“Bethesda” on The Daily Caller

A Montgomery County jury ordered Nordstrom to pay nearly $1.6 million to two women stabbed inside its Bethesda store six years ago, concluding that the retailer did not adequately warn shoppers that a woman armed with four butcher knives was on the loose, attorneys said Monday. (more)

UPDATE: Brittany Norwood, who at first appeared to be a survivor of Lululemon Athletica’s March 11 killing, is now suspected of murdering her colleague Jayna Murray, whose body was found inside the Bethesda, Md., shop, reports the Associated Press. (more)

After surging in size and profits during the post-9/11 era, the defense industry in metropolitan Washington is bracing for a major contraction and significant layoffs that economists said could produce a drag on the regional economy for years. (more)

“But not a drop to drink”, completes the verse from the” Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Unlike the storied sailor whose thirst could not be quenched by the bountiful surrounding waters due to the ocean’s salinity, much of our nation faces decline in available potable water due to faulty and antiquated infrastructure and regulatory regimes. (more)

It was inauguration day for the nation’s most modern facility for the treatment of active-duty soldiers and veterans suffering from brain injuries and psychological disorders—5,000 of them with families on hand. At the podium in Bethesda, Maryland, stood Arnold Fisher, the chief fundraiser for this precious center that may need to care for hundreds of thousands of victims, searching in vain for one White House official, one Cabinet officer, one member of the Joint Chiefs, one senator. He found none. And he asked again and again, “Where are they?” (more)

It was interesting being in Kenya this past week while the World Cup football (soccer) matches were being played near-by in South Africa. When Kenyan’s interrupted their viewing of a match to converse with me and learned that I was an American they inevitably wanted to know how I thought President Obama was doing. I hated telling them. The current World Cup in South Africa, however, made viewing Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus” on the plane on the way home even more moving than it would have been anyway. The movie dramatizes South Africa’s first post apartheid president, Nelson Mandela’s, decision to save and embrace South Africa’s national soccer team, “Springboks,” so loved by white South African’s and thus hated by black South Africans, as an element of his program of national reconciliation. (more)

Dear Maureen: (more)

I have had to remind myself of late that there is much to be proud of as an American. And I have not been prouder for a long time than I was Tuesday night listening to this year’s recipients of the Merage Foundation for the American Dream’s National Leadership Awards. Paul Merage family’s foundation is dedicated to “Helping Immigrants Join Mainstream America.” Mr. Merage is himself an immigrant from Iran, which he left in 1979 by necessity. But his choice to settle in the United States was his, and the Merage Foundation is one of his ways of expressing thanks for the opportunities that opened up to him here and to give something back to help keep America the dynamic, innovative home to immigrants that has been such an important component of our success as a nation. (more)

Greece suffers from unsustainable public-sector debt, low productivity, and an overall uncompetitive economy. In 2009, the government’s fiscal deficit was 13.6 percent of Greece’s gross domestic product (GDP) and its outstanding debt stood at 115 percent of its GDP. Lenders were losing confidence in Greece’s ability to repay them. Before the loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the EU announced on May 2, they were demanding an almost 10 percentage points premium over lending rates to Germany, which worsened Greece’s deficit. Even with the large corrective measures Greece has agreed to undertake, its debt is projected to increase to 149 percent of GDP in 2012 before beginning to shrink in 2014. (more)

The game of lacrosse originated with Native Americans , largely the Huron and Iroquois tribes. Westerners—missionaries and fur trappers—first saw it in the 1600’s. The Indians would play the game as symbolic warfare, with hundreds of men at a time, for days on end, with fields that knew no boundaries. Some historical records suggest that they would sometimes play to the death. (more)

Has Goldman Sachs done something wrong? Do their synthetic collateralized debt obligations pose a systemic risk? If so, what should we do about it? (more)

During his State of the Union address on Jan. 31, 2006, President Bush mentioned malaria twice. This probably took most Americans by surprise as the disease was banished from the States in the early 1950s. But as Bush and his administration established the ambitious President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), the disease would soon feature fairly high on the political and popular agenda. So it should — the disease claims the life of an African child almost every 30 seconds. (more)

The annual Union Members Summary—the U.S. labor unions’ own State of the Union—encourages us to assess the state of the unionized workforce. And, much like the profit margins and job-loss the rest of America has experienced, the construction union outlook proves no better. (more)

If AIG, the insurance giant bailed out by the U.S. government, had failed a large number of assets such as mortgage-backed securities would have lost their insurance against losses (called credit default swaps) causing their value in the market to fall. (more)