Police arrest one man in connection with D.C. homicide, his statement implicates two others

A suspect in the shooting death of a man found last year in a burning car in Capitol Heights told D.C. police of two accomplices, one who pulled the trigger and another who helped dispose of the body, according to court documents. Antwain Henderson, 34, of Capitol Heights was found dead early in the morning of Aug. 31. On Thursday, D.C. police arrested Sean Donnelle Hawkins, 37, and charged him with second-degree murder in the case. Hawkins, 37, of Waldorf told investigators that one man shot Henderson in the head, according to police charging documents, and that the second got a tow truck to take Henderson’s car — with the body in it — to Maryland from Northeast Washington. Neither man was named in the charging documents, which say that both men are known to law enforcement and call them “co-defendants.” On Friday, a D.C. police spokeswoman declined to identify or describe the men or to say whether authorities were still seeking them, citing an ongoing investigation. According to the charging documents, Hawkins told police that Henderson and the shooter argued before the shooter pulled out a gun and fired, hitting Henderson in the head. Hawkins told police that he took a handgun from Henderson’s waist after he fell to the ground. Hawkins and the two men took the body into a residence in the 5800 block of Field Place NE while police, responding to the sound of gunfire, searched the area, Hawkins told police. Hawkins said he helped clean up the area, put Henderson’s body in trash bags and carry him to his car. The other men then towed Henderson’s car to Maryland, according to Hawkins’s allegations. Shortly after 4:30 a.m. Aug. 31, firefighters in Prince George’s county found the burning car with Henderson in the trunk. The medical examiner later ruled the cause of his death to be a gunshot wound to the head, authorities said. Police reported that Henderson’s body was badly burned and that the car was so damaged that it was impossible to tell what type of vehicle it was — beyond a “standard” sedan-type. On Friday, Hawkins was ordered held without bond until a hearing next month, according to online D.C. Superior Court records. .


Japan orders restart of two nuclear reactors shut by tsunami

TOKYO — The central government’s decision clears the way for western Japan’s Kansai Electric Power Co. to refire a pair of units at the Ohi plant, whose four reactors — like others in the country — were idled after last year’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. Although engineers will need several weeks to power up Ohi reactors 3 and 4, Noda’s announcement formally breaks the stalemate in a months-long debate about Japan’s short-term energy plan. A majority here argued that the earthquake-prone country should back away from nuclear power because of safety concerns. But Noda and his powerful lieutenants argued that Japan’s economy would wither if the country remained nuclear-free and short on energy. The restart at Ohi could open the door for reactors to come back online elsewhere in the country, and Noda has said that the government will make judgments “on individual cases,” based on safety. “We are determined to make further efforts to restore people’s trust in nuclear policy and safety regulations,” he said Saturday, according to the Kyodo news agency. In the 15 months since the Fukushima disaster — an earthquake- and a tsunami-triggered triple meltdown that forced the evacuation of 100,000 people — Japan has first abandoned nuclear power and then re-embraced it. As the country’s 50 working reactors were shuttered either because of safety concerns or for routine maintenance checks, officials in host communities put up stiff resistance to any restart orders. Many said Tokyo had done too little to reform its discredited nuclear regulatory system or break up the traditional cozy ties between government and utility companies. In early May, a final nuclear reactor on the northern island of Hokkaido came offline, and Japan, briefly, was nuclear-free. But Noda has pushed local mayors and regional governors to reconsider their stance, emphasizing the possibility of rolling blackouts that would potentially cause companies to relocate overseas. In recent months, he has brought most pressure to bear on officials in Fukui prefecture, or state, home of the Ohi plant. Fukui is often called “nuclear alley,” because it hosts four plants and feeds energy to a chain of major cities — Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe — just to the south that the government sees as particularly vulnerable to shortages this summer. The government might push next to restart the No. 3 reactor at the Ikata nuclear plant, in the southwest. That reactor has passed an initial stress test


Attack on U.S. outpost in Afghanistan worse than originally reported

on the Salerno base. They said it is their long-standing policy to withhold information about wounded or injured troops. At Salerno, many of the service members listed as casualties went to the base clinic as a precaution to be tested for traumatic brain injury, the officials said. “When you do look at the number of wounded . . . it looks like ‘oh my goodness,’ ” said a senior NATO official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the policy against discussing non-lethal casualties. “It’s not a coverup. It is what it is.” The official said most of the 100 service members who suffered minor injuries returned to duty that same day. The Defense Department did later identify a soldier who died three days after the attack as Pfc. Vincent J. Ellis, 22, a member of the 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division. U.S. officials said Saturday that an American contractor also later died of wounds suffered in the attack, but they declined to provide an identification. U.S. officials said they were assessing security at Salerno in the aftermath of the truck bombing. Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, said that at all coalition bases, from the headquarters in Kabul to the smallest combat outpost, “protection is taken very seriously.” “When you do have an incident like this, you do after-action reviews, you assess the incident to see . . . what can you do better to improve,” he said. “We’re always doing that.” Salerno is a relatively large base in the mountains near the Pakistani border, named after the town where Allied troops made amphibious landings during their 1943 invasion of the Italian mainland during World War II. The Haqqanis have repeatedly tried to overrun the Salerno base in recent years, and it is a frequent target of rocket attacks. In August 2008, insurgents were beaten back during an assault on the camp’s perimeter that lasted two days. Two years later, about three dozen Haqqani fighters were killed during a similar attack on Salerno and a nearby installation, Forward Operating Base Chapman. Chapman is a military base also used by the CIA. It was the target of a December 2009 suicide bombing by an al-Qaeda triple agent who killed seven CIA operatives, the deadliest attack against the agency in 26 years. Whitlock reported from Washington. Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this


Making smart spending and saving decisions is crucial to emerging from economic downturn

to 24.5 percent in 2010. People have been trying to correct bad habits. The percentage of families using credit cards for borrowing dropped. Overall, the median balance for those carrying a credit card balance fell 16.1 percent to $2,600. Over the three-year period, the median balance fell for most demographic groups. The number of credit cards held by families also decreased. It’s also hard to plan when you aren’t sure what you’re going to earn. Over the 2007-10 period, the U.S. economy experienced its most substantial downturn since the Great Depression, the Fed says. In 2010, 35.1 percent of families reported that they didn’t have a good idea of what their income would be for the next year, and 29 percent reported that they don’t usually have a good idea of their next year’s income. “Families’ finances are affected by both their own decisions and the state of the broader economy,” the Fed said. So what can we learn from this report? Because if we don’t ask the question, what’s the point of capturing the statistics? One, don’t replace old financial bad habits with new ones. While debt is down in some areas, it’s increasing in another. School loans rose 11.9 percentage points as a share of installment borrowing over the recent three-year period, the Fed reported. In 2010, 45.1 percent of such borrowing was related to education, 39.3 percent was related to the purchase of a vehicle. In past surveys, the balances on vehicle loans always accounted for more than half of all installment debt. People still are not saving enough. Overall, from 2007 to 2010, the proportion of families who reported that they had saved in the preceding year fell from 56.4 percent to 52 percent. The Fed said the decrease pushed the fraction of families reporting savings to the lowest level since it began collecting such information in 1992. When the economy is rebooted and thriving again, it might be easy to fall back into old habits. But don’t forget the hardships. “I’m learning to control my spending, have a plan, have a budget and save save save,” my friend said. “I wasn’t prepared at all for what happened.” Now you know. Readers can write to Michelle Singletary c/o The Washington Post, 1150 15th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20071. Or e-mail: singletarym@washpost.com. Personal responses may not be possible. Please also note comments or questions may be used


Amazon spreads its Web in Washington

Amazon Web Services lured Teresa Carlson away from Microsoft, where she was the software company’s top federal executive. Now based in Herndon, she leads Amazon’s public sector efforts. (Evy Mages/Capital Business) When federal officials rolled out a new initiative to make cloud — or Web-based — computing a priority for all federal agencies, every information technology contractor felt the ground shift. But maybe none more so than Amazon Web Services, which found in the policy change a massive business opportunity. Since that announcement less than two years ago, the company has lured away Microsoft’s top federal executive, increased the number of federal, state and local government agencies with whom it does business from 20 to more than 150 and partnered with a host of traditional government contractors. As the federal IT focus moves from cloud computing to big data, meaning the push to make better use of reams of data, Amazon is again in the spotlight. A government press release earlier this year describing big data pilot efforts mentioned just one company by name — Amazon Web Services — for its work on a National Institutes of Health program. The business — a separate unit of Amazon.com — began in 2006, when the retailing giant realized it could use its experience developing technology for its online store and internal systems to create a cloud computing infrastructure for other businesses and organizations. The offering proved popular because it allowed companies to not only avoid purchasing their own equipment but permitted them to pay solely for what they used. “By building that early, they dealt with a lot of the challenges that people moving to cloud are dealing with right now,” said said Shawn P. McCarthy, research director at IDC Government Insights. “The federal government has a lot of requirements ... [Amazon] already dealt with a lot of that.” The federal government was slow to embrace the new model. But in late 2010, Vivek Kundra, the government’s first federal chief information officer, put together a federal IT plan that called for dramatic changes, from shuttering hundreds of government data centers to moving federal agency programs to the cloud. At the same time, AWS, seeing an opportunity, hired Teresa Carlson, the former head of Microsoft’s federal business, to lead its public sector efforts. “Our strategic approach to the market was number one, get the message out to the agencies that we’re here,” Carlson


Punish the Russian abusers

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S hopes of forging a partnership with Vladimir Putin after his return to the Russian presidency appear to be fading fast. With a meeting between the two presidents due Monday, Russia is rebuffing U.S. appeals for cooperation in stopping the massacres in Syria, while continuing to supply the regime of Bashar al-Assad with weapons. Meanwhile the Kremlin is cracking down on Russians seeking democratic reform or fighting corruption. This month a prominent journalist was forced to flee the country after a senior government official reportedly threatened to kill him. Apart from occasional public expressions of exasperation, the administration isn’t reacting much to the cold wind from Moscow. Instead it is pressing Congress to pass a piece of legislation much sought by Mr. Putin: repeal of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which conditions trade preferences for Russia on free emigration. On its face the repeal makes sense; if the law is not changed, U.S. companies will be disadvantaged when Russia joins the World Trade Organization this summer. But a bill that grants Russia trade preferences and removes human rights conditions hardly seems the right response to Mr. Putin’s recent behavior. That’s why momentum in Congress appears to be swinging behind a bipartisan initiative to couple the Jackson-Vanik repeal with a new human rights provision. The Magnitsky act, whose prime author has been Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.), would sanction Russian officials “responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” The bill is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who uncovered a $230 million embezzlement scheme by Russia tax and interior ministry officials, then was imprisoned by those same officials and subjected to mistreatment that led to his death. The bill is due to be taken up Tuesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and could later be attached to the Russia trade bill under a deal struck between Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). The appeal of the legislation is its sharp focus: It will affect only those found to be involved in Mr. Magnitsky’s death or the mistreatment of other Russians fighting corruption or abuses of human rights. It would punish people like the senior law enforcement official who allegedly threatened to kill Sergei Sokolov of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, then appoint himself investigator of the crime. Those sanctioned will be denied the U.S. visas they prize, and their dollar


McTee’s ‘Double Play’ stands out in NOI concert led by Slatkin

Former National Symphony music director Leonard Slatkin was in town Saturday as the University of Maryland’s National Orchestral Institute presented the first of three full-orchestra programs at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. Slatkin had only a few days to pull together this assemblage of college-age musicians into a cohesive orchestra. He was only partially successful. Slatkin’s indifference to orchestral balances marred his National Symphony tenure, and he has not improved in this area. It is particularly unfortunate that he repeated this mistake with the NOI. The orchestra boasts a string section that numerically is at full symphonic strength; the section clearly would be able to produce glorious sounds if given a fighting chance. But vast swaths of important musical material were rendered inaudible by the brass and percussion players, who were never given anything but encouragement from the podium. In the Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphony, all was bombast and macho one-upmanship among the brass and timpani players. The string players — who looked skilled and attentive all the way to the last stands — would have been appalled if they knew how few of their carefully practiced notes were actually audible. Slatkin opened the concert with the Bach/Stokowski Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor,” a work of plodding bathos that likely taught these student musicians very little. The second piece was a local premiere of “Double Play” by Slatkin’s new bride, Cindy McTee. It was worth the drive. McTee studied with the Polish master Krzysztof Penderecki, and lived in his home for a year. Her music, while unmistakably American-sounding, also hums with Penderecki’s craftsmanship and a catholic array of influences across several centuries. The first part is an homage to Ives, while the second is a mash-up of big-band licks a la Leonard Bernstein and scurrying, frenetic urban passages. Great fun, and well delivered by all. Leonard Slatkin (Steve J. Sherman) Battey is a freelance writer.


A stagnant Ukraine struggles to see a way out

daughter of Yanukovych’s chief rival and Ukraine’s most famous prisoner, Yulia Tymoshenko. The discussions, she said, involve “pseudo-reforms with a thin veneer of European norms.” Window dressing or not, the talks to some degree probably reflect pressure from Europe, which Ukraine can’t ignore, analysts say. Ukrainian oligarchs reportedly aren’t thrilled with the government, either. They’ve watched while Yanukovych’s family and cronies from the coal mining center of Donetsk have snatched up one business after another, usually with the connivance of tax authorities. The president’s son, Oleksandr, saw his net worth increase 18-fold after his father took office. Isolation over Tymoshenko But one question overshadows everything else. Yulia Tymoshenko was Yanukovych’s opponent on the streets during the Orange Revolution and at the ballot box in 2010, and now, with the upper hand, he has thrown her into prison, along with three ministers who worked in her government. Currently under guard in a hospital, she was convicted of misuse of office for a natural-gas deal she negotiated with Russia when she was prime minister in 2009. “It’s crucial for them to have Tymoshenko in prison,” Bushchenko said. For Yanukovych, she is an obsession. Though he has said that in theory he would like to pardon her, he has also talked about bringing murder charges against her. European leaders have denounced her treatment as political persecution, and there is a move in Congress to deny U.S. visas to officials associated with her case. Even Russia — which was Yanukovych’s sponsor against Tymoshenko during the Orange Revolution — has turned against him over the way she has been treated. “The Ukrainian president is effectively isolated — isolated from the European side and isolated from the Russian side,” said Igor Burakovsky, who runs a think tank here called the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting. Kiev is a graceful old city, spruced up now for the Euro 2012 soccer tournament, but there is a faded quality to it that hasn’t been erased. A winding street that drops down the hill behind St. Sofia Cathedral was once full of galleries and cafes, but it’s mostly quiet now. Kiev no longer feels like a city on the make. In March, the International Monetary Fund froze payments on a $15.6 billion bailout for Ukraine because the government failed to raise utility rates. It almost certainly won’t raise those rates before the elections — but Ukrainians know the


‘Functional food’ is hot, but its claims of health benefits rely on flimsy data

scientific research in its advertising, the research must squarely support the claims made. Contrary to POM Wonderful’s advertising, the available scientific information does not prove that POM Juice or POMx effectively treats or prevents these illnesses.” An administrative law judge issued a cease-and-desist order in May after finding insufficient evidence to support the manufacturer’s claims about reduced health risks. The company filed a lawsuit in 2010 contending that the FTC was overstepping its authority by setting new standards for advertising food and dietary supplements. That litigation is still pending. Honesty on labels Health claims weren’t allowed on food products until about 20 years ago. As the FDA saw it, such a link would mean the products were being marketed as drugs. And if food was being promoted that way, manufacturers had to conduct clinical studies to provide evidence of safety and efficacy. That changed in the early 1990s with the creation of a national system of nutrition labeling (the “Nutrition Facts” panels now found on food packages). Food manufacturers had opposed the effort, thinking it would reveal negative information about their products. They then lobbied for the right to promote the benefits of their products, and in response Congress passed another piece of legislation: the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, forcing the FDA to permit substantiated health claims on food packages. In 1994 Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which made it easier to put health claims on vitamins, minerals and herbal products. “We expected to see nutritional supplements or dietary supplements making health claims,” says Mary K. Engle, director of the FTC’s Advertising Practices division. “But then, about five years ago, we started to see those kinds of claims on foods — claims like ‘metabolism-enhancing’ and ‘immune-boosting,’ or something having to do with brain health or heart health.” Food for function Conventional wisdom suggests that consumers might be tempted to eat fortified food instead of taking medication, but a study in the journal Pharmacoepidemiology & Drug Safety found otherwise. So what’s a health-conscious shopper to do? “Know thyself,” says Elizabeth Rahavi, director of health and wellness at the International Food Information Council Foundation, an industry group. “Consumers can ask themselves questions that can help guide their choices, such as ‘Is this a food that I commonly consume?’ Often the benefit of a functional food comes through repeated consumption.” Copyright 2012. Consumers Union of United States Inc.


Raindrops don’t swat down mosquitoes, researchers find

Biologists determine how mosquitoes shrug off raindrops. (Bigstock) A mosquito buzzes toward an open window, heading for an unsuspecting victim peacefully asleep in bed. Suddenly, a raindrop weighing 50 times as much as the mosquito plummets straight down on the insect. The drop should have the impact of a bus running over a human. Sadly for the sleeping person, the pest will survive this collision. That’s the conclusion of a team of engineers and biologists who used a combination of real-time video and sophisticated math to demonstrate that the mosquito’s light but rugged construction allows it to shrug off even large raindrop. The findings offer little aid in controlling the pest — but might help engineers improve the design of tiny flying robots. Aviation engineers know a lot about how rain impairs the flight of airplanes. Heavy rain increases drag, reduces lift and increases the risk of stalling. But research on the impact of water on flying animals is sparse. To help fill this knowledge gap, mechanical engineer David Hu and his colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology decided to subject Anopheles mosquitoes, the primary insect that infects people with malaria, to artificial rain conditions. Hu’s team is already well known for its studies of water-animal interactions, including the physics of how wet dogs dry themselves by shaking the water off. The team built an acrylic cage covered with a mesh top that allowed water in but kept the mosquitoes from escaping. In an initial round of experiments, the researchers shot jets of water into the cage to simulate raindrops falling about 33 feet, the height at which they achieve their maximum velocity. Six mosquitoes placed in the cage were then filmed with a camera that shot 4,000 frames per second. It was like a game of insect pinball. All six mosquitoes were able to recover from raindrop impacts without crashing to the bottom of the cage. In one typical example, a mosquito hit by a drop tumbled 13 body lengths before separating itself from the drop and flying laterally to land on the side of the cage. To better picture what was happening, the team subjected 20 mosquitoes to drops that were falling more slowly. The videos showed that most of the collisions were glancing blows on the wings and legs. But even when the mosquitoes took a direct hit, they still recovered after falling no more than


Chen Guangcheng adjusts to life in America

to the birth of a civil society ruled by law, and how China might learn from America’s experience. For now, Chen is often careful in how he describes China’s current problems. “Caution runs through everything we do,” he said. Although he often avoids criticizing the Chinese government or its laws, he does fault authorities for not enforcing the law. He reserves his most passionate criticism for officials overseeing the case of his nephew Chen Kegui, who has been charged with attempted murder after an incident in April in which he stabbed at plainclothes security guards. His defenders argue that he acted in self-defense after the guards broke into his home without warning and beat members of the family. In his spare time, Chen has begun delicately delving again into the world of activism. Although he has become most known for his work against forced abortions imposed on rural peasants under China’s one-child policy, he has largely stayed away from politically charged issues related to abortion in the United States. Instead, he said, he is focusing on campaigning for the rights of the disabled in New York. “How a society treats its disabled is the true measure of a civilization,” he said. Intending to go back Chen said he hopes to be able to return to China after his studies. It is a theoretical possibility under the terms of his negotiated deal, but one that may depend partly on what he says and how far he goes in his activism while in the United States. Barely a month into his stay, the prospect of going back to China looms large in his mind. It is why he studies so intently, despite daily frustration with his progress in English and law classes. He said he believes that change is coming to China and that still-abstract concepts, such as “unalienable rights,” will become a reality. And when they do, he explained, he wants to be there, as a witness and a contributor. “We are at a point now when anything is possible,” he said in Mandarin. Then, switching to English a little later to drive home the point, he said with a grin, “equal,” “liberty,” “self-evident.” More world news coverage: - Iranian exiles in Iraq balking at relocation - A stagnant Ukraine struggles to see a way out - Israeli worker killed at Sinai border - Read more headlines from around the world


William S. Knowles dies; Nobel Prize-winning chemist was 95

of research” about chemical catalysts that create only the desired form of a molecule. William S. Knowles, left, receives the Nobel Prize in Chemistry from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in Stockholm, Sweden on Dec. 10, 2001. Knowles, from St. Louis, Mo., shared the prize with Ryoji Noyori of Japan and K. Barry Sharpless, of the U.S. (HENRIK MONTGOMERY/ASSOCIATED PRESS) The prize was divided, with one half given jointly to Dr. Knowles and Ryoji Noyori of Nagoya University in Japan and the other half to K. Barry Sharpless of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. “I always thought it would be a neat idea,” Dr. Knowles once said of his work on asymmetric catalysts. “If only I could figure out how to do it.” The ratios of the desired output to the undesired rose during his several decades of research. The achievement of 88 percent efficiency was regarded as a breakthrough, according to a profile in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, with the man-made results almost matching those produced in nature. The milestone came around the time when L-Dopa was being increasingly used to treat Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Knowles was credited with devising the first practical lab technique for making the L form and avoiding the undesired D-Dopa form. Colleagues lauded him not only for this achievement but also for showing others the most fruitful direction of research. Today, the research by Dr. Knowles and his co-Nobelists is used to make antibiotics, anti-inflammatory drugs and heart medicines. Dr. Knowles had “broken nature’s monopoly on making asymmetric compounds,” Sharpless said after the Nobel Prize was announced. William Standish Knowles was born June 1, 1917, in Taunton, Mass. He grew up in New Bedford and attended private boarding schools that gave him a “good lesson in New England thrift,” he wrote in a Nobel biographical sketch. “To get free ice for our physics experiments,” he wrote, “we had to wait until it snowed.” Dr. Knowles received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Harvard University in 1939. “Competition was fierce and I always got a solid B, but not the straight A’s of many of my class mates,” he wrote in the sketch. He received a doctorate in synthetic organic chemistry from Columbia University in 1942. With World War II raging, Dr. Knowles joined Monsanto to take part in military-related research. He retired from the company in


London 2012: Alan Webb trying to unlock his elusive talents

is slated to compete in the 1,500 meters at the U.S. Olympic trials, which begin this week in Eugene, Ore., but if the U.S. Track and Field Association grants a late petition, he could enter the 5,000 meters instead, an 11th-hour change of strategy that speaks to some of Webb’s recent difficulties in the 1,500. Either way, Webb knows what’s at stake. Win, and he has a chance to validate all that promise outsiders have long sensed in him and extend a career that has sputtered in recent years. Lose, and — well, he can’t afford to even think about that. “I’m not old,” he said. “But I’m not super-young any more either.” He is married now. (His wife will stay in Virginia while Webb competes in Eugene, knowing he might miss the birth of his first child.) And he’s still on Nike’s payroll. Though Webb says he keeps running in better perspective now, failure still tears him up inside. For example, Webb signed up for piano lessons about a year ago, shortly after moving to Charlottesville. He recently had a recital in a small church and wasn’t pleased with his performance. “It set him off for the rest of the day,” said Julia. “He was just like, ‘I suck!’ I told him, ‘It’s just piano. The audience was a bunch of 5-year-olds. Nobody cares.’ ” ‘The sorest loser ever’ Aging isn’t easy for an elite runner. The hard work is still there, the effort is still there, but the results can be elusive. “The thing about being 29 versus 23, you can still run just as fast — that’s what keeps people in the game — you just can’t do it every week,” said Marty Liquori, a former middle distance runner and track broadcaster. In 1967, Liquori became the third American high schooler to run a sub-four minute mile and was a 19-year-old Olympian in ’68. He was later slowed by injuries and retired from competitive running at age 30. “In many ways, you do better workouts when you’re older,” he said. “But all those little injuries — you really have to have a lot of self-awareness and patience. You’re one injury away from missing a whole season while the younger guys seem to just bounce back.” Webb had Achilles’ surgery in 2009 and still hasn’t run a full track season since 2007. In March of last year, he


himself who set those records and an impossibly high bar. “Runners never compare themselves to their average. You always compare yourself to your very best,” Vigilante said. “He’d be a lot more fair to himself if he said, ‘Okay, this is my average and this is where I’d like to be.’ But instead, he’s always comparing himself to 2007.” Webb’s competitive spirit is no different than when he was a teenager in Fairfax County, stirring the nation’s track community into a frenzy. Nowadays, back in Virginia, he and his wife often play games together, and Webb still has only one gear: He wants to win. The couple had recently been playing the card game Uno, and Julia strung together several victories. “He turned into the sorest loser ever,” she said with a laugh. “He threw the cards, yelling, knocked over my water. I was like, ‘We’re never playing this game again.’ It’s like, he just doesn’t know how to lose.” ‘A blessing and a curse’ More than an hour after his final training run one recent morning, he was still at Albemarle High in Charlottesville, lying in the shade behind the track restrooms. Webb compulsively stretches, pulling this muscle and pushing that one. “He doesn’t take anything for granted,” said Robby Andrews, Webb’s training partner and one of the nation‘s top middle distance runners. “He knows how hard he worked to get to where he was and knows how hard he has to work to get back there. He’s incredible to watch.” Webb chatted as he stretched, thoughtful and contemplative with every question. He went silent for long stretches, slowly chewing an apple as a response churned in his head. “I don’t know, it’s a tough question to answer,” he said. “I’d say it’s been like a blessing and a curse. I mean, I wouldn’t change any of it. Even the bad times. If I look back at my career, like the years I didn’t do well — 2002, 2003 and maybe 2006 — I wouldn’t have run my best races and best times without those years. I had to learn from the bad times.” He says everything feels “amazingly different” from 2009. His life away from the track — a new home, a wife, a baby on the way — doesn’t eliminate the frustrating times but it offers a nice counterbalance. In Eugene at the Olympic trials, he’ll have


Militants attack NATO camp in Afghanistan; seven killed

A burqa-clad Afghan woman walks past a NATO camp that was attacked by militants in Kandahar, south of Kabul, Afghanistan. (Allauddin Khan/AP) KABUL — The attack on the outskirts of Kandahar city was carried out before dawn by seven assailants who were killed by coalition forces after a gunbattle lasting 15 minutes, according to Afghan and coalition officials. There was no immediate report of any deaths among the NATO soldiers, but some working at the camp, including a foreign contractor, were wounded in the attack, an Afghan official said. The strike caused some damages to the facilities inside the camp, he added. Hours later, another group of Taliban fighters, dressed in police uniforms, fired on a joint NATO-Afghan police post in an area of Kandahar city. Four attackers and three police officers died in the exchange of fire, according Ahmad Javid Faisal, a spokesman for Kandahar’s governor. Police foiled a separate Taliban attack on another police post, resulting in the deaths of two assailants, he said by phone. A Taliban spokesman only confirmed the attack on the NATO camp and the joint post, putting the losses of foreign and Afghan forces to more than 20. Kandahar used to be the main seat of power for the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s before its ouster in late 2001. Since then, the province has been the scene of some of the worst violence. The latest strikes came hours after three men in Afghan police uniforms killed an alliance soldier in another part of Kandahar on Monday, latest in a spate of attacks by “rogue” Afghan forces. A senior Afghan police officer said the victim was an American serviceman. NATO said a search has been launched to arrest the three men. The Taliban spokesman said they had joined the Islamist movement . Separately, eight Afghan civilians lost their lives when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in neighboring Helmand province, the office for Helmand’s governor said.


District’s needy get fruit and vegetable Rx

per day — $112 every four weeks for a family of four — to spend at any of five District farmers markets: the Columbia Heights Community Marketplace, Mount Pleasant, 14th and U, Bloomingdale and Glover Park. The hope is that a medical endorsement of healthful eating, plus cash to buy ingredients, will help families make real changes to the way they shop and eat. In the fight against obesity, many solutions are more stick than carrot: taxes on sodas, bans of junk food in schools and, most recently, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal to ban the sale of sugary drinks in servings larger than 16 ounces. The produce prescription program, in contrast, is the brainchild of Wholesome Wave, a nonprofit organization that specializes in incentive programs to encourage healthful eating and lure new dollars to farmers markets. (Its hallmark initiative is its Double Value Coupon program, which doubles the value of food assistance benefits, such as food stamps and WIC, if shoppers spend their money at farmers markets.) The District is the latest to launch produce prescriptions. The program, now in its third year, already has shown remarkable results: Of the 1,200 participants in six towns and cities in the Northeast, 66 percent said they ate more fruits and vegetables as a result of the program and 38 percent improved their body mass index, a standard measure used to estimate healthy body weight. The program brought new customers to farmers markets. More than half of families that received fruit-and-vegetable prescriptions had never, or rarely, been to a farmers market. “Our goal is nothing less than to prove that eating more fruits and vegetables makes people more healthy,” says Michel Nischan, Wholesome Wave’s founder and chief executive. “We want to show that by funding these programs, we can help reduce what we spend on health care.” Prescribing food as a cure dates at least to ancient Greece, where the physician Hippocrates counseled: Let food be thy medicine. In the 1960s, Jack Geiger, a doctor in the Mississippi Delta, persuaded local grocery stores to fill prescriptions for food for his malnourished patients. But over the past half-century, the connection between diet and health has been overshadowed by the health-care industry’s high-tech, and reimbursable, treatments. “We talk a lot about health in a holistic sense, but we haven’t been empowered to endorse it in any way,” says Shikha Anand, a doctor in


Planting fresh produce in D.C.’s ‘food deserts’

— he couldn’t exactly translate those lessons into a business plan that made sense for Marbury Market. He had tried to sneak in healthier drinks — fruits juices and smoothies — and discovered his customers preferred their carbonated sodas with high-fructose corn syrup. But the owner’s weight-loss story made him open to a surprise offer that came his way last year: D.C. Central Kitchen, the nonprofit dedicated to feeding and training unemployed and at-risk Washingtonians, asked Singleton to join a pilot program to introduce fresh produce to corner markets in the District’s so-called “food deserts.” The program is part of a growing national effort to increase access to healthy food. In Philadelphia, for instance, a federally funded program is placing fresh food in hundreds of corner stores in low-income neighborhoods with high obesity rates. Central Kitchen’s “Healthy Corners” program launched in September 2011, with about 30 stores taking part, each located in a low-income neighborhood that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has designated a food desert, because at least a third of its residents live more than a mile away from a large grocery store. Healthy Corners was designed to overcome at least two major obstacles that keep fresh produce out of bodegas: Retailers think the fruits and vegetables are too expensive and too hard to sell, and distributors don’t see the value of delivering small orders to these tiny neighborhood stores. Michael F. Curtin Jr., chief executive of D.C. Central Kitchen, calls it a “vicious cycle” that has kept poor neighborhoods hooked on empty calories, a reminder that food security is not just about access to food — but access to good food. With initial funding from the D.C. Department of Small and Local Business Development, Healthy Corners was able not only to supply corner stores with modest refrigeration units, but also to serve as a small-scale distributor, buying produce in bulk and then breaking the fruits and veggies into small orders for delivery. But more important, Curtin says, Healthy Corners has eased these small retailers into the program by subsidizing the produce for several months before charging full wholesale prices. The slow phase-in period allows store owners to figure out what their customers want, so that when D.C. Central Kitchen starts charging full price, retailers can cater their weekly orders to match consumer demand. This, in part, explains why 27 of the original 30 pilot stores continue to


take part in Healthy Corners. “That’s pretty amazing,” Curtin says. “Internally, we thought we might lose half, and let’s put it this way, I would not have been surprised if we lost half” when D.C. Central Kitchen started charging full price. Despite the healthy retention rate with retailers, Healthy Corners is a small program battling deeply entrenched eating habits. Many markets place orders so small — such as five apples, 10 potatoes or five white onions, etc., a week — that it would make traditional produce wholesalers laugh. But, as Curtin points out, those are not the numbers to focus on. The more important figures are the ones that show slow, gradual growth in sales at the majority of Healthy Corner stores. “The sales numbers have gone up consistently every month. . . . That is, for me, the key piece: that we’re seeing this growth,” Curtin says. “People are becoming aware that they can get these kinds of products at their local stores, and they’re relying on it.” Over at Marbury Market, Singleton talks glowingly of Healthy Corners while speaking honestly about the realities of his subterranean store. Yes, some customers have learned to buy an apple over, say, a bag of chips. And, yes, his orders have increased by more than 100 percent since last fall, to the point where Joelle Johnson, local initiatives and procurement coordinator for D.C. Central Kitchen, calls Marbury Market “one of our better stores.” But Singleton isn’t about to turn his store into Whole Foods; his market’s biggest sellers, he says, remain candy and fruit-flavored cigarillos. “That’s the only fruit they’re consuming,” Singleton says with a resigned laugh. Because efforts here and nationwide are still new, it remains to be seen whether creating access to healthier food will actually change people’s habits; some recent studies have suggested it won’t. But many see it as a step in the right direction. Singleton says that while some customers may ignore the small stashes of produce and trail mix — not to mention the Healthy Corner signage that explains the caloric difference between a sticky bun and a banana — others have embraced Marbury’s fresh approach. Sometimes, they’re shoppers who previously avoided the market. “Some refused to come here because we didn’t have anything nutritious. . . . The temptation was too great,” Singleton says. “These people have started to come down, which is great for


Investigators recommend punishment for Koran burning

U.S. military investigators have recommended that as many as seven servicemembers face possible administrative punishment, but no criminal charges, for their role in the incineration of Korans in Afghanistan earlier this year, according to U.S. officials. The Koran burnings, which senior military officials have repeatedly characterized as inadvertent, set off a week of riots throughout Afghanistan. The February incident was believed to have been a motivating factor in the killing of several U.S. troops by their Afghan counterparts. The military’s investigation was conducted by an Army general in Afghanistan and submitted to the Pentagon in the past few days, according to officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. The Army and Navy will now decide whether the six soldiers and one sailor receive any punishment. The services could choose to take no action against them. The recommendation was first reported by the Associated Press. An earlier joint U.S.-Afghan investigation into the incident concluded that the holy books had been identified as Korans and placed in an office for safekeeping. Because of a mistake, however, they were misidentified as trash. The Korans had been confiscated because Afghan prisoners at Bagram Air Base had written extremist messages in them. Afghan employees spotted the Korans after they had been thrown on a burn pit at Bagram and rushed to save them. Afghan clerics have repeatedly called for U.S. officials to punish the troops involved in the burning and said that the incident highlighted the need for the U.S.-led NATO coalition to relinquish control of military prisons to the Afghan government as quickly as possible. A relatively light administrative punishment could rekindle the dormant controversy in Afghanistan. But any Afghan outrage over the incident is likely to be muted by an agreement between U.S. and Afghan officials to hand over control of all U.S. detention facilities to the Afghan government later this year. The agreement on the transfer of prisoners to Afghan control is part of a long-term partnership between the U.S. and Afghan governments.


D.C. news in brief

using a new short crash form to better identify crash locations throughout the District. The new Property Damage Only Crash Form is a voluntary report for drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians involved in fender-bender incidents without bodily injuries. D.C. police typically only take reports when a crash involves an injury, damage to public or government property or an inoperable vehicle. Residents can obtain the form from a D.C. police officer or online. For information, go to www.ddot.dc.gov. D.C. Library seeks Chuck Brown memorabilia The D.C. Public Library is seeking memorabilia for an archive devoted to go-go singer and guitarist Chuck Brown, who died May 16. Flyers, posters, photos, ticket stubs, videos or DVDs, CDs and audio recordings of Brown and other go-go musicians can be brought to the Washingtoniana Division in the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, 901 G St. NW. Archivists are also interested in letters that describe attending a Chuck Brown or go-go concert. The library will review the donated materials and preserve those selected. For information, go to www.dclibrary.org. SOME opens affordable housing at Griffin House So Others Might Eat held a dedication June 6 for Griffin House, a 40-unit affordable housing building at 2765 Naylor Rd. SE. The 40-unit structure will house 22 homeless and poor families, including approximately 70 children and 18 single adults. The nonprofit organization provides shelter, food and health-care services to the homeless and impoverished residents in the District. Since 2005, So Others Might Eat has developed 296 affordable housing units, many from previously abandoned or dilapidated buildings. For information, go to www.some.org. New Lockridge/Bellevue library has opened The new William O. Lockridge/Bellevue library at 115 Atlantic St. SW opened on June 13. The building, designed by architects Adjaye and Associates and Wiencek Associates, has 36 public-access computers, a 100-person meeting room and space for up to 80,000 items. Architect David Adjaye is known for his British library designs, which maximize natural light sources. In the District, he has designed the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is currently under construction. For information, go to www.dclibrary.org. Farmers market opens in NoMa The NoMa Farmers Market will be open from 3 to 7 p.m. Wednesdays through Oct. 31 at 1325 Second St. NE (Second and N Streets), a site adjacent to the Florida Avenue entrance of NoMa-Gallaudet Metro station. For information, go to www.nomabid.org/farmersmarket. — Compiled by Terence McArdle


SE D.C. standoff ends; police arrest murder suspect

An eight-hour standoff in Southeast Washington ended Wednesday when police took a murder suspect into custody. Police believe that about 2 a.m. Wednesday, the suspect fatally shot J’Ron Brown, 24, in an apartment in the 1700 block of 17th Street SE. The suspect then ran into another apartment on that same block and barricaded himself inside, police said. A SWAT team was called, and streets were closed in the Fairlawn area near Anacostia High School during the morning rush hour. Curious residents in the neighborhood of neatly kept, two-story row houses near Minnesota Avenue came out to watch behind yellow police tape. About eight hours after Brown was shot, police took one man into custody. They declined to name him or provide further details about him or the incident. Brown, who lived in Southeast Washington, was pronounced dead at a hospital.


Fareed Zakaria: How government funding of science rewards U.S. taxpayers

It’s hard to find any good economic news these days. Europe is teetering on the brink; emerging markets such as China, Brazil and India are slowing down; and the United States is in a slump. There is one bright spot on the American landscape: technology, particularly biotechnology. The cost of sequencing a human genome is down to $1,000, and the process now takes two hours — a pace that is much faster than “Moore’s Law,” which says that computing power doubles while its costs drop by half every 18 months. This technology revolution is already transforming whole industries. It is a reminder that, as we confront difficulties across the economic landscape, the one area where the United States can still move from strength to strength is science and technology — if we make the right decisions. Take, for instance, the decision to map the human genome. The federal government funded that project at a whopping $3.8 billion cost, over a 15-year period. But consider the payback. One study — funded by the industry — calculates that the Human Genome Project has helped drive $796 billion in economic activity and raised $244 billion in personal income; it supported 310,000 jobs in 2010 alone. These numbers may be exaggerated, but the scale of the impact is clear across such vast fields as agriculture and medicine and new areas such as gene therapy. A lot has been said about the government’s $500 million loan to Solyndra, which was indeed a bust. But how often do you hear about the Human Genome Project? “From a simple return on investment, the financial stake made in mapping the entire human genome is clearly one of the best uses of taxpayer dollars the U.S. government has ever made,” says Greg Lucier, chief executive of Life Technologies, whose foundation sponsored the study cited above and whose company produces the $1,000 gene-sequencing technology. Lucier, and many scientists, argue that we’re at the beginning of a new wave of biotechnologies that could be applied to produce food, fuels and medicines, and to counteract problems such as pollution and climate change. Federal funding for research and development — a drop in the bucket compared with farm subsidies — has long been in decline. From 1970 to 1995, it fell as a percentage of gross domestic product by 54 percent in physical sciences and 51 percent in engineering. Federal R&D funding increased


Data show top banks get most complaints

to the bureau between July 21 and Dec. 31. JPMorgan and Citigroup each accounted for about 11 percent, Capital One Financial represented about 8 percent and Wells Fargo accounted for about 5 percent. The number of complaints was roughly consistent with the size of the banks’ credit card business. Complaints filed since June 1 were made available to the public on the consumer bureau’s Web site Wednesday, a spokesman said in an e-mailed statement. Complaints from before then will be included later this year, it said. “We intend to make this data widely available to consumers, advocacy groups, businesses, policymakers and journalists,” Richard Cordray, the bureau’s director, said in a telephone news conference. “Anyone with access to the Web will be able to review and analyze the information and draw their own conclusions.” Capital One spokesman Pam Girardo said, “We’re always interested in customer feedback — good and bad — since we are focused on continuous improvement and providing a great customer experience.” Spokesmen for JPMorgan and Citigroup declined to comment. Spokesmen for Bank of America and Wells Fargo did not respond to requests for comment. The consumer bureau on Dec. 8 proposed a rule that would provide for public disclosure of data on credit card complaints that excludes consumers’ personal identification. The banking industry has objected to the publication of company names. Steven Zeisel, vice president and general counsel for the Consumer Bankers Association, wrote in a Jan. 30 comment on the proposal that disclosure would expose banks to “undue reputational risk and harm.” “The inclusion of identifying information on institutions in a public database will likely only serve to provide one- sided, unsubstantiated views of consumer complaints,” Zeisel wrote. The 2010 Dodd-Frank legislation requires the consumer bureau to set up a complaint system and gives it authority to make the data it collects public. The database will include the type of complaint, the complainant’s zip code, the name of the company and a description of what action, if any, the company took in response, the agency said. The 2011 complaint data obtained under a public records request is roughly consistent with the banks’ status as the largest credit card issuers in the United States. The top issuers by number of cards are JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Discover Financial Services and American Express, according to February data published by The Nilson Report, an industry newsletter. — Bloomberg News


Historic Evermay mansion in Georgetown becomes a $22 million guesthouse

we wanted to buy it,” Ueno recalls, sounding as if he had just picked out a new sofa. “Well, maybe it was 10 minutes. We knew it was very unusual to find such a property on the market in Georgetown.” “We were attracted to everything, the history of the building and the beauty of the garden,” Kuno says. “We fell in love, and we felt like we would like to have it.” *** Evermay has been enchanting visitors for more than 200 years. The estate’s terraced gardens are dotted with fountains, domed temples and statuary, and lush with decades-old boxwood, roses and azalea. The house has weathered Victorian additions (now gone), threats of demolition and tree-toppling hurricanes. Oprah Winfrey was rumored to have considered buying it several years back to keep as a Washington pied-a-terre near pal Barack Obama. The property on 28th Street NW, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, sits on land bought by businessman Samuel Davidson in 1792. He hired British architect Nicholas King, a noted surveyor of early Washington, to design the mansion and formal gardens. For two centuries, the view from this woodsy crest at the edge of Georgetown has offered a vantage point on history: Residents have monitored British troops burning the Capitol and watched the burials of the rich and powerful in adjoining Oak Hill Cemetery. Ownership passed through several families. The mansion’s most recent caretakers were members of the Belin family, who enhanced and nurtured the walled estate for nearly nine decades. Diplomat Ferdinand Lammot Belin, who bought the property in 1923, and son Peter sensitively restored the Federal style of the house and added many features, including the brick orangery constructed on the east front in 1961. Peter’s son, Harry Belin, opened the property for Georgetown garden tours and launched a nonprofit group to rent the estate for special events. But, struggling under heavy maintenance costs, he put it on the market, eventually selling it to Ueno and Kuno for less than half of his original $49 million asking price. With the purchase, Ueno and Kuno inherited five boxes of carefully preserved archives that document purchases of mahogany doors, marble fountains, boxwood plants and pine paneling. *** Because Kuno was spending more of her time on activities for the couple’s nonprofit foundation, she had realized the importance of having a special place — not only for offices,


Fairfax county probing mystery sickness at George Mason University

Fairfax County health officials are investigating the cause of an illness that has sickened more than three dozen students staying at George Mason University for a summer camp program. Glen Barbour, a spokesman for the county health department, said health officials were alerted Thursday after students woke up vomiting and with stomach pain. Of the 40 or so affected students, more than a dozen were treated at a nearby urgent care center, where they received treatment for dehydration and were monitored for a few hours before being released. University spokesman Daniel Walsch, said county officials initially thought the illness was food-borne,Walsch said. The cause of the sickness is viral gastroenteritis, also known as the stomach flu, county health officials say. “Like any virus, it can spread from person to person,” Walsch said. “That’s why the county stresses wash your hands and be as hygienic as possible.” The individuals who got sick were between 15 and 22 and were part of the Congressional Award Foundation Program, which brings kids from across the country to the D.C. area to learn about the federal government, Walsch said. The first reports of symptoms started late Wednesday afternoon, with more reports accumulating throughout the day and early Thursday morning, Walsch said. “People didn’t take it that seriously at first,” Walsch said. He said the rooms in Piedmont Hall are being thoroughly washed by university officials, and for several days nobody will move into them, although another camp is expected to move in later this week. Walsch said today was the last day of the program, and most of the kids had left the D.C. area, although there were some who lived in the area.


NSO and Eschenbach enjoying belated honeymoon

trombone and percussion chairs will be occupied by newly hired players in the fall — and at a time when many orchestra musicians are faced with salary cuts, the NSO is safely enfolded in the Kennedy Center’s sheltering arms, making it an attractive berth. NSO's South America Tour Booklet from 1959 (National Symphony Orchestra) “In two years,” Shapiro says, “he has hired seven players and tenured one, and there are three principal openings. He’s really overseeing and selecting and building that way, making enormous change in the sound of the orchestra.” “Orchestras adapt to the personality of the conductor,” Eschenbach said, speaking by phone the week before the orchestra left for South America. “[The] Berlin [Philharmonic] played very, very differently with [Herbert von] Karajan than with [Claudio] Abbado or [Simon] Rattle. So this orchestra is tending now towards my way. ‘My way,’ ” he added, breaking into a few bars of the Paul Anka song, chuckling, before adding quickly, “But it is also their way.” It can take a while to fill a new position, especially since Eschenbach tends to have a very particular idea about what he’s looking for. Instrumental color is important to him; he also places a premium on players listening to each other, rather than simply following his baton. “There’s a lot of chamber music going on,” says Nurit Bar-Josef, the orchestra’s concertmaster. His specificity drives some musicians crazy. Eschenbach talks a lot in rehearsals, and has the orchestra play phrases over and over to get the effect he wants. Preparing for the South America tour, he had the orchestra spend almost two rehearsal sessions on Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony — a piece so familiar to orchestra musicians, Bar-Josef observes, that if you “wake us up at 2 a.m., we can play that piece.” Many musicians in Philadelphia or at the Chicago Symphony, which Eschenbach led as music director of the Ravinia Festival from 1994 to 2003, felt they were above this kind of thing, and there are some NSO musicians who don’t warm to it, either. But “I think this orchestra has been eager to try something new,” Bar-Josef says, and “although there may be some people who are still unhappy, there are certainly a lot of happy people.” The tour, the orchestra’s first international excursion with a music director of its own in nearly a decade, should make people happier; at least, it got off


Solar power project eclipsed in D.C.

Three years ago, when Mark Chandler and Laurie Wingate bought their 1906 foursquare home in Cleveland Park, the couple had two goals in mind as they began their renovation: maintain the home’s historic character while updating it with environmentally friendly features. For most of their renovation, the goals were compatible with one other — until they wanted to install solar panels on their hipped roof. In a May 31 decision that some saw as limiting solar power in the District, the Historic Preservation Review Board, after initially deadlocking on the issue, voted 4-3 against approving the Chandler-Wingate proposal. Although the board had no objection to the panels that were placed on the rear addition, those who voted against the proposal disapproved of the eight panels on the west side of the house because of their visibility from the street. As solar power becomes more affordable and more homeowners aim to reduce energy use, this case may be the first of many in which historic preservation and environmental sustainability collide. The guidelines for solar panels on roofs of historic buildings were adopted by the HPRB in 1997. They state: “On a flat roof, solar panels should be located so they are not visible from the public street. If located on a sloping roof building, they should only be installed on rear slopes that are not visible from a public street.” “The effect of that is that any house that is south or west facing would not be able to use solar,” Chandler said. “By definition, that’s half the houses” in D.C. The board members who opposed the proposal agreed with a report written by Anne Brockett, an architectural historian in the Historic Preservation Office, that said the panels “create a visual intrusion on the house and into an intact historic streetscape. The panels are highly reflective and visually distracting from the form and finish of the house’s roof.” “It’s not as simple as saying, ‘Oh, the board doesn’t want anything visible from the street,’ ” said Steve Callcott, an HPO deputy director. “It’s the relative prominence of the visibility and whether or not they are being put on the primary roof form in a way that altered the character of that roof form.” More than 230 solar-panel projects have been approved by the HPO, and almost none of them have gone before the review board. That’s because most of the solar


Man’s best friend may not be a landlord’s best friend

pets. ●Increase your security deposit to the maximum allowable under local law. The District and Maryland, for example, cap security deposits at amounts equal to one month’s rent. ●Require the tenant to have the rental unit professionally cleaned and treated for fleas, ticks and vermin. ●Insert a lease clause that requires the tenant to maintain his own liability insurance to cover the risks of a dog bite. ●Contact your insurance agent to buy or confirm that your existing liability umbrella policy covers the risk of your tenant’s dog bite. ●Restrict the number and size of the permitted animals. ●Require the tenant to provide you with evidence of current vaccinations for all animals that will be permitted on the premises. ●Have the tenant indemnify you in the lease for any claims brought by third parties resulting from his or her animal. That indemnification should include, but not be limited to, fines or penalties from the homeowner’s or condominium association. For single-family home tenancies, tenants are typically not legally responsible when trees, shrubs, bushes and the like die during the term of the lease. Even if the tenant’s dog digs up your prize Japanese maple tree in the front lawn, you may not be able to deduct that from his or her security deposit. Thus, the best approach is to insert lease provisions that make the tenant legally liable to maintain the landscaping and require the tenant to hire an acceptable, professional landscaper. The landscape contract should be paid in advance or automatically charged to the tenant’s credit card each month and should contain a notice provision that alerts you if the contract is ever suspended. There is one exception for landlords in Maryland: If the pet is a service animal — a guide dog, signal dog or other animal used help individuals with a disability — landlords cannot refuse to rent on that basis nor charge extra rent. Violators of the law may be guilty of a misdemeanor, and if convicted, may face a $500 fine. The law, however, does not require a landlord to modify his property or provide a higher degree of care for a blind or visually impaired tenant than for a tenant without those disabilities. The law holds the tenant liable for all damage attributable to the service animal. Landlords who rent out only one room in their home are exempt from these laws. Harvey S. Jacobs


Mexico is ready to vote, watchful for fraud

Camp, a Mexico scholar at Claremont McKenna College in California. “The real problem is perception,” he said, “and there is a perception that elections are still somehow not fair, even though that may not be true or the number of people who have actually seen fraudulent behavior doesn't correspond to that. “It’s a legacy of the PRI era.” Camp and other political observers say that although Mexican regulators have put an end to large-scale cheating, tougher-to-detect forms of tampering and interference persist. So do perceptions that Mexico’s political and media elite are working the levers by other means. A student-led protest movement has staged demonstrations in several Mexican cities and flourished online under the Twitter hashtag #YoSoy132, alleging that the country’s dominant TV networks are in the tank for PRI candidate Peña Nieto. “If we’re talking about ballots being altered, or not counted, that type of fraud no longer exists in Mexico,” said Mauricio Merino, a scholar at Mexico City’s Center for Economic Research and Teaching. “But some of the practices of the past still continue.” Incumbents may illegally use public resources to campaign for their parties, Merino said. Other candidates set up slush funds in hidden accounts beyond the reach of regulators, which may draw illegal contributions from legitimate business interests — or drug lords. And patronage networks still apply pressure to voters in some areas where the promise of a reward comes in exchange for support. Vote buying remains a risk, too. In front-runner Peña Nieto’s state of Mexico, the country’s most populous, a single vote can sell for 1,000 pesos, or about $75, said Silvia Gomez Tagle, a political scientist at the Colegio de Mexico who has written extensively about electoral abuses. There is also concern that Mexico’s powerful drug gangs could intimidate voters at a local level, depressing turnout with threats of violence through social media or other channels. But Valdes, Mexico’s top election official, said the agency has not received a single report or complaint about criminal elements attempting to influence the election. Extensive security measures will be deployed July 1, he added. “We will have everything in place to instill confidence,” Valdes said. “Our citizens will be able to vote.” More world news coverage: - Afghan refugees forced to return home - Karzai calls for government reform - Faltering Iran talks stoke fear of new conflict - Read more headlines from around the world


‘Little America’ book excerpt: Obama’s troop increase for Afghan war was misdirected

Afghanistan dotted with blue bubbles that indicated where he intended to place the new forces. Several bubbles were in Helmand. But in more than two hours of discussion, the 14-member war cabinet — which included Vice President Biden, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — never asked McChrystal why he wanted so many more Marines in Helmand. The civilians didn’t know enough about Afghanistan to focus on that issue. They were also concerned about micromanaging the war, of looking like President Lyndon B. Johnson picking bombing targets in North Vietnam. From his seat along the wall, Obama’s top adviser on the Afghan war, Douglas E. Lute, believed that those around the table were missing a crucial point. Instead of arguing about counterinsurgency strategy — whether Afghan President Hamid Karzai would improve and whether the Pakistanis would crack down on Taliban sanctuaries — they should have focused more on how the forces would be employed. That would have revealed how the military had misused the first wave of troops Obama authorized. Had they inquired, the president’s civilian advisers also could have learned that the initial 17,000 troops played only a minor role in the overall security effort for the Afghan election. In fact, the new troops protected polling sites in Helmand and Kandahar where Karzai supporters engaged in some of their most egregious ballot tampering. After the meeting, Lute and his staff assembled a list of follow-up questions for McChrystal. Lute, a three-star general, asked McChrystal to provide more explanation of the location of the bubbles. At the war cabinet's next meeting, McChrystal talked briefly about the need to “demonstrate momentum” in Helmand. To Lute, the answer seemed unsatisfactory, but nobody around the table pressed McChrystal any further. NATO alliance vs. winning war Shortly after McChrystal was appointed the top commander in Afghanistan in 2009, Defense Secretary Gates had told him to take stock of the war effort within 60 days. The idea for the assessment had originated with national security adviser James L. Jones, who grew alarmed when McChrystal told the Senate Armed Services Committee, during his confirmation hearing, that he did not know whether the 17,000 troops Obama had approved that February would be enough. Jones believed the Pentagon was lobbying for more forces before the 17,000 had fully deployed — and after McChrystal’s bosses had all but told the president that they


Biotech tycoons who bought historic Georgetown properties retain aura of mystery

couple say that they don’t make it out there as much as they like because they are so often working. Ask them what they do for fun, and Kuno laughs and says, “Fun? What is fun?” Start in Japan When they arrived in the United States in 1996, the pair had already created a successful pharmaceutical company in Japan that makes eyedrops to treat glaucoma. They wanted to create a U.S. company that would build on a technology that Ueno had discovered and patented. (It involves a series of compounds called prostones that can restore and heal organs and cells in the body.) Ueno is from a very wealthy family of inventors from the suburbs of Osaka; his grandfather owned an early prototype of an electric car, and his father, Ryuzo, founded a chemical company that did so well that he was able to help finance his son’s effort to develop the eyedrops — to the tune of $80 million. The early decade in Japan, developing the first drug, was full of debt and uncertainty, Ueno says, which put a strain on his relationship with his father. In fact, after his sons from his first marriage grew up as witnesses to the family tension, they both swore they would not be the fourth generation of Uenos to become entrepreneur-inventors. “My father started to be very angry because the debt was growing too big, and he was not in too good of a temper when he talked to me,” Ueno says. “My sons decided they would go into business straight. . . . The older one said his ideal goal was to have a stable life.” Both ultimately followed more traditional career paths: One is now 30 and an auto company employee in Ann Arbor, Mich., and the other is 27 and an accountant in Tokyo. Ueno and Kuno — who was a researcher in Ueno’s experimental lab when they met in 1982 — founded Sucampo Pharmaceuticals in Bethesda in 1996 and began expanding on Ueno’s research. Ten years later, their work paid off when the Food and Drug Administration approved their new drug, Amitiza, to treat chronic constipation. It was later approved for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome, too. “They are born risk takers who are not afraid to try something new,” says Kei Tolliver, who has worked for the couple since 1998 and now oversees their private-asset holding


Japan’s cautious return to a nuclear-powered future

JAPAN’S PRIME MINISTER, Yoshihiko Noda, has been sailing into the political winds lately, bravely pushing a tax increase and the restarting of the country’s nuclear power stations, idled after last year’s earthquake and meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Both initiatives could be risky to his career, given that his five predecessors each survived in office less than 15 months. Mr. Noda’s drive to switch on nuclear power has implications far beyond Japan. It goes to the heart of a question that has troubled people since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979: Can governments and utilities be trusted to safely manage complex machines that split the atom and capture the energy? Nuclear power evokes suspicions that run deeper than other technology hazards, social researchers say. In today’s globalized digital universe, the scenes of chaos and fear at Fukushima spread quickly. Germany decided to close eight of its 17 nuclear power plants. Although U.S. views of nuclear energy were not shaken as dramatically, the need to build and sustain public confidence can’t be taken for granted. In the fight against global warming, nuclear power remains a vital low-carbon energy source and very well may be for a long time to come. In Japan, nuclear power generated about 30 percent of the electricity supply before the disaster. Years of public relations by government and industry had left people convinced it was safe and necessary. More than eight in 10 Japanese favored in a 2005 poll building more nuclear plants or maintaining the existing ones. Now that support has crumbled. In a survey taken in Japan by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project and published this month, 70 percent of respondents said that the country should reduce its reliance on nuclear energy. Eighty percent said that the government has done a poor job dealing with the Fukushima crisis. These feelings are an understandable response to the shock of the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami. But they also stem from inexcusable missteps by the government in failing to fully inform people of the radiation dangers as the crisis unfolded. Thousands of Japanese fled in the same direction as winds were carrying radiation emissions. Data about the emissions existed but were not disseminated in a timely way. No wonder people are still angry. Japan has begun to address the mistrust with legislation to overhaul the nuclear regulatory agencies and with revised safety


George Allen’s second chance at the Senate

Correction: Speaking at Richmond’s posh Jefferson Hotel on April 25, George Allen seemed at the top of his game. Trying to regain his U.S. Senate seat, he gave a speech to the nonprofit World Affairs Council that was dignified and lofty. His trademark folksiness also came through in carefully measured doses, right down to the cowboy boots and the occasional flashes of his boyish grin. Quoting Ronald Reagan and paraphrasing the Gospel of Matthew, he spoke of America “as a shining city upon a hill whose beacon guides freedom-loving people everywhere.” He talked briefly of his own immigrant background and the need for balancing tough enforcement of immigration laws with welcoming talented foreigners. He talked of promise, hope and a greater America to come. A more mature, self-disciplined Allen is emerging this year. He is watching himself carefully, seeking to avoid the horrendous errors that cost him his 2006 Senate race to Democrat James Webb. During that race, it was revealed that Allen wore a Confederate flag on his lapel at his high school graduation in California, a tidbit he handled badly. He seemed uncomfortable acknowledging that his mother, Henrietta, came from a Jewish family in Tunisia. Then came his “macaca” moment: the thoughtless slurring of a young American-born man of Indian descent at a campaign event that was captured on videotape and went viral on the Internet. His stumblings were especially strange given that Allen should have known better. The son of the Hall of Fame coach of the Washington Redskins, a popular former governor and an incumbent U.S. senator, he was hardly new to the public eye. His easygoing, “aw-shucks” manner, football pedigree and solid loyalty to Virginia’s business elite made him seem destined to be a dynastic figure. He was mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2008. All he needed to do was get past Webb. After his implosion, Allen kept a low profile, and perhaps this time out of the spotlight gave him space and time for soul-searching. He served as an energy industry political consultant and published a book that linked understanding sports with Washington politics. “He’s certainly learned his lessons from that one horrific campaign,” says political observer Bob Holsworth, who regards him as an otherwise good campaigner. The new Allen has prevailed on the first rung of his campaign. In the June 12 Republican primary, he easily fought off three opponents, including


Ashton Eaton sets world record in decathlon at U.S. Olympic track and field trials

only disappointment. Dawn Harper will aim for a second Olympic gold medal in the 100-meter hurdles after topping the field with a time of 12.73 seconds. She will be joined by second-place finisher Kellie Wells (12.77) and crowd favorite Lolo Jones (12.86), who made the team by just four-hundredths of a second. Meanwhile, sprinter Lauryn Williams and hurdler Joanna Hayes, who won silver and gold in their respective events at the 2004 Games, both failed to qualify for London. Hayes, 35, gave birth to a baby girl less than two years ago and her bid to return to the Olympic stage ended in a semifinal heat. She wept afterward but said she was not sad. “All I could think about was doing something to make [my daughter] proud,” she said through tears. Tears take on different meanings when so much is at stake. Adam Nelson, a thick tree stump of an Olympian who won silver in the shot put at the 2000 and ’04 Games, momentarily caught his breath and tried to explain. “I’ve been fortunate to have a great team behind me, my wife . . .” he said, before falling into Laci Nelson’s arms and rousing a new round of tears for both. “You guys know I’m an emotional guy, so it’s all right, right?” Nelson’s bid for a third Olympics was cut short as he finished 15th in the preliminary round and wasn’t one of the 12 who advanced to Sunday’s finals. Nelson, 36, wasn’t ready to announce his retirement but conceded, “I definitely am getting older and Father Time does take its toll.” Other past Olympians were still fighting to compete another day. Jeremy Wariner, who won four Olympic medals in the past two Summer Games, posted the seventh-best time in Saturday’s semifinal to barely earn one of eight spots in Sunday’s 400-meter final. His finishing time of 45.27 seconds was well off the pace set by the day’s fastest runner, LaShawn Merritt, who ran the 400 in 44.78. In the men’s 100 meters, several of the favorites advanced to Sunday’s semifinals with impressive times in the preliminary rounds. Justin Gatlin, the 2004 Olympic gold medalist, finished in 9.90 seconds, Tyson Gay had the day’s second-best time (10 seconds), followed by Ryan Bailey and Walter Dix (both 10.03). Decathete Trey Hardee (8,383 points) is also headed to London, but over the course of 10 events in


With pair of acquisitions, Cvent expands into mobile

Reggie Aggarwal, chairman and chief executive of McLean-based Cvent, talks with his sales team after returning from an event conference in Baltimore last week. (Jeffrey MacMillan/Capital Business) Roughly 1.5 million people descended on the District this past spring to see the cherry blossoms bloom for the 100th year, many of them toting a digital guide to the annual festival in their pocket. Organizers created a mobile application with a schedule of events, maps, merchandise and other features for the second year in a row. Spokeswoman Danielle Piacente said the app saw a 14 percent increase in downloads compared to last year. “Once people are on site, so many people have smartphones and it makes it so much easier for people to access maps and get to many places within the event,” Piacente said. McLean-based Cvent bought the firm that built the festival’s app earlier this month, one of two acquisitions carried out in less than a week as the maker of event management software looks to engage with event attendees on handheld devices. “Events are going mobile,” chief executive Reggie Aggarwal said. “When you go to an event and you’re not in your office or at your house, that’s when you rely more on ... a smartphone or iPad because you need to access the information.” The company paid $4.2 million on June 13 for Austin-based SeedLabs, which builds mobile applications for consumer-oriented events, including the National Cherry Blossom Festival and Preakness horse race. Less than a week later, on June 19, Cvent announced that it paid $10 million for Portland, Ore.-based CrowdCompass, a firm that creates mobile applications for business-related events. Aggarwal said mobile has become front of mind for the firm in the last year as an increasing number of people buy smartphones to access the Internet while on the go and share information and photos via social networks. Event applications can be used to find information about the event, such as schedules and speakers, to connect with other attendees in real time or communicate via popular social networks, such as Twitter and LinkedIn, Aggarwal said. “There’s all kinds of things you can do to enhance your experience and make the most out of the event,” he said. The SeedLabs acquisition will also push Cvent into the consumer events market, an area where the company doesn’t do much business currently, Aggarwal said. To date, its primary client base


At Whole Foods, a ‘Survivor’-like ritual

Fresh produce at a Whole Foods Market store. The company has a profit-sharing model for its employees. (Rebecca Cook/Reuters) Company: Area locations: Number of employees: Annoyed with a colleague? At Whole Foods Market, you can vote them off the island — or rather, out of the company. “If there’s someone who’s not working hard, who’s not putting in everything they can, the team can say, ‘You know what? We don’t want you to drag us down,’ ” said Libba Letton, who handles corporate communications for the chain of specialty grocery stores. New hires are voted in — or out — by their teams after their first 90 days at the company. A two-thirds majority is required to keep an employee on board. “It’s actually really nice because it makes you feel like you have a say in what goes on,” said Mirian Alvarenga, a graphic artist at the Whole Foods Market in Friendship Heights. The policy works in part because the company relies on a profit-sharing model, Letton said. Employees receive bonuses at the end of each quarter based on the number of internal goals their team has met. “We have this sense of shared fate,” Letton said, adding that employees also vote on their benefit plans and stock options every three years. The logistics of the actual vote are left up to each team. Some collect votes by e-mail, whereas others prefer to do so in person. “In my case, there was a team meeting and it was just like ‘OK, Libba, leave the room for a minute and we’ll all vote on whether you stay or not,” Letton said. “Thankfully I had a good idea things were going to be fine.” Employees say the vast majority of new hires are approved by their teams. Newly-hired managers are evaluated by their peers, not their employees. “It’s almost always positive,” said Alvarenga, who has been working at the company for 13 years. “It’s just a matter of the team agreeing with what the manager has already decided.” Clare Bender, marketing team leader at the Friendship Heights store, began working at the company in October. In January, her team voted to keep her on. “It makes you feel like you really deserve to be a part of the team,” Bender said, “Like everyone wants you to be there.”


Budget cuts threaten pursuit of nuclear fusion as a clean energy source

mega-project now under construction in the south of France, called ITER, a project whose estimated costs have grown to $23 billion and whose start date has been pushed back to the next decade. In a time of flat federal spending, the president has made a choice to fund the international project — whose costs to the United States will grow in coming years, according to Energy Department projections, to as much as $300 million a year — at the expense of the domestic program. (The United States pledged funding to ITER in 2003, joining the European Union, Russia, China, India, South Korea and Japan.) This would be “devastating” to the community of several hundred U.S. scientists working on fusion energy, said Stewart Prager, the physicist who heads the Princeton lab. “We need clean, limitless power without greenhouse gases,” he said. “Year by year by year, the need for fusion just grows and grows and grows.” The Princeton lab’s stellerator will not receive additional funding and so will remain unfinished, said Ed Synakowski, head of fusion research for the Energy Department. “Fusion is hard. The stakes are high,” Synakowski said. “But the potential payoff could be enormous for mankind.” If the MIT lab is shuttered as planned — Congress has not yet voted on next year’s budget — fewer scientists will be drawn into the field, Prager says. And he worries that the United States will lose the expertise it needs to capitalize on lessons learned from ITER. Already, the United States has cut way back on investment in fusion. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Energy Department spent about three times more than it does now. Progress has been slow, and the technical hurdles remain high. Even Prager, the most optimistic of fusion scientists, says that a fusion reactor that could pump electricity into the grid wouldn’t be feasible until at least 2035 — and that’s only with the help of generous funding. Superhot plasma National Spherical Torus Experiment Inside its silvery vacuum chamber, microwaves and other sources of energy will excite hydrogen atoms to temperatures hotter than the sun. As these atoms fuse, a hard-to-control plasma will pop into existence. Magnetic fields will squeeze this plasma to keep it contained. “It’s like trying to hold jello with rubber bands,” says Mike Williams, the lab’s head engineer. “How do you do that in a stable way?” No one has


Baltimore’s star-spangled beer scene

and Capitol City chains, plans to introduce two beers: Duckpin Pale Ale, which Blodger describes as a hoppy, “West Coast” take on the style; and Balt Altbier, a toffeeish German-style brown ale. The brewery occupies a nondescript industrial-park type of building across from the Woodberry light-rail stop and a stone’s throw from a glass-blowing factory and Woodberry Kitchen restaurant. Blodger’s plans are to open a tasting room by late July, to install a canning line and eventually to expand distribution to the District. He also would like to squeeze in a batch of gose (a low-alcohol, tart ale seasoned with coriander and salt), a style that won him acclaim at the Gordon Biersch in Rockville. Peabody Heights Brewing Demczuk brews his Raven Beer at Clipper City Brewing in Halethorpe. Once Peabody Heights fires up its kettles (first brew is set for July, says partner Hollis Albert), Demczuk will transfer production of the amber lager here and augment the Raven with other Edgar Allan Poe-themed beers, including Pendulum Pilsner, Tell-Tale Hearty Ale and Cask of Amontillado (a strong, malty double bock). Demczuk and Albert are installing a 30-barrel brew house, a sizable operation for a start-up brewery. The pieces are being trucked cross-country from British Columbia, and a couple more vessels arrived shortly before my recent Baltimore visit. Demczuk and Albert are inspecting them for dings and other damage. (Political cartoonist Kevin Kallaugher, who publishes in the Economist under the pen name KAL, is designing the labels and popped his head in for a conference with Demczuk.) Peabody Heights will have enough capacity, says Demczuk, to rent tank space to parties interested in contract-brewing. He says he’s talking with a man from California who owns the rights to the brand Oriole Beer. What does Hugh Sisson, dean of the Baltimore craft beer scene, think of this new wave of breweries? Sisson founded Clipper City (maker of the Heavy Seas line) in 1995. He survived the so-called “shakeout” of the late 1990s, when the market became glutted and craft beer growth slowed to a single-digit crawl, and witnessed competitors like Baltimore Brewing, Brimstone Brewing and Oxford Brewing vanish into history. Will there be enough thirst to support all these beermakers? “For the time being, I’m taking the stand that a rising tide floats all boats,” he answers. Five beers to drink on the Fourth Kitsock is editor of the Mid-Atlantic Brewing News.


Judith Shinogle, health economist

Judith Shinogle, 49, a health economist and senior research scientist at the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, died May 19 in a traffic accident on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. She was a Washington resident. Parkway police said her sport-utility vehicle collided head-on with a minivan that crossed the median into the lane of oncoming traffic. Dr. Shinogle and the driver of the minivan were killed. The accident occurred near the intersection of the parkway and Greenbelt Road. Judith Ann Shinogle was a native of Wichita and a 1988 pharmacology graduate of the University of Kansas. She received a master’s degree in health policy and financing from Harvard University in 1993 and a doctorate in public health economics from Johns Hopkins University in 2001. She came to Washington in 1988 as an executive resident at the American Pharmaceutical Association. Later she was a consultant and analyst at the health-cost estimating unit of the Congressional Budget Office. From 2001 to 2005, she was an assistant professor of health economics at the University of South Carolina. She then returned to the Washington area as an assistant professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Maryland at College Park. Since 2008 she had been at the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research. Dr. Shinogle was an accomplished dog-agility handler. At the time of the accident, she was en route with her two German shorthaired pointers, Siegfried and Bruni, to an agility trial, in which handlers direct dogs through an obstacle course. Bruni died in the accident and Siegfried survived. Survivors include her partner, Jim McCarthy of Washington; her parents, Paul and Louise Shinogle of Wichita; two brothers; and three sisters. — Bart Barnes


A contest: Where should the Obamas vacation?

Loop fans, it’s time to do your civic duty by suggesting where the first family should vacation this year. Deadline for submissions is Friday, June 29. Our five favorite entries will win coveted Loop T-shirts — perfect for wearing on your own summer vacation. You can leave your entry as a comment on the blog — you may want to double-check that there’s an active e-mail address associated with your washingtonpost.com log-in. You can also e-mail us at intheloop@washpost.com. (Please make sure to include a phone number so we can contact you.) Catching Up With . . . When last we chatted with former Clinton administration associate attorney general and convicted felon Webb Hubbell, he was working in town for an insurance agency and making radio ads hawking life insurance for “responsible” marijuana smokers. Hubble, longtime close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, did 18 months in a Cumberland, Md., federal prison in 1995-96 for bilking his old law firm’s clients of about $400,000 — he was also indicted a few times by Whitewater prosecutor Ken Starr , who was reportedly squeezing him for information on Hillary Clinton. The former No. 3 official at the Justice Department told us that “responsible” dopers means occasional users as opposed to constant smokers — something like social drinkers vs. lushes. But we lost touch with Hubbell not long after that chat in January 2007. Seems the former Little Rock mayor and chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court has relocated to Charlotte, where, according to his Web site (www.webbhubbell.com), he’s been keeping busy, very busy. We see on his LinkedIn page that he’s a “lecturer, consultant and legal advisor” these days, as well as a founder at the Mark of Cain Foundation, which looks at the problems ex-felons have reentering society. It appears that he does a fair amount of speaking to various bar and other organizations and may still be involved in insurance matters. Records we found indicated that Hubbell, who wrote a book about his fall called “Friends in High Places” — isn’t living a lavish lifestyle but seems to be doing just fine, living in a nice rented condo with his wife, Suzanna. We called the other day to ask how things are going, but he demurred because he was driving. We learn on his other Web site — www.thehubbellpew.com — that he recently went to Atlanta to attend his


Naked Foot 5K spotlights barefoot running in Washington

Abigail Daley takes part in the Naked Foot 5K at Meadowbrook Park in Chevy Chase. (Matt McClain/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) “I have really bad knees,” says Rebecca Ouding of Vienna. “I have an old knee injury that gets aggravated,” says Bud Uyeda of Fairfax. “I ran a marathon 20 years ago, and after that my arches collapsed,” says Dave Hafera of Germantown. Not what you typically hear from people enjoying a fun run on a sunny summer Sunday. But there they were in Chevy Chase’s Meadowbrook Park at the Naked Foot 5K last weekend, happily joining 450 others despite injuries that usually spell the end of running careers. Their secret? After years of frustration trying to cure these ailments, all have switched to running barefoot or in the minimalist shoes that mimic running shoeless. “I would not be running if I were not running barefoot,” says Uyeda, who, to be totally honest, had to sit out this event because of a minor car accident Friday. Nearly three years after it was reignited by the remarkable book “Born to Run,” barefoot running is less a fad than a realistic alternative to traditional running shoes for people who have struggled with lower-leg injuries. Minimalist shoes are not for everyone, probably not even for most of us, but the anecdotal evidence of their place in the world of running is hard to deny. Minimalist shoes now account for 12 percent of running shoe sales (though it’s just 4 percent without Nike’s Free line), according to one report, and the practice is mainstream enough that Naked Foot runs are being held in 10 cities this summer. Sunday’s event, the third, produced the biggest turnout so far, said organizer Scott Jones, whose Web site invites participants to run barefoot, in minimalist footwear or shod. When he asked for a show of hands, about a quarter of the runners were going barefoot. “The goal is to get a lot of [people] out and having fun running again,” says Jones, who staged a 1K run for children before the main event. “Kids run barefoot when they’re 2 and 3 years old and they don’t think about it. They have fun. We want to reinvigorate that feeling in adults.” I wrote about barefoot running in October 2009, when author Christopher McDougall introduced us to the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s Copper Canyon, who run 100-mile races in sandals made


Five beers to drink on the Fourth

Craft brewing is a melting pot; the best beers borrow from German, English and Belgian traditions while managing to be American originals. These five brews, listed in order from lighter to more assertive, would be a welcome addition to any Fourth of July picnic. Samuel Adams Porch Rocker. Flying Dog Underdog Atlantic Lager. Goose Island Honker’s Ale. New Belgium La Folie. La Folie Sour Brown Ale by New Belgium Brewing. (FROM NEW BELGIUM BREWING) Tuppers’ Hop Pocket Ale.