Japan eases some sanctions on North Korea

A pedestrian is reflected on a campaign poster on Japan's abduction issue, on a street in Tokyo July 3, 2014. Japan decided on Thursday to ease some sanctions on North Korea in return for its reopening of a probe into the fate of Japanese citizens abducted by the reclusive state decades ago, as a fresh report emerged that some of them were alive. The poster reads "we will get them back at any cost". (Yuya Shino/Reuters) SEOUL — The sanctions that Japan rolled back were unilateral, and Tokyo will continue to abide by resolutions imposed by the U.N. Security Council. Still, Japan’s move is delicate, coming at a time when the United States and its allies have tried to hold a firm line on North Korea, saying relations will improve only if the North curbs or dismantles its illicit nuclear weapons program. Japan will lift certain travel bans and loosen its oversight of remittances. It will also allow port calls by North Korean ships for humanitarian purposes. The easing of the sanctions is largely symbolic, but some analysts say it could mark the beginning of a broader warming if North Korea returns abducted Japanese citizens. Those abductions, which took place primarily in the 1970s and 1980s, have long been Japan’s top priority with the North. This week, Japanese and North Korean diplomats met in Beijing, and Tokyo came away with information about a new investigative committee formed by Pyongyang to look into the issue. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday that the North’s panel appeared to be credible and involved members of some of the authoritarian country’s most powerful organs. Chinese President Xi Jinping is in South Korea on Thursday, hoping to strengthen ties. Seoul officials are expected to push for increased pressure on North Korea to end its nuclear program. “This is only a start,” Abe said. “We will do our utmost to resolve the issue.” In a state-sponsored effort, the North abducted dozens and possibly hundreds of Japanese citizens, some of whom were used in espionage training programs. In 2002, in another flurry of diplomacy, the North admitted to kidnapping 13 citizens. The North said five were still alive, and they were returned to Japan. North Korea claimed the others were dead, but Japan says the explanations for these deaths are dubious. North Korea handed over the supposed remains of two victims, but DNA tests found no


Innovator: John Owens is trying to make a modern U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

experience applying for patents inform decisions in your current role? ■ I came to the U.S. PTO because I believe in the patent system. I believe our founding fathers were right in protecting someone’s intellectual property. To protect that ... is paramount to the nation’s economy. To take six years [to patent] an algorithm or a piece of software, that’s just huge. It takes too long. I know Patents is working on that, and part of what we’re doing here in the Office of the Chief Information Officer is helping influence that. The America Invents Act made several significant changes to the way patents are issued and protected in this country. Did it impact the agency’s technology needs or demands? ■ It caused hundreds and hundreds of changes. We have approximately 200 systems ... that are connected in many ways and, in some ways, not connected. When we look at the changes AIA wanted and the new systems AIA wanted, there was no way to rapidly develop and prototype those systems with the way we were doing work. Some of the first deliveries had to happen in a year. What kind of technology was the office dealing with before your recent efforts to modernize? ■ A lot of the technology the PTO had was ancient. Some of it was started on mainframes as early as the 1970s. There was a plethora of very old hardware, and there wasn’t a concerted effort to modernize the environment and bring it up to modern standards when I came in in 2008. We built a modernization road map. It took five years, and we prepared one of the most modern infrastructures you can get. The hard part is really redeveloping and rewriting from scratch, kind of re-envisioning as it were, business architecture and design. Reimagine what a modern patent or trademark examination system is. The real difference in this job is you can’t go out and buy a patent and trademark system. I tried. No one makes one. One of the biggest shifts you’ve undertaken is moving toward “agile development.” What does that mean? ■ It’s a process of project management. Instead of thinking we’re going to start today and totally define something that four years or five years from now will be delivered and it will be right ... agile takes things in chunks. Agile accounts for a rapid change in direction. It


Capital Buzz: A futurist gives a glimpse of what’s ahead

At next week’s World Future Society annual meeting in Orlando, attendees will hear things such as how to invest in technology and how the stock market might predict epidemics. Hmmm. Amy Zalman Zalman most recently served on the faculty at the National War College in the District, where she specialized in national security. How will the future change the business world? Radically. What we think of today as a company or business may not exist in 50 years because of technological changes. Offices could disappear, and we will be able to work from anywhere. Automation and robots will do our rote tasks, while workers perform uniquely human face-to-face work or do higher order cognitive and creative work. Can Washington-based businesses, whether it’s a big defense contractor, hotel chain or computer software firm, learn anything from the WFS? We offer Washington-based businesses techniques for looking ahead and figuring out how to prepare for threats and opportunities. Alternative energy systems, alternative food supplies, managing the effects of climate change — these are all business opportunities of the future. Your field is national security. How does our national security look right now? The international balance of power is radically shifting. We face transnational threats like climate change. Domestically, failures to educate and employ Americans may be a national security threat National security would benefit from a stronger focus on foresight and the future, instead of efforts to hold onto programs and systems that don’t really protect us from tomorrow’s threats. Hello. We’re open The new owners of the National Conference Center and West Belmont Place in Leesburg are busy reintroducing the facility to the neighbors in hopes of boosting business, which was ailing for years. The center has expanded its Internet WiFi capabilities. The new owners hosted wine-tasting classes last week, and is beginning a six-week, free outdoor family movie series every Friday night, starting July 11. A wine festival is planned this fall. The center, whose 250,000 square feet of meeting space filling 250 meeting rooms, is the largest government training center in the mid-Atlantic. It was originally built in the 1970s as a training center for Xerox. It is now used by private and public sector industries as a place to train employees. Its business took a hit during the Great Recession. Earlier this year, it was acquired by a joint venture of Connecticut-based Stoneleigh Capital and a real estate management


Study debunks a ‘Goldilocks’ planet thought to potentially support alien life

their research. “We stand by our data and results and are hard at work obtaining more of our own data on this system,” Vogt told Space.com in February 2011. The background image is a composite photo of our Sun. The left side of the Sun is seen through a filter that allows the camera to see wavelengths of light only in the deep-blue range, while the right side is seen through a filter that blocks all wavelengths except those in the red range. While the blue region is traditionally used to detect a star’s activity, this study used the red region of the light spectrum. (Alan Friedman) The Penn State researchers said they used a new technique to process existing data and were able to correct for activity on the star’s surface — a sun spot, for example — that could be misinterpreted as evidence of a planet. The new analysis strengthened evidence that the three true planets in the system exist, and the suspect planets disappeared, they said. Paul Robertson, the lead researcher on the Penn State paper, said his intent was not to criticize Vogt and Butler’s methods but to provide a new tool for scientists who are hunting for planets. “I think the astronomers did more than due diligence,” he said of Butler, Vogt and other researchers who have looked at this system. “I think their work is more than defensible. It’s perfectly good science, and all those groups continue to do good science. This is the scientific method. You have this happen all the time, where you have a result that looks to all the world correct, but if you introduce a new perspective or a new tool, those results can change.” Since Butler and Vogt’s initial report, scientists have found 22 other potentially habitable planets outside Earth’s solar system, according to the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, which keeps a catalogue of “exoplanets,” or planets outside Earth’s solar system. Dozens of others are awaiting confirmation that they exist and are habitable. In astronomy circles, given the previous skepticism about the Goldilocks planet, the bigger news in Thursday’s report was the debunking of Gliese 581D, a massive “super-Earth” thought to have a dense, murky atmosphere. Its purported discovery in 2007 by French scientists was a bombshell because 581D was so different from Earth and yet still seemed able to harbor


Science is open to error, misinterpretation and even fraud

foreground dust. So is this the whisper of cosmic creation or just schmutz in our eyes? More data needed! In March, scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced their discovery of gravitational waves created at the dawn of the universe. These waves were created in a period of rapid expansion called cosmic inflation. This new evidence could prove the definitive confirmation of the inflation theory. But other researchers are not convinced. 4. Goldilocks planets. In 2010, astronomers reported they had discovered a “Goldilocks” planet, not much bigger than Earth, that orbits a star in the habitable zone where it’s not too hot and not too cold for water to be liquid at the surface. But the Goldilocks planet, Gliese 581G, may also be not too real: A new report in Science, published Thursday, says that this congenial planet and another one believed to orbit the star Gliese 581 aren’t actually there. The report says the star has internal processes that created the illusion of planets. The new interpretation of the data remains in dispute, however, as the original team of scientists stands by its claim. 5. STAP stem cells. The journal Nature this week retracted two papers that reported claims that ordinary mouse cells could be exposed to a lightly acidic environment and turned into stem cells. The editors of Nature cited extensive errors, plagiarism and the inability of other researchers to duplicate the experiments. It is not clear now that the phenomenon of “stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency” actually exists. Nature’s editors, in retracting the papers, discussed the rash of recent incidents calling into question the reliability of scientific studies: “Underlying these issues, often, is sloppiness, whether in the handling of data, in their analysis, or in the inadequate keeping of laboratory notes. As a result, the conclusions of such papers can seem misleadingly robust. Another contributory factor lies in selection bias behind the data presented, whether implicit because the experiment was not randomized or blinded, or explicit in the deliberate selection of data that, usually with honest good intentions, are judged to be representative.” A reminder: Science as an enterprise is very good at catching its mistakes. That’s why science has worked so well for 400 years. But the most important science is done on the edge of the knowable, where results can be ambiguous and open to interpretation. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be great science.


Report outlines contingency plans for Pentagon spending; Lockheed beefs up ground systems tech with acquisition

all budget constraints or increasing America’s ‘soft power’ across the world through foreign assistance and joint military exercises. Lockheed beefs up ground systems tech Bethesda-based defense and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin has agreed to acquire Zeta Associates, a Fairfax-based information technology company, the two announced last week. This is Lockheed’s second recent acquisition; in June, it agreed to acquire Deposition Sciences, a Santa Rosa, Calif.-based company that makes thin film technology. Zeta Associates makes software and hardware that converts airborne signals to a digital form for intelligence and defense customers. For instance, the company makes radio-frequency switches, synthesizers and other products. The transaction, whose terms were not disclosed, is expected to close in the third quarter of 2014. “Zeta Associates’ expertise in cross-platform information collection, analysis and dissemination is an ideal complement to our national security capabilities,” Marillyn Hewson, chairman and chief executive of Lockheed Martin, said in a statement. Zeta Associate’s technology could help the company deliver ground, air and space-based intelligence support, she said. Zeta Associates has about 350 employees based in Fairfax and Denver, Colo., among a few other customer locations. Lockheed does not currently have any plans to move the employees — Zeta will become a wholly owned subsidiary after the acquisition closes, according to the company. Orbital launches one mission, awaiting another Dulles-based Orbital Sciences launched another NASA satellite last week, but the company’s earlier mission that suffered from an engine failure has yet to be rescheduled. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory, a NASA experiment to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide, was successfully launched aboard a Delta II rocket on July 2. The satellite will be operated by Orbital engineers from the Dulles Mission Operations Center as well as scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Orbital’s other mission, a supply run to the international space station set to launch from Virginia’s Wallops Island facility, was delayed when an AJ26 engine failed a standard inspection in May. The company said inspectors were making progress on the engine failure investigation, but a launch date was likely only after July 10. All other aspects of the mission are ready to go, Orbital said in an update on its Web site, including its Cygnus spacecraft. Earlier this year, Orbital announced a $5 billion merger with the defense arm of Alliant Techsystems. The union will create a new aerospace company named Orbital ATK. Mohana Ravindranath contributed to this report.


Local Digest: News about the Washington region

MARYLAND Funeral arrangements for Wayne K. Curry Viewing and funeral arrangements have been announced for former Prince George’s county executive Wayne K. Curry. Curry, 63, who died of lung cancer July 2, will lie in state at the Prince George’s County Administrative Building from9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday. The building is at 14741 Governor Oden Bowie Dr. A public viewing will also be held at First Baptist Church of Glenardern from 9:30 a.m. to11 a.m Thursday. The church is at 600 Watkins Park Dr. in Upper Marlboro. A service will follow the viewing at 11 a.m. The internment will be a private ceremony for family only. Curry, 63, was elected Prince George’s County executive in 1994 and served two terms. He helped transform the county into one of the nation’s wealthiest black communities. — Justin Jouvenal THE DISTRICT Thieves steal jewelry at Mazza Gallerie Two thieves made off with about $50,000 worth of jewelry Thursday afternoon after smashing cases at a high-end shop in Mazza Gallerie in Northwest Washington, D.C. police said. Officers went to the scene, in the 5200 block of Wisconsin Avenue, about 12:35 p.m. to investigate a report of a theft in progress, said Araz Alali, a police spokesman. Witnesses reported that two men entered Pampillonia Jewelers, put on masks and then smashed display cases with a hammer, Alali said. The men took assorted pieces of valuable jewelry before fleeing in a car. Police declined to describe the pieces that were stolen. — Justin Jouvenal MARYLAND Several killed in traffic fatalities At least four people were killed in separate traffic incidents Friday, including two people on motorcycles and one man on foot, authorities said. The pedestrian was killed in Prince George’s County, at Pennsylvania Avenue and Forestville Road. A man was killed in a car crash in the county in the Bowie area at Lanham Severn and Glenn Dale roads, said Cpl. Maria McKinney, a county police spokeswoman. One man who had been on a motorcycle was killed in Montgomery County about 6 p.m. at University Boulevard West and Dennis Avenue, county police said. A woman motorcycle passenger was killed in a separate crash later Friday at Sandy Spring Road and Birmingham Drive, police said. — Martin Weil


The U.S. should use its economic clout responsibly

It’s a scandal! It’s a conspiracy! It’s economic warfare! No, not the crimes the U.S. government is punishing the French bank BNP Paribas for perpetrating, but the punishment itself. So say French politicians, at least. On Monday, BNP Paribas pleaded guilty to violating U.S. economic sanctions against Sudan, Iran and Cuba. As part of the settlement, it agreed to pay nearly $9 billion and temporarily suspend some of its valuable dollar-clearing services. The magnitude of the penalties — the largest imposed on a financial institution for U.S. sanctions violations — reflect not only the astounding volume of forbidden transactions routed through the U.S. financial system but also the lengths the bank went to to hoodwink authorities. Internal documents revealed that BNP officials falsified records and obscured the countries involved, even as they privately recognized that some of the entities they served were party to a “humanitarian catastrophe” and directly supported terrorists. In other words, BNP officials knew all along that they were behaving badly, from both a moral and a legal standpoint. A logo for BNP Paribas SA sits on a window of a bank branch,. (Kosuke Okahara/Bloomberg) But no matter. The real problem, French politicians have asserted for the past few months, is that the United States shouldn’t be sticking its nose into BNP’s business. Last month, French President Francois Hollande confronted President Obama over “l’affaire BNP” at a D-Day event, insisting that Obama intervene to ease the proposed fine. Hollande also took up the cause with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European governments, according to the Financial Times. U.S. regulators, after all, are still investigating other foreign banks — including, reportedly, Germany’s Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, Italy’s UniCredit and France’s Credit Agricole and Societe Generale – that may have also violated our trade embargoes. The penalties in those cases could be similarly onerous. The United States is engaging in a cash grab from helpless foreigners, French politicians have intimated, and is attempting to hobble U.S. banks’ competitors. Large fines “sometimes offer some advantages in economic warfare,” French economic minister Arnaud Montebourg said recently, adding ominously, “Maybe we should imitate them.” Never mind that U.S. regulators recently slapped JPMorgan Chase with an even higher penalty of $13 billion over its mortgage business or that Bank of America is anticipating similarly scaled punishment. Extraterritorial bullies that we Americans are, we’ve resorted to stealing France’s lunch money just because we


U.S. confronts difficulties in arming Iraqi air forces with missiles and F-16s

“The more people you kill, the more terrorists you produce.” “Everything they are doing is running contrary to what we want them to do, because all they are doing is creating more fear and distrust,” said Richard Brennan, a senior political scientist at the Rand Corp. who studies Iraq’s air force. “There are a lot of indiscriminate attacks.” Human Rights Watch says Iraqi forces have also repeatedly struck Fallujah General Hospital this year, injuring doctors and staff. Iraq also reportedly dropped “barrel bombs” filled with scrap metal and explosives on Fallujah, a Sunni-dominated city, and the surrounding areas during a two-week period in May. Maliki’s office denies both charges. Proponents of training foreign air forces in targeted killings say the tactics will decrease the number of civilians killed. But even supporters recognize the risks inherent in arming unstable allies with such lethal technology. “None of this is perfect,” said retired Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, who was Air Force chief of staff from 2008 to 2012 when the Iraqi program began. “You have to be very judicious to act in a lethal way against potential targets. . . . I don’t have any problem acting against combatants as long as there is probable cause. It’s a balancing act. I watch people struggle with it.” Iraq is buying 36 F-16s, which will give it a greatly enhanced ability to kill people from a distance. In 2011, Iraq delayed a pending $1 billion contract for the first 18 of the planes, saying it could not afford them because it needed the money for food aid to the poor. The contract was restarted in late 2012. Twelve of the 18 Iraqi pilots undergoing F-16 training are at an Air Force facility in Tucson. Two have advanced to the final stage and should be certified to fly as lead pilots in mid-August, according to Tom Fox, a civilian government employee who manages the F-16 training program. Six others have qualified as wingmen who would accompany the lead pilot in separate planes, and four are in basic training, Fox said. The plan is to train a total of 54 pilots. Fox said Iraq was having trouble paying the agreed-upon price for the training, so the Air Force created a payment plan to make it more affordable and keep it on track. Aaron Gregg is attached to The Post’s Investigative Unit through a program with American University.


Business digest

2010. The latter two settled the case the same day it was filed. The states include Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Missouri, Maryland, Arizona and Iowa. AmEx says it commands only 26 percent of the market, as defined by consumer spending. If debit cards are included, as AmEx insists, its share would drop to 15 percent. With such a small market share, AmEx says it is incapable of harming competition. However, the Justice Department has said it can show that AmEx’s behavior had an “adverse” effect on competition, regardless of its market share. — Reuters Also in Business ● The nationwide average rate for a 30-year mortgage dipped to 4.12 percent, down from 4.14 last week, mortgage company Freddie Mac said. The average for the 15-year mortgage was unchanged this week at 3.22 percent. Rates on one-year adjustable mortgages averaged 2.38 percent this week, down from 2.40 percent last week. ● The U.S. trade deficit fell in May as U.S. exports hit an all-time high, helped by a jump in exports of petroleum products. The trade deficit narrowed 5.6 percent in May, to $44.4 billion, after hitting a two-year high of $47 billion in April, the Commerce Department reported. Exports of goods and services rose 1 percent to a record $195.5 billion in May while imports fell a slight 0.3 percent to $239.8 billion. ● PetSmart shares surged 13 percent to close at $67.28 after hedge fund Jana Partners disclosed an activist stake in the pet-care company and urged it to undertake a strategic review, including a potential sale. Jana, the $10 billion firm run by Barry Rosenstein that’s known for pushing corporate managements to make changes, acquired about 9.9 percent of Phoenix-based PetSmart in stock and options, according to a regulatory filing, and “expects to have discussions” with management, the board and other investors. ● U.S. services firms expanded again last month but at a slightly slower pace than they did in May. The Institute for Supply Management said its service-sector index slipped to 56 last month, down from May’s 56.3 reading. Any figure above 50 indicates expansion, however. The services survey covers businesses that employ 90 percent of the workforce, including retail, construction, health-care and financial services firms. ● BlackBerry is selling its research and development department in Germany to Volkswagen Infotainment, a subsidiary of the automaker that makes interactive technology for vehicle dashboards. The companies said the deal will


Food Cowboy app helps charities get passed-over produce onto plates faster

Brett Meyers, left, founder of Nourish Now, and Roger Gordon of Food Cowboy load Meyers’s truck with produce from Mexican Fruits. Once the produce is picked up, it is delivered quickly to those in need. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post) Behind a Mexican produce market in Northeast Washington on Tuesday, three laborers were stacking boxes of slightly bruised tomatoes, bananas and oranges next to a dumpster. A white refrigerated van pulled up, and driver Brett Meyers jumped out. To him, the imperfect produce was a precious find, and he was just in time to sort the items and salvage them. “These are great,” said Meyers, inspecting the tomatoes. “A little too black,” he said, discarding some of the bananas. “Look — these are almost blue,” he noted with a scowl as he pointed to a bag of moldy oranges and then tossed it into the trash. “We can’t take the risk of people getting sick,” he said. Meyers, who runs Nourish Now, a private food charity in Rockville, had already picked up a dozen boxes of chilled broccoli from a Korean warehouse manager across the street. Now he had four more crates to stash in his van. Within two hours, the produce would be boxed with other donations, and by the next day, it would be delivered to needy families in Maryland. The day’s scavenging success was based on more than luck. Meyers also had some high-tech help from Food Cowboy, an organization that uses a mobile app to link facilities with excess produce with groups that can make sure it reaches hungry people while still fresh. Food Cowboy was founded two years ago by Roger Gordon, a former community-development activist on the West Coast who is now based in Bethesda. He said he decided to launch the nonprofit initiative after he learned that tons of edible fresh food was going to waste — tossed and left to rot in landfills — because there was no systematic or timely way to match supply with demand. Gustavo Balbuena, left, of Mexican Fruits; Brett Meyers, founder of Nourish Now; and Roger Gordon of Food Cowboy examine produce before loading it into Meyers's truck. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post) “We are a country that has a surplus of food and a surplus of hunger,” said Gordon, a 46-year-old lawyer. “Two million tons of fresh produce are wasted every year. There is no reason


Commercial drones are ready for takeoff

Gary Shapiro is chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association. Lightweight commercial drone aircraft are poised to transform industries from online retail to film and photography to farming and even Internet signal delivery. But delays in federal rule-making mean that U.S. businesses are stuck in limbo, unable to move forward with this exciting technology. While the rest of the world is putting these robots-on-wings to work in life-altering ways, U.S. policymakers continue to stifle innovation and economic growth by equivocating on the merits of drones. In 2007, the Federal Aviation Administration banned commercial drone use under the same rules that govern the use of model aircraft. Recently, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the intelligence committee, called for hefty regulation of drones. While the FAA has approved drones for use by hobbyists, as well as for one company to use them in remote parts of Alaska, it’s now time for the agency to consider whether more businesses should be allowed to fly them, given concerns about privacy and safety. Such issues have a real place in this debate, but continuing to keep commercial drones grounded is not the right answer. The issue of safety As the FAA continues to hold commercial drones in abeyance, it may not have much of a legal leg to stand on. For one thing, the rules are inconsistent. The agency goes only after operators who make money from drone use, which is why individual hobbyists can fly them without repercussions. Parrot product manager Francois Callou holds a Parrot Bebop drone during a Parrot event in San Francisco, Thursday, May 8, 2014. The Parrot Bebop drone, which has a 14-megapixel fish-eye camera lens and battery life of about 12 minutes flying time, is scheduled to be released later this year. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) (Jeff Chiu/AP) Then there are questions about whether the 2007 ban is enforceable. In March, a federal judge threw out a $10,000 fine the FAA imposed on a Swiss drone operator who used a drone to shoot a promotional video at the University of Virginia in 2011, on the grounds that the FAA failed to follow proper rule-making procedures. The agency has appealed the ruling to the National Transportation Safety Board. Sadly, there are plenty of examples of the FAA squelching drone use rather than developing a needed policy framework. The Washington Nationals are facing potential fines for using a drone to take


Q&A: CEO Robert McCann talks about the turnaround at UBS Group Americas

thought of as someone who charges market rates. I believe that if you give away your intelligence or your balance sheet, you fail. Many investors missed out on the market gains of recent years. Do you think investors are still overly cautious after the recession? Should they be? Our clients are holding between 28 and 32 percent in cash, based on our surveys. That doesn’t mean that in their UBS portfolios they’re holding that much, but maybe at UBS and at their bank. We do these research pieces: What is rich? What is old? Rich is now $5 million. Eighty is the new 60. One thing we determined is that people have redefined the word “risk.” Risk used to mean the volatility that you could live with in your portfolio. And today we think a big group of people have redefined risk to mean, “What can I afford to lose permanently?” So everybody talks about the fact that people have missed out on the market move. If somebody has missed out for conscious reasons, I don’t know that I can be critical of that. We have clients who decide they want to do 30 percent in cash, and we help them do that — and with the other 70 percent, we try to help them invest for the long term. What differences are you seeing in investing approaches between generations? I have two millennials in my house. There are all these generalizations about millennials and how they act. Our work would indicate that millennials aren’t as self-directed as a lot of people want to portray them and that they are going to want advice. When they make a big financial decision, which for most of us is a mortgage, they often get referrals from family members or somebody that they know or trust. We also think millennials are going to be more like their grandparents than their parents. My dad’s view on investing in the stock market is that’s something rich people do. Now, if I go to my daughters, both of them are working. But they had to work really hard to get jobs and have watched their friends struggle just as hard to get a start. My older daughter only gets to work 30 hours a week. She would work 50, but if she works more than 30 they have to give her health benefits. And my younger


The epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse can be curbed

PRESCRIPTION OPIOIDS enable millions of Americans to overcome what might otherwise be agonizing, crippling pain. Yet, each year, those same wonder drugs sicken, addict and even kill thousands of others. Prescription opioid overdoses caused more than 16,000 deaths in the United States during 2010, the last year for which statistics are available — quadruple the number recorded in 1999. Public- and private-sector officials were slow to respond to this public health crisis, but there are signs that new measures designed to curb the illicit flow of painkillers are producing lifesaving results. A report released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that overdose deaths in Florida — one of the states hit hardest by painkiller abuse — fell by 17 percent between 2010 and 2012, from 3,201 to 2,666. Incremental as that decrease may seem, it stands in blessed contrast to the 2003-2010 period, in which deaths rose 75 percent, from 1,829 to 3,201. As the CDC notes, the data suggest that most of the decline is due to fewer prescription opioid overdoses — and that, in turn, reflects policy changes that shut down 250 of the state’s notorious “pill mills,” as high-volume pain-medication dispensaries are known. Once home to 98 high-volume prescribers, Florida now has no such doctors. The United States remains far and away the world’s largest user of prescription opioids, with 259 million prescriptions written in 2012, according to the CDC — twice as many, per capita, as the next-largest consumer, Canada. A separate CDC report issued the same day as the Florida update showed that prescription rates vary widely among states. The range is so wide — prescriptions for oxymorphone were 22 times more frequent in Tennessee than in Minnesota, for example — that it is difficult to account for it through any legitimate medical explanation. The five highest prescribing jurisdictions remain a handful of Southern states where the epidemic of prescription opioid abuse began: Alabama, Tennessee, West Virginia, Kentucky and Oklahoma. The Florida numbers demonstrate that the epidemic can be curbed, even where it seems unstoppable. Additionally, Florida has not seen the same rise in heroin abuse that has accompanied prescription opioid crackdowns elsewhere, and which has caused some critics to argue that government was merely shifting addicts into an even more dangerous source of supply. The CDC figures show that heroin-related deaths rose by only 60 in Florida between 2010 and


Can plants hear? In a study, vibrations prompt some to boost their defenses

a caterpillar chewing. The other group was left in silence. When later faced with a real caterpillar, the plants that heard chewing noises produced a greater amount of insecticide-like chemicals than the silence group. They also seemed able to pick out those vibrations signaling danger; playing wind noises or insect mating calls did not trigger the same chemical boost. A cabbage butterfly caterpillar eats an Arabidopsis plant. On an adjacent leaf, a piece of reflective tape helps record vibrations. (Roger Meissen) Although the mechanism of how plants can discern sounds is not known, a deeper investigation could lead to advances in agriculture and natural crop resistance — as opposed to spraying costly and harmful pesticides. “We can imagine applications of this where plants could be treated with sound or genetically engineered to respond to certain sounds that would be useful for agriculture,” said study author and biologist Heidi Appel. The study was published online Tuesday in the journal Oecologia. Despite not having brains or nervous systems in the traditional sense, plants are surprisingly sophisticated. They can communicate with each other and signal impending danger to their neighbors by releasing chemicals into the air. Plants constantly react to their environment — not only light and temperature changes, but also physical stimuli. Two famous examples are the Venus’ flytrap, which snaps shut when an unsuspecting bug contacts one of its trigger hairs, and the touch-me-not plant (Mimosa pudica), which shrinks and closes its leaves upon even a slight touch. “Plants certainly have the capacity to feel mechanical loads,” said plant biologist Frank Telewski, who was not involved in the research. “They can respond to gravity, wind, ice or an abundance of fruit.” But trying to prove that plants can sense sound has been difficult. University of Missouri-Columbia researchers Heidi Appel and Rex Cocroft found that plants respond to the sounds that caterpillars make when eating nibbling on their leaves. (Roger Meissen) “There is a long history of people interested in whether plants could hear sound, and that usually involved sounds that are very salient to us — music or tones of pure sound — just to see if plants would react,” said study author and biologist Reginald Corcroft. Even though some swear that a soothing voice or classical music works wonders for their greenery, the scientific evidence is spotty. Experts believe that music in particular is too complex and varied to be


Congress’s head-in-the-sand approach to climate change

ANY GOOD business executive knows that the world is full of risks, ignored at a company’s peril. Interest rates could spike. China could change its currency policy. Chaos in Iraq could push up gasoline prices. Smart firms account for these possibilities as best they can, adjusting business plans so that they aren’t caught flat-footed. The same can be said of wise societies. In late June , a bipartisan group of economic leaders argued that the United States must take this approach when facing the risks of climate change. It’s still not perfectly clear how sensitive the climate will be to a given increase in atmospheric greenhouse-gas emissions. Nor is it perfectly clear how ongoing temperature change will affect complicated Earth systems. But these are not excuses for doing nothing, or too little, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. To back up its claims, the group — led by, among others, Hank Paulson and Bob Rubin, treasury secretaries for George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, respectively — commissioned an analysis of the risks that climate change poses to the United States. They only attempted to quantify the impact of a few changes that scientists are confident will occur to some degree with unabated warming: sea-level rise, higher storm surges, heat extremes, higher demand for energy and changes in agricultural production. As with a climate assessment the Obama administration published this year, the results should — but probably won’t — snap Congress into action. Scientists already are observing climate changes in the United States. They will grow worse. Higher seas mean higher storm surges and more at-risk property along heavily populated coasts — $66 billion to $106 billion worth will likely be below sea level by mid-century. The annual national storm cleanup tab will balloon. As the country warms, the average American will likely see a month’s worth — or more — of days over 95 degrees. The South and Southwest will be much hotter than that. The analysis considered how many cold-related deaths further warming would prevent and concluded that heat-related deaths would outweigh the potential benefit. Similarly, farmers in northern latitudes might see longer growing seasons, but those farther south, in what has been prime farming country, will have to make costly adjustments, changing what they grow and developing crops that can adapt to climate extremes. In the long term, uncontrolled warming could even produce days in the United States in


Backlash has begun against gluten-free dieters

Hanson Cheng, owner of The Green Spoon, which prepares gluten free and organic meals for delivery around the DC metro area. (Photo by The Green Spoon/The Green Spoon) The swelling ranks of Americans adopting gluten-free diets have given rise to another hot trend: people calling the whole thing a bunch of baloney. And then requesting that the baloney be sandwiched between two pieces of white bread. Served with a cookie for dessert. David Klimas has a friend who recently went gluten-free, a development that the 46-year-old real estate sales manager greets with a slow eye roll. He thinks that the gluten-free thing is just a fad, promoted by food companies “as a way of making money.” “In the ’50s, everyone had ulcers,” he says. “Then, it was back problems. Now, it’s gluten.” Gluten abstinence has grown dramatically over the past several years. According to a survey by the NPD Group, a market-research firm, nearly a third of adults say that they’re trying to either eliminate or cut back on gluten, a combination of proteins found in wheat and other grains. And this movement has spawned a burgeoning food industry valued at at least $4 billion and perhaps more than $10 billion — and climbing. Entire aisles at grocery stores are dedicated to the diet. Restaurant chains including Bob Evans, Hooters and, impressively, Uno Pizzeria and Grill, offer gluten-free menus. Trade shows devoted to gluten-free products have popped up nationwide. Bars use menu icons to denote gluten-free beers. Try these gluten-free main courses from our Recipe Finder any night of the week. Click the title of each dish for the recipe. All of which makes some people want to bang their heads against a flour mill. “I don’t get it,” Klimas says of his friend’s decision to cut gluten from his diet. “How can you all of a sudden be gluten-free? He’s 45. We’ve been friends for 19 years. Sometimes, I think it’s just for him to be cool in front of the waiters.” “He used to eat pancakes by the dozen!” adds Klimas’s husband, Kurt Rieschick, as the two sat over lunch at a downtown Chipotle. (Klimas was chowing down on a taco made with a flour tortilla. “Delicious!” he reported.) About 1 percent of the American population suffers from celiac disease, according to the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness. This is a confounding affliction in which gluten consumption causes


U-Md. supercomputer lands on list of top performers

Every university presumably provides a home for thought, but one of the Washington area’s premier institutions of higher education houses something more, and that is deepthought2. Deepthought2, a new super-capable supercomputer, is owned and operated by the University of Maryland and it has made a splash in the world of fast calculation. Last month it was ranked the 14th most powerful computer among all of those at American universities by a computer group that compiles a list of top-performing supercomputers. A memo will go out Monday to the campus community that heralds the availability of the new cluster of computers, said Fran LoPresti, a top tech official at the College Park campus. Deepthought2 is an array of computing equipment able to process 300 trillion operations every second, making it — in computer-speak — a 300 teraflop machine. That capacity is the equivalent of about 10,000 laptops working in concert, university officials said. “People are very excited about it,” said Phyllis Dickerson Johnson, a university spokeswoman, It has 2,000 times the storage of an average laptop and its internal network provides more than 50 times the speed of broadband. This prodigy of information processing is expected to push obstacles from the path of campus researchers, freeing them from the need to apply to access equivalent capacity elsewhere. It is housed about two miles from the College Park campus, in the university’s research zone in Riverdale Park. To LoPresti, the most important thing is that the $4.2 million cost was met by the university, without federal funding. “It’s a lot for a university to put together,” she said. As for deepthought, the predecessor computer cluster, that will continue in operation, officials said. And as for the name, bestowing such a sobriquet is part of the culture of the academic computing world. The particular handle was inspired by the book “A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,” LoPresti said. The ranking was released last month by TOP500.rg, which makes a list of top computers twice a year. In the most recent listing, deepthought2 ranked 347th in the world. “Having one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers” shows that the school aims to offer the capabilities needed for a dramatic boost to scientific discovery and exploration,” said Ann G. Wylie, interim vice president for information technology.


Recent Salisbury University graduate named as victim of College Park hit and run

who had just graduated from college was struck by a car and killed early Sunday in a hit-and-run incident in College Park, authorities said. The woman, identified as Janelle Marie Oni of Randallstown, Md., was killed about 3 a.m. on the same stretch of roadway where two other pedestrians had been killed in separate incidents earlier this year. Oni was struck around 3 a..m. in the 7600 block of Baltimore Avenue, the Prince George’s County police said. They said that a man was arrested shortly after the incident. He was identified as Jacky Luangraj, 33, of Manassas. Police said that Luangraj was facing 13 charges, including negligent auto homicide-under the influence, driving under the influence and reckless endangerment. At the time of his arrest, his blood alcohol reading was twice the legal limit, police said in a statement. Reached Sunday night at the family home in Randallstown, Oni’s mother, Ana Burnett, called her daughter “a bright shining star” who “had a bright future ahead of her.” Burnett said her daughter had just graduated from Salisbury University in Salisbury, Md., with a degree in communications and conflict resolution. Oni was planning to begin work on a master’s degree, her mother said. She said her daughter hoped to teach at the college or high school level, with the aim of helping young people. The area where the incident occurred is a bustling commercial zone just south of the main campus of the University of Maryland, and houses many stores and restaurants. The 21-year-old had been having dinner with sorority friends, her mother said. She was preparing to go home and had called her mother a little earlier to say she was coming, Burnett said. Apparently, she had left the restaurant shortly before her friends, who did not see what happened to her, her mother said, adding that she herself was trying to learn exactly what happened. “She was a special person,” Burnett said. “She touched lives . . . I could not have asked for a better daughter.” The person who struck her daughter “took my star,” Burnett said. “He took my angel.” Police said their investigation indicated that Oni was struck by a driver who was headed north on Baltimore Avenue and did not stay at the scene. They said a minivan was stopped shortly afterward at Baltimore Avenue and the Capital Beltway. Get updates on your area delivered via e-mail.


Dan Barber on ‘The Third Plate’: ‘Farm-to-table . . . has a fallacy attached to it’

You can’t look at these things in single-ingredient paradigms. You need to look at the whole farm. That’s how I got to cooking the third plate, cooking the whole farm, because how could you support just one thing? The third plate is a way to say that farm-to-table has become too individualized. You’re supporting these individual farms and really individual crops, like tomatoes and peas and asparagus, which are great, and they make the farmer a lot of money because they’re specialty. But from a soil perspective, they’re very expensive. They’re like the Hummers of the vegetable world. Besides the silliness of calling yourself a “farm-to-table chef” and supporting one ingredient from a farm, the shortsightedness of that is just not sustainable. If farm-to-table eating isn’t the full answer to fixing the food system, what is? We need a culture around food that puts it all together. If you eat a cuisine, a pattern of eating, it doesn’t allow you to just eat tomatoes, asparagus, peas and grass-fed steaks. That’s why the farm-to-table movement is not going to go any further. I see promise with farmers markets as long as we stop heralding these cream crops and start to engage in a conversation with farmers — and I think chefs are uniquely positioned to do this — to understand what I didn’t understand just a few years ago. I’m not saying farm-to-table is the wrong idea. It’s great. But it has a fallacy attached to it, which is that it can change the world. I’m a little skeptical now. Your book talks a lot about how cuisines relate to soil health. Can you expound on that? What I realized after five years of researching cuisines was that all of them — all of them — are built on nitrogen-fixing crops. If you’re in India, you’re looking at lentils; if you’re in France, looking at beans; in Italy, beans and different grains, like chickpeas. Mexico does beans. They were all negotiations that peasants made to eke out something from the land, to get fertility back into the soil after the crop is harvested, because we eat fertility for energy. They were just trying to figure out, how do you extract a harvest and get fertility back in? And they built their cuisines to support that. But we in America have borrowed mozzarella cheese, tomatoes and wheat as Italian cuisine. Because we’re


DEET does more good than harm in protecting people from dangerous insects

The June 24 DEET is an Environmental Protection Agency-registered product that can keep people safe from life-threatening diseases. While there is a risk of reaction — most commonly minor skin irritation, reported in about 1 out of 25,000 DEET users — insect repellents with DEET offer protection from diseases such as West Nile virus, Lyme disease and the new chikungunya disease. The EPA cares about protecting public health, and both the EPA and CDC advise that individuals protect themselves from mosquito and tick bites with chemical-based insect repellents such as those containing DEET. When using these products, it is critical to follow all the directions and precautions on the label. While the EPA agrees that the public should take precautions to avoid ticks and mosquitoes, we urge people to stay safe by using the most effective approved products available. Jim Jones, Washington The writer is the assistant administrator of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention at the Environment Protection Agency.


Trial of Boston bombing suspect’s friend begins with words from Tsarnaev

In this courtroom sketch, defendant Azamat Tazhayakov, left, a college friend of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, listens to testimony by FBI Special Agent Phil Christiana, right, during the first day of his federal trial Monday in Boston. (Jane Flavell Collins/AP) BOSTON — Tsarnaev also texted the friend, Azamat Tazhayakov, 90 minutes after the bombings, saying, “Don’t go thinking it’s me,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephanie Siegmann said. Siegmann’s comments came during opening statements at Tazhayakov’s trial, a prosecution that promises to provide a glimpse into the government’s case against Tsarnaev. Tsarnaev is scheduled to go on trial in November on charges that carry the possibility of the death penalty. Prosecutors say he and his older brother, Tamerlan, built two bombs and placed them near the finish line of the 2013 marathon to retaliate against the United States for its actions in Muslim countries. The explosions killed three people and injured more than 260. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after a shootout with police several days later. Tazhayakov, 20, has pleaded not guilty to obstruction-of-justice and conspiracy charges. He and his roommate, Dias Kadyrbayev, went to Tsarnaev’s dorm room at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth several days after the bombing and took a laptop computer and a backpack containing fireworks, which had black powder spilling out or had been emptied of their powder, Siegmann told the jury. “The government will prove to you that the defendant and his co-conspirator removed the backpack for one reason, and that reason was to protect their friend who they had just learned was one of the two suspected marathon bombers,” Siegmann said. Prosecutors acknowledge that Kadyrbayev is the one who put the backpack in the trash but said Tazhayakov agreed to get rid of it. Siegmann described a conversation Tsarnaev had with Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev as they ate at a restaurant a month before the bombings. “Tsarnaev told the defendant and Kadyrbayev that it was good to die as a shaheed, or a martyr, as you would die with a smile on your face and go straight to heaven,” she said. During that same meal, Siegmann said, Tsarnaev also told his friends that he knew how to make a bomb and went on to list the ingredients, including gunpowder or explosive powder like what was found in the fireworks inside the backpack. Tazhayakov’s defense attorney, Nicholas Wooldridge, urged jurors not to be swayed by the


Protecting U.S. troops means being able to master nimble, effective procurement

controversial within the military and among outside experts. Lamb pointed out to the House committee a danger that senior civilian Defense Department officials “frustrated with Pentagon processes are increasingly inclined to jettison disciplined defense analyses in favor of intuitive and impressionistic decision-making, which I think would be a mistake.” Some military analysts noted that the IED casualty rate was already declining because of changes in Gen. David H. Petraeus’s counterinsurgency tactics, so the MRAPs’ impact was marginal. Meanwhile, since 2007 the Army and Marines have been focusing on the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) to replace Humvees. The Army is projected to buy about 50,000 from fiscal 2015 to fiscal 2040, while the Marines’ plan calls for purchasing 5,500 JLTVs from fiscal 2015 to fiscal 2021, according to the Pentagon’s December 2012 Selected Acquisition Report. Together, the Army and Marine Corps have decided to keep only 10,000 MRAPs. The Army plans to keep 8,500 — most mothballed for contingencies — and get rid of about 7,500. Defense News has reported that about 2,000 MRAPs in Afghanistan are up for auction because it costs nearly $300,000 each to return them to the United States. Small numbers are being taken by U.S. police departments, and Pakistan is reportedly seeking some. Many are bound to be scrapped. One other aspect of the MRAP procurement story is worth recording. While the initial delay can be mainly attributed to the force development and requirements system — which is always concerned with the next big war — you cannot discount what Lamb described as the military “service cultures that generally undervalue irregular warfare capabilities.” “Service organizational cultures disincline the Pentagon to field capabilities for irregular warfare that compete with established warfighting programs,” Lamb said. To some degree, that led years ago to the Special Operations Command having its own procurement capability for specific gear and services for its unique missions. Now, according to Lamb, “if we want better niche capabilities for irregular warfare or joint capabilities for other major mission areas” outside traditional ground, sea and air warfare, “we will have to embrace alternative decision-making mechanisms and processes.” His major message is: “The intense oversight and rigid processes that govern large, long-term major acquisition programs are not appropriate for quick fielding of creative solutions in irregular and rapidly evolving circumstances.” Lessons from MRAP should be put to use. For previous Fine Print columns, go to washingtonpost.com/fedpage.


India’s Narendra Modi dreams of a modern rail system, but hurdles abound

panel report. In addition, about 3,000 people have died in the past decade in train accidents. In some parts of India, ticketless passengers ride on the roofs of trains, and some are electrocuted or fall off. Efforts to ban rooftop travel have gone nowhere. Sanitation is also generally poor, with station floors crammed with sleeping passengers, dogs and beggars. “Politicians keep adding new trains, stations and halts to satisfy their voters, without worrying about the capability of the rail tracks, condition of coaches and financial viability,” said Jai Prakash Batra, a former chairman of the Railway Board. And it’s not just about passengers. Economists say India’s railway system simply does not meet the needs of an aspiring economic and industrial powerhouse. The total rail length is woefully inadequate today, at a little over 40,000 miles, just 7,400 miles more than the country had when it gained independence from Britain in 1947, Sachan said. “About two-thirds of freight in India travels on-road because we do not have enough rail tracks,” said Arvind Mahajan, a partner and infrastructure expert at the consultancy KPMG India. “The priority is always given to the passenger trains, so freight trains have to wait. This raises the cost of logistics and makes Indian manufacturing uncompetitive. “Your goods reach when they reach. There is no guarantee,” Mahajan added. “And you can’t even track your consignment.” India is building dedicated freight corridors with financial assistance from Japan and the World Bank, but construction is running five years behind schedule, officials say. Such delay is commonplace. In 2007, the country invited private investors for the first time to build electric and diesel locomotives. Companies including GE and Bombardier bid for the projects, but after seven years a contract has still not been finalized, Batra said. “It is an archaic organization,” said an official in the Rail Ministry, commenting on the system on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media. “Instead of decisions, you have endless deliberations. Nobody has the power to make things happen, but everyone can stop work from happening.” This week, Modi’s government announced that it would upgrade 10 train stations and make them look like airports, introduce high-speed trains on nine routes, and begin work on India’s first bullet train, connecting Mumbai to Modi’s home state of Gujarat. “Rail is not just a mode of transport; it is an engine


Chat Leftovers: A vegetable gardening twofer

one at the best place I could think of: a local extension service office. And there in the Fairfax County office of the Virginia Cooperative Extension was extension agent Adria Bordas, who had some advice. First, the battle-scarred eggplant. “With thrips, the damage is mostly cosmetic. Personally, I would peel it and eat it,” Bordas said. “Unless there’s so much injury on it that it’s tough.” There’s one qualifier. “Sometimes thrips carry certain strains of plant viruses,” she said. Those wouldn’t be problematic for a normally healthy person. But in rare cases — say, for someone with a compromised immune system — it might be wiser not to press your luck. With that, Bordas proceeded gamely into the zucchini realm. Here’s the deal: If you grow zucchini, you probably know that the plant generates two types of flowers, male and female. The male flowers pollinate the female flowers, and the female flowers develop into the squash you’re yearning for. What happens, Bordas says, is that the male flowers appear first. “That way the pollen is around for the bees to pollinate the female flowers,” she says. As usual, nature has it all planned out. There’s no point in having the female flowers bloom early, when there’s less chance they’ll be pollinated. So the males get a pretty good head start. To confirm that that’s what’s happening in your garden, check to see what the blooms look like. The males are on longer, slender stems. The females have a swollen spot at the base of the bloom that will develop into a squash if the blossom is fertilized. I wouldn’t be surprised if those early blooms that have been disappointing you by failing to turn into zucchini are all males. Your problem will correct itself. Once again, good things come to those who wait. For those of you who are about to be blessed with an eggplant or zucchini bounty, see below for a list of recipes from our Recipe Finder that will help you put the crop to good use. And there are plenty more where those came from. Recipes: Seasonal Caponata Eggplant “Meatballs” in Tomato Sauce Roasted Eggplant Dip Spicy Braised Eggplant With Prunes Sumac-Spiced Eggplant “Schnitzel” Stir-Fried Beef, Zucchini and Sweet Onions Shaved Summer Squash Salad Stuffed Zucchini Zucchini Fritters Skillet Vegetable Spoonbread Cobbler More from Food: Weeknight Vegetarian The Immigrant’s Table Smoke Signals Spirits Column Beer Column


Asabech Abayneh, a ‘mother figure,’ killed in Alexandria mystery

At 17, Asabech Abayneh found herself raising three young boys in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, cooking from scratch and washing laundry by hand. Their mother, her sister, had moved to Virginia. Over time, the children left to join their mother, and Abayneh followed about nine years ago. In the United States, Abayneh found a job at an Ethiopian cafe and market in Falls Church, just a few months after it opened. Her co-workers became another family to nurture. She worked long hours, attended church daily and shared her sister’s one-bedroom apartment in Alexandria. Abayneh was found dead in that apartment Friday, strangled in a crime that has mystified her relatives and co-workers. The 43-year-old had no enemies, they said, and nothing in her life seemed amiss. “She was working on Thursday all day with us. Everything was fine and perfect,” said Birhan Awol, the owner of the cafe where Abayneh worked. A co-worker drove her home safely that evening, he said. Awol described Abayneh as a “mother figure” who would always make sure the other employees had eaten breakfast and made time to feed themselves during busy lunch hours. She often worked 12 hours a day, six days a week, he said. In six years, she never took a vacation. When she wasn’t at the cafe, he said, she was at church. Asabech Abayneh (Family photo) “Her life was church and work, church and work,” Awol said. “She’s just a hardworking woman, the most wonderful woman I have ever known.” Yonas Mekonen, Abayneh’s nephew, echoed that praise, saying his aunt was responsible for him and his brothers when his mother left Ethiopia for the United States. “She pretty much took care of the whole family,” said Mekonen, 35. “She sacrificed all her life to take care of us.” Friday was supposed to be Abayneh’s day off, but Awol asked her to come in at 10 a.m. in case the Fourth of July brought an influx of customers. At 10:40, the very punctual employee still had not arrived. Awol called her cellphone, and her sister answered. As they spoke on the phone, Awol said, Abayneh’s sister discovered the body. Mekonen said his mother was sleeping in the bedroom of the shared apartment while Abayneh slept in the den. Two rooms separated them, he said, and his mother heard nothing. There were no signs of a break-in or a struggle. Abayneh and her


Some NIH employees irked by agency’s failure to notify them about smallpox vials

The administrative building of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. (J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press) As news was breaking Tuesday about the discovery of decades-old vials of smallpox virus in a building on the sprawling Bethesda campus of the National Institutes of Health, NIH officials reached out to Montgomery County officials and telephoned Maryland health officials. Senior NIH executives also were alerted. But no general notification was sent to the 18,000 NIH employees who work at the main campus of the nation’s medical research institution, according to the agency. One researcher said Wednesday that some employees thought they should have been told, even though there was no evidence of infectious-exposure risk to workers or the public. “I think the responsible thing to do would have been to inform us without us having to find out through the media,” said the researcher, who works at the clinical center on the main campus and did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation. In 2011, a deadly infection untreatable by nearly every antibiotic spread through the NIH clinical center but was not made public until a year later, when researchers published a scientific paper about how they had traced it. NIH pledged to do better about informing local and state officials about high-profile diseases or outbreaks, even those that do not pose an obvious public risk. In the case of the smallpox discovery, an NIH spokeswoman said the agency did not notify employees because the vials were secure and did not present a safety concern or threat. The directors of the NIH’s 27 institutes and centers were informed Tuesday morning. This 1975 electronmicrograph shows the smallpox virus. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via AP) The FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta are investigating how the smallpox samples were prepared and stored in the building. The CDC sent an e-mail to all employees and contractors midday Tuesday informing them of the discovery, about the same time that it alerted media. “We’ve learned that you simply can’t overcommunicate when it comes to an event like this,” said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner. Last month, live anthrax bacteria was released accidentally at CDC labs in Atlanta, resulting in as many as 84 employees getting vaccines or antibiotics as a precaution and a lab director being reassigned. CDC employees working in labs adjacent to the affected areas complained at


How to help native bird species take flight in the District

Thank you to Thomas Heath for highlighting D.C. area residents’ passion for feeding local birds in his Value Added column [“A business for the birds, and their free-spending friends,” news, July 7]. It is heartwarming to know how much people enjoy and care about birds. However, trees and grass are not paradise for our resident and migratory breeding birds. Green lawns are often maintained through synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, which can be toxic to birds and wreak havoc on the environment. Our region’s dominant natural ecosystems are forests, meadows and wetlands. Hence, the birds also need understory trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants. Our common backyard birds have declined by 70 percent since 1967, mainly from habitat loss. Native species beyond cardinals, blue jays and sparrows would be more prevalent with more habitat variety , and it’s simple to add a native fruiting shrub or a patch of native wildflowers in back yards. Several online programs can provide assistance to anyone interested in helping our declining bird populations. Elaine Franklin, Arlington


Hints From Heloise: Kiss these stains goodbye

Dear Heloise: I love to use CLOTH NAPKINS in my home, because they look prettier than paper and are more environmentally stable. However, many female guests leave lipstick marks on the napkins after using them. Do you have a hint for removing these stains? -- Debbie W., via e-mail Yes, and it’s easy. Use an old towel or a couple of paper towels. Lay the lipstick-stained part of the napkin down on the towel. Take another towel, dampen it with rubbing alcohol (70 to 90 percent) and use it to dab the stained areas of the napkin. Check underneath as you work, and you should start to see the lipstick transfer onto the bottom towel. Continue to dab until the entire stain disappears. With longer-lasting lipsticks, this may take longer, but keep working, and the stains should come out. You also can use a prewash spray on both sides of the stain and scrub it with a small brush. -- Heloise P.S.: Here is a hint I learned from a friend: She put a paper napkin inside the cloth one, so the ladies could use that first (discreetly) to blot the lipstick. WET UMBRELLAS Dear Heloise: There are many ways to reuse the plastic bags that newspapers come in. I reuse them to hold wet umbrellas. I keep a couple of bags in my purse, and whenever it rains, I simply slip my umbrella into a bag before going inside. I hate carrying around a wet umbrella inside a store, and this solves the problem. -- L.Y. in Illinois SEPARATING GROCERIES Dear Heloise: I try to lump all of my errands together. Many times I have gone grocery shopping and then needed to go right back out again. When I know this is going to happen, I try to separate the grocery bags in the car. When loading the groceries, bags that have food that needs to be refrigerated or frozen go on the right side of my trunk. Bags with groceries that can be put away later go on the left side. When I get home, I know which ones need to be put away and which can wait until later. -- R.T. in San Antonio MUFFIN PAN Dear Heloise: Whenever I get a piece of furniture or something else that needs assembling using small parts, I get out a muffin tin. Before I begin to assemble, I separate


ABC Board opens Adams Morgan to new restaurant liquor licenses

Looking for solutions to Adams Morgan’s ongoing struggle to attract new business while shielding residents from the nuisances of the famously rowdy neighborhood, the D.C. Alcoholic Beverage Control Board voted Wednesday to allow new restaurant liquor licenses for the first time in five years. But two months after hearing public comments on the flow of liquor in the Northwest community, the board also renewed the moratorium on nightclub and tavern licenses for three years and rejected the Advisory Neighborhood Commission’s proposal to prohibit new entertainment permits for restaurants looking to operate more like nightclubs. Board members essentially copied their recent decisions in Glover Park and East Dupont Circle, where they renewed moratoriums for three years, instead of five, while allowing more restaurant licenses. “It is our hope that allowing new restaurants to locate within Adams Morgan without the mantle of artificially inflated licensing costs will bring to the neighborhood the vibrancy it has been missing, without the negative impacts caused by other types of alcohol establishments,” board Chair Ruthanne Miller said before the unanimous vote. The decision to open Adams Morgan to new restaurant licenses follows a study, released last year by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, which noted that the neighborhood had stagnated economically since the liquor-license moratorium went into effect. The study asserts the moratorium “helped push development to other parts of the city” and raised the “price of obtaining a new license, making it hard for new businesses to start and for existing business owners to expand.” A Washington Post analysis this year showed that, when compared with Adams Morgan, restaurant and tavern licenses were issued at a far greater rate in thriving neighborhoods such as Shaw and Logan Circle during a five-year span between 2008 and 2013. Adams Morgan’s ANC had also argued, in its proposal to the board, that allowing new restaurant licenses would “foster competition among existing establishments and raise the level of quality within the commercial district.” The new restaurants, in other words, might push out lesser operators who attract the hard-drinking crowds that spill into the streets early in the morning, starting fights and turning lawns into public urinals. The Kalorama Citizens Association, in a separate proposal, rejected these theories and asked the board to renew the moratorium for five more years. In its ruling, the board essentially agreed with the ANC, while rejecting its proposal to ban new entertainment permits (known


FDA has free-speech, safety issues to weigh in review of ‘off-label’ drug marketing rules

Wilkes, a medical professor at the University of California at Davis who has written about drug promotion. “It’s hard to know what’s legitimate and what’s not,” he said. “I’d like to see [the FDA] err on the side of overregulation and making companies prove that these drugs work” for off-label uses. For their part, FDA officials say they are trying to find a reasonable balance. In a statement, the agency said that given “the emerging case law,” it is working to “harmonize the fundamental public health interests underlying FDA’s mission and statutory framework with the interests in the dissemination of truthful and non-misleading information.” The agency permits companies to share certain off-label information with doctors, though with plenty of strings attached. For instance, the FDA has said manufacturers can distribute certain peer-reviewed medical-journal articles, but the articles should be unabridged and handed out separately from drug promotional materials. Also, the FDA says, companies should disclose any funding of the research behind such articles. Thus far, the wrangling over the rules appears to have had little effect on the Justice Department’s determination to take on misbranding cases. Last fall, Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $2.2 billion to resolve civil and criminal allegations involving the marketing of off-label, unapproved uses for the antipsychotic drug Risperdal to the elderly, children and mentally disabled people, among other accusations. The previous summer, British manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline agreed to plead guilty to criminal offenses and to pay $3 billion to settle charges that included promoting its best-selling antidepressants for off-label uses. Kamp, of the Coalition for Healthcare Communication, said the FDA has an opportunity this year to provide clarity on what has long remained a murky and contentious issue. “As this plays out and the rules get more clear and more consistent with the First Amendment, the doctors who prescribe drugs and the patients who take them are going to know more about the safety and efficacy of those drugs than they would without these changes in the rules,” Kamp said. “It’s going to be a step forward.” Wilkes, the medical professor, disagrees. Without maintaining stringent rules and harsh penalties for violating them, he says, companies could too easily push drugs for uses without the solid evidence to support them. He pointed to the case of Vioxx, a once-popular painkiller that Merck, its manufacturer, illegally promoted for rheumatoid arthritis before the drug was discovered to actually


National Zoo welcomes 4 litters of red panda cubs

One of the new panda cubs gets extra care to ensure its survival. It may be as big as a cat one day. (Janice Sveda/Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute ) The National Zoo’s giant panda cub, Bao Bao, will celebrate her first birthday next month. But the zoo also recently welcomed four litters of red panda cubs at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia, according to the zoo. The institute is where the zoo does a lot of its research on animal care and reproduction. Four pairs of red pandas live there, and all four had babies this year. The 10 cubs born were the most they’ve ever had in one year. Seven have survived, the zoo said. The latest pair to have cubs was Shama and Rusty. Rusty gained national attention last year after he escaped from his enclosure on Asia Trail at the zoo. Shama gave birth to three cubs June 26, the zoo said. Red pandas normally live in cool bamboo forests in China, Nepal and Burma (all countries in Asia). There are fewer than 10,000 of them living in the wild. They usually grow to be about the size of a house cat. — Mari-Jane Williams


Montgomery County Animal Watch

This case was received recently by the Montgomery County Animal Services Division. For information, call 240-773-5900. This number provides recorded information on such topics 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. Repeat offenders Montgomery County Humane Society: Rockville Gaithersburg Adoptable cats at no-kill shelter: Gaithersburg Reduced fees for cat adoption: Germantown — Compiled by Lisa M. Bolton


IBM funnels $3B into cloud, big data research

A man watches a server at the booth of IBM during preparations for the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover, March 9, 2014. The company on Thursday announced it would invest $3 billion in cloud computing and big data research. (REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch) IBM is investing $3 billion in research that could benefit its cloud computing and big data services, the company announced on Thursday. The hefty investment — intended to span five years — will fuel research projects in chip development, according to IBM. While chip manufacturers have been rapidly reducing the size of their silicon chip transistors to make them cheaper and more efficient, silicon has physical limitations, IBM said — meaning that at some point, shrinking the technology will no longer reduce cost or power consumption. So the company is looking for new materials or structures as alternatives to silicon, IBM said. These might include, among others, carbon nanotubes, quantum computing (a system that relies on atomic particles called “qubits”) and neurosynaptic computing, a field of computing that simulates the human brain. “In the next ten years computing hardware systems will be fundamentally different as our scientists and engineers push the limits of semiconductor innovations to explore the post-silicon future,” Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president of IBM Systems and Technology Group, said in a statement. Research scientists based in Albany and Yorktown, NY; Alamaden, Calif.; and parts of Europe plan to work on these and other projects.


The U.S. should follow Ukraine’s lead and act unilaterally on Russia sanctions

support for his proxies. The Russian leader has been playing what NATO’s secretary general correctly termed a “double game,” offering fake compromises to the West while continuing his campaign to make Ukraine ungovernable. Mr. Putin has economic as well as military cards to play: He has suspended Russian gas deliveries to Ukraine and threatened to impose crippling trade tariffs. He has patience and plenty of time; for the moment he is popular at home, and the Russian stock market is rising. If he has been surprised by Mr. Poroshenko’s grit, then Mr. Putin can only be encouraged by the fecklessness of the European Union and the United States. At the end of June, the allies promised tough sanctions against Russia if Moscow did not immediately stop its support of the rebels. Secretary of State John F. Kerry breathlessly declared on June 26 that Russia had to move within “hours” to disarm its proxies. Two weeks later, the promised “sectoral” sanctions on Russian industries have not been adopted, even though Western governments agree that Mr. Putin has not met any of their conditions. Instead, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande are leaning on Mr. Poroshenko to stop trying to regain control over his country. Ukrainian sappers ride on a truck used for neutralizing shells, which were left by pro-Russian fighters in the near of Slaviansk, Ukraine. (Sergey Polezhaka/EPA) To their credit, senators from both parties voiced frustration with the Obama administration’s continued passivity at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing Wednesday. “What are we waiting for?” asked Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.). Administration officials predicted that the oft-promised sanctions would come “very soon” if Russia did not change course — perhaps following a European Union summit meeting next week. But the White House has not committed itself to unilateral action if the European Union falters. The administration is not wrong to prefer joint action with the Europeans if it is achievable. But the United States has the power to impose crippling unilateral sanctions on Russia, especially through the banking system. If the Ukrainian government can act without the permission of France and Germany, so can the United States. Read more on this topic: Zbigniew Brzezinski: Putin’s three choices on Ukraine Vladimir V. Kara-Murza: Ukraine is Putin’s, not Russia’s, war Henry A. Kissinger: To settle the Ukraine crisis, start at the end Katrina vanden Heuvel: Ukraine needs Russia and the West


Cities find buyers’ remorse for winning Olympics, World Cup

the World Cup, in Sao Paulo June 24, 2014. (Stringer/Brazil/Reuters) Countries have fought tooth and nail over the supposed privilege of hosting the Olympics, but the 2022 Winter Games are proving less popular. Last year, Munich and the Swiss cities of Davos and St. Moritz dropped out of consideration after proposals to bid were defeated in public referendums. Stockholm exited in January. Krakow stepped aside after nearly 70 percent of voters nixed the idea in May. And Lviv, Ukraine, dropped out just a couple weeks ago because the country has, well, more pressing concerns these days. The three cities left, all of which the International Olympic Committee ceremoniously named “finalists” this week, are: Oslo (though Norway’s government looks likely to nix the bid later this year, since polls show only 36 percent of Norwegians are on board); Almaty, Kazakhstan (an uncomfortable choice, given the country’s record on human rights and political repression); and Beijing (see previous parenthetical, but add chewable air). Maybe the skittishness about hosting is related to the widespread mockery that Sochi was subjected to when journalists descended on the Russian city’s hotels, stadiums and toilets. But, probably, cities are backing off thanks to the ludicrous price tags and dubious economic benefits that country after country has seen from hosting budget-busting athletic competitions. Economists and budget analysts have long proclaimed the fiscal folly of hosting these events. The rosy economic estimates touted by sports leagues and politicians tend to use suspect methodologies, when they’re not pulled from thin air (as seemed to be the case for the NFL’s claims that the Super Bowl would bring a half-trillion dollars to the New York metro area last winter). The news releases promising riches to be gleaned from putting on a major sports event rarely include the massive costs — in sanitation, security, traffic and overpriced and soon-to-be-underused stadiums — that must be incurred. They also tend to ignore the fact that the event may crowd out other kinds of tourism or economic activity. The question has always been why cities kept wanting to host in the first place, given that honest experts consistently tell them that it’s such a lousy economic proposition. Hosting fell out of favor once before, for a little while. After the high-profile financial losses from Montreal’s 1976 Summer Games, Los Angeles was the only bidder for the 1984 Olympics. And because it was the only city


Mobile-only banks like Simple, Moven skip the tellers for a purely digital experience

Start-ups, including Simple and Moven, are battling it out with traditional banks for tech-savvy customers. They offer all of the basic services of a bank account — deposits, bill pay, savings — without overdraft and maintenance fees. The catch? You have to have a smartphone to get an account. Smartphones have become the center of financial services as companies latch onto technology that could help them reach the millions of people at the margins of the system at a fraction of the cost of traditional banking. Researchers at CEB Tower Group estimate that banks spend roughly $1.34 for tellers to process a transaction in a branch, while the same transaction on a smartphone costs one-tenth of that amount. “Basic retail banking products — checking, savings and credit — have low value and are extremely expensive to sell,” said Alex Sion, president of Moven, which has thousands of users. “To make money, banks either try to sell retail customers on loans or hit them with punitive fees.” Start-ups, such as Simple and Moven, are battling it out with traditional banks for tech-savvy customers. (Simple) All of the major banks offer mobile apps, but the technology is still tied to an old-guard operation with high overhead costs that make it difficult to provide accounts with little to no fees. Without a physical presence, mobile-only providers say they can keep costs to a minimum. Companies like Moven and Simple partner with FDIC-insured banks that handle the banking functions of their mobile apps, house customers deposits and issue debit cards. (CBW Bank in Kansas works with Moven, while Bancorp Bank backs Simple.) The start-ups make money off of interchange, the fee merchants pay when people purchase goods with plastic, and by splitting the interest the partner banks earn off of deposits. The firms say their mobile platforms offer a easy way for users to instantly track their spending. Moven gives users financial feedback each time they make a purchase. After swiping their debit card at the grocery store, for instance, customers may receive an alert that they have surpassed their allotted money for food that month. Simple, meanwhile, alerts its over 100,000 customers to their “safe to spend” balance — the amount of money left over once upcoming bills and pending transactions are taken into account. Simple customers typically set aside 30 percent of their money toward future purchases, a savings rate that easily


Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concert offers an emotional tour of baroque

No love is as unrequited as that propelling an Italian baroque cantata. Take, for example, Alessandro Scarlatti’s “Su le sponde del Tebro,” sung Thursday night by soprano Nola Richardson — joined by Andrew Balio’s trumpet. The Scarlatti was part of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s all-baroque program at Bethesda’s Strathmore Music Center. The concert opened with J.S. Bach’s exuberant Cantata No. 51, followed by Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerto Grosso in G Minor, Op. 6, No. 8. After the Scarlatti, the evening closed with Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, BWV 1043. In Bach’s cantata, emotion reigns, compelled by boundless joy. Richardson’s soprano was vigorous but a bit sharp on her highest notes and sometimes overshadowed by the orchestra in her lowest range. Balio’s trumpet delivered a nonstop rhythmic pulse, reinforcing the relentless drive that typically propels Bach’s music. The Corelli followed the Bach, with Jonathan Carney, Qing Li and Dariusz Skoraczewski as the solo group pitted against the full orchestra. The musicians sustained the slow sections so that Corelli’s dissonances deepened the pathos of the music. Richardson hit her stride with the Scarlatti — the lament of an anguished soul. Her voice opened up with confidence and dramatic conviction, full of redolent passion. The story was taken from Roman mythology, depicting the suffering of Aminta, writhing in wretched pain after a scornful betrayal by his beloved. Richardson’s voice matched all the passion of his disillusionment with widely diverging doses of emotional color, perfectly matched by Balio’s trumpet, which reinforced the passion of the moment with electrifying trills and clearly articulated rhythm. Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins (Carney and Igor Yuzefovich) ended the evening with a magical, sometimes demonic drive, every player sharply enunciating firepower with furious bowing, all in total agreement. In the Largo movement, the solo violins reached ethereal heights, joining delicacy with reverence. Porter is a freelance writer.


In a top-floor studio, conductor and teacher Leon Fleisher aims for the musical heights

Conductor and teacher Leon Fleisher in his studio at the Peabody Conservatory, on June, 24, 2014 in Baltimore, MD. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) You get to Leon Fleisher’s studio on the top floor of the Peabody Institute in an elevator big enough to transport bulky musical instruments, and the doors open onto a south-facing window overlooking a skyscape of copper roofs toward Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. That view isn’t visible from the legendary pianist and conductor’s rectangular studio, with its three small windows (“You can’t have everything,” he jokes), but the elevation is symbolically important. Fleisher, who’s been here so long that he considers himself one of the institute’s “concrete pillars,” says he has been “aspiring to the rooftop” ever since he joined the Peabody in 1959 and was assigned space on the second floor. The man, his music and his approach to teaching, it turns out, are at once solidly grounded while apparently defying some of the basic laws of nature. Many people talk about a connection between music and math, Fleisher explains, but music is about movement. To play an instrument is to toy with the forces of physics, which govern movement: momentum, centrifugal forces and, of course, gravity. Most striking among the artwork on the walls (an ornate mirror picked out by his wife, a few posters commemorating concerts, two masks decorated by fellow musicians and sold at a fundraiser) are images of a soaring bird and several multicolored shots of distant nebulae taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. A collection of these is placed strategically opposite the two grand pianos. Items on and above the desk of conductor Leon Fleisher in his studio at the Peabody Conservatory, on June, 24, 2014 in Baltimore, MD. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) “They represent a sense of what we aspire to,” says Fleisher. “A sense of space, the sublime, the transcendent.” The room is designed to inspire, then, as well as to accommodate the “specific way” Fleisher teaches. Rather than meeting one-on-one with students, he explains, “I have a comparatively small class of seven or eight,” and he asks all the students to be present for each one’s lessons. That way, they hear seven to eight times the amount of repertoire, and they see how similar their challenges are, and how solutions in one piece of music might suggest a path to a solution in another. It is a grounded, pragmatic


Corporate tax dodgers leave the rest of us to foot the bill

a Panama-based company with headquarters in Miami, was happy to have the U.S. Coast Guard, for which it doesn’t pay its fair share, help rescue its burning Carnival Triumph. (It later reimbursed Uncle Sam.) Alexander Cutler, chief executive of Eaton, a Cleveland company that he inverted to Ireland, told the City Club of Cleveland, without a trace of irony, that to fix our nation’s budget problems, we need to close “those loopholes in the tax system.” Inversions, I guess, aren’t loopholes. Before we proceed, a brief confessional rant: This spectacle makes me deeply angry. It’s the same way that I felt when idiots and incompetents in Washington brought us to the brink of defaulting on our national debt in summer 2011, the last time that I wrote anything angry at remotely this length. Except that this is worse. Inverters don’t hesitate to take advantage of the great things that make America America: our deep financial markets, our democracy and rule of law, our military might, our intellectual and physical infrastructure, our national research programs, all the terrific places our country offers for employees and their families to live. But inverters do hesitate — totally — when it’s time to ante up their fair share of financial support of our system. Inverting a company, which is done in the name of “shareholder value” — a euphemism for a higher stock price — is way more offensive to me than even the most disgusting (albeit not illegal) tax games that companies such as Apple and GE play to siphon earnings out of the nation. At least those companies remain American. It may be for technical reasons that I won’t bore you with — but I don’t care. What matters is the result. Apple and GE remain American. Inverters are deserters. Even though I understand inversion intellectually, I have trouble dealing with it emotionally. Maybe it’s because of my background: I’m the grandson of immigrants, and I’m profoundly grateful that this country took my family in. Watching companies walk out just to cut their taxes turns my stomach. Okay, rant over. The current poster child for inversion outrage is Medtronic, the multinational Minnesota medical-device company that once exuded a cleaner-than-clean image but now proposes to move its nominal headquarters to Ireland by paying a fat premium price to buy Covidien, itself a faux-Irish firm that is run from Massachusetts except for income-tax-paying purposes.


Excerpts of Navy Yard report: 160 cameras and no one watching; facing down shooter

creating confusion about which command bus was the actual command bus. That was exacerbated by the fact that some agency leaders stayed on the buses they rode in on, separating decision makers. The Navy Yard went on lockdown — and locked out D.C. police. In the chaotic first minutes, a lot of police were stranded outside the Navy Yard. Gate personnel initiated a military lockdown. It had the unintended effect of locking out arriving help. Some of the first officers on the scene had to enter the base on foot through a visitor’s entrance, as well as ask directions because gate personnel had left their posts to respond to the shooting. D.C. police officers looked around, the report said, and decided to simply run in the opposite direction of fleeing employees. The late order to shelter in place led to fa While officers were still scrambling to get into the building, and before the Navy sent out an alert to workers with instructions to shelter in place, some began organizing an evacuation. One “floor captain” inside Building 197 donned his reflective vest, grabbed a megaphone and began directing colleagues to move swiftly down a stairwell, the report states. Whether the commotion attracted the gunman is unclear, but as the floor captain barked out directions, Alexis appeared a few feet away. The floor captain “attempted to throw the megaphone at Alexis just as the gunman fired his shotgun at him. Both the megaphone and shotgun blast missed, and the floor captain and his colleagues escaped.” Some survived, almost inexplicably. Within the first four minutes of firing his first shot, Alexis killed eight victims on the fourth floor and moved to the third floor. With what survivors later described as a “mean” facial expression, he remained silent and kept shooting indiscriminately. Then, there was this: Alexis “turns and walks away and sees a young woman hiding between a metal beam and filing cabinet. He stands directly over her and attempts to fire twice, but the shotgun does not fire. It appears that it is not loaded. He disappears down the hallway, reaching in his pocket for more shells. The woman crawls around the corner and is later evacuated by police officers.” Police didn’t know how many officers were inside the building. As arriving officers finally reached Building 197, they organized well into impromptu teams to enter the building, but if a secondary


Colbert King: In Petworth, a robbery and death tell us something abut ourselves

terms of inches of newsprint initially devoted to his slaying, though, it apparently was not that big a deal. His homicide was hardly unique. WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 10: Gold Corner Market in 5500 block of Colorado Ave NW – 14th and Colorado – in Washington, DC on July 10, 2014. The store was robbed about 5:30 p.m. on July 4. James Oh, 76, the owner, died July 8. (Peter Hermann/The Post) Our nation’s capital, as of July 11, has had 64 homicides this year. That’s up from 43 at the same point in 2013; a 44.8 percent increase, according to the D.C. police. Hear any complaining about the killings? Naw, we’re used to it. In this city, we measure success by comparison. Twenty years ago, the year ended with 399 homicides. So we’re making progress, right? Besides, we prefer to worry ourselves sick about bicyclists riding on sidewalks , streetcars on H Street NE, a new soccer stadium, yoga shop taxes and making the city hospitable to pot smokers. You know, the “important” things. City boosters say that if homicides get you worked up, check out Chicago: 14 people shot to death last week, nine over the three-day holiday weekend, when at least 60 other people were shot and wounded. James Oh notwithstanding, the District isn’t so bad in comparison. Face it: We in the media treat murder in the District as a run-of-the-mill story unless it involves a “name,” is particularly gruesome or occurs on a slow news day. And don’t just blame the media: We Washingtonians profess to care about the human suffering, but we can hardly wait until the commercial break. Even when bothering to think about the tragic event, we tend to lock onto simple sympathy for the victim. We overlook — no, we evade the truly chilling and ominous condition plaguing our community: predation. The Ohs’ attackers were described as 17 or 18 years old. If police accounts are accurate, the youths attacked their prey with all the deliberateness used by predators in the natural food chain. They stalked. Using teamwork, they sneaked up, ambushed, subdued and seized what they were after. In the natural world, predators use teeth and claws. Our young men used a gun and brute strength. In the wild, predators feed on other creatures who share their habitat. In our society, predators feed on other members of the community. We,