Wednesday, July 4, 2012

It was a little like the old days without electricity Wednesday, as the nation’s capital region celebrated Independence Day the better part of a week into a widespread blackout that left millions of residents sweltering in 90-plus degree heat without air conditioning. Utilities have slowly been restoring service knocked out by a freak storm Friday from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic, and at least 26 people have died in the storm or its aftermath.

At George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, one of the most popular Fourth of July attractions was a demonstration of 18th-century ice cream making, one of Washington’s favorite desserts. Historical interpreters Gail Cassidy and Anette Ahrens showed the crowds how cocoa beans were roasted and ground into a paste for chocolate ice cream, made using ice hauled up in massive blocks from the Potomac River and stored underground to last as long into the summer as possible.

As for beverages, Washington was no stranger to alcohol, enjoying imported Madeira wine from Spain, distilling his own whiskey and enjoying a fruity brandy cocktail called Cherry Bounce.

Washington was his own architect at Mount Vernon, “and he was very good at it,” said Dennis Pogue, associate director for preservation at Mount Vernon. The piazza, which runs the length of the mansion, is “kind of California living in the 18th century,” Pogue said.

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AP Essay: A nation that can’t agree on much marks its 236th year of independence

SMITHTOWN, N.Y. (AP) — In the market for new designer eyewear this Independence Day? Look no further than Wize Eyes on Long Island. “So Proudly We Hail,” the chain advertised this week, “With Fashion Eyewear … At Half The Price.”

Perhaps Competition Subaru of Smithtown’s flag-themed “July 4th Blast of Savings SALES EVENT” is more up your alley this year. Or possibly you need some last-minute hot dogs for your Fourth of July cookout? Don’t miss the Dietz & Watson “Grill-a-bration.”

Look around, and one truth seems kind of self-evident. If you arrived in America with entirely fresh eyes, it would be easy to conclude that the summer’s day on which we celebrate our hard-won independence from England is merely a pause to blow up some colorful explosives, cook some meat over an open flame and get some good deals on major appliances. And, of course, drink beer.

But that can’t be all there is. Can it?

In an era when everything from health care policy to immigration divides us more than it unites us, when the Internet allows us to tear apart our fellow Americans’ virtual throats from the comfort of our keyboards, what does a holiday like Independence Day mean? Is commercialism the only thing that keeps us together? Does this tribal-feeling nation of niches and special interest groups and online communities still have much use for a holiday that, at its most elemental, celebrates the societal-level version of “Hey — I’m sick of you, so I’m leaving”?

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AP survey: High US unemployment to persist well into next presidential term

WASHINGTON (AP) — A majority of economists in the latest Associated Press Economy Survey expect the national unemployment rate to stay above 6 percent — the upper bounds of what’s considered healthy — for at least four more years.

If the economists are correct, the job market will still be unhealthy seven years after the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009. That would be the longest stretch of high unemployment since the end of World War II.

And it means the job market and the economy — President Barack Obama’s main political threats — would remain big challenges in either a second Obama term or President Mitt Romney’s first term.

“The election isn’t going to be a miracle cure for the unemployment rate — that’s for sure,” says Sean Snaith, an economics professor at the University of Central Florida. He thinks unemployment, which is 8.2 percent now, won’t drop back to 6 percent until after 2016.

Economists consider a “normal” level to be between 5 percent and 6 percent.

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Eureka! After long quest, top physicists celebrate evidence of subatomic ‘God particle’

GENEVA (AP) — Scientists at the world’s biggest atom smasher hailed the discovery of “the missing cornerstone of physics” Wednesday, cheering the apparent end of a decades-long quest for a new subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, or “God particle,” which could help explain why all matter has mass and crack open a new realm of subatomic science.

First proposed as a theory in the 1960s, the maddeningly elusive Higgs had been hunted by at least two generations of physicists who believed it would help shape our understanding of how the universe began and how its most elemental pieces fit together.

As the highly technical findings were announced by two independent teams involving more than 5,000 researchers, the usually sedate corridors of the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, erupted in frequent applause and standing ovations. Physicists who spent their careers in pursuit of the particle shed tears.

The new particle appears to share many of the same qualities as the one predicted by Scottish physicist Peter Higgs and others and is perhaps the biggest accomplishment at CERN since its founding in 1954 outside Geneva along the Swiss-French border.

Rolf Heuer, director of CERN, said the newly discovered particle is a boson, but he stopped just shy of claiming outright that it is the Higgs boson itself — an extremely fine distinction.

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As attacks mount, with US troops gone and government flailing, Iraqis see a future of fear

BAGHDAD (AP) — Whenever he leaves his home, Mohammed Jabar, a Sunni Muslim, carries his cellphone so his family can find out quickly whether he is safe if a deadly bomb attack hits. Shukria Mahmud, another Sunni, rarely ventures from her house because of the rash of violence that is gripping Iraq.

Laith Hashim, a young Shiite Muslim, is considering moving away from Iraq if security continues to disintegrate. Such a breakdown, he fears, would spark a new round of bitter sectarian fighting of the kind that brought the nation to the brink of civil war just a few years ago.

Tensions simmer between Iraq’s Sunni and Shiite communities, yet they share an increasingly widespread despair. Al-Qaida-style attacks are on the rise, faith in the government’s ability to keep people safe is on the wane and a fatalistic acceptance of a life of fear is perniciously settling in.

Nine years after the U.S. led an invasion of Iraq that overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein — purging the leadership and military of his supporters and leading to a fight against insurgents in a bloody guerrilla war that left more than 100,000 dead — Iraq’s outlook is increasingly bleak in summer 2012.

Instead of a Western-style democracy functioning in peace and cooperation, what’s been left behind is dysfunctional and increasingly violent. Many of the attacks of the past month have targeted Shiites on annual religious pilgrimages, raising fears of a return to the deadly cycle of destructive violence between Sunni and Shiite communities.

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A closer look at the Higgs boson, particle that helps explain what gives matter size and shape

BERLIN (AP) — Scientists working at the world’s biggest atom smasher near Geneva have announced the discovery of a new subatomic particle that looks remarkably like the long-sought Higgs boson. Sometimes called the “God particle” because its existence is fundamental to the creation of the universe, the hunt for the Higgs involved thousands of scientists from all over the world.

WHAT IS THE GOD PARTICLE ANYWAY?

School physics teaches that everything is made up of atoms, and inside atoms are electrons, protons and neutrons. They, in turn, are made of quarks and other subatomic particles. Scientists have long puzzled over how these minute building blocks of the universe acquire mass. Without mass, particles wouldn’t hold together and there would be no matter.

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Murder of student, musicians stoke fears in Egypt about intentions of Islamists

CAIRO (AP) — Three bearded men approached a university student and his girlfriend during a romantic rendezvous in a park and ordered them to separate because they weren’t married, according to security officials. An argument broke out, ending with one of the men fatally stabbing the student.

The June 25 attack has alarmed Egyptians concerned that with an Islamist president in office, vigilante groups are feeling emboldened to enforce strict Islamic mores on the streets.

Islamists, including members of one-time violent groups, were empowered after last year’s ouster of Hosni Mubarak’s secular regime by a popular uprising. They formed political parties and won about 70 percent of parliament seats in elections held some six months ago, although a court dissolved the legislature.

Moderate Muslims along with liberal and women’s groups now worry that Mohammed Morsi’s presidency will eradicate what is left of Egypt’s secular traditions and change the social fabric of the mainly Muslim nation of 82 million people.

Some activists say Islamists already are flexing their muscles in areas outside Cairo and other main cities, taking advantage of the absence of civil society groups and tenuous security in the areas.

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Discovery of deadly agent revives debate of Arafat death

JERUSALEM (AP) — The discovery of traces of a radioactive agent on clothing reportedly worn by Yasser Arafat in his final days reignited a cauldron of conspiracy theories Wednesday about the mysterious death of the longtime Palestinian leader.

Arafat’s widow, who ordered the tests by a Swiss lab, called for her husband’s body to be exhumed, and Arafat’s successor gave tentative approval for an autopsy. But experts warned that even after the detection of polonium-210, getting answers on the cause of death will be tough.

Arafat was 75 when he died Nov. 11, 2004, in a French military hospital. He had been airlifted to the facility just weeks earlier with a mysterious illness, after being confined by Israel for three years to his West Bank headquarters.

At the time, French doctors said Arafat died of a massive brain hemorrhage. According to French medical records, he had suffered inflammation, jaundice and a blood condition known as disseminated intravascular coagulation, or DIC.

But the records were inconclusive about what brought about the DIC, which has numerous causes including infections, colitis and liver disease. Outside experts who reviewed the records on behalf of The Associated Press were also unable to pinpoint the underlying cause.

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German spy agency faces shake-up as destroyed files deepen embarrassment in neo-Nazi case

BERLIN (AP) — The case horrified Germany, a nation where the Hitler era still casts a long shadow: a small band of neo-Nazis suspected of killing ethnic Turks and others in a seven-year terror spree, undetected by security forces until a botched bank robbery brought down the group last year.

Now, Germany’s domestic spy agency faces awkward questions about a possible cover-up after revelations that an official destroyed files related to the investigation of the neo-Nazi group. The case prompted the government to announce this week that the agency’s head for the past 12 years will take early retirement.

Before he leaves, a parliamentary committee wants to question Heinz Fromm and the official responsible for the files on Thursday about whether the material was destroyed by mistake or deliberately.

The case had already proven deeply embarrassing to the agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, because of the failure to solve the killings of eight Turkish small businessmen and a Greek between 2000 and 2006 and a policewoman in 2007.

For years, authorities suspected organized crime rather than racist violence. Only when two suspected founding members were found dead last November after a botched bank robbery did the so-called National Socialist Underground’s activities come to light.

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Small-town America and the modern world: Andy Griffith showed one to the other

Close your eyes and picture it: small-town America.

It has a little post office, of course. A general store, too, and a fishing hole. There’s a barber who knows everyone — and knows about everyone. There’s a friendly auto mechanic. The picture wouldn’t be complete without several women who could be anyone’s favorite older sister or aunt.

Kids scurry around at reasonable paces, making low-grade mischief while dirtying their short-sleeve plaid shirts or striped T-shirts. Quirky characters wander about in a landscape of picket fences and healthy storefronts. And the police officer in charge? He’s tough but fair, community minded, the Solomon of his entire, geographically limited jurisdiction. He’s Atticus Finch without any of the racial tension.

This is, today, the comforting script America often reaches for when it summons the vanished rural nation that so many say they long for. Not coincidentally, it is also the state of mind given to us by Andy Griffith and his long-running TV show.

More than anyone except perhaps Walt Disney, Griffith was the entertainment-world emblem of the 20th-century values Americans often like to say they prize most. He spread the notion, begun by no less a figure than Thomas Jefferson, that somehow the very best of us was contained in the rural life — in this case, the fictional tales of Mayberry that “The Andy Griffith Show” delivered for almost a decade.