Zohn Burden to coach wide receivers at Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech wide receiver Isaiah Ford eludes Ohio State’s Joey Bosa and Raekwon McMillan. (Paul Vernon/AP) Zohn Burden will be Virginia Tech’s new wide receivers coach, replacing Aaron Moorehead, the school announced Monday. Burden was hired away from Old Dominion, where he was the passing game coordinator for the past three years. The Hokies have kept their staff largely intact after last season’s 7-6 campaign that culminated in a Military Bowl win over Cincinnati. The wide receivers coach was the lone change after Moorehead accepted a similar position at Texas A&M in January. Burden, a Virginia native and Virginia Military Institute graduate, has local recruiting ties, and under his tutelage, Monarchs wide receiver Antonio Vaughan earned first-team All-Conference USA honors last season with a league-leading 1,019 receiving yards and 12 touchdowns. The Hokies return Isaiah Ford, who in his freshman season led the team with 709 receiving yards and six touchdowns. Cam Phillips, a DeMatha product who tallied 498 yards and three touchdowns, will also be a sophomore in the upcoming season. “We are excited to welcome Coach Burden and his family into the Hokie Nation,” Virginia Tech Coach Frank Beamer said in a release. “He brings an enthusiasm for recruiting, and his knowledge and experience of the wide receiver position as both a player and coach will be a good fit. As a recruiter, his relentless approach and diligence will pay dividends for us as we work to attract the highest caliber of student-athlete here to Virginia Tech.”


Hayat Boumeddiene, wife of Paris attacker, becomes France’s most-wanted woman

all European services,” said a European intelligence official. “She is one of the people who can shed light into the network.” A difficult past Boumeddiene’s troubles started when she was 8, when her mother died suddenly from a heart ailment, family friends say. Her father quickly remarried. The new wife clashed with her six stepchildren, including dreamy-eyed Hayat, in cramped quarters in a public housing complex in Villiers-sur-Marne, a hard-luck suburb of Paris. Boumeddiene was placed in a group home at 13, with a family that came from the same Algerian city as her father. She broke from her family, with whom she remained only sporadically in touch. “This girl didn’t grow up in my house. She grew up in the house of nonbelievers,” said Boumeddiene’s father, Mohamed Boumeddiene, reached by phone in Algeria, where he traveled after the attacks. “She made all these decisions on her own.” Hayat Boumeddiene favored makeup from Sephora and rambling phone calls with her friends, said Omar, her foster brother, who spoke on the condition that his family’s last name not be published. “She was fragile,” he said, and clearly shaken by her mother’s death. But he said she was also studious and hard-working, holding down a part-time job at a newsstand in a Paris train station even as she attended high school classes. When she was 18, she rejected a suitor, whom her foster family had found for her in Algeria, and moved on her own to Paris. Within a year, a mutual acquaintance introduced her to Amedy Coulibaly. The French native, whose parents emigrated from Mali, was fresh out of prison for armed robbery. In prison, he had met at least one of the men who would attack Charlie Hebdo. Neither of the couple was especially religious, Boumeddiene would later tell investigators, but they explored their deepening Islamic faith together. In 2009, two years after they met, they married in a religious ceremony, although such marriages are not recognized by French law. “I had a difficult past, and this religion answered all my questions and brought me peace,” Boumeddiene told police in 2010, according to a transcript of an interrogation after Coulibaly was charged with trying to break a top militant out of a French jail. She said she quickly became more observant than her husband. He prayed at the mosque “on his own timetable,” every three weeks or so, she said.


Sometimes, protecting one species harms another

away at their primary food source — coral. When McCauley saw the parrotfish destroying the reef, he dived in to inspect, following one fish around, noting what it ate and what type of coral it preferred. At one point, the parrotfish joined a group of five others, and they spotted McCauley. One male, weighing perhaps 100 pounds, charged full force at McCauley, who was both worried and struck by the wonder of the moment. “It is the aesthetic pleasure of being knocked out of the way on a reef by a hungry school of buffalo-like bumphead parrotfish,” he explained. Using data collected over four years at Palmyra, McCauley and his colleagues created a simple computer model of the reef. They found that each parrotfish ate about two tons of coral every year. At that pace, the fish would damage the shallow reefs within decades, causing them to shrink and become much less diverse. The findings were published last year in the journal Conservation Biology. So, how should a species like the bumphead parrotfish — threatened and yet, in large numbers, destructive — be managed? In the past, conservationists have tried to give specific species an advantage, McCauley said. For example, to save sea turtles, people have protected the beaches where the turtles lay eggs and have given fishermen devices to reduce unintended harvesting of the animals. But rather than protect particular species, a better approach may be to protect entire assemblages of species in an ecosystem, some conservationists believe. A grey reef shark swims inside a tank in the Madrid’s Zoo Aquarium. (Andrea Comas/Reuters) Protecting predators In the parrotfish case, that might mean protecting its predators. (Some parrotfish appear to avoid reefs that attract especially large numbers of sharks.) While this approach would not apply to Palymra, where sharks are already protected but too large to reach shallow reefs, it can be applied at a nearby atoll, Tabuaeran, whose reefs also have been damaged by parrotfish. “We expect sharks are confining the bumphead to particular parts of the reef, controlling the impacts they have on the reefs,” McCauley said. “You need this rare bumphead, but in order to keep things more or less in balance, you also need the predators of this fish.’’ Creating such a balance of protection is complicated. Ecologists know little about the intricate interactions between species in many ecosystems. Case in point is the parrotfish, which


to save sea turtles, people have protected the beaches where the turtles lay eggs and have given fishermen devices to reduce unintended harvesting of the animals. But rather than protect particular species, a better approach may be to protect entire assemblages of species in an ecosystem, some conservationists believe. A grey reef shark swims inside a tank in the Madrid’s Zoo Aquarium. (Andrea Comas/Reuters) Protecting predators In the parrotfish case, that might mean protecting its predators. (Some parrotfish appear to avoid reefs that attract especially large numbers of sharks.) While this approach would not apply to Palymra, where sharks are already protected but too large to reach shallow reefs, it can be applied at a nearby atoll, Tabuaeran, whose reefs also have been damaged by parrotfish. “We expect sharks are confining the bumphead to particular parts of the reef, controlling the impacts they have on the reefs,” McCauley said. “You need this rare bumphead, but in order to keep things more or less in balance, you also need the predators of this fish.’’ Creating such a balance of protection is complicated. Ecologists know little about the intricate interactions between species in many ecosystems. Case in point is the parrotfish, which was once thought to primarily benefit reefs by eating algae and dead corals and creating space for new growth. Now, it appears the species can both benefit and harm the ecosystem. Meanwhile, ecosystems are constantly changing. The world is in what many scientists are now calling the Anthropocene age — the age of humans, who are altering the chemistry of the oceans and atmosphere and hastening climate change. Humans are now the prime shapers of the planet, more so even than nature — building, growing new foods, creating marine reserves and catalyzing change. And humans are overfishing the oceans and removing top predators such as sharks. As ecologist Daniel Botkin put it in his 1990 book “Discordant Harmonies,” nature is a symphony of several compositions, and ecologists are playing the role of conductors, “forced to choose among these [compositions], which we have barely begun to hear and understand.” Elephants, too “Elephants are large-bodied savanna browsers,” ecologist Greg Asner said. “You get a lot of them, and it can really crash parts of the ecosystem.” (Mosa'ab Elshamy/AP) A similar saga is playing out at Kruger National Park in South Africa. The size of Israel, it is the largest national park on


Military life is stressful on all concerned; efforts to help often fall short

Jose Perez, left, walks with his son Joseph Perez, 17. (Michael Todd for The Washington Post) The military has never been a particularly family-friendly career. (Thus the old saying that if Uncle Sam had wanted you to have a family, he’d have issued you one.) Yet 44 percent of military personnel have children, and families serve, too. In recognition of the rigors of service, every branch of the military runs programs to support the psychological health of military families. But a report released in 2013 by the Institute of Medicine concluded that these efforts are falling short in many areas. Even relatively smooth deployments can strain families, says psychologist David Riggs. The person who comes back from war is not the same person who left, but the family that stays behind changes, too. “It’s not like the service member comes back” and family life just returns to normal, says Riggs, executive director of the Center for Deployment Psychology in Bethesda, Md., which trains behavioral health professionals to work with military personnel and their families. Studies show that partners and children may develop anxiety, depression and other mental health problems while a family member is deployed, Riggs says, and these problems can persist after their loved one has come home. The departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs have invested billions of dollars to expand their capacity to support veterans and their families, but it’s not clear that those dollars are translating into better results, says Terri Tanielian, a senior research analyst at the Rand Corp. in Arlington. “When people get care, are they getting the right care? Are they getting better, and if they’re not, is the system able to identify that and adjust accordingly?” Those questions remain unanswered, she says. Jose Perez watches his son John during a hike near Chino, Calif. Perez left the Army in 2007 after being wounded in Iraq. (Michael Todd for The Washington Post) The IOM analysis found that, too often, programs for military personnel and their families are implemented without evidence that they’re effective, and few programs are monitored to track whether they’re making a real difference, says Kenneth Warner, the University of Michigan professor of public health who led the assessment. He and his colleagues recommended that efforts to prevent psychological disorders in service members and their families include outcome measurements to ensure that they’re getting the intended results. Stigma barrier Stigma remains


Sierra Nevada fox, not seen for nearly a century in Yosemite, is caught on camera

50 — were thought to still exist in the wild, in a remnant population near Lassen Volcanic National Park in northeastern California. The subspecies, which is genetically distinct from other red foxes, once ranged across the snowy high mountains from Oregon to California. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to announce this year whether the fox will be protected under the Endangered Species Act. No one knows why there are so few Sierra Nevada red foxes, said Cate Quinn, an ecology graduate student at UC Davis who is studying their decline. “There is a lot of speculation about the causes, but there is no evidence supporting one or the other right now,” she said. The most popular theories include loss of prey, competition from coyotes, inbreeding and loss of habitat, Quinn said. Biologists think the historical population was always relatively small. “We are thrilled to hear about the sighting of the Sierra Nevada red fox, one of the most rare and elusive animals in the Sierra Nevada,” Don Neubacher, Yosemite National Park’s superintendent, said in a statement. Sacks records red fox sightings and hopes the Yosemite news will encourage park visitors to dig through their vacation photos for images of the mammal. “There could be backpackers who have personal photos from the 1980s or 1990s,” Sacks said. “Someone who has them might not have realized they were important enough to share.” Here’s what to look for: ●The Sierra Nevada red fox is smaller than red foxes that live at lower elevations, with larger, hairier feet for padding through snow. ●Its fur ranges in color from very red to black, but the fur behind its ears is always black. Coyotes and other fox species don’t have black fur behind the ears, Sacks said. ●Red foxes have black fur on their legs, and coyotes don’t. ●Red foxes have big, fluffy, white-tipped tails. Coyotes can also have white-tipped tails, but relative to body size, a coyote tail is smaller than a Sierra Nevada red fox tail. “On a fox, the tail is almost as long as the body,” Sacks said. “If a coyote is standing straight up, its tail might barely touch the ground, but a fox tail would be buried in the ground.” — Live Science Camera Trapped: Wonderful and Weird Wildlife Around the World In Images: 100 Most Threatened Species Photos: Stunning Views of US National Parks from Space


Zoo to start bag checks during spring break after last year’s shooting on Easter Monday

The National Zoo said Tuesday that it plans to implement special security screening measures during its especially high visitation periods over local schools’ spring breaks. The measures will include things like bag checks, and restricting the flow of visitors into the zoo on extremely crowded days, the zoo said. It said the measures are similar to those at other Smithsonian sites. The action comes after a shooting outside the zoo last Easter Monday that wounded a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old from Prince George’s County. The attack involved rival gangs, polce said. A 14-year-old who pleaded guilty in September to the shooting was ordered to remain under the supervision of the District’s youth correctional department until he turns 18.


Earth’s chill pill?

The Feb. 1 Outlook article “Thermostat wars” explored the potential for conflict arising from the use of geoengineering techniques to mitigate climate change. When the authors concluded that getting a United Nations agreement on programs to modify the atmosphere would be “implausible,” they overlooked an important point: Such an agreement already exists. The U.N. Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (the ENMOD Convention) entered into force in 1978 . Parties commit not to engage in environmental modification that would result in widespread, long-lasting or severe effects that would cause injury to other parties. Seventy-six countries have ratified the convention, including the United States and most of the other large countries that the authors suggested could be among the first practitioners of geoengineering. The ENMOD Convention provides a ready-made forum. All that is required is the vision and will to use it. Colin Helmer, Bethesda ● “Thermostat wars” was irresponsible. The authors assumed that the science of geoengineering is settled and safe and that the only dangers are about the politics of implementation and who has control. The science at this point has no data on the other environmental, human health and pollution implications of seeding the atmosphere with aerosols. Many reputable scientists take issue with the conclusions drawn by the Royal Society conference mentioned in the article. We already live with too many unintended consequences of supposedly benign applications of science. The thought of a global experiment on our fragile planet should make every inhabitant quake. John von Knorring, Reston ● “Thermostat wars” claimed that solar geoengineering would “make the planet more livable for people and ecosystems.” But any climate solution has to protect the ocean ecosystem, which provides food for more than 1 billion people and is threatened by waters made more acidic by rising carbon dioxide levels. Any solar geoengineering program must be accompanied by a drastic reduction in carbon emissions, which has proved contentious as climate effects and energy needs compete for national priority. Given the uncertainties of the science and the dangers of rogue nations acting on their own, we should look for easier solutions. By avoiding deforestation and restoring degraded land with trees, shrubs and conservation agriculture, enough carbon dioxide could be absorbed through photosynthesis to keep the global temperature below dangerous levels. At the U.N. Climate Summit in New York in September, world leaders endorsed


Measles case confirmed in the District

A case of measles has been confirmed in the District, a spokesman for Mayor Muriel Bowser said Tuesday. Michael Czin said in an e-mail that the case is linked to international travel, not to an outbreak of more than 100 cases that is believed to have started at Disneyland in California. Czin called the case in the District “isolated” but said that the Bowser administration was monitoring the situation and encouraged everyone, especially young children, to be vaccinated against the disease. “Getting vaccinated is the best way to prevent the harmful spread of measles in and around the District of Columbia,” said LaQuandra S. Nesbitt, director of the D.C. Health Department. “It’s imperative for residents to understand the effect measles can have on the human body and the public health threat it poses to young unvaccinated children and adults.” Health Department officials did not respond to requests for information on the current case. Measles is very contagious. Its symptoms can include pink or red eyes and cough, followed by a red blotchy rash that appears on the third to seventh day, the department said. The rash begins on the face and spreads around the body. The effects of the disease are most serious in infants and adults. Related: Everything you need to know about measles


Parents with doubts about vaccinations face backlash from pediatricians, peers

questions are labeled as crazy, as selfish. We’re not all followers of Jenny McCarthy,” she said, referring to the outspoken celebrity closely associated with the anti-vaccine movement. Hamilton hears regularly from parents who feel caught between the certainty of the medical establishment that vaccines are safe and the anguish of their fears that shots might permanently injure their babies. “It’s a very easy view to take when your child has never spiked a fever, lost all language, and become someone who will require care for the rest of their lives, with very few adequate supports available,” said Hamilton, whose husband works in information technology at The Washington Post. Kim Taylor with her sons, Dawson, 12, left, and Noah, 14. Because Noah will need a tetanus booster and the meningitis vaccine to run track, she’s negotiating with her doctor to go slowly. (Mary F. Calvert/For The Washington Post) While Shay doesn’t necessarily attribute her son’s autism to the battery of shots he got as an infant, she began to worry about their number and intensity in light of a sharp rise in food allergies and autoimmune disorders. She’s become cautious. She has spent “thousands of hours” looking at vaccine safety studies and the relative risks of the diseases they prevent. Until last month, Shay said her doctors have been willing to work with her concerns. When it came time for a measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) booster, she paid for a blood test that showed her children already had sufficient immunity from their first shots, a substitute that most doctors accept. The practice agreed, signing school and sports forms that certified them as up to date. Now, Bayside won’t continue seeing her daughter unless she gets a range of new shots: boosters for tetanus, polio, chicken pox and MMR, and new vaccines for meningitis and human papillomavirus (HPV). Shay thinks the meningitis shot may be a good idea. “That’s a nasty disease,” she said. But she’s hesitant about the others, which are not required by the state. Maryland doesn’t mandate HPV or a fourth polio shot, and new school requirements for boosters for tetanus and chicken pox apply only to children younger than Shay’s. She has doubts, but this time, the practice won’t accommodate them. “They said they’ve changed the policy,” Shay said. [ What a Measles outbreak looks like when no one is vaccinated ] The practice declined a request


RadioShack may be facing the end after decade of decline

RadioShack, the company that introduced the first mass-market personal computer, is fading after years of heavy losses and the suspension of its shares. (Tony Gutierrez/AP) Through every retailing revolution of the past generation — from the rise of big-box stores to the arrival of e-commerce giants such as Amazon.com — there was always RadioShack. The electronics chain managed to hang on in failing suburban shopping plazas and on city street corners even though it wasn’t exactly a destination store. It became known as the store to pick up a spare battery or a cellphone case but not to make a major purchase such as a tablet or TV. And that made the brand a symbol of the failure of analog retailing to adapt to a digital world. Last year, the chain poked fun at its dated reputation in a Super Bowl commercial that joked that it had left the 1980s behind. Still others called it “the cockroach of retail.” It survived and survived. But RadioShack might be finally facing its end. This week, the New York Stock Exchange moved to delist the chain, which was founded nearly a century ago by two ham-radio enthusiasts. Some of its 4,000 stores are rumored to be in the process of being sold to Sprint or Amazon. Talk of bankruptcy is again raging among investors. RadioShack has reinvented itself plenty of times before: In the 1980s, the shop that was known as a destination for tinkerers and gearheads made a big bet on the $600 TRS-80 personal computer. As cellphones became popular, RadioShack shifted its attention there, but that strategy had a short shelf life. More recently, the company threw one hail-Mary pass after another to save itself. It pumped millions of dollars into a redesign, secured a $120 million financing lifeline from hedge fund Standard General, and went back to its roots with a branding push aimed at hipsters with a do-it-yourself ethos. And yet experts say the brand became stale as it moved too slowly to adapt to a world in which gadgets aren’t just for gearheads but are deeply entwined in our everyday lives. “It was too little, too late,” said Will Frohnhoefer, an equity research analyst at BTIG. “They had multiple years — a decade of decline — to try to reverse things, and they didn’t seem to come up with a coordinated strategy until very late in the game.”


Seeking a vaccine for ignorance

Boxes of single-doses vials of the measles-mumps-rubella virus vaccine in Northridge, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 29, 2015. (Damian Dovarganes/AP) Flashback: Galileo is under house arrest pondering the unyielding ignorance of The Church for refusing to consider his heliocentric proposition that the Earth circled the sun. We find this historical anecdote preposterous today, but people were persecuted for lesser heresies in Galileo’s time. Though we are now centuries removed from such dim-wittery, we find ourselves in a not-dissimilar pickle. After decades free of many crippling and deadly diseases thanks to the miracle of vaccines, some people are skeptical. Parents fearful of side effects, often on account of anecdotal evidence or discredited studies, are reluctant to vaccinate their children. Marin County, Calif. The latter group is familiarly known as the GOP base. They tend to be litmus-test conservatives on social issues and place Scripture above science. On the bright side, the far left and the far right finally have found common ground. They’d rather let their children risk illness — and their country an epidemic — than contaminate their offspring’s pristine bodies with antibodies. Oh, to be a fly at that picnic! One wonders what public tortures Jonas Salk might have encountered had he presented his polio vaccine today rather than in the 1950s. One crucial difference is that polio left visual reminders of its assault on the human body. The 1952 epidemic affected nearly 58,000 people, more than 3,100 of whom died and some 21,000 were left disabled. Most Americans under the age of 50, including doctors, have never seen measles. Now, after decades of being a virtually measles-free nation, we have 100 cases spread across at least 14 states and the potential for more as stubborn purists resist common sense. Science and experience overwhelmingly support vaccines, and the single study to the contrary, suggesting a connection to autism, has been thoroughly discredited. Naturally, into this tar pit, the GOP presidential field has fallen. Or rather, been pushed. Asked about the vaccine controversy, both New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul have handed the media a fresh bone to gnaw. Christie initially said that parents “need to have some measure of choice,” though he later clarified by saying that children should be vaccinated against measles. Paul told radio host Laura Ingraham, “While I think it’s a good idea to take the vaccine, I think that’s a personal decision for


D.C. news in brief

Mayor to hold three public forums on District budget Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) will have three forums this month for D.C. residents to provide input on city budget priorities. Forums are scheduled for Feb. 19 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Wilson High School, 3950 Chesapeake St. NW; Feb. 21 from 1 to 2 p.m. at Anacostia High School, 1601 16th St. SE; and Feb. 23 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Dunbar High School, 101 N St. NW. The mayor and administration officials are also scheduled to discuss the budget at local community meetings in the coming weeks. Solar panels available for low-income D.C. residents The D.C. Department of the Environment and the D.C. Sustainable Energy Utility recently launched the Solar Advantage Plus Program to provide low-income D.C. residents with solar panels for their homes. Rebates, provided on a first-come, first-served basis, will cover the full cost to install solar panels on single-family homes owned or rented by low-income residents. Homeowners must contract with a solar installer authorized by the D.C. Sustainable Energy Utility and provide a copy of their photo identification, proof of income for each income earner and their most recent Pepco bill. The contractor will install a solar photovoltaic system without charge to the homeowner and be paid in rebates from the Department of the Environment and the Sustainable Energy Utility. The system must be operational by Sept. 30. For information, call 202-479-2222, e-mail info@dcseu.com or go to ddoe.dc.gov/node/9342. David Do is director of Asian and Pacific Islander office David Do has been appointed director of the D.C. Office on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs. The office assists Asian and Pacific Islander residents with accessing government services, performs community outreach and provides information on the city government in languages spoken in the API community. Do previously served in the executive office of the mayor during the Fenty and Gray administrations. He has a master’s degree in community planning from the University of Maryland College Park and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California Merced. Do, a D.C. resident since 2009, leads the Ward 1 Education Collaborative, a neighborhood public school advocacy group. For information, go to apia.dc.gov. Free legal clinic for small businesses is Feb. 11 The D.C. Bar pro bono program and the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs are having a free legal clinic for aspiring or existing small-business


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. Horse quarantined: Fence-jumping troubles: Adopt dogs and cats at MCHS no-kill rescue: Rockville Adoptable cats at no-kill shelter: Gaithersburg Adopt or foster rescue dogs: Rockville Reduced fees for cat adoption: Germantown — Compiled by Lisa M. Bolton


Prince George’s and Southern Maryland Going Out Guide, Feb. 5-11, 2015

“Emancipating the Past: Kara Walker’s Tale of Slavery and Power,” is at the University of Maryland’s Driskell Center. (Kara Walker Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer) ‘Emancipating the Past: Kara Walker’s Tale of Slavery and Power’ 3Works by contemporary artist Kara Walker explore race, gender and sexuality. Reception Thursday 5-7 p.m. Through May 29. University of Maryland, Cole Student Activities Building, College Park. 301-314-2615. driskellcenter.umd.edu. Free. THU 05 “Emancipating the Past: Kara Walker’s Tale of Slavery and Power” “Adult American Males” Cause Theatre stages this adult-themed show about four two-fisted drinkers who discover something remarkable. Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday-Saturday at 8 p.m. College of Southern Maryland, La Plata Campus, Fine Arts Center Room 143, 8730 Mitchell Rd., La Plata. 301-934-2251. www.csmd.edu/arts. $5. FRI 06 “Honor Flight” “Boundaries” “I Hate Hamlet” SAT 07 Annapolis Symphony Orchestra “Within These Walls: African American Surgeons and Nurses During the Civil War” “Juiced” Jazz Meets Blues Ragamala Dance Company: “Song of the Jasmine” SUN 08 Expressions of People A Black History Month celebration with musical and dance performances, maskmaking, face-painting, vendors and workshops for the entire family. 1-6 p.m. Harmony Hall Regional Center, 10701 Livingston Rd., Fort Washington. 301-203-6070. arts.pgparks.com. Free. “Ice and Fire” Eliza Garth “Ripped From the Headlines: Laurel in the News” MON 09 Alice Walker: American Icon TUE 10 “One Noble Journey: A Box Marked Freedom” WED 11 “White on White” — Compiled by Jillian S. Jarrett from staff reports


D.C. regulators green-light the city’s first equity-based crowdfunding campaign

From left, Johann Moonesinghe, Andrew Harris, Patrick Vacca and Stephen Lucas are the creators of EquityEats, an online crowdfunding platform for budding restaurateurs. The company is running D.C.’s first equity-based crowdfunding campaign. (Jeffrey MacMillan/Capital Business) District regulators have authorized the city’s first equity-based crowdfunding campaign under rules they wrote last year that allow entrepreneurs to collect as much as $2 million from the general public through online fundraising. The first venture to receive the green light is Prequel, a pop-up restaurant space scheduled to open in Penn Quarter this spring. The 17,000-square-foot venue will feature a selection of five dining concepts that change each month. Prequel is the brainchild of the founders behind EquityEats, a District-based crowdfunding platform for budding restaurateurs. The site allows culinary entrepreneurs to raise money, currently from accredited investors, to get their eateries off the ground. The restaurants featured on the site will have an opportunity to showcase their menu and hospitality as one of Prequel’s pop-up restaurants. Prequel’s creators are aiming to raise $200,000 through the crowdfunding campaign that launched Wednesday. Investors who contribute money will share a 10 percent ownership in the business, according to Prequel’s crowdfunding Web site. The investors will share 50 percent of the venue’s profits until their initial investment is recouped. Once that money has been returned, they will then split 10 percent of the venue’s future profits. Executives project revenue of $5.3 million and net profit of about $520,000 in Prequel’s first year, according to the Web site. Funders also receive ancillary benefits, such as priority reservations, party invitations and free drinks, depending on the size of their investment. “Restaurants are unique in crowdfunding because the investors actually add a lot of value to the restaurant,” EquityEats chief executive Johann Moonesinghe said. “If I invested in commercial real estate or even a tech start-up, I don’t add a lot of value as an investor other than the capital I am putting in.” Moonesinghe said restaurant investors can become frequent patrons of the business and encourage friends to do the same, while also providing credible feedback on cuisine, decor and customer service. Before regulators would accept the campaign, they required a considerable amount of back-and-forth about how EquityEats planned to word the offer, Moonesinghe said. They wanted to ensure those without a background in finance could make sense of it, he said. “We tried very hard, with the firm’s cooperation,


Local digest: A roundup of D.C.-area news briefs

THE DISTRICT A case of measles is confirmed in city A case of measles has been confirmed in the District, a spokesman for Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said Tuesday. Michael Czin, the spokesman, said in an e-mail that the case is linked to international travel, not to an outbreak that is believed to have started at Disneyland in California and now totals more than 100 cases. Czin called the District case “isolated,” but he said that the Bowser administration is monitoring the situation and that everyone, especially young children, should be vaccinated against the disease. D.C. Department of Health officials did not respond to requests for information about the current case. THE REGION Zoo to check bags during spring break The National Zoo said Tuesday that it plans to employ special security-screening measures during especially busy periods that coincide with area school systems’ spring breaks. The measures will include bag checks and restrictions on the influx of visitors on extremely crowded days, the zoo said. It said the measures are similar to those used at other Smithsonian sites. Last year, an Easter Monday shooting near the zoo wounded a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old from Prince George’s County. The attack involved an encounter between members of rival gangs, police said. A 14-year-old pleaded guilty in September to the shooting and was placed under the supervision of the District’s youth correctional agency until he turns 18. — Michael E. Ruane MARYLAND Aid for Purple Line proposed by Obama President Obama’s proposed transportation budget for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1 includes $100 million in federal aid to build a light-rail Purple Line in the Maryland suburbs, even though state support for the project remains uncertain. The money would be part of the $900 million in federal construction funds that the Maryland Transit Administration is seeking to build a light-rail line between Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. But the state won’t receive federal construction funds until it secures a “full funding grant agreement” with the Federal Transit Administration, an official said. Whether the state will pursue the federal money under Gov. Larry Hogan (R) remains unclear because Hogan has not said whether he intends to continue O’Malley’s transit plans. — Katherine Shaver


Wynton Marsalis debuts a stirring ‘Blues Symphony’

Dan Nimmer, Wynton Marsalis, Carlos Henriquez, Walter Blanding and Ali Jackson of the Wynton Marsalis Quintet perform at the Strathmore in Rockville. (Kyle Gustafson/For The Washington Post) You can’t accuse Wynton Marsalis of lacking ambition. It’s right there in the title of his “Blues Symphony,” which the composer debuted in its entirety Wednesday night at Strathmore. And that says nothing of its scale. The piece is for 100 musicians (here, the Shenandoah Conservatory Symphony Orchestra), in six discrete movements charting the evolution of the blues throughout the Americas. But the work perhaps tries to do too much. Its subject matter, coupled with its episodic structure — the movements marking off changes in time and geography, for example — makes it feel less like a symphony than an ethnomusicology essay, one that stuffs in too much information. There are many wonderful moments, but their connections are often tenuous and confusing. The fifth movement shifts between evocations of the African American spiritual tradition and an exercise in shuffle rhythms. Both are highly enjoyable (if a bit obvious — the woodblock “cowboy” shuffle has been done to death), but the juxtaposition is murky: What’s the relationship being expressed? The second movement, the symphony’s weakest, compounds this problem by moving from an undulating “ocean” of strings to trombone solo to country two-beat. All of this is interpolated by a clarinet that too easily (and perhaps inevitably, in a classical-blues fusion) recalls Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Still, there are exceptionally strong movements. The first makes the best use of the 12-bar blues form that is the backbone of the entire symphony, using it as a foundation on which to build patriotic American songs and marches, complete with stirring dissonance and inventive use of the piccolo. The fourth, a portrait of Manhattan, evokes the city’s drama and danger with staccato slants of strings and heavy, layered percussion (including the famous “spangalang” jazz cymbal pattern). And the finale includes an extended, full-orchestra ragtime workout. (A ragtime symphony — now that’s an endeavor someone should undertake.) The musicians — all Shenandoah undergraduates — were terrific. Trombone soloist Nathan Davis did some of the evening’s best work. In the fifth movement’s high point, he and violist Erin Reilly traded improvised blues choruses. Clarinetist Jacob Moyer was also superlative, as was trumpeter Nathaniel Hussell, whose parts required him to pull hard at the harmonic edges. It should be noted that


Can Maryland racing return to the majors?

the perception that trainers are cheating regularly by using illegal drugs. In Maryland such suspicions have been commonplace. Ritvo noted that the state has had a surprising number of trainers “who work miracles and win with 30 and 40 percent of their starters.” He declared, “We can’t have people saying, ‘Look at how these guys cheat and rob the public.’ ” Fortunately, he has in Quade a staunch ally on the integrity issue. The racing commission last weekend suspended three trainers for the illegal use of steroids and threw the book at one, banning him for 13 months. Ritvo knows that there is no quick fix for Maryland, but he hopes that improvements to the on-track experience and the racing product will gradually boost betting at Laurel from its present average of $1.4 million per day. That modest level of wagering in not merely a symptom of Maryland’s present problems — it is one of the problems, because wagering pools are too small to attract the serious bettors who drive tracks’ business. Last Sunday Laurel offered seven pick threes with an average pool size of $2,607 — minus the onerous 25.75 percent cut that the track takes from many of its exotic wagers. No rational gambler could play these races. So here are a few modest suggestions for Ritvo to consider at Laurel. Discontinue wagers like the overlapping pick threes and daily doubles that cannibalize each other; offer fewer betting options in order to bolster the pools that customers want to play. Lower the 25.75 percent takeout on exotic wagers as a signal that Maryland cares about the betting public. Offer a pick four or pick five with a special ultra-low takeout and guarantee a pool size of $25,000 to inject some spice into the betting menu. The Stronach Group and the various segments of the Maryland racing industry are unified in their commitment to improve the sport’s business, but they face a difficult task. Bettors are creatures of habit. They supported Gulfstream’s summer racing because they knew and respected the Gulfstream brand. There was a time when Maryland had similar prestige in the simulcast marketplace, but over the years its racing declined to minor-league status. Bettors across the country have had little reason to pay attention to Laurel and Pimlico for the past two decades, and their habits will not change overnight. For more by Andrew Beyer, visit washingtonpost.com/people/andrew-beyer.


Where We Live: NoMa, the wrong side of the tracks no more

Avenue and possibly to someday develop several new blocks above the tracks north of Union Station. “It’s interesting to see developers infilling the empty spaces, and it’s great to be part of the conversations trying to do this in a way that enhances a sense of community,” said Gerard Wall, a two-year resident who serves on the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission’s Transportation and Public Space Committee and its Parks and Events Committee. “My job as an ANC member is to ensure this.” “NoMa is unique,” added Wall, a solutions architect at Vibeffect. “Very rarely do you get to witness a part of the city transform itself the way NoMa has.” Nerds and yoga: Several developers permanently ceded land for parks and public spaces. A film series, NoMa Summer Screen, usually takes place on privately owned, undeveloped parcels. The Lobby Project, in the glass-walled lobby of 1200 First St. NE, owned by Principal Financial Group, is a pop-up established by the BID in partnership with the D.C. Office of Planning. It presents the “Nerds in NoMa” speaker series, “Yoga NoMa,” chamber concerts, and gallery shows curated by Washington Project for the Arts. Four developers — JBG, Skanska, MRP Realty and AvalonBay — are collaborating on a four-block pedestrian corridor called NoMa Meander. With water features, ground-level retail and pocket parks, it will run between North Capitol Street and First Street NE. Living there: According to Larry Bivins, a sales associate with Long & Foster, one three-bedroom, two-bathroom rowhouse is on the market for $559,000. A large sculpture on the corner of M Street and First Street NE (Evy Mages/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) Four properties are under contract, ranging from a three-bedroom, two-bath rowhouse for $459,900 to a three-bedroom, three-bath condo in a rowhouse for $679,000. Over the past year, 19 homes sold in the area, at prices ranging from $349,000 in a short sale for a three-bedroom, one-bath rowhouse to $745,000 for a three-bedroom, three-bath condo in a rowhouse. According to Apartments.com, about two dozen rentals are available, ranging from a studio at Trilogy NoMa for $1,347 a month to a two-bedroom at Loree Grand at Union Place for $5,418. Transit: Metrobus and the Circulator crisscross the neighborhood, and Capital Bikeshare has several stations there. Bicylists, runners and walkers have access to the Metropolitan Branch Trail, which spans eight miles from Union Station to Silver Spring, Md. Schools: Crime: Audrey Hoffer


The story of the U.S. measles outbreak, as the rest of the world might see it

Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Interim Health Officer, Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser, speaks about the state's measles outbreak during a news conference in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2015. (Nick Ut/AP) If the foreign press covered the U.S. measles outbreak the way the American press covered the Ebola crisis . . . ■ Paranoia and fear have spread throughout this human-resource-rich but politically dysfunctional nation, allowing a disease once nearly eradicated to return and ravage large swaths of the U.S. population. Measles, a highly communicable and potentially deadly illness, has been mostly preventable since a vaccine was developed more than 50 years ago. And for decades this North American superpower — like other Western nation-states — had near-universal immunization rates. In recent years, though, locals have become increasingly distrustful of Western medicine. Many have opted for alternative methods to ward off illness, relying on dietary supplements, frantic Google searches and advice from former Playboy models. As superstitions and anti-elite conspiracy theories have taken hold, measles outbreaks have flared up around the nation in the past few years. The epidemic reached a fever pitch in December after it infiltrated one of the country’s holiest sites: a national shrine honoring a singing rodent who serves pilgrims fried dough in exchange for alms. (Pious natives refer to the site as “Disneyland.”) Unsuspecting wayfarers were reportedly exposed to measles while queuing for a popular worship site involving whirling teacups, revered for its ability to purify and purge believers’ insides by inducing vertigo; infected visitors brought the disease back to their home towns, whence it spread to unvaccinated communities around the country. Foreign leaders, fearful for the health of the United States’ most vulnerable ethnic groups (particularly those already suffering from the recent gluten-allergy epidemic), have urged the U.S. government to start mandating immunizations. But although American statesmen have almost uniformly treated their own offspring to such preventive measures, they are reluctant to force modern medicine upon their unruly and independent-minded constituents. Indeed, some American politicians have been fomenting distrust of the government’s public health initiatives. They seem to fear losing the coveted Anti-Science vote, a growing demographic expected to play a key role in deciding the next presidential election. “In traditional American culture, locals value ‘rugged individualism’ above all social or moral obligations,” said longtime U.S. observer and ethnographer Ike Arumba. “Many Americans believe liberty and public health are fundamentally at


Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Strathmore celebration falls a bit flat

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra presented a hybrid event at Strathmore on Thursday — part concert, part infomercial, part award ceremony — celebrating 10 years at the North Bethesda venue. The BSO’s success there has been a win-win, of course, tapping into a separate audience and donor pool and enhancing the musical culture in Montgomery County. So celebrating was in order, but it was a clunky and not entirely enjoyable evening. In addition to about 20 minutes of speeches and the presentation of a leadership award to County Executive Isiah Leggett and his wife, Catherine, the orchestra’s ancillary educational activities were extolled in two videos during the concert. And midway there was a head-scratching insertion of a movement from the Max Bruch Double Concerto with the BSO’s concertmaster playing viola and a member of the Maryland Classic Youth Orchestra playing the clarinet part on the violin. I’m still unsure why. The evening’s featured work, a performance of the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto with the always superb Garrick Ohlsson, was ruined for me by the employment of a live projection — on a huge screen above the orchestra — of the keyboard and the artist’s hands. Direct-feed video has a tiny lag, which is irritating, particularly in fast passages, but the video would have distracted and detracted even had it been aligned perfectly. Orchestras around the country are experimenting with this technology, but it’s usually in programs targeted to young people or other nontraditional audiences. Let me vote against it for standard concerts. Music felt like an afterthought all evening. The BSO certainly was not sounding its best; there was some dreadful intonation between the woodwinds and an offstage trumpet in Ottorino Respighi’s “Church Windows.” Music director Marin Alsop did not match Ohlsson’s propulsive playing in the concerto, and there were more pitch problems from the solo clarinet in the slow movement. The closer, Respighi’s ultimate crowd-pleaser, “The Pines of Rome,” is hard to mess up, and the gala audience finally got its money’s worth, without gimmicks. The BSO at Strathmore has been a good thing for the region, the hall and the orchestra, even if the celebration itself was a bit of a slog. Battey is a freelance writer.


Book review: “The Evil Hours,” a biography of PTSD, by David J. Morris

Carter Malkasian is the author of “War Comes to Garmser” and spent several years in Iraq and Afghanistan, often as an advisor to U.S. generals. THE EVIL HOURS A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder By David J. Morris Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 338 pp. $27 ‘We are born in debt, owing the world a death,” David J. Morris writes. “This is the shadow that darkens every cradle. Trauma is what happens when you catch a surprise glimpse of that darkness.” This passage captures the sadness, pain and profound weight of “The Evil Hours,” Morris’s exploration of post-traumatic stress disorder. Morris weaves together an autobiography of his own experience with PTSD , a history of research into the disorder and a critique of modern treatment. The book is timely, coming out when hundreds of thousands of veterans are back home from Iraq and Afghanistan and the Department of Veterans Affairs is under siege for mismanagement. From 2004 to 2007, Morris was a war correspondent in Iraq for Salon, the Virginia Quarterly Review and NPR. Before becoming a journalist, he was a Marine officer in the 1990s, which was one reason he volunteered for Iraq. He embedded with Marines and soldiers in Fallujah, Ramadi and Baghdad, and witnessed his fair share of death and violence. His description of a direct IED strike on his Humvee is perhaps the most vivid in the entire literature: “The force of the blast rocked past Reaper’s right ear. . . . I looked at him, his head wreathed in smoke. . . . In the air behind my head there was no sound, just an underwater rush, like if I were swimming inside the explosion, holding my breath and waiting to come to the other side.” Morris returned from Iraq traumatized. Flashbacks, nightmares and sleeplessness haunted him. Eventually diagnosed with PTSD, he went through therapy and saw the Department of Veterans Affairs up close. Moved by his experience and those of others, he ventured to write about PTSD. ’The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’ by David J. Morris (Eamon Dolan/HMH) In parallel with his own story, Morris tells the history of PTSD from the ancient Greeks to the present. The Civil War and World War I are key periods. The latter, with its mass industrial warfare, 8 million deaths and “shell shock,” was the first conflict in which trauma was officially diagnosed and treated.


The industry that charges low-income Americans to fix credit errors they can fix themselves for free

Kimberly Cox had found a fast-growing and controversial industry that charges Americans to assist them with relatively basic financial repair. (Russ Scalf/For The Washington Post) By the time she made it to the American Bill Pay Web site, with its testimonials and its guarantee to solve credit woes, Kimberly Cox couldn’t afford another problem. She was squeaking by on $720 per month in disability checks. Her credit score was a measly 530. She lived with her son, Logan, who moonlighted on weekends as a bullrider at amateur rodeos in western Arkansas. Neither had health insurance, and one rodeo night, a 2,000-pound bull bucked hard, knocking Logan to the ground. There was a knee surgery, a long hospital stay, a $40,000 medical debt. And then a seeming helping hand. “REGISTER NOW,” the American Bill Pay site said, and it offered an enticing possibility: that Cox, for a fee, could ease her debts and improve her credit score with just a few easy steps. Cox borrowed $900 from her mother-in-law to pay for the service. “We were in desperation mode,” Cox said. Cox had found a fast-growing and controversial industry that charges Americans to assist them with relatively basic financial repair work. The Federal Trade Commission warns that the industry is vulnerable to rampant abuse, noting that among the thousands of credit repair companies, “many” make “highly questionable claims” about the results they can achieve. Other players are above-board and legal, trying to help Americans improve their financial standing — even if consumers could do by themselves most of what the companies charge hundreds of dollars to do on their behalf. The industry has capitalized on the aftermath of a financial crash that has left many lower working-class people struggling to pay bills despite the broader economic recovery. Lenders have tightened standards since the Great Recession, increasing the importance of one’s credit score, a three-digit number that reflects a history of paying back bills on time over seven years. The problem? The past seven years have seen the highest level of late debt payments in generations. Industry insiders say the number of credit repair firms now stands between 5,000 to 7,000, at least double the number before the financial crisis. Many of the new companies are small, started by former mortgage brokers or auto dealers who had familiarity with the power of credit scores and whose own industries had suffered major downturns.


Instruments from China, Korea and Japan to come together at Smithsonian

Japanese sho player Mayumi Miyata (Photo courtesy of Music From Japan/Photo courtesy of Music From Japan) No one expects musicians to replace the United Nations any time soon. Still, musical visionary Naoyuki Miura has geopolitical hopes for a round of concerts featuring three traditional instruments: the Japanese sho, the Korean komungo and the Chinese pipa. Miura is the founding artistic director of Music From Japan, which presents contemporary and older Japanese music in the United States and internationally. Currently celebrating its 40th year, the organization is bringing an anniversary-themed concert to the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art on Feb. 10. The evening will include the Washington premiere of “Unkai (Sea of Clouds),” a commissioned piece for the sho, komungo and pipa by composer Ned Rothenberg. The programming is significant because relations between Japan, Korea and China have seldom been tension-free. Given this troubled historical record, the spectacle of the sho, komungo and pipa united in performance will be particularly affecting, Miura says. “It doesn’t matter what country you are from,” he said by phone from the city of Fukushima, where he lives. “People are moved by the heart” when they hear music. Music From Japan’s 40th anniversary festival programming will include concerts in New York, Tokyo and Fukushima, as well as Washington. Miura’s wife, Mari Ono, who helps lead Music From Japan, said by e-mail that she and Miura had hoped to take the lineup to China and Korea, too, but that they couldn’t raise sufficient funds. Still, with its embrace of cultural heritage from the three East Asian nations, the touring bill is noteworthy. At the concert in D.C., Mayumi Miyata will perform on the sho, a mouth organ traditionally associated with gagaku, Japan’s imperial court music. Miyata has gained attention for using the instrument in contemporary scores. Writer Okwiri Oduor (Chelsea Bieker Gipe/Chelsea Bieker Gipe) Performing on the pipa, a lute-like instrument, will be Wu Man. Jin Hi Kim will play the komungo, a six-stringed Korean zither; she will also perform on the electric komungo. The three musicians will jam — okay, improvise — together at one point in the concert, and will also interpret classical and contemporary solo works for their instruments. Rothenberg’s “Unkai (Sea of Clouds),” which incorporates a bit of sung haiku and other poetry in addition to instrumentation, will have had its world premiere in New York three days before the concert at the


Djamel Beghal, the charming and chilling mentor of Paris jihadist attackers

in 2000. He was arrested the following year in connection with a plot against the U.S. Embassy in Paris and went sent to prison for a 10-year sentence. He has long maintained his innocence and says he was tortured during the investigation. In 2005, he met Coulibaly and another future Paris attacker, Chérif Kouachi, in the Fleury-Merogis prison south of Paris, notorious for its poor conditions. Police later asked Coulibaly whether he knew any “veterans of jihad.” “Yes, I know one, Djamel Beghal,” Coulibaly responded. After the men were released, they stayed in close touch. Coulibaly often asked for advice, as did his wife, Hayat Boumeddiene, who is now in Syria, officials say. Transcripts of intercepted phone calls show the friendly relations among the three men, as Beghal teased Kouachi about his spaghetti-cooking skills and joked that Coulibaly would have to be “masochistic to want to hang out with Chérif [Kouachi] on a Friday night.” Coulibaly asked Beghal whether there were any circumstances in which it was religiously acceptable to die with debt, hinting without saying explicitly that he was referring to martyrdom. “It’s God who will pay back the debt,” Beghal replied. He pushed Coulibaly to donate money to an organization for Palestinian orphans run by “a veteran who fought in Afghanistan. He’s done quite a bit of jihad and all that comes with it, and prison, too.” “Children from Palestine are tomorrow’s fighters, my friend. They’re the ones standing up to the Jews,” Beghal said. In the cramped hotel chambers in southern France where Beghal was living in 2010 on supervised release from prison, before being taken back into custody, police found a clipping about rocket-propelled grenades, maps of Afghanistan and Pakistan, printouts about suicide attacks, and an audio tape of songs with titles including “I, Terrorist,” “Blow Them Up,” “No Solution Except Arms” and “Oh You, Martyr.” “Those are songs,” Beghal told police, when asked about them. In documents confiscated from his computer, he maintained that he had no connection to terrorism. But he complained bitterly about the Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram prisons, which he said were markers of the “extermination of peoples by ‘those who are civilized.’ ” He complained also about the suffering of Palestinians at the hands of Israelis and the massacres of Bosnian Muslims in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. “This all-out anti-terrorist war . . . has only darkened the


only darkened the global landscape,” he wrote. The fierce convictions visible in his writings make clear his potential power over recruits. “He had a real reach to potential terrorists all over Europe, especially in France,” said Jean-Charles Brisard, a Paris-based terrorism expert. “These networks rely highly on mentoring.” Counterterrorism officials continue to try to understand the connections between al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in the attacks. The extent to which the terrorist networks were involved in the planning of the attacks remains unclear. Some experts say the friendship between Coulibaly and Kouachi was more important for the coordination of the attacks than any faraway force. But questions were raised by an unusual apparent cross-pollination between the two groups. A day before Coulibaly attacked the grocery store, intelligence officials say, his wife entered Syrian territory held by the Islamic State — accompanied by Mehdi Belhoucine, the younger brother of a man who has recorded propaganda films released by an al-Qaeda media outlet. Officials believe Belhoucine was part of a logistics network with ties to al-Qaeda. Coulibaly also obtained weapons for the attack from suppliers with al-Qaeda connections, counterterrorism officials say. And officials believe at least one of the two Kouachi brothers who killed 12 people at a satirical newsweekly’s offices trained in Yemen, the home of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. “The Paris attacks and also recent operations in Belgium do raise the question about a possible change in the strategies of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State when it comes to global operations,” said a European counterterrorism official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive investigation details. “It could be that Paris was the beginning of a new cooperation between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda,” the official said. Counterterrorism experts are still trying to understand what the Islamic State does next as it broadens its aspirations beyond the territory it controls in Syria and Iraq. “The Islamic State considers bin Laden as a historical figure and role model. So it could be, indeed, that we see a new common strategy when it comes to larger operations,” despite previous clashes between the two groups, said Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, deputy director of the Geneva Center for Security Policy. “Fundamentally right now, the big unknown is how it is going to act in the next phase and expand or act more transnationally.” Cléophée Demoustier and Anna Polonyi contributed to this report.


Where is the outrage over D.C.’s homicides?

A scrap of police tape is all that remains at the scene of la triple shooting and double homicide on Ridge road on July, 18, 2013 in Washington, D.C. (Bill O'Leary/WASHINGTON POST) The headline on the Feb. 3 Post story, “Shooting on East Capitol St. turns deadly,” was followed by a few paragraphs of prose. It reported a fatal shooting Tuesday afternoon in the 3500 block of East Capitol Street, just east of the Anacostia Freeway near Minnesota Avenue. Much was vague: The victim “appeared to be in his late teens or possibly early 20s.” He died “at the hospital or on the way.” No information was available about “any suspect or motive.” End of story. This homicide story was about the same length as other items published on the same day: a “teenager groped while walking home from school”; a 19-year-old pedestrian struck by a bus at the Wheaton Metro station. On Wednesday, The Post reported that D.C. police identified the shooting victim as Navontae Howard, 19, of the District. The police also corrected the shooting location: It was the unit block of Ridge Road in Southeast Washington, not East Capitol Street. At this writing, I know more about Hayat Boumeddiene, the widow of one of the assailants in last month’s Paris terrorist attacks, than Howard, who died at an assailant’s hands in our nation’s capital on Tuesday. This is no knock on the reporting. The process of gathering news depends upon sourcing, and the D.C. police department’s report on the shooting was all The Post had at the time. Still, the casual way in which the snuffing out of a life on the city’s streets is received is hard to accept, let alone get used to. Where was the angry crowd in the Greenway section of the city, where the shooting occurred? Now that we know Howard’s name, maybe we’ll learn something about a suspect or motive. But where’s the outrage, the uproar over gunfire and murder taking place in homes, stores and places where children come and go? Has the annual racking up of homicides by the dozens — 105 in 2014, 104 in 2013 — made us phlegmatic to murder? Or is it something else too terrible to admit? Do we simply not care about homicides when they occur in parts of town we don’t frequent and the victims belong to a group we either don’t


Short-term fixes for long-term climate problems? Not so fast, experts say.

the day when it comes to climate change. They don’t think we should rely on technology to fix a problem that is rooted in human behavior. “Geoengineering is pretty much a blind alley,” says Richard Heinberg, a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute in Santa Rosa, Calif. “We’re probably not going to be able to solve climate change with techno-fixes. We’re actually going to have to change our behavior and our expectations and our economy. Nobody likes to hear that.” The report was funded in part by the U.S. intelligence community. Other sponsors include NASA, the Energy Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The report being released in a relatively hushed atmosphere; committee members and reviewers are not supposed to talk about the specifics. One fact is already public: The report will be in two volumes, separately addressing the two most commonly discussed geoengineering strategies — solar radiation management (SRM), which is designed to increase the reflectivity of the planet, and carbon dioxide removal (CDR), in which the carbon dioxide is directly extracted from the air and sequestered in some form. The two-volume approach appears to be designed to keep the more radical idea of solar radiation management from being conflated with the less jarring proposals to subtract the carbon dioxide that we’re currently adding. The main virtue of solar radiation management, known as albedo modification, is that it’s relatively cheap and would work quickly. The effort might use balloons or a high-altitude aircraft to spray small particles into the air. Because the aerosols eventually rain from the atmosphere, the program would have to be continuous. Advocates concede that solar radiation management could have unintended consequences. The cooling of continental land masses could reduce the summer monsoon in some areas, with a dramatic effect on agriculture. And those tiny particles could lead to chemical reactions that reduce the amount of ozone, which serves as a radiation shield for the planet. And there are subtler effects that could make people unhappy. “You’d get whiter skies. People wouldn’t have blue skies anymore,” said Alan Robock, a Rutgers University climate scientist who was not on the academy committee. “Astronomers wouldn’t be happy, because you’d have a cloud up there permanently. It’d be hard to see the Milky Way anymore.” Still, there are advocates who say that this kind of geoengineering, even if not implemented anytime soon, should receive research dollars


Fewer people driving drunk,but drug use on the road is rising

There are fewer drunk drivers on the road, but their place has been taken by people high on marijuana and prescription drugs, according to two reports from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The number of inebriated drivers has declined by almost a third since 2007, but a 2014 survey found that nearly one in four on the road tested positive for a drug that endangered them or others, NHTSA said. “The latest roadside survey raises significant questions about drug use and highway safety,” NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind said. “The rising prevalence of marijuana and other drugs is a challenge to everyone who is dedicated to saving lives and reducing crashes.” The survey is a voluntary, anonymous effort to collect information from regions across the country. Road signs tell drivers that a data-collection site is ahead of them, and those who wish to participate pull over. The survey has been taken five times in the past 40 years. The 2014 survey found that about 8 percent of people on the road on weekend nights had alcohol in their system, and slightly more than 1 percent were above the legal limit. That was 30 percent below the 2007 figure, NHTSA said, and an 80 percent drop since the first survey was taken in 1973. But the number of people with drugs in their system was found to be on the rise. It jumped from 16.3 percent in 2007 to 20 percent of weekend nighttime drivers in 2014. Drivers with marijuana in their system soared by almost 50 percent. NHTSA conducted a second study to determine whether smoking marijuana increased the risk of crashes. They found that it did but, adding a caveat, said that pot smoking is most common among a group already at high risk for crashes: young men. “We know that marijuana impairs judgment, reaction times and awareness,” said Jeff Michael, NHTSA’s associate administrator. “These findings highlight the importance of research to better understand how marijuana use affects drivers, so states and communities can craft the best safety policies.” The study was done in Virginia Beach, where researchers gathered data from more than 3,000 crashes over a 20-month period. “The combined message of these two surveys is that our work to understand and combat drunk driving is paying off,” Rosekind said, “but that we have much to learn about how illegal drugs and prescription medicines affect highway safety —


Is Mexico mishandling investigation into disappearance of 43 students?

support, necessarily, that the students were killed there.” The attorney general’s office could not be reached for comment. In this Oct. 28, 2014, file photo, a local resident pauses to contemplate crosses set to remember 43 missing students, in front of the burnt town hall, in Iguala, Mexico. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP) In a 16-page report, the Argentine team, hired by the victims’ families as independent investigators, cited several problems in the government’s investigation, including lax security at the site and the procedures by which the evidence was collected and interpreted. In the 11 days in October and November that Mexican investigators worked alongside the Argentine team at the trash dump outside Cocula, the majority of the ballistic evidence was found at the bottom of the hill. But then government investigators returned alone on Nov. 15 — despite an agreement to work together — and found 42 shell casings in a pile right where the suspects’ testimonies suggested they should be, the Argentines said. That discovery has raised the possibility that evidence was planted to support the testimony. Murillo Karam said last month that his conclusions were based on 39 confessions and hundreds of forensic tests. The official description of the scene at the trash dump relies on the testimony of at least three people — out of roughly 100 arrested — who claimed they worked for the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel and participated in killing and burning the students. Of the 17 bone fragment samples sent to a lab at a university in Innsbruck, Austria, just one has produced a positive DNA match with a student — 19-year-old Alexander Mora Venancio. But the Argentines said they were not present when Mexican authorities claimed to have found the bag of ashes and bone along the Rio San Juan near the trash dump. The Argentine team also concluded, using satellite imagery and soil samples, that there had been fires at the trash dump in Cocula going back years. That has led them to doubt that it is possible for prosecutors to conclude that the evidence they are relying on — tooth or tire or metal fragments — comes from one specific fire. The Argentines have further found the burned remains of a prosthetic dental bridge that they believe did not belong to any of the students. “There are other human remains here that do not belong to the” students, the team member said.


Back to Yucca Mountain

THE COUNTRY’S nuclear power plants have produced massive amounts of reliable electricity for decades while emitting negligible amounts of carbon dioxide. The big drawback is the more than 70,000 tons of radioactive spent fuel U.S. nuclear facilities have piled up — with 2,000 more tons added to the total every year. A report the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) released in late January underscores that this problem is solvable — if only Congress and the White House would stick to a plan. For decades, the plan was to open a permanent, geologically isolated storage facility in Yucca Mountain, Nev., in which canisters of dry waste would be stored behind layers of rock and titanium barriers. The federal government spent more than $15 billion researching and developing the site. Until, that is, not-in-my-backyard opposition from Nevada leaders such as Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D) prevailed. In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama promised to pull the plug on the Yucca project. After Mr. Obama took swing-state Nevada in the presidential election, his Energy Department ended funding. But the regulatory process had already begun, resulting in the NRC report. The country’s nuclear regulators found that the Yucca facility would have been technically sound. They considered the potential for corrosion, cracking, damage from seismic activity and unintentional human intrusion. They gamed out the likelihood of breaches over massive time scales — up to a million years from now. Everything checked out, with a few conditions. The NRC’s experts, for example, would have barred planes from flying directly over the site. They also noted that if the federal government restarted work on Yucca, officials would have to obtain certain land and water rights from the state. This means, firstly, that opponents of nuclear power who raise the spectre of radioactive waste haunting humanity hundreds of thousands of years from now wildly exaggerate the difficulty of the problem. Nothing is risk-free, but there are ways to make the risks extremely small. Nuclear power, meanwhile, is likely to play a part in responding to a much more important environmental threat: climate change. The NRC report’s conclusions also show that Nevadans’ intense opposition to the Yucca project is unreasonable, unambiguously harmful to the country and should end. In a rational world, the NRC’s report would result in Nevadans backing down, Congress restoring funding and the Obama administration pushing Yucca along. This could fit neatly into the administration’s plan


Ethiopia’s stifled press

stranglehold on the press. Even Ethiopia’s rival Eritrea looks better: It released several imprisoned journalists last month. As Human Rights Watch documents, journalists and media outlets who dare publish critical articles routinely receive threatening phone calls, texts and e-mails from party officials and security personnel. Journalists’ movements are often restricted outside of the capital, Addis Ababa. Sources who talk to foreign journalists and human rights organizations can face threats and detainment. The repression extends across the media ecosystem. State agents harass printers and disrupt distribution processes associated with critical publications. Journalists who flee into neighboring countries are tracked and threatened. The government blocks Web sites from the Ethiopian diaspora, and it has jammed signals of foreign broadcasters, including Voice of America. Much of the persecution has come under the guise of counterterrorism by a regime that has been a player in the fight against the al-Qaeda-allied al-Shabab. At least 38 journalists have been charged under a 2009 “anti-terrorism proclamation” and the criminal code. In 2012, prominent journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega was jailed for 18 years on charges of terrorism after criticizing the government’s repression. Despite these policies, Ethiopia has retained its status as a U.S. ally and recipient of large amounts of U.S. development assistance — including $373 million for health and humanitarian programs in 2014. By contrast, U.S. spending on democracy and human rights assistance in Ethiopia has fallen dramatically in the past several years, from $3.4 million in 2012 to $162,900 in 2014. The decline in assistance for human rights bows to a 2009 law that prohibits nongovernmental organizations receiving more than 10 percent of their funding from abroad from conducting human rights advocacy. The State Department recently spoke out against the media crackdown. But more than words should be at stake. The Obama administration should link continued aid to the release of imprisoned journalists and bloggers, and it should enlist other Western aid donors to do the same. The West should not be subsidizing a regime that is one of the world’s leading persecutors of journalists. Read more about this from Opinions: Natan Sharansky and David Keyes: Trust the dissidents, not the diplomats The Post’s View: The U.S. is complacent as Egypt repeats its history of repression A. Ross Johnson and S. Enders Wimbush: Radio and TV Martí have roles to play as Cuba enters a new era Ekrem Dumanli: Turkey’s witch hunt against the media


Do you have what it takes to judge Beer Madness?

Panelist Erica Skolnik in action during Beer Madness 2014. (Jason Aldag/The Washington Post) The Washington Post’s ninth annual Beer Madness — a bracketed taste-off that will winnow 32 craft brews down to a single champion — is approaching, and you know what that means: We’re in need of reader panelists. As with last year’s event, our 2015 competition will include experts and readers. So take your best shot, and do it promptly. Send an e-mail to food@washpost.com with BEER MADNESS in the subject line. To be considered for one of the designated reader slots, you must be able to attend tasting sessions on two evenings in late February or early March at a location TBA in the District. Other requirements: ■ Describe your qualifications and your passion for beer in a single, tightly constructed sentence. Humor is appreciated. ■List your three favorite domestic craft beers and your favorite style. ■Include your age and gender, and attach a photo of yourself that we could publish if we decide to. (File format: JPEG, under 1 MB in size.) ■ The deadline for submitting your panel bid is Friday, Feb. 13. More from Food: Beer Madness 2014: We reveal the bracket Our 2014 panelists: Why we chose them The champion is revealed in Beer Madness 2014


‘We are targeting the mental health of military families. But you failed to mention us.’

David Riggs was extensively quoted in “Military life is stressful on all concerned; efforts to help often fall short” [Feb. 3]. He was identified as part of the “Center for Deployment Psychology in Bethesda, Md.” without mentioning that the center is part of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the U.S. military’s medical school. Readers would not know from the story that the university exists. USU is one of our nation’s most rigorous and important health-sciences universities. It is doing more to tackle the challenges described in the story than any other university in the nation. Perhaps because our medical and graduate nursing schools train students for national service, it is one of the least known — which makes the above omission even more disappointing. Part of our mission is caring for those who serve. By failing to mention USU, The Washington Post “missed the target.” Arthur L. Kellermann, Dean, F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Bethesda, Md.


Smoking marijuana may help athletic performance

(Illustration by The Washington Post/iStock ) Can smoking marijuana make you a better athlete? That’s probably a question you hadn’t pondered, given pot’s reputation for creating mellowness and a craving for munchies. But with growing numbers of states legalizing or decriminalizing the drug, Outside magazine decided to answer that question. So author Gordy Megroz ran on a treadmill, skied and performed a host of physical tests under the influence, and he talked to scientists to get their take (not toke) on his performance. Here’s what he found: Skiing: “After popping a 10-milligram THC gummy, I experience a slight yet very functional high. But something else stood out: I felt invincible and proceeded to attack the steepest lines without fear.” Stanford Medical School professor Keith Humphreys’s comment: “We have cannabinoid receptors throughout our brains and when the THC hits those receptors, it triggers a system that reduces anxiety,” he told Megroz. Feeling more aggressive “is a natural reaction to the drug.” (Megroz writes that the World Anti-Doping Association bans marijuana in competitions in part because of its anti-anxiety effects.) Treadmill test: Without pot, Megroz ran at a pace of 5 mph, regularly increased the incline on the ramp and ran for 19 minutes until his legs gave out. Later, after taking a hit of pot before getting on the treadmill, “I can still feel the pain, but I’m not fixated on it.” He lasted 30 seconds longer. Rerunning the sober-high comparison twice more on other days produced similar times. Positive comparisons also emerged for bench pressing (not as sore afterward, which Humphreys says may be due to pot’s anti-inflammatory effect) and mountain biking, when he feels “flowy and fast” — at least until he biked “straight off the trail” after failing to adjust his speed on a turn. Which may be the moral of the story: “You might feel invincible out there,” Humphreys says, “but you’re probably putting yourself in more danger.” In the end, Megroz says, he ended up preferring “the natural high of a hard run.”


Everything you wanted to know about the stars — and more, from Astronomy magazine

Ganymede, which orbits Jupiter, contains 25 percent more volume than Mercury. (NASA via Reuters) “We all know astronomy is cool,” Astronomy magazine writes in its March issue — the 500th since the magazine was launched in August 1973. To demonstrate and celebrate, the magazine compiled a wide-ranging, colorfully illustrated list of 500 facts ranging over “every aspect of the cosmos” and how we perceive it. Here’s a sampling: 1. “Exactly 88 constellations cover the sky, with no gaps and no overlaps.” 2. “The solar system’s largest moon, Ganymede,”which orbits Jupiter, “contains 25 percent more volume than Mercury.” 10. “The most luminous star visible to the naked eye, 34 Cygni, outshines the sun by 610,000 times.” 22. “If you drilled a tunnel through Earth and jumped in, you would reach the other side in 42 minutes and 12 seconds, and your top speed would be 17,670 mph.” 44. “As your eyes adapt to darkness, their sensitivity increases 10,000-fold in the first 30 minutes, with little gain after that.” 71. “The odds are greater than 7-to-1 that on your birthday, the sun was not in what you think is your zodiacal constellation.” 107. “The 60-ton Hoba iron meteorite in Namibia is the world’s largest intact meteorite.” 198. “Of the 12 traditional constellations of the zodiac, Capricorn is the smallest.” 251. “When the universe was 14 million years old, its background temperature was 80 degrees Fahrenheit, about the same as a summer day on Earth.” 351. “Sunrise on Earth lasts an average of 2.13 minutes, while the same event on Mercury takes 16.13 hours.” 352. “A person who weighs 200 pounds at Earth’s poles would weigh 199 pounds at the equator, mainly due to centrifugal force.” A look at the best photos of space. 391. “If you weigh 200 pounds on Earth, you would weigh 33 pounds on the moon.” 473. “The process of falling into a black hole — getting more and more stretched out — is known as ‘spaghettification.’ ”


National Archives awards $2 million in grants; Alexandria property values up

THE DISTRICT Archives gives $2 million in grants The National Archives awarded $2,186,024 in grants Monday to help publish the papers of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and Dolley Madison and assist in numerous other history projects across the country. Grants went to digitize 50,000 photographs from the Atlas rocket program at the San Diego Air and Space Museum, process the records of New York City’s Almshouse in 19th and early 20th century, and help Minnesota Public Radio digitize 2,200 audio recordings from the mid-to-late 20th century. The Archives said it also continued its funding agreement with the University of Virginia to support Founders Online, which provides free online access to thousands of letters and documents from the country’s founding fathers. — Michael E. Ruane VIRGINIA Property values up in Alexandria Alexandria property values rose 3.5 percent last year, a new city report says, driven by both appreciation and new growth and reflecting the recovery of the residential tax base after a nine-year dip. The average single-family home was assessed at $702,098, up 2.9 percent from the previous year. The average condominium value rose to $302,843, a 3.5 percent jump. The value of commercial property — which includes rental apartments — rose 2.37 percent, with a jump in apartment values compensating for flat office-building assessments and a 13.3 percent decline for hotels. “We’re happy on the residential side,” Deputy City Manager Laura Triggs said. “We’re still concerned on our commercial side.” — Patricia Sullivan Human remains found in Fairfax Fairfax County officials said they are investigating after human remains were found in a wooded area of Herndon. Bud Walker, a spokesman for Fairfax police, said the remains were found around 5 p.m. Sunday in the 2900 block of Treadwell Lane. He said they were found in a wooded, isolated area near the Difficult Run Stream Valley Park area. He said he did not know who found them or how the person found them. “A resident found what appears to be human remains,” Walker said. He said officers responded to the call and collected the remains. The office of the medical examiner determined on Monday that the remains were human, the Fairfax County Police Department said in a news release. Investigators are also trying to determine how long the bones had been in the wooded area. Walker said there appear to be no “obvious signs of criminal activity.” — Dana Hedgpeth


Despite minister’s words, Iran’s mistreatment of Jason Rezaian continues

known for imposing harsh sentences in political cases. As Mr. Rezaian’s family noted in a statement, Judge Abolghassem Salavati was sanctioned in 2011 by the European Union for “gross human rights violations.” In 2009, he sentenced two American hikers, arrested near Iran’s border with Iraq, to eight years in prison on groundless espionage charges. To suggest, as Mr. Zarif did, that Mr. Rezaian will be treated fairly in such a court strains credulity; it raises the question of whether the foreign minister was seeking to deflect an embarrassing inquiry with an empty expression of hope. Some analysts of Iran have speculated that the persecution of Mr. Rezaian is an attempt by “hard-liners” and their allies in the judiciary to undermine the “moderate” government of President Hassan Rouhani and the nuclear negotiations being conducted by Mr. Zarif. If that is true, the case raises a question about the talks: If Mr. Zarif is not able to obtain justice for an innocent journalist he has called “a good reporter,” can he be expected to obtain necessary concessions on a nuclear program that has been the focal point of Iran’s national security apparatus for more than a decade? Whether there is a power struggle in Tehran or not, the Rezaian case illustrates a profound imbalance in the nuclear negotiation. While an American citizen is openly wielded as a human pawn, at enormous cost to his well-being and that of his family, the Obama administration fastidiously refrains from any action it believes might offend Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — from seeking the downfall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to tolerating a vote in Congress on sanctions that would be imposed in the event the talks failed. Mr. Zarif asserted that he had “tried my best to help [Mr. Rezaian] in a humanitarian way, providing for his mother’s visit.” But such palliatives are not a substitute for justice. It’s time for him and Mr. Rouhani to use their influence to free Mr. Rezaian — and demonstrate that the Iranian government can deliver on its words. Read more about this topic: Mary Breme Rezaian: Iran should free my son The Post’s View: Iran should free Post journalist Jason Rezaian and his colleagues immediately The Post’s View: Iran doesn’t hesitate to use a human pawn as nuclear negotiations go on The Post’s View: A dangerous year for courageous journalists The Post’s View: Iran should free Post


Obama, Merkel hold out thin hope for cease-fire between Ukraine, Russia

willing to do to sustain it,” former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in recent testimony when asked about weapons shipments. “I believe we should avoid taking incremental steps before we know how far we are willing to go.” He said that while Ukraine must be defended vigorously, it also has “special security implications” because of its proximity to Moscow. “I am uneasy when one speaks of military measures alone without having the strategy fully put forward,” he said. Although it has been nearly a year since Obama signed an executive order slapping sanctions on Russian individuals and companies, sanctions have not yet altered events on the ground in Ukraine. But Obama cited the economic cost that sanctions are imposing on Russia’s economy, and added, “We will continue to raise those costs, and we will not relent.” The European Union has drawn up a list of further sanctions on 19 individuals and nine companies that could go into effect if European and U.S. leaders fail to reach an agreement with Russia this week. The E.U. delayed its implementation until Feb. 16. Economy-wide and technology transfer sanctions could come next, U.S. officials said, a step that would broaden restrictions that up to now have focused on individuals and companies. Merkel compared the sanctions on Russia to Iran sanctions and the Cold War, when economic restrictions had impacts over extended periods of time. Merkel and French President François Hollande will meet Wednesday with Ukrainian and Russian officials in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, in a bid to revive a cease-fire accord that was reached there Sept. 5 but was only fleetingly enforced. “With regard to Russia and the separatists it supports in Ukraine, it’s clear that they’ve violated just about every commitment they made in the Minsk agreement,” Obama said. U.S. officials said that one of the big sticking points is where to draw a demarcation line for a demilitarized zone that was part of the Minsk accord. Heavy artillery would be withdrawn on either side of the broad line. In recent weeks, separatists have advanced beyond the line, and they now assert that any new line should reflect their advances. U.S. and European negotiators are eager not to reward separatists who violated the earlier Minsk accord. “I cannot give you a guarantee for the outcome of the Wednesday talks or further talks, and maybe nothing


Our waning interest in exploring the solar system

This handout image released on February 5, 2015 by NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures a rare occurrence as three of Jupiters largest moons parade across the giant gas planets banded face. (Ho/AFP/Getty Images) Michael J. Neufeld is a curator at the National Air and Space Museum and the author of “Von Braun.”” Thanks to the New Horizons probe, which began its exploration of Pluto last month, scientists and the public can anticipate ever more exciting pictures and data about the dwarf planet. It will be the first encounter with a member of the Kuiper Belt of icy objects beyond Neptune. Yet the scheduled July 14 flyby will be of not one object but at least six: Pluto, Charon (a satellite half the size of Pluto) and four small moons — and who knows what else in orbit around their common center. Many wonders and insights about the origins and evolution of the solar system await. But this encounter may also mark the beginning of the end of a golden period of U.S. planetary exploration, particularly of our solar system’s outer reaches. If marvelous things are found at Pluto, when would the next mission follow up? We can hope that New Horizons’ flight past a small Kuiper Belt object in 2019 will be funded, but beyond that there is nothing. No spacecraft are planned to investigate Uranus or Neptune, which were visited only once each, by Voyager 2 in the 1980s. When the magnificent Cassini orbiter around Saturn runs out of propellant and crashes into that planet in 2017, that will be the end of data from the ringed planet and its astounding moons. Only mighty Jupiter will be favored, with the Juno spacecraft set to go into orbit in 2016. Following that, the next Jupiter missions are a European one not scheduled to reach it until 2030, and NASA’s Europa Clipper, which will take about that long, assuming that it is funded. It was a hopeful sign that in the fiscal 2015 omnibus bill, Congress increased the study money for the Clipper — which will focus on Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon with a possible life-bearing, subsurface ocean — from $15 million to $100 million. That makes the project a real possibility for the 2020s, but the Obama administration still needs to give it formal approval. Once before, in the late 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, the United


Three restaurant-quality Valentine’s Day menus you can cook at home

three scenarios when you would. Because we are asked quite often in our Free Range chats for special-occasion menu ideas, we offer options designed to meet each of those three needs: 1. You’re not expecting a tax refund, or you have several kids in college and/or student loans. But you like to eat well. 2. You’re a kitchen whiz and would rather not deal with the heart-shaped balloons and confetti at restaurants. 3. You forgot to make reservations. Chocolate’s missing from all three menus, because there’s already a lot of it around this time of year. (And we’ve heard some folks don’t even like it.) You’ll find the following dishes, and more, in our Recipe Finder. Use the handy scaling tool to create the right number of servings. Vegetarian main-course alternatives are included. 1. The budget-conscious menu You could eat for less, but perhaps not this tastefully. With a good pantry and careful shopping, the omnivores’ courses for two might cost about $10 each. (Lois Raimondo/The Washington Post) Asparagus With Crystallized Vinaigrette: (Deb Lindsey for The Washington Post) Mahogany Short Ribs: (Terry Allen for The Washington Post) Celeriac Puree: (Matt McClain for The Washington Post) Orzo With Sweet Winter Vegetables (vegetarian option): (James M. Thresher for The Washington Post) Jacques Pepin’s Baked Apples: 2. The all-out menu Looking for caviar, foie gras, lobster? We’ve headed in the another direction here, with creamy cheeses, carefully constructed and beautiful dishes, and a sweetheart ending. (Deb Lindsey for The Washington Post) Torta Gorgonzola With Walnuts in Honey: (James M. Thresher for The Washington Post) Baked Veal “Involtini” With Grilled Radicchio: (Julia Ewan/The Washington Post) Endive Gratin: (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post) Roasted Carrots With Black Lentils and Green Harissa (vegetarian option): (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) Coeur a la Cremesicle: 3. The last-minute menu It’s a little bit Asian, with dishes that come together quickly — especially with two cooks in the kitchen. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post) Sue’s Korean Shrimp Pancakes: (Matt McClain for The Washington Post) Hot Duck and Coconut Noodles: (Deb Lindsey for The Washington Post) Forbidden Rice With Eggs, Tofu and Mushrooms (vegetarian option): (Julia Ewan/The Washington Post) Raspberry and White Chocolate Fool: More from Food: This Valentine’s Day, balance sweet with bitter Valentine’s Day tributes to the Food and appliances we love Tom Sietsema’s Valentines to people and places he loves Everyday Dorie: A cookie straight from the heart


Va. House allows marijuana oils for epilepsy

who said the measure is “not even close to legalizing medical marijuana.” “It is a very small, narrowly targeted step to try to alleviate the suffering of these kids that does not open a Pandora’s box with respect to the disaster that medical marijuana has represented in some states that have gone that route, specifically California,” Gilbert said. The legislation allows the use of two marijuana-extracted oils that lack the plant’s intoxicating properties but help alleviate debilitating seizures. The bill provides a way for epileptics or their legal guardians to avoid prosecution for possession of cannabidiol oil (also known as CBD) and THC-A oil. Similar bills have begun sweeping though legislatures — many of them in conservative states — after an August 2013 CNN documentary “Weed” that showed the plight of a family seeking the oil for their daughter’s seizures, said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. About a dozen states have passed laws allowing use of the oils in the past 18 months, including Alabama, Utah and Mississippi. It’s not quite the Age of Aquarius. More like “the CBD epoch,” as staff at NORML refer to the phenomenon. “In the course of one legislative session, some of the most conservative states have embraced this notion of CBD access,” St. Pierre said. “We never could have predicted it, and we’re currently vexed by it.” He worries that legislators are giving lip service to helping patients seeking medical marijuana by allowing limited forms to a very specific type of patient and providing no means of obtaining them. “They’re really being dragged there kicking and screaming by their constituents,” St. Pierre said. “What we need to keep an eye out for is, brushing their hands, ‘Look, we acted on medical marijuana. We did it.’ ” The House bill, sponsored by Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax), heads to the Senate, which has passed similar legislation sponsored by Sen. David W. Marsden (D-Fairfax) with just one no vote. Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe supports the bills, spokesman Brian Coy has said. Those big legislative wins came after considerable work to make the bills palatable to conservatives. The process began with heart-wrenching stories that constituents brought to Albo and Marsden. Parents of children who suffered dozens of seizures a day, who had exhausted every conventional drug or suffered debilitating side-effects from them and who saw hope in