PeacePlayers International's program in Northern Ireland is the only U.S.-based group that was selected for Prince William and Kate Middleton's Charitable Gift Fund in honor of their wedding. PPI was founded ten years ago by Washingtonians Brendan and Sean Touhey to get kids together in conflict-torn areas through basketball. The Tuohey's were honored by The Washingtonian as 2005 Washingtonians of the Year. Here is that story:

"Most the kids are nervous. Watching the fears subside and the spirit of competition take over is one of the best parts of my job."

What's a nice boy like Sean Tuohey, 29, doing in the back alleys of Tulkarm, a Palestinian village in the West Bank? Teaching 12-to-14-year-old kids to play basketball.

It's the first step in getting Arab and Jewish kids together on the basketball court as part of Playing for Peace, the program Tuohey started with his brother, Brendan, 31, in 2001 to use the sport to break down cultural and religious barriers.

Both Tuoheys played college basketball. After college, Brendan moved to Dublin in 1996 to play for the Tolka Rovers. He discovered that Catholic and Protestant kids never played together. They played different sports. And neither group played basketball.

Sean soon followed his brother across the pond, but he headed to Belfast. He began coaching basketball, mixing Protestant and Catholic kids on the teams. And it worked. Then a police chief in Belfast suggested that Sean organize the same kind of games in South Africa.

One of the most controversial and convoluted chapters in military history may have come to a close today. The Air Force has selected Boeing to build its next fleet of mid-air refueling tankers, an aircraft that’s so indispensable to modern warfare its pilots’ slogan is “You can’t kick ass without tanker gas.”

Boeing and the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) have been locked in heated competition for years on the contract, which is potentially worth $40 billion. But this saga’s routes go back even further. Today’s award marks the third time the Air Force has tried to select a company to build the new fleet. Last year, The Washingtonian took a look back at the sordid tanker tale, and if history is any guide, today’s announcement will merely be the prelude to another round of intense fighting.

Boeing had strong support from lawmakers in Washington state, where the planes will be built. They pitched the tanker contract as a massive jobs program and openly questioned the political wisdom of awarding such a lucrative deal to a foreign-owned company, particularly as unemployment in the United States remains stubbornly high.

Boeing was the Air Force’s original choice to provide the tankers, but that deal crumbled in 2004 in the wake of a high-level Air Force scandal and relentless hounding by Senator John McCain, who opposed a plan to lease the tankers rather than buy them outright.

UPDATE! 

Politico's Josh Gerstein reports that Risen got the subpoena quashed in November, before Sterling was indicted. http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/0111/NYTer_Risen_I_didnt_burn_source.html  Gerstein says Risen didn't cut a deal with prosecutors to give up his source. This is good news for reporters. I firmly believe Risen would have gone to jail rather than give up a source. 

But there's something troubling in the comment from Risen's lawyer. 

"Jim has not provided any testimony or cooperation of any kind to the government in connection with their investigation about the confidential source or sources of Chapter 9." 

I don't suggest that Risen provided testimony or cooperation for an investigation about some other chapter. But I do worry that there might in fact be an investigation into another chapter. Otherwise, why single this case out as being only about Chapter 9?  

The original post appears here:

The Justice Department has indicted a former CIA officer for leaking to a reporter, and all signs point to the New York Times’ James Risen as the beneficiary of said leak. This is a major development in one of the more-important reporters’ privilege cases in recent memory. As we revealed last year, the government had twice subpoenaed Risen to testify before a grand jury about his source, even through the government already had identified the leaker and didn’t actually need Risen to testify in order to bring its case. This was an extraordinary stretch of the government’s powers to force journalists to give up their sources, and it had profound implications for reporters that, sadly, went unnoticed in the hubbub over the Wikileaks disclosures.

The ex-CIA official named in the indictment is Jeffrey Sterling, who reportedly worked on Iran issues for the agency. The leak for which Risen was being subpoenaed involved a covert CIA operation against Iran. If Sterling is the man whom investigators have been seeking, then presumably they will now drop their subpoena against Risen, if they haven’t already. That is, unless they intend to call him in open court, which would be a very dark day for journalists everywhere.

The biggest news this week, as first reported by the legal blog Above the Law, is high-profile Supreme Court advocate Tom Goldstein’s decision to leave mega-firm Akin Gump, where he co-headed the Supreme Court practice. But he’s not going to one of Akin Gump’s large law-firm competitors. Instead, he’s returning to the small practice he shared with his wife, Amy Howe, before he joined Akin. The small firm will be called Goldstein Howe & Russell. Goldstein cited client conflicts as his reason for leaving.

It’s been seven weeks since we last saw Washington’s Real Housewives—posed on couches for their “reunion show,” the tension ratcheted up to a level that anywhere else would mean wig-tugging and table-flipping. The question is: Are they coming back? Will we get to see newly single Cat Ommaney on the prowl on 14th Street? Will Michaele Salahi have a revelation, dump Tareq, and become a full-time advocate for multiple-sclerosis research, redeeming the term “girl lobbyist” in the process? Whatever is happening to the spinoff focused on Paul Wharton and his hair?

As for the network’s response, Bravo spokeswoman Rachelle Savoia says, “We don’t have a time frame on a decision just yet.” Rich Amons—wearer of Pucci, father of closet-raider Lolly, and general voice of reason—says he hasn’t heard a thing about whether the show is coming back. But that uncertainty doesn’t necessarily mean Bravo is pulling up stakes on the Potomac and heading for ritzier, more scandalous climes.

The story of Valerie Plame’s outing as a CIA operative has been picked over so many times that it’s a wonder it took seven years to produce a movie about the scandal. The revelation of her identity by a shadowy Republican spin machine is meaty, salacious stuff—like The Bourne Identity meets W, with fewer outbreaks of violence and considerably more angst. Now that Fair Game—starring Naomi Watts as Plame and Sean Penn as her bombastic husband, Joe Wilson—has arrived, it almost feels unnecessary. There isn’t really anything new for director Doug Liman to reveal, so he relies heavily on archival cable-TV clips and visual jokes, such as casting an overly chubby actor to play White House adviser Karl Rove as well as emphasizing the spy intrigue Plame was forbidden from exploring in her memoir of the same name.

The Russian spies arrested last month and traded back to Moscow have mostly been introduced to the American public as a hot girl and a bunch of bumbling Borises and Natashas. They may have been sent here to infiltrate American institutions, and according to news reports about the information they sent back, Moscow Center might have been better served by a few American news subscriptions. But people who crossed paths with one of the recently deported spies, a Bostonian calling himself Donald Heathfield, suggest that he, at least, may have passed important American business intelligence back to Russia.