Meet the Saudi royal family’s rising star, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef

Clark College in Portland, Ore., in 1981 and speaks excellent English. Mohammed met with President Obama in the Oval Office on Dec. 12, discussing terrorism and regional issues. At the time, F. Gregory Gause III, a prominent international affairs professor at Texas A&M University, called Mohammed “America’s favorite Saudi official.” Gause cited the good cooperation between U.S. officials and the Saudi Interior Ministry. “What he has — and which American officials have grown to appreciate in particular — is that he’s quite pragmatic and not particularly ideological,” said a senior Obama administration official in Washington, who commented on the condition of anonymity to be able to speak more freely. “He certainly gives priority to the terrorist threat, and on all the practical ways of trying to deal with the problem,” the official added. “On other regional challenges, he is trying to work with us, and with an emphasis on countering the same terrorist threat we perceive. He has been a particularly constructive partner.” [Read: Abdullah’s death sets up complex succession process] Human rights activists had high hopes for Mohammed when he took over as interior minister, but those hopes were quickly crushed, said Adam Coogle, a Saudi-based Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch. “What’s very troubling about his record is that he is the principle architect of this massive onslaught against dissidents and human rights activists,” Coogle said. “He is the chief, number one hard-liner, and he is persecuting moderate, independent voices for reform.” Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz was popular with his subjects and kept a good relationship with the United States. [View: The Saudi royal family tree] Coogle said Mohammed’s father would often lock people up arbitrarily and without charges for a few days or weeks when he was interior minister, then let them go when he thought he had taught them a lesson. Mohammed made the system more professional, with actual charges and trials, but the outcome is that those whose only crime is to criticize the regime receive prison sentences of 10 or 15 years, he said. “So he’s actually worse than his father,” Coogle said. Steven Mufson in Washington contributed to this report. Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed a quote about Prince Mohammed bin Nayef to an unidentified former U.S. ambassador. The comment was by F. Gregory Gause III, a professor. This version has been corrected. Related stories on Saudi Arabia:


Deltek: Growth in data will drive emerging federal technology markets

At a Deltek conference a couple of years ago, former Defense Department chief information officer Teri Takai talked about her belief that sequestration would be a mechanism for federal innovation. In the days when year-over-year budget increases were the norm, agency leaders could simply add initiatives to their technology wish list when new demands arose. Now, sacrifices must be made to assure some level of budgetary support for future innovation. Contractors have a difficult job; they must split their attention between what agencies are buying now and what they will be buying in future. Looking across the federal IT space, a major catalyst for next generation IT is likely to be the proliferation of data. The exponential growth in data is a problem now, but imagine the amount of federal data that will be collected and shared five years from now. Agencies are likely to require more effective infrastructure to transport that data, and better tools to analyze it for operational and strategic decision-making. The “data problem” is likely to drive investment in three emerging technology areas over the next few years: Sensor Technologies related to the Internet of Things (IoT), machine-to-machine (M2M) and cyber physical solutions (CPS); software-defined infrastructure (SDI); and predictive analytics and machine learning. While these are not brand new technologies, they are positioned to become emerging markets within the federal IT space over the next few years. The IoT, M2M and CPS are all flavors of sensor technologies that enable communication among embedded sensor devices or between those devices and the physical environment, which contributes to growing data creation. SDI aims to give agencies a more efficient way to expand the bandwidth of networks and provide bigger communication “pipes” for transporting data. Predictive analytics will provide agencies with more robust tools to glean insight from their data, with the eventual potential for machine-based systems to “learn” or improve upon their response capabilities without human intervention. Compared to IoT, M2M, CPS and SDI, the federal predictive analytics market is both relatively mature and poised for growth. Analysis of predictive analytics solutions shows agency investment growing 70 percent from fiscal year 2013 to fiscal 2014. Ultimately, the adoption of these emerging technologies could depend not only on agencies’ budgets, policy and workforce expertise, but also on contractors’ willingness and capacity to educate them on the benefits and risks. And considering the inherent risk aversion within some federal agencies,


Review: ‘Age of Cryptocurrency,’ bitcoin and economy, by Paul Vigna and Michael Casey

the validity of each transaction.” Transactions between two individuals are validated only when a third party — a “miner” equipped with a powerful computer — performs a complicated mathematical puzzle. The first to solve the puzzle receives a bitcoin as a sort of commission and officially updates the universal ledger. The first commercial bitcoin transaction was completed in May 2010, when a Florida programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz offered 10,000 bitcoins to anybody who would pay cash to have a Papa John’s cheese pizza delivered to his house. A fellow enthusiast in England took him up on the offer. As more users adopted the currency, Nakamoto — who had announced that he’d issue only 21 million bitcoins over time — essentially disappeared. He (or possibly she?) last posted on the bitcoin forum in December 2010. “All we have is the specter of a reclusive genius, and a hint at the godhead of bitcoin,” Vigna and Casey write. Like the Internet, bitcoin is a networks-effect business — it becomes more powerful the more people connect to it. Vigna and Casey introduce us to the array of early adopters who have emerged from the woodwork to mine and buy bitcoin — and the wide variety of uses and hopes they have for it. We meet Austin and Beccy Craig, a young couple who tried to live for 90 days using only bitcoin. In Barbados, we meet Gabriel Abed, a.k.a. Mr. Bit, who sees the digital currency’s low transaction fees as a quantum leap for small Caribbean nations that currently maintain their own currencies. In Afghanistan, a nonprofit wants to use bitcoin to pay women, thus relieving them of culturally problematic visits to bank branches. The authors take us, too, to Silicon Valley, where young hackers and establishment venture capitalists such as Netscape founder Marc Andreesen are busily backing and building bitcoin apps, exchanges and businesses. It is impressive how a small community of enthusiasts has willed bitcoin from a theoretical concept into a cultural phenomenon. Bitcoin, improbably, has become a thing. But is it money? Here, the authors are appropriately skeptical — though perhaps not sufficiently so. “One familiar benchmark says that for a currency to become money it must function as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value,” they write. Bitcoin has definitely succeeded in becoming a medium of exchange for some — Microsoft accepts it


Elon Musk’s SpaceX settles lawsuit against Air Force

was awarded to the United Launch Alliance, should have been competitively bid. The announcement comes after months of acrimony between the parties. Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla and PayPal, had accused the Air Force of improperly awarding a sole-source contract and said it was taking too long to certify his company for the launches. SpaceX had hoped that it would be certified by the end of last year. But earlier this month, the Air Force said that was not likely to happen until the middle of this year. In an interview with Bloomberg Business Week, Musk accused military procurement officials of holding up the certification to curry favor with the ULA, the joint venture of defense contracting giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing. “Essentially we’re asking them to award a contract to a company where they are probably not going to get a job, against a company where their friends are,” he said. “So they’ve got to go against their friends, and their future retirement program. This is a difficult thing to expect.” Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James called his remarks “rather unfortunate.” And she said the service was working diligently to get SpaceX certified for the launches. She also appointed retired Gen. Larry D. Welch, a former chief of staff, to lead an independent review of the certification process, which would explore whether there are “ways that we can streamline, speed it up, do things a little bit differently.” In the joint statement, the parties said that “under the agreement, the Air Force will work collaboratively with SpaceX to complete the certification process in an efficient and expedient manner.” The multibillion-dollar contract is for 36 rockets to launch defense payloads, including satellites. By 2030, the Pentagon expects to spend almost $70 billion on the program. SpaceX, once considered a small but feisty startup, has recently scored some major victories in an industry long dominated by traditional players. It was the first commercial company to resupply the International Space Station. And it also won a major contract from NASA last year to ferry astronauts to the space station. It also has attracted attention for pushing the envelopes of space travel. And next week it plans once again to try to land a rocket booster on a floating barge. If successful that could be a significant step toward developing reusable rockets, which could vastly decrease the costs of space flight.


New challenges come with new leadership in Saudi Arabia

Saudi King Salman (C) prays during the funeral of the late Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh January 23, 2015. (Handout/Reuters) SAUDI KING Abdullah had a not-undeserved reputation as a relative moderate and modernizer of his hidebound and autocratic monarchy. He waged war against Islamic extremists, both at home and abroad; invested heavily in education, including for women; worked to preserve good relations with the United States and to check Iranian expansionism; and proposed a landmark plan for Arab peace with Israel. Yet it was telling that, as the 90-year-old king’s death was announced, Iranian-backed militants were overturning the government of Yemen, a close Saudi ally, while the kingdom faced global opprobrium for the brutal flogging of a liberal blogger who dared to criticize religious authorities. In the end, King Abdullah’s policies failed to prevent a significant decline in Saudi influence and to answer the challenge of accommodating the rising, Internet-bred generation of Arabs — including the 46 percent of Saudis who are 25 or younger. The king’s successor, Salman bin Abdul Aziz, was greeted with understandable skepticism, since he is 79 years old and reputed to be mentally infirm. But the new regime quickly sent a strong message of stability and continuity by naming 69-year-old Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz as crown prince and — more significantly — Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef, 55, as deputy crown prince. Prince Mohammed, the first grandson of the Saudi dynasty’s founder to be placed in the line of succession, is American-educated and has led the mostly successful campaign to suppress al-Qaeda inside Saudi Arabia. The Post’s David Ignatius reports that Prince Mohammed is the Saudi official in whom the United States has the most trust. That could prove important in navigating the increasingly difficult relationship between the governments, which are united in fighting al-Qaeda and the Islamic State but at odds about how to handle Iran’s nuclear program and its bid for hegemony in the Middle East. For now, it’s uncertain how quickly the next generation of Saudi leaders, including newly appointed defense minister Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 34, will assert themselves, and whether the succession scheme will be challenged. Some experts expect a collective leadership for the immediate future, which would probably impede significant policy changes. What seems clear is that the Saudi monarchy will have to accelerate the late king’s glacial pace of reform if it is to survive the early 21st


Existing-home sales pick up in December

MasterCard lifts ban on card use in Cuba MasterCard on Friday became the first major credit card company to say it will start handling U.S. card transactions in Cuba. Citing new guidance from the Treasury Department, MasterCard said it would begin processing swipes by U.S. card holders in Cuba beginning March 1. The announcement comes one month after President Obama said the United States would work to restore normal diplomatic relations for the first time in more than 50 years with the Communist-run island. The move affects Americans who travel to Cuba to visit relatives or for a handful of other authorized purposes, including educational visits. General tourism to Cuba is still prohibited. New regulations announced this month lifted a ban on U.S. banks and credit card companies from doing business in Cuba. A spokeswoman for American Express said the card provider is evaluating the new regulations released by Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Visa did not immediately respond to a request for comment. MasterCard said cardholders should contact their bank before visiting Cuba to make sure their card will function on the island. — Associated Press Also in Business ● UPS spent heavily to avoid 2013’s debacle over the holidays, when a crush of last-minute shipping and bad weather led millions of late deliveries. UPS succeeded in making customers happy, but the effort cost the company. UPS cut its outlook for the year and warned that fourth-quarter earnings would come in well below Wall Street expectations. Shares tumbled 10 percent, to $102.93, and UPS pulled down rival FedEx, whose shares slid 3 percent, to $176.01. ● Union membership in the United States is down slightly, accounting for just over 11 percent of the workforce last year, a fractional drop from the year before, the Labor Department reported. The department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said public-sector workers have the highest union membership rate at nearly 36 percent, more than five times higher than membership of private-sector workers at less than 7 percent. Earnings were higher for union members, at $970 a week vs. $763 a week for non-union members. ● Box’s shares soared 66 percent in its stock market debut. The start on the New York Stock Exchange came after Box sold 12.5 million shares for $14 apiece in a delayed intial public offering that raised $175 million. Box’s stock gained $9.23 to close at $23.23. ● General Electric


Police in the D.C. and Montgomery County investigate two homicides

Washington area police are investigating two homicides early Sunday, one in Northwest D.C., and the other in Montgomery County, authorities said. D.C. police called to the 2700 block of Georgia Avenue NW at about 3 a.m. found an adult male in his 40s with a gunshot wound, a police spokesman said. Paramedics called to the scene found no signs of life. Montgomery County Police, responding to a call from a passerby at about 12:35 a.m., found an adult male slumped in the drivers seat of a car in the parking lot of an apartment complex near Bel Pre Road in Aspen Hill. Capt. Paul Starks, a police spokesman. He was identified as Wei Wu, 46, of the 400 block of K Street NW in Washington. Police said anyone with information should call 301-279-8000. Callers may remain anonymous.


The D.C. area’s unprepared for an emergency, big or small

MORE THAN 13 years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in a world still menaced by terrorists and in a city at risk of attack as few others, how is it possible that basic radio communications used by the District’s first responders could fail in an emergency? How could the District’s transit system be unprepared to ventilate smoke from a subway tunnel? What other lapses in preparedness will the region’s residents discover, and will it take an emergency to discover them? Those questions arise from the Jan. 12 tragedy in which smoke from an electrical meltdown filled a six-car Yellow Line train in a tunnel near Metro’s L’Enfant Plaza station, leaving one woman dead and more than 80 passengers requiring hospitalization. Among the lessons of 9/11 was the peril posed by lack of coordination among the agencies that might be called upon to prevent and respond to an emergency. Yet now it appears that even in managing a tool as basic to emergency response as radio communications, the right and left hands of those entrusted to ensure safety in subway tunnels were strangers. According to Metro’s acting general manager, Jack Requa, the fire department had failed to inform Metro when it encrypted firefighters’ radios. The result, he said, was that the radios, unsynched to Metro’s tunnel relaying equipment, were all but useless, and firefighters below ground could not communicate with commanders above ground. District officials, for their part, dispute that explanation of the communications failure, saying the encryption issue is a canard and that the fault lies squarely with Metro, which had failed to fix problems of which it had been informed. As if the finger-pointing weren’t sufficiently groan-worthy, what seems clear is that all involved were already aware that the radios were not functioning, owing to an incident five days earlier, in which firefighters responding to a debris fire, also near L’Enfant Plaza, discovered something was amiss. It took a week for Metro and the fire department to unravel the problem, by which time the tunnel smoke disaster had taken place. The District’s homeland security agency, in a report released late Friday, put its finger on the real problem: namely, that the city remains at risk of “larger, more complicated incidents to occur in the future, where agency roles and responsibilities may be stressed in more challenging ways.” Translation: What will it take to ensure that Metro and


Consumer confidence is up. Just ask New England’s breweries.

the beer universe. That morning trek by the happy lady from New Jersey, and me, and all those other far-flung folks, was to get a beer called Heady Topper, which is considered by many to be the tastiest in the world. It’s sold only within a few miles of its brewery in Waterbury, Vt., and it sells out within minutes of arriving at any of the stores to which the brewery delivers, so the effort to get a four-pack has become a hilariously hapless tourist route of people following around delivery trucks and trying to coax store owners into estimating the exact moment the booty might arrive. Another fervently sought-after beer is brewed in Connecticut by a Vermont company called Lawson’s Finest Liquids. The distribution of that one — it’s called “Sip of Sunshine” — is talked about online like leaked Beyoncé tracks; people line up for hours ahead of time when a store announces it’s getting cases, and by the time you make it to the front of the line, there’s often a one-four-pack-per-person limit. People line up anyway. In the scrappy little city of Worcester, Mass., Wormtown Brewery started making its award-winning beers a few years ago in an old ice cream parlor attached to a downtown restaurant. Now it’s moving into a new facility that’s 10 times larger. IPA all around! And it’s not just beer. Everyone I know in western New England seems to be starting a small business, or growing their smaller one into a bigger one. With the help of a Small Business Association loan, the awesome old lakehouse in Ashfield, Mass., is becoming a significantly more awesome new lakehouse. New England’s top-tier freshwater fishing is becoming a less-well-kept secret now that we’re experiencing a minor explosion of world-class fishing guides and gear. Another friend has just started a magazine — yes, paper! — about the “new culture” of New England. It wasn’t hard to find either investors or advertisers. Did I mention it’s a magazine on paper? Perhaps the clearest sign of what’s going on is that the newest big new business in college-town Northampton is itself an incubator of new businesses. It’s shared, flexible office space for entrepreneurs who need a temporary base. Demand was so great that it outgrew the old space and moved closer to the new Amtrak station that just started serving the downtown’s first new commuter trains in


An unusual spike in storms is clouding Uranus

This image shows Uranus’s very faint rings, which were discovered in 1977. Extremely dark, they may be made of countless fragments of water ice containing radiation-altered organic material. (NASA/JPL/Calvin Hamilton/Kinetikon Pictures) Storms have clouded Uranus’s normally placid face. In the past year, the gas planet has played host to huge cloud systems so bright that even amateur astronomers can see them from Earth — and their cause is a mystery. “We have no idea. It’s very unexpected,” says Imke de Pater of the University of California at Berkeley. De Pater observed Uranus last August and was surprised to spot unusually bright features, the hallmark of clouds condensing in the planet’s upper atmosphere. “It was brighter than anything we had ever seen in Uranus’s atmosphere before,” she says. The planet’s weather generally picks up at its spring and autumn equinoxes every 42 years, when the sun shines on its equator. But the last equinox was seven years ago, so the recent spike in activity is difficult to explain. A look at the best photos of space. De Pater’s group spread the word, and amateurs around the globe trained telescopes on Uranus; some of them spotted a storm that de Pater had imaged at a different wavelength. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, de Pater and colleagues saw storms spanning a variety of altitudes, a phenomenon that may be linked to a vortex deep in Uranus’s atmosphere.


Russia’s new offensive in Ukraine should prompt stern sanctions from the West

A girl wrapped in the Ukrainian flag stands next to a woman holding a placard that reads "Stop Russian aggression" in Independence Square in Kiev, on January 25, 2015. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images) A MISSILE strike against the Ukrainian city of Mariupol on Saturday should have awakened Western leaders to the seriousness of Russia’s latest aggression in Ukraine. Some 30 civilians were killed and scores wounded in the attack, which came not long after the chief of the Russian puppet government in occupied Donetsk announced a plan to capture Mariupol as well as other territory. International monitors subsequently confirmed that the missiles were fired from ground held by Russian forces. The Obama administration and European Union leaders have been slow to react to Vladimir Putin’s new gambit, which came just as the union was debating proposals to reengage with Moscow and President Obama was touting what he portrayed in his State of the Union address as a successful response to Mr. Putin. Contrary to their wishful thinking, the Russian ruler has been neither deterred by the impending economic crash caused by Western sanctions and declining oil prices nor attracted by the prospect of a reconciliation with the West. His aim appears to be to expand the slice of Ukraine under his control in order to impose terms on the fragile democratic government, rather than implement the peace plan he agreed to in September. To that end he has dispatched thousands more troops and hundreds of military vehicles across the border since the beginning of the year. The Mariupol strike did, at least, get Western leaders talking about an offensive they had mostly ignored for a week. Speaking Sunday during his visit to New Delhi, Mr. Obama said the “aggression” had been conducted with “Russian backing, Russian equipment, Russian financing, Russian training and Russian troops,” and he promised to “look at all additional options that are available to us” to “ratchet up the pressure on Russia.” The European Union scheduled an emergency meeting of foreign ministers for Thursday. The crucial question is whether the West will now have the fortitude to respond to Mr. Putin with tangible measures of deterrence, rather than mere rhetoric. It won’t be easy: A number of European governments, including France, have been agitating to ease sanctions, while the White House insists it will act only in concert with Europe. The president of Latvia, which currently holds the


Obama pays condolences to family of late King Abdullah

walked up an embroidered red carpet to greet Obama. As the president and first lady walked down the stairs, a band began to play. Saudi Arabia is part of the coalition fighting Islamist militants who want to create an Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq. A son of Salman’s, Prince Khaled bin Salman, is a pilot who was photographed last year in the cockpit of his Tornado jet after conducting airstrikes against extremist positions in Syria. Saudi Arabia is grappling with the rise of Islamist extremism and terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the collapse of the government in neighboring Yemen. The Saudis are a crucial part of the international coalition battling the terrorist group that calls itself the Islamic State, and they have sent warplanes to attack the group in Iraq and Syria. White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said Obama made the decision to go to Riyadh principally “to mark this transition in leadership and to pay respects to the family and to the people of Saudi Arabia.” A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said Obama met with Salman for a little over an hour. The men discussed common efforts against terrorism, including the effort to counter the Islamic State, returning stability to Yemen, supporting partners in the region, and Iran. Salman didn’t comment on the ongoing Iranian nuclear negotiations but said he doesn’t want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. The issue of human rights came up, with Obama underscoring that people “need an outlet” and that civil society is “an important antidote to the extremism we’ve seen take root.” The men did not discuss specific cases, including that of blogger Raif Badawi, whose criticism of Saudi religious leaders caused him to be sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes. Saudi authorities carried out one round of flogging, but have postponed further lashings, citing health concerns. “I think it will certainly be the case that human rights will be on the agenda with Saudi Arabia going forward and we raise these types of individual cases with Saudi Arabia on a regular basis,” Rhodes said. Vice President Biden was originally scheduled to lead the U.S. delegation, but the White House changed the schedule last weekend so Obama could leave India earlier to be in Riyadh.


Washington-area obituaries of note

Obituaries of residents from the District, Maryland and Northern Virginia. Joseph W. Scopin, upholstery store co-owner Joseph W. Scopin, 90, co-owner of Scopin Brothers Upholstery in Bethesda, Md., died Jan. 1 at a hospice in Bethesda. The cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, said a son, Joseph Scopin Jr. Mr. Scopin, a Bethesda native and resident, succeeded his father in the management and operation of the business, originally named Joe Scopin Upholstery, in the early 1950s. He managed the corporation with his brother, Raymond Scopin Sr., until his brother’s death in 2001. He closed the business in 2006. Robert L. Ayres, World Bank official Robert L. Ayres, 73, a political economist and officer of the World Bank who coordinated an advisory group on policy priorities and directed a task force on reform of the state in Latin America and the Caribbean, died Dec. 23 at a hospice in Rockville, Md. The cause was complications from dementia, said a son, Ken Ayres. Dr. Ayres, a Bethesda resident, was born in Passaic, N.J. He taught at the University of California at Berkeley before moving to the Washington area in 1978. He was a fellow at the Overseas Development Council, an independent research organization, and author of a book on the evolution of poverty-oriented World Bank policies under the leadership of World Bank President Robert S. McNamara. Subsequently, Dr. Ayres joined the World Bank, where he served for nearly 20 years before retiring in 2002. A look at those who have died. Marian A. Bowie, advertising manager Marian A. Bowie, 78, a former advertising manager of what was The Washington Post’s Home section, died Jan. 10 at her home in Chevy Chase, Md. The cause was arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease and diabetes, said her husband, William Bowie. Mrs. Bowie was born Marian Carroll in Brooklyn, and she settled in the Washington area in 1965. She retired from The Post in 1993 after 17 years in the classified advertising department. In 1982, she received a publisher’s award from The Post. Olivia B. Huet, gardener Olivia B. Huet, 93, an Alexandria gardener and neighborhood “candy lady” who gave out candy to children, died Jan. 11 at her home in Alexandria. The cause was heart ailments, said a granddaughter, Olivia Bridges. Mrs. Huet was born Olivia Bantock in London and had lived in Alexandria for 52 years. She won a city of Alexandria “beautiful garden” award in


Looking for a restaurant in D.C.? This massive space plans to offer five in one

it in 2011, adding a top-of-the-line kitchen, concert stage and bar, among other features. During its peak, 918 F St. NW attracted 1,000 guests a day for functions that included cooking lessons, live music and painting classes. In January 2014, LivingSocial decided to close the facility after deeming it superfluous to the company’s core business. This 2012 file phot shows the 918 F Street NW property where EquityEats will open a collection of pop-up restaurants. LivingSocial previously leased the building. (Tracy A. Woodward/The Washington Post) LivingSocial has now agreed to sublease the basement and four floors of the building to Moonesinghe, the chief executive of District-based EquityEats, a crowdfunding platform that allows budding restaurateurs to raise money for new eateries. The sublease has not yet been approved by the landlord, Douglas Development. A representative did not respond to requests for comment. The EquityEats Web site, which launched in October, allows vetted culinary entrepreneurs to create profiles that explain their restaurant concept, projected revenue, and other information prospective funders need to know. Those who buy into the idea can invest between $500 and $200,000. To date, the four concepts on EquityEats have not hit their fundraising goals. Equity-based crowdfunding has been touted by entrepreneurs as a promising mechanism to raise money, but the practice has been hamstrung by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s delay in creating guidelines. The District’s Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking created its own equity-based crowdfunding rules last year that allow entrepreneurs to collect as much as $2 million from city residents — as long as regulators approve the fundraiser. The pop-up restaurants at the venue coming this spring — the name of which is not yet public — will primarily consist of eateries seeking to raise money on the EquityEats site, Moonesinghe said. Funders can, quite literally, get a taste of the business. Patrons will select a fixed-price meal and pay online in advance. They will then be given a ticket to present when they dine. Similar to a movie theater, diners can also walk up and purchase tickets on the spot. There will be no gratuity expected and no cash accepted, Moonesinghe said. The venue at 918 F St. NW promises to be the largest space of its kind in the city, though it is certainly not the first. Union Kitchen and Mess Hall offer full-service kitchens to budding food businesses at warehouses in Northeast.


Arrest in Lebanon lifts veil on life of Islamic State leader’s ex-wife, Saja al-Dulaimi

under the cover of aid for Syrian refugees.” Dulaimi could more easily move the money to militants because she is a woman, said Salem Zahran, a Lebanese analyst who is close to military officials. Conservative traditions make soldiers, most of them male, wary of searching women and girls at checkpoints and border crossings, he said. “Groups like al-Qaeda use women to exploit these traditions to their advantage, just like Saja did,” Zahran said. Lebanese security agencies discovered Dulaimi’s activities through a tip from a Western intelligence agency, said the military officials, who declined to identify the agency. The senior intelligence officer said DNA tests were carried out on Dulaimi and the young girl after they were detained in November. He added that the DNA samples of Baghdadi were obtained with assistance from an unspecified U.S. agency. A decade ago, Baghdadi was imprisoned in Iraq by U.S. forces. DNA samples may have been collected from detainees at the time. Last month, Lebanese Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk announced on local television that Dulaimi was a former wife of Baghdadi’s and that the girl was his daughter. Lebanese authorities have apprehended family members of other militants linked to organizations such as the Islamic State. They include the wife and children of an Islamic State-affiliated fighter named Anas Sharkas, known as Abu Ali al-Shishani, a nom de guerre. His family, all Syrians, were detained recently while living in a predominantly Christian village in northern Lebanon. His wife has not been charged with a crime, and it appears she was not involved in militant activities. The authorities may be holding the family as bargaining chips for the release of the Lebanese soldiers kidnapped in Arsal, allegedly with Shishani’s involvement. Last month, Shishani threatened to kidnap Lebanese women and children if authorities did not release his family. Baghdadi is not known to have issued any such threat after his daughter and ex-wife were detained. As for Dulaimi, she moved on to another relationship, Lebanese military officials said. After she arrived in Lebanon last year, she linked up with a man from a Palestinian refugee camp who had a history of militant activity, Lebanese military officials said. The man has been arrested on allegations of aiding Dulaimi in financing extremists, they said, adding that she is pregnant with his child. “What we are dealing with here are literally the children of al-Qaeda,” said a high-ranking army officer.


Jordan prepared to swap terrorist convict for pilot captured by Islamic State

organizational precursor to the Islamic State. Rishawi is the sister of a former close aide to Zarqawi, who was killed in Iraq in 2006. “Time and time again, the Islamic State has made clear its desire to see the release of Rishawi,” said Mohammed Shalbi, known as Abu Sayyef, head of an ultraconservative Jordanian Muslim movement. His group maintains ties to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. “This may be the one and only demand that can lead to Muath’s release,” he said. The Jordanian government has come under growing popular pressure to obtain the pilot’s safe return. The protests have been led by Kaseasbeh’s family, members of an influential tribe from the southern city of Karak. “To this date, we have not seen a real effort by any official to secure Muath’s safe return or to keep our sons out of harm’s way,” Joudat Kaseasbeh, the pilot’s brother, told The Washington Post. In Karak on Wednesday, about 200 of Kaseasbeh’s relatives rallied at the governor’s office, blocking roads with burning tires. In the capital, supporters of Kaseasbeh demonstrated in front of the prime minister’s office and the country’s royal court late Tuesday. Muath’s father, Safi Kaseasbeh, and other tribal leaders issued a statement late Tuesday calling for Jordan’s immediate withdrawal from the U.S.-led coalition. The hostage crisis has given birth to an antiwar movement calling for Amman to pull out of the coalition and detailing the growing number of civilians caught in the bombings. Judeh, the foreign minister, told CNN that his government had worked around the clock to free the pilot. Even if the swap takes place, the crisis has clearly weakened a key U.S. ally. Because of Jordan’s proximity to neighboring Iraq and Syria, its air bases have been used to launch strikes by coalition warplanes. Kaseasbeh, 26, was captured after his warplane crashed while participating in coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State. The militants claimed to have shot down his F-16, but the U.S. Central Command said the incident “was an aircraft crash and not the result of enemy action.” The pilot ejected from the plane and was seized by militants near the north-central Syrian city of Raqqa, an Islamic State stronghold. Kaseasbeh was the first known military member of the coalition to be captured by the Islamic State since the airstrikes began last summer. Booth reported from Jerusalem. William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.


Going Out Guide for Montgomery County, Jan. 29-Feb. 4, 2015

Wynton Marsalis presents a retooled version of his “Blues Symphony” Wednesday at Strathmore. (Courtesy of Jazz at Lincoln Center) THU 29 Alice McDermott “Rapture, Blister, Burn” Vadim Neselovskyi FRI 30 David London’s Festival of Magic “Petite Rouge: A Cajun Red Riding Hood” Ladysmith Black Mambazo “Artwork of Cohen, Glander and Arts Barn Faculty Members” 42nd annual faculty exhibition SAT 31 “Miss Nelson Is Missing” Two Beans Productions stages the children’s musical about a badly behaved class whose nice teacher is replaced by a nasty substitute. 11 a.m. Montgomery College, Robert E. Parilla Performing Arts Center, 51 Mannakee St., Rockville. 240-567-5301. www.montgomerycollege.edu/pac. $7, seniors $6, students and children $4. Dream Discs Baltimore Symphony Orchestra “Orson’s Shadow” Rick Whitehead Trio The Seldom Scene Stephen Boocks “Color and Chaos” “Coloring All the Angles” “White” SUN 01 “Inside Out” Sue Eisenfeld Terry Pellmar MON 02 Skating at the Square Gallery exhibit TUE 03 Daniel Getz WED 04 “Godspell” The musical based on the Gospel according to Matthew opens Wednesday at 8 p.m. Through March 1. Olney Theatre Center, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Rd., Olney. 301-924-3400. www.olneytheatre.org. $38-$75, seniors and children $33-$70, military $18-$55. “Blues Symphony” with the Wynton Marsalis Quintet “Coaxing the Elements” — Compiled by Carrie Donovan from staff reports


Montgomery County Animal Watch

These cases were received recently 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. Dog shot with rock salt: Puppy dies: Reduced fees for cat adoption: Cats and kittens will be available for adoption at the next open house of Friends of Montgomery County Animals at the following location. Call 301-977-4833 or visit www.fmca.org or www.facebook.com/fmcainfo. Germantown Adoptable cats at no-kill shelter: Gaithersburg Adopt or foster rescue dogs: Rockville — Compiled by Lisa M. Bolton


Diana Engel, lawyer and co-founder of Levine music school, dies at 77

years without pay. They answered the phones and drew up the schedules, found donors to support the school and persuaded musicians to join the faculty. Once, when someone donated a harpsichord to the school, Marlin and Ms. Engel carried it out of the house themselves. Levine Music, as it is now known, is an independent community school, unaffiliated with any local college, but it has partnerships with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Performing Arts Society and other organizations. It serves children and adults of every skill level and provides training in classical music, jazz, dance and other art forms. It has 150 faculty members and 3,700 students attending classes on four campuses in the District, Maryland and Virginia. “We’re more than delighted when one of our students becomes a professional performer,” Ms. Engel told Washingtonian magazine when she and the school’s other co-founders were named Washingtonians of the Year in 1996. “But we’re equally delighted to produce a community of music lovers and amateur musicians.” Diana Rosenberg was born Nov. 2, 1937, in New York City. Her parents were born in Eastern Europe, and her father became a pharmacist. After studying piano and violin in Juilliard’s pre-college program, Ms. Engel graduated in 1958 from Barnard College in New York. She taught in the Bronx, Baltimore and New Haven, Conn., before settling in the Shepherd Park neighborhood of Washington. She was a community activist and a member of groups promoting civil rights and gun control. A look at those who have died. She received a master’s degree in religious studies from American University in 1974 and was a longtime leader of Adas Israel Congregation in the District. She served on the board of the synagogue’s Anne Frank House, which provides housing and social support to people in Washington with chronic mental illness. After helping lead the Levine school for several years, Ms. Engel attended law school at Georgetown University, graduating in 1983. She practiced family law at Liotta, Dranitzke and Engel until her retirement in 2014. Her husband of 43 years, Milton Engel, a psychiatrist, died in 2002. Survivors include three sons, Andrew Engel of Bethesda, Md., Jonathan Engel of Millburn, N.J., and Samuel Engel of Brookline, Mass.; a brother; and seven grandchildren. Ms. Engel battled breast cancer for many years, but she continued to work and travel. Last year, she attended an intensive week-long program for pianists in Vermont.


D.C. community calendar, Jan. 29 to Feb. 5, 2015

Morning Music Club recital “To Tell the Truth: Working for Change” Secrets of the Washington Monument grounds Amharic for beginners Chamber music concert “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo” Memorials of the Mall by night An Evening with Company E Zap Mama and Antibalas “Selma” “Leviathan” Saturday, JAN. 24 Construction junction Family matinee Yoga for adults Yoga in Mount Pleasant Ten tips for tighter buns Library of Congress lecture “Mockingbird ” Carillon recital “Sleepy Hollow”: Ballet and American Art “King: Pilgrimage to the Mountaintop” book discussion Struggle for the Thirteenth Amendment Games galore NSO Prelude concert Kennedy Center jazz Sunday, FEB. 1 Babysitter meet and greet The D.C. Jewish Community Center’s Parenting Center and UrbanSitter invite you to meet several potential sitters at the same time and to learn the basics of infant and child CPR and first aid with a pediatric focus from American Heart Association instructor Jay Gruber; refreshments served. Infant and child CPR from 9:30 a.m.-noon. Pediatric first aid from 1-3:30 p.m. D.C. Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th St. NW. 202-777-3263 or miriams@washingtondcjcc.org. Both classes, $102; CPR, $62; first aid, $57. Get It “Write” study hall Palisades winter readathon Cathedral tour: Service and sacrifice STEAM team Sunday crafts Board games Shaw knitting and crocheting circle National Gallery of Art Chamber Players Scott Reese Broadway program Monday, FEB. 2 Income tax assistance U.S. Botanic Garden lunchtime tour Yoga at West End Homework help Mental health and HIV confidential group D.C. Schools lottery help Reader’s theatre Imani-Grace Cooper in homage to Ella Fitzgerald Cancer support group African American history and culture Black history month for children Monday night meditation Tuesday, FEB. 3 Yoga at noon Classical music Yoga at Georgetown Library Computer basics class Sketching workshop Explorer’s club Tech Tuesdays Teen Cafe Tutoring by KIPP Radford University Percussion Ensemble Ethics in the design world: When to say no Yoga in the evening One-hour lesson, all skill levels welcome and mats provided. Tuesdays at 6:30 p.m. Northwest One Library, 155 L St. NW. 202-939-5946. Free. Yoga Karine Deshayes, mezzo soprano Poetry readings Wednesday, FEB. 4 KanKouran West African Dance Company Gallery talk Jazz at lunchtime Thomas Jefferson on slavery Arts in the library Kick back History-book discussion Zumba at Southwest Classical music concert Classical organ recital Thursday, FEB. 5 “Lions of Industry, Mothers of Invention” Manga madness Teen comic book club Smithsonian newsflash — Compiled by Gerri Marmer TO SUBMIT AN EVENT


What’s the right temperature for the Earth?

technologically advanced country the planet has ever known, and it still caused dozens of deaths and more than $60 billion in damage. And so attention is turning to solar geoengineering, also known as solar radiation management. Although the concept of injecting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere has so far been tested only using computer simulations, there’s high confidence that it would work to cool the Earth because it would mimic the well-understood cooling effect of large volcanic eruptions. A gram of aerosol in the stratosphere, delivered perhaps by high-flying jets, could offset the warming effect of a ton of carbon dioxide, a factor of 1 million to 1. The tiny sulfate aerosols would stay up there, reflecting away a small amount of sunlight, for a year or two, so the material would need to be continually renewed for as long as the cooling effect was needed. A consistent and growing body of evidence indicates that this technology would be fast-acting — reducing global temperatures immediately after deployment — and relatively cheap, costing an average of $1 billion a year over the next half-century to cut the rate of warming in half. It wouldn’t eliminate the need to cut emissions, as it would only mask the symptoms of climate change. It would create an approximate and artificial balance between the warming effect of greenhouse gases trapping heat in the lower atmosphere and the cooling effect of aerosols reflecting away solar energy in the upper atmosphere. We don’t yet have a full understanding of what the side effects would be — whether this technique would result in ozone loss, for example, or changed weather patterns. But early evidence from climate modeling overwhelmingly indicates that it would make the planet more livable for people and ecosystems. The biggest concern should be the politics of it. In the political arena, solar geoengineering could be a hot mess. Because there’s no one “right” temperature, some nations would probably want more cooling, some less and others none at all. Russia and Canada, for example, might desire moderate warming — this would defrost some of their enormous swaths of frozen tundra, allowing farming or mineral extraction. On the other hand, tropical states such as Brazil and Indonesia, threatened with rising seas or crop losses caused by record temperatures, might prefer that temperatures be locked at today’s levels or even lowered. But since solar geoengineering would be cheap


Here's what a Hamas training camp for teens looks like

attendees. Qassam commanders allowed a Washington Post reporter to enter two camps, but they did not let the reporter stay more than 30 minutes or take photographs until Thursday’s more-scripted graduation. Military commanders for Hamas, which has been branded a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel, said the camps were designed to boost the Palestinian resistance and to give Gaza’s frustrated and unemployed youths a way to blow off steam — and shoot some guns. A Qassam officer who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Mujahed said the camps were not organized to recruit new cadres to the militia, although he conceded that candidates were chosen from the ranks. “We have more than enough recruits. Too many,” he said. “The camps are designed to answer the demands of the youth — to do something.” Critics of Hamas said the camps were designed to bolster the group’s popularity and distract residents from the grim conditions of Gaza: the unpaid salaries, the lack of reconstruction, the closures of the strip to trade and travel. According to initial estimates by Israeli and Palestinian groups, about 1,000 Gaza combatants may have died in the 50-day summer war between Hamas and Israel, which has the best-equipped army in the Middle East. Analysts estimate that al-Qassam, the largest and best-equipped of the half-dozen militias in Gaza, has 20,000 or 25,000 fighters in its ranks. The heavy losses of the summer do not appear to have dimmed the zeal of Gaza’s young men, who said they were ready to fight the Jewish state again. Hamas and Israel have fought three wars in the past six years, and the Hamas movement remains in control in the Gaza Strip. Ahmad Ismail, 16, dressed in a black Qassam T-shirt, said after his graduation: “I have received training on using weapons, especially rifles, and climbing on ropes, marching, shooting, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. We also had practical training and got to shoot the Kalashnikovs.” He said: “I wish I could join Qassam Brigades now. I want to fight Israel. I want to kick them out of our land. I am ready now.” Israeli military intelligence officers say the Hamas military wing will have no trouble recruiting more troops. “There is no shortage of manpower in Gaza,” said one Israeli officer selected to speak to the foreign news media. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because of Israeli


Thomas Jefferson High School enhances research capabilities

cells, stem cells, and bacteria and observe the interaction between cells and nanoparticles, which has medical delivery and other practical applications. In addition, students look at gene expression and telomere length (the ends of chromosomes) using the thermocycler. Students also use an environmental growth chamber to bioengineer algae and study plant pathogens. Under Lisa Wu, oceanography and geophysical systems lab director, students go out into the field and collect samples from the Chesapeake Bay to study for fossilized pollen and understand the history of vegetation in the area. Her lab includes a 3D sonar mapping system for coastal topography studies and a dark room to conduct bioluminescent work. Some of her students who worked with outside mentors over the summer no longer have to leave TJ’s campus for research since they now essentially have the same equipment. It has made logistics much easier for the students. TJ has the highest number of high school Intel and Siemens Science & Math Competition finalists represented in the nation. The high caliber of quality teaching, mentoring, and exposure to courses like Advanced Marine Biology, Neurobiology, Computational Physics, Optics, Bionanotechnology and Artificial Intelligence has made TJ one of the most unique high schools in the world. “I think what makes our school unique is that as a magnet, we are able to build something like this where you get a lot of students signing up for these types of classes,” said Glazer. A unique feature at TJ is the Jefferson Underclassmen Multidiscipline Projects (JUMP) lab, a versatile research space for students to design and work on science fair projects where they have access to a FTIR spectrophotometer to collect high-spectral resolution data, incubators, and a chilled centrifuge. The JUMP lab includes video conferencing equipment that allows students to interact with mentors using iPads. Glazer noted that TJ’s JUMP lab is a good example of a prototype STEM lab for other county high schools which lack the capacity to build 13 specialized labs. TJ’s goal is to get more students in Fairfax County interested in conducting nationally recognized projects. According to Glazer, starting this summer, the school will offer a research institute program that will be open to all students in the area. It is intended to share the college-level labs with students all over Northern Virginia, offering them the chance to do high-caliber research. TJ has become a global model of how to design


Meet your tour guide to Australia, the wombat

got a classic persona,” says Matt Richel, the executive director of the Victorian National Parks Association, a lobby group for nature reserves. “If you get in the way of the wombat and where it wants to go, it will walk over you.” French and Roz Holme, who founded the refuge I visited, are members of a small but highly motivated — some might say obsessed — community dedicated to protecting wombats and convincing other Australians that one of their more unusual creatures is worthy of human love — or perhaps cautious affection. One wombat ripped up Holme’s son Wade’s homework, an excuse his teacher didn’t believe, according to his parents. “Wombats trash your house,” says Roz’s husband, Kevin, a truck driver. “They chew everything: power cords, walls. They will tunnel through a Gyprock [drywall] wall in a night.” Ask any wombat activist for the best place to find wombats in the wild and they’ll likely give the same answer: dead, on the side of a road. Even though wombats can run as fast as 25 mph, a lack of natural predators and poor eyesight makes them highly vulnerable to cars. Baby wombats, which live in their mother’s pouch for up to a year, often starve to death attached to their dead parent. Road signs warning drivers to look out for camels, wombats and kangaroos on Eyre Highway, South Australia. (Auscape/UIG via Getty Images) One luckier wombat was Ringo, now a star exhibit at Wild Life Sydney Zoo, a private zoo in the city’s Darling Harbour tourist district. Ringo was found in his dead mother’s pouch by a passing motorist. He weighed less than two pounds. Six months later he was passed to the Sydney zoo by a regional zoo. Now 37 pounds, Ringo is highly popular among zoogoers, says Erin Costello, the keeper who raised him. The zoo, which specializes in native Australian animals (including a 16-foot-long saltwater crocodile and several deadly spiders), created a dedicated room for Ringo attached to the marsupial enclosure. The room, which has a glass wall so visitors can see in, is kept cool and dark. Ringo has access to the same area as several rock wallabies (which look like small kangaroos), kookaburras and quokkas (which look like even smaller kangaroos). Until recently he participated in regular performances. He would follow a small green ball on a stick through a crowd of tourists. Now that


With 4,000 in homeless shelters, D.C. on pace to eclipse record set last year

Volunteers and public employees combed streets, alleys and parks to tally those living rough in Washington this winter. As D.C. workers and volunteers fanned out for an annual count of the city’s homeless late Wednesday, they found dozens bundled up in familiar spots around Union Station, dozens more huddled under an overpass in Foggy Bottom and others never before recorded in bushes and doorways in sight of the U.S. Capitol. But city workers began the evening already knowing where most of the city’s homeless were: in shelters or rented motel rooms paid for by the District. The number of people in the emergency care of the District surpassed 4,000 this week — easily on track to eclipse last year’s record-breaking number of sheltered homeless. The number has grown by more than 1,500 over the past four weeks and continues to expand daily, often with 100 families or more seeking shelter when the temperature drops below freezing, advocates say. But most of these families are no closer to a long-term housing solution. Despite a sustained period of city revenue growth and more scrutiny than ever, the District government has failed over the past year to make serious progress on one of its most vexing and visible social challenges. Even as its new mayor, Democrat Muriel E. Bowser, promises a new course, the city is largely in a holding pattern, spending millions on emergency services and doing little that’s new to provide longer-term housing for those who need it. Once people are given shelter — on nights when the city issues a hypothermia alert — they are almost always guaranteed a room for the remainder of winter, fueling an ever-upward climb in program numbers and cost until spring arrives. Kristy Greenwalt, right, an expert on homeless housing policy with the city, shakes hands with Michael Jones, a man who has been homeless in the District for eight years, just after an interview and questionnaire had been completed. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post) More than 660 families are now on city shelter rolls with two full months of winter and historically on-and-off freezing weather remaining. At the current rate, the number of families in motels and shelters could top 900 by the end of March. Bowser won office last year promising a new approach to the city’s homeless problem. One of her most frequent applause lines on the campaign trail was to call


Taliban claims responsibility for attack on Americans at Kabul airport base

rogue Afghan soldiers or police particularly rose in the last years of the NATO combat mission, which formally ended in December. Assaults reached record levels in 2012, when there were 37 such attacks that killed 51 people, including 32 U.S. troops, according to the Pentagon. Since then, U.S. and coalition forces have tightened vetting procedures for Afghan security forces and required that all foreign troops be armed at all times. The efforts have reduced the number of insider attacks, but they nevertheless remain a major concer The killings were a reminder of the threats faced by the roughly 10,600 U.S. troops and thousands of American contractors who remain in Afghanistan, mostly to train and advise Afghan security forces. Such tasks require close interaction with Afghans, and it remains to be seen whether the attacks will have an adverse impact or restrict such relationships. “We can confirm that there was a shooting incident at North Kabul International Airport complex 29 January at approximately 6:40 p.m.,” Tribus said in an e-mailed statement. “Three coalition contractors were killed as was an Afghan local national. This incident is under investigation.” A U.S. defense official in Washington, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the nationalities of those killed, said the contractors were all Americans and that the fourth one had been wounded. In August, a gunman wearing an Afghan army uniform opened fire at a military training school near Kabul, killing U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene. He was the highest-ranking U.S. officer to be killed in 13 years of war in Afghanistan and the first general to be killed in the line of duty since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that prompted the United States to intervene militarily in Afghanistan, combining with Afghan resistance forces to topple the radical Islamist Taliban regime. Virtually everyone on the base at the Kabul airport is armed. But that did not stop U.S. military officials from worrying about insider attacks during a flag-lowering ceremony in early December that marked the official end of the coalition’s combat mission. Before the ceremony, the officials warned journalists that if any rockets landed, or if anyone started shooting, to run and take cover. With the U.S. military drawdown, civilian contractors have become more visible. Even though their numbers have also sharply decreased, thousands of contractors remain in Afghanistan, most of them based in Kabul.


Dazzling ‘discovery’ of gravitational waves from the Big Bang goes poof with new data

will have created ripples in the cosmic microwave background radiation. Many researchers have been racing to discover such waves, and last March, it looked as though BICEP2 had gotten there first. Soon after the announcement, other scientists raised doubts. They said the BICEP2 “signal” could have been caused by foreground dust within our galaxy. The BICEP2 team began a new analysis in tandem with scientists from the European Space Agency’s Planck spacecraft. The new conclusion, announced Friday: The entire “signal” could have been created by dust. The BICEP2 team’s detection of gravitational waves “is no longer robust,” said Jean-Loup Puget, a leader of the Planck team, in a statement jointly released by the European Space Agency and by the National Science Foundation. Clem Pryke, a physicist at the University of Minnesota who was part of the BICEP2 team and led the new analysis, offered an explanation of what went wrong last year. The team detected a signal in the sky. It compared that signal to existing models describing the amount of dust in that region of the galaxy. “Those models suggested that galactic dust emission would be relatively weak and much smaller than the signal we were seeing in our patch of sky,” Pryke said. But the Planck spacecraft has better, more comprehensive data on dust. That has forced a change in the interpretation of the BICEP2 signal, Pryke said. “It seems that a considerable part of the signal that we detected is due to dust emission. It’s not possible to say that all of the signal we detected is due to dust emission,” he said. “If there is a gravitational wave component, it’s less than about half the total signal.” And that doesn’t come close, he said, to meeting scientific standards for a discovery. New data from additional observations will be published in the coming months and could help clarify what BICEP2 saw in the sky. Pryke has been to the South Pole 10 times, spending more than a year of his life there. This result is a major disappointment. “So, look, we are humans, and obviously this is certainly not the result that we would like. On the other hand, we are scientists and it’s our job to do the best job we can with the available data,” he said. “If we are to be criticized, it should be for over-interpreting the signal, rather than for being wrong.”


Reasonable reforms to military retiree health benefits are needed

A 1 percentage-point reduction in military pension annual cost-of-living increases (savings: $6 billion over 10 years) made it into a comprehensive two-year House-Senate budget agreement last year. But retiree lobbies have vowed to undo it and have much support in both parties. Now comes the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission, a blue-ribbon panel established by Congress in 2013, with the latest package of proposed reforms. The panel has clearly done its homework, as demonstrated by the sheer mass of its 302-page report. In one respect, however, its work disappoints: The panel recommends no change to the so-called Tricare for Life program, essentially a free Medigap plan for military retirees age 65 and older that the CBO has repeatedly identified as a major cost center — and which is all but untouchable politically. It also recommended no change in the active-duty compensation system. More encouraging was the commission’s proposal to revamp the versions of Tricare that apply to the families of active-duty personnel and working-age retirees. The former group could enroll in private health insurance plans at government expense. The latter would see an increase in cost-sharing of 1 percent per year for the next 15 years. The changes would leave working-age retirees paying less for health care than civilian federal retirees but save $26.5 billion over the next half-decade, according to the commission. Additionally, it recommends offering new recruits a 401(k)-like retirement plan in combination with a slightly reduced defined-benefit pension plan for those who serve 20 years or more. Current rules offer everyone either a generous pension after 20 years or nothing, so the commission’s hybrid proposal is fairer and well designed to appeal to a new generation that expects portable, defined-contribution plans. Some object that this will give recruits less incentive to stay in the military as a career. But the vast majority leave before 20 years and get no pension, while others feel “locked in” by the need to qualify for one. Few public-policy issues are more fraught with emotion than that of rewarding long-serving military personnel appropriately, without shortchanging other public interests. To this hot topic, the commission has brought a welcome dose of cool reason. Read more about this topic: Tom Slear: I’m an Army veteran, and my benefits are too generous The Post’s View: Time to rein in Tricare Charles Lane: Tricare the untouchable The Post’s View: Wishful thinking on the defense budget


Lawyer: FBI terror suspect had relatives who were killed by al-Shabab

The Northern Virginia man added this week to the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list has relatives who were killed or captured by al-Shabab, and family members are skeptical that he would have tried to help the Somali group, an attorney for the man’s brother said Friday. The attorney, Gadeir Abbas, said Liban Mohamed’s family “rejects the allegations” against him and noted that the family has something of a fraught relationship with federal authorities. Abbas represents Mohamed’s brother, Gulet Mohamed, in a civil suit against U.S. officials that is not related to the criminal charge against Liban Mohamed. “Al-Shabab killed his uncle, imprisoned his cousins, inflicted trauma on their family extensively,” Abbas said. “And Gulet understands better than most that there’s good reason to be skeptical of the government’s allegations.” Abbas said that the Mohamed brothers came with their family to the United States many years ago to escape strife in Somalia and that many of them still live in Northern Virginia. Gulet Mohamed, now 23, has an information technology job, Abbas said. Federal authorities have said that Liban Mohamed, a naturalized U.S. citizen, worked as a cabdriver. Abbas said that Liban Mohamed disappeared without explanation in the summer of 2012 and that family members reached out to federal investigators through attorneys to see whether they might know his whereabouts. He said investigators claimed that they did not. He said, to his knowledge, the family has not had contact with Liban Mohamed since that summer. Liban Haji Mohamed (Courtesy of FBI) On Thursday, federal prosecutors in Virginia unsealed an arrest warrant, filed in February 2014, charging Liban Mohamed with providing material support and resources to a designated terrorist organization. At the same time, the FBI announced that it was offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction. FBI officials have not detailed why they believe Liban Mohamed is an al-Shabab supporter. They have said only that they think he helped recruit for the terrorist group and, in July 2012, left to join the fight in Somalia. They also have said they consider Liban Mohamed particularly dangerous because he has weapons training and knowledge of Washington infrastructure. The Mohamed family has long been on the FBI’s radar. In 2010, Gulet Mohamed, then 19, was detained and allegedly tortured by authorities in Kuwait, and then questioned by FBI agents, after his inclusion on a no-fly list kept him from


Skywatch: A brilliant Venus shines in February

a higher spot and Mars below. Jupiter Saturn Don’t forget the fleet Mercury in the morning. Later this week, it rises before the sun in the east-southeast about 6:15 a.m., and a week later this tiny, fast planet (zero magnitude) ascends the morning sky at 5:45 a.m. You’ll need a clear view of the southeastern horizon. By Feb. 20, this morning delight settles on rising about 5:35 a.m. through the end of February. (It remains visible in the heavens through March.) An old, waning, crescent moon approaches our lithe planetary friend Feb. 16 and slides by Feb. 17. While Groundhog Day (Monday) is thought to be a mid-winter gauge, winter’s official astronomical middle is Wednesday at 6:54 a.m., according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. Down-to-Earth events: ● Monday — Crisp nights convey great heavenly scenes: “Stars Tonight,” at the David M. Brown Planetarium, 1426 N. Quincy St., Arlington. 7:30 p.m. $3. friendsoftheplanetarium.org. ● Thursday — “Rosetta Results,” a talk by astronomer Dennis Bodewits at the University of Maryland Observatory, College Park. 8 p.m. See cosmic wonders through telescopes afterward, weather permitting. www.astro.umd.edu/openhouse. ● Feb. 8 — “The Future of U.S. Manned Spaceflight,” a talk by astronomer Greg Redfern, at the regular meeting of the Northern Virginia Astronomy Club, Room 163 at Research Hall, George Mason University. 7 p.m. novac.com. ● Feb. 14 — Our moon may be geologically active as John Keller of the Goddard Space Flight Center explains in “The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and our New View of the Moon.” At the National Capital Astronomers meeting, University of Maryland Observatory, College Park. 7:30 p.m. capitalastronomers.org. ● Feb. 20 — “ALMA and Big Data,” a talk about ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile, by astronomer Peter Teuben at the University of Maryland Observatory, College Park. 8 p.m. Viewing through telescopes afterward, weather permitting. www.astro.umd.edu/openhouse. ● Feb. 21 — “African Skies.” Astronomers explain creation myths and how slaves in the American South followed the “drinking gourd,” or the Big Dipper, to freedom in the North. At the Montgomery College planetarium, Takoma Park, 7 p.m. montgomerycollege.edu/Departments/planet/. ● Feb. 26 — “Fixing Hubble: Dare to Dream the Impossible and the Incredible Will Happen,” a lecture on the servicing missions to the Hubble Space Telescope, by Frank J. Cepollina of NASA. Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the Mall. 8 p.m. airandspace.si.edu. Friedlander may be reached at PostSkyWatch@yahoo.com.


Washington-area obituaries of note

Evaluation Center from 1963 to 1972 and a principal analyst at the Naval Sea System Command in Crystal City from 1972 to 1988. He represented Vienna on Fairfax County’s Human Rights Commission. He was a member of St. Mark Catholic Church in Vienna and the Knights of Columbus before moving to Front Royal, Va., in September. A look at those who have died. Theresa K. Robinson, teacher, meeting planner Theresa K. Robinson, 84, a substitute teacher in the Fairfax County public schools in the 1970s and a meeting planner with the American Society of Appraisers from 1988 to 1992, died Jan. 3 at a hospice in Leesburg. The cause was coronary artery disease, said a daughter, Wendy Fox. Mrs. Robinson, a resident of Reston, Va., was born Theresa Kosciusko in Worcester, Mass., and came to the Washington area in 1970. She had participated in at least 25 organized walks, or “volksmarches,” around the world. Ranjit de Silva, journalist Ranjit de Silva, 77, a journalist who wrote and edited stories for Reuters news agency from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, died Jan. 1 at a hospice in Arlington. The cause was stomach cancer, said a daughter, Indrani de Silva. Mr. de Silva, a resident of Montgomery Village, Md., was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. At Reuters, he covered the White House, Congress, the Watergate hearings, the Department of Justice and intelligence-related issues. In the late 1980s, he became a spokesman for the Commerce Department, and he retired in 2007 as public affairs director of the department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Deirdre K. Sugrue, police officer Deirdre K. Sugrue, 58, a retired Montgomery County police officer who had served as a patrol officer, training officer, hostage negotiator, bicycle officer and instructor at the police academy, died Jan. 11 at her home in Mount Airy, Md. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said a brother, Gregory Kenefick. Mrs. Sugrue was born in Takoma Park. She served as a Montgomery County police officer from 1979 to 2012. She received an award for administering CPR in 2011 to a spectator who had collapsed at the U.S. Open Golf Tournament at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda. She was a competitive runner who had participated in marathon races, including the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington. Stewart W. Miner, CIA officer Stewart W. Miner, 93, a CIA officer for more than 30 years, died Dec. 17


Metro rushes to install more ‘low-smoke’ power cables after L’Enfant Plaza incident

bridged by a bundle of four General Cable jumper cables, each 1 1/ 2 inches in diameter. Inside each cable’s quarter-inch of insulation, about 130 copper strands carried electricity across the gap. Most of the bundle was out of sight, encased in a square conduit running along the track bed. But some of the bundle was uncovered on each end, where the cables connected with the third rail. The NTSB report cited “severe electrical arcing damage” to the jumper cables. Arcing suggests that electricity was escaping from one or more of the cables. This would occur if the insulation was badly deteriorated or had been damaged and the copper strands, juiced with high-voltage current, were exposed. Without discussing specifics of the investigation, Bitar said that because of the rumble of passing trains, cables in bundles continually vibrate and rub against one another, causing insulation to wear out. Since the Jan. 12 incident, he said, Metro has been exploring ways to better secure each cable within a bundle to prevent rubbing. “We don’t know yet” why the arcing occurred, Bitar said. “We’re waiting to find out all kinds of results from the NTSB investigation. We just want to be proactive.” Environmental factors — including moisture, oil, grime and other corrosive substances in a subway tunnel — also can damage cable insulation. Even with the copper strands exposed, arcing won’t occur — meaning power won’t flow out of a cable — unless the strands come in contact with a material or substance that conducts electricity, such as metal or water. The tunnel walls where the Jan. 12 malfunction occurred are lined with metal. And there were puddles of water on the track bed. If an exposed electrical wire touches a conductive surface and current starts to flow, it can generate tremendous heat, especially over a prolonged period, and possibly ignite a conflagration. Or if there isn’t much combustible material in the area to fuel a big fire, the electrical heat can cause melting or a smoldering fire, still with plenty of smoke. No one has publicly reported seeing flames in the tunnel, and the NTSB’s preliminary report did not mention a fire. That suggests that the smoke was not caused by a large blaze. In terms of gaseous emissions, a prolonged smoldering fire can be more dangerous than major flames, said Stanislav I. Stoliarov, an assistant professor in the University of Maryland’s


Israeli medical marijuana creates buzz but no high— will it go global?

physician, said he is conducting research in Israel after seeing U.S. drug laws block clinical studies, even into promising applications for illnesses, such as ALS, that conventional medicine cannot help. This year, he will lead studies in Israel on pain, skin disorders, seizure disorders, several types of cancers, migraine headaches and post-traumatic stress disorder. “I went to Israel because I was frustrated,” he said. “Israel is the one place in the world that combines the scientific expertise, world-class universities and scientists. It’s so exciting.” Israel first approved medical cannabis for a patient in 1992, for severe asthma. In 2007, the Health Ministry implemented a comprehensive medical cannabis program, and now 20,000 patients are permitted to use cannabis — a number expected to rise to 30,000 by 2016. Israeli doctors use it to treat ailments including Crohn’s disease, basal cell carcinoma, psoriasis, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis and PTSD in Israeli military veterans, and the pain of cancer patients and the elderly. Its doses are available in cookies, caramels, chocolates, oils, and leaf form for smoking or vaporizing. One of Canada’s leading producers, MedReleaf, is tapping Israel’s expertise, in a partnership it signed in May 2014 with Tikun Olam, whose name means “Healing the World” in Hebrew. MedReleaf now produces strains including the non-intoxicating varieties, with high concentrations of cannabidiol, or CBD — a powerful anti-inflammatory with no narcotic effect — and low tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which creates the “high” typically associated with marijuana. “Tikun Olam shares their 10 years of data, so we can say, ‘Our Israeli partner has treated 817 patients with Crohn’s or colitis or Alzheimer’s, and they know that this variety, with this dosage, is the optimum,’ ” said Neil J. Closer, the chief executive of MedReleaf. ‘Promising’ results For the past year, Dor has collected clinical data from Israeli doctors, hospitals and universities to develop national cannabis treatment guidelines, which he said he has shared with the Jamaican health ministry, among other interested parties. One contributor was Timna Naftali, a gastroenterologist at Meir Hospital, who said she was skeptical in 2011 when she prescribed cannabis to 30 patients with Crohn’s disease. But “the results were dramatic,” she said. “They didn’t need steroids or surgery or hospitalization.” Neurologists who have been monitoring 67 children with intractable epilepsy at four medical centers reported “promising” results last week at an epilepsy conference in Tel Aviv. Avigael Ka’atabi said her 15-year-old epileptic


Lawyers seek to exonerate ex-Army officer who ordered soliders to shoot Afghan men

Every morning, Clint Lorance wakes up in his Army-issued prison cell at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and looks at a photo of two dead Afghan men. To this day, the former first lieutenant does not know their names, but he knows he is responsible for their deaths. In August 2013, Lorance was sentenced to 20 years for murder after he ordered soldiers in his unit to kill the pair as they sped toward their platoon in Kandahar province on a motorbike and ignored commands to stop. Lorance never fired a shot, but the men would turn out to be unarmed. Now lawyers and others working on Lorance’s behalf are seeking to exonerate the 30-year-old — only the second Army officer charged with murder in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — claiming that he did not receive a fair trial. At Lorance’s court-martial, the majority of the men in his platoon testified against him, including the two soldiers who fired their weapons during the brief engagement in July 2012. On the stand, the soldiers said that the Afghans posed no threat and that there was no reason to shoot them. Maj. Gen. Richard D. Clarke, who as commanding officer of the 82nd Airborne Division had the authority to oversee Lorance’s case, recently upheld the conviction. Clint Lorance, a former Army lieutenant who was sentenced to 20 years for murder in 2013 in the deaths of two Afghan men. (Courtesy of Lorance family) (Courtesy of Lorance family/Courtesy of Lorance family) But John Maher, Lorance’s attorney, said the jury was never informed that those soldiers were offered immunity from murder charges to testify against his client — a disclosure that Maher says could have influenced a jury. Maher, a retired Army judge advocate general officer, also said Lorance acted within the law that summer day. “This is not a case where a depraved soldier intended to kill indiscriminately,” Maher wrote in a filing to the 82nd Airborne leadership. “This is the case of a patriotic and loyal infantry officer who zealously sought to protect his paratroopers.” The case now sits with the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals at Fort Belvoir, Va. In an interview, Maher said he is filing a motion to the court to have Clarke review the case a second time. In the meantime, he and Lorance’s supporters have built support for his case. An online White House petition they


Brewers do the wild thing and let yeasts have their way with beer

result is a highly effervescent beverage called a gueuze. They might age those beers over fruit to create variants, such as a kriek (a cherry lambic) or a framboise (raspberry lambic). At best, lambics have a dry, sparkling, champagnelike quality. However, different batches and different barrels will yield different results; the only way to achieve a consistent house character is by blending the contents of many casks. That’s the plan of Bluejacket’s beer director, Greg Engert. A second batch from the coolship yielded six more barrels, for a total of 10 so far. Engert said he would like to see that number eventually grow into the hundreds. But he acknowledges that he’ll have to find a place offsite to store that many barrels. Not quite two months in the wood, the beer was progressing nicely. “It’s in its acid phase,” Engert said in mid-January, as he sipped a sample of the tart, hazy liquid freshly drawn from the barrel. “There are also some cool tannins coming through.” An earthy note in the aroma could be the first harbinger of Brett. Other Mid-Atlantic breweries are experimenting with lambic-style beers. Down in Virginia Beach, Justin MacDonald, president and head brewer of Beach Brewing, built an addition to his plant he calls the Cool-Shack, where he’s dabbling in spontaneous fermentation. Flying Dog’s planned satellite brewery, a farmhouse-style operation outside Leesburg, will include a coolship for brewing wild ales. At Lost Rhino, Akerboom exposed a beaker of wort to the outside air, then used it to spike a barrel of now-fermenting ale. Will these experiments yield anything drinkable? Allagash Brewing in Portland, Maine, has been brewing spontaneously fermented beers since 2007. Resurgam is a gueuze-style blend with lively carbonation, piercing acidity and a dry, peppery finish. Allagash ages the Resurgam on cherries to produce a beer called Cerise and on raspberries to make an ale called Red. All are available in corked bottles — but only at the brewery. Allagash brew master Jason Perkins cautions that brewing lambic-style brews (he prefers the name “coolship beers”) is a long-term project and many a barrel probably will be dumped along the way. “It was a big leap of faith for us,” he says. Kitsock is the editor of Mid-Atlantic Brewing News. More from Food: Modern porters get flavor from unusual places Pabst bringing back Ballantine as a craft brew Saisons: Made for drinking, not getting drunk


Microsoft’s commercial cloud revenue doubles

Software sales Microsoft cloud revenue doubles Software giant Microsoft reported last week that its commercial cloud revenue had reached an annualized run rate of $5.5 billion for the quarter ended Dec. 31 — a 114 percent jump from the same quarter a year earlier. Microsoft’s commercial revenue grew 5 percent overall to $13.27 billion for the quarter. Total revenue was $26.5 billion. Growth in commercial cloud services was driven by sales of Office 365, the Azure cloud computing platform and Microsoft’s customer relationship management software, Dynamics CRM Online. Almost at the end of his first year as chief executive, Satya Nadella noted that the company is “extending [its] cloud leadership.” Nadella was previously executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group. — Mohana Ravindranath Cloud Computing IBM opens first center in Mexico IBM is continuing its $1.2 billion effort to open cloud facilities in new regions with a center near Mexico City. The facility is intended to keep sensitive data closer to Mexican and other Latin American customers, the company says. It also reflects the company’s commitment to Latin American markets, which are predicted to see a 25 percent expansion in cloud computing over the next three years, according to IBM. The center can house thousands of physical servers, according to IBM. In the past year, IBM has opened cloud centers in locations including Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Paris, Melbourne, Toronto and London. The new facilities use technology from SoftLayer, a Dallas cloud computing firm that IBM acquired in 2013. — Mohana Ravindranath


Farm-based breweries are on tap in Loudoun

Beer lovers can look forward to the arrival of farm-based breweries across Loudoun County this spring, after the Board of Supervisors’ recent passage of an ordinance that allows brewery businesses and tasting rooms on land where ingredients for beer are grown. Last year, state lawmakers passed legislation that relaxed regulations for farm-based breweries across Virginia. The Board of Supervisors’ approval of the farm brewery ordinance at a Jan. 21 meeting made Loudoun the first county in Virginia to incorporate the new state law into local legislation. Jay DeCianno, a farmer who is preparing to open a brewery now that the ordinance has passed, said in a statement that Loudoun’s aspiring brewers were “thrilled” that the board had authorized farm breweries. “This demonstrates their support for entrepreneurs and small business owners like us,” DeCianno said. “We depend on this for our success.” Virginia is home to 93 craft breweries, according to the Virginia Craft Brewers Guild, eight of which are operating in Loudoun. The Brewers Association estimates that these businesses have a statewide economic value of more than $650 million. The ordinance will allow farmers outside Loudoun’s incorporated towns to begin farm brewery operations, county officials said in a statement. The county’s department of economic development is working with six new businesses that plan to begin production this year, officials said. “We have everything in Loudoun to make farm breweries an incredibly successful industry,” Loudoun Economic Development Director Buddy Rizer said in the statement. Loudoun’s increasingly popular craft brewery industry will also be fueled by the addition of the largest hops yard in the state — the first commercial-scale hops processing facility located in the mid-Atlantic region — at Black Hops Farm in Lucketts. The project, which will convert 15 acres of former pasture land into a sprawling hops yard, was announced in November by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D.) Within days of the governor’s announcement, the popular, Frederick, Md.-based Flying Dog brewery moved to set up shop in Loudoun, county officials said. “Every day we get calls from people who want to start breweries or grow hops or specialty grains,” Rizer said in the statement. Kellie Boles, the county’s agricultural business development officer, anticipates that the local brewery industry will follow the path of the county’s explosive winery scene. “Our winery industry has doubled in the last decade, and there’s a pent-up demand for farm breweries,” Boles said in the


Baltimore Symphony Orchestra finds its Mahler groove

Gustav Mahler may not have written any operas, but his longer symphonies approach, perhaps even surpass, opera in their metaphysical scope. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s excellent performance of the composer’s Third Symphony, heard Saturday night at the Music Center at Strathmore, certainly had the feel of epic drama: funereal grief, ecstatic awakening, hushed birth of self-awareness and, finally, consummation. Best of all, music director Marin Alsop has found her Mahler groove after her rocky first efforts on an unofficial symphony cycle with the BSO a few years ago. Both this performance and the season opener of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony in September were excellent. The instrumental contributions here were top-notch across an expansive 100 minutes of music, with the trombone solo both prophetic in volume and, where needed, suave and polished. The off-stage post horn solo, the moment where the piece turns from nervous energy to meditative exaltation, was spell-binding, right on pitch and clean up to the highest notes. One could almost sense the assembled listeners collectively holding their breath. Alsop also chose wisely in mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, who pleaded mournfully, in Nietzsche’s words heard at midnight by Zarathustra, but also had the clarion power to soar above the massive choral and instrumental forces in the fifth movement. The women of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society and the Peabody Children’s Chorus delivered their brief but crucial parts with grace and energy. The only disappointment was in the melting “Langsam” section of the sixth movement. The string section was lush in sound, but for some reason Alsop’s previously free sense of rubato stalled, making this section beautiful but too plain. Happily, her marshaling of the concluding climaxes erased the memory of that deficit, down to the pounding thuds of the doubled timpani. Downey is freelance writer.


Private moments helped shape Obama’s education about war

plan to end the U.S. involvement in the Afghan war. The mortuary affairs troops strode out to the air base’s tarmac, where the body of Sgt. Nicholas Dickhut was waiting for them. They documented his wounds and searched his body for pictures, letters, a pocket Bible or other talismans that could be sent home to his family. They were still working on him when Obama, speaking to a single camera in an empty airplane hangar, delivered his address. “As president, nothing is more wrenching than signing a letter to a family of the fallen, or looking into the eyes of a child who will grow up without a mother or father,” Obama said. “I will not keep Americans in harm’s way a single day longer than is absolutely required for our national security. But we must finish the job we started in Afghanistan and end this war responsibly.” The troops finished their work about 8:30 a.m. By then, Obama was already on his way back to Washington, having left for security reasons before the sun rose. Three weeks later, a letter from the president arrived at the Rochester, Minn., home of the dead sergeant’s mother. “In life your son was a shining example of all that is best in our land,” Obama wrote. “In rest, may he find the peace we all seek.” From Oslo to West Point Before he had much firsthand experience with the costs of war or the burdens of being commander in chief, Obama delivered a speech about both. In December 2009, just days after he issued orders sending 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan, Obama flew to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. To prepare for his Afghanistan decision and Nobel address, Obama visited Dover Air Force Base to witness the return of 18 Americans killed in Afghanistan. He met with families of deceased troops and asked his speechwriters to pull together a packet of writings about war by people he admired: King, Gandhi, Churchill, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Reinhold Niebuhr. “I’m responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land,” Obama said in Oslo. “Some will kill, and some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the costs of armed conflict — filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace.” That was war as the president imagined it to be.


a shining example of all that is best in our land,” Obama wrote. “In rest, may he find the peace we all seek.” From Oslo to West Point Before he had much firsthand experience with the costs of war or the burdens of being commander in chief, Obama delivered a speech about both. In December 2009, just days after he issued orders sending 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan, Obama flew to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. To prepare for his Afghanistan decision and Nobel address, Obama visited Dover Air Force Base to witness the return of 18 Americans killed in Afghanistan. He met with families of deceased troops and asked his speechwriters to pull together a packet of writings about war by people he admired: King, Gandhi, Churchill, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Reinhold Niebuhr. “I’m responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land,” Obama said in Oslo. “Some will kill, and some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the costs of armed conflict — filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace.” That was war as the president imagined it to be. His real-world education in the human consequences of his decisions would take place over the next several years, and, for the most part, he would reveal little of what he was learning. Obama rarely displays strong emotions, even during discussions of war. The trait has bothered some of his most senior advisers, especially those closest to the military. “One quality I missed in Obama was passion, especially when it came to the two wars,” former defense secretary Robert M. Gates wrote in his autobiography. Bush would sometimes tear up when meeting with the families of deceased soldiers. “I worked for Obama longer than Bush, and I never saw his eyes well up,” Gates wrote. Obama’s reserve left his top advisers guessing how he was handling the growing American losses in Afghanistan, which more than tripled from 155 deaths in 2008 to nearly 500 during 2010. Those who backed his troop surge recognized that the president had made a tough decision on Afghanistan that ran counter to his instincts and the advice of his most trusted civilian advisers. “Half his staff and the vice president were telling him that he had made a mistake,” said a former senior administration official, who,


Obama budget would fund public works program with tax on overseas profits

to trim my sails and not tell the American people what we should be doing, pretending somehow that we don’t need better roads or more affordable college.” The president will also propose approximately $1.8 trillion in deficit-reducing measures over a 10-year period. Those measures, which resemble past proposals, would include about $160 billion in higher income and Social Security taxes resulting from immigration reform, $400 billion in health care savings. and $640 billion from taxes raised mostly by eliminating deductions without raising rates. Additional savings would come from lower interest costs on the federal debt. One item that will still be in the printed version of the budget: a tax on withdrawals from 529 accounts designed to promote parents’ savings for college tuition. After that proposal was recently greeted with a backlash, the administration retreated from the idea, but it was too late to change the printed budget. Obama administration officials have been trying to link various tax and spending changes to build support among members of Congress who might favor only one part of those pairings. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew recently said that the windfall resulting from taxing foreign profits accumulated by corporations should go to funding the infrastructure program. The administration also paired increases in capital gains taxes and a new fee on the liabilities of big banks and insurance companies with proposals to expand middle-class tax credits and free community-college education. And the administration has also said that it wants to break through spending caps for discretionary spending by equal amounts for military and non-military programs. But making those trade-offs will prove more difficult in Congress than on paper. For example, the tax on foreign profits, regardless of whether they are brought back to the United States, is likely to face strong headwinds in Congress. Obama’s plan would impose an immediate tax of up to $280 billion on U.S.-based multinationals at a time when many lawmakers are worried about pushing companies to move their headquarters overseas. The 14 percent tax would “transition” to a long-term 19 percent rate, senior administration officials said. As previously announced, the budget will include an increase in the top capital gains tax rate to 28 percent, which would fall primarily on the richest 1 percent of Americans. “What I think the president is trying to do here is to, again, exploit envy economics. This top-down redistribution doesn’t work,” Ryan said on NBC’s


Unearthed: A rallying cry for a crop program that could change everything

protected against both losses and price drops. That’s critical: designing revenue policies that work for farmers is difficult, and we have to make sure the safety net is effective before we take away other protection. Walton brings up another important point about subsidizing just a few crops: It’s a policy that doesn’t encourage crop diversity, which is often cited as important to both human and environmental health. The federal crop insurance program, though, actually offers a discount for crop diversity, on the theory that a multi-crop farm is less susceptible to devastating loss. One crop might fail, but another might thrive. What that doesn’t do is actively subsidize those foods that we’re supposed to eat more of — fruits and vegetables, primarily — but the system we have now illustrates why it might be better not to. Who knew, 50 years ago, that corn would play out as animal feed, biofuel and high-fructose corn syrup? If we start shaping our policy to encourage a different set of crops, how will that play out 50 years from now? What diabolically delicious, calorie-dense, nutrition-free foods will future food scientists engineer from an oversupply of kale? Weaving crop-specific incentives into the fabric of our agriculture is something that perhaps we’ve learned not to do. I’m not making the case that rejiggering subsidies will dramatically change the way Americans eat; it’s a complicated matter, and I don’t think anyone can predict with certainty what the effect will be. But crop-neutrality aligns public dollars more closely with public interest. It lets farmers decide what they want to grow, and it encourages the age-old risk-mitigation strategy of diversity. It continues to ensure that a bad year isn’t crippling, and a decent living is possible for the men and women who feed us. And, although it’s not a national food policy, I asked Ricardo Salvador, director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and one of the co-authors of the op-ed calling for it, whether crop-neutral insurance is consistent with a national food policy’s goals. It is, he said: “It would be highly pragmatic to take steps like this.” Maybe it’s a step we can all get behind. So repeat after me: What do we want? Crop-neutrality! When do we want it? Phased in slowly over 10 years! Haspel farms oysters on Cape Cod and writes about food and science. On Twitter: