1981 that catered to meat companies. A decade later, BPI was the first to commercially sell lean finely textured ground beef using a technique of his devising that separated the meat from fatty trimmings. Roth, who worked in milk and ice cream factories early in his career, borrowed heavily from dairy plant technology when he created a process to reclaim the bits of beef left clinging to the trimmings after a cow carcass is cut up to make steak. BPI buys the refrigerated trimmings from slaughterhouses. It grinds them, warms them to slightly below the body temperature of a live cow, and then spins them at high speeds to cull the beef. The lean meat is then flash-frozen and sold to meat processors, enabling those firms to meet increased demand for lower fat grinds. The company began using ammonia gas in 2001, with the USDA’s blessing. When the gas hits the water in the meat, it turns to ammonium hydroxide and kills bacteria, the firm said. Through the years, some BPI critics balked at the safety claims and dismissed the meat as a salvage product that does not meet the government’s definition of ground beef. The New York Times report found that USDA initially did not test BPI’s beef, figuring the ammonia made it pathogen-free. Federal school lunch officials tested it anyway, found E. coli and salmonella numerous times between 2005 and 2009, and pulled it before it was served. But when the most recent controversy erupted, many rallied to the company’s side. USDA officials vouched for BPI’s meat. They said it has never been directly linked to illnesses or outbreaks since the government started testing it in December 2009. Of 7,000 samples that BPI provided to USDA school lunch officials in the past two years, none has tested positive for Salmonella or a deadly strain of E. coli, a government spokesman said. Bill Marler, a Seattle lawyer who has built a business out of suing meat companies, said BPI’s lean beef is safe enough. “It’s not any more or less dangerous than anything else in hamburger,” Marler said. Nancy Donley’s only child died from an E. coli infection. Yet the consumer activist also stands by the beef product. “It just sounds gross to people, but at the end of the day it’s beef,” she said. “Nothing is 100 percent safe ... but this product is misunderstood.” Ammonia, BPI’s defenders


After ouster of Bo Xilai, questions surround China’s security chief

less visible, figures in the Chinese Communist Party, with control of the vast security forces and the judiciary, including all the prosecutors. He sits on the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, which effectively runs the country as a kind of collective leadership; its other members include China’s president and prime minister. Zhou Yongkang, seen attending the National People's Congress in March, is reported to have been the only leading official to have argued against last week's striking decision to suspend Bo Xilai's membership in the 25-seat Politburo. (Andy Wong/AP) The speculation intensified this week with the release of an April 17 Xinhua editorial hinting that more high-level firings may be coming. “The investigation into Bo,” the editorial said, “serves as a declaration to all Party members that no matter what position one holds, Party members shall never place themselves over Party discipline and the law.” Chinese authorities have released little about their ongoing investigation into Bo, his wife, Gu Kailai, or other associates in his Chongqing inner circle who have been detained. In the vacuum of real information, citizens who have been closely following the saga through overseas Internet reports, and outside China-watchers, have been trying to glean information from the most innocuous signs, such as how much or how little a senior leader appears in the official media. Zhou’s past and present statements and appearances are being closely dissected for any hints of internal strife. For example, on March 8, during the annual meeting of China’s national legislature, Zhou made a highly-public appearance before the delegation from Chongqing, heaping praise on Bo and his achievements. Bo at the time was already reeling from his former police chief Wang Lijun’s flight to the American consulate in Chengdu, where Wang first outlined a dramatic tale of political intrigue, corruption and murder in Chongqing. But exactly a week after Zhou’s high-profile endorsement, Bo was removed as Chongqing Party chief. Zhou then disappeared for a week from state-run television and newspapers, leading to questions about whether he had been sacked — and the period coincided with persistent, unsubstantiated rumors of a rift in the top ranks, or the wild rumor that Zhou was leading a coup. Then a March 23 photograph showed Zhou meeting the visiting Indonesian foreign minister, seeming to temporarily dispel the rumors. Zhou’s most recent public appearance — on April 12, with the Shanghai Cooperation Council, and an April meeting with


Our generals in Afghanistan need more accountability

what might ensue. The answer was not long in coming: chaos and a far uglier and more costly conflict than Americans had bargained for. Historians will probably place Franks in the company of Burnside and Hooker rather than Grant and Sherman. Yet, for whatever reason, Bush glossed over his field commander’s shortcomings, ordained him a great leader and awarded him the Medal of Freedom. Franks had neither won nor lost his war; he had merely mismanaged it and then moved on, washing his hands of the mess. Here was a troubling precedent. War induces barbarism, and the Iraq war proved no exception. Soon enough, egregious transgressions by U.S. troops surfaced. Abu Ghraib provides one especially notorious example; the massacre at Haditha another. But there were others, now mostly forgotten, at least by Americans — among them the Iraq insurgency’s equivalent of the Boston Massacre. In Fallujah on April 28, 2003, with Franks still in command, U.S. troops opened fire on Iraqi demonstrators, killing more than a dozen and wounding several dozen more. The Pentagon declared each of these an aberration. In each instance, extensive investigation singled out a handful of minions for punishment. In each, senior commanders escaped unscathed. (Abu Ghraib is the partial exception that proves the rule: In the scandal’s aftermath, a female Army Reserve brigadier general — not quite a member of the club — lost her star, a fate thus far shared with no male counterpart and no regular officer.) In an earlier day, this misconduct might not have mattered. When Sherman’s troops marched to the sea in 1864, few cared about any atrocities they might commit. The object of the exercise, after all, was not to win Confederate hearts and minds but, as Sherman succinctly put it, to “make Georgia howl.” Similarly, although the desecration of remains by U.S. troops today pales in comparison with the treatment visited upon Japanese dead during World War II, ensuring that Marines at Peleliu or Okinawa complied with the Hague Conventions did not figure as a priority. Their job was to kill. Yet, like it or not, our wars differ from those wars. The attenuated definition of command responsibility that prevailed after Sept. 11, 2001, not only let senior commanders off the hook; in wars where killing is not enough, it also compromised overall military effectiveness. Much to his credit, when Robert Gates became secretary of defense in 2006,


The four-star educational opportunity I found there for the taking in D.C.

to explain the application process to the students seeking his nomination. I expected to walk into a small meeting room containing a few other guys, maybe even a girl, who were seeking the spot. I found a packed auditorium holding more than a hundred other candidates, all of them dressed as if they were interviewing at Goldman Sachs. Only one of these students would receive a coveted “principal nomination” to West Point from Wolf — the nomination that guaranteed admission if the applicant was determined to be qualified. I quickly realized that any admission hopes I had developed in the preceding weeks were naive. But I continued the application process with Wolf and started applications with Sens. Mark R. Warner (D) and James Webb (D). Three rejection letters quickly followed. Soon after this, and well after I had given up hope of admission to the U.S. Military Academy, I received a forwarded e-mail from my liaison officer, West Point’s local admissions representative. The e-mail, written by the regional admissions officer, explained that the District had not managed to find a resident who met the academy’s standards. Someone was needed to fill the spot. Within a matter of weeks, I acquired a nomination from D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), despite hastily prepared application essays and a shaky interview with her service academy panel. I am now finishing my first year at the academy. I am the only Washingtonian in my class. Too often, I read about the lack of opportunities for the District’s youth or scan columns that complain about D.C. schools failing to provide opportunities to their students. Why, then, does Virginia’s 10th Congressional District manage to find more than a hundred interested applicants for the service academies, while the District struggles to fill its allotted spots? The military is not for everybody. The academies are not for everybody. But the fact remains: Educational opportunities do exist for D.C. youth and, at some point, it needs to become the responsibility of the individual to seek out those opportunities. Critics are too quick to complain about D.C.’s failing education system. After all, I’m proof that it doesn’t exactly take Goldman Sachs-level interview skills for a young Washingtonian to get a top-notch education free of charge. William Moore, Washington More Local Opinions Six Post readers on Discovery’s ‘victory lap’ L. Scott Lingamfelter: An outdated gun law Norman Leahy: Wolf votes present


“The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches from the Future of Food” by Josh Schonwald

center of the industry; it’s the home base of companies like Fresh Express and Dole and Mann Packing, the Apples and Microsofts of the salad world. In other words, Salinas is not only where our leafy greens are grown; it’s where the decisions about our salads are made.” It was Fresh Express that “started introducing bagged salads to consumers in 1989,” extending the shelf life of delicate greens and posing real rivals to durable but usually tasteless iceberg lettuce. What, Schonwald wondered, is Salinas Valley looking to do next? A few people there believe that radicchio is the salad of the future. It comes in more varieties than the unappetizing red variety that pops up in salad bars and “spring mix” bags, but efforts to gain popular acceptance of those varieties have met with little success. Schonwald is optimistic about the overall future of salad, though, because the “agrigiants” of Salinas are quick to capitalize on changing tastes and to alter supply to meet altered demand. Disbelievers are referred to the nearest salad bar, where there’s a lot more in the lettuce bins than chopped romaine. It’s a very short step from agribusiness to agricultural genetics, which Schonwald used to call “Frankenfood.” But no longer: What he has seen has persuaded him to be “pro-agricultural biotechnology” and considerably more skeptical about the ideas of the “foodie mainstream,” some of which he finds “dangerously myopic” and “potentially destructive.” Schonwald would much prefer to eat organic vegetables and free-range chicken, as indeed would I, but he now knows that people able to afford such a diet are a minuscule percentage of the world’s population — albeit a disproportionately noisy one — and that the real issue is not how to make them happy but how to feed the world’s vastly less privileged hungry millions. Thus the move, still in its tentative early stages, toward in vitro growing of meat and the development of fish farms in immense inland warehouses. Whether meat produced in laboratories ever will catch on is problematic, but “warehouse fish farming” is the “fastest-growing segment” of aquaculture, itself “the world’s fastest growing source of food production.” Yes, I’d much rather be eating ceviche made with fresh Maryland rockfish, but more and more that is going to be a privilege rather than the daily norm. As Schonwald says: “As much as I want craft fish farming, and responsible open-ocean farming,


Russia’s tech-savvy opposition goes old school

to organize everything and decrease the confusion and miscoordination by 30 percent. And then we will win,” Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption blogger and protest leader, wrote on his blog this past week. He called on supporters to build a “kind machine of propaganda,” in contrast to what he described as the Kremlin’s “evil machine of propaganda.” ‘The bubble can burst’ The opposition’s best opportunities, leaders say, are a series of mayoral elections, each one of which Navalny has said he hopes will turn into a “political crisis.” But elections in the Siberian cities of Omsk and Krasnoyarsk will be held in June, leaving relatively little time to prepare. A third election, in central Russian Nizhny Tagil, is scheduled for October. Those races are not about to eject Putin’s United Russia party from power nationally, but they could be enough to keep the Kremlin off-balance and give the opposition a toehold on local control that could help it launch larger efforts. Since last month, opposition candidates have won mayors’ offices in two cities — both after campaigning under tough conditions with no access to local media. And in Astrakhan, a city of 500,000 near the Caspian Sea, authorities were concerned enough about post-election protests that they flooded the city center with hundreds of riot police. “Astrakhan has been successful in proving that the bubble can burst at any moment in any place,” said Lilia Shevtsova, a political analyst and Putin critic at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “There’s such ferment going on.” The protesters there this month used tactics more reminiscent of the American civil rights movement of the 1960s than of wired 2012. The mayoral candidate, Oleg Shein, walked a group of two dozen journalists and supporters into a closed-door committee meeting at the regional parliament, surprising the journalists and the local politicians sitting around the table. The politicians quickly agreed to Shein’s demands that they take up his grievances before the full legislature. Shein, a veteran labor organizer and local politician, said the ploy was “absolutely spontaneous.” “If it hadn’t been for journalists, I don’t think it would have been possible” to win the concessions, Shein said. “When we have publicity, we can talk about developing democratic tools.” Days after Shein crashed the committee meeting, many of the city’s bus drivers were roped into the cause. They had been poised to go on strike because their contracts were expiring. Fifty


Not all foreclosures are equal

was held, and have no role in servicing or maintaining the property,” Nicole Garrison-Sprenger, vice president of corporate public relations, said in a statement. “When we do own a property, we have a strong and comprehensive process in place to regularly inspect and maintain properties to marketing standards where we have legal access, regardless of their location.” Wells Fargo said in a statement that the bank “conducts all lending- and servicing-related activities in a fair and consistent manner without regard to race, and this includes maintenance and marketing standards for all foreclosed properties for which we are responsible. Regrettably, the complaint does not include specific property information that can allow us to investigate the circumstances in any of the markets they list.” The properties examined by the housing groups were evaluated on a 100-point scale. Points were subtracted for routine maintenance issues, including broken windows and doors, unshoveled snow, overgrown lawns and trash on the property. Although properties in predominantly white neighborhoods “were more likely to have neatly manicured lawns, securely locked doors and attractive ‘for sale’ signs out front, homes in communities of color were more likely to have overgrown yards littered with trash, unsecured doors, broken windows and indications of marketing as a distressed sale,” the report said. The report noted that properties in communities of color were 42 percent more likely to have more than a dozen maintenance problems compared with properties in predominantly white neighborhoods. In many cases, the report added, the deterioration occurred while properties were under bank ownership and could be attributed to lender neglect. By allowing inferior maintenance standards for properties in minority communities, the institutions are creating substandard communities where values will continue to decline, said Shanna L. Smith, president and chief executive of the National Fair Housing Alliance. “The investigation did not focus on people who lost their homes, but rather the homeowners living next door to or down the street from the vacant foreclosed property and the impact that poorly maintained foreclosure is having on their property values — their homeowners insurance costs, their increased property taxes to make up for the lost tax revenue from the foreclosures in their neighborhood,” Smith said. “It addresses the harm in economic and safety terms for the homeowners left behind in the neighborhood, particularly in communities of color.” Smith added that if banks don’t properly maintain their assets, many of the related expenses


Pakistani militant Hafiz Mohammad Saeed seeks protection from bounty hunters

13, a 24-year-old Woodbridge resident and native of Pakistan was sentenced to 12 years in prison for providing material support to Lashkar-i-Taiba. He had trained at a Lashkar camp and pleaded guilty to producing a violent jihadist video after communicating with Talha Saeed, Saeed’s son. But cases against Lashkar-i-Taiba members in Pakistan drag on for years and have generally been unsuccessful. Some analysts attribute this to interference by the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, which U.S. officials say protects certain militant groups for its own ends, even as Pakistan’s army battles other insurgents trying to bring down the government. ISI does not deny directing Lashkar-i-Taiba militants in operations in Kashmir but says it ended contact with the group after 2001 and has not been involved in directing its operations since. In his book “Pakistan: A Hard Country,” researcher and analyst Anatol Lieven presents this case for why Saeed is a free man: “While the Pakistani authorities could do a great deal more to restrict and detain [Lashkar] activists and leaders, it is extremely difficult to put them on public trial — for the obvious reason that they would then reveal everything about the ISI’s previous backing for their organization.” Although U.S. officials portray Saeed as a terrorist on a par with fugitive Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, who also has a $10 million price on his head, the sentiment is far different in the court of public opinion — especially in the dusty alleys where Jamaat-ud-Dawa dispenses charity. The other day, in a Lahore storefront clinic with a tiny examination room made private with a worn brown curtain, neighborhood women received free antibiotics and fever remedies for their sick children from a pharmacy assistant named Abdul Majeed. Majeed also checked the blood pressure of one of the regular patients, a mother of seven who suffers from hypertension and diabetes. The 34-year-old housewife, who gave her name only as Mrs. Khalil, said she knew nothing about the bounty but did know certain other things about Saeed’s group. “They not only give treatment to people, but my own daughter is reciting the Holy Koran with them,” she said. “They cannot be terrorists.” More world news coverage: - Afghanistan, U.S. reach post-2014 pact - Iran says it recovered data from U.S. spy drone, plans to build copy - French presidential vote heads into runoff election - Read more headlines from around the world


Slaying Still Haunts Eighth and H Streets;D.C. Neighborhood Hopes for Better Days

This article originally ran on March 23, 1986. The alley where Catherine Fuller was brutally murdered on a rainy afternoon nearly 1 1/2 years ago has been cleaned and dirtied again. On a recent afternoon, the park where her assailants met daily — young men known as the “Eighth and H Crew” — was sanctuary only to a man dressed in Army fatigues who muttered to himself and said his name was “John.” Three months after the trial of Fuller’s murderers, people in this Northeast Washington community speak of fear and the invisible scars of the tragedy, and real estate agents say people do not want to buy in the neighborhood. Yet there is excitement about a new merchants association and talk of entrepreneurs who view the H Street corridor as a place of economic promise. Residents welcome that future. But for now, they say, unemployment and crime are still high and there are no recreation facilities for teen-agers in the area. Most residents agree there have been no visible changes in the community since the day Fuller was killed. “We need to go back to the word of God! We’re gonna leave here one day!” an evangelist on the southeast corner of Eighth and H streets NE called through a bullhorn to passers-by one recent afternoon. Across the street a young man in a knit cap asked the same passers-by: “Want to buy a gold chain today?” Standing in front of Murry’s Steaks, a woman slipped her tank top to her waist to reveal her breasts. A little girl walked by on her way from school, a violin case strapped to her shoulder. The children who walk on H Street see a lot. Some people have known that for a long time; now everyone knows. This is the street with the infamous corner, the street with the alley where the 48-year-old Fuller, a mother of six, was brutally beaten to death, an area of the city that was mentioned on the news almost nightly during the six-week trial of nine young men and one woman charged with her murder. Residents, many of whom have lived in the working class neighborhood for two decades, live with the notoriety that a single brutal act by some of their young people has brought upon their neighborhood. “I’ve talked to real estate agents who say they’ve had people who don’t want to go


Main Street needs Congress to lift credit unions’ business-lending cap

While the stock market is up so far this year, Main Street communities across the country are still anxiously waiting for the catalyst that will jumpstart their economies and create jobs. Small businesses nationwide have been stymied from expanding and adding new jobs. The limited availability of capital from banks has hampered their efforts. While credit unions — not-for-profit, member-owned financial institutions — have been devoting more funds to loans for small companies, they are prevented from doing more because of an arbitrary cap on their business lending. Recently, legislation was reintroduced by Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) (S. 2231, Small Business Lending Enhancement Act) that would help small businesses gain access to much-needed capital by raising the member business lending cap credit unions currently face. Identical legislation (H.R. 1418) was introduced by Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.). At its most basic level, restricting credit unions on the amount of business lending they can provide undermines job creation. The Treasury Department and the National Credit Union Administration have both signed off on this common sense measure that could spur more than $13 billion in new lending and create more than 140,000 new jobs in the first year alone at no cost to taxpayers. Current data underscore the need for credit unions to offer more loans to their small-business members, particularly the smaller dollar loans which banks are not making. In a recent survey, credit unions reported that 44 percent of their portfolio was made up of loans of less than $100,000, compared with banks that only have 8 percent of their lending in this size category. Additionally, credit unions said loans between $100,000 to $250,000 were 20 percent of their portfolio, compared with 6 percent for banks. By contrast, business loans of more than $1 million make up 68 percent of the banks’ portfolios, but only 16 percent for credit unions. The federal government made several attempts to boost business lending through the 2009 stimulus bill, the 2010 Small Business Jobs Act and “credit enhancements” that pumped up the Small Business Administration’s loan guarantee rate. Yet none of these vehicles have made significant progress in improving small businesses’s access to capital. Of the $30 billion apportioned in the Small Business Lending Fund, only $4.8 billion was actually dispersed. Given the fact that these other attempts have fallen short, shouldn’t the government give small-business owners a chance to


Some question whether sustainable seafood delivers on its promise

A worker cuts a steak from a piece of tuna at a fish market. Seafood counters used to be simpler places, where a fish was labeled with its name and price. Nowadays, it carries more information than a used-car listing. Where did it swim? Was it farm-raised? Was it ever frozen? How much harm was done to the ocean by fishing it? (Scott Eells/Bloomberg) Seafood counters used to be simpler places, where a fish was labeled with its name and price. Nowadays, it carries more information than a used-car listing. Where did it swim? Was it farm-raised? Was it ever frozen? How much harm was done to the ocean by fishing it? Many retailers tout the environmental credentials of their seafood, but a growing number of scientists have begun to question whether these certification systems deliver on their promises. The labels give customers a false impression that purchasing certain products helps the ocean more than it really does, some researchers say. Backers respond that they are helping transform many of the globe’s wild-caught fisheries, giving them a financial incentive to include environmental safeguards, while giving consumers a sense of what they can eat with a clear conscience. To add to the confusion, there are a variety of certification labels and guides, prompting retailers to adopt a hybrid approach, relying on multiple seafood rating systems or establishing their own criteria and screening products that way. As of Sunday, for example, Whole Foods stopped selling seafood listed as “red” by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Blue Ocean Institute — including octopus, gray sole and Atlantic halibut — because these species are overfished or caught in a way that harms ocean habitat or other species. The move has sparked criticism from New England fishermen, who are now barred from selling to the upscale chain. Whole Foods also sells only pole- or line-caught canned tuna, which harms fewer species than conventional tuna-fishing methods. Target no longer sells farmed salmon — which has come under fire for consuming a disproportionate amount of forage fish and creating several other problems — and has pledged that by 2015 it will sell only fresh and frozen fish that are “sustainable and traceable.” Wegmans said it will not obtain seafood from the Ross Sea in the Antarctic, which many environmentalists say should be off-limits to fishing, and this fall it will start selling oysters from plots it has leased


How D.C. can better deal with climate change

DISTRICT COUNCIL member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) celebrated Earth Day this year by proposing a series of measures meant to lower the city’s carbon emissions. But the bill is a reminder of how unnecessarily complex the city’s anti-climate-change policy already is. Ms. Cheh’s bill would exempt owners of local solar power infrastructure from personal property taxes on their facilities. Backers claim that the provision is necessary because companies that might want to erect solar panels on others’ property would be treated unusually harshly under the tax code. If that’s so, the council should investigate changing the law for anyone who finds himself in that bend in the tax code, not just solar developers. As it is, solar power benefits from unfair government preferences that the council should consider repealing. The District requires utilities to derive 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Though such policies are supposed to encourage competition among renewables, solar power enjoys a “carve out” within the renewable mandate, guaranteeing a piece for that particular technology unless it proves extremely expensive. If the goal is to reduce emissions, policy should instead create an environment in which the cheapest low-carbon technologies win out, not the ones politicians favor. Ms. Cheh’s bill would also require stores to keep their doors closed while their air conditioning is switched on. Preventing such waste is obviously appealing. But the best way to lower emissions is to put a price on carbon or to set top-line goals without prescribing precisely how businesses must achieve them. This allows businesses to make their own decisions about the most efficient ways to save energy. The fight against climate change requires government to intervene, creating incentives for cleaner energy. But in that process, it’s easy for government to get too involved in deciding how we derive and use energy. If city leaders worry that the District isn’t moving toward green energy fast enough, they should first press for a more aggressive regional carbon-pricing scheme or to modify the city’s renewables mandate. More on this debate: Alexandra Petri: Do millennials care about Earth Day?


Phasing out nuclear

CAN THE WORLD fight global warming without nuclear power? One major industrialized country — Germany — is determined to find out, and another — Japan — is debating whether to try. Both illustrate how hard it would be. To date, nuclear is the only proven source of low-emissions “baseload” power — that is, electricity that’s always on, day or night, powering round-the-clock elevators in Tokyo or office buildings in Munich. Yet both Germany and Japan are poised to prematurely shutter their large nuclear sectors, giving up all of that guaranteed, low-carbon electricity generation in an anti-nuclear frenzy, on a bet that they can multiply their generation of renewable electricity within a decade or two. Before the Fukushima Daiichi disaster last year, Japan derived a third of its electricity from nuclear power. Now, with all but one reactor offline, the country’s consumption of crude and heavy fuel oil for power generation has roughly tripled. Even with that backup fossil-fired power, though, the government worries that the electrical system will fail during peak summer demand if utilities don’t switch on reactors. The Financial Times’ Gerrit Wiesmann reports a similar situation in Germany, which has committed to closing all of its reactors, even as its power grid teeters and its electricity sector emits more carbon than it must after eight reactors shut down last year. With both countries making the paths to their emissions goals more difficult, anti-nuclear activists justify this mess by insisting that renewable energy sources will pick up the slack. But that raises major questions of feasibility and cost. Perhaps, a Japanese government report claimed, Japan could still reduce carbon emissions by 25 percent of its 1990 levels by 2030 without nuclear power. Yet even if that’s true, it’s hardly a reason to let all of that existing nuclear infrastructure and know-how go to waste. The report also notes that the country could cut emissions 33 percent if nuclear accounted for a fifth of the country’s generation, or even as much as 39 percent if Japan continued to derive a third of its electricity from nuclear. It’s also far from clear that cutting Japan’s emissions will be as easy as those numbers suggest. A separate government analysis indicated argued that the country would actually fall well short of 25 percent without nuclear. Not content to rely on optimistic predictions about renewables, Japanese utilities are already investing hundreds of millions of


Mosquitoes, ticks and other insects will be plentiful this season, experts say

to die off.” Still, he suggests that it’s time for more people to get “tick smart,” particularly since the symptoms of Lyme disease and other tick-borne infections are often subtle and hard to diagnose. “The initial bite may or may not be known, and only 10 to 20 percent of people see the bull’s-eye rash for Lyme, for example,” says Beals, who recommends watching out for unexplained, sudden onset of symptoms such as fever, chills, chronic fatigue, joint pain and headaches that typically get worse over time. ‘The size of a poppy seed’ Another complicating factor is that the standard laboratory tests used to diagnose these ailments are notoriously unreliable. “Seventy percent of the time, for people with documented Lyme disease, routine tests don’t show it,” Beals says. As a result, the prevention of bites — which starts with knowing your enemy — is key. “This is not a great big tick that’s going to crawl to the top of your head. This is something the size of a poppy seed that crawls to your . . . nether regions — and who looks there?” says Mather, who also heads the University of Rhode Island’s TickEncounter Resource Center. He suggests a daily tick check whenever you’ve been out at a park, playing golf, gardening or in other areas that ticks frequent. Pay special attention to such spots as the back of your knee, your armpit area, around waistbands and underwear, and belt and bra lines. In addition, it’s essential to treat pets frequently with a reputable tick repellent. As for protection, Mather advises carefully following instructions for bug repellents. He adds that products containing DEET, which merely repel insects for a relatively short period, appear to be less effective than clothing or gear treated with permethrin, a chemical that can kill ticks and mosquitoes even after repeated laundering. Mather co-authored a study that found that summer-weight clothing treated with permethrin severely reduced the risk of tick bites: Overall, participants who donned tick-repellent garments were bitten about one-third less often as those wearing untreated clothes. Another small recent study found that outdoor workers who wore permethrin-treated garb received 93 percent fewer tick bites than other workers. Mather coats his family’s shoes with permethrin once a month: “It makes protecting yourself against tick bites — and also mosquitoes, to some degree as well — as easy as getting dressed in the morning.”


Some junk food isn’t all that bad for you, dietitian says, but moderation is key

of potato chips. (And there’s a less greasy microwavable variety available.) If you like a daily drink, you’ll be happy to know that in a study of 18,000 men, Harvard scientists found that men who consumed one to two alcoholic beverages a day had a lower risk of heart attack than non-drinkers. As for what kind of drink to have, consider that pinot noir is an antioxidant-rich wine that won’t give you a beer belly. Although beef jerky is usually loaded with preservatives, it’s also high in protein, and it’s possible to find jerky made from grass-fed beef that has no preservatives. “Ounce for ounce, coconut contains more saturated fat than butter does,” says the article, by registered dietitian Jeff Volek. But it also boosts good cholesterol, so just look for the unsweetened kind. And finally, for those who worry about their love of chocolate, you can take solace in knowing that it contains flavonoids that improve blood flow to the heart. Regardless of their redeeming qualities, none of these qualify as healthful food, so moderation is key. Long distance running Say chi, and avoid injury “Chi Marathon,” by Danny and Katherine Dreyer In a grueling sport such as distance running, training harder can lead to injury, so training smarter is key. So say Danny and Katherine Dreyer — running and health coaches, respectively — who apply the principles of tai chi to running (and other activities). The idea, they say, is that with practice and focus, runners can use their minds to move energy, or chi, in their body to propel themselves forward, taking stress off the muscles and joints. If this sounds a little too spiritual, they also emphasize proper technique and biomechanically sound movements to help serious runners avoid pain and injury. You’ll learn about everything from posture and foot strike to conditioning and nutrition. A major focus of the book is race preparation, which the Dreyers strongly believe to be equal parts mental and physical. They even debate hot-button issues, such as sneakers vs. barefoot running and what not to do the night before a race. (Their advice: no massages or alcohol.) If you are a beginner or a casual runner, this book might be too intense, but if you’re a dedicated runner hoping maybe to try the Marine Corps Marathon one day, this might help you get to a new personal best. — Whitney Fetterhoff


Music review: A Far Cry at Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown

Are conductors really necessary? They’re expensive to feed, after all, and while they’re useful for holding large orchestras together, smaller groups might be better off just jettisoning them entirely. That, at any rate, was the takeaway from a lively and impressively precise performance Sunday night at Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown by A Far Cry, a young, Boston-based string orchestra whose 17 members call themselves a “collective” and take a democratic, guaranteed conductor-free approach to chamber music. The group’s sense of freedom and enthusiasm was tangible in the opening work, the vivid “Battaglia” by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. It’s a series of musical scenes meant to evoke wartime, and Biber lets his imagination loose, instructing the players to engage in all sorts of “extended techniques” — even sticking paper between the strings to produce a snare-drum effect. The wildest moments come in a short-but-sour movement, in which each of the musicians plays in a different key — think Ives, with a 17th-century touch. The Criers brought the whole thing off with spirit and engaging wit. But the group’s unusual take on Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 95 revealed some of the hazards of the leaderless approach. The Criers transcribed the work for string orchestra — quadrupling each of the parts, more or less — and though they handled the technical challenges well enough, it was never clear that adding more mass to the quartet really added to its power. The thing is all muscle and bone as it is; adding flesh only seemed to soften the edges and blur the details, where much of the interest lies. Despite fine ensemble work, you end up with the impression not of a riveting conversation among four individuals but, rather, almost of music by committee. Osvaldo Golijov wrote that he wanted his “Tenebrae” to sound “as an orbiting spaceship that never touches ground.” It does. This is music that floats in a netherworld of mist and shadow — it has the strange enchantment of falling into a dream — and the Criers’ collective approach produced a gorgeous, radiant reading. But it was in the much more complex “Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge,” by Benjamin Britten, that the ensemble showed just how skillfully they can navigate without a conductor. This was a superb, perfectly calibrated performance, full of subtle nuances and real power. Conductors, watch out: The collective approach works. Brookes is a


At World Book Night, D.C. literacy advocates greeted with delight and skepticism

brought with them. Handing out free books is a way to be social, safe and do a good deed, says Carl Lennertz, the New York-based executive director (and only employee) of World Book Night U.S. “Book lovers, of which there are a lot, always talk to each other about the books they love,” he said, “and this is a chance to tell a total stranger.” The program is geared mostly toward adults and young adults. Sponsors, including Barnes and Noble, UPS and the American Booksellers Association, donated the books, and volunteers had to specify titles they wanted and where they planned to hand them out. According to Lennertz, everyone from police officers in Wichita to a cab driver in Duluth, Minn., were planning to give away books at locations such as food pantries, women’s shelters and nursing homes. In the District, more than 100 people signed up to pick up titles at Politics and Prose, where there was a book lover’s joy about the giveaway. At the Silver Spring Metro station, Politics and Prose floor manager Susan Skirboll had a pretty straightforward strategy for her giveaway approach: “I’ll try to look respectable and not like a total freak.” Skirboll calls the story she selected — “Kindred,” by the late science-fiction writer Octavia Butler — a book “everyone should read.” Though it contains a little bit of science fiction and fantasy, “it’s done in a way that’s kind of believable,” Skirboll said. “It talks about the slavery experience in a way I had never read before.” Skirboll was joined by her friend, Korey Rothman, a professor of musical theater at the University of Maryland, who was giving away “Bel Canto,” by Ann Patchett. The women were prepared to talk about the books with riders. They also were prepared, Skirboll said, “for people to think there’s a catch to it, for people not taking them because they don’t read, or for just plain old ignoring because we are city people and we ignore weirdos.” Gussie Lewis, who plans Politics and Prose’s children’s events, was giving away copies of “Because of Winn Dixie,” a tale of a young girl and her dog, to visitors at the Washington Animal Rescue League. She hoped the book would reach young people “who may not have been raised with a pet and may have seen dogs fighting. [The book tries] to teach how animals have feelings, too.”


U.S. meeting with China to avoid unfolding murder case

— and much to lose — from involvement in the unfolding tale of political shenanigans and privilege at the highest levels of China’s Communist Party. The scandal that brought down the powerful and charismatic Bo, widely considered to have been a rising star, has moved far from where it began with Heywood’s untimely death. “This is a huge, big deal story, in terms of China’s internal evolution,” said a former U.S. official. “Our curious little bit part in it has no long-term implications.” “It’s their dirty linen, not ours,” another former official said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity out of what they said was reluctance to be seen as sources on such a sensitive subject. Some U.S. involvement, however, may be unavoidable, as reports have circulated about questionable financial dealings by members of Bo’s family. His son, Bo Guagua, a 24-year-old student at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, has been stalked by reporters in Cambridge and chastized on Chinese blogs for a profligate lifestyle. Media reports here and in Britain have alleged that Heywood, who was close to Bo and his wife, was moving Bo family funds abroad. Any cash transfer of more than $10,000 to U.S. banks would have been reported to American authorities. “Unless there is law-enforcement information ... about financial holdings abroad, then this is a domestic affair,” said David Shambaugh, director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University. For Britain, the scandal has become more difficult to publicly avoid. By January, Foreign Office officials were aware of gossip, emanating from the British expatriate community in China, that Heywood had not died of natural causes. His body had long since been cremated. But Foreign Secretary William Hague said he was not informed of the suspicions until Feb. 7. On that day, British diplomats in Beijing received word of Wang’s revelations from the U.S. Embassy there, Barbour said. Hague told Parliament last week that the government had repeatedly sought information from China, but received no answer until April 10, when Britain was informed “that an investigation into Neil Heywood’s death had begun and that proper judicial process would be followed.” Staff writer Steve Mufson and staff researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report. More world news coverage: - Mexican immigration in reverse, study says - E.U. suspends most Burma sanctions - Sudan warplanes bomb South Sudan - Read more headlines from around the world


Planetary Resources has a plan to mine asteroids

This computer-generated image provided by Planetary Resources, a group of high-tech tycoons that wants to mine nearby asteroids, shows a conceptual rendering of satellites prospecting a water-rich, near-Earth asteroid. The group's mega-million dollar plan is to use commercially built robotic ships to squeeze rocket fuel and valuable minerals like platinum and gold out of the lifeless rocks that routinely whiz by Earth. One of the company founders predicts they could have their version of a space-based gas station up and running by 2020. (AP Photo/Planetary Resources) (AP/AP) The tech world is abuzz with news of a new venture that’s earned the backing of high-profile names such as Google Chief Executive Larry Page, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, director James Cameron and Ross Perot Jr., according to a report from Wired. The new company, Planetary Resources Inc., is dedicated to mining asteroids for precious metals and sending what they find back to Earth. The company is the brainchild of co-founders Eric Anderson, who also founded the space tourism company Space Adventures, and Peter Diamandis, the man behind the X Prize foundation. Diamandis has talked about asteroid mining in the past, most notably in a TED talk in 2005. “The Earth is a crumb in a supermarket full of resources,” Diamandis told an audience at Oxford University at the time. He said that the government is “unable to take the risks required to open up this precious frontier” and that entrepreneurs are the ones with the resources and willingness to lead the drive into space. Other partners in the venture include former NASA Mars mission manager Chris Lewicki and planetary scientist and veteran NASA astronaut Tom Jones, according to a release obtained by MIT’s Technology Review. The Wired report says that the two men are most interested in minerals from the platinum group of metals: platinum, palladium, osmium and iridium, which are important for the production of medical devices and renewable energy technology. The company is announcing more about its plans at 1 p.m. Eastern; the Associated Press reports that Planetary Resources is expecting to launch its first series of private telescopes to begin looking for the best targets for mining. So what do scientists think about the project? The Mercury News gathered its share of skeptics, including Purdue University planetary geologist Jay Melosh, who said that the venture simply isn’t cost-effective. Physicist Michio Kaku told ABC News that he believes that


3 more Secret Service employees ousted

Three more employees of the U.S. Secret Service are on the verge of losing their jobs as part of the brewing Colombia sex scandal, the agency said Tuesday. Two employees will resign, two others have been cleared of the most serious charges, but will face administrative action and be removed from their current positions; a fifth will be relieved of his security clearance, meaning he can no longer work for the Secret Service, but could be employed by other federal agencies. The employee has the right to appeal the decision, the agency said. “The Secret Service is committed to conducting a full, thorough and fair investigation in this matter, and will not hesitate to take appropriate action should any additional information come to light,” the agency said in a statement. The decision means the Secret Service has determined the fates of the 12 employees implicated in the scandal, though several could still appeal the decision. Last week, six other employees either resigned, were fired, or permitted to retire. Another agent was cleared of wrongdoing but will face administrative action. Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan is closely reviewing the agency’s code of conduct and is considering enforcing a curfew on agents and officers when they are on the road, according to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who spoke with the director Tuesday. “If you give football players curfews, it makes sense you’d give curfews to people protecting the president,” Cummings said. Cummings said Sullivan also told him that the Secret Service has concluded that no White House staffers were involved in the sex scandal. Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King (R-N.Y.) once again voiced support Tuesday for the agency’s ongoing investigation. “This is the first major part of the investigation and it seems to have been completed very effectively and expeditiously,” King said. “Obviously, we’ll continue to investigate to see whether anything else has occurred. We’ll also have to look at trying to determine whether this was an aberration and what procedures can be implemented to minimize the possibility of it ever happening again.” King said he thinks it would be a good idea for the director to consider bringing in outside advisers to help assess overall agency operations now. “Everyone is focused on the investigation, because the longer you wait, the easier it is for people to get confused and to forget details,” King said. “All the emphasis was put this


Life Your Way blogger Mandi Ehman gives advice on running an efficient, happy home

saves you time and money. If you stock up on frozen foods at the right time, you don’t have to clip coupons or go to five different grocery stores. Or if you take time before Christmas or before a birthday party to declutter the toys, it’s a lot easier to fit those new toys in. What are your daily strategies for clutter control? We clean up almost every night so it’s not building on top of yesterday’s clutter; it’s just today’s clutter. We can get it cleaned up in 30 minutes and the house is as good as new. What’s your favorite timesaving strategy for decluttering? Set a timer, and say that I am going to declutter for 15 minutes today. Go through a drawer in your kitchen and say, “Which of these utensils have I not touched in the last six months?” Do it slowly and don’t try to force yourself to get rid of everything at once. How does having less stuff save you money? Being organized can pave the way to spending less money because you know what you have and what you need. The book’s home tips are organized by room. Let’s talk about the kitchen: How do you keep the counters clean and the fridge full? Create zones in your kitchen. You have your coffee pot here — you should have your coffee mugs and your coffee nearby. At the end of the day, almost all of my advice comes down to ‘just have less stuff.’ You don’t need an individual tool for every little thing out there. One of your kitchen-cleaning strategies is to clean the fridge before you go grocery shopping. Who wants to deal with that when you get home and have bags everywhere? I take time to clean it out and reorganize, and wipe down the shelves. Then, when I come home, things can be put away right away. How do you keep your grocery bill down? Decide when brand names are worth it to your family. I try the generic brand once so that we know why we’re paying more for something. I also love to shop at Amazon.com because you can buy in bulk and sometimes even save money over warehouse stores. We love Amazon so much that we started a blog to share deals that we find, called Jungle Deals [www.jungledealsandsteals.com]. As for the other rooms of the


D.C. news briefs

Broadband Summit will address access Connect.DC, a community outreach program of the D.C. technology office, has scheduled a day-long Community Broadband Summit at 10 a.m. Saturday in the Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School, 2427 Martin Luther King Junior Ave. SE. The event will include a town hall meeting on broadband access, community forums on the new D.C. digital inclusion centers, high-tech exhibitors and technology workshops. The office anticipates nearly 500 participants at the summit. Research based on the 2010 Census shows that broadband adoption averages below 40 percent in wards 5, 7 and 8 but nearly 100 percent in other wards. Recently, Connect.DC opened two digital inclusion centers. One, a pilot program at University of the District of Columbia Community College Shadd campus, 5601 East Capitol St. SE, has offered computer training to ex-offenders. The other, at Riggs LaSalle recreation center, 501 Riggs Rd. NE, offers digital literacy courses to D.C. residents. The office plans to add more centers through partnerships with other city agencies. To register for the summit or for information, go to www.connect.dc.gov. DDOT to discuss bike lanes, facilities The District Department of Transportation has scheduled a public meeting on its Innovative Bicycle Facility Research Project and on a proposed protected bike lane for L Street between 25th and 12th streets. The meeting is from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. next Thursday at the Reeves Center, second floor community room, 2000 14th St. NW. The bicycle project analyzes three bike facilities: bicycle signals and bike boxes at 16th and U streets and New Hampshire Avenue NW, the two-way cycle track on 15th Street NW between E and V streets, and the center median bicycle lanes on Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The proposed L Street protected bike lane will be separated by flexible posts and placed on the north side of the road. The same type of posts were used on 15th Street to provide greater protection for bicyclists. For information, go to www.ddot.dc.gov. Richard Dreyfuss to speak at Law Day Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss will speak at the Library of Congress on Tuesday as part of the Law Day activities. For seven years, Dreyfuss has been an advocate for civics education. In 2010, he founded the nonprofit Dreyfuss Initiative, which aims to revitalize civics education in public schools. “We must teach our kids how to run our country with common sense and realism,” Dreyfuss said. The program


Track and field: Annandale’s Ahmed Bile has sights set on boys’ mile at Penn Relays

lot of time kicking the soccer ball around. He earned a spot on the Atoms’ JV squad as a freshman. Bile, who was born in New Mexico and moved to the area in 2001, only joined the cross-country and indoor track teams as a sophomore because his father recommended it. They were a good way to build his endurance, Abdi said. He saw rapid improvements in the 1,000. His first time out he ran 2:48. Two races later at the Northern Region championships he was runner-up in 2:36. In the three short years since he started running, Bile has won two AAA state titles in the 1,000; a 1,600 meters title (4:09.48); and two state cross-country championships. He has covered so much ground in so little time. “He reads the race really, really well and times his effort,” said Chantilly Coach Matt Gilchrist, whose Chargers compete in the Concorde District and region against Annandale. “There’s no wasted energy. Ahmed doesn’t show any real weaknesses. “In the end he’s going to walk away as one of the greatest athletes the region has ever seen. I hope people appreciate just how good a three-sport athlete he really is.” Abdi appreciates just how well his son is developing, but mostly from afar. He spends much of his time these days 8,000 miles away in Somalia. His homeland lies on the eastern shoulder of Africa and it has been torn apart by war and poverty. Abdi, the first Somali to win a gold medal in a world-class event, is hoping to put it back together through his efforts with Somali Comprehensive Development Association, a non-profit he helped establish that focuses on creating youth development programs. Development becomes less of a thing when he talks about the athletic growth of his son. He considers it a delicate matter that shouldn’t be rushed and praises his wife of 22 years, Shadia Hajinur, for doing the lion’s share of the work when it comes to raising their three children. “The whole credit goes to her,” Abdi, a two-time NCAA 1,500 meters champion at George Mason, said. “I have a small role. She made him the person he is. “In terms of athletics, I see many possibilities for Ahmed. But all those possibilities need patience. They need no pushing at this point. Right now, I want him to not overtrain, get an education and, you know, enjoy life.”


The Post’s position on nuclear power reflects a pragmatic approach to energy that is seldom heard but needs to be supported. Germany’s instant political rejection of nuclear power in its future after the Fukushima accident will cost it in pollution from coal-burning plants, and in the electricity it will need to buy from France’s nuclear fleet. Japan’s response to reconsider nuclear power is more understandable, but time will bring perspective, and the Japanese will continue their nuclear power program to fulfill their energy needs. Nuclear power in the United States remains safe, and we are enhancing the protections against Fukushima-type extreme natural events even though we do not face the same level of threats as does Japan. And most important, the first new generation of reactors since the 1980s are now being built in Georgia and South Carolina. These are designed to provide long-term reactor cooling by natural processes, for days, even if no electricity is available. Michael Corradini, Madison, Wis.


VA mental health system sharply denounced at hearing

services possible. “The plan that was ultimately developed gamed the system so that the facility met performance requirements but utterly failed our veterans,” said Tolentino, a former Navy corpsman who went to work at the Manchester facility in 2009. One manager directed the staff to focus only on the immediate reason for an appointment and not to ask the veteran about any other problems because “we don’t want to know or we’ll have to treat it,” according to Tolentino. “VA is failing to meet its own mandates for timeliness and instead is finding ways to make the data look like they are complying,” said Murray, who requested the report. “It’s mind-boggling,” said Sen. Scott Brown, (R-Mass.), who raised concerns that the long waits that veterans seeking mental-health services face leaves them at heightened risk for suicide. “We fully embrace that our performance measures need to be revised,” William Schoenhard, deputy under secretary for health for operations and management, told the committee. The data was often based on available appointments, rather than the patient’s clinical needs, according to the inspector general’s office. If the patient was given an appointment two months later because of a lack of openings, the veteran would still be recorded as having been seen within two weeks of the desired date. The office issued reports in 2005 and 2007 raising similar concerns that the VA was using faulty data to calculate wait times. “This has been an issue for many years and hasn’t been resolved,” John Daigh Jr., assistant inspector general for health-care inspections, told the committee. Under pressure to reduce waiting times for veterans, the VA announced last week that it plans to hire 1,600 mental-health workers, an increase of more than 9 percent. But the VA already has about 1,500 vacancies in mental-health specialties, positions that have been hard to fill given better pay in the private sector. “How are you going to ensure that 1,600 positions . . . don’t become 1,600 vacancies?” Murray asked. Schoenhard said the department is studying ways to better recruit and retain mental-health professionals. “In the interim, you have soldiers who are killing themselves,” Brown said. Tolentino, who said his complaints “largely fell on deaf ears,” resigned from the Manchester facility in December. “Ultimately, I could not continue to work at a facility where the well-being of our patients seemed secondary to making the numbers look good,” he said.


Ernest ‘Chick’ Callenbach wrote ‘Ecotopia,’ an influential novel about an environmental utopia

and majored in English, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1949 and a master’s degree in 1953. In 1955, after a short stint in Paris studying at the Sorbonne and watching four movies a day, he moved to California and was hired as an assistant editor for UC Press. He became the editor of Film Quarterly in 1958 and led the magazine for 33 years. In the early 1970s, the farmer’s son found his disgust with consumer society rising. He was particularly upset at the way the country disposed of sewage by burning or dumping it. He wanted to write a magazine article about the problem but abandoned the project after realizing that he could not offer a practical solution. Instead, he began to imagine what would have to change for the country to embrace new approaches. He wound up writing “Ecotopia,” where citizens recycle almost everything, anything that can’t be reused is banned, walking or magnetic-levitation trains are the main modes of transportation, and the few cars allowed are electric. Mr. Callenbach was the first to admit that literary style was not the chief merit of the book, which he once described as “half-novel, half-tract.” The manuscript was rejected by 25 publishers, who, according to the author, believed that ecology was a passing fad. With money raised from friends, he formed Banyan Tree Books and sold out the first couple of printings. After Bantam picked up “Ecotopia” in 1977, Mr. Callenbach called his novel “the little book that could,” his wife said. Besides his wife, Christine, survivors include two children and five grandchildren. Mr. Callenbach wrote several other books, including “Living Poor With Style” and “Living Cheaply With Style.” He followed his own precepts: He bicycled to work for many years, drove a used car for 17 years, landscaped with native plants and grew his own vegetables. He bought his clothes from thrift shops until “used” became “vintage” and prices went up. Proof that “Ecotopia” had a cult following came soon after it was published when he discovered that a kind of “Ecotopian lending library” had sprung up. In 1977, Mr. Callenbach said he came across one copy that had been inscribed by 20 borrowers in places such as Portland, Ore.; Missoula, Mont.; and Alberta, Canada, before it was returned to the original owner. “That wrecks my royalties,” Mr. Callenbach observed, “but it does save trees.” — Los Angeles Times


D.C. area ethnic markets: Emily Wax explores

in Afghanistan, with a knowing smile on his face, would pull into a bakery to buy us naan bread — oval, hot and as long as my arm. I wasn’t sure I could find anything like those markets again, but a Rockville strip mall houses Yekta Supermarket, a beautiful, well-organized Iranian and Middle Eastern food bazaar with an entrance that has Persian-style mosaic tiles lining the floors. The store has an adjoining restaurant called Yekta Kabobi (www.yekta.com), which serves Persian dishes. Sahel Dadras, 35, and her sister Sougol Mollaan, 37, run the shop, along with their mother, Laila. Their late father, Yadi Dadras, opened the store in 1979. He previously had worked in Iran with his uncle Haj Samad, a reputable grocer in Tehran who operated the largest grocery store in the city, Sahel told me. Because of recent sanctions that forbid the United States from importing large-scale products from Iran, their father worked on sourcing specialty fruits and vegetables. Persian cucumbers, figs and tart tangerines are flown in from California, which has a large Iranian community and weather similar to Iran, making the produce taste similar. “His vision for Yekta began as a place where Iranian immigrants could shop for products reminiscent of loving memories from back home,” Sahel said, adding that Yekta means “one of a kind” in Persian. I visited right before the Iranian New Year last month. The front of the store was lined with Persian sesame and chickpea cookies and nuts and almond baklava, “different than the Greeks, who use walnuts,” Sahel said. The freezer was stocked with saffron and rose water ice cream, all made locally. (Order it or ask about their supply before you venture there.) And in the back: dozens of varieties of naan. It wasn’t straight from the oven. But when I took the long bread home and toasted it, I was surprised at how authentic it tasted. I wanted to call my driver and tell him. 1488-B Rockville Pike, Rockville. 301-984-1190. www.yekta.com. Indian shampoo and bling-y saris My search for my favorite Indian items started in a tiny butcher and grocery shop called Halal Meat and Grocery. It’s run by a Muslim Indian merchant who sells the Koran in Spanish and Arabic along with statues of the elephant-headed deity Lord Ganesh, the remover of obstacles. From the outside, the shop’s not much to look at. But inside I found many


Obama reelection campaign to target a new voter set: military families

in 2008 against Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). Foreign policy has remained largely on the margins of campaigning so far. But Biden pushed the administration’s unfolding argument into view Thursday with a sharp assault on Romney’s qualifications to be commander in chief. Biden’s principal message is that that Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and business executive, has failed to adapt his foreign-policy views to a time when social media, international terrorism, trade and demographic change are remaking the world. The vice president described Romney’s policies as “dangerously divorced from today’s realities,” accused Romney of being “mired in a Cold War mind-set” and said his foreign -policy positions on Russia, Iraq, missile defense and nuclear arms are “clearly and consistently stuck in the past.” In addition to the Obamas’ visit to Fort Stewart to greet troops, veterans and military families, the president will sign an executive order establishing new protections against predatory educational institutions trying to take advantage of those who qualify for the G.I. Bill and other programs. Michelle Obama also will travel to New Mexico on Tuesday to meet with service members and families. Both trips have been billed as official events unrelated to the campaign. But the reelection team in Chicago made clear Thursday that it plans to tout Obama’s policy accomplishments and his efforts to improve and promote services for veterans and their families. “The president and the campaign believe that this is one of the most important issues out there as we bring more than 2 million men and women home from serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and deal with the issues they face as returning veterans,” said Rob Diamond, who served in Iraq and is the Obama campaign’s vote director for veterans and military families. “We are out there talking about that, engaging veterans, educating them, making sure they understand how much has been done.” Obama’s celebration of the drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan opens him to criticism from his opponent, who has accused the president of weakening the country’s position in the world and compromising national security by pulling out too soon. Romney’s campaign made clear Thursday that it does not intend to cede foreign policy as an issue, despite poll numbers showing that much of the country agrees with Obama’s approach. Romney has criticized Obama for not securing an agreement to leave U.S. troops in Iraq to effectively confront Iran over its nuclear program


With Bo Xilai’s ouster, China’s premier pushes reform

revolutionary hero, Bo Yibo, had been widely assumed to be in line for one of the seven vacant slots on the Standing Committee, the elite body that effectively runs the country. But Bo’s downfall began Feb. 6, when his former police chief and onetime right-hand man in Chongqing, Wang Lijun, entered the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, 200 miles away. Wang, who initially sought a meeting with British diplomats, told the Americans that Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, was involved in the death of a British businessman, Neil Heywood, whose body was found in a Chongqing hotel room Nov. 15, 2010. Wang remained at the consulate for more than 24 hours but was eventually taken by top Chinese security officials to Beijing, where he remains out of sight. Chinese authorities have said that Bo was removed from the Central Committee and the Politburo and is being investigated for “serious violations” of the party’s discipline rules. His wife and a household aide have been detained on suspicion of killing Heywood after falling out over a financial dispute, according to the official version. Beyond that official version, little is known. Overseas and online media have offered numerous but sometimes conflicting versions of exactly what went on in Chongqing and what central government authorities are investigating. But in his March 14 news conference, Wen made clear that he had linked what he called “the Wang Lijun incident” to a broader agenda. Answering a question about Chongqing and Wang’s flight to the consulate, Wen said, “We’ve taken the major decision of conducting reform and opening up in China, a decision that’s crucial for China’s future and destiny.” Some analysts said Wen appeared to be using the Chongqing incident as an opportunity for “housecleaning,” to remove Bo and others considered opposed to further economic opening before he steps down as prime minister this year. “Wen Jiabao feels he has an obligation to get rid of this troublemaker,” said Cheng Li, an expert on Chinese elite politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Wang Kang, the Chongqing academic who was visiting Beijing this week, added: “Wen Jiabao seized this chance, turning a bad thing into something good.” Researcher Zhang Jie in Beijing contributed to this report. More world news coverage: - Nuclear communication system could be used for cybersecurity - Israeli general: Iran will not build nuclear bomb - Murdoch: ‘I failed, and I am very sorry about


Chen Guangcheng, blind Chinese lawyer-activist, escapes house arrest

broker a cease-fire in Syria. The Obama administration put up a wall of silence in the hours after Chen’s escape became public Friday morning. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, pressed repeatedly by reporters at the department’s daily news briefing, said only: “I don’t have anything for you on that subject.” Asked more generally about China’s treatment of Chen, Nuland said, “We have always had concerns about this case.” Chen ran afoul of authorities after he filed a class-action lawsuit in 2005 accusing officials of enforcing the one-child population law by forcing thousands of women to undergo late-term abortions and compulsory sterilization. He has been in and out of prison in recent years. After his last prison release, in September 2010, he was taken to his farmhouse in Dongshigu village and kept under unofficial house arrest, surrounded by armed thugs in plain clothes who prevented Chen and his wife from leaving and blocked journalists and activists from visiting. If Chen turns out to be sheltered by U.S. diplomats, it would present the Obama administration with the second thorny diplomatic issue with China in recent months. On Feb. 6, former Chongqing police chief, Wang Lijun, spent more than a day at the U.S. consulate in Chengdu. In that case, Wang left the consulate — of his own volition, according to U.S. diplomats — and was immediately taken into custody by Beijing central government security officials, but only after revealing a tale of internal intrigue, scandal and murder that led to China’s biggest political crisis in two decades. Wang, who as police chief led an often-brutal anti-crime drive in Chongqing, is being held incommunicado by Chinese security agents as part of a wide investigation into purged Communist Party official Bo Xilai. “There is a series of dots that connect up here with these embassy episodes where the United States keeps getting drawn into China’s internal affairs,” said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York. “With the Wang Lijun thing, the United States has been very prudent and careful to not say anything. That’s the proper response. But with Chen Guangcheng, there’s no way they can’t say something because you have Hillary Clinton heading over there.” There are several examples of temporary refuge given at U.S. diplomatic installations around the world but “posts may not grant or in any way promise ‘asylum’ to any foreign


Postcard From Tom: Indian Accent, a jewel box of a restaurant in New Delhi

is a pale pink dip coaxed from tomato pickle. Diners also get tweezers for extricating the hot crab from its pliant vase. Butter chicken, ubiquitous on restaurant menus in the Indian capital, gets a rich lift from crushed roasted peanuts and peanut butter, a texture combination that demonstrates the chef’s pan-Asian culinary training. The entree is sandwiched between fenugreek crackers and served with a vivid salad of onion, mint, beet and carrot by a waiter who playfully upends a chai glass over the plate. I’ve had Indian breads stuffed countless ways over the years, but it wasn’t until a spring dinner at Indian Accent that I encountered quarter-size nan sharpened with blue cheese and larger pillows of bread plumped with pumpkin and cheddar cheese. Mehrotra refers to his style as “Indian food with an international accent,” or the other way around. However you view his elegant and entertaining cooking, the chef comes from an unlikely background and is doing something that few of his peers have attempted, says Vir Sanghvi, a respected Indian print and television journalist and my recent guide to the country’s dining scene. According to Sanghvi, most Indian chefs are steeped in the ways of the French; Mehrotra, by contrast, was schooled in pan-Asian techniques by Thai master chefs in London. Even the venue for his cooking is uncommon. Most high-end Indian restaurants in New Delhi are found in large hotels that are “designed to appeal to foreigners who want to enjoy a good Indian meal without venturing too far,” says Sanghvi, who gave Mehrotra his namesake chef of the year award in 2010. Flanked by an expansive lawn visible from the serene dining room, the Manor houses a mere 15 guest rooms in a part of the city where ambassadors and titans of industry reside. Indian Accent was preceded in its space by a restaurant from the Michelin-starred London chef Vineet Bhatia. That concept foundered. Says Sanghvi, “Delhiites were not ready for Vineet’s style of modern Indian cooking.” They’ve since warmed to Indian Accent. To win the confidence of what Mehrotra calls his toughest audience — his fellow middle-class Indians — he never mixes two styles of regional Indian cooking on the same plate. Also, “if I can give a reason why I’m doing” something different with a traditional dish, he says, “fusion is successful.” I appreciate the little story that accompanies most dishes, especially if


Our all-volunteer military should stay that way

Elliot J. Feldman, a Washington lawyer, was a special project officer and consultant in the Defense Department during the Reagan administration. Those suggesting that the United States return to military conscription — including Thomas E. Ricks, writing recently in The Post, and my former boss at the Pentagon, Lawrence Korb — surely have honorable intentions. But they should know better. They cast a historical eye toward Vietnam and Korea, but they seem to have forgotten why we resorted to an all-volunteer armed force. The reasons applicable in 1972 are even more compelling today. Among the reasons Ricks, Korb and others have cited for the change they propose is the extent to which our armed forces have been broken by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, producing tragedy in those countries and within our military. They also note the detachment from civil society that our troops experienced during these wars. The concluding argument is always the same: Had the troops been conscripted, we would have ended these wars more quickly because the American people would have objected sooner to the futility of the missions. Without such democratic pressure, they assume (and without reference to the decisions of the Obama administration), national leaders will not easily withdraw. These observations are seriously flawed. There may be no historical precedent for the professionalism and success, within their missions, of the all-volunteer U.S. forces since their creation. The most important problems have arisen from policies of stop-loss (effectively an unofficial selective draft) and the abuse of reservists, who did not expect to spend prolonged periods in combat. These problems are partly attributable to the size and scale of the armed forces, which were dictated by the economics of a volunteer force. Such criticism assumes that with a draft we could have maintained a much larger force, but that is not the case. The economics of training and equipping a much larger military would have been as challenging, compounded by the famous problems of morale and efficiency with conscripted soldiers — lessons we supposedly learned in Vietnam. The truth is that missions must correspond to capabilities, not that we can redesign capabilities for ever-expanding missions. Another flawed rationale in calls to restore the draft is that Americans would be more mindful of misbegotten wars. Here the amnesia about Vietnam is distressing. Americans supported that war by significant polling margins for more than five years, until nearly


Why homeowner bailout plans don’t work

once within their means, but now these homeowners don’t need a loan modification — they need work. With unemployment stuck at 8.2 percent, millions of Americans are in this terrible position. Recent data from the Mortgage Bankers Association indicate that almost 4 million mortgages in the United States are at least 90 days delinquent or in the foreclosure process. A loan modification can’t help someone who doesn’t have a job. Political constraints have forced government housing programs to target homeowners who need limited assistance. Even this use of taxpayer money has angered many Americans who sacrificed to live within their means: Why should their tax dollars support those less prudent? This political constraint is the fundamental reason more homeowners have not been saved. Unless as a nation we are willing to spend substantial taxpayer dollars to help those who need a lot of housing assistance, any new foreclosure program, even the latest silver bullet of principal write-downs, is likely to have only limited reach. It is important to note that we did not constrain ourselves this way when we used the Troubled Assets Relief Program to stabilize the financial system. If the federal government had limited TARP funds to banks that needed moderate assistance, several large banks would have failed, bringing down the financial system. Those bailouts were also politically unpopular, but we overrode political concerns for the sake of preventing another Great Depression — and sparked tremendous political backlash as a result. In effect, because of both political constraints and limited resources, bailout recipients had to be deemed systemically important or not that troubled. Those deemed not critical to the system and deeply troubled have not been helped by government programs. Unfortunately, many individual homeowners have fallen into this category. Given this political reality, we need either to agree, as a nation, to spend substantial taxpayer dollars to reach more homeowners, or the federal government should focus on programs to quickly move troubled homeowners to affordable rentals and, most important, focus on pro-growth economic policy to create jobs. The urgent need for decisive action was highlighted by Friday’s disappointing economic data. The economy grew at only a 2.2 percent rate in the first quarter, down from 3 percent the previous quarter and below expectations. Most alarming, however, is that this growth was achieved largely by consumers saving less to spend more: The personal savings rate fell from 4.5 percent


BSO at Strathmore: A captivating self-contained drama

Conductor Jun Markl made Schumann’s oft-maligned orchestration sound ingeniously fresh. (Christiane Höhne) Conductor Jun Markl kicked off Thursday’s Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concert at Strathmore Hall with a jolt of adrenaline, treating the overture to Weber’s “Euryanthe” as a captivating self-contained drama. There was tension underlying the rapid string figurations — the Baltimore strings here superbly disciplined and woodsy of tone — and an urgency to the crisp attacks he coaxed from all sections of the orchestra. Markl’s reading of Schumann’s “Rhenish” symphony proved just as individual, with lyrical passages taking on an autumnal glow and big moments filled with bustling energy. This is a conductor who isn’t afraid to mold phrases and play with tempos for expressive effect. His attention to the score’s atmosphere — letting troubling inner voices dart up through the music’s grand surface, or spinning a legato line through shifting brass chords to create an almost regal flavor — made Schumann’s oft-maligned orchestration sound ingeniously fresh. Beethoven’s Violin Concerto was just as lovingly shaped, and Markl’s genial account suited the ravishingly pure and lovely playing of violinist Arabella Steinbacher. Steinbacher is a superb technician — a quality displayed as much in her encore of Kreisler’s fiendishly difficult Recitativo and Scherzo as in the concerto itself. What made her playing so special was her poised and natural way with phrasing (complemented by a serene, almost patrician physical bearing), her ability to float pianissimo notes and ethereal harmonics like a dream, and her sure command of musical architecture. In a month in which Strathmore featured Joshua Bell’s beautiful rendition of the piece, Steinbacher’s reading distilled even more magic. Banno is a freelance writer.


Chen Guangcheng, escaped Chinese dissident, is subject of diplomacy with U.S., activists say

end of the day, he is going to have to leave China or leave the embassy and see what he faces.” Chen’s escape and the possible involvement of the U.S. Embassy in sheltering him come at an already challenging time for China’s Communist rulers, who are grappling with the gravest political crisis here since the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989. The firing of and investigation into once-rising star Bo Xilai, the former Chongqing party secretary, and the arrest of Bo’s wife on suspicion of murder have exposed high-level corruption and leadership rifts just months ahead of what was supposed to be a carefully choreographed handover of power this fall. The Chen case could push human rights issues to the forefront of this week’s talks, which are supposed to focus on issues such as trade, currency appreciation, Iran sanctions and North Korea. Another contentious issue at the talks could be a letter the White House legislative affairs director sent Friday to Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), assuring him that the administration would give “serious consideration” to Cornyn’s proposal to sell new F-16C/D fighter planes to Taiwan. Cornyn, whose state includes plants belonging to the fighter-jet manufacturer Lockheed Martin, had earlier lifted his hold on Mark Lippert’s appointment as assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs, a post that has been vacant for more than a year. So far, however, both the United States and China have maintained a cautious silence on the Chen affair. Asked about it Friday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said simply, “I have no information to give you.” Associates detained Meanwhile, further details emerged about Chen’s journey over the past week. Hu Jia said he and Chen met in the same room in Beijing where Chen recorded the video, broadcast on YouTube, in which he calls on Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to protect his family and investigate corruption in Linyi city, in Shandong province, where Chen’s home village of Dongshigu is located. Hu described wearing a raincoat for concealment when he went to meet Chen at a safe house and said that to avoid being tracked, he did not take a cellphone. He said that after their meeting, which lasted more than an hour, Chen moved to a new secret location. “We discussed where was a safe place for him in Beijing,” Hu said. “But we couldn’t figure out any absolutely safe place in


In Everglades, tracking pythons may provide clues to vanishing wildlife

bounty hunters with guns and machetes into the park. Bounty hunters are great at capturing snakes — when they find them, which is rare. Hunters are also known to execute small native snakes, mistaking them for python hatchlings. “Someone could tell you there are 10 pythons in this area, and you could walk all day and not see them,” Smith said as he leaned on a truck, dirty and tired after wrestling Python 51 and leading the team on a two-mile hike with her live 140-pound body draped over their shoulders. Pythons prefer warmth, but many in the Everglades have managed to survive hard freezes, leading some biologists to worry about their ability to adapt and travel north. The snake has already been swimming and slithering south toward the Florida Keys. Once pythons are established, trouble seems to follow. A study co-authored by Hart, Mazzotti and other researchers showed that when pythons started to appear in large numbers in the late 1990s and early 2000s, mammals in the southernmost part of the Everglades started to disappear. For the study, researchers traveled nearly 40,000 miles over 11 years, observing wildlife in the southern area. They found that 99 percent of raccoons, 98 percent of opossums and about 88 percent of bobcats were gone. Marsh and cottontail rabbits, as well as foxes, could not be found. Nearly every news report blamed pythons, but the study — “Severe Mammal Declines Coincide with Proliferation of Invasive Burmese Pythons in Everglades National Park” — did not conclude that. It said more research was needed. “You have to ask the question,” Mazzotti said. “Has a crime occurred? Yes, mammals have declined. Do pythons have a motive? You bet, they have to eat. Do they have the means? They’re like vacuum cleaners on mammals. But then you have to do a much better job of looking at cause and effect.” Mazzotti is also examining the impact of humans, who have drained water for development. “What’s happened in the Everglades is that the depth of water has been completely screwed up by humans, and we have to ask the question if hydrology is related to the disappearance of mammals.” Using data collected from recaptured pythons, Hart is testing her own theory. Although humans rarely see well-camouflaged pythons, she wonders whether vanishing marsh rabbits see them all the time, just before their world goes black. “I used to see


on site, the company has experimented with technology from Square and eBay’s PayPal unit. Those products let them track preferences of specific customers. “Even at a very early stage, we’re able to drive a lot of foot traffic and customer traffic to wherever we’re popping up,” Scholnick said. That’s how Schmendricks, named after the Yiddish word for a stupid person, sold out its launch party. While it has a growing fan base, the bagels aren’t cheap. The company charges $3 each, compared with $1 to $1.50 at most of the local stores. Cream cheese, which they buy in stores and then flavor themselves, is an extra dollar. Ethan Kurzweil, a Boston-area native, is willing to pay the premium. He compares it to buying an artisan chocolate versus a supermarket candy bar. “They have to brand themselves as a different category — they are a bagel and nothing else is a bagel,” said Kurzweilwho became an early Schmendricks customer through his venture connection to Scholnick.“If I’m going to eat the carbs, it’s not really about the money. It’s about the food experience.” Schmendricks’ bagels are modeled after the Bagel Hole in Brooklyn, Kover’s childhood store. The baking is left to Scholnick’s wife, Deepa Subramanian, who quit her job as a corporate lawyer last year to become the single full-time employee. A native of India, Subramanian had never tasted a bagel until coming to the United States for college. She jumped at the opportunity for a career change. “Once we nailed down the product, I was really excited about a shot at being an entrepreneur,” said Subramanian, who was a software developer at Salesforce.com before going to law school. “I’ve never produced anything in my life that is this tangible.” She now wakes at 4 a.m. to have bagels ready for breakfast delivery at nearby start-ups and law firms. She’s making thousands of bagels a week, with evening help from the rest of the team. That includes the fourth founder, Dagny Dingman, who’s married to Kover. They expect to hire someone soon to help meet rising demand and give Subramanian more time to work on social marketing, meeting cafe owners and trying to build the business. “It’s not the best use of my time spending eight or nine hours a day baking,” she said. “I’m really intrigued to see how I’m going to manage people. I’ve never done that.” — Bloomberg News


Saving Chen Guangcheng

Bob Fu is founder and president of the China Aid Association, a Texas-based Christian human rights organization campaigning for Chen Guangcheng’s freedom. The blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng climbed over the back wall of his home April 22 — and escaped nearly six years of torture, malnutrition and isolation. During his detention, Chen became a global star, his dark glasses emblematic of the embattled movement of human rights defenders in China. Chen is my hero and friend. He is under the protection of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. His status and safety present a pivotal test for freedom in China and for U.S. credibility as a defender of freedom. Chen’s escape was planned carefully for many months. The actor Christian Bale was the most prominent person who tried to visit Chen during his years of house detention, but hundreds of Chinese citizens sought a similar audience and were forcibly turned away by police. Chen’s most passionate supporters were the Chinese netizen community. One netizen, He “Pearl” Peirong, provided logistic support for Chen’s escape, picking him up in Shandong province — where Chen and I both hail from — and taking him to Beijing. I am awed by the courage of those who helped Chen escape. Pearl told me she is willing to die with Chen because he is such a “pure-hearted courageous person.” I was talking to her last week when she said “guo bao lai le,” that state security had arrived. Now, she is under arrest at an undisclosed location, and her blog has been erased. Chen is often described as a “dissident,” but that is a misnomer. Despite years of brutal treatment for seeking to bring attention to those victimized by China’s “one-child” policy, he has never established a political party or organization. He has never advocated overthrowing the Communist Party. In the video he posted online after his escape, he says that the injustices his family experienced “hurt the image of our Party.” And the first thing he told me after escaping was that he wanted the outside the world to know that he was not going to leave China but to “fight to the end for the freedom of my family. . . . I want to live a normal life as a Chinese citizen with my family.” Chen’s escape prompted a predictable brutal response. After police in Shandong realized — four days after Chen got away


Yuri Bashmet and the Moscow Soloists Chamber Orchestra at the Music Center at Strathmore

Conductor and violist Yuri Bashmet. (Oleg Nachinkin) Viola virtuoso Yuri Bashmet founded the Moscow Soloists Chamber Orchestra two decades ago, which quickly established itself through Grammy-winning recordings and worldwide tours. On Friday evening, Bashmet and company presented a strange and, at times, irritating concert at the Music Center at Strathmore. First, the programming. The MSCO is a string orchestra, for which there is a wealth of original literature ranging from Antonio Vivaldi to Arvo Part. None of the six works offered came from this broad category; everything performed was an arrangement, adulteration or corruption of the original. Why wouldn’t a world-class group want to showcase its unique repertoire? Then there’s the question of whether the MSCO has a conductor. Bashmet’s directing style could be called collaborative or superficial. His gestures tend to be horizontal and airy and lack detail. The players watch one another more than Bashmet, but many entrances were still sloppy. When Bashmet took up his viola to perform as soloist in the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, he dropped any pretense of leadership, standing motionless even during long rests, leaving the group to hang together as best it could. The MSCO also brought cellist Mischa Maisky along as soloist, although it didn’t have the necessary wind players for the Tchaikovsky Nocturne or the Haydn Cello Concerto in C Major. The solution? Simply do without. This appallingly cavalier attitude from a professional ensemble — just play and hope no one notices — was of a piece with its interpretations. To trim a long first half, Bashmet left off most repeats in the Schubert Death and the Maiden Quartet (a partial Mahler arrangement, which the composer sensibly abandoned halfway through as unworkable). The famously slow movement began faster than I’d ever heard it, then immediately slowed for the first variation. At the end, it slowed even further, the coda ending in a crawl. Did the musicians not understand it was the same material, now unrecognizable? The tragedy of all this was that much of the playing was impressive. Maisky is truly a master, with an industrial-strength sound, although he doesn’t draw the long lines of his illustrious teacher Mstislav Rostropovich. Bashmet is justifiably hailed as one of the world’s finest violists; what a pity we had to hear him in such an ill-advised misfire. While Brahms sanctioned the substitution of the viola in his clarinet quintet, he never intended this tightly


The joy of innovation

reservation system through which they can arrange for five-course tastings at one of five partner restaurants, including Fiola and Bibiana, for $135 a person. “Our value proposition is connecting curious dinners with innovative chefs,” said Jill Richmond, who co-founded The Coterie with Nick and David Wiseman. “What underpins what we do, especially with the fireside dinners, is providing connections that are more meaningful than just having a great experience at a restaurant.” Richmond, a consultant at the World Bank, started the culinary salon under the name No. 68 Project in London in March 2010. When her job led her back to the states a year later, she revived the project as a nine-week pop-up restaurant in the District. The underground scene Area foodies are dispelling the notion that Washington is too conservative to embrace experimental concepts. Underground dinner parties, where guests are not allowed to disclose the location or the host’s identity, have been gaining popularity in the past two years. Dinner requests are growing at the Web site for underground restaurant Chez La Commis. Tom, the chef who requested anonymity to maintain privacy, started sending out e-mails to friends of friends in January to try out his creations. A public relations executive by day, budding chef by night, Tom serves six-courses, with three wine pairings, for $40 out of his home in Clarendon. Word got out in the blogosphere about his dishes, such as crab salad with cucumber granite, and foodies started e-mailing requests to attend his clandestine supper club. “Because there is no barrier aside from the cost of ingredients, you can get as creative as you want,” Tom said. “When you free people from the formal setting of a restaurant, the atmosphere becomes more lively. That matches the type of food I put out.” What started out as a once a month event now occurs three to four times a month. “This is an investment in finding out whether I can eventually do my own restaurant,” Tom said. Meals on wheels No recent restaurant trend has garnered quite the attention as food trucks have. The new era of curbside cuisine, rife with gourmet concepts, has spawned well over 100 mobile vendors in the region since 2009. “The evolution of mobile food service now has been fueled by the sustained period of economic weakness,” said Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research at the National Restaurant Association. “Consumers


Germany struggles with homecoming of Afghanistan veterans

of troops in Afghanistan — 5,350 troops were stationed there at the beginning of the year, before the drawdown started, and more than 300,000 German troops have served in foreign operations since reunification in 1990. Since then, more than 100 have died. The simple passage of time has made discussions about veterans less fraught. Few members of the World War II generation are around to raise awkward questions about how they fit into the broader plans. De Maiziere — the son of a prominent general who was active in World War II and postwar West Germany — has said that he intends honors to go only to members of postwar Germany’s military, which was established in 1955 and whose size is still limited to an internationally agreed upon maximum. No greeting at the airport Among regular Germans, the discussion has not provoked the heated debate that might have occurred a decade ago. Instead, many seem ready to accept the plans for more recognition for the military. Still, no one is suggesting military parades down Unter den Linden, the broad Berlin boulevard that was built to accommodate that purpose. “There’s a need for peace and peacefulness,” said David Habedank, 31, a chef who was visiting the New Guard House on Unter den Linden on a recent afternoon. Once a monument to the German military, it is now a memorial “to the victims of war and tyranny.” “It’s okay to honor not a passion, but a kind of work,” Habedank said. But soldiers who have served in Afghanistan say that there remains a stark divide between how their country treats them and the reception that their American, British and other counterparts get upon returning home. “If you look at the U.S. guys, you look at the day they return from Afghanistan or Iraq. In Germany, there’s no one who is greeting them at the airport. There’s no comparison,” said Andreas Timmermann-Levanas, head of the Association of German Veterans, who served in Bosnia and Afghanistan and has pushed for a veterans day. Treatment of veterans in the United States is far from perfect, he said, but the country has a broader awareness of the areas that need improvement. “You discuss the problem, because you know the problem,” Habedank said. “We still don’t know the whole problem.” And sometimes, as a result, soldiers fall through the cracks. “I lost everything: house, car, family,” said