What 2020 could bring in spaceflight

millions of dollars of private investment, but now is headed to a turning point, said Carissa Christensen, the CEO of Bryce Space and Technology, a consulting firm. “Now that’s moving to a phase of: prove it,” she said. “Companies are having to prove they’re viable and their business model flows, and some are succeeding and some are not.” SpaceX started the year Monday night with a launch from Cape Canaveral to put 60 more satellites into low Earth orbit, part of a constellation that eventually could reach thousands that the company hopes would beam the Internet to remote parts of the globe without broadband. Assembling that architecture in space will require dozens of launches, which many think could have the California-based company break its record for the most launches in a single year, 21 in 2018. SpaceX’s next launch is set to come as soon as Jan. 11, when it is scheduled to again test the emergency abort system of its Dragon spacecraft — this time in flight. A Falcon 9 rocket would blast off from launchpad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. Then, shortly thereafter, the abort motors would fire, demonstrating that it has the ability to get crews away safely in the event of an emergency. If it goes well, SpaceX is hoping to follow that with its first flight with people in the coming months. Boeing is also moving aggressively, despite the problems that hampered the first test flight of its Starliner spacecraft. Officials said the spacecraft’s onboard timer was off by 11 hours and, as a result, the engines that would have propelled it on a trajectory to the space station never fired. The company, which fired chief executive Dennis Muilenburg in the wake of the 737 Max airplane crisis, is still investigating what caused the problem. But company officials said that they were preparing the spacecraft for its next mission and that its life-support system had performed well. The spacecraft “shows little scorching from the heat of atmospheric re-entry,” the company said. When it comes to human spaceflight, no one has made more overly optimistic pronouncements than Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Galactic. For years, the British-born billionaire has predicted that his company would soon ferry legions of paying tourists to the edge of space and back — only to have to delay again and again. But now, having reached what many consider the


A guide to the best bars without TVs in the Washington area

work of art as the drinks themselves, and more fun to look at than a projection screen. Eat the Rich Derek Brown's three restaurants on Seventh Street NW are adverse to televisions: The Eat the Rich oyster bar and Mockingbird Hill sherry bar (currently being renovated) don't have them, while Southern Efficiency's lone screen is primarily used to show the Kentucky Derby. Otherwise, Brown says, "we rarely turn it on." The Gibson The trendsetting 14th and U cocktail bar -- unmarked outside, dark atmosphere inside -- has no screens to distract you from your drink and your date. Jack Rose While Jack Rose's popular rooftop deck and tiki bar have multiple televisions, there are no screens in the cavernous first-floor Saloon Bar, or in the cozy, speakeasy-like Dram and Grain in the basement. Lyman's Tavern While Lyman's does have a projection screen that's brought down for screenings of "The Walking Dead," it's turned off 99 percent of the time the pinball-centric bar is open. The Partisan Sister bars ChurchKey and the Sovereign combine craft beer and sports viewing, but the Partisan focuses on beer, wine and cocktails without distractions. Pizzeria Paradiso The Dupont Circle location of the craft beer and pizza bar doesn't have televisions. The ones in Old Town Alexandria and Georgetown do. PX You'll probably need a reservation to get into the famous speakeasy-like restaurant in Alexandria, but the cocktails and service are perfect for spoiling yourself for a night. Quarry House Tavern Quarry House's temporary digs, across the street from its fire-damaged Silver Spring basement location, don't have a television. (It does, however, have a patio.) Room 11 The classiest date spot in Columbia Heights combines a television-free bistro and bar with a large paved patio. The Saloon "No TV" is one of the "rules" posted outside the Saloon on U Street NW, along with edicts against standing at the bar, martinis and loud cellphone conversations. Regulars who love the grilled cheese and German beers wouldn't have it any other way. Wonderland Ballroom The Wonderland Ballroom has been a mainstay in Columbia Heights for 12 years. The entertainment schedule includes DJs, comedy, live music, karaoke and trivia -- no wonder televisions aren't needed. Read more: - Where to watch the presidential debate with food specials and drinking games - Where to find half-price food and drink deals every day of the week - If you’re going to


Europeans shift troops from Iraq, warn fight against Islamic State is imperiled because of U.S. actions

State and speaking on the condition of anonymity to comment frankly about European assessments. The diplomat expressed incredulity about some of the U.S. justifications for the killing of Soleimani. “The notion that the Americans are calling this a de-escalating, defensive move is frankly surreal. It’s Soviet,” the diplomat said. “They think they’re reestablishing their deterrence while planning the withdrawal of their forces in Iraq.” A second senior NATO diplomat, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly, expressed concern that targeting a senior military leader of a nation-state could change the bounds of what is acceptable between countries that are not at war with each other. The diplomat drew a distinction with actions against Islamic State and other terrorist network leaders because they are not part of sovereign nations. “This changes the rules of the game,” the diplomat said. “If you take out a senior military commander, why shouldn’t they do the same to you?” The airstrike targeting Soleimani also killed senior Iraqi officials and led to a wave of anger in Baghdad. On Sunday, the Iraqi parliament approved a nonbinding resolution calling for the U.S. military to pull out of the country. It offered no time frame for the request. A U.S. departure would lead to a wave of other pullouts from Iraq, since U.S. logistical support is key for the presence of most of the military deployments, even those of large nations such as France and Germany. A total of 35 German service members in the district of Taji and in Baghdad were affected by the order to leave Iraq, which was completed by Tuesday morning. Another 110 German military members are still stationed in Irbil, the regional capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, the German military spokesman said. The German government said it remains open to returning military personnel to Baghdad and other Iraqi bases. “In principle, we stand by the usefulness of this mission,” the military spokesman said. “The fight against the Islamic State is not over, and the many achievements we have made need to be secured. The decisive factor will now be the Iraqi government,” he said. A Friday meeting of E.U. foreign ministers, convened on an emergency basis to discuss how to respond to the Iran threat, is expected to be a venue for airing frustrations with U.S. actions. Europeans fear that the Iran nuclear agreement, already faltering, may now be dead, with


The fatal flaw that could stop each NFL playoff team from reaching the Super Bowl

If defense wins championships, many of the eight teams remaining in the NFL playoffs are in trouble. Some struggled in the red zone this season, while others had issues with forcing opponents into three-and-outs; strength in those metrics is often indicative of a potential Super Bowl champion. Two of the weakest defenses in the field reside in the AFC, giving the conference’s top seed, the Baltimore Ravens, a relatively easy path to this year’s Super Bowl. The Ravens, however, have defensive issues of their own. Their defensive line has had trouble generating pressure with a traditional four-man pass rush, forcing Coach John Harbaugh and defensive coordinator Don Martindale to blitz a league-high 55 percent of the time. (The league average is 28 percent.) That can leave the Baltimore secondary vulnerable. The remaining playoff teams that faced Baltimore this season produced an 84.6 passer rating against its blitz but just a 68.9 passer rating against its traditional pass pressure, with significant differences in completion rate and yards per attempt. That difference might not be dramatic, but it’s easy to imagine how giddy Tennessee Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill is at the thought of facing plenty of blitzes Saturday night. Tannehill averaged 11 yards per attempt against the blitz this season, with eight touchdowns, no interceptions and a 133.9 passer rating. If generating pressure with a four-man rush is Baltimore’s biggest weakness, here are potentially fatal flaws for the rest of the playoff field: No. 2 Kansas City Chiefs Fatal flaw: Rush defense The Chiefs stopped just 14 percent of opposing rushers at or behind the line of scrimmage during the regular season (the third-lowest stuff rate of 2019) and allowed 71 percent of runs on third or fourth down needing two yards or less to achieve a first down or touchdown, the fifth-worst rate in the league. Those numbers limited Kansas City’s overall rush defense, after adjusting for opponent, to 29th in the NFL, with opponents going three-and-out a league-low 22 percent of the time. Over the past 16 years, only the 2006 Colts won the Super Bowl after a regular season in which they forced opponents to go three-and-out less than 30 percent of the time. No. 4 Houston Texans Fatal flaw: Pass coverage Houston’s defensive component of Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (a measure of team efficiency based on comparing success on every play to a league average based on situation


There’s a new baby chimpanzee for a first-time mom at Maryland Zoo

The Maryland Zoo is welcoming a baby female chimpanzee to first-time mom Raven, a crucial addition to the Baltimore zoo’s chimpanzee population. The chimp was born Dec. 29 to 24-year-old Raven, after an eight-month pregnancy and a smooth birth, officials said. The mother and daughter have “spent their first week together bonding in a quiet off-exhibit area,” according to a statement from the zoo. Officials at the zoo, near downtown Baltimore, said the baby chimp is a “miniature version of her mom, with fluffy black hair covering most of her body.” Raven is the second mom to give birth at the zoo recently. Another chimpanzee, Bunny, gave birth to Lola in July. Experts are hoping Raven will get comfortable as a mom by spending time with Bunny and 6-month-old Lola. There are 14 chimpanzees at the Maryland Zoo. Chimpanzees are considered endangered on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. In the wild, they face threats of poaching, disease and the destruction of their habitat, the African rainforest, experts said. At the Maryland Zoo, officials said the birth of the two chimps is key because reproduction of chimpanzees at zoos has been slow. “These two babies are essential for the long-term genetic health of the chimpanzee population in human care,” Erin Cantwell, the mammal collection and conservation manager at the Maryland Zoo, said in the statement. Keepers watch for chimps to reach milestones similar to those of human babies: holding their heads up on their own, learning facial expressions and how to vocalize, and figuring out how to use their fingers and toes to reach for items. The new baby chimp is already “gripping well and is very vocal,” Cantwell wrote. She said the zoo staff is working to give Raven a “lot of support and encouragement” because she’s a new mom. They’re using “behavior training” to teach her “how to carry and nurse the baby properly.” In videos put out by the zoo, the baby chimp can be seen taking a few steps toward her mother. Another shows the mother taking hay to tuck in her baby and tending to the newborn. The baby chimp, officials said, spends most of her time cradled in her mother’s arms. She weighed about two pounds at birth. Claire Aubel, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Zoo, said in an email that officials haven’t decided on a name.


Did you get ‘drafted’ by the U.S. Army via text message? It’s a hoax.

slightly varied wording, appear to target people in Florida and New Jersey. The Tuesday statement from Recruiting Command noted that the Selective Service System, the federal agency tasked with maintaining a database of young men ages 18 to 26 who could be called up to serve should a crisis necessitate a military draft, has not had a draft since 1973: “The military has been an all-volunteer force since that time. Registering for the Selective Service does not enlist a person into the military.” But among young Americans — particularly young men who were born decades after the last draft and fall into the age range for mandatory Selective Service registration — anxieties around conscription for service have grown in the days since a U.S. airstrike killed one of Iran’s top military commanders, Qasem Soleimani, in Baghdad. Google searches for terms such as “conscription,” “Selective Service” and “Iran” spiked after the early-Friday attack, according to Google Trends data. A day after the airstrike, people flooded the Selective Service website, causing it to crash. Even with tensions high between the United States and Iran, Congress and the president would have to enact legislation to reactivate the draft, and such a move would be unlikely, given the historic opposition that ended the last draft. Antiwar sentiment around the Vietnam War propelled the end of the draft in 1973, and the requirement to register for the draft was dropped two years later. Today, eligible individuals need only register with Selective Services within 30 days of their 18th birthday. Nearly all men in the eligible age range are required to register, including U.S. citizens, documented and undocumented immigrants, refugees and legal permanent residents. Women are not required to register, though a 2019 court decision about the matter has renewed debate over whether that should change. Patricia Sullivan, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies military policy, said the current situation with Iran hardly signals the need for a draft. “With Iran, there’s almost no chance that we’re getting into the kind of ground-war scenario that large numbers of ground troops would be needed and we would implement the draft,” Sullivan previously told The Post. She added that the military is now so professionalized, and the cost of training each soldier so high, that it would not necessarily make sense to add a surge of recruits who may not


Earth posts second-hottest year on record to close out our warmest decade

3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above preindustrial levels. The aspirational goal in the agreement is to hold temperatures to a 2.7-degree increase, or 1.5 Celsius, above preindustrial levels, which is a target favored by the countries considered most vulnerable to climate impacts, such as small island nations. The rapid warming has occurred as concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a long-lived heat-trapping greenhouse gas, continue to increase. Copernicus cited satellite measurements showing the amount of carbon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere in 2019 increased by 2.3 parts per million, which was larger than the growth rate in 2018 but below the growth rate of 2.9 ppm in 2015. Overall, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now the highest level in human history and probably has not been seen on this planet for 3 million years. However, to meet the Paris targets, the world would need to commit to rapidly slashing carbon emissions at a rate far outside the plans of any of the largest emitters, making the 2.7-degree goal technically possible but politically unlikely. This past year featured numerous climate milestones, most of which indicated human and natural systems are already being buffeted by extensive impacts from relatively low levels of climate change, considering the warming projected to come in the next several decades. Last year, extreme climate events, such as a searing European heat wave, drove home the urgency of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. The recent bush fires in Australia charred millions of acres in December, which was that country’s hottest month on record, capping off its hottest and driest year. Last year was also the warmest summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and Europe had its hottest year on record. Europe also had its hottest December on record as 2019 came to a close. The year also brought fierce hurricanes that rapidly intensified from weak to monstrous storms — a process in which climate change is thought to play a role. Among them was Hurricane Dorian, which devastated the northwestern Bahamas. In the United States, Alaska experienced record warmth, with an astonishing lack of sea ice in the Bering and Chukchi Seas even during winter. The year also brought troubling signs that natural systems that serve to store huge quantities of carbon dioxide and methane, the latter being another powerful greenhouse gas, may be faltering as temperatures increase. In December, a federal


After the Boeing crash near Tehran, who will investigate?

the necessary preparation and skills. European lawmakers were among the first to call for an international investigation Wednesday. “This has to be examined internationally,” Omid Nouripour, a foreign affairs spokesman for Germany’s Green Party, told broadcaster NTV. The engines of the crashed Ukraine International Airlines plane reportedly were produced by a company partially based in France. After the Ethiopian Airlines crash, for instance, Ethiopia requested multiple European nations to analyze the plane’s black boxes. French investigators agreed to do so in the end, as they have particularly extensive experience with some of the most modern Airbus planes that are manufactured in France. France’s analysis of the Ethiopian Airlines black boxes appeared significant at the time because the plane was a Boeing 737 Max 8, not an Airbus jet. The French investigative authority for civil aviation safety rejected claims that it was seeking to create a competitive advantage for Boeing competitor Airbus by assigning blame to the U.S. plane manufacturer. The results of such analyses — including when U.S. authorities provide assistance to foreign states — are usually secret and can be released only by the country officially in charge of the investigation. At times, political disputes have pushed countries where incidents occurred to hand over responsibility of investigations to third parties. However, the norm, according to Annex 13 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation, is that states where an accident occurs are in charge of the investigations, even though the NTSB may “designate a U.S. Accredited Representative and appoint advisors to carry out the Obligations, receive the Entitlements, provide Consultation, and receive Safety Recommendations from the state of occurrence.” Iran ratified the convention in 1950. Other parties to that convention have in the past opted to set aside differences with the United States and allow private or official U.S. representatives to be involved. For example, the crash of a 39-year-old Boeing 737 after takeoff from Havana last year occurred amid deteriorating relations between the Trump administration and Cuba. Still, Cuban officials notified the NTSB, which appointed a representative. Only one passenger survived the crash, in which 112 people died. The Cuban-led commission — supported by U.S. and Mexican officials — later contradicted prior conclusions and argued that errors by the plane’s crew “in the calculations of weight and balance” were to blame for the crash. Read more: Iran launches ballistic missiles at bases housing U.S. military personnel in Iraq


2019 saw a major setback in fighting polio

LAST YEAR was dispiriting for those struggling to eradicate polio, especially in Pakistan. The goal of eradication seemed at least possible when there were only eight cases in 2017, and 12 cases in 2018. Now, the latest data show there have been 128 cases of polio in Pakistan in the past year. Moreover, the global campaign to eradicate polio, which began in 1988, is facing a whole new set of uncertainties. Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria are the three remaining countries where polio is endemic, and Nigeria had been free of wild poliovirus for three years. Highly contagious, the poliovirus largely strikes children under age 5 and can cause permanent paralysis. Vaccinations must be sufficiently widespread to break the chain of transmission. Unfortunately in Pakistan, political instability, population mobility and violence driven by intolerance have made it hard to reach all children for vaccination. Two policemen were killed Dec. 18 while on their way to accompany a polio vaccination team in the Lower Dir district, about 112 miles northwest of the capital, Islamabad. Since 2012, at least 98 people have been killed in attacks on Pakistan’s polio vaccination campaigns. Hard-line Islamist forces still spread irrational beliefs that vaccines are contaminated or a Western plot. Social media in Pakistan has accelerated false rumors about vaccination, leading to waves of refusals by parents. According to a recent account by Al Jazeera, another worrisome trend has arisen lately: Villages are using vaccination as a bargaining chip to win other needs from the state, such as water, natural gas, electricity and jobs. No global eradication effort can be successful without Pakistan. This year must see progress against these serious obstacles, which are caused by human behavior, not virology. At the same time, new problems have cropped up in the global vaccination effort. Three poliovirus strains have existed: wild types 1, 2 and 3. The wild type 3 was declared eradicated last year. The wild type 2 had not been sighted since 1999. Vaccines use an inactivated version of the wild strains to trigger an immune response by the human body. Sometimes, the inactivated strains pass into the environment and revert to active. When wild type 2 disappeared, a decision was made to omit the type 2 component from the oral polio vaccine used by 155 countries. The “switch” in April 2016 was made with a realization that some type 2 outbreaks were possible if the


Boeing’s firing of its CEO seen as move to ‘restore confidence’ in wake of 737 Max crisis

when, after a flawless launch to space, a Boeing spacecraft designed to fly NASA astronauts did not achieve the correct orbit when the capsule’s engines failed to fire as expected. The latest misstep forced the cancellation of the spacecraft’s planned mission to the International Space Station. Muilenburg was present for the launch of the Starliner capsule, but made no public statement. In a note to Boeing employees Monday morning, Smith thanked Muilenburg for his nearly 35 years at Boeing and wrote that he “gave his all to the company under extraordinarily difficult circumstances.” “This has obviously been a difficult time for our company, and our people have pulled together in extraordinary ways,” Smith wrote. “Over the next few weeks as we transition to new leadership, I am committed to ensuring above all that we meet the needs of our stakeholders — especially our regulators, customers and employees — with transparency and humility.” The FAA issued a statement Monday saying Boeing informed the agency of Muilenburg’s departure and reiterated that it is following no set schedule for when the Max will be cleared to fly again. “The FAA continues to follow a thorough process for returning the Boeing 737 MAX to passenger service,” the agency’s statement said. “We continue to work with other international aviation safety regulators to review the proposed changes to the aircraft. Our first priority is safety, and we have set no timeframe for when the work will be completed.” “We expect that Boeing will support that process by focusing on the quality and timeliness of data submittals for FAA review, as well as being transparent in its relationship with the FAA as safety regulator.” In a statement, Michael Stumo, whose 24-year-old daughter Samya Rose Stumo was killed in one of the 737 Max crashes, said that Muilenburg’s resignation “is a good first step toward restoring Boeing to a company that focuses on safety and innovation. Now that it’s known what he and top Boeing officials knew, yet ignored, prior to the crashes, it has become clear how the company eroded in quality over the years.” Robert A. Clifford, an attorney representing the families suing the company, said Boeing’s board “does not deserve a ‘pat on the back’ for this decision. In fact, their leadership decisions empowered Muilenburg and the company to create a culture where profits were put ahead of the safety of the global traveling public.”


U.S. report calls for sanctions on China for human rights abuses, influence operations

BEIJING — A U.S. government commission led by bipartisan lawmakers urged the Trump administration to enact sanctions against Chinese officials and companies for human rights abuses and to develop stronger policies to counteract what it called China's intensified political influence operations abroad. The Congressional-Executive Commission on China argued for tougher and more cohesive U.S. action against Beijing in a new annual report that detailed the Chinese government's crackdown against religious minorities and labor activists, its expansion of digital surveillance and censorship, and its political influence activities around the world. "Rising authoritarianism in China is one of the most important challenges of the 21st century," said the commission, which is led by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). The agency is mandated to monitor human rights in China under a U.S. law passed in 2000 as China prepared to enter the World Trade Organization. At the time, proponents of China's WTO entry said it would gradually usher greater political and trade liberalization into the country. Two decades later, Beijing has instead "expanded a costly and elaborate authoritarian system designed to intimidate, censor, and even imprison Chinese citizens for exercising their fundamental human rights," said the report released Wednesday. The commission's recommendations reflected growing wariness toward America's largest trading partner and the rapidly shifting discourse in Washington over the past 18 months as President Trump waged a bruising trade war. While the commission's previous reports focused on China's domestic situation, Wednesday's document contained stark new warnings about the threat of what it called China's "intensified use of disinformation, propaganda, economic intimidation and political influence operations." Congress should require U.S. universities, think tanks and nongovernmental organizations to disclose major gifts from foreign sources and expand scrutiny of Chinese government influence in American classrooms via student groups and on-campus organizations such as China's state-funded Confucius Institutes, the commission said. It warned, however, that the U.S. government's statements and policies should "clearly differentiate between the Chinese people and culture and the Chinese government and Communist Party" to prevent the targeting of Chinese Americans or the Chinese diaspora. China consistently dismisses U.S. criticism of its human rights record as interfering in its domestic affairs. Beijing also views U.S. efforts to exhort countries to condemn China’s behavior as Cold War-era thinking and has rallied its own partners, including many Muslim-majority countries, to defend its policies affecting Muslim Uighurs in the northwestern Xinjiang region. “For


Specter of possible new virus emerging from central China raises alarms across Asia

BEIJING — An outbreak of an unidentified and possibly new viral disease in central China is prompting officials across Asia to take heightened precautions ahead of the busy Lunar New Year travel season. Officials in Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines said in recent days that they will begin setting up quarantine zones or scanning passengers from China for signs of fever or other pneumonialike symptoms that may indicate a new disease possibly linked to a wild animal market in Wuhan. The health commission in Wuhan, a transit and business hub, says there is no clear evidence that the unidentified disease can be transmitted between humans, and no health-care workers have been infected. Cases of fever have been reported in Hong Kong and Taiwan by travelers who recently visited Wuhan, although there is no confirmation that the illnesses are linked. Since mid-December, 59 people have been diagnosed with viral pneumonia of “unknown cause” — including seven who are critically ill, according to Wuhan’s health commission. The officials said an additional 163 people who have come into close contact with the infected have been placed under close observation. No deaths have been reported. Several of the patients worked at Wuhan’s South China Seafood City, said the authorities, who shut down the market Jan. 1 to carry out daily disinfections. The 1,000-stall bazaar sold not only seafood but marmots, spotted deer and venomous snakes, according to state media reports that described the market as “filthy and messy.” Videos from Wuhan showed the market barricaded in recent days and guarded by police wearing surgical masks. The emergence of a new illness out of China has carried echoes of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic, which infected more than 8,000 people, killed 774 and sparked mass panic as it spread across more than two dozen countries over eight months after starting in China in November 2002. SARS is thought to be an animal virus from an as-yet-uncertain animal reservoir, perhaps bats, that spread to other animals, such as civet cats, and first infected humans in China’s Guangdong province, according to the World Health Organization. The tropical civet is sold and eaten as a delicacy in south China. The SARS epidemic delivered a political shock to the Communist Party, which was widely condemned for mismanaging the outbreak, covering up cases and smothering news reports. Wuhan’s health commission, which has given relatively


regular news updates, said the new pneumonia cases were not caused by SARS. It has also ruled out influenza, bird flu, adenoviruses and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and said nucleic acid analysis was underway to identify the pathogen. “There are now two key questions: What is the cause of the disease? Is it a brand new virus?” said Leo Poon, a Hong Kong University epidemiologist who was among the first to decode the SARS coronavirus. “Next: Is it transmissible between humans? We cannot yet rule out the possibility entirely.” Because Wuhan authorities began quarantining and disinfecting the market on New Year’s Day, the number of new cases should taper off in the coming weeks, Poon said. “But if there are additional cases, that may suggest human-to-human transmission” that would greatly complicate the situation, he added. The WHO said it is monitoring the situation in China. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a low-level travel notice Monday, reminding travelers to practice “usual precautions” inside the country. On Tuesday, the CDC said it has established an incident management structure to “optimize domestic and international coordination in the event additional public health actions are required,” according to a notice the agency sent to state health officers and public health emergency preparedness directors. There are no known U.S. cases or any cases in any countries outside China, the CDC said. “But outbreaks of unknown respiratory disease are always of concern, particularly when there are possible zoonotic origins to the outbreak,” the CDC statement said. On Wednesday, the CDC issued a health advisory to clinicians to consider pneumonia as a diagnosis for patients with severe respiratory symptoms who have been to Wuhan since Dec. 1, had illness within two weeks of returning and do not have another diagnosis that would explain their illness. Public health experts say it is reassuring that no health-care workers have fallen sick. When the SARS outbreak began, the major alarm bells were illness in doctors and nurses and the spread of disease from person to person, said Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. But while Chinese officials have ruled out several causes of the illnesses, they have not provided detailed information about what tests were performed, when they were done and at what point in the patients’ illnesses. Nor have Chinese officials provided a


Ukrainian passenger jet carrying over 170 people crashes in Iran, killing all on board

feet when it abruptly lost contact with ground control, officials said. About four hours earlier, Iranian forces launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles into Iraq, targeting an Iraqi air base with U.S. personnel and a facility in the northern city of Irbil in response to an American airstrike last week that killed the commander of Iran's elite Quds Force, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. American passenger airliners and others have avoided flying over Iran because of the risk that they could be mistaken for military aircraft. Iranian authorities said "technical" problems were probably behind the crash of the Ukrainian Boeing 737-800. Ukraine's embassy in Tehran initially concurred, issuing a statement ruling out terrorism and suggesting likely engine failure. It later took down the statement without explanation, raising questions about whether different scenarios — including an external cause such as a missile — were being explored as potential reasons for the crash. But Iranian officials pushed back against that theory. Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, an Iranian armed forces spokesman, said "rumors" that a missile brought down the plane were "completely false." The Ukrainian Embassy said that a commission was investigating the crash and that "any statements about the causes of the accident before the decision of the commission are not official." He was quoted by Iran’s Fars News Agency as calling the missile speculation “psychological warfare” by the government’s opponents. A video circulated on Twitter Guzzetti, the retired head of the FAA’s accident investigation division, said the publicly available details of the crash suggested the plane was brought down deliberately. “To me, it has all the earmarks of an intentional act. I don’t know whether it was a bomb or a missile or an incendiary device,” he said. If the video of the flaming plane is accurate, “I can’t conceive of a failure that could cause that much of a conflagration,” he said. An engine fire, for example, would take a substantial period “to consume the airplane,” said Guzzetti, who was an air safety investigator and engineering specialist at the National Transportation Safety Board for 18 years before joining the FAA. The abrupt cutoff of flight-tracking data emitting from the plane also indicated that it was “a sudden catastrophic event that created a power loss throughout the whole airplane,” he said. Todd Curtis, an aviation safety analyst for the website AirSafe.com and a former Boeing safety engineer who assisted in accident investigations,


Coyotes are poised to invade South America. Humans are to blame.

from one American continent to the next — in the opposite direction. The crab-eating fox, another adventurous canid species native to South America, made its way from Colombia to Panama through the Darien gap a couple of years ago, also largely thanks to deforestation. The fox species and the coyote now share territory for the first time in recorded history. The ramifications for such a species interchange have yet to be seen, but if previous episodes of invasive species tell us anything, it won’t be good. Coyotes that reach South America would almost certainly spread far and wide, just as they have in the north. The coyotes aren’t typically any more threatening than feral dogs. But they would disrupt food chains and compete for ecological resources with native wildlife across the continent. They would also clash with South American human communities, as they have in North American cities. And coyotes could just be the start. As deforestation continues, other species might follow the path across the Darien gap, including insects and agricultural pests. Who knows what havoc such travelers could wreak on either side of the Panamanian land bridge? Such an event alone would probably not pose existential threats to American continents. Wildlife, after all, has proved resilient and adaptable. But invasive species would add another stress to ecosystems already strained by human-made challenges, such as climate change and habitat destruction. Combined, these forces could unleash unforeseen ripple effects for decades — even centuries — to come. Why risk such a fate? Fortunately, the nations of Central America resolved last month at the U.N. COP 25 Climate Change Conference to halt the destruction of the “five great forests” of southern Mexico and Central America, including the Darien. It’s an encouraging development, but those nations must be held accountable to make sure they actually follow through. To begin, they can set one concrete goal: Hold the line against invading coyotes. Fortify the region’s rainforest defenses. Do everything possible to keep these animals from arriving in a new continent. If we can stave off this offense, perhaps we can win the bigger war to save biodiversity. Read more: Helaine Olen: We’re in danger of killing off the biodiversity that makes our way of life possible Kathleen Parker: Nothing in today’s headlines compares to the coming catastrophe The Post’s View: Brazil and the world need to strike a balance to save the Amazon


After mishap with Boeing spacecraft, NASA faces a dilemma

As it probes why Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft suffered a serious setback during a flight test last month that forced the cancellation of its planned docking with the International Space Station, NASA faces a high-stakes dilemma: Should the space agency require the company to repeat the uncrewed test flight or allow the next flight to proceed, as originally planned, with astronauts aboard? The answer could have significant ramifications for the agency — and put astronauts’ lives on the line — at a time when NASA is struggling to resume human spaceflight from the United States, years after the space shuttle fleet was retired in 2011. Forcing Boeing to redo the test flight without anyone aboard would be costly, possibly requiring the embattled company, already struggling from the consequences of two deadly crashes of its 737 Max airplane, to spend tens of millions of dollars to demonstrate that its new spacecraft is capable of meeting the space station in orbit. But if NASA moved ahead with the crewed flight and something went wrong that put the astronauts in danger, the agency would come under withering criticism that could plague it for years. For now, NASA is moving cautiously. It has formed an independent team with Boeing to examine what went wrong with the Starliner during last month’s test flight. NASA also is reviewing data to help it determine whether the capsule achieved enough objectives during its truncated flight to assure NASA that its astronauts will be safe. On Dec. 20, an Atlas V rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., delivering the Starliner into space. But soon after it was on its own, the Starliner suffered a software problem — its onboard clock was 11 hours off. As a result, the engines that would have put it on a trajectory to the space station failed to fire, even while other thrusters, designed to keep the capsule stable, did fire, expending precious fuel. Boeing officials regained control of the spacecraft and were able to complete several objectives, including maneuvering the capsule, having it communicate with the space station and deploying the docking system to see whether it would work in a real scenario. But the spacecraft had consumed too much fuel to make it to the space station, and officials canceled that part of the mission. Two days after it launched, the Starliner landed safely in the New Mexico desert, days ahead of


Maryland open houses Jan. 11-12

77 Boileau Ct NEW MARKET 21774 10154 Vantage Point Ct 9914 Arapahoe Rd URBANA 21704 9227 Bealls Farm Rd 9245 Bealls Farm Rd 9279 Bealls Farm Rd 9264 Bealls Farm Rd 9262 Bealls Farm Rd 8803 Bealls Farm Lane 9233 Bealls Farm Rd 8795 Bealls Farm Lane 8799 Bealls Farm Lane HOWARD COUNTY COLUMBIA 21044 6717 Green Mill Way 7804 River Rock Way 21045 9474 Wandering Way 9653 Whiteacre Rd #c-1 COOKSVILLE 21723 14008 Monticello Dr ELKRIDGE 21075 7671 Old Rockbridge Dr 7720 Blue Stream Dr ELLICOTT CITY 21043 8228 Elko Dr 4938 Montgomery Rd 6301 Woodcrest Dr 8002 Hillsborough Rd 7998 Hillsborough Rd 8561 Falls Run Rd #h JESSUP 20794 7324 Elbridge Ct WOODSTOCK 21163 10804 Acme Ave MONTGOMERY COUNTY BETHESDA 20814 5210 Danbury Rd 5450 Whitley Park Ter #811 20817 5522 Oakmont Ave 20852 11710 Old Georgetown Rd #1521 BOYDS 20841 18919 Festival Dr CHEVY CHASE 20815 8803 Walnut Hill Rd CLARKSBURG 20871 23514 Overlook Park Dr #101 23516 Overlook Park Dr #7 23518 Overlook Park #10 23524 Overlook Park Dr #15 23524 Overlook Park Dr #16 13001 Martz St 23407 Harnes Point Dr 23518 Overlook Park Dr 23522 Overlook Park Dr #201 GAITHERSBURG 20878 11933 Bayswater Rd 631 Main St #b 210 Decoverly Dr #205 210 Decoverly Dr #106 210 Decoverly Dr #10003 250 Decoverly Dr #220 250 Decoverly Dr #226 GERMANTOWN 20874 13407 Demetrias Way 12822 Cloverleaf Center Dr 12810 Cloverleaf Center Dr 20396 Stol Run 20343 Century Blvd #a 3322 Provider Way 3330 Provider Way 20309 Century Blvd #0 20307 Century Blvd #0 20305 Century Blvd #0 20361 Century Blvd #174 20361 Century Blvd #173 20876 21937 Boneset Way 21933 Boneset Way 21929 Boneset Way #0 HYATTSVILLE 20781 4918 55th Pl 20782 1001 Chillum Rd #312 4921 Crest View Dr MONTGOMERY VILLAGE 20886 9812 Dockside Ter POTOMAC 20854 10612 Morning Field Dr ROCKVILLE 20850 101 Lynch St 587 Shorthorn Way 585 Shorthorn Way 577 Shorthorn Way 913 King Farm Blvd #0 921 King Farm Blvd #0 919 King Farm Blvd #0 591 Shorthorn Way 20855 5825 Winegrove Ct SILVER SPRING 20901 10703 Eastwood Ave 9906 Edgehill Lane 721 Glouster Knoll Dr 20904 900 Rosemere Ave 14000 Colesville Manor Pl 20905 1236 Elm Grove Cir 20906 13909 Blair Stone Lane 20910 709 Wayne Ave PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY BOWIE 20715 12113 Rockledge Dr 20716 15602 Everglade Lane #2-301 15401 Empress Way 20720 13802 Gullivers Trl BRENTWOOD 20722


China identifies new strain of coronavirus as source of pneumonia outbreak

BEIJING — Chinese researchers investigating the cause of a mysterious pneumonia outbreak have discovered a new strain of coronavirus, a species of viruses that can cause deadly illnesses such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), according to Chinese state media and the World Health Organization. A group of Chinese experts this week isolated and obtained the genome sequence of the new virus, which is believed to be responsible for sickening dozens of people who visited a wild-animal market last month in Wuhan, in central China, state media reported Thursday. The outbreak ahead of the Lunar New Year travel season in China has prompted health authorities across East Asia to increase screening of travelers for signs of fever, underscoring fears about its potential spread. A Chinese preliminary assessment panel isolated the coronavirus — named for its crown-like appearance under a microscope — from samples taken from a single patient’s lung fluid, blood and throat swabs, the panel’s leader, Xu Jianguo, told the official Xinhua News Agency in an interview. “The expert group believes that the pathogen of the unexplained cases of viral pneumonia has been preliminarily identified as a new type of coronavirus,” Xu said. “The virus was isolated from samples and showed a typical coronavirus appearance under an electron microscope.” Developing specific drugs and vaccines against a new pathogen could take years, he said. In a statement, the WHO said initial information about the Wuhan cases it obtained from Chinese authorities pointed to a coronavirus — a family of viruses that can cause the common cold, as well as SARS and MERS. There is no vaccine or treatment for SARS or MERS, which are epidemic threats. “According to Chinese authorities, the virus in question can cause severe illness in some patients and does not transmit readily between people,” it said. Coronaviruses cause illnesses of differing severity, the WHO said. Some transmit easily. Novel coronaviruses emerge periodically, with SARS emerging in southern China in 2002 and MERS a decade later. SARS caused 774 deaths, while MERS, first reported in Saudi Arabia, has killed 851 people. As surveillance improves, more coronaviruses are likely to be identified. The WHO said more-comprehensive information is required to confirm the pathogen and to better understand the epidemiology of the outbreak, the clinical picture, the investigations to determine the source, how the illness is spread and the extent of infection. In


radiographs. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a health advisory Wednesday to clinicians about screening patients with severe respiratory symptoms for travel history to Wuhan. Among the chief concerns about the outbreak is how readily this respiratory illness spreads from one person to another. So far, there have been no reports of infection among health-care workers treating patients or among family members who have not had the same exposure to the source, infectious-disease experts said. “Then the level of concern is somewhat reduced, although it can always happen later and infections can change,” said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, a London-based global biomedical research charity. “In Wuhan, there has not been a new confirmed case for around two weeks and the evidence does not suggest any human to human transmission,” he said in a statement. “Both of these are every reassuring for now.” If the new virus is behaving like MERS, there could be some limited human-to-human transmission, which could explain why there have been clusters of cases in hospitals, said Andrew Rambaut, an infectious-diseases professor at the University of Edinburgh whose research focuses on the evolution of emerging viral pathogens in humans. That could be from ill people in hospitals infecting one another, he said. Those cases would probably be severe infections. When MERS hit Saudi Arabia, individuals were getting infected from camels. Many of the hospitalized cases were people with underlying health conditions, with many mild cases detected only using a test developed for the virus. The mild infections seem not to transmit to others, he said, “so they are dead-ends for the virus.” As a result, MERS tends to cause small, self-limiting clusters of cases. MERS infections are still happening because people are still being exposed to infected camels, he said. In China, authorities have not yet identified the source of the virus. It is almost certain to be a mammal, because coronaviruses are mainly mammalian viruses, Rambaut said. Chinese authorities have closed the wild-animal market in Wuhan. If that is the source, the outbreak will probably go away, he said. But the virus will still be out there in the animals somewhere, so it is important to find the direct source. Authorities also need to create a fast and sensitive test that can detect the new virus in clinical samples. “Once you know what you are looking for, it is much


Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, a London-based global biomedical research charity. “In Wuhan, there has not been a new confirmed case for around two weeks and the evidence does not suggest any human to human transmission,” he said in a statement. “Both of these are every reassuring for now.” If the new virus is behaving like MERS, there could be some limited human-to-human transmission, which could explain why there have been clusters of cases in hospitals, said Andrew Rambaut, an infectious-diseases professor at the University of Edinburgh whose research focuses on the evolution of emerging viral pathogens in humans. That could be from ill people in hospitals infecting one another, he said. Those cases would probably be severe infections. When MERS hit Saudi Arabia, individuals were getting infected from camels. Many of the hospitalized cases were people with underlying health conditions, with many mild cases detected only using a test developed for the virus. The mild infections seem not to transmit to others, he said, “so they are dead-ends for the virus.” As a result, MERS tends to cause small, self-limiting clusters of cases. MERS infections are still happening because people are still being exposed to infected camels, he said. In China, authorities have not yet identified the source of the virus. It is almost certain to be a mammal, because coronaviruses are mainly mammalian viruses, Rambaut said. Chinese authorities have closed the wild-animal market in Wuhan. If that is the source, the outbreak will probably go away, he said. But the virus will still be out there in the animals somewhere, so it is important to find the direct source. Authorities also need to create a fast and sensitive test that can detect the new virus in clinical samples. “Once you know what you are looking for, it is much easier to find it,” Rambaut said. Over the past week, people with symptoms of pneumonia and reported travel history to Wuhan have been identified at international airports. The WHO is not recommending any specific measures for travelers, and is advising against any restriction on travel or trade with China based on the information available. China’s transport officials told reporters Thursday that they will take measures, such as disinfecting transportation hubs, to prevent the spread of the illness during the Lunar New Year period later this month, when more than 400 million Chinese are expected to travel. gerry.shih@washpost.com lena.sun@washpost.com


Justin Bieber looks like a drug addict, fans said. Then the singer revealed he has Lyme disease.

ticks), according to the federal agency. The sesame-seed-sized adults and their poppy-seed-sized babies attach themselves to hard-to-see areas, such as at the groin, armpits and scalp for 36 to 48 hours, which allows them to pass on their Lyme disease bacterium. Nymph ticks, which are smaller than adult ticks, are more likely to affect people because of their size. Last April, the CDC reported that certain species of ticks have expanded their geographic range along with their ability to spread illness such as Lyme disease. Counties in the U.S. Northeast and Upper Midwest are considered high-risk areas. A bitten person can develop a rash around the bite area that could feel hot to the touch and will look like a bull’s eye, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. For those who don’t develop the characteristic Lyme rash, diagnosing the disease can be more difficult because it can mimic symptoms of other diseases. Those can range from flu-like symptoms to neurological disruptions, such as facial paralysis or severe headaches. Early Lyme diagnosis can be cured with antibiotics, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health. A late-stage diagnosis can result in joint inflammation, heart rhythm problems and brain and nervous system complications. Model Hailey Bieber, Justin Bieber’s wife, urged people who downplayed the severity of the illness to educate themselves. She also thanked other celebrities, such as fellow models Bella and Gigi Hadid and their mother Yolanda for informing the public about life with Lyme disease. Canadian singer Avril Lavigne is among those who have talked about their struggles of Lyme disease and its complications. Lavigne told Billboard magazine in 2018 that she was bedridden for two years while she was battling the illness. She founded the Avril Lavigne Foundation that provides funding and education about Lyme disease. She tweeted that she was sorry that Justin Bieber was diagnosed with the disease. “The fact that it’s so hard to diagnose and is so debilitating was something I suffered through also,” she wrote. Read more: The tick population is booming. Is climate change to blame? And will tick-borne diseases increase? Worried about ticks and their diseases this summer? This site has information. As spring arrives, tick season will soon be here — and soon may last longer He went to the optometrist with an irritated eye. The doctor pulled out a tick.


Man killed in D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood

An 18-year-old man was fatally shot Wednesday night in the Shaw neighborhood in Northwest Washington, authorities said. The victim was identified as Malick Cisse of Northwest Washington. D.C. police said Cisse was shot in the head about 11:30 p.m. in the 1300 block of Seventh Street NW, outside the Gibson Plaza Apartments near N Street. Police release no other details of the shooting, which was the seventh homicide in the District this year. That compares with eight for the same period in 2019. dana.hedgpeth@washpost.com


A timeline of the escalation in the Middle East

seized an Iranian supertanker they said was suspected of transporting oil to Syria, a violation of European Union sanctions. Both ships are released months later. An American military drone is shot down in Yemen, according to U.S. officials and Yemeni rebels. A military spokesman for the Iran-aligned rebels, known as the Houthis, claims they are responsible for bringing down the MQ-9 Reaper drone. Two oil facilities in Saudi Arabia are targeted in a drone and cruise missile attack, which the Yemeni rebels claim credit for. Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper claims Iran was involved, which the country denies, and that it is clear the weapons used in the attack “were Iranian-produced and were not launched from Yemen.” Six days after the attack, Trump approves the deployment of additional U.S. troops and air defense assets to Saudi Arabia. A barrage of missile fire hits the joint U.S.-Iraqi K-1 base near Kirkuk, killing a U.S. defense contractor and wounding three American soldiers and two Iraqi federal police officers. The United States blames the attack that killed a defense contractor on Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia, and responds with airstrikes that kill 25 militia fighters. Supporters of Kataib Hezbollah storm the entrances of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, chanting “Death to America!” The demonstrators smashed their way into one of the reception areas and set it on fire. A U.S. drone strike in Baghdad kills Qasem Soleimani, a powerful Iranian commander with close links to a network of armed groups backed by Iran across the Middle East. “Gen. Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” Esper says in a statement. “This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.” But U.S. officials give differing and incomplete accounts of the intelligence they say prompted Trump to act. Iranian forces launch more than a dozen ballistic missiles against two military bases housing U.S. military personnel in Iraq in response to the killing of Soleimani. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweets that Tehran “took & concluded proportionate measures in self-defense,” adding that Tehran did “not seek escalation” but would defend itself against further aggression. Trump says the Iranian strike caused no American or Iraqi deaths, despite the claims by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard that dozens of U.S. troops were killed. He announces that new sanctions on Iran would be imposed, without offering further details.


AMLO keeps setting the agenda in Mexico. When will journalists push back?

making the president an omnipresent, if sometimes rambling, narrator in chief who frequently presents an alternative and often false version of events (according to fact-checker Verificado, most of what López Obrador says during these morning briefings is “either misleading or untrue”). “This is stealth state television,” a U.S. colleague told me recently after witnessing one of the Mexican president’s daily performances. There is, indeed, an Orwellian method to the madness. Journalist Daniel Moreno, who runs the independent news site Animal Político, told me López Obrador’s news conferences “are propaganda in the most fundamental way.” He added: López Obrador “gets to speak directly to his audience, an audience that believes him and believes in him. This helps him maintain his popularity." Political scientist Raúl Trejo Delarbre agrees. The news conferences “rarely have any journalistic significance” because they serve an entirely different purpose, Trejo told me. “The conferences are meant to accentuate the president’s public presence and turn him into the only relevant actor in the country’s political life.” Newspaper El Financiero, which published the recent poll on López Obrador’s approval rating, also live-streams his morning news conferences. The editor, Enrique Quintana, told me López Obrador’s daily appearances have become “the centerpiece” of the government’s propaganda strategy. “They allow him to be part of the public agenda in a systematic and permanent way,” he said. Still, Quintana says, El Financiero has found enough demand among its readership to warrant posting the live-stream window every morning on its website. And most people like it. According to the paper’s poll, 54 percent of people approve of the daily exercise. The question for Mexican news outlets is whether their audiences follow López Obrador’s daily briefings because they find the president appealing or vice versa. Like other charismatic Latin American leaders, López Obrador has always shown a savvy understanding of the power of setting the agenda. In 2000, as mayor of Mexico City, he also began every morning with press briefings much like the ones he holds today. They were occasionally informative but mostly entertaining — good for ratings. So the media played along. López Obrador soon stole the spotlight from Vicente Fox, the PAN president who had extricated the PRI from power after 70-plus years, as he began his quest for the presidency. His ascendancy cannot be understood without the ubiquitous visibility media afforded him. Journalists might be falling into the same trap today. “These


The search for the perfect avocado results in a food (waste) fight

Jim Sollisch should stop worrying about searching multiple grocery stores for the perfect avocado, which, in his Jan. 5 Outlook essay, “You should go to the grocery store every day. Several of them. Seriously,” he claimed to do. If he’s concerned about what he would do with all that leisure time he would have if he weren’t shopping at least half of his days, he could volunteer at community centers in low-income neighborhoods and share strategies on shopping smart and cooking healthy. Or he could work to help bring grocery stores into food deserts. Or he could help to start neighborhood gardens in the food deserts so fresh, affordable local produce would be available in those localities. Sheryl Luebke Jim Sollisch’s tone-deaf ode Mr. Sollisch’s open disdain is based on his assumption that much of what they buy will go to waste. That may be true, but surely the answer is education around cooking and meal-planning, not a romantic trek in search of the right feta. While I, too, love the ritual of frequent food shopping, it’s a luxury, not a moral imperative. Compassion, not judgment, is the order of the day in discussions concerning food. Aurora Zeledon Read more letters to the editor.


The Finance 202: World Bank sees growth slowing amid nagging risks

more than 1,900 Boeing jets after cracks were found in some of the aircraft’s wings. Dozens of them were later grounded after cracks were found in a part of the plane that connects the wings to the fuselage.” — Ghosn emerges with wild news conference: “Ghosn complained of a ‘systematic campaign by a handful of malevolent actors to destroy my reputation and impugn my character’ because of his plans to deepen the alliance between Nissan and Renault. He also denounced his detention under a ‘corrupt and hostile system that presumed my guilt from Day One …’ But Japanese Justice Minister Masako Mori said Ghosn was propagating false information about Japan’s justice system and warned that his decision to run away from a criminal trial could be a crime in itself.” — Federal government rolls out new self-driving car rules: “In a speech at the show, a vast annual get-together for tech companies, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said the new policy would ensure that the United States is at the forefront of innovation … The policy, which is the fourth version issued by the federal government, largely continues on a path of letting private companies take the lead on developing the technology with limited input from the government. That approach has been challenged as established automakers and start-ups have tested increasingly advanced self-driving cars on public streets where rules are still being set.” — Macy’s closing 29 stores: “The Cincinnati-based department store chain said it will shutter 28 namesake stores and one Bloomingdale’s store in the coming weeks, according to a company spokesperson who declined to provide further details. The retail giant has shuttered dozens of underperforming stores, many of them in declining shopping malls, since 2016 as it invests more in its most lucrative properties. Even so, it has struggled to win over customers who are increasingly buying online.” Bed Bath & Beyond shares plunge: “The retailer also reported third-quarter earnings and revenue that fell short of Wall Street’s expectations. The company’s new CEO Mark Tritton called the results ‘unsatisfactory’ in a statement and said that the company has to create a durable business model for long-term profitable growth. The stock plunged 8 percent in extended trading on the report.” — Former FDIC chair bashes Buttigieg: “I like Buttigieg and would be happy to endorse him . . . 20 years from now, after he has proved himself. Today, however,


IOC to athletes: No kneeling, hand gestures or ‘any political messaging’ at Tokyo Olympics

The International Olympic Committee warned athletes Thursday not to participate in specific forms of political protest at the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo, including kneeling, political hand gestures and wearing or holding signs or armbands. The committee published a three-page document of guidelines to fortify Rule 50 of the International Olympic Charter, which states in part, “No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.” “We needed clarity, and they wanted clarity on the rules,” Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe, chair of the IOC Athletes’ Commission, which helped create the new document, told the Associated Press. “The majority of athletes feel it is very important that we respect each other as athletes.” The guidelines outlaw demonstrations such as those staged by Tommie Smith and John Carlos, American sprinters who raised their gloved fists on the medal stand at the 1968 Games in Mexico City, and former NFL player Colin Kaepernick, who in 2016 began kneeling during the national anthem. Both demonstrations sought to draw attention to racial injustice and have been repeated by other athletes in recent years. Ethiopian runner Feyisa Lilesa crossed his wrists at the finish line of the men’s marathon at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro to show support for civil rights protesters in his home country. Americans Race Imboden, a fencer, and hammer-thrower Gwen Berry were placed on probation by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee in August after demonstrating on the medal stand at the Pan American Games. Imboden knelt during the national anthem, while Berry raised a fist. Athletes who protest will face discipline “on a case-by-case basis as necessary,” according to the guidelines. The document argues for a vision of the Olympics free of political issues, in which athletes choose not to use their worldwide platforms to discuss topics described as a potential “wedge between individuals, groups and nations.” “It is a fundamental principle that sport is neutral and must be separate from political, religious or any other type of interference,” the new guidelines state. “Specifically, the focus for the field of play and related ceremonies must be on celebrating athletes’ performance, and showcasing sport and its values.” “When an individual makes their grievances, however legitimate, more important than the feelings of their competitors and the competition itself, the unity and harmony as well as the celebration of sport and human


In Lyon, a new museum celebrates a longstanding culinary tradition

head, steel-and-glass chandeliers heralded the stylized ceiling fresco. And there it was — his name engraved on a copper plaque at table six. Taking my cues from Curnonsky’s guidebook, I ordered the Incomparable gratinée and a brown, fatty choucroute escorted by ham, sausages and boiled potatoes. The gratinée, an exquisite onion soup, was thickened at the table with an egg yolk stirred in Madeira wine. Lightly acidic, the sauerkraut balanced the sweetness of the soup, while the plump meats yielded salty deliciousness. As Lyon’s silk industry collapsed in the 1900s, bourgeois laid off their cooks. Finding themselves jobless, several women founded their own eateries and became known as Les Mères (the Mothers). In 1933, La Mère Brazier was the first woman to be anointed by the Michelin guide: three Michelin stars for each of her two restaurants! Since 2008, Chef Mathieu Viannay has led her downtown historical restaurant, and while she remains his inspiration, the authentic but modernized interior, as well as his inventive variations on her recipes — and his two stars — are clearly his own. Describing her cuisine, Curnonsky mentioned simple perfection. Dare I say that Viannay’s 12th version of her foie gras terrine and artichoke heart came close? How long until his third star? The Brunet family is long gone, but current owners Xavier Beyrieux and Benjamin Baldassini are passionate about Lyon’s culinary legacy. “For us,” said Beyrieux, “acquiring a 1934 bistro only makes sense if we keep everything as close to the original as possible.” They kept the name, the original checkered floor tiles, similar marble tables and wooden chairs. The old bar collapsed, but the new one is its honorable heir. The menu still features tripe, sauce gribiche and cow’s udder with garlic, but Curnonsky called the escargots “a splendor.” Indeed, snails bathed in bubbly caramelized parsley butter tasted splendid. Standing proud since 1904 on a downtown street corner and named for its founder, Léon Déan — a king of cooks, wrote Curnonsky — this elegant wood-paneled space was recently revamped and now features a casual bistro, a gastronomic restaurant and a cozy contemporary bar. A collection of classic paintings depict kitchen scenes and set the stage for chef Olivier Bourrat’s Lyonnais cuisine. I was dying to experience the sum of gastronomical pleasures described by Curnonsky, but it was too early for liquor souffle. Instead, I savored another local favorite, the earthy pâté en


CES shows us a future with flying cars — but can’t avoid the reality of climate change, pollution and war

company Dictaf, which says it uses artificial intelligence to help farmers improve their crops, and Corners, a South Korean company developing evacuation systems to better help people survive such disasters as gas leaks or, for U.S. customers, active-shooter events. Multiple companies, including John Deere and Odd.bot, are working on weeding technology to help farmers use fewer chemical herbicides. A handful of companies were focused on the environment and climate change. There was technology aimed at cities and towns facing pollution and climate issues. The BeachBot is a small, rugged autonomous vehicle from the Netherlands designed to clean up beaches using object detection. Its makers hope to start selling it to local governments next month. Korean company N.thing showed off its modular indoor farm systems in stackable shipping containers, which grow vegetables in locations where the climate has become too dry or hot for some outdoor farming. Some corners of the conference are a prepper’s paradise, with solutions for anyone interested in living off the grid just in case existing infrastructure collapses. There are DIY greenhouses for growing your own food, solar panels for homes and batteries to store enough electricity to weather power outages. Air filtration systems promised to make air more breathable, inside homes and cars or during time outside. Another mask — AirBliss Plus’s more traditional-looking smart air pollution mask — was designed to be comfortable for prolonged wear. ClimateSeed didn’t have any technology or fun hardware prototypes at its simple booth in the crowded basement of the Sands, the location of the smaller start-ups’ exhibits. The company takes money from businesses hoping to offset their carbon footprint, then invests it in projects, such as preventing deforestation in Brazil. The idea is to cancel out, on paper anyway, the damage businesses might do to the environment through such things as manufacturing. Edoardo Bertin, ClimateSeed’s head of marketing and partnerships, said he hadn’t seen much innovation around addressing climate change. “It’s strange to see the four thousand exhibitors and only a really small part focused on the environment,” Bertin said. Zero Mass Water’s Friesen thinks the intelligence on display at CES, and in the technology sector around the world, could be applied to bigger problems and help humans live better lives. “There’s a huge opportunity to create solutions that both provide joy to people and make their lives better, as opposed to just simply another screen with higher resolution.”


Iranian missile hit Ukrainian plane in possible unintentional firing, Western officials say

times of conflict. In July 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was downed by a missile shot from a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile system from rebel territory in eastern Ukraine. The attack on the Boeing 777, which was passing over the conflict zone while flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, killed all 298 people aboard. A joint investigative team from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine identified a Russian military unit in charge of the antiaircraft missile system and has pursued prosecution of Russian and Ukrainian citizens allegedly involved. Russia has denied any involvement in the incident. Danilov said that Ukraine’s investigative commission for the Tehran crash includes specialists who helped investigate the Flight 17 crash site. The government in Kyiv has also suspended all Ukrainian flights over Iranian and Iraqi airspace. The responsibility for air defense traditionally falls to Iran’s Air Defense Force command, said Saeid Golkar, a political science professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga who has studied Iranian security forces for 20 years. Orders to mobilize the country’s air defense are given by a central command center, which includes air-defense batteries controlled by Iran’s two armed forces: the regular military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Within this system, the Revolutionary Guard is also in control of its own air-defense systems and has the capability of acting without authorization, Golkar said. “It is possible that the IRGC acted alone?” Golkar asked. “If you asked me if its possible if someone mistakenly shot it down, I’d say yes, because of the whole informality of the system,” Golkar said. A preliminary report from Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization said witnesses — on the ground and among the crew of another flight in the vicinity — reported seeing a fire while the Boeing 737-800 was still in the air, followed by an explosion when it slammed into a field near an amusement park. A video from a closed-circuit television camera posted on Twitter by Iran’s state broadcaster showed the predawn darkness suddenly lit in a fiery orange glow and then flaming debris scattering over a wide area. “The trajectory of the collision indicated that the plane was initially moving toward the west, but after encountering a problem, it turned to the right and was approaching the airport again at the time of the crash,” Ali Abedzadeh, head of the Civil Aviation Organization, said in the report. Iranian officials said


A billion animals have been caught in Australia’s fires. Some may go extinct.

in flames. And then there are all the insects, the foundation of a living forest. They make up half of all animal biomass and are the major food source for virtually anything that moves. Bugs also break down organic matter and help pollinate plants. Inside branches, under leaves, within hollowed logs and in pockets on the ground, tens of millions of bugs are being burned alive. Some may vanish without ever being discovered. “Only about 20 to 30 percent of Australian insects are known to science,” said Katja Hogendoorn, a researcher at the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine at the University of Adelaide. A single bee species shows how grim the outlook is for many. Fires and land clearing had already driven the green carpenter bee to extinction in Victoria and South Australia. Now, Hogendoorn said, fires are threatening them on Kangaroo Island. Banksia plants, which the bees use for nests, have burned. It takes 30 years for it to grow to the right size and softness for the picky bees. “It is difficult to assess the situation,” Hogendoorn said, “because there is no access to the burned sites, but the species is likely to be in dire straits.” Climate change, invasive species, overuse of farm chemicals and human development also threaten insects. “The fires could be the last straw that drives fragile populations over the brink,” said Tanya Latty, an entomologist at the University of Sydney. Wild animals aren’t the only creatures suffering. Federal agriculture officials say at least 100,000 cattle will die before the fires end. Farmers say their livestock are keeling over from burns. Cows have stopped feeding calves because their teats are scorched. An army of veterinarians has been assembled to assess those left standing. They’re also weighing how to dispose of the dead. Stephen Shipton lost 50 cows when fire struck his farm in Coolagolite, a town in New South Wales, on New Year’s Day. He knows because he killed dozens of wounded animals himself. “We’ve lost a third of our herd,” Shipton said. “They’re still dying. They’re just getting sick and other things at this point.” Starvation and disease are part of the damage fire leaves behind. Animals that survive may struggle to find food in an ashen landscape devoid of plants that provide nutrients or shelter. Without trees to nest in, birds may fail to breed. Prey, including insects, may be scarce.


A disturbing sign of psychopathy

Regarding the Jan. 5 Metro article “Gulls lured to lot and run over, police say”: The FBI has identified cruelty to animals as a sign of psychopathy, a red flag indicating a high risk for committing acts of violence that pose a danger to the entire community. The individual who recently lured seagulls to a Maryland parking lot with popcorn and then deliberately ran them over, killing at least 10, is seriously disturbed. These intelligent and resourceful birds were simply trying to survive another day. With fish stocks plummeting because of overfishing and climate change, the birds’ naturally procured meals are in short supply. A popcorn buffet was likely a pleasant surprise for these doomed birds. Seagulls are clever and have complex communication systems. They pair for life and share parenting responsibilities. These lovely birds should be respected and appreciated. Acts of cruelty to animals such as this one are not mere indications of a minor personality flaw; a history of animal torture and abuse has been linked to serial killers and school shooters. If you witness someone hurting an animal, call 911 immediately. Jennifer O'Connor The writer is a senior writer with the PETA Foundation. Read more letters to the editor.


The Technology 202: At CES, it’s robots and rainbow slides. In Washington, tech is under fire.

LAS VEGAS The optimism and ambition about the future of the tech industry on the showroom floor here at CES presented an alternate reality to the broad anxiety in Washington about its power and influence. People flooded Las Vegas from around the world, pacing 2.9 million square feet of company displays while donning augmented reality glasses, bending new foldable phones and tablets, cruising in pod-shaped Segways and getting their first glimpse at vertical TVs. They dined on Impossible Foods’s new faux ground pork as they snaked through booths hawking home surveillance drones, emotional support robots and high-tech sex toys. They held intellectual conversations about the promise of self-driving cars —and stood in long lines for a chance to race down Google’s massive rainbow slide and fall into a ball pit. Company parties raged into early morning hours at hotels along the Las Vegas Strip. Contrast that with the mood on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers were grilling Facebook executive Monika Bickert about the company’s efforts to deal with manipulated videos ahead of the 2020 elections. The social network’s announcement yesterday that it was not backing down from its decision not to fact-check politicians ads and would allow them to microtarget ads renewed anxieties among Democrats. Amazon told concerned lawmakers that its connected doorbell company Ring was firing employees for improperly accessing users’ video data. The split screen highlights the difference between what the tech industry wants to be -- and how increasingly skeptical Washington lawmakers see it. It also underscores the mounting pressure on CES, the 52-year-old tech conference, to adjust to a new reality where tech is no longer a political darling but a target. CES in recent years has increasingly become a venue where policymakers and tech industry officials can mingle. The Consumer Technology Agency, the tech industry trade group that organizes the event, told me earlier this week that more than 150 policymakers attended, including several from the Trump administration. But the officials who got top billing on the main stage largely steered clear of the incidents defining the techlash in Washington and focused on the positive promises of innovation. As my colleague Heather Kelly wrote yesterday And Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s keynote address on self-driving cars made little mention of the concerns in Washington about the industry’s swift and largely unchecked rollout of test vehicles on the road. She described self-driving cars as an innovation “that have


Trump takes partial credit for Ethiopian prime minister’s Nobel Peace Prize. That’s news to Ethiopians.

NAIROBI — President Trump’s speech at a rally in Ohio on Thursday night was typical in that it laced thoughts about current events together with criticism of his opponents. But his comments Thursday included a remark that caught the attention of many in Ethiopia, whose prime minister was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, largely for his work securing a peace deal with neighboring Eritrea after decades of hostilities. “I made a deal, I saved a country, and I just heard that the head of that country is now getting the Nobel Peace Prize for saving the country. I said, ‘What, did I have something do with it?’ ” Trump asked the crowd. “Yeah,” Trump said, answering his own question. “But that’s the way it is.” Trump played no apparent role in the Eritrea peace deal, but Washington has played a convening role in another deal Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is seeking with Egypt that will regulate how quickly Ethiopia can fill a new dam it has built in the upper reaches of the Nile River that has major implications for the flow of water Egypt relies on economically. The apparent conflation of the two led to widespread befuddlement on social media in Ethiopia and elsewhere, though by and large the comments were not taken seriously. The U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia referred reporters to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s remarks in October congratulating Abiy for his prize. The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on Friday tweeted “Trump is confused” about why Abiy was awarded the prize. “He was talking about Egypt and Ethiopia,” a senior Ethiopian government official told the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media on the matter. “President Trump really believes he avoided a war as such … but that was not the case.” Ministers from Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan, which controls a stretch of the Nile between its two sparring neighbors, will meet in Washington next week to discuss the ongoing impasse in talks concerning the dam. Ethiopia’s peace deal with Eritrea led to a reopening of borders and diplomatic relations. Eritrea was part of Ethiopia until it seceded in 1993 and then fought a bloody war to retain its independence that began in 1998. The war resulted in at least 80,000 deaths. Eritrea still has mandatory conscription, which tens of thousands have sought to avoid


Coyotes may have attacked Chicagoans twice this week after decades of leaving people alone

he said. If authorities find an animal that seems to have “gotten too comfortable around people,” they will “humanely capture” it and consider relocating it, Gandurski said Thursday. Rabies exposure is unlikely, added Thomas Wake, interim administrator of Cook County Animal and Rabies Control, noting that Cook County has not seen rabies in any animals except bats since 1954. Once inhabitants of the West Coast, coyotes have spread to urban and suburban spots around North America. In the Chicago metropolitan area alone, Ohio State University researchers found a 20-fold increase in news reports of “human-coyote conflicts” from the 1990s to the mid-2000s. “Perhaps as a result, homeowners in the Chicago metropolitan area have ranked coyotes as the wildlife species perceived as the greatest threat to human health and safety,” the researchers wrote in 2009, even though there were no verified attacks on humans on record. Coyote violence toward pets is rare but often covered in the news in another reflection of “escalating concern from the public,” they said. Stanley Gehrt, one of the paper’s authors, told The Washington Post in 2018 that cities and towns should teach people how to live with coyotes rather than attempt to eliminate the wild creatures. “Their first inclination, at least it used to be, [was] ‘We want to get rid of them, so how do we get rid of them?' ” he said. “Just to be clear, we’re not in the business of protecting coyotes or defending them or anything; we provide the best science that we can. What our science tells us is that you’re not going to be very successful at trying to remove them permanently.” Chicago officials are advising residents to be mindful of food sources that could draw coyotes, such as unsecured garbage or pet food left out in a backyard. They’re also urging people to keep their small animals on a leash or under watch outdoors. Those who see a coyote should call 311 rather than approach the animal, Gandurski said Thursday. If a creature gets too close, residents can try the “hazing” tactics used to scare off other predators such as bears, such as yelling and waving their arms. Wednesday’s reported attack on a child unfolded outside the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Lincoln Park, she said. It’s not clear exactly what led the coyote to leave the grass next to a path to come face-to-face with the


Patrick Reed’s attorney demanded that a Golf Channel personality stop calling him a cheater

history of literature. “As I read further and got to the sentence that the tape fully supported him, I wondered how did Patrick Reed find the only lawyer in the world who didn’t play golf?” Chamblee told Golfweek. “As I continued, I felt like I was reading ‘Finnegans Wake.’ ” In a 2015 book, author Shane Ryan uncovered allegations that Reed cheated on the course and stole from teammates during his time at the University of Georgia and Augusta State. In his letter to Chamblee, Gregory included signed 2015 statements from the coaches at the schools, with neither saying they were aware that Reed had ever cheated. Reed continues to receive grief from spectators over his penalty at the Hero World Challenge. One weekend later, fans at the Presidents Cup in Australia mercilessly jeered him to the point where Kessler Karain, Reed’s caddie, got into an altercation with a spectator and was barred from working on the final day of the event. And just this past weekend at Kapalua, a heckler from the gallery yelled, “Cheater!” as his potentially tournament-winning putt rolled toward the hole in a playoff against Justin Thomas and Xander Schauffele. (The putt missed badly, and Thomas ended up winning.) A legal expert contacted by Golfweek said she thinks Reed and Ginsberg would have no chance of success in a defamation lawsuit against Chamblee, and indeed, the letter does not threaten one. Instead, it asks that Chamblee sign a document agreeing that he won’t call Reed a cheater in the future. That doesn’t seem likely, either. “My job is to be accurate in my analysis, and I weigh my words heavily,” Chamblee told Golfweek. “Nothing I said on the air did I say flippantly. I thought about how exactly to say it to get closer to the larger point about the traditions of the game. That’s the origin of my remarks. They had no malice. They were meant to be accurate and admonishing about the decay of the traditions of the game. Instead of self-policing, it’s catch-me-if-you-can. And that bothers me.” More sports coverage from The Post: Olympic runner’s premature celebration at finish line ends in defeat Eliud Kipchoge is the first to run a sub-two-hour marathon With cannabis use in the NBA an open secret, this former player is pushing the league to allow CBD Online culture can be toxic. These female gamers are pushing back.


Unusual flu virus is hitting children hard, and this season’s vaccine is a poor match

An unusual viral strain is dominating flu activity across the United States and may be one reason for the severe infections in children so far, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and this season’s influenza vaccine is not a close match for the virus. There are different types of flu viruses, and the strain causing illnesses in most parts of the country is an influenza B virus. In most years, the A strain of influenza dominates during the early months, and the B strain shows up toward the end. Flu activity also started early this season, with some cases showing up by July. In more typical seasons, flu activity starts around October and lasts through March or April. Flu hit hard in the South with influenza B before spreading to much of the rest of the country. It’s the first time in nearly three decades that an influenza B strain has been the dominant circulating flu virus in the United States. Generally, that type of virus isn’t as dangerous to people 65 and older, who make up the majority of flu hospitalizations and deaths. But the B virus is more likely to cause complications in children and younger adults than in the elderly. In the latest available weekly flu data released Friday, five pediatric deaths were reported for the week ending Jan. 4, for a total of 32 such deaths since the season began. Flu viruses change constantly, which is why health officials must choose the influenza strains that vaccine makers should target for an upcoming season months in advance, when it is hard to know what strains might be circulating. Seasonal flu vaccines are generally formulated to protect against two influenza A strains and two influenza B strains. When flu vaccines are well matched to circulating viruses, effectiveness is, at best, around 60 percent. (Measles vaccine, by comparison, is about 97 percent effective with two doses.) In a year when the circulating flu strains closely match the vaccine, that effectiveness rate means that about three out of five people who get shots are protected from getting so sick that they require a visit to a doctor. The beginning of the flu season in Louisiana was unusually early and intense. One pediatric hospital in New Orleans reported more than 1,200 laboratory-confirmed influenza B virus infections, including 23 hospitalizations, between July 31 and Nov.


How open-source investigators quickly identified Iran’s likely role in the crash of Flight 752

the fuselage of the wreckage of that plane. Those holes were consistent with damage from an antiaircraft missile like the Buk, given how such missiles work. “It basically tries to create a cloud of shrapnel near the front of the aircraft that these aircraft then fly through,” Higgins explained, “rather than it being a heat-seeking missile with an explosive tip or something like that. The actual warhead's in the center of the missile; it tries to kind of spray shrapnel into the front of the aircraft.” The intended targets, after all, are meant to be “small, fast-moving jet fighters” — not “big, slow-moving airliners." After the PS752 crash, photos of the site appeared to show similar damage. In one, taken in the early morning light, a wing is seen with marks suggesting the presence of small holes that might be consistent with shrapnel damage. It wasn't. “We found other images that showed that this was a low-resolution image and the dark spots were actually rocks,” Higgins said, noting that something similar had happened during the MH17 investigation. The team quickly debunked the assertion. “When you're obviously dealing with a really serious incident like this, you don't want [mistakes] to happen,” Higgins said. “We've even seen various mainstream media websites using that image to say, look, here's shrapnel. Then, because we published, we noticed they'd removed these images." “Fact-checking stuff like that might seem rather minor in the big picture, especially when it turned out it was a missile that likely shot it down,” he continued, “but you still want to actually tell the truth about these images and be clear what they are because they're part of a bigger picture that leads to our understanding of what actually happened." The first significant evidence that the plane was downed by a missile came when the team was sent another, more evocative photo. The Tor is a short-range, surface-to-air missile that originated in the Soviet Union. Iran is known to possess Tor systems; a 2007 Sputnik report documented tests of some of the 29 Tors supplied to the country by Russia. The image Bellingcat was sent showed the front end of an apparent Tor missile resting in some sort of a ditch. A bit later, they received another image taken from another angle but apparently showing the same object. “Unfortunately, because it was in a ditch, it didn't really show the background,”


The Daily 202: It’s personal for the lead sponsors of the Iran war powers resolutions

participating in political protests during the Olympics in Tokyo this summer, including kneeling, political hand gestures and wearing or holding signs or armbands. “Ethiopian runner Feyisa Lilesa crossed his wrists at the finish line of the men’s marathon at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro to show support for civil rights protesters in his home country. Americans Race Imboden, a fencer, and hammer-thrower Gwen Berry were placed on probation by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee in August after demonstrating on the medal stand at the Pan American Games. Imboden knelt during the national anthem, while Berry raised a fist. Athletes who protest will face discipline ‘on a case-by-case basis as necessary,’ according to the guidelines.”  -- Disgusting: Hoaxers are using the fires to spread misinformation and profit, -- The fire crisis is fueling protests calling for bolder action on climate change. -- Suspected Islamist militants killed 25 soldiers in Niger. -- In Israel, deadly floods have kept residents confined to their homes and offices even as they braced for potential spinoff attacks from rising tensions between the United States and Iran. -- China identified a new strain of coronavirus as the source of its pneumonia outbreak. Gerry Shih and Lena H. Sun report: “A group of Chinese experts this week isolated and obtained the genome sequence of the new virus, which is believed to be responsible for sickening dozens of people who visited a wild-animal market last month in Wuhan, in central China, state media reported Thursday. The outbreak ahead of the Lunar New Year travel season in China has prompted health authorities across East Asia to increase screening of travelers for signs of fever, underscoring fears about its potential spread.” -- Understatement of the year? Pope Francis said 2020 is off to a rough start, saying it “does not seem to be marked by encouraging signs.” -- Lebanon has banned ex-Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn from traveling. -- Trump wished North Korean leader Kim Jung Un a happy birthday through South Korea. -- A statue mocking Trump in Melania Trump’s home country was burned down. -- London’s Madame Tussauds removed its wax figures of Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, from its display of Britain’s royal family less than 24 hours after the couple announced they would be “stepping back” from their roles as senior royals. 2020 WATCH: -- Jared Kushner’s global role is shrinking as


Iran must tell the truth about the Ukrainian plane crash

THE LOSS of PS752, the Ukraine International Airlines flight that crashed in Iran with the loss of 176 lives, is a tragedy no matter the cause. Family and friends are suffering deeply. The United States and Canada say they have evidence an Iranian missile downed the plane; Tehran denies it, and reports from the crash site suggest debris has been hastily cleared away. Iran should not compound the disaster by stonewalling and coverup. If it mistakenly destroyed the liner, it should admit the error now, because it would be the right thing to do — and because the truth will probably come out. The Boeing 737 took off from Tehran and suffered a catastrophe, which amateur video suggests was a missile strike or other explosion. The blast came hours after Iran had fired missiles at bases used by U.S. troops in Iraq in retaliation for the U.S. assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani at the Baghdad airport. Tensions were high, and it is entirely possible Iran’s air defense forces were on alert and made an error. A full investigation is required to establish the truth. Iran’s bellicose statements accusing the United States of “lying and engaging in psychological warfare” in the aftermath do not get anyone closer to the truth. Ideally, Iran should cooperate with Canada — most passengers’ planned eventual destination — and Ukraine and others as needed for a thorough probe. Tehran was reported to have invited international investigators from Ukraine and elsewhere, including U.S. experts. But reports from journalists that bulldozers were already moving in, and that the site had been picked clean by scavengers, do not bode well. At all costs, Iran must avoid the coverup and disinformation that were Russia’s response after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH-17) over Ukraine on July 17, 2014, in the midst of the separatist war that Russia had ignited in southeastern Ukraine. Russia repeatedly issued false statements that sought to blame Ukraine for the shoot-down, including fabricated video. But the coverup fell apart over time. Open-source investigation by the news organization Bellingcat highlighted the route of the Russian Buk 332 mobile missile launcher with four mounted missiles through the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine before and after the shoot-down. Such sources as Twitter posts, satellite images and ordinary street snapshots provided supporting evidence, which was also bolstered by an international investigating team. Technology