The Wire: March 5, 2009

• National

  2:31 p.m.

  

  HOLMES: India should be policy linchpin

  As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama repeatedly charged that then-President Bush had “alienated” America from the rest of the world. He accused Mr. Bush of bullying allies and suggested that he would do a better job of reaching out to old friends and finding new ones.
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  6:49 a.m.

  Barbara Bush recovering from surgery

  UPDATED: Former first lady Barbara Bush underwent successful open heart surgery to replace her aortic valve, and was awake and talking hours after the procedure, officials said.
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  6:49 a.m.

  Border residents add bulletproofing, armor

  The drug violence in Mexico has gotten so bad that booming numbers of Mexican and American professionals are having their cars fitted with armor plates, bulletproof glass and James Bond-style gadgets such as electrified door handles and push-button smokescreens.
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  6:49 a.m.

  Bashir defies arrest warrant

  Sudanese President Omar Bashir, freshly indicted by an international war-crimes tribunal for atrocities in Darfur, plans to test the court’s authority with a business trip to Qatar.
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  6:49 a.m.

  Shell Oil exec sees 'cap-and-trade' win

  Shell Oil Co. President Marvin E. Odum said Wednesday that President Obama probably will win approval as early as next year for his signature environmental goal, a “cap-and-trade” system to reduce greenhouse gases.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Bomb kills 10 outside Baghdad

  A car bomb exploded Thursday in a crowded cattle market south of Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and injuring 32 others, Iraqi police and medical officials said.
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  2:56 p.m.

  GdF Suez 2008 profit up on higher energy prices

  GdF Suez said Thursday its net profit jumped 13 percent to euro6.5 billion ($8.2 billion) last year thanks to higher demand and prices for gas and electricity in key markets both in Europe and internationally.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Leahy battles alone for 'truth'

  Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy’s pursuit of a “truth commission” to expose possible Bush administration abuses became a lonely quest Wednesday as fellow senators skipped a hearing for more compelling events elsewhere at the Capitol.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Zadzooks: More from toy fair

  Previews from the 2009 Toy Fair include “Dragonball Evolution” and “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” acton figures, the Women of Marvel Costume Collection, Lego Star Wars, Minimates and Monopoly G.I. Joe Collector’s Edition.
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  2:56 p.m.

  U.S. changing its mission in Korea

  In April 2012, South Korea will assume wartime operational control of its forces now under a combined U.S.-South Korea command. That will free U.S. forces to concentrate on contingency plans elsewhere.
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  2:56 p.m.

  MOVIES: 'Watchmen' leap into action

  Considering that we’re in a golden age of comic-book movies, a time when titles such as “Spider-Man 2,” “Iron Man” and “The Dark Knight” wow audiences and critics alike, it’s no wonder that “the most acclaimed graphic novel of all time” - if “Watchmen’s” advertising campaign is to be believed - is hitting the big screen.
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  2:56 p.m.

  DEAR MS. VICKI: Spouses suffer combat stress

  Dear Ms. Vicki, I’m always arguing with my husband and we cannot resolve problems. He can’t say one positive thing about me or to me. Sometimes I just want to stay away from him and sometimes I want to hit him because he just won’t listen.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Obama to start health care talks

  President Barack Obama has invited to the White House more than 120 people who hold a wide range of views on how to fix the world’s costliest health care system, one that still leaves millions uninsured.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Nationals Report

  Zimmermann dazzles in second start.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Ramirez, Dodgers strike deal

  Club, player agree on two-year, $45 million contract.
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  2:56 p.m.

  First Down

  Newsmakers. Plus, top five outside linebackers in draft.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Inside the Ring

  A Chinese democracy activist who signed the recent human rights manifesto called Charter 08 said in a speech that the conditions for democratic political reform in the communist state are the best since the ill-fated Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
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  2:56 p.m.

  GENE MUELLER: Yellow perch run may come this weekend

  As local temperatures climb, here’s betting that a yellow perch run will be under way this weekend. The annual spawning run of the perch is overdue, and the roe-laden females will hold on to their eggs only so long.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Rizzo's audition starts with more authority

  VIERA, Fla. | The role Mike Rizzo is inheriting carries no change of title, no promise of permanence, nothing more than a chance to be the guy who picks up the phone when another team calls the Washington Nationals with a trade proposal.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Embassy Row

  The “Lion of the Senate” purred Wednesday as he thanked Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II for granting him an honorary knighthood.
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  2:56 p.m.

  DAN DALY: Best move was to sit this out

  Ted Leonsis and George McPhee have been too patient - extraordinarily patient - to do anything foolish Wednesday at the trading deadline. There’s been nothing rushed about their rebuilding of the Capitals, nothing panicky or hasty.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Capitals stand pat at trade deadline

  One year after the Washington Capitals were one of the busiest teams on NHL trade deadline day, general manager George McPhee decided his best move was to do nothing at all.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Virginian loses weight, gains life

  Two years ago, Jack Koukerjinian was so overweight that just walking up steps without pain was impossible, and jumping out of a window blindfolded or scampering down a ladder seemed, well, beyond impossible.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Tar Heels' late surge nets win over Hokies

  From combined dispatches
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  2:56 p.m.

  Pittsburgh dominates Marquette

  From combined dispatches
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  2:56 p.m.

  FIELDS: Slings and arrows on the way

  Barack Obama may be becoming presidential at last. The campaign mode of supplication and imitation is fading. The new president has done his Lincoln shtick, train ride and all. He’s no longer tempted to make his Saturday radio address an imitation of a fireside chat (he still sneaks an occasional cigarette, but without Franklin Roosevelt’s cigarette holder). Conservatives who were afraid to challenge his popularity, retreating to criticism of an unpopular Congress, are unlacing the gloves.
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  2:56 p.m.

  SALHANI: Syria is key

  As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tours the Middle East she is likely to find the region facing greater tension than it has in many years.
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  2:56 p.m.

  BAUER/ALLOTT: Abortion ascendance

  A philosophical shift has taken place in the abortion rights movement. After confronting either a pro-life president or a pro-life majority in Congress for 26 of the last 28 years, abortion advocates have now secured sympathetic majorities in all three branches of government.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Hispanic enrollment rising in schools

  Roughly one-fourth of the nation’s kindergartners are Hispanic, evidence of an accelerating trend that will see minority children become the majority by 2023.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Obama rejects Bush contracting rules

  In yet another reversal of Bush administration policy, President Barack Obama ordered an overhaul of the way the government hands out contracts, promising to curtail a system that led to waste and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Rove, Miers to testify under oath

  Karl Rove and Harriet E. Miers, two top aides to former President George W. Bush, have agreed to testify under oath before Congress, ending a lawsuit over the role the two White House officials played in the firings of nine U.S. attorneys, purportedly for political reasons.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Home-schoolers persist in hard times

  When hard times reached the Schneider household in central Oregon, the longtime stay-at-home mom got a job at Subway to offset a drop in her husband’s earnings. What she didn’t do was also notable - she didn’t stop home-schooling her three teenage children.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Ukraine's leaders feud over gas shipments

  Masked, armed security agents searched the headquarters of Ukraine’s natural gas company Wednesday in a dispute between the country’s feuding leaders that could jeopardize gas shipments to Europe.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Terrorist group recruits in Midwest

  As people crowded into the capital for Barack Obama’s inaugural celebration, senior counterterrorism officials huddled in the White House situation room, frantically trying to unravel intelligence about a possible attack on Washington.
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  2:56 p.m.

  LETTER TO EDITOR: Misconduct at Guantanamo

  Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are two different creatures.
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  2:56 p.m.

  U.S. forces in Iraq remain focused

  U.S. and Iraqi soldiers scouring the palm groves here for extremists’ weapons caches during a recent patrol seemed to take in stride the announcement that the majority of U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Iraq within 18 months.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Around the Nation

  An asteroid about the size of one that leveled more than 800 square miles of forest in Siberia a century ago just buzzed the Earth.
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  2:56 p.m.

  LETTER TO EDITOR: Taking up for Tadic

  As someone who often denounced the repression of the late Slobodan Milosevic, I do not minimize his responsibility for the 1999 conflict in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija. Nevertheless, William Walker’s heaping of every foul claim human malice can concoct on Serbs collectively, even more than on Milosevic himself, is another matter (“A separate take from Serbia,” Op-Ed, Feb. 24).
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  2:56 p.m.

  LETTER TO EDITOR: Obama scares Wall Street

  President Obama has admonished the American people, in so many words, “Don’t worry, be happy,” to relax and not pay attention to the “day-to-day gyrations of the stock market.”
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  2:56 p.m.

  LESSER: The prettier ugly Americans

  The legendary ugly American is getting a new lease on life from a new generation of Americans descending on European cities and towns like the barbarian invaders of old.
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  2:56 p.m.

  DUIN: Sebelius poses dilemma to Wuerl

  The perfect political storm has descended upon the Archdiocese of Washington.
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  2:56 p.m.

  CHAFFETZ: Indefensibly unconstitutional

  Taxation without representation is fundamentally flawed. It was wrong when Great Britain governed the American Colonies. It is still wrong today. Citizens of the District of Columbia deserve to be represented by a voting Member of Congress.
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  2:56 p.m.

  SAUNDERS: Heat is on true believers

  A Sunday New York Times story described an expected sea change in international global warming policy. The story noted that President George W. Bush, “pressed by the Senate, rejected” the Kyoto global warming protocol in 2001, but now President Obama is eager to negotiate a robust international global warming treaty to be signed in Copenhagen in December.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Wizards lose again

  Short-handed club falls to Oklahoma City.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Mids miss chance

  Navy falls to Colgate in Patriot League tourney.
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  2:56 p.m.

  On Faith

  It was like in the school playground, when a big kid beats up a little one. Bystanders try to justify their own passivity by picking fault with the victim. The same happened to [Salman] Rushdie, with some people saying that the demonstrations in India, Pakistan and Britain, which had preceded the fatwa were a deliberate campaign to put the novel in the spotlight. Many people were envious of Rushdie: he was good, he was non-white, he had received an unprecedented advance for ‘The Satanic Verses.’ So the question arose as to whether he should pay for his own security.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Inside the Beltway

  “Minority Leader Limbaugh” is the headline of an op-ed by political consultant David Plouffe, who you will recall was the campaign manager for Obama for America and Obama-Biden 2008. He is just the latest in a long line of outspoken Democrats declaring right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh the new leader of the floundering Republican Party.
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  2:56 p.m.

  CHANG: China extends orbit of influence

  China has traded many manufactured goods for oil from several African nations. Angola has become China’s second-largest source of crude oil, followed by Nigeria in third place. In addition, shipments of African copper, zinc and uranium are constantly heading to China.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Inside Politics

  “If leadership is measured by seizing big opportunities that others do not see, then Barack Obama is already proving himself a leader,” Roger Altman writes in the Financial Times.
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  2:56 p.m.

  Ruling may turn drugmakers skittish

  A Supreme Court ruling Wednesday that federal approval of a drug is no protection from lawsuits in state courts could make drugmakers more cautious about safety issues and may lead them to halt development of some medicines and even pull others off the market.