scientific work. He announced hatchings of Komodo dragons and Micronesian kingfishers and such research breakthroughs as artificial insemination in cheetahs, pandas and elephants. He also discussed such unusual events as the death of a transient mental patient who in 1995 was mauled by lions after entering the lion enclosure. Dr. Hoage produced eight symposia, with speakers from scientific organizations and academic institutions. He edited and coordinated five volumes stemming from the symposia. After retiring from the National Zoo, he taught until this year at Notre Dame of Maryland University in Baltimore. In retirement, he spent time on the Chesapeake Bay on a motor cruiser. He was a resident of Pasadena in Anne Arundel County. His first marriage, to Carole Meininger, ended in divorce. His second wife, Patricia Pendergast, whom he married in 1976, died in 2010. Survivors include a son from his first marriage, Christopher Hoage of Millersville; two sons from his second marriage, Neal Hoage of Silver Spring and Kevin Hoage of Pasadena; a stepdaughter, Theresa Yost of Poolesville; two brothers, James Hoage of Severna Park and Donald Hoage of Kensington; five grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.


Foreign banks freezing out U.S. millionaires

who live elsewhere face obstacles. Before Fatca, U.S. citizens in Bangkok or Manila could find investment opportunities through non-U.S. banks such as HSBC. Now their only option is to fly to cities where U.S. firms operate. Limited choices If Americans choose to bank with a non-U.S. firm such as HSBC, their investment choices are limited. At the HSBC branch in the bank’s Asia regional headquarters in Hong Kong, Americans can hold only savings deposits. They’re prohibited from opening accounts to trade local stocks or buy products available to non-U.S. customers, including 45 equity funds investing in China or other geographies and industries. There’s only one comparable emerging-markets equity option available on HSBC’s U.S.-based investors’ Web site. Financial institutions that choose not to accept American customers still must determine whether new or existing clients are “U.S. persons,“ in order to comply with Fatca, according to Michael Brevetta, director of U.S. tax consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Singapore. The definition includes citizens, green-card holders and non-Americans deemed U.S. residents by being present in the country for at least 183 days over a three-year period, which makes them subject to U.S. tax on their worldwide income, according to the IRS. The compliance costs for banks, asset managers and insurance companies “could stretch into the billions of dollars,” Brevetta said. Private-banking firms in Hong Kong and Singapore already have operating costs between 88 percent and 90 percent of their revenue, compared with 70 percent at Swiss banks, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated in a September report. Penalties for not complying will be stiff. Non-U.S. firms that don’t make required disclosures will be subject to 30 percent withholding of certain dividends, interest or proceeds from the sale of assets they or their customers receive from U.S. sources, according to Baker & McKenzie’s Weisman, who has conducted workshops and seminars on the proposed rules for current and potential clients in Hong Kong and Singapore. “Overwhelmingly, financial institutions outside the U.S. don’t like it, for obvious reasons,” Weisman said, calling the withholding tax a “stick” the U.S. is wielding. “The U.S. is outsourcing a tax-compliance function, which is enormously expensive.” Renouncing citizenship Americans who don’t comply with Fatca are deemed “recalcitrant,” and income they receive from U.S. sources also is subject to a 30 percent withholding tax, said Jason Choi, a Singapore-based tax lawyer with Latham & Watkins. Renouncing citizenship is an option chosen by increasing numbers of Americans. A record


Philadelphia Orchestra at Strathmore

Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Charles Dutoit. (Chris Lee/Courtesy of the Philadelphia Orchestra) In these days of increasingly internationalized and homogenized orchestral playing, we sometimes have to remind ourselves that the great orchestras of the world once possessed sonorities so uniquely their own that they were instantly recognizable. The Philadelphia Orchestra, which played a WPAS concert at Strathmore Hall on Friday under its chief conductor, Charles Dutoit, was renowned during much of the last century for its ultra-saturated string tone. It was a sound cultivated by music directors Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy, exaggerated by the old Academy of Music’s thick acoustics and beefed-up on its Columbia recordings. Recent decades have seen the Philadelphians leave behind that singularly lush string sound, as they’ve become a lither and more versatile ensemble. But there were moments Friday in certain phrases — such as the opening of the second movement of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 and the expansively lyrical moments in the first movement of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto — when that decadently rich, old style returned. It was a pleasure to hear. But what was even more striking about those famous strings was how silken and luminous they sounded and how subtly responsive they were to Dutoit’s interpretive urgings. Dutoit — who has a decades-long relationship with this orchestra — is above all a scrupulous colorist, and he exploited the Shostakovich for its often subtle range of hues. There was drama, to be sure, in his reading of the symphony, as well as a succession of vivid incidents. But tension wasn’t always palpable, and the composer’s dark-night-of-the-soul angst was significantly missing. The first movement’s opening chords were more yearning than trenchant, and the largo was a relatively dry-eyed affair; the sonorities he elicited emphasized beauty over tragic weight. That meant a welcome lack of militaristic hectoring, but the reading felt a shade cosmopolitan for material of such enthusiastic brashness. Even with a reduced complement of strings in the Mendelssohn, the violins displayed a notable sheen, and the mellowness of the cellos was matched by eloquent wind and brass playing. Dutoit did a lovely job of blending the sectional voices and provided a comfortable carpet of sound to set off his young violin soloist, James Ehnes. Ehnes produced a handsome, keenly focused tone and delivered the piece with athletic technique, a fluidly even execution of the arpeggiated chords in the opening-movement cadenza, and exquisitely floated


Music review: Great Noise Ensemble in concert at the Atlas Performing Arts Center

Great Noise Ensemble has earned a reputation as an ambitious fixture of Washington’s new-music scene. (Kate Kress/Great Noise Ensemble) Although Great Noise Ensemble has earned a reputation as an ambitious fixture of Washington’s new music scene, its performances and repertoire choices vary in quality. Friday night’s concert inaugurated the group’s residency at the Atlas Performing Arts Center and was themed after the opening piece, Randall Woolf’s “Urban Legends,” which appealed more in theory than in practice. That Woolf combined taped rappers with chamber orchestra wasn’t problematic — classical and hip-hop mergers aren’t unusual. But the accompaniment, in design and performance, was unimaginatively matched to the powerful, socially conscious texts. There was also unevenness to Andrew Simpson’s Double Concerto (for violin and guitar). Playing up the folk and classical sides of both instruments was a good idea, but by piling on too many styles and textures, the concerto lost focus. The guitar, barely audible throughout, remained faceless. Only the second movement, infused by flamenco elements and energetic playing by violinist Andrea Vercoe, satisfied. Fortunately, the ensemble roared back after intermission with two strong pieces and performances. David Smooke’s “Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death,” inspired by crime scene dioramas, is essentially a mischievous, 15-minute concerto for toy piano. The composer sat at his tiny blood-red instrument, producing a Pandora’s box of eerie sounds by bowing (threading a single string through its guts) and pawing the insides, as if scratching an itch. A foghorn tolled eerily in the bassoon, while winds and strings creaked. Stefan Freund’s confidently scored “Three Urban Images” conjured scenes from a seedy Rochester, N.Y., neighborhood. Jolts of jazzy rhythms fueled the outer movements, where percussionist Chris DeChiara shined. The central panel sported a film noir feel, thanks to effective ensemble playing and the evocative bassoon of Alan Michels. Freund achieved an impressive American, almost Bernstein-like sound. Without doubt, the young Great Noise Ensemble is unafraid of risks. And for that, music lovers in Washington can be thankful.


“Total barbarity” as Mexican cartel dumps 49 torsos along highway

retaliation for the murder of 23 of the cartel’s members in the border city of Nuevo Laredo this month. Those victims were found May 4, with nine hung from a bridge in the center of town and the 14 severed heads of the others left in coolers outside city hall. “All of these acts are part of a media strategy to get attention,” said Javier Treviño, the former lieutenant governor of Nuevo Leon. Identifying the dead found Sunday will be difficult given the absence of identifying features, Mexican officials said, but they seemed eager to suggest that the 49 were not likely to have been innocent victims. Some of the torsos had tattoos of Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, the iconic grim-reaper figure that is worshiped widely in Mexico’s criminal underworld, they said. Forensic work will also be difficult because the victims appeared to have been dead at least 48 hours, and many of their bodies were covered in mud and dust. The site where they were dumped is near the tiny town of San Juan, about 75 miles south of the U.S. border town of Roma, Tex. Authorities searched the area and found no other victims, Domene said, emphasizing the possibility that the dead were killed in another state or location and driven to the site to be dumped. “They left them there so they would be seen,” he said. None of the torsos had bullet wounds, and the bodies appeared to have been transported along the unpaved back roads that wind among local farms and ranches, Domene said. A large deployment of Mexican federal police and soldiers was sent to search the area. Mexico’s presidential candidates have campaigned in the area on pledges that they will halt the violence that has turned Monterrey, the once-safe industrial capital of northern Mexico, into a gangster horror show. An arson attack carried out by Zetas gunmen on a casino in the city killed 52 in August. Monterrey’s renowned business community has been besieged by kidnappers and extortionists, and the threat to the city is so great that it risks becoming a drag on the entire Mexican economy, experts warn. More world news coverage: - Notable incidents of violence, mass graves in Mexico over the past year - Greece appears headed to new elections as talks stall - Ex-Taliban leader-turned peace negotiator shot dead - Read more headlines from around the world


Obama’s misguided wooing of an uninterested Putin

Obama nevertheless congratulated Putin on an election that international observers said was neither free nor fair. He has made repeal of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which limits U.S. trade with Russia, a priority in Congress this spring. What’s striking about this strategy is its disregard for the biggest foreign-policy lesson of Obama’s first term. The Arab Spring showed that “engagement” with autocratic leaders isn’t wise if their grip is slipping. With thousands of opposition demonstrators roaming the streets of Moscow and clashing with his security forces, Putin looks more than a little like Hosni Mubarak or Bashar al-Assad when Obama was courting them three years ago: For now he’s in control — but his governing model is broken, and his country is beginning to turn on him. A little bet-hedging would seem to be in order, particularly given Putin’s stiffing of a presidential invitation. That’s why the most wrongheaded piece of the administration’s policy may be its continuing and stubborn opposition to the “Magnitsky bill” — a piece of legislation, authored by Democrats, that aims to restore human rights to the center of U.S.-Russian relations. Sergei Magnitsky This sanction strikes at the heart of the web of corruption around Putin. Moscow’s bureaucratic mafiosi rely heavily on foreign bank accounts; they vacation in France, send their children to U.S. colleges and take refuge in London when they fall from Putin’s favor. The fear and loathing provoked in Moscow by the bill is encapsulated by item No. 3 on Putin’s new priority list: “Work actively on preventing unilateral extraterritorial sanctions by the U.S. against Russian legal entities and individuals.” Incredibly, Obama has sided with Putin against Congress. His lobbyists have tried repeatedly to block the bill, even though it has become key to passing the trade legislation Obama wants. As the measure moved toward a vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month, senior White House and State Department officials demanded that it be postponed until after Putin’s visit to Camp David. Now that Putin has canceled, maybe it’s time to put human rights in Russia back on the agenda. diehlj@washpost.com Read more about this issue: David J. Kramer and Robert Kagan: Replace Jackson-Vanik with the Magnitsky bill Ben Cardin: Accountability for Sergei Magnitsky’s killers Jennifer Rubin: Time to increase pressure on Putin The Post’s View: Press the Putin regime on human rights Masha Lipman: Russia’s strongman is losing his grip


Arlington’s Claire Hallissey will run marathon for British Olympic team

the junior ranks.” Back in 2005, when London was awarded the 2012 Summer Games, Hallissey trained with and occasionally competed for running clubs, but it was hardly serious business. She did, though, enjoy challenging herself. And running provided a break from her heady research into meningitis. As she moved beyond the 800- and 1,500-meter races she ran in her youth, attempting 3,000 and 5,000 races on the track, then 5K and 10K road races, she found surprising gratification: She did better, relatively speaking, as the races grew longer. A year after running her first 10K road race in 2004, she decided to try a half-marathon. In the 2005 Grunty Fen Half Marathon just north of Cambridge, where she earned her undegraduate degree, she finished second in 85:04. “It was more just a natural progression as I worked my way up through the distances,” Hallissey said. “As the races got longer, I did comparatively better in relation to other people.” After turning in her thesis and settling in Virginia, Hallissey decided to run the 2010 Cherry Blossom 10-miler here in Washington, her first road race in the United States. She finished eighth in 54:57. She ran a host of other small races throughout the region, and won many of them, including the Capital Crescent 5k in Bethesda (16:46), the Jingle All the Way 10K in Washington (35:17) and the Leesburg 10K (33:54). She met George Buckheit, the coach at the Capital Area Runners training group, at an event, and joined his club. She logged laps around the track at Washington-Lee High in Arlington and went on long runs along the C&O Canal. In November, Hallissey decided to tackle her first marathon, wondering if her propensity for better performances at longer distances would extend to the grandest road race of all. She finished a respectable 18th in the New York City Marathon in 2:36.13. It was then that she and her husband began pondering her Olympic prospects. “That was a very, very good time,” Matt Hallissey said. “That’s when it kind of became possible.” The next year, she ran the Chicago marathon. Her finish in 2:29:27 convinced her she was seriously in the mix for an Olympic spot. With her doctoral research out of the way, she could put all of her attention into that new goal. “I’ve wondered what [her] limit would be,” Matt Hallissey said. “There’s hasn’t been one yet.”


U.S. trains African soldiers for Somalia mission

Hawk Down” debacle. Thanks to an influx of U.S. aid and equipment, the Ugandan military has been willing to step into the breach. Ugandan officials have pledged to increase their forces in Somalia to 8,000 troops, the largest foreign contingent (Kenya and Burundi are the other major players, each contributing about 4,500 troops). U.S. officials praised the Ugandans’ performance and military skills. “They’re a very professional army,” said Maj. Albert Conley, deputy chief of the office of security cooperation for the U.S. military in Uganda. “I’ve never had a discussion on Clausewitzian theory with an African military officer before, but I have here.” Ugandan military officials said they have had no trouble finding recruits willing to go to Somalia, despite the dangers. “It has stepped up our credibility in the region, and any soldier would be very proud to be part of the mission,” said Col. J.B. Ruhesi, the Ugandan commander of the Singo training camp. Financial incentives also play a major role. The African Union pays troops about $1,000 a month to serve in Somalia — quintuple the usual salaries for many enlisted Ugandan soldiers. Ugandan military officials said about 80 of their troops have been killed in Somalia since 2007, although analysts suspect the number of casualties has been far higher. A leading cause of death for the African Union troops in Somalia has been homemade bombs — al-Shabab’s weapon of choice. U.S. trainers said they recently upgraded their course of instruction to help recruits learn how to avoid the explosives. To that end, the Defense Department recently sent about 20 Marines to the Singo training camp to provide specialized instruction in combat medicine and bomb detection. Although the Marines have never fought in Somalia, they have years of experience dealing with homemade bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan “When it comes to IEDs, there’s really nothing new under the sun,” said Marine Staff Sgt. Neal Fischer, referring to improvised explosive devices, the military’s term for rudimentary bombs. Fischer acknowledged that many of the Ugandan recruits are “raw” but said they were fast learners. “We’re looking to enhance their mobility in the field,” he said. “They’re here to learn this skill set so they can go back to Somalia.” More world news coverage: - 49 torsos found along Mexican highway - Greece’s new elections delay talks - Russian protesters’ peaceful stroll - Read more headlines from around the world


Global warming threatens pine forests, forcing federal officials to shift strategy

— are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Warmer temperatures have allowed native beetles to grow and feed on trees at a faster rate. Water deprivation and drought can also hurt them, and they can be crowded out by other tree species migrating to higher altitudes. “We know the consequences of doing nothing,” said Forest Service research ecologist Anna Schoettle, looking out from Rainbow Curve at a vista boasting both healthy conifers and ones that had turned red and gray after beetle infestations. “We have a threat we can’t ignore.” Diana Tomback, a biology professor at the University of Colorado at Denver who directs the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation, started studying whitebark as a graduate student in the 1970s. She was the first to discover that the tree depended on the diminutive Clark’s nutcracker to disperse its seeds: the bird pries seeds from whitebark cones and transports them in its throat pouch, depositing as many as 35,000 seeds in 30,000sites in a single season. Now, some regions of the Northern Rockies have experienced an 80 percent die-off of whitebark pines, and the Natural Resource Defense Council projects that between 80 and 100 percent of remaining trees in some areas will be killed by mountain pine beetles, whitepine blister rust or a combination of the two. The NRDC has petitioned to list the tree as an endangered species. “Seeing what’s happened to the whitebark pine really shakes you up,” Tomback said, adding that scientists and officials need to be “strategic” if they want to protect some of the remaining conifers growing near mountain tops. “There is certainly nothing that’s going to work to protect millions of acres of these high-elevation trees.” That is why federal officials are singling out trees such as the limber pine at the Beaver Ponds area, attaching a pouch filled with the chemical compound verbenone to ward off beetles. Verbenone mimics the scent of an insect pheromone, giving off a false signal that the tree has already suffered a mass attack, prompting the beetles to move on. “It’s like we draw them in and we tell them, ‘The hotel’s full,’ ” said Jeff Witcosky, a Forest Service entomologist in Lakewood, Colo. The West’s beetle epidemic may be beginning to wane, federal officials said, giving scientists the time they need to figure out how best to help the forest adapt to future changes.Mountain pine beetles killed 8.8 million acres


Researchers race to make a long-lasting battery for cellphones and other devices

a surge of new configurations and chemistry that may solve some of our low-battery woes, said Esther Takeuchi, a professor of advanced power systems at the State University of New York at Buffalo. “With the combination of new materials, new design concepts, and new production and manufacturing methodologies, I believe we will get there,” she said. The race is on Takeuchi said the current gold standard for batteries is lithium-ion, which was commercialized more than 20 years ago and is now commonly found in computers, camcorders and cellphones. Some researchers are trying to pack more power into existing lithium-ion cells; others are looking to incorporate such elements as sulfur, zinc, magnesium and even air into new types of batteries. But while the race is on to make this quantum leap, some observers caution that improvements will take longer than the big jumps in memory and speed that have occurred in the computer industry roughly every 18 months. “If you want to talk about a tenfold improvement, it might be a while,” said John Gartner, senior research analyst at Pike Research in Boulder, Colo. “But we are going to see consistent improvements across the board.” Batteries work In the 20th century, heavy but long-lasting lead-acid batteries were developed for vehicles, while portable yet disposable alkaline batteries were commercialized for flashlights, smoke detectors and almost everything else. Improvements to rechargeable lithium-ion batteries appear to have the most promise, at least right now. These batteries, used in most consumer electronics, including smartphones and iPads, have a limited life span and charge capacity. But researchers say they can be made tremendously more efficient and long-lasting. Researchers at the University of Texas developed the first lithium-ion rechargeable battery in the early 1980s, And while today’s lithium-ion batteries last longer than older nickel-metal-hydride rechargeables, some experts say there’s plenty of room for improvement. “Lithium-ion is only at the halfway point of what’s theoretically possible,” said Dane Boysen, director of the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy battery program, which has awarded $36 million to 10 projects since 2010. One of the grantees, Envia Systems of Newark, Calif., said in February that it could now more than double the power stored in its rechargeable lithium-ion battery, thanks to its new manganese-based cathode and silicon-carbon anode. The claim was verified by the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Ind., a federal lab that evaluates engineering and electronics


to a few dozen candidates, while Toyota reported in August that it is using magnesium, sulfur and a special electrolyte. Up in the air Then there are lithium-air batteries, which use carbon for their cathodes instead of metal oxides. Carbon is lighter and reacts with oxygen in the air to produce an electrical current. Although such a battery promises a 1,000-mile range for electric cars, engineers haven’t yet figured out how to make it recharge properly, according to New Scientist magazine. Lithium can also have issues. It ignites in contact with moist air. But IBM researchers in California and Switzerland reported this year that they have solved a key problem by finding a way to get rid of water vapor. IBM hopes to have a prototype lithium-air car battery by 2013, with commercialization by 2020. Hitting a home run in battery technology takes decades, not just years, of research, Boysen said. “In batteries, every chemistry is different,” he noted. “Every battery will need a different manufacturing infrastructure. Batteries are a much harder problem to solve” than other technologies, such as building faster computers or new kinds of electronics, Boysen said. In fact, two battery companies have had trouble commercializing their rechargeable lithium-ion battery technology, even after getting government help. Ener1 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January after its main customer, a Norweigan electric car manufacturer, went under. Ener1 had received $118 million in federal stimulus funds. A123 Systems recently said that it had to replace some faulty batteries in the new Fisker Automotive luxury electric plug-in vehicles. The company received $249.1 million in federal funding in 2009. Despite the potential for failure, some entrepreneurs just won’t give up. Nowhere is that more clear than in the track record of PolyPlus, which has been hunting for the holy grail of battery technology, lithium-air and lithium-water batteries, since the early 1990s. After pursuing lithium-sulfur for years, the company switched to lithium-air in 2003. PolyPlus chief executive Steve Visco is finally building a pilot manufacturing plant in Berkeley, Calif., not far from the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, where he works as a fuel cell researcher. He expects to have the first lithium-seawater batteries available in two years; they will power long-distance probes that cruise ocean currents and send back oceanographic data to help scientists make climate predictions. The next application will be lithium-air battery pouches that can be inserted into soldiers’ radios. It


Smoking marijuana can help ease symptoms of multiple sclerosis, study suggests

MEDICAL MARIJUANA Marijuana may help relieve muscle tightness linked to multiple sclerosis THE QUESTION THIS STUDY WHO MAY BE AFFECTED? CAVEATS FIND THIS STUDY LEARN MORE ABOUT — Linda Searing The research described in Quick Study comes from credible, peer-reviewed journals. Nonetheless, conclusive evidence about a treatment's effectiveness is rarely found in a single study. Anyone considering changing or beginning treatment of any kind should consult with a physician.


Chemotherapy via pills can be costly; health plans are slow to cover new drugs

Cancer treatment is changing: Increasingly, pills are the drug of choice rather than intravenous chemotherapy that drips into a patient’s vein. In contrast to conventional IV chemotherapy, which often kills both cancer and healthy cells alike, many of the new oral oncology drugs target specific biologic processes in cancer cells and block their growth. In addition to being highly effective, they’re convenient, especially for patients who live far from a treatment facility. And the trend is accelerating. At least 25 percent of the drugs in the oncology pipeline are oral medications. Health plans, however, have been slow to adjust to the change. People who get traditional IV chemotherapy on an outpatient basis often pay a flat co-payment that covers the drug as well as the cost of administering it. Annual out-of-pocket costs are also typically capped. Oral anti-cancer medications, on the other hand, are generally considered a pharmacy benefit. Instead of a co-payment, plan members often pay a percentage of the drugs’ cost — up to 50 percent, in some cases — with no annual out-of-pocket limit. And these drugs are expensive, often costing tens of thousands of dollars a year. In recent years, states have stepped in to address the problem. Since 2007, 19 states and the District have passed laws requiring insurers to provide coverage for oral cancer drugs that is equivalent to infusion drugs, according to the National Patient Advocate Foundation. Five states, including Virginia and Maryland, have passed laws in 2012 alone, and others are considering proposals, according to advocacy groups. Improved access? Patient advocates say these oral oncology parity laws, as they are called, give patients more-affordable access to the best treatment available. “Some of these drugs work when nothing else does,” says Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society. “But if a patient needs a new targeted therapy like [the lung cancer drug] Tarceva, he may end up paying a substantially higher percentage of the cost than he would have had there been a comparable intravenous drug.” There is no oral oncology parity law in California, where Robert Adler received a diagnosis of multiple myeloma in 2006. In 2009, his doctor recommended that Adler, now 55, begin using the oral anti-cancer drug Revlimid, which is recommended for multiple myeloma patients who have been through at least one other therapy. When the pharmacist called to tell Adler his plan had approved


How to save horseshoe crabs and red knot birds

Regarding the May 12 front-page article “A G-rated spring fling”: Readers should know that the horseshoe crab’s future remains uncertain, as does that of the red knot and other shorebird species dependent upon excess crab eggs for food. In 2010, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reaffirmed that the red knot warranted listing under the Endangered Species Act and concluded that “the threats, in particular the modification of habitat through harvesting of horseshoe crabs, are severe enough to put the viability of the knot at substantial risk.” While the crab population has stabilized over the past six to seven years, it is down significantly from 20 years ago, and knot populations have collapsed due to crab overharvesting for conch and eel bait. Maryland now allows the killing of more horseshoe crabs than any other state — 167,000 in 2011. Meanwhile, the Maine-to-Florida harvest rose to 651,274, a 9.2 percent increase over the 2010 figure. The medical harvesting of crabs — their blood is used in a test to ensure the purity of injectable drugs — has skyrocketed to 549,000. The estimated mortality rate during the harvesting is as high as 30 percent. Despite concerns raised by the conservation community, no actions to further protect the crabs have been taken by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, the council responsible for managing the crab population along the Atlantic coast. We join the call by leading conservation groups for a full moratorium on all bait harvesting and for more restrictions to reduce mortality caused by medical harvesting. A moratorium will spur the use of a medical-testing substitute and a synthetic bait for conch pots, the biggest uses of the crabs. Colin Rees, Anne Arundel The writer is president of the Anne Arundel Bird Club.


Opera review: ‘Samson et Dalila,’ by the Washington Concert Opera

Conductor Antony Walker, Michelle DeYoung and Greer Grimsley in the Washington Concert Opera performance of “Samson et Dalila.” (Stan Engebretson/Washington Concert Opera) For an opera about an action hero, Camille Saint-Saens’s “Samson et Dalila” is remarkably action-free: Even the climactic moment when Delilah shears the hero’s hair takes place offstage. It’s open to question whether its stasis makes it better suited to a concert performance than some other operas, or whether it needs a little stage business — costumes, sets — to help liven things up. The Washington Concert Opera took the gamble Saturday night by offering it in concert format under Antony Walker, albeit with at least one piece of real-life visual enhancement: The male leads, Frank Poretta and Greer Grimsley, both had genuine ponytails. Had Michelle DeYoung’s Delilah dared to actually clip Poretta’s hair, we would have ventured into the territory of verismo. Instead, the terrain was the vaguely Oriental world of Saint-Saens’s big, sensuous sound — a sound that was a little beyond the abilities of the Washington Concert Opera Orchestra to fully realize in the confines of Lisner Auditorium, despite Walker’s best efforts. Walker is one of those marvelous musicians who throws himself heart and soul into everything he does. Watching him conduct the Bacchanale, the priests’ dance in the final act, you could almost have believed it was a piece of significant music rather than a pops-concert potboiler — almost, but not quite. The orchestra did quite well, but you want a slightly richer sound to convey this languid, dreamy music. And you want slightly richer voices. The WCO was banking on Brandon Jovanovich, a rising young tenor sensation and Richard Tucker Award winner, who’s been moving into ever heavier repertory. Jovanovich, alas, wound up with swollen vocal cords at the end of his successful run in Dallas’s “Don Carlo,” and he is on doctor’s orders for full vocal rest — meaning he canceled not only “Samson” but also a scheduled appearance with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra later this month. This left Poretta, already heard here this season in Washington National Opera’s “Tosca,” a big burly presence with a slightly less burly voice. (His performances often leave me with a feeling of respect for hard work honorably done, but seldom leave me excited.) Grimsley, a Wagnerian, assailed the High Priest’s role with a big, wiry sound to match his tall, wiry body, cutting through the


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Almost every week can be beer week Beer weeks, celebrations that showcase an area’s beer culture and brews, have become a global trend. The Brookston Beer Bulletin lists nearly 100 such weeks. In our region, Frederick Beer Week in — you guessed it — Frederick kicked off on Saturday. Highlights include the Great FBW Scavenger Hunt on Friday and a FirkinFest set for noon on Saturday at Stillpoint Farm in Mount Airy, soon to become the site of the Milkhouse Brewery at Stillpoint Farm. American Craft Beer Week, a promotion of the Colorado-based Brewers Association, started Monday and encompasses all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia. It’s not too early to start planning for DC Beer Week, which is scheduled to unfold Aug.12-18. Six local breweries have announced they’ll brew a Belgian-style farmhouse ale to mark the event. Their efforts will then be blended into a single brew, which will be served from kegs and casks throughout the week. Tickets for the opening extravaganza — a brews cruise along the Potomac on the luxury yacht Odyssey — go on sale Wednesday at $100 a pop at dcbeerweek.net. — Greg Kitsock All We Can Eat voices.washingtonpost.com/allwecaneat