The week ahead: February 24 to March 2
A look at what’s coming up on the East Coast and around the world. This week, that includes a wind conference in Massachusetts, one of the final notes in Vienna’s ball season and the end of the show for a big, golden bear.
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- Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is expected to outline this week the U.S. Defense Department’s priorities and challenges in budgeting for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1 || Related: Hagel to preview Pentagon’s budget for 2015 on Feb. 24 || Photo by T.J. Kirkpatrick/Getty Images
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- Vice President Joe Biden addresses the American Israel Public Affiars Committee’s annual policy conference at the Washington Convention Center last year. The event is scheduled for March 2-4 in Washington. || Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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- Energy summit Offshore Wind Power USA meets Feb 25 and 26 at Boston’s Hynes Convention Center. Event organizers describe the meeting in their materials as the “ultimate high-level gathering of the industry’s major stakeholders both from the U.S. and overseas.” || Related: Dominion says it will bid in Md. offshore wind auction || Related: Offshore wind marches on || PHOTO BY YOSHIKAZU TSUNO – AFP/GETTY IMAGES
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- The Philadelphia Flower Show will feature alpine and Mediterranean plants, tips on small-space and budget gardening. The show runs March 1-9 || File Photo Provided by PHS
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- Posters with portraits of five Cubans jailed in the United States – Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert, Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, Fernando Gonzalez Llort(C), Ramon Labanino Salazar and Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez – are dispayed in this April 7, 2010 file photo in front of Cuba’s Consulate in Sao Pablo, Brazil. One of the so-called “Cuban Five” — intelligence agents convicted in a 2001 US spy case that made them heroes in Havana -has been told he will be released from prison, his lawyer told a Miami newspaper on January 29, 2014. Fernando Gonzalez, who is serving a 17-year prison sentence for not registering as a foreign agent and possessing false identity papers, would be the second member of the group to be released. His lawyer Ira Kurzban told El Nuevo Herald newspaper that the Bureau of Federal Prisons had set Fernandez’s release for February 27 for good conduct. Fernandez was arrested in 1998 along with four other Cuban intelligence agents for infiltrating the Key West Naval Air Station and Cuban exile groups in Miami. || CREDIT: NELSON ALMEIDA – AFP/GETTY IMAGES
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- Japanese model Nana Suzuki hugs a life-sized gold panda which is made from fiber rainforced plastic (FRP) and coated with gold foil at the opening of the Gold Expo at Tokyo’s Matsuzakaya department store on February 13, 2014. The 100 cm tall panda figure is on sale with a price of 8.88 million yen (88,000 USD), and the gold products exhibition will be held through February 25. || CREDIT: YOSHIKAZU TSUNO – AFP/GETTY IMAGES
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- Yaroslava (R), 21, Stas, 18, pose for a photo in front of Kiev’s city hall on February 13, 2014. Both are members of self-defence groups that defend Kiev’s Independence Square, which has been occupied by anti-government protesters for nearly three months, and plan to get married on February 26, 2014. || PHOTO CREDIT: GENYA SAVILOV – AFP/GETTY IMAGES
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- Baltimore, Md.–2/20/14– Lynne Parks, of Baltimore, one of the 2013 winners of the Baker Artist Awards, is pictured at the Baltimore Museum of Arts, where her photographs of dead migratory birds will be exhibited on February 26. || Photo by Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun
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- Debutants dressed for the Opera Ball pose with ball organizer Desiree Treichl-Stuergkh (R) and opera director Dominique Meyer during the presentation of their tiaras in Vienna January 28, 2014. The traditional Vienna Opera Ball takes place on February 27. || Credit: Heinz-Peter Bader – Reuters
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- A worker prepares part of a carnival float at the Mangueira Samba School in preparation for the annual carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro February 19, 2014. The Rio de Janeiro Carnival will be held from February 28 to March 3. || Credit: Pilar Olivares – Reuters
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- Farmers wash their dairy cows as preparations continue on the eve of the opening of the 51st International Agricultural Show in Paris, February 21, 2014. The Paris Farm Show runs through March 2, 2014. || Credit: Benoit Tessier – Reuters
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- The former Georgian minister of Defence David Kezerachvili embraces his wife Sophia as he leaves the Baumettes prison in Marseille on February 3, 2014. The former Defence minister was freed and placed under house arrest with an electronic bracelet by an appeals court in Aix-en-Provence, as he awaits the court’s February 27 ruling on the Georgian government’s request for his extradition. || CREDIT: BORIS HORVAT – AFP/GETTY IMAGES
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- Gilman 3rd grade teacher Jen Reiter poses in her traditional Eskimo designed jacket and other official apparel for the Iditarod race, in a snowy field at the school on Thursday, Jan 30. Reiter is this year’s national Teacher on the Trail for the annual Iditarod dog sled race in Alaska which begins March 1. || Baltimore, Md. 1/30/14 Staff Photo by Brian Krista
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- Master chef Wolfgang Puck displays a tray of miniature Oscar statues coated with 24k gold dust during the 86th Oscars Governors Ball press preview in Hollywood, California February 20, 2014. Puck will serve the Ball’s 1,500 invited guests dinner after the Academy Awards March 2. || Credit: Fred Prouser – Reuters
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- Kittisak Ratanawarahal, chairman of the Northern Farmers Network, stands in a warehouse of rotten rice abandoned ten years ago in Phichit province under a price-support scheme by then-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra February 6, 2014. Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra is now in power and under attack for what Kittisak and other critics say is another wasteful and corrupt rice subsidy policy. Thailand’s anti-corruption body said on Tuesday it had filed charges against Yingluck relating to irregularities in the government’s rice-buying scheme, and it summoned her to appear to face the charges on February 27. Kittisak represents 50,000 farmers, many of whom still wait to be paid by the government for rice they have delivered. Photo taken February 6, 2014. || Credit: Andrew R.C. Marshall – Reuters
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- Palestinians protest earlier this month against the closure of the main downtown street “Al-Shuhada” and also to mark the 20th anniversary of the massacre of 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers by Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein. The killings took place at the Tomb of the Patriarchs on February 25, 1994, the 20th anniversary of which arrives this week. At the outset of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, the army declared the street a “closed military zone,” restricting Palestinian access to residents of the immediate area, on foot only. || CREDIT: THOMAS COEX – AFP/GETTY IMAGES
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is expected to preview the Pentagon’s fiscal 2015 budget request on Monday, one week before the White House sends a formal budget plan to Congress, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Hagel is expected to use the announcement to outline the U.S. Defense Department’s priorities and challenges in budgeting for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1, said the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Hagel has previously said the military faces big spending cuts despite a two-year budget deal by Congress that reduced the size of mandatory reductions. The Pentagon must reduce its projected spending for fiscal 2015 by about $40 billion more than planned.
Additional editing by Baltimore Sun staff
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