Deadly gang riot in Mexican prison; 49 dead amid clashes and flames

A clash between rival factions in a Mexican prison touched off a deadly riot and mattress-fed fires Thursday, leaving at least 49 inmates dead after one of the worst outbreaks of violence in a system plagued by overcrowding and corruption. The melee at the Topo Chico prison in the northern city of Monterrey was another blow to authorities seeking to tackle problems that include gang control in many of Mexico’s largest penitentiaries. It also comes less than a week before Pope Francis is scheduled to visit a prison in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, a former epicenter for battles between Mexico’s powerful drug networks. Jaime Rodríguez, the governor of Nuevo Leon state, of which Monterrey is the capital, told reporters that the prison fight involved a faction linked to the Zetas drug cartel. Rodríguez had initially said at least 52 inmates were killed and 12 were injured, including some burned in cellblock blazes as mattresses and furniture were set aflame, but later reduced the number of dead to 49. Outside the prison, worried relatives rattled the gates and chain-link fences demanding to be let into the compound. At one point, family members forced open an entrance and pelted riot police with wood and stones, television reports showed. Images on social media purported to show bodies of inmates scattered across a prison courtyard. The prison has separate areas for female and elderly inmates, but they were calm, Rodríguez said after the unrest was brought under control. The death toll was the highest from prison violence in years in Mexico. In 2012, 44 inmates died in a prison bloodbath between rival drug gang members in the Monterrey suburb of Apodaca. A report the following year by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission found that 65 of 101 prisons surveyed were effectively run by inmates. Other rights activists have documented chronic overcrowding in many Mexican jails. Shortcomings in prison security were highlighted by an elaborate tunnel used by drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán to escape in July from his cell in the Altiplano federal maximum-security prison about 50 miles west of Mexico City. He was recaptured last month shortly after giving an interview to actor Sean Penn for an article that appeared in Rolling Stone magazine. Read more: Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world


Afghan courts said these ex-U.S. detainees should be freed. Why weren’t they?

a longtime political dissident and Islamic leader in Tajikistan, a country that regulates Muslims’ religious observance. Fearing persecution, the brothers left home in the early 2000s to study in seminaries in Iran and later Afghanistan, Foster said. In 2009, they were captured by U.S. forces during a raid on a suspected militant safe house in Afghanistan. For years, there was no public record of their detention. Then about a year ago, Kate Clark, a researcher and director of the Afghan Analysts Network, uncovered U.S. case files containing allegations that the brothers had confessed to membership in the Islamic Movement of Turkestan, a Muslim separatist group. However, neither U.S. nor Afghan prosecutors have ever charged the men with any terrorism-related crimes, Foster said. Last February, an Afghan court convicted the brothers of entering Afghanistan without a valid visa, Foster said. They were sentenced to a maximum of three years in prison, but the judge ordered their release because they had already spent at least five years at Bagram. An appellate court and Afghanistan’s Supreme Court have upheld that ruling. “They have now already been in custody for seven years,” said Foster, adding that her clients say the heat is not turned on in the prison and they are served food covered in maggots. “Why do they need to be there? You could at least put them in a hotel.” Akhmadjanov, the Uzbek, was a shopkeeper who fled his native country because authorities were harassing him for “growing a beard and looking Muslim,” said his attorney, Mohammad Zamir Zamani. He traveled to Turkey, where he got married. But in early 2010, Turkish authorities expelled him because he did not have a Turkish visa, Zamani said. When he entered Afghanistan’s Nimruz province, local security forces handed him over to U.S. troops, according to court documents. According to Clark But Afghan courts have repeatedly ruled there was not enough evidence to suggest that Akhmadjanov — who claims an Afghan guard once bit him during an interrogation — had done anything illegal in Afghanistan. “We have concluded to hand over the accused person to the officials of his country,” a three-judge appellate panel ruled in a written statement in May. “[If] the individual would feel threatened from [a] safety perspective, then we request application of international law for his safety and security.” But Zamani said his attempts to get Akhmadjanov transferred out of Bagram have


USOC takes steps to reassure athletes about Zika as Rio Games approach

defects is expected to spread to all countries in the Americas except Canada and Chile and remains a global health emergency, according to the World Health Organization. “All I can do is speak for myself. If the Olympics were today, I would not go,” she said. “Fortunately, the Olympics are six months away. So I believe we have some time to get our doubts and questions answered.” USOC Chief Executive Officer Scott Blackmun told the Associated Press that Solo’s earlier remarks “made us realize we need to provide concise and accurate info for our athletes.” The World Health Organization has deemed the outbreak a “global health emergency” and has advised pregnant women to avoid travel to areas where the virus has been reported. Although the disease effects men and women, pregnant women are at particular risk because the virus has been linked to a serious birth defect, microcephaly, characterized by an abnormally small head and damaged brains in infants. In a letter sent to potential Team USA athletes and posted on the USOC’s website late Wednesday, Blackmun noted the virus “is of concern to many of you.” “I want to emphasize that it is to us as well,” the letter said, “and that your well-being in Rio this summer is our highest priority.” A USOC spokesman said Thursday it would be impossible to estimate how many Team USA athletes might be pregnant during any given Olympics. However, in Blackmun’s letter Wednesday, athletes are reminded that scientists believe babies are at risk of microcephaly even if a woman becomes pregnant “within an unknown timeframe” after being infected. Everything you ever wanted to know about the Zika virus and its spread across North and South America. The Centers for Disease Control also reported Thursday two instances of women who had traveled abroad to Zika-infected areas suffering miscarriages that were believed to be linked to the virus. Scientists believe the disease also can be transmitted to women by male sexual partners who have been infected. There is no vaccine for Zika. The International Olympic Committee has not considered postponing or moving the Olympics, which begin with the Opening Ceremonies on Aug. 5, according to an interview IOC medical director Richard Budgett gave to the Associated Press on Thursday. “Everything that can be done is being done,” Padgett told the AP. “Our priority is to protect the health of the athletes. The IOC absolutely


First case of Zika reported in Maryland; health officials expect more

A Maryland resident has the Zika virus, the first case of the infection reported in the state. The state health department said on Thursday that a resident who recently traveled in a country where the mosquito-transmitted illness is rampant tested positive for the virus after returning home. Brian Lawrence, a spokesman for the health department, declined to say the patient’s age or gender, where in Maryland the patient lives or what the patient’s condition is. He said he did not know whether the health department has contacted close associates of the patient to talk to them about the disease, which can be spread by sexual contact as well as mosquito bite. The primary concern surrounding the virus, which has largely been reported in Latin America, is its link to the birth defect microcephaly. Three cases of Zika, including one in a patient who is pregnant, have been reported in the District. And Maryland public health officials said Thursday that they anticipate more cases in the state. Medical personnel in Maryland have sent samples from 17 patients suspected to have the virus to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for testing. Officials said that so far, two have come back negative, and this is the first positive result. But the rest are still pending. “It is likely that there will be other cases of people who have traveled,” said Howard Haft, the deputy secretary for public health. Officials said the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will post a weekly update online on further Zika cases, including information on whether the person was infected locally or abroad. But Haft also said that “this is not cause for alarm or panic.” He said that the current flu season poses a greater risk to the public. Related news: Two American women who caught Zika abroad suffer miscarriages NIH speeds up plan for human trials of Zika vaccine Graphic: What you need to know about the Zika virus


House Republicans move ahead with plan to shift 38,000 FAA workers

aboard airplanes. It also voted against a proposal to allow the FAA to regulate shipment of lithium-ion batteries, seen as a fire hazard and blamed for the 2010 crash of a cargo plane that was carrying 80,000 of them. Two years after that crash, Congress prohibited the FAA from imposing restrictions on transporting lithium-ion batteries that exceeded the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The National Transportation Safety Board proposed this year that their shipment be regulated on all passenger planes. While it is barred from regulating battery shipments, the FAA warned last month that they pose a “potential risk for a catastrophic hull.” “Lithium batteries are a disaster waiting to happen,” said Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (Ore.), ranking Democrat on the House Transportation Committee. “Why should we hobble the FAA? I would hate to think we’re going to tie the hands of the FAA to regulate these batteries.” As the bill emerges from committee, it will fall to Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) to smooth its passage on the House floor, a daunting prospect during a presidential election year. Though most of the bill won bipartisan support, Democrats said the attempt to move 14,000 air-traffic controllers and 24,000 other FAA workers to a private entity was a “poison pill.” “I fear these bipartisan proposals are going to be jeopardized because of this effort to spin off the air-traffic controllers,” said Rick Larsen (Wash.), ranking Democrat of the aviation subcommittee. “I don’t think that experimenting with the most complicated airspace in the world comes without a lot of risk.” The National Air Traffic Controllers Association has supported the plan to move its members to a private entity, as have all the major airlines except Delta. The business of directing air traffic and modernizing the system with which it is done has been transferred to private hands in several other Western nations. “The FAA’s failing to modernize its infrastructure,” Shuster said. “If we don’t act, we’re going to fall farther behind.” The FAA has been criticized for delays and cost overruns as it struggles to elevate its operations from a radar-based system to one that relies on GPS. The project, known as NextGen, has been estimated to cost $40 billion, but an inspector general’s report said the price tag may double or triple by the time the full system is installed. The FAA has spent $6 billion on it so


Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s centennial gala hits all the right notes

Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (here in an older photo) celebrated the orchestra’s 100th birthday with a gala that showcased the ensemble’s strengths. (Chris Lee) When the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was founded, 100 years ago on Thursday, it was as an arm of the Baltimore city government — to the tune of a $6,000 budget item. It’s the only orchestra in America that was founded as a municipal entity, and it’s retained strong ties to its community ever since. Thursday’s exhilarating birthday gala at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, with remarks from mayors present and past, was punctuated by whoops and applause from an audience exuding a palpable sense of ownership that many other cities — including Washington — might envy. The BSO hasn’t always had an easy time surviving in a city where funding and corporate sponsorship for a luxury item like an orchestra (now costing considerably more than $6,000 a season) are hard to come by, but it’s achieved remarkable things, and its audience is on its side. On paper, the concert program seemed to me slender, but that turned out to be a failure of my imagination. It proved a celebration tailored to the particular strengths of the orchestra and its musicians, with works that were a lot of fun and had substance. The suite from Bernstein’s “West Side Story” for solo violin and orchestra, for example, turned out to be a wholly engaging vehicle for Joshua Bell, showcasing his lyrical and expressive gifts as it leapt from song to familiar song, piling up motifs almost willy-nilly and casting him in one different role after another, keeping him on his toes. I am not sure I’ve ever enjoyed Bell more, occasional slips and all. While D.C.’s National Symphony Orchestra has labored, on and off over the years, to be seen as an American orchestra, the BSO has simply claimed the territory. David Zinman put the group on the map as a specialist in contemporary American repertoire, and Marin Alsop has picked up with her own kind of distinctive adventurous programming. The two American works on the program fit the ensemble like a glove. “Moxie,” written for the occasion by the composer Kristin Kuster (one of 10 commissions spearheaded by the Alexandria-based travel agency Classical Movements for the orchestra’s centennial), was literally tailor-made, and sounded it: At once energetic and melodic, it juxtaposed big full chords with


We didn’t see Donald Trump coming. But we could have.

are common at political rallies, but Donald Trump knows how to use them to fire up his audience. The prospect of a President Trump is closer to a gray swan than a black one — and it offers a valuable opportunity for learning just how much we can and cannot know about the future. At one end of the epistemological spectrum is the deterministic universe proposed by 19th-century French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace. Working in the midst of the Enlightenment, Laplace posited that rules such as Newton’s laws of motion might govern all of nature, including its human inhabitants. An entity that knew all the rules could, in principle, extrapolate from the current state of the world and see precisely into the distant future: “For such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.” Laplace called this intellect a “demon,” and it’s not hard to see why: It offered the possibility of omniscience, but it left no room for free will. At the other end of the spectrum lies the universe as scientists see it now, one permeated by tremendous uncertainty. Sure, thanks to Newton and Einstein, we know that objects behave reliably at the macro level. But quantum mechanics tells us that matter behaves unpredictably at the subatomic level, and although the social sciences can explain some of the funny things people do, we’re a long way from a unified theory of human behavior. This uncertainty is uncomfortable. Which is why many people prefer a universe where the divine moderates the tension between determinism and free will — where the natural world operates according to scientific laws but human endeavors are guided by some sort of master plan. Infusing events, even horrible ones, with meaning feels more reassuring than “things happen.” Probability is the humble secular answer to that problem. It allows us to transform vague, anything-could-happen sentiments into measurable risk, and it is essential to finance, medicine, engineering and more. Without ways of quantifying risk, decision-making would come to a standstill — or grind unproductively against a logical wall. Consider the weather, which operates according to deterministic laws but is unpredictable more than a week out, because even small changes have exponential effects that build on one another. It’s an example of a chaotic system. If you had perfect input data and infinite computing power, you could perhaps


U.S. retail sales increased slightly in January

RETAIL U.S. sales increased slightly in January U.S. retail sales rose modestly in January, evidence that Americans kept shopping despite tumbling stock prices. The Commerce Department said Friday that retail sales increased a seasonally adjusted 0.2 percent last month, the same as in December. Excluding the effect of falling gas prices, sales rose 0.4 percent. Sales in December were revised higher from an initial estimate of a 0.1 percent drop. Steady hiring and signs that employers are finally handing out higher wages means that Americans have more money to spend. A key question is whether consumer spending can keep growing and offset the effects of stock market volatility and slowing growth overseas. Americans stepped up their purchases in January of autos, home supplies and groceries, and spent more online. They spent less at restaurants and bars, probably because of harsh snowstorms on the East Coast. Gas prices averaged $1.70 a gallon nationwide Thursday, according to AAA. That’s down 27 cents in just the past month. Excluding the impact of cheap gas, retail sales rose 4.5 percent in January from 12 months earlier. That was the best year-over-pace since September. — Associated Press FEDERAL RESERVE Talk of negative rates too early, official says The U.S. economy has the momentum to weather stormy global financial markets, and policymakers have many other options before they would consider driving borrowing costs below zero to protect growth, Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley said Friday in New York. “I just find that an extraordinarily premature conversation to be having,” Dudley said. “There are a lot of things that we would do long before we would really think about moving to negative interest rates.” Financial markets have been routed in recent weeks by concerns over the global economic outlook. Dudley said that the Fed is “definitely aware of what’s going on internationally” and would take that into account when the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee meets March 15 and 16. Dudley also said that the outlook for how quickly inflation would rise has been dimmed by recent market developments. “Inflation is probably going to take a little bit longer to get back to our 2 percent objective, everything equal, than maybe what you thought a few months ago,” he said. The Fed raised interest rates in December for the first time since 2006 after growing in confidence that inflation would rise back to


Why Zika is ‘much more insidious, cunning and evil’ than Ebola

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Zika virus and its spread across North and South America. Global health authorities and government officials are mobilizing to battle the fast-spreading Zika virus, sending rapid-response teams to affected regions, issuing travel warnings for pregnant women, accelerating vaccine trials and even deploying mosquito-fighting troops to hard-hit areas in Brazil. Stung by criticism that the world’s response to the Ebola epidemic was halting and disjointed, officials in Latin America, the United States and Europe say they are determined to do better against a new foe that, in some ways, is more daunting than the hemorrhagic virus that killed 11,000 people in West Africa. But their efforts are being hobbled by a fundamental lack of understanding of a disease that has spread to nearly three dozen countries and is moving so quickly that some experts estimate it could infect as many as 3 million to 4 million people within 12 months. Unlike the highly lethal Ebola, which had been studied extensively by the time it emerged in Guinea in late 2013, Zika wasn’t considered a menace. Most infected people didn’t even show symptoms. For decades, Zika got little scrutiny before showing up in Brazil in May. The mosquito-borne disease suspected of causing serious birth defects is expected to spread to all countries in the Americas except Canada and Chile and remains a global health emergency, according to the World Health Organization. Now, for the first time, Zika is suspected of being the culprit behind a constellation of devastating birth defects, most notably microcephaly, a rare condition in which babies are born with head and brain abnormalities. In adults, the virus has been associated with another rare condition, called Guillain-Barré syndrome, that can result in paralysis and even death. But, even at this point, scientists are not able to say definitively that Zika is the cause of the problems. The mystery surrounding the virus — officials aren’t sure what will turn up next — makes it “much more insidious, cunning and evil” than Ebola, said Bruce Aylward, a World Health Organization official who helped coordinate the organization’s Ebola response and is now leading the Zika effort. The urgency to understand the virus, along with pressure not to repeat its slow-footed reaction to the devastating Ebola crisis, prompted the WHO to move faster this time to declare a global public health emergency. “This emergency is because


What do you do when you have one of the rarest diseases around?

Hannah Manning in 2013 at age 10, before a new type of DNA test revealed that she had an extremely rare hereditary disorder. (Family Photo) For most of her 13-year life, Hannah Manning was a mystery to her doctors. At age 2, she had her first seizure. At 4, she was diagnosed with autism. She developed cognitive deficits, muscle weakness, exercise intolerance, swallowing difficulties, a speech impediment, balance and coordination problems and gastroparesis, a condition that slows the stomach’s ability to empty the food inside. Hannah’s mother, Christina Wyatt Manning, of Baldwinsville, N.Y., was baffled after several genetic tests came back normal. Finally, in December 2014, Christina and her wife, Kristin Manning, got the explanation they had long been seeking. The answer emerged after doctors ran a new type of DNA test, called next-generation sequencing, to identify abnormalities that may cause disease. The test showed that Hannah had a gene mutation that causes spinocerebellar ataxia autosomal recessive 9, or SCAR9, an ultra-rare, recessively inherited neurological disorder. Hannah’s doctors believe she is the only person in the United States with the disease and perhaps one of only two dozen in the world. Next-generation sequencing technology became commercially available only recently, after the first test was given approval by the Food and Drug Administration in 2013. But scientists and clinicians say it has already identified multiple cases similar to Hannah’s, where a patient’s puzzling symptoms turned out to be signs of a rare disease. As this technology gets cheaper and faster, experts say more patients will get tested and find they have rare diseases. They will have the satisfaction of finding out what is causing their symptoms but then will often face a frustrating question: What do you do when diagnosed with a rare disease that has been studied little and has no known treatment, and few other patients to turn to for support? “We found a needle in a haystack with this diagnosis,” Christina Manning says. Since then, she has been researching her daughter’s condition nonstop and blogging on her website in hopes of finding researchers, medical specialists and patients who know anything about SCAR9. One physician and researcher she connected with is Michael Kruer, a pediatric neurologist at Phoenix Children’s Hospital who specializes in genetic diseases and has studied hereditary ataxias, the group of disorders to which SCAR9 belongs. “Rare diseases are literally coming out of the woodwork,” Kruer says.


When my brother got TB, doctors said there was no hope. How could that be?

“compassionate use,” program. The program requires buy-in from the patient’s physician, the FDA and the drug manufacturer. But when Reed appealed to the Japanese drug manufacturer, Otsuka, to allow her to use delamanid on Gary, it denied her request because the drug had never been tested for use in combination with bedaquiline. Reed had high hopes for using the drugs in combination. Delamanid would have replaced the drug that was causing Gary’s nerve damage. However, it is unknown whether the two drugs are safe to use together; we believe it’s a risk worth taking when the alternative is eventual paralysis. In early 2015 the pain of Gary’s drug regimen became too much to endure, and he told his doctors he could not bear to take the drug that was causing his nerve damage any longer. They replaced it with another drug, which caused kidney damage. He is on a third drug now, one we hope will work out better, in combination with his other medications. The nerve damage and pain continue, and he still takes medication to combat it, along with very high doses of painkillers. Gary is almost done with his drug treatment. Following additional testing, delamanid use with bedaquiline is now allowed under limited circumstances through the compassionate-use protocol. An urgent need The last effective diagnostic for latent tuberculosis was introduced in 1891; the last vaccine for TB was introduced in 1921; and before the approval of bedaquiline in 2012, a new first-line drug for TB had not been introduced in the United States since 1967. In the United States the small number of TB cases means that there isn’t much monetary incentive for companies to stock TB drugs, which has resulted in widespread shortages of critical TB medicines and testing supplies. There is also an urgent need for new, more effective vaccines for use in preventing TB infection, disease manifestation and recurrence, internationally and even domestically. TB has not yet been relegated to the history books. As my family’s story continues to unfold, the disease’s burden is very real, and the next chapters remain uncertain. Aleksanyan is an actress and chief operating officer of Smart Actors, a company that offers online acting and mentoring sessions. She wrote this essay with Katya Cengel, a freelance writer. This article was excerpted from the Narrative Matters section of the journal Health Affairs and can be read in full at healthaffairs.org.


Bill meant to pave way for marijuana-oil production advances in Virginia

Sen. Bryce Reeves (Spotsylvania), joined Obenshain to vote against it. Another, Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment (James City), abstained. “God bless you guys. You’re awesome,” Sen. Thomas Garrett (R-Buckingham), told Collins and Lisa Smith, of White Stone, Va., who had brought her epileptic daughter, Haley, to watch the vote from her wheelchair. Last year, the General Assembly passed a law intended to make it easier for people with severe forms of epilepsy to use two oils derived from marijuana, which lack the plant’s intoxicating properties but help alleviate debilitating seizures. The bill provided a way for epileptics or their legal guardians to avoid prosecution for possession of cannabidiol oil (also known as CBD) and THC-A oil. Passage came as something of a surprise in a legislature that has remained staunchly opposed to legalization of marijuana, but the measure was so narrowly tailored that conservative members were largely on board. Virginia legalized medical marijuana in 1979 for patients with cancer and glaucoma, but that law requires “a valid prescription” — something doctors cannot legally provide as long as marijuana is federally restricted. Marijuana-oil bills began sweeping though legislatures — many of them in conservative states — after an August 2013 CNN documentary “Weed” that showed the plight of a family seeking the oil for their daughter’s seizures. The law passed in Virginia last year was intended to prevent patients or their caretakers from being prosecuted for possession of the oils, but it stopped short of making the oils legal. And it did not provide a way for patients to obtain the oils — a flaw in the eyes of critics on the left and right, who said at the time that would force the use of products purchased on the black market whose quality will be uncertain. But the original bill laid the groundwork for possibly producing the oils in Virginia after 2017, when and if the legislature votes to re-enact it. The law says that no pharmaceutical processor could produce the oils without first obtaining a permit from the state Board of Pharmacy. The current bill, which still faces a vote in the full Senate and House, would direct the board to start to develop those regulations. Sen. David W. Marsden (D-Fairfax), who sponsored the measure, said he does not want to wait until the measure is reenacted next year because the regulatory process takes as long as 280 days.


The beat goes on: Prince George’s Philharmonic honors conductor

get.” The Queens native had moved with her husband and children to Bowie from Levittown, N.Y., on Long Island. Her teenage daughter Jamie was studying violin. “There was no place for her to play,” Rita said. “Even the high school didn’t have an orchestra. I thought an orchestra might be nice. I just thought I would put a notice in the local paper, see if anybody was interested in getting out there.” If it was easy to start a symphony orchestra, everyone would do it. “It’s a little hard,” Rita said. “I think we had eight flutes and two violins at first. It’s hard to find people, but the people who came and met with me all searched among their friends and any musicians they knew.” These were amateurs in the best sense: lovers of music who welcomed the opportunity to learn and perform under the guidance of people like Chuck and his predecessors. Guest artists receive a small honorarium. The principal string players receive small stipends. The rest — retirees, Hill staffers, schoolteachers, chemists — are volunteers. “They do it out of love,” Rita said. “They get extreme joy. They get nothing else.” There are two more concerts this season: March 19 at the Bowie Center for the Performing Arts and May 22 at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland in College Park. The March concert will feature the return of every conductor who led the Prince George’s Philharmonic since it was founded in 1965, every one but Chuck. “It’s just so sad,” Rita said. Susan Pearl I didn’t even know Chuck, but as the strings resolved in tender melancholy, I found myself wiping my eyes. How can it be that a thing that possesses no mass — that is just invisible waves moving through invisible air — can affect us as much as a drug or a punch in the gut? But music has always been magic. “When you think about a phrase of music, it’s analogous to the birth and the death of a star,” Blair said. “You can see the moment of creation, the explosion that starts the thing. It grows, depending on how long or how florid the phrase is. That whole universe that’s created within it, it’s representative of something larger — and then it dies away.” How like a human life. Twitter: @johnkelly For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly.


What can a poet tell us about the Zika virus?

(Michigan State University) The Zika virus has spread to more than 30 countries, with no cure or vaccine available. And once again, the carrier of this new scourge is the mosquito, the same fairy insect that delivers West Nile virus, yellow fever, encephalitis and, of course, one of our oldest, more effective enemies: malaria. As of December, the World Health Organization estimated that there were 214 million cases of malaria in 2015 and more than 400,000 deaths from the disease. For a year I’ve had a slim volume of poetry called “Malaria” buzzing around my head. It’s a collection by Cameron Conaway, a writer who moves gracefully between liberal arts and martial arts. In various forms and styles, the two-dozen poems in “Malaria” draw us into the world made unlivable for hundreds of millions of people. The collection begins with these lines: “That’s cerebral,” the doctor said and it dispersed Cameron Conaway. (Courtesy of Cameron Conaway) slick through thick air quiet barracuda shuttling sound away from mouth mutating it to mean. A compliment in another place here sticks here clots here a death sentence. Most of Conaway’s poems describe the ravages of the disease on ordinary people who have no access to modern medical care. There are children baffled by their lameness, mothers burying babies and scoundrels hawking fake pills. There’s even a poem from a mosquito’s point of view. But in each piece, there’s this lush immediacy: Migrant workers in dried bamboo huts in still postcard mountains in rainy season know the fruits are best to pick when the humid air hums with the ripe husking of mosquito wings cutting sky, know the rainy season is the sweetest season, is malaria season, is when the fullest baskets may weigh heavy with the cruelest emptiness. Then Cameron comments with a gut punch: It’s often this way. The poor going to war for our sweet wants masked as needs. These poems arose from a curious project when Conaway went to Thailand in 2011 to practice kick-boxing. A parallel interest in poetry led to a grant to study malaria and the world’s response in Thailand and Bangladesh. Conaway quickly realized how fortunate he was not to have much firsthand knowledge of a disease that ruins so many people. But it wasn’t just the illness and death he found difficult to accept; it was the West’s ineffective approach to finding a cure. “The


Police arrest two suspects in 25-year-old triple slaying in Northeast

Samantha Simone Gillard, who, along with two men, was fatally shot in 1991 in a park in the District. (Family Photo) Grieving relatives and determined detectives thought for years that they knew why three people were lined up and killed under a clump of trees in Northeast Washington’s Langdon Park in the spring of 1991. It took nearly 25 years to get the evidence to back up that theory. Charges announced Wednesday against two men in the long-ago killings confirmed what family members suspected back then — that the victims stole a car belonging to two drug dealers, who authorities think sought retribution because there had been a half-ounce of cocaine in the vehicle. “At least they didn’t give up,” Nathaniel Gillard, the brother of one of the victims, Samantha Simone Gillard, said of police. In addition to Gillard, who was 23, Curtis Kelvin Pixley, 29, of Northeast, and Keith Edwin Simmons, 26, of Fort Washington, were slain. All three were shot in the head and elsewhere on their bodies. Samantha Simone Gillard’s mother Effie is shown in 1998 in the park where her daughter was shot. (James M. Thresher/The Washington Post) Police have charged Michael Green, 44, of Northeast Washington, and Benito Valdez, 45, of Arlington, Va., with first-degree murder while armed. Attorneys for both suspects declined to comment Wednesday. Authorities confirmed that Green was taken into custody Tuesday, five months after he was freed from jail to await trial in another District murder case for which he was arrested in July. Police allege he stabbed a man over a $3 drug dispute in 1999. A D.C. Superior Court judge on Wednesday ordered Valdez and Green detained until a preliminary hearing March 16, dismissing arguments from defense attorneys that their clients were not a danger because they have aged over the past quarter-century. The 1991 killings occurred April 23 in a park in the 1800 block of Franklin Street NE. Residents reported hearing a volley of shots, and a passerby found the bodies hours later on a grassy slope, face down and lined up side-by-side. Police said they recovered 13 casings from two different guns. The killings were three of 482 recorded in 1991, the height of a period in which the District bore the dubious distinction as the nation’s “murder capital.” “It is rewarding to be able to do this,” Assistant D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said of


Montgomery Animal Watch

These cases were received by the Montgomery County Animal Services Division. For information, call 240-773-5900. This number provides recorded information on topics such as the new animal services and adoption center’s hours and location in Derwood, adoption and licensing procedures, and lost-and-found and field services. A hug, a bite: Another hug, another bite: Adoptable cats at no-kill shelter: Gaithersburg Adopt dogs and cats at MCHS no-kill rescue: Rockville Reduced fees for cat adoption: Germantown — Compiled by Lisa M. Bolton


Prince George’s County news in brief

Planning Department initiates Resource Conservation Plan The Prince George’s County Planning Department recently announced an initiative aimed at increasing the county’s green infrastructure planning and streamlining the process for current green infrastructure elements. The Resource Conservation Plan will identify green infrastructure features throughout the county to meet state requirements, and update plans and maps. Green infrastructure is defined as an interconnected network of waterways, wetlands, woodlands, wildlife habitats and other natural areas of countywide significance. The Planning Department will host a community input session Tuesday to share information and get feedback from constituents. The meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. at the Hyattsville City Administration Building, 4310 Gallatin St., Hyattsville. For information, visit pgplanning.org . Grants available to animal organizations The Maryland Department of Agriculture is accepting applications for its Spay and Neuter Grant Program. The program is open to organizations seeking money to fund programs that will help reduce intake and euthanasia numbers among animals in local shelters. The program will award $900,000 in grants, with a minimum of $5,000 per grant, to municipal, government and nonprofit animal welfare organizations. Funded by fees paid by the pet food industry, the program has provided grants to 33 projects statewide. Applications are due by April 1 at 5 p.m. Chosen applicants will be notified within 60 days if they have received full or partial funding. To apply, visit mda.maryland.gov or contact Jane Mallory, program coordinator, at 410-841-5766 or jane.mallory@maryland.gov. — Compiled by Jillian S. Jarrett


Where to find Washington’s new Chinatown, Little Ethiopia, etc.

red-wine-marinated meat simmered with Ethiopian butter. Silver Spring is one of the areas that has seen an increase in Ethiopian restaurants. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) Salvadoran Central American employees of U.S. diplomats began coming to Washington in the 1960s. They were followed in the 1970s and ’80s by fellow citizens, especially Salvadorans, fleeing war and poverty. Many established themselves in Mount Pleasant, which was still recovering from the 1968 riots. But by the 1990s, gentrification had started forcing immigrants to the suburbs (those tensions, plus feelings of disenfranchisement, led to the 1991 Mount Pleasant riots). There’s a notable Salvadoran presence in Maryland’s multicultural Langley Park — called the International Corridor — and in Manassas, Va. Recommended: Pupuseria El Comalito, 1167-C University Blvd., Takoma Park, Md. Try frijoles con ayote (beans with cheese and squash) or loroco con queso (cheese with a Salvadoran flower bud pupusa). Vietnamese After the 1975 fall of Saigon, South Vietnamese refugees settled in Northern Virginia, probably because of connections with military and CIA personnel. The Vietnamese hub was in Arlington County’s Clarendon neighborhood until its Metro station opened in 1979. New development pushed the businesses west to a shopping center at routes 7 and 50 in Falls Church. That strip mall became Eden Center, which now has several buildings and about 120 stores and restaurants. Recommended: Nha Trang, 6757 Wilson Blvd., No. 7-8, Falls Church. Try nem nuong cuon Ninh Hoa (grilled pork rolls), fresh summer rolls and pho with noodles made in-house. Diners share a meal in 2013 at Nha Trang Vietnamese Restaurant in Falls Church. (Bonnie Jo Mount/Washington Post) Korean There has been a Korean community in Washington since the opening of the Korean Embassy in 1949. But the larger influx of immigrants did not occur until the 1990s, and many arrivals chose Fairfax County, perhaps drawn by the public schools. Soon there was a flourishing group of stores and restaurants in Annandale catering to the Korean community. With the continuing growth of the population, clusters of businesses are also opening in Centreville, Va., and Germantown, Rockville and Silver Spring, Md. Recommended: Il Mee Buffet, 7031-A5 Little River Tpk., Annandale. Try the all-you-can-eat buffet, plus kimchi pancakes and bulgogi cooked at your table. Elizabeth Chang is an editor in the Magazine; Tim Carman writes for the Food section and is the $20 Diner. E-mail us at wpmagazine@washpost.com. For more articles, as well as features


A blackout in Ukraine is a reminder of the dangers of cyberattacks

by malware known as BlackEnergy, which could have entered the substations and enabled attackers to switch off the power. Much is still unknown about how this might have worked, but it is another ominous reminder that the age of cyberconflict has arrived. The United States and Israel pioneered the use of malware to damage industrial control systems with the creation of Stuxnet, a digital worm infiltrated into Iran that caused malfunctions in systems enriching uranium. While Stuxnet may have been innovative, it is no longer unique, and the ability to misdirect or wreck industrial control systems that are connected to the Internet is spreading. Much has been aired in the past year or two about the vulnerability of electrical grids to this type of mischief, a threat that all nations and electricity networks should take extremely seriously. Journalist Ted Koppel, author of a recent book on the topic, wrote in these pages in October, “Our electric power grids, in particular, are highly susceptible to cyberattacks, the consequences of which would be both devastating and long-lasting.” A similar cyberattack was reported to have recently targeted Israel’s electrical grid. Other cyberattacks have involved stealing massive loads of intellectual property, such as at Sony Pictures Entertainment, or scooping up truckloads of personal data, such as the breaches at Target and Home Depot. Cybersnoops have wormed their way into the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the White House, and thieves took millions of sensitive dossiers from the Office of Personnel Management. But the electrical grid shutdown in Ukraine heralds an altogether different kind of danger, one that can manipulate machines that control industrial equipment, such as power grids and dams, and cause them to behave in dangerous ways. It is entirely plausible that Russia — either the state or its proxies — carried out such a cyberattack on Ukraine. Russia’s offensive cybercapabilities are growing, as are those of a dozen other countries, including the United States. The Ukraine blackout is a cautionary signal that a new type of destructive conflict is possible — and probable. Read more on this topic: Robert J. Samuelson: Could an attack on the power grid mean cybergeddon? Ted Koppel: Where is America’s cyberdefense plan? Robert J. Samuelson: The coming cyber wars? Chris Stewart: It’s time to take cyberattacks seriously and install a deterrence plan The Post’s View: The United States has been complacent and lazy in responding to cyberattacks


How drafting women became a wedge issue for Republicans on the trail

country’s culture wars for the past eight years. Cruz has often cast the issue in the harshest terms. “As the father of two daughters, I can tell you, we are not going to draft American women into military combat,” Cruz said to cheers Tuesday in South Carolina. He promised to review the Marine Corps’ failed request to bar women from combat jobs, saying that he “would not simply bow down to political correctness.” A week earlier, Cruz railed against the notion that the government would “forcibly conscript our daughters” and “put them in a foxhole fighting a jihadist, a 220-pound psychopath trying to kill them.” His stand has drawn cheers from some conservatives who sense that Cruz has latched on to an important wedge issue. “A big deal,” Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, tweeted about Cruz’s stand. “Cruz can distinguish himself from the rest of the field and steal some of Trump’s anti-P.C. thunder.” Cruz’s attacks led Rubio to reconsider his stance, telling reporters last Friday that he doesn’t “support drafting women and forcing them into combat roles.” Rubio has also questioned whether the Selective Service system — which requires 18-year-old males to register for the draft — is even necessary anymore. The question of drafting women arose only after Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter ordered the military to open up all combat jobs to women, with no exceptions. This month, a few days after Carter’s order became official, the military’s top brass were called to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee, where Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) raised the draft issue. A 1981 Supreme Court decision found that women should not have to register because they were barred from serving in front-line combat positions. Since the 9/11 attacks, women serving in military support jobs have engaged in fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have received awards for valor under fire, and 161 have lost their lives. Now that the restriction on women filling combat jobs has been lifted, McCaskill asked, shouldn’t they be treated exactly as men? The Army’s four-star chief of staff and the Marine Corps’ commandant both said they should, setting off a scramble on Capitol Hill, where Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said he plans to introduce a bill that would prevent the Obama administration from forcing women to register for military service. “We simply can’t trust this president or the courts to honor the


Three killed, including 15-year-old, in Afghan security raid on health clinic

staffers and caretakers. President Obama apologized for that airstrike, but Doctors Without Borders is pressing for war crimes charges to be filed. Gen. John Campbell, the outgoing commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, blamed “human error” for the Kunduz strike. Campbell said U.S. Special Forces who had been operating in that area had not been briefed that the Doctors Without Borders compound was a hospital. Afghan security forces, however, have been known to routinely enter medical facilities in pursuit of militants, even though hospitals are considered neutral spaces under international law. A few months before the hospital in Kunduz was bombed, Doctors Without Borders complained that Afghan troops had illegally entered the facility. A report released Sunday by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan noted that coalition and Afghan special forces raided health facilities in Logar and Helmand provinces in December. The report said the search operations “resulted in the arrest of healthcare staff and destruction of clinic equipment — although they did not cause any civilian casualties.” Jorgen Holmstrom, the country director for the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, said all the patients in the group’s clinics had the right to be protected. “Medical facilities and medical staff are to provide treatment to anyone in need, and patients are to be granted safety according to humanitarian law,” he said. Lindh noted that the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan is the only medical provider in Wardak province, where fierce battles between Afghan security forces and Taliban militants are common. Abdul Wali Noorzai, a spokesman for the provincial police force, said the raid began when Afghan special forces used ropes to descend into the village from a helicopter. “The operation was conducted at night, and Afghans do not have the technology to do it by air, lowering troops onto the ground,” he said. “I think Americans were present with them.” U.S. military officials say the Afghan army sometimes uses its own helicopters now to conduct night operations, without the presence of coalition advisers. Hameeda Akbari, a member of parliament from the area, said the hospital was well-known for treating Taliban militants. She called the raid “justifiable.” “That hospital treats the opposition,” Akbari said. But Lindh stressed that the staff at the health clinic “is not part of this conflict.” “Anyone who comes to our clinics, we don’t ask questions, and they should feel protected,” Lindh said. “But they were taken out, and they


D.C. community calendar, February 18-25, 2016

Chamber Band “Three Days of Rain” Sunday, Feb. 21 Interregnum: The Eclipse of the L’Enfant Plan Yoga at the Southeast Library Soothing Sunday yoga Shaw knitting and crocheting circle All experience levels welcome, special instruction for beginners, in-house training materials provided, but please bring needles and yard for your own take-home projects. Sundays at 3 p.m. through Feb. 28, Shaw (Watha T. Daniel) Library, 1630 7th St. NW. 202-727-1288. www.dclibrary.org/watha. Vivaldi Gloria - Cathedral Choral Society Art Signs: Gallery Talk in ASL Classical music concert What Makes It Great? With Rob Kapilow Monday, Feb. 22 Baby and toddler story time Therapeutic yoga classes Awareness through movement Income tax preparation help Tech Monday: PC Basics I Intermediate Youth chess club Long-term care insurance 3:30-5 p.m. St. Thomas Church, 1772 Church St. NW. Reservations: Linda Harsh, 202-234-2567, lindajkh@mac.com. $10. Fun and games Mondays Reader’s theatre After-school workshops American Sign Language class for beginners Classical music concert Speaking English Six more Italian regions worth discovering African American history lecture Literary Celebration with the Birmingham Jail Players Zumba Tuesday, Feb. 23 Income tax preparation help Yoga for seniors Dogs like to read, too (Paws to read) Toddler story time Preschool story time Seedlings Preschool story time Chair yoga classes Classical music for Black History Month Health literacy for healthy living Sketching: draw and discover Chess club for kids and teens Income tax preparation assistance DC Legendary Musicians Band Yoga for adults and teens Wednesday, Feb. 24 What Thomas Jefferson really thought about slavery Gallery talk Parks and People Creative writing in the afternoon Lunder behind the scenes Afterschool lounge Board game bonanza BARS workshop ScottClark4tet concert Chess Club Yoga with Caroline PAL (People animals love) Pajama Party 12th Annual Showcase of Academy Award-nominated documentaries and short subjects Screenings of films in the Documentary Feature, Documentary Short Subject, Live Action Short Film and Animated Short Film categories. Call 202-357-6814 for times and to register for seating. National Archives, William G. McGowan Theater, Constitution Avenue and Seventh Street NW. 202-357-5000. Free. Thursday, Feb. 25 The Peale Painter Dynasty and Thomas Jefferson Genealogy research using the U.S. Congressional Serial Set “Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer” “Wedding Doll” 8:30 p.m. Washington D.C. Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th St. NW. 202-777-3250. www.wjff.org. $16.90. “Demon” E Street Cinema, 555 11th St. NW. 202-777-3250. www.wjff.org. $16.90. Upper northwest knitters “Black Angels Over Tuskegee” Shofuso, the Japanese house and


In Danish drama ‘A War,’ nobody wins, everybody loses a little

Claus (Pilou Asbaek), right, works with Najib Bisma (Dar Salim) at a military outpost in Afghanistan in Tobias Lindholm’s “A War.” (Magnolia Pictures) Like his 2012 film “A Hijacking,” Danish writer-director Tobias Lindholm’s drama “A War” explores the theme of moral compromise with an uncomfortably astringent honesty. Set in a remote military outpost in Afghanistan, the Academy Award-nominated film revolves around the commander of a unit of Danish soldiers who, after issuing an order that results in unintended collateral damage, finds himself caught in a three-way dilemma of duty: to his own men; to the Afghan civilians whose hearts and minds he’s there to win; and to his family. There is no way that Claus (Pilou Asbaek) can square away all three, and Lindholm recognizes this, with a story whose resolution echoes with the tinny, off-key music of concession. It’s a beautiful, haunting reverberation that stays with you long after you have left the theater. Asbaek — so great in “A Hijacking,” where he played a lowly cook on a ship hijacked by Somali pirates, a nobody stuck in a vise between his desperate captors and his cynical, cost-conscious employers back home — is one of three professional actors in the Afghanistan scenes. The majority of Claus’s troops and the Afghan villagers are played by real Danish army veterans and Afghan victims of Taliban crimes. This lends a documentary-like feel to the first half of the film, which toggles between tense monotony and explosive, often bloody violence. It’s in stark contrast to the court-martial that dominates the second half of “A War,” after Claus is brought home to face charges of committing a war crime. Both of these sections are intercut with the everyday domestic drama that plays out between Claus and his wife (Tuva Novotny) and their three children, initially over satellite phone and later face to face. Claus is not a bad man, but he may have done a bad thing. The question here: How does one reconcile one’s obligation to a literal truth — made no less true by the mitigating fog of war — with the obligation to a second, implicit truth, that an admission of guilt would deprive his family of the father they need? And which of these competing truths is the greater one, the one less likely to eat away, like a slowly corrosive solvent, at one’s soul? Lindholm sets up this endgame


WASHINGTON, DC - Quinoa and Kiwicha Salad at Nazca, the upstairs portion of Nazca Mochica, a new Peruvian restaurant photographed in Washington, DC. (Photo by Deb Lindsey For The Washington Post). (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post) Chef Roberto Castre preps in the open kitchen upstairs at Nazca Mochica. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post) GOOD This review appeared in The Washington Post’s 2016 Spring Dining Guide as No. 9 on a list of the year’s 10 best new restaurants. Proof that Shaw doesn’t have all the fun: this two-story Peruvian oasis in Dupont Circle. Upstairs (Nazca) is a minimalist dining room with a brief but compelling menu, a mix of Peruvian standards (causitas, lomo saltado) and novelties including duck confit over which a tangy marinade is added at the table. Downstairs (Mochica) is a seviche lounge and a bar whose street snacks, pisco sours and handsome design conspire to turn after-work drinks into a full-fledged feast. One of my best memories is meatless: quinoa tossed with creamy avocado, toasted marcona almonds, diced mozzarella and fresh mint, everything wrapped in ruffled lettuce leaves and eaten like a taco. Now you see it, now you don’t. Previous: More of Tom Sietsema’s top 10 new restaurants: 10. Hank’s Pasta Bar 9. Nazca Mochica 8. The Dabney 7. Tail Up Goat 6. Espita Mezcaleria 5. Masseria 4. Bad Saint 3. Convivial 2. Kinship 1. Pineapple and Pearls -- Nazca Mochica review: Proof that Peruvian food means more than seviche This review was originally published March 2, 2016. The recent debuts of Convivial by Cedric Maupillier, the Dabney by Jeremiah Langhorne and Kinship courtesy of Eric Ziebold have kept more than a few food fanciers fixated on a single neighborhood in Washington. Should you need a nudge to get out of Shaw and expand your sights, let me introduce you to a young Peruvian restaurant in Dupont Circle. It goes by Nazca Mochica, and it’s the two-story successor to Heritage India. The street level showcases an inviting seviche lounge, Mochica, named after an ancient Peruvian society known for ceramic art. The second floor, Nazca, finds a minimalist dining room with a brief but intriguing menu. Both venues are fun when they’re on, frustrating when they’re not, and possibly the best representative of Peruvian cuisine in town since Carlos Delgado bid “chau” to Ocopa on H Street NE. (Some of us still mourn the loss.)


The voyages of the Dawnlight: Where is it headed? And what is it carrying?

because he works in a related field. He described the implementation of sanctions as “patchy.” “Are they turning a blind eye to things going through, or is it just too difficult to stop things?” he said. When enforcing sanctions, the Singaporeans make a clear distinction: While they will enforce multilateral orders, they will not uphold U.S. sanctions unless the targeted company has also broken local laws. “We generally ignore unilateral sanctions,” said a former Singaporean official who was involved in enforcement and spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing his current work. He described periods when his office would receive daily emails from U.S. officials asking for action. “American requests come in at such a volume, we have to be very selective on how we act on them,” he said. “We have millions of containers coming through every day.” The case of the Dawnlight encapsulates the problem. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Senat Shipping, a Singaporean company, and its president, Leonard Lai, in July, saying the company was working with North Korean entities that procure weapons for the regime. In the process, the Treasury Department blacklisted the Dawnlight, then owned by Senat, meaning that U.S. individuals and companies were prohibited from doing any business involving the company or the ship. Senat protested the designation, saying that all of its dealings pertained to the legal shipment of commercial commodities and that it had not had a “business relationship” with North Korea since late 2011. The company was not sanctioned by the United Nations, meaning that Senat and Lai were allowed to operate in and out of Singapore — including sending ships to North Korea. In November, The Post started monitoring the Dawnlight using data collated by MarineTraffic, a community-based, online ship-tracking service. All ships submit data through the automatic identification system, or AIS, which pings radar stations when a vessel is in range or allows detection by satellites when ships are in the right place. Tracking ships traveling to North Korea is inherently challenging, because the North does not have radar stations that feed into the international ship-tracking system and satellite coverage in that part of Asia can be spotty. Still, many vessels are routinely recorded by satellite calling at North Korean ports. Although it is against international regulations, a ship’s crew can turn off the AIS, ensuring that it will not be tracked. On some of its voyages,


Police arrest man in fatal stabbing at Barcode in downtown Washington

Northeast Two men were shot Thursday inside a residence in Northeast Washington, D.C. police said. One man died at the scene, and the other died at a hospital. The shootings occurred shortly after 1 p.m. in the 500 block of 58th Street NE, near the Burrville neighborhood. Names of the victims were not immediately released. Police said both appeared to be in their 40s. The deaths are the 11th and 12th homicides in the District so far this year. Dustin Sternbeck, the chief D.C. police spokesman, said the victims were acquaintances. He would not comment on whether anyone else was home at the time of the shootings, or if there had been a forced entry. MARYLAND Man, 21, is charged with murder A 21-year-old man was arrested Thursday for a fatal shooting in Greenbelt this week, Prince George’s County police said. Jarel Dickerson of District Heights is charged with first-degree murder in the homicide of Robert Brandon Jr. on Monday. Brandon, 28, was shot to death on the 8600 block of Greenbelt Road, the street where he lived. Tyler Hunter, a county police spokesman, said investigators believe that Dickerson shot Brandon during a drug-related robbery. Adoption is sought for emaciated dog Authorities in Prince George’s County are trying to find out who abandoned a 7-year-old mastiff found so emaciated that it weighed just over 56 pounds rather than the typical 140- to 150-pound weight for that breed of dog. County animal officials named the dog Violet after she was found Feb. 8 on Gallahan Road in the Clinton area, according to officials with the Prince George’s County Animal Management Division. Violet is being cared for at Mutts Matter Rescue in Rockville until she is “healthy enough to be adopted” by a foster family, the Humane Society said. Anyone with information is asked to call 301-780-7241. Burglar took it to-go in Prince George’s Prince George’s County authorities are searching for a man who crawled through the drive-through windows of two fast-food establishments to steal cash from registers, police said Wednesday. Both burglaries took place within 30 minutes of each other last month in Colmar Manor, police said. At about 4:30 a.m. on Jan. 23, authorities said the man crawled through the window of a restaurant in the 4000 block of Bladensburg Road. Then, at about 5 a.m., investigators said he broke into another restaurant in the 3900 block of Bladensburg Road.


An astrophysicist banished from China for his democratic ideas

Dan Southerland, a former Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post, is the executive editor of congressionally funded Radio Free Asia. Fang Lizhi, the astrophysicist who inspired Chinese pro-democracy student protesters in the late 1980s, gives a fascinating and insightful account of his life in a memoir now published nearly four years after his death in exile. In “The Most Wanted Man in China,” Fang takes us from the 1940s, when he joined an underground Communist Party youth organization, through the years when he was expelled from the party and sent to the countryside to dig wells, labor in a coal mine and work on a railroad construction site. Fang’s experiences working in the countryside, his scientific approach to the pursuit of truth, and his growing knowledge of Western concepts of freedom and democracy left him disillusioned with Marxism and Maoism. They also left him outspoken in his criticism of the Communist system. I knew Fang when I was a reporter for The Washington Post based in Beijing from 1985 to 1990. Like many of my colleagues at the time, I became aware of Fang in 1986, when university students began calling for a more democratic system and an end to corruption and nepotism in China’s Communist Party. Fang was the vice president of a science and technology university in a remote city in southern China that most of us had never visited. The students were taking advantage of Communist Party chief Hu Yaobang’s declarations that modernization could not take place without democracy. Party elders ousted Hu in early 1987 for failing to crack down on the students, among other things. But little did I understand at that moment in 1986 the electrifying effect that Fang’s rhetoric was having on students at a number of Chinese universities, who like many before them considered themselves to be the conscience of the nation. In one of his boldest moves, Fang appealed directly in January 1989 to Deng Xiaoping, China’s supreme leader, to release the country’s political prisoners, something that few Chinese would have dared to do at the time. That June, Fang and his wife, physicist Li Shuxian, were accused of being “black hands” behind the student-led protests at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, which ended on June 4 when Chinese troops killed hundreds of demonstrators. As Fang’s account makes clear, he and Li had not played any direct role in the demonstrations. Nonetheless,


Five myths about placebos

bodies automatically mimic that response — a phenomenon known as conditioning. There’s also evidence that simply being cared for in a trial — even if patients know that a treatment is fake — eases anxiety and helps them feel that their conditions will improve. 3. Neurotic, suggestible people are more likely to respond to placebos. Doctors once took a very patronizing view of placebos. A 1954 article in the Lancet, for example, advocated placebos as a means to comfort “unintelligent or inadequate patients.” That belief — that placebo responders are pliable, suggestible souls who simply wish to “please the investigator” — persists today. Recent studies, however, suggest that anyone can respond to a placebo. Crucial factors include patients’ attitudes toward a particular treatment, their previous experiences (whether, for example, they’ve responded well to a particular drug) and the information they’re given about a treatment. Genes also play a role. About a quarter of the variation does seem to depend on personality. It’s not neurotic people who see benefits, though, but rather those who are optimistic, altruistic, resilient and straightforward. Scientists think this is because these personality types tend to be more engaged with their treatment and have more positive expectations for it. Neurotic and hostile people are least likely to respond. 4. You have to take a placebo to get a placebo effect. The placebo effect is commonly defined as what happens when a patient takes a placebo, or as the benefit experienced by someone in the placebo arm of a clinical trial. It’s true that placebos won’t shrink a tumor, cure an infection or replace insulin in someone with diabetes. But many “real” medical treatments — particularly those that modify symptoms like pain, fatigue, nausea or depression — rely on the placebo effect. Common opioid painkillers such as Tramadol are about a third less effective if we don’t know we’re taking them, for example. In a study that followed 459 migraine attacks, the placebo effect accounted for 60 percent of the benefit of the painkiller Maxalt. Meanwhile, in mild to moderate cases of depression, the placebo effect is thought to account for almost all of the benefits of the drugs patients take. 5. Drugs are always more effective than placebos. An oft-cited 2001 analysis compared patients given placebos with those given no treatment in 130 trials. The researchers found little evidence that the placebos had powerful clinical effects. “Outside


Suspect arrested in slaying of 2 men who were being helped by nonprofit

D.C. police arrested a suspect Friday in the fatal shooting of two men inside a Northeast Washington house used by a nonprofit group that helps people in urgent need of housing. Police did not describe a possible motive in the shooting that occurred shortly before 1 p.m. Thursday in the 500 block of 58th Street NE. The victims were identified as Clifton David Francis, 51, and David Aumon Watkins Jr., 45. Both men lived in the home and were clients of the Friendship Place organization, according to the group. The suspect was identified as David Joshua Bright, 29, of Northeast Washington. A police spokesman said he was arrested outside a barbershop in Maryland and faces two counts of first-degree murder while armed. A spokesman for Friendship Place said the privately owned home where the shooting occurred is one of hundreds in the organization’s District-wide network. “It’s a very sad situation,” said Jean-Michel Giraud, the nonprofit group’s president. “We are really sad for the families of the people involved.” Police have released scant information on the case, including where in the home the shooting occurred and whether the gunman forced his way inside. One victim was pronounced dead on the scene and the other shortly after arriving at a hospital. The deaths bring the number of D.C. homicides this year to 12. Friendship Place is a District-based nonprofit group that mostly works to help the homeless find both temporary and permanent shelter. It has a variety of programs and lists its motto as “Ending homelessness, rebuilding lives.” Both shooting victims were in the group’s rapid rehousing program called Home Now. The D.C.-funded pilot program is run out of the group’s walk-in Welcome Center on Wisconsin Avenue in Tenleytown. Juan Garcia, the spokesman for Friendship Place, declined to discuss specific cases but said the program helps a variety of people with immediate needs. They include people just getting out of prison, battered wives escaping abusive homes, people getting laid off from work or even those suffering unexpected health problems. Garcia said people are screened by need and reason for their troubles and put into pre-selected private homes whose owners work with the group. Each person is assigned a case worker. The nonprofit group helps with some expenses, such as first month’s rent and deposits, and, according to its website, is for people who “with just temporary assistance . . . can get


Invasive mosquito that calls the U.S. home is a known Zika carrier

its larval young in tiny pockets of water. In the jungle, that might be rain trapped in a bromeliad flower. In home gardens, that’s wheelbarrows, pots, watering cans, rain barrels, trash cans, birdbaths, clogged gutters, folds in tarpaulins, paddling pools, children’s toys, play sets, trash, soda cans and even bottle caps. When I walk through my neighborhood or community garden, the array of potential breeding sites is truly astonishing. In one garden, plastic sheeting laid to solarize weeds had become perfect basins for mosquito larvae, which can develop into adults in a week. “There’s isn’t a single mosquito control program in our nation that could have the resources to go through every single back yard,” Faraji said. He was a member of a Rutgers University team that spent five years studying the effectiveness of control strategies in urban Mercer and suburban Monmouth counties, in New Jersey, an area that includes Trenton. In some districts, volunteers would survey and remove tires and drain containers, apply larvicides to standing water, spray pesticides to knock down adult mosquitoes, and, most effectively, bring education programs to neighborhood and schools. In poorer, urban areas, residents were generally welcoming of the intervention. In the suburban districts, not so much, and about 30 percent of the homeowners wouldn’t participate, Faraji said. “There’s a lot of anti-government feeling out there,” he said. In many yards where residents were cooperative, they were happy to have the containers cleaned up, but the problem would come back. “Even after they were aware which containers would be producing mosquitoes, they wouldn’t clean up their yard,” he said. Spraying against adult populations is of little value if you don’t fix the sources of standing water, which form the engine of mosquito production. Applying insecticidal barrier sprays, a tactic of many pest control companies, won’t address the larvae issue and seems ecologically unsound. How many beneficial insects would you kill? Another Rutgers study showed that if you identified and wiped out mosquito hot spots early in the season, you could make a significant reduction in their annual populations. “It really does work,” said Dina Fonseca, a professor of entomology at Rutgers. “July 27 is our magic date in Trenton. The population gets so big after that date” that you can’t reel it back. The key is to get a whole community focused on cleaning up breeding sources, she said. “You have to engage the


Meet the start-up trying to keep hackers from hijacking your car

Since last year’s high-profile corporate data breaches, hundreds of start-ups have popped up with newfangled ways of spotting hackers within the electronic noise, usually by looking for virtual “threat signatures” pulled from expensive databases. But Vienna, Va.-based PFP Cybersecurity is trying something different: tracking tiny changes in power usage and radio waves emitted by hardware. When something out of the ordinary happens — such as an unexplained spike in power coming off a computer chip — PFP’s system raises a red flag. “Instead of dealing with hundreds of millions of [threat] signatures, you go back to the fundamentals — the laws of physics,” PFP chief executive Steven Chen said. “When a hacker moves electrons, we can see them.” The idea comes from an electronic spying technique used by intelligence agencies for decades. Side-channel attacks can suck information off a computer screen by picking up external radio waves, the subject of a recently declassified National Security Agency program called Tempest that started in the late 1970s. PFP’s founders, Jeff Reed and Carlos Aguayo Gonzalez, who were Virginia Tech researchers at the time, started toying with the idea in 2006, with funding help from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s advanced research lab. Chen, a serial entrepreneur with experience starting and selling companies, discovered the duo four years later and licensed the technology from Virginia Tech. “I was looking for a new thing and I didn’t want to do anything that was derivative,” he said. “This is just so untraditional.” PFP spent the next five years working on government research contracts and silently shoring up its intellectual property. Blu Venture Investors, a loose syndicate of investors of which Chen is a member, later gave PFP operating capital. “Our strategy was to build a patent portfolio,” Chen said, “and that put us in a good position where we don’t have to worry about being shut down by somebody.” That work is finally coming to fruition: One of several patents for PFP’s technology has been approved by the government. Today the company brings in a little less than $2 million in annual sales, and Chen has recruited big names from the Washington cybersecurity community to the company’s board of directors. New board members John Czupak and Todd Headley were executives at Sourcefire, which was acquired by Cisco for $2.7 billion in 2013. And new board member Dave Merkel was the chief technology


TV highlights: “Girls” and “Togetherness” return to HBO

Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet), Hannah (Lena Dunham), Marnie (Allison Williams) and Jessa (Jemima Kirke) in Sunday night’s Season 5 premiere of "Girls.” (Mark Schafer/HBO) (All times Eastern.) The funeral Mass for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia will air live from the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (C-SPAN at 11 a.m.). The documentary “Telescope” (Discovery at 9) follows international efforts to build NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Set to be deployed in October 2018, the telescope will offer an unprecedented look at the origins of the universe and planets outside our solar system. Sunday talk shows Also on Sunday, “Must-See TV: A Tribute to James Burrows” (NBC at 9 p.m.) salutes the veteran television sitcom director, who recently helmed his 1,000th episode. No, it’s not a “Friends” reunion, but (most) of that beloved show’s cast will be there, along with cast members from shows such as “Cheers,” “Taxi,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “Will and Grace.” Mrs. Patmore’s bed-and-breakfast attracts a scandal, and relationships get complicated for Mary and Edith in the penultimate episode of “Downton Abbey” (WETA and MPT at 9). The series finale airs March 6. RETURNING SHOW RETURNING SHOW — Bethonie Butler


What the detection of gravitational waves teaches us about patience

as if you were born deaf: You could see, but you had no comprehension of speech, of music, of the chirpings of birds. Then suddenly you could hear sounds. With the ability to detect gravitational waves, we may learn about the explosion of stars, the formation of black holes, the lumpiness of matter in the early universe. As with the first understanding of DNA, we cannot imagine the insights and revelations that may emerge. As I watched the Feb. 11 news conference broadcast from the California Institute of Technology, I was struck by the fact that the leaders of this scientific project are well into their senior years. Caltech’s Kip Thorne is in his mid-70s, and MIT’s Rainer Weiss is in his early 80s. (Ronald Drever, the third leader of the team, is 85 and suffers from dementia.) These guys are not hot-shot young mavericks like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg. They have been working on this project, called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), for 40 years. From Aristotle to Einstein, the world's greatest minds have long theorized about gravity. Here are the highlights, and where the study of gravity is headed next. Gerald Ford was in the White House when Weiss and Thorne had their first meeting in a D.C. hotel room to discuss the outrageous idea of measuring a movement 1,000 times smaller than the pit of an atom. Over the subsequent decades, thousands of pages of equations and design concepts were scribbled, hundreds of scientists were recruited, and novel equipment and prototypes were imagined, built and tested. Generations of graduate students have come and gone without seeing the fruits of their labors as the project received grant after grant from the National Science Foundation, which had every right to be skeptical of this wild dream. It was like building three Brooklyn Bridges, one after another, with only a hope and a prayer that the thing would hold up. The world at large, and the United States in particular, has developed an unfortunate need for instant gratification. We live not only in the age of information. We live in the Age of the Now. We grow impatient with printers that cannot churn out 10 pages per minute, or with computer screens that take 30 seconds to boot up. We avoid investing in companies that do not promise payoffs within a few years. Federal research and development, as


LIGO is really making waves by observing them

The collision of two black holes holes — a tremendously powerful event detected for the first time ever by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory — is seen in this still image from a computer simulation released in Washington on Feb. 11. (LIGO/Reuters) Sadly, the fanfare around the detection of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory [“Gravitational waves Einstein foresaw are detected,” front page, Feb. 12] included little tribute to Albert Michelson, who developed the interferometer in the 1880s. LIGO is essentially a souped-up version of Michelson’s device. Michelson and his colleague Edward Morley used their interferometer to detect a difference in the speed of light traveling in one direction relative to its speed traveling in a perpendicular direction. Whereas their device failed to prove the erroneous theory that light waves were propagated by a “luminiferous aether” that constituted the background fabric of the universe, LIGO successfully proved the existence of gravitational waves — in effect, waves in the aether itself. Nicholas Kingsland, Washington The Post Joan Chamberlain, Bethesda


Photographs taken on railroad tracks are not worth dying for

The Point of Rocks train station in Maryland, pictured on Feb. 6, was built by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1873 and sits at the point where the tracks from Baltimore and the District converge to go west. The B&O Railroad became part of CSX Transportation, which now uses the station for offices and maintenance crews. Point of Rocks MARC Train Service passenger platforms sit adjacent to the station. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post) The photograph of the historic B&O Railroad station in Point of Rocks, Md., was obviously intended to show this iconic structure in a pleasant light [“Reflecting on the rails,” Metro, Feb. 9]. However, the photo was apparently taken with the camera and, presumably, the photographer on the railroad tracks. Photography on railroad tracks is becoming increasingly popular and increasingly dangerous. With a train traveling at 70 mph, there is little time to react once someone on the tracks sees a train approaching. Recent technology has made trains quieter, so the idea that one would hear a train from a distance is incorrect, particularly in the case of a commuter train, the locomotive of which is sometimes “pushing” the passenger cars and can be some distance from the front of the train. Trains can’t stop in the short distance from which an engineer would see a pedestrian on the tracks. Rail lines are busier than ever. The CSX line is a main line of the railroad. During some parts of the day, there may be several trains an hour in each direction passing that point. One wouldn’t try to take a similar photo from the center lane of the Beltway. Those who work around railroads are taught to expect a train on any track from any direction at any time. Recent tragic deaths involving people taking photos on railroad tracks, including a teenager killed this past fall on the same CSX tracks in Montgomery County, illustrate the point all too well. Railroad tracks are also private property. People on the tracks are trespassing. The Post should not publish photos, however beautiful, with the photographer engaging in dangerous and illegal acts. Steve Lichtman, Mount Airy, Md.


Beer of the Week: Ocelot Talking Backwards Triple IPA

I don’t put much stock in Beer Advocate’s “Top New Beers” list as a way to rank brews. Because it’s based on ratings submitted by hard-core beer geeks, its 250 entries are comically slanted toward double IPAs and imperial stouts: Eight of the current top 10, and 53 of the top 100, fall into one of those categories. (That’s as of Friday afternoon; the list changes as new ratings are added.) Also, there are far too many special releases that will never find their way into bars or stores. But because it’s based on reader reviews, “Top New Beers” is a good field guide to what the beer community is buzzing about. At the moment, only two Washington-area beers have a place among the Tree Houses and Trilliums in the top 100: Talking Backwards, a triple IPA from Dulles’s Ocelot Brewing, at number 55, and Mind the Hop, a double IPA by Herndon’s Aslin Beer Company, at number 88. (Full disclosure: Talking Backwards was brewed with Meridian Pint beer director Jace Gonnerman, and Gonnerman and his bar host The Post’s annual Beer Madness competition.) Talking Backwards, released at the beginning of February, is a beautiful, impressive beast of a beer. It boasts a hefty 10.8 percent alcohol by volume, though that’s mostly imperceptible within the rich, easy-drinking body, which is balanced enough to avoid becoming a tidal wave of Mosaic, Citra and Simcoe hops. Instead, my lasting memories are of its grapefruit and orange aromas; flavors of pineapple and melon with some spice and a dry, lingering bitterness; and gratitude that Talking Backwards isn’t as sticky-sweet as many imperial IPAs. Like all Ocelot beers, Talking Backwards is limited and available only on draft. Meridian Pint tapped a keg Friday, and the beer is still pouring at several other locations (below). Keep your eyes open: ChurchKey tapped a keg in the middle of last week. — Fritz Hahn Ocelot Talking Backwards. ocelotbrewing.com. Available at Meridian Pint , Smoke and Barrel, Brookland Pint, ChurchKey and the Ocelot Brewing taproom in Dulles, Va. $7 per glass. More from Food: Beer Column


People accused of being Boko Haram are disappearing in northeast Nigeria

you that there have been a series of complaints about extrajudicial killings,” he said. He called for a federal investigation and said that “the military should always operate within the confines of the law.” The president promised to end military abuses last year, pledging an investigation into Amnesty International’s allegations that since 2011, the military has been responsible for the deaths of about 8,000 detainees who were shot, starved or tortured. That is more than a third of the estimated 20,000 people killed during the six-year-old insurgency. Human rights groups also accuse the self-defense fighters of extrajudicial killings but no one has collated figures. Buhari’s spokesman, Garba Shehu, referred requests for comment for this report to the military, but army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman did not respond. However, the army on Thursday announced the establishment of a special office to “investigate all cases of human rights complaints brought before it.” And it said it has established a special court-martial to try “all cases of indiscipline and related acts of misconduct, including human rights abuse.” Buhari told a delegation from the United States Institute of Peace this week that “mechanisms” have been put in place to ensure human rights are respected in the fight against terrorism. “We attach great importance to human rights,” he said. “If there are breaches, they will be investigated and dealt with.” There is little evidence of this in the villages, and one of nine senior commanders that Amnesty International accused of possible war crimes — Maj. Gen. Ahmadu Mohammed — was reinstated last month without any investigation, ending an early retirement prompted by a mutiny among his men. The many allegations of gross rights abuses have hampered the cooperation some allies, including the United States, can offer to Nigeria because of laws that prohibit arming and training troops that may be guilty of war crimes. Wugira, the lawyer, said he and others continue to work to uphold people’s rights. He said he got two young men released from illegal military detention in December, and he freed a group of 10 wrongly accused young men in November, after a soldier testified that they had fought against Boko Haram. But most disappearances go unchallenged, Wugira said, even though he offers his services free. “People will say, at the end of the day we will never get justice,” he said. “People are living in fear.” — Associated Press


Why do Metro train operators keep running red lights?

of the way. The consultants also cited a “systemic cause.” It “may have been prudent,” they wrote, for the Rail Operations Control Center to share more information. It was a “novel situation” to be “fleeting” a pair of trains toward the airport, and the operator could have used that information. ‘One is not acceptable’ Metro officials emphasize that they have a multilayered system to keep passengers safe, including technology designed to stop trains when humans fall short. And oversight officials say they have seen no examples of the automated technology failing in red-light incidents. But the systems don’t help in all situations. In this month’s incident near Smithsonian, the train was moving in the reverse direction to avoid a problem ahead. The operator misheard an instruction from his controller about which station to go to. When the operator repeated the mangled instruction, the controller didn’t catch the mistake, allowing the operator to head toward the wrong station. While headed there, he ran the red-light signal. The safety system does not take over in such circumstances, officials said. But the operator, traveling at 10 mph, was able to stop in time. Metro’s deputy general manager, Rob Troup, in an interview Feb. 11, hours before announcing his resignation, said behavioral concerns are universal. In recent years, Metro increased training and added placards in train cabs reminding operators that red means “STOP YOUR TRAIN.” In “every operating environment — whether it be aviation, freight railroads, transit railroads, class-one railroads, truck drivers, it doesn’t matter — the human-error element is the hardest thing that you deal with,” Troup said. Management, engineering, audits, rules and procedures all have a role in eliminating the incidents, he said. Citing “an exchange of information we have with other properties,” Troup said that Metro has “significantly” fewer red-light violations than its peers, although he declined to name the other systems. Still, he said, “it’s not acceptable to me. One is not acceptable to me.” The Federal Transit Administration said in a statement that such violations are not systematically reported to its transit database, making it “difficult to compare different rail transit agencies.” Still, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has a problem, the FTA said. “Red signal violations are a serious safety concern and WMATA’s trend line is going in the wrong direction. WMATA had more red signal overruns in 2015 than in either of the preceding two years,”


This week in Annapolis: Aid-in dying law; policing; choosing state ed leaders

Maryland State Superintendent of Schools Lillian Lowery announced her resignation December, setting off a dispute over how her successor should be chosen. ( Photo by Jeffrey MacMillan ) (Jeffrey MacMillan/JEFFREY MACMILLAN) Maryland’s 90-day legislative session hits the halfway mark this week with many contentious issues still unresolved. A few things to watch: Vote on school superintendent The state Senate is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a bill giving the legislative body power to confirm Maryland’s school superintendent, one of several attempts by Democrats to limit the executive branch’s powers. Lawmakers last week delayed a vote on the issue to ask the attorney general’s office if such a move would violate separation of powers. Right-to-die hearing in Senate An uphill battle awaits advocates for allowing terminally ill patients to legally end their lives, with a hearing on the proposed legislation before a Senate committee on Thursday. As Ovetta Wiggins reported this weekend, the four undecided Democrats on the panel are the subject of an intensive lobbying effort by both sides of the emotional issue. Police reform Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings Blake, whose city was roiled by riots following the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, is scheduled to testify Tuesday on legislation that would make changes to the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights. Lawmakers are also examining recommendations by a policing work group formed after the riots that recommended major changes in how officers are recruited and allegations of abuse are investigated. What you may have missed last week: HOGAN’S POLITICAL PROWESS: BLACK LAWMAKERS vs. HOGAN: TRANSPORTATION TUSSLE: PREVENTING ABUSE: BLIZZARD COSTS:


Thirteen bald eagles were found dead on a Maryland farm

This bald eagle was one of 13 found dead on a farm on Maryland's Eastern Shore. (Maryland Natural Resources Police) Thirteen bald eagles found dead near a farm on Maryland’s Eastern Shore may have been poisoned, authorities say, in the largest single die-off of bald eagles in the state in 30 years. Officials with the Maryland Natural Resources Police said they received a call around 2:30 p.m. Saturday from a man who said he was out looking for antlers that deer might have shed. The man came across what he initially thought was a dead turkey in a field on a farm in Caroline County. He discovered it was four dead bald eagles. When officers arrived, they found nine additional dead bald eagles in the field on Laurel Grove Road in Federalsburg. It was not immediately clear what had caused the birds to die, but there were “no obvious signs of trauma with these birds,” according to Candy Thomson, a natural resources police spokeswoman. “A working theory is poisoning,” Thomson said Monday night. She added that someone may have sprayed a new chemical on a field that adversely affected the birds. Or someone may have used poison to kill rodents; if the rodents died outdoors and the eagles consumed their carcasses, the birds could get sick too. Thirteen bald eagles were found dead on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and officials say the eagles may have been poisoned. “We just don’t know right now, which is why we’re asking the public if they heard anything, if they saw anything, we want to know about it,” Thomson said. A reward of $2,500 is being offered for information in the case. The discovery of 13 dead bald eagles was the largest single incident in decades for the state, officials said. At least three of the birds were mature, with the signature white heads and brown bodies. Two of the birds were close to being mature birds, officials said, and the rest were considered immature birds with no white feathers. “It’s been 30 years since we’ve seen anything like this involving this many dead bald eagles,” Thomson said. “Three mature eagles, the ones we all love that look like the national bird, are gone. “It’s sad that we have three eagles of mating ability that have been eliminated from our population.” Thomson said the birds were tagged and the scene was photographed. The natural resources


Can exercising too hard kill you?

(iStock) Most people who have spent a lot of time in the gym, on the trail or in the pool have heard of someone who keeled over dead, or near dead, while exercising. The early years of the running boom had the shocking example of Jim Fixx, who died while running at age 52 in 1984, seven years after the publication of his popular “The Complete Book of Running.” (An autopsy revealed severe coronary artery disease.) More recently, ultramarathoner Micah True, a hero of Christopher McDougall’s 2009 book, “Born to Run,” died on a run at age 58; at autopsy, his heart was grossly enlarged. And there’s the original marathoner, ancient Greece’s Pheidippides, who is said to have run 25 miles from Marathon to Athens, yelled “Nike!” (“Victory!”) and collapsed dead. Can exercise kill you? For an unlucky few, the answer is yes. Should that scare people away from such endurance sports as marathons, triathlons, bike races and open-water swims? Most experts would say, “Definitely not.” “I don’t think there is danger out there. There’s no study that shows that endurance athletes live shorter lives,” said Paul D. Thompson, chief of cardiology at Connecticut’s Hartford Hospital, who has studied the effects of extreme exercise. That said, there are some interesting asterisks. There’s little doubt that when a person exercises vigorously — hard enough to raise the pulse and respiratory rates — he or she has a transiently higher risk of sudden death than when sitting at rest. For joggers in Rhode Island from 1975 to 1980, it was one death for every 792,000 hours of exercise. In a chain of health clubs with 3 million members, it was one death for every 2.57 million workouts. A study of 10.9 million participants in half- and full marathons over a 10-year period found one cardiac arrest for every 200,000 participants. (About a quarter of the victims survived). While such events are impossible to predict, one can guard against them by . . . exercise. The “habitually sedentary” are 50 times as likely to die during vigorous exercise as are people who exercise that way more than five times a week. The overwhelming evidence, however, is that physical fitness brings longevity. A study of 15,000 former Olympians from nine countries found that they lived, on average, three years longer than the general population. And 2,600 elite Finnish athletes lived six years longer than


Ethiopia is facing a severe drought, and food aid may soon run out

television screens.” The suffering may be evident sooner than that, according to the World Food Program (WFP), one of the major providers of the food rations being handed outto patiently waiting people at centers across the country. The agency estimates that unless new money comes in by the end of February, those centers will stop providing the monthly ration by May, and at that point the real disaster will occur. “Because in May, if we run out of food, we start having a pretty immediate spike in severe malnutrition,” said John Aylieff, WFP country director, referring to the swollen bellies and listless children long associated with droughts. “We have a chance to stop this, we have a chance to keep Ethiopia on its development trajectory, but the window we have to work with is very small.” The government and aid agencies are frustrated that this drought could unravel the extensive development progress Ethiopia has made in the past decade. Malnutrition in children under 5 has dropped from 44 percent to 40 percent in five years, while cases of infant mortality have dropped from 500,000 to 200,000 a year. One of the places the sacks of WFP grain are being distributed is in Sitti Zone, an arid region in eastern Ethiopia inhabited by ethnic Somali herders, who were among the first affected as their herds died off when the rains failed last spring. “There was no rain, no pastures. The ground became like sand,” recalled Asha Abdelahi at the Aydora camp in the middle of a flat, scrub-filled desert, describing how her herd of 200 sheep and goats has been reduced to just five. “The animals started dying, so I carried my children here.” “Here” is a collection of small buildings, a children’s clinic and a school under a grove of acacia trees more than 60 miles from the nearest city. It is home to more than 8,000 people. An estimated 100,000 people have been displaced by the drought since the summer. For now, the children are filled with energy, badgering visiting reporters before getting shooed away by stick-wielding elders. But it is a precarious life, and should the trucks carrying the sacks of grain be interrupted, it could rapidly deteriorate. Read more Ethiopia confronts its worst ethnic violence in years Obama’s trip to Ethiopia alarms some human rights activists Climate change could devastate Africa. It’s already hurting this Kenyan town.