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| Denmark’s radical plan to deal with radicals: Roll out the welcome mat |
| Some progressives praise officials for providing counseling and jobs to militants returning home from fighting in Iraq and Syria. |
| Federal probes into college sexual assaults skyrocket in past few months |
| The rapidly rising number of federal investigations poses challenges for the Obama administration. |
| Police seek evidence in area where human remains found Saturday |
| The remains are thought to be those of a missing University of Virginia student who vanished Sept. 13. |
| Reid: In a dire situation, McCoy delivers |
| THE TAKEAWAY | Jay Gruden didn’t want to have to turn to Colt McCoy at quarterback, but the third-stringer delivered when called upon. |
| King of Late Night gets his laugh lines |
| Mark Twain Prize honoree Jay Leno holds his own in a house full of stand-up stars. |
| Amid chaotic commutes, finding inner peace — and stopping a spiraling day |
| Practitioners of “mindful commuting” say they remain more calm, focused and alert during daily slog. |
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| POLITICS |
| The tea party’s anti-Washington consensus |
The following is a guest post by political scientist Erin K. Jenne of Central European University. ***** The tea party movement has been called out for many things, not least of which is championing positions that would make Barry Goldwater blush. This begs the question: What separates the tea party from Republicans or from the conservative movement at large? Read full article >> |
| Gubernatorial races poised to make history in two weeks |
| You wouldn’t know it by following the Senate-control-centric coverage of the midterm elections emanating from Washington, but we could well be headed toward a historic gubernatorial election in 15 days. Read full article >> |
| The 17 best Fix posts of the week |
My weekly look at what I liked best on the blog over the past seven days. 1. How Democrats are winning the ad wars, in 2 charts 2. This is the only Election Day countdown clock you'll ever need Read full article >> |
| OPINIONS |
| America: Now the unforgiving land of gotcha |
| With a new week, and the possibility of additional Ebola patients, Americans — or at least American politicians — have an urgent need: someone to blame. After all, while more than 4,000 Africans dying of Ebola was not enough to grab our attention, two infected nurses in the United States is a full-fledged crisis. Read full article >> |
| The long-term cure for Ebola: An investment in health systems |
| As the Ebola nightmare continues in Liberia and as we battle to contain the epidemic, it is important to look beyond the immediate crisis. Many more lives will be lost before this dreadful outbreak is beaten, but to properly honor the memory of the victims we need to ask how it happened in the first place and, more pressingly, how we can prevent it from happening again. Read full article >> |
| Both parties face a blue-collar imperative |
| In Georgia, Democrat Michelle Nunn is giving Republicans a real scare in a Senate race the GOP thought it had put away. Some of her new momentum comes from a sustained attack on David Perdue, her businessman foe, for his work shipping American jobs overseas. Read full article >> |
| LOCAL |
| The flu pandemic that came to Washington in 1918 killed 2,800, sickened many more |
| It started with the death of John W. Clore, 30, a widower, on Sept. 21, 1918, in the old Sibley Hospital, on North Capitol Street.¶ Four days later, John Janes, 33, who ran a candy store and restaurant, died at home. ¶ On Sept. 27, three people died — Amos Matticks, 33, Grayson B. Coffman, 20, and Pearl Morgan, 33. ¶Six more died on the 29th. Seven succumbed the next day, and 27 on Oct. 5. ¶ These were the initial victims in Washington of the great influenza pandemic that swept the world in 1918 and 1919. ¶ Vastly larger and deadlier than the current Ebola outbreak, it killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide and more than half a million in the United States. It is considered among the worst epidemics in human history. ¶ But its appearance almost a century ago bore similarities to today, and engendered the same kind of fear, courage and tragedy that comes with the spread of a terrifying illness. Read full article >> |
| D.C. area forecast: One more day of partial sun, then back into the clouds |
| WEATHER GANG | After a very cold start, today will move into quite pleasant territory. |
| Obama implores Marylanders to vote — and for Anthony Brown for governor |
| President Obama stood before thousands of Marylanders in a high school gym in Prince George’s County on Sunday and urged them to vote for Democrats who fight for the working class — such as gubernatorial candidate Anthony G. Brown. Read full article >> |
| SPORTS |
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| Now Redskins reporters are calling Colt McCoy ‘Kirk’ |
A few years ago we had a Cult of Colt, and then we had Donovan and Rex and John and Rex and Robert and Kirk (who everyone calls Kurt) and then Colt again. So you can forgive the Redskins media contingent for some temporarily spinning heads. Read full article >> |
| Seahawks QB Russell Wilson makes history, steals spotlight from Aaron Rodgers |
Aaron Rodgers had a pretty good day today.
Aaron Rodgers finishes 19-22, 255 yards, 3 TDs, no picks and 154.5 QB rating. Yes, he had as many touchdowns as incompletion today.
Read full article >> |
| FEDERAL GOVERNMENT |
| Loop Guidance for new Ebola czar Ron Klain |
First of all, congratulations on your new czarship. It’s not White House counsel or chief of staff, but it’s very important. (Besides, McDonough can’t be there forever, right?)
There will be people who’ll say you don’t have any background in matters medical, but ignore them. You are eminently qualified. You clerked for Byron White, for crying out loud, and anyone who could handle Byron. . . And being chief of staff to both Al Gore and then Joe Biden isn’t exactly a walk in the park. Read full article >> |
| Security clearances don’t pay like they once did |
| Security clearances are a highly sought-after commodity in the D.C. job market, given the region’s proximity to intelligence agencies, and cleared employees are paid substantially more on average than those without access to confidential information. Read full article >> |
| VA morale low, but actions by new boss could change things |
| Despite all its recent controversy, the Department of Veterans Affairs generally provides good health care to its patients. Attitudes of VA employees toward their agency, however, are ailing. If Secretary Bob McDonald needed any more confirmation that he waded into a quagmire when he took over the department in July, he got it with VA’s 2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, which was released Friday. Read full article >> |
| WORLD |
| China’s crackdown slows Tibetan refugee crossings to freedom in India |
| DHARMSALA, India — Kunga Dolma waited years to escape the repressive life of her remote Tibetan village, and one day in July it was time. The soft-spoken 24-year-old paid a smuggler about $800 to guide her over the Himalayas to what she hoped would be freedom and a better life. Her lace-up shoes were torn to shreds in the snowy passage. But if she was cold, she doesn’t remember. She was too terrified of being caught and beaten by Chinese security forces on the border. Read full article >> |
| U.S. drops weapons, aid to Kurds fighting Islamic State in Syria |
| U.S. aircraft dropped weapons and medical supplies late Sunday to besieged forces fighting the Islamic State in the Syrian border town of Kobane, the first airdrops into Syria since the civil war there began more than three years ago. Read full article >> |
| Japan’s farmers face an existential crisis: Reform or die out |
| YABU, Japan — When tending to her rice paddies in this remote, mountainous part of Japan became too arduous, Sakae Tanigaki brought in some young guys to help out. Now, a bunch of 70-somethings do most of the work on the terraced hillside. That means the 85-year-old Tanigaki can stick to the flat fields. Read full article >> |
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| BUSINESS |
| Construction giant Bechtel’s Reston move shines spotlight on Md.-Va. business rivalry |
| Construction giant Bechtel is moving a large chunk of jobs from Maryland to Virginia, the second time in three years that the company is doing so since Maryland approved economic incentives to keep the corporate giant in the state. Read full article >> |
| For SRA International, going private has been a rocky ride |
| For the past few years, government contractors have increasingly sought to diversify their businesses to cope with reduced federal spending. Many have entered the commercial market, for example, or moved into “adjacencies,” which means designing products or services that are similar to their core offerings, but for nongovernment customers. Read full article >> |
| Stop with the fiction of a binary economy |
| The economy is a mess. It’s one thing many Americans and political candidates of all stripes seem to agree on. While it may be somewhat less of a mess than five years ago, the thinking goes, the current administration and Congress have done little to address the crushing challenges faced by large swaths of the American public. Read full article >> |
| TECHNOLOGY |
| Stop worrying about mastermind hackers. Start worrying about the IT guy. |
Mistakes in setting up popular office software have sent information about millions of Americans spilling onto the Internet, including Social Security numbers of college students, the names of children in Texas and the ID numbers of intelligence officials who visited a port facility in Maryland. Read full article >> |
| Meet ’5G,’ the next-gen technology that will bring you mobile data on steroids |
Many wireless carriers are still rolling out their 4G LTE networks. But federal regulators are already turning their eye toward next-gen technologies that will allow incredibly fast mobile data. We're talking rates that are 1,000 times faster than what the average American gets at home today from a fixed broadband connection. Read full article >> |
| President Obama’s credit card got rejected last month. Here’s what happened next. |
Presidents, they’re just like us — their credit cards get declined.
President Obama’s credit card was rejected last month at a restaurant in New York. “I went to a restaurant up in New York when I was — during the U.N. General Assembly, and my credit card was rejected,” Obama said Friday while signing an executive order to protect consumers from identity theft. “It turned out I guess I don’t use it enough. They were — they thought there was some fraud going on. Fortunately, Michelle had hers.” Read full article >> |
| LIFESTYLE |
| Documenting with dignity in the Ebola zone |
I have taken pride over my 40-plus years as a photojournalist in offering dignity to subjects I photograph, especially those who are sick or in distress while in front of my camera. My recent photographic assignment to cover the Ebola outbreak in Liberia has proved exceedingly challenging for me. Respect is often the last and only thing that the world can offer a deceased or dying person. Yet the camera itself seems to be a betrayal of the dignity I so hope to offer. Sometimes, the harshness of a gruesome scene simply cannot be sanitized. How does one give dignity to the image of a woman who has died and is lying on the ground, unattended, uncovered and alone as people walk by or gaze from a distance? But I believe that the world must see the horrible and dehumanizing effects of Ebola. The story must be told; so one moves around with tender care, gingerly, without extreme intrusion. Read full article >> |
| MeccaFest is no Yardfest: Disorganization aggravates crowd’s discontented mood |
| The air was a perfect 70-something degrees and filled with music. But Aisha Brownlee was still annoyed. The 21-year-old, who graduated from Howard University in May, had trekked to Southeast D.C. for the MeccaFest, an all-day rap concert organized by a group of Howard alumni after the university announced that Yardfest — a free, annual, historically thrilling homecoming extravaganza held on the campus quad — would no longer host live music. Read full article >> |
| Kris Humphries shops organic at Whole Foods |
Hey, isn’t that…Washington Wizards forward Kris Humphries, shopping for grocery at the Whole Foods on P Street near Logan Circle on Saturday afternoon? The former Mr. Kim Kardashian looked errand-running-casual in a button-down shirt and dark shades (um, you know that they’re no disguise, right? Because it’s kind of hard to blend in when you’re 6′ 9”.). Read full article >> |
