A key piece of America’s enduring presence in Iraq — a multimillion-dollar program to train police forces — could become a “bottomless pit” for taxpayer funding if officials fail to adequately assess the needs of Iraqi security forces and obtain assurances from Iraqi officials about the program’s future, according to a new federal watchdog report. Read full article > >

See more here:
State Department’s police training program in Iraq lacks planning, report says

The Emerson String Quartet is one of the world’s blue-chip chamber groups, so perhaps it wasn’t a surprise that it turned in a superb and often deeply involving performance on Saturday night at the National Museum of Natural History’s Baird Auditorium. What was a little surprising was the relative conservatism of the program — a well-worn path of late works by Mozart and Beethoven — but as it turned out, the conservatism was only skin deep. Read full article > >

View original post here:
Review of Emerson String Quartet at Natural History Museum

The Obama administration ended a major benefit in the 2010 health-care law on Friday, announcing that a program to offer Americans insurance for long-term care was simply unworkable. Although the program had been dogged from the start by doubts about its feasibility, its elimination marks the first time the administration has backed away from a key piece of what remains of President Obama’s signature legislative achievement. Read full article > >

See more here:
White House eliminates insurance program for long-term care

The 50,000 drivers who cruise daily along Interstate 25 between Denver and Colorado Springs drive through ranch and farm land, marked by dramatic buttes and wild animals, a vista that might have been very different but for a little-known federal program. The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), which Congress created in 1965, helped pay for this open space, along with large swaths of land in other areas across the country. But there is a fight looming in Washington as Congress plans to drastically cut the program’s budget, and President Obama, who had accepted cuts in the past, appears ready to oppose them. Read full article > >

See the original post here:
Conservation funding sparks political battle

The Energy Department, under fire over its management of a program that offers loan guarantees to clean-technology companies, has been finalizing additional multimillion-dollar loan guarantees in the program at a rate of more than one a week since the beginning of August. It now has just two weeks left to commit the program’s remaining $9.3 billion. Read full article > >

See original here:
During Solyndra probe, Energy Dept. has to move billions in loans

There were rambling moments and unnecessary stage turns during Monday’s gala celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater. But every minute of the 3 1 / 2 -hour program was worth it just to hear the evening’s honored guest, Aretha Franklin, sing jazz. Read full article > >

More:
Aretha Franklin steals the show at Monk Institute anniversary gala

After eight months of changes to Maryland football’s culture , uniforms and on-field schemes, the new-look Terrapins distinguished themselves in style and substance Monday night, delivering Randy Edsall an important victory in his debut as the school’s head coach . From the garish Under Armour-designed uniforms that even drew a thumbs-down Twitter review from LeBron James to a dynamic, mostly no-huddle offense, Edsall unveiled the program’s bold new image in a 32-24 victory over a depleted Miami team . Read full article > >

View post:
University of Maryland football defeats Miami in season opener

Facebook announced Friday that it will end its Deals program, the network’s answer to Groupon and other daily deals sites. The program is being dropped after four months of testing in select markets in Texas, California and Georgia. The network will discontinue the program in the “coming weeks.” “We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses,” Facebook said in a statement to the Associated Press. “We’ve learned a lot from our test and we’ll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses.” Read full article > >

More here:
Facebook ends Deals in a move that bolsters Groupon’s lead

The United Nations World Food Program is investigating allegations that supplies intended for famine victims have been stolen and sold on the open market for profit.

Read the original:
Allegations of Food Aid Theft Resurface in Somalia

Mekayell Lucas expected to return to her Southeast home after her freshman year at Shaw University in North Carolina to spend this summer like the last: working with elementary school children through the District’s summer jobs program. But when the 19-year-old tried to sign up in March, the program was already full. For more than two months, she has sought summer work — including jobs at CVS and Target — because she said she needs the income. “I won’t be able to buy clothes and shoes that I need, or help my mom with bills,” Lucas said. “I think that’s not fair.” Read full article > >

See original here:
Cuts leave jobless young Washingtonians searching for summer options

This weekend will be about many things for the Virginia baseball team: earning the program’s second College World Series berth in three years, validating its status as the NCAA tournament’s top overall seed and perpetuating the mantra that has carried the Cavaliers through yet another season of high expectations. All of those goals hinge on preventing a reoccurrence of last season’s final, haunting scene — players from some faraway place celebrating on Virginia’s home field after upsetting Virginia one step shy of college baseball’s grandest stage. Read full article > >

Read more:
Virginia baseball team motivated by last season’s NCAA super regional letdown

It was 1962 when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration first decided to invite artists — yes, artists — to interpret the work of the space agency. At the time, James Dean, the program’s founding director, remembers thinking, “What do we know about art, right?” You may be wondering that, too. This is a government agency staffed by people with pocket protectors. What do they traffic in? Only stuff such as human weightlessness, speeds that could rip your skin off, and the power to lift a house-size ship filled with astronauts off the face of the Earth and send them hurtling through space. Read full article > >

Follow this link:
Art review: ‘NASA/Art: 50 Years of Exploration’

Banks stopped repossessing District homes in mid-November as they waited on city officials to set the ground rules for an ambitious new foreclosure-prevention program . The final rules were unveiled Friday, but that’s unlikely to jump-start D.C.’s foreclosure process. Lenders must sort through a backlog of troubled loans, set up new systems and reach out to struggling borrowers as they ramp up for the program. Starting May 25, before lenders press forward with a foreclosure, they must first offer the affected homeowners a shot at mediation, which will enable them and the borrowers to explore foreclosure alternatives under the watchful eye of a neutral third party. Those alternatives can include lowering a borrower’s payment to an affordable level. Read full article > >

Go here to read the rest:
Rules in place for D.C. foreclosure-prevention program

Senate Armed Services Committee members questioned top Pentagon officials Thursday on how they plan to rein in spending on the nation’s next-generation fighter, whose life-cycle costs could eventually reach $1 trillion. Defense Undersecretary for Acquisition Ashton Carter described current projected costs for the F-35 as “unacceptable” and said the plane would be “unaffordable at that rate.” To remedy the situation, he said, the Pentagon is doing a new “should cost” analysis, “scrutinizing every aspect of the cost of the airplane . . . and seeing how they can be driven [down] over time of the program.” Read full article > >

Continue reading here:
Senate panel questions Pentagon on F-35 costs

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — To visit the low-rise medical offices dotting the sun-bleached highways of Broward County is to meet doctors and patients who complain of being guinea pigs in a social experiment gone wrong. They are part of a five-year pilot program designed to test whether Florida can reduce spending on Medicaid, the public insurance program for the poor and disabled, by largely turning the program over to for-profit HMOs. Success would mean getting a handle on one of the fastest-growing and most vexing expenditures confronting states. Read full article > >

More:
Fla. pilot program to cut Medicaid costs raises new questions