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K Eids An African elephant in the wild lives about 60 years.


New buzz about elephants I


Scientist discovers they fear bees, which could help protect crops


t is said that elephants are afraid of mice, but scientists have discov- ered what elephants are really


afraid of: bees. It turns out that the enormous mammals sound an alarm when they encounter bees, and that knowledge could help save African farmers’ crops from elephants — and could save ele- phants, too.


Elephants and humans don’t al-


ways live well together, particularly in African countries including Kenya. A single hungry elephant can wipe out a family’s crops overnight. During the harvest season, farmers will huddle by fires all night, and when an elephant comes near, they will jump up with flaming sticks while their children bang on pots and pans. But not all fields can be guarded, and the elephants aren’t


always


frightened off. Sometimes, farmers kill elephants to protect their crops. Rampaging elephants have also killed people.


But bees could help end all that, said Lucy King, who studies animal behavior and published a study on the subject. King did two experiments. In the first, she played recorded bee sounds near elephants, and the ele- phants took off. But the researchers also noticed that even elephants in the distance, away from the recorded bee sound, also moved away. That sug- gested elephants could communicate


an alarm that humans could not hear. For her second experiment, King hung ultra-sensitive microphones from trees to record the elephant rumblings. She then played the sounds back to elephants, and those elephants also moved away when they heard the recordings. More research needs to be done be- fore these findings can be put to wide use, but King hopes it will offer a solu- tion to the 1,300 complaints the Ken-


ya Wildlife Service records about ele- phant-human contact each year. Farmers could make “bee fences” by stringing up hives on poles about 10 yards apart, King said. A strong wire connecting the poles would cause them to swing when an elephant walks into it, disturbing the bees. The swarm would bother the big animal so much that it would flee. The low rum- bling sound the elephant makes in re- sponse would warn other elephants


RICHARD HARTOG/ASSOCIATED PRESS


Abby Sunderland was rescued after her ship was damaged.


Girl safe after sailing


adventure goes awry  Abby Sunderland, the 16-year- old from California trying to sail solo around the world, had to be rescued in the Indian Ocean over the weekend after her boat was badly damaged in a storm. Abby had been adrift for two days hop- ing rescuers would detect her emergency signal.


She had hoped to become the PHOTOS BY LUCY KING/OXFORD UNIVERSITY Farmers in Africa could place beehives near fencing, left, to scare off elephants and save their crops.


nearby. “It’s impossible to cover Africa in


electric fences,” King said. “This could be a better way to direct elephants away from farmers’ crops.” So the next time a bee gets between you and the picnic table, don’t feel bad. Now you know that even much bigger creatures share your fear of the insects.


— From staff and wire reports


youngest person to sail nonstop around the world. She gave up that quest when equipment prob- lems forced her to stop for repairs in South Africa last month, but she continued her journey around the globe. Then last week she got caught in a fierce storm that tossed her boat around with 30-foot waves. The mast was bro- ken off and her satellite connec- tion was destroyed. She said she feared it would take weeks before she was found, but a rescue plane spotted her after just a day. Abby has been taken aboard a


French fishing boat. It will take a few weeks before she returns home to California.


KLMNO FRAZZ


TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 2010 JEF MALLETT


TODAY:Mostly cloudy


HIGH LOW 85 68


ILLUSTRATION BY SAM WELSH, 9, ROCKVILLE


TODAY’S NEWS


Scrutinizing an election surprise


S.C. primary speculation comes from all corners after an unknown wins


by Manuel Roig-Franzia It’s the voting machines. No wait, it’s


random-selecting voters. Or, maybe, shadowy Republican operatives. Or Democratic antagonists. Take your pick. Everyone’s got a theory about why Al- vin M. Greene — an unemployed veteran and political newbie who didn’t trifle with campaign speeches or public ap- pearances — handily won South Caro- lina’s Democratic Party nomination for the U.S. Senate last week. Protests have been lodged and the White House has chimed in (senior presidential adviser David Axelrod called Greene’s win “a mysterious deal” on “Meet the Press”), yet the reason for the top shocker of the primary season remains anyone’s guess. Greene’s opponent — a Charleston


city councilman, former judge and four- time member of the South Carolina leg- islature named Vic Rawl — filed a com- plaint Monday with the South Carolina Democratic Party, then laid out his own theories in a news conference. He has heard from voters who selected his name only to have Greene’s appear. He also says the voting machines “were pur- chased surplus from Louisiana after that state outlawed them.” The implication of that last charge is


pretty juicy. Louisiana, after all, does po- litical shenanigans more colorfully and brazenly than most. South Carolina’s election commission begs to differ about the provenance of the voting machines. Spokesman Chris Whitmire says the state’s 12,000 iVotron- ic voting machines were bought brand- spanking-new from Election Systems and Software, an Omaha-based behe- moth that boasts of operations in 39 states. Asked to clear up the claim about South Carolina using Louisiana’s rejects, Rawl spokesman Walter Ludwig said in an e-mail, “That was what the word around the state was — heard it from several people.” Whether new or previously owned, the contraptions are villainous, in the eyes of Donald Fowler, a prominent South Carolina political strategist who


served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1995 to 1997 and is married to Carol Fowler, chair- man of the South Carolina Democratic Party. Donald Fowler also thinks Greene was a Republican plant — though he of- fers no proof and Greene has denied it every which way. But that, alone, doesn’t explain the huge margin for Greene, who collected more than 100,000 votes, nearly 60 percent of the total, Fowler says. “No logical pattern explains this to me


except voting machine error or deliber- ate manipulation, and I’ve been doing this for 40 years,” the Democratic mach- er intones. Somehow, Greene, who lives with his


father and hasn’t worked since leaving the Army in August, came up with a $10,400 filing fee. Greene says the mon- ey came from personal savings, but he declined to provide documentation dur- ing an interview. His assertion has been questioned by Fowler and others. They’re suspicious because Greene was assigned a public defender — typically a service reserved for indigent defendants — in November when he was charged with obscenity for allegedly showing pornography to a University of South Carolina student. (Greene says he is not guilty.) Fowler suspects Republicans put up the money and placed Greene in the race to embarrass South Carolina’s Dem- ocratic Party. Imaginative, but not un- precedented. Even some prominent South Carolina Republicans suspect Greene didn’t come up with the money all by himself. But Katon Dawson — a former South Caro- lina Republican Party chairman — thinks the culprit lurks inside the Demo- cratic ranks. “I suspect somebody inside the Demo-


cratic Party had a problem with Vic Rawl or wanted to create some mischief in that primary,” Dawson says. (Dawson, by the way, thinks Axelrod was wrong to weigh in on the race. “The White House really needs to mind its own business and get on over there and fix this thing in the gulf, and stop worrying about the Democratic primary in South Carolina,” he says.)


Shenanigans are always a possibility, considering that “low-grade fraud and back-stabbing is well within the stan- dard deviation of the mean in South Carolina politics,” says Scott Huffmon, a politics expert at South Carolina’s Win- throp University. But Huffmon says no


Meeks named president of National Trust


by Jacqueline Trescott The National Trust for Historic Preser-


vation announced Monday that Stepha- nie Meeks, a longtime official in the non- profit community, would became its president in July. Meeks, 45, is president and chief exec- utive of Counterpart International, a hu- manitarian organization. Earlier she worked at the Nature Conservancy for 18 years, and for one year was its acting president. Meeks succeeds Richard Moe, who was president of the trust for 17 years and completed a $165 million fundraising campaign last year. Moe retired earlier this month.


MARY ANN CHASTAIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS


POLITICS AS UNUSUAL: Alvin M. Greene, displaying one of his campaign fliers, won the Democratic nomination for Senate in a South Carolina primary.


single factor can explain Greene’s win. Huffmon isn’t buying the bit about Greene being a Republican plant. Why bother, he asks, given that incumbent Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) was not con- sidered vulnerable. He also doesn’t give much weight to another prevailing theo- ry, the one about large numbers of Re- publicans crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary — a perfectly legal move because South Carolinians don’t register by party. Huffmon doubts Re- publicans would have given up a chance to vote in their own hotly contested gu- bernatorial race, in which upstart Nikki Haley defeated three strong candidates. Huffmon is more intrigued by the pos-


sibility that voters selected Greene be- cause his name appeared first on the ballot, a phenomenon known as “prima- cy” that occurs when voters know little about candidates or don’t care much


about races. He also notes that Greene is aname more common than Rawl among African Americans, and wonders wheth- er African American voters, who often make up more than half of the voters in South Carolina’s Democratic primaries, might have chosen him for that reason. It’s been argued all sorts of ways on


the Internet — that folks saw Alvin Greene on the ballot and thought of Al Green, the gospel great. But wait, some may have seen Vic Rawl and conjured Lou Rawls, the soul singer. An “e” at the end of the victor’s name was seen by some analysts as a traditionally African American spelling. But then Graham Greene comes to mind, and off the horde flits to another theory. roigfranzia@washpost.com


Staff writers Jon Cohen and Garance Franke-Ruta contributed to this report.


Originally from Loveland, Colo., Meeks has a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Colorado and a master’s in business administration from George Washington University. “The work is an expansion of what I have been doing in the protection of unique and special places. I’m particularly interested in the trust’s Main Street program and its Pres- ervation Green Lab program. At the end of the day, it is all about how we can enjoy the places we love,” Meeks said. Counterpart International works around the world to build partnerships to work on economic, environmental and social issues. Since the devastating earth- quake in Haiti, it has raised $1 million in relief for that country. Meeks has been the leader of the group since November 2008. At the Nature Conservancy, she led a successful $1.6 billion fundraising cam- paign. The trust has been a leader in the pres-


ervation field since 1949, bringing atten- tion to historic buildings, landscapes and communities that were in decay or in danger of being destroyed. Its annual list of Most Endangered Sites is a rallying cry for architects and civic activists to step in before it’s too late. The Trust has named 200 places since 1988. This year the Met- ropolitan A.M.E. Church in downtown Washington, where abolitionist Frederick Douglass worshiped, was added to the list. In recent years the trust voluntarily de- clined to receive federal funding, led the fight to stop the Walt Disney Co. from de- veloping a historic theme park close to the Manassas Civil War Battlefield and worked to preserve President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington. In 2001 the trust was awarded the Na- tional Humanities Medal for its work. trescottj@washpost.com


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