How to fix the American diet, according to the man who popularized the term ‘junk food’

Are there any issues you fought for, at the federal level, but ultimately abandoned? Oh, sure. At least temporarily. We fought to raise the alcohol tax but had to give up on it — the industry was just too strong among both Democrats and Republicans. Big-city Democrats have the big beer distributors to worry about, and Republicans are anti-tax. And some states — like Kentucky, Tennessee, California, Washington — have very influential wine and liquor producers. So you see how tough that kind of change becomes. I would like to see nutrition labeling on alcoholic beverages. And I’ve always wanted ingredient labels on foods to be clearer — it’s just impossible to read that tiny sans-serif font. We petitioned the FDA without success. And this is a little issue, but it galls me — this product called Quorn. That stuff shouldn’t have been approved, and it shouldn’t be on the market. Some people have severe allergies to it. But the FDA just won’t do anything about it. I’d say somewhere down deep hope still exists. This stuff could go through in the right political environment. A lot of public-health advocates would say, as you know, that this isn’t the right political environment for getting much done on nutrition. What do you think is the future of food and nutrition under the Trump administration? Well, that’s why I’m retiring now — it’s a favor to my replacement! He will have plenty of work to do. You know, so far we’ve seen more delays than real reversals from the Trump administration. They delayed rules that would put calorie labels on restaurant menus, and they delayed the rollout of new “Nutrition Facts” labels. They also delayed planned sodium reductions for school lunches. My feeling is that we have to wait and see. But delays are different from reversals. I do think that there are things Trump can’t do anything about, even if he wanted to. Clearly there are cultural changes going on, as well. Would you say Americans’ eating habits are trending in the right direction? Oh, absolutely. Just look at a grocery store. In the 1970s, few even had whole-grain bread or canned chickpeas or yogurt. Now you have to walk through a huge product section to get to that stuff, and there’s a large selection. When I was a teenager, soda was something we normally consumed. Now so many teenagers and


There are hundreds of recorded types of some fruits. You wouldn’t know it from stores.

I buy my groceries from one store, a foodie emporium with quality victuals, no piped music and aisles relatively free of clutter, though it is backsliding on the last score. For all its emphasis on seasonal produce, however, you can still buy raspberries, strawberries, blueberries and other berried fruit pretty much year-round, but generically. Selling apples and pears by variety has become standard in the produce section, but the trend has not reached most other fruits. Bananas remain nameless, no doubt because they are bound to be just one variety or a related strain, that is, the Cavendish. The anonymous berries do have names. The growers produce a handful of proprietary varieties developed for the needs of everyone in the food chain, of which the consumer is but one link. These varieties are usually protected by a plant patent — no one else can grow them without permission. This is a reasonable legal device; breeders put a lot of their skills and their employer's resources into developing new cultivars. But if you want to get a sense of just how limited our consumer fruit world has become, pick up a copy of the recently published Nursery Trade Census. Its prosaic title disguises the fact it is a cornucopia of the vast if somewhat hidden richness of fruits, berries and nuts grown in the United States by specialty nurseries and their customers, which include niche farmers and home gardeners. The census was compiled by Seed Savers Exchange, the Decorah, Iowa, nonprofit that has been working for four decades to track, preserve and trade heritage varieties of flowers, vegetables, fruits and nuts. Heirlooms, by definition, grow true from seed and can be passed from one generation to the next. No one owns them, but a given variety, selected and improved over the years, might pertain to one family, village, Indian tribe, ethnic community or religious sect. Thus we have in general garden circulation the Brandywine tomato, the Hubbard squash and the Roxbury Russet apple, for example. Tree fruits are typically propagated not by seed but by grafted cuttings — scions — attached to rootstock to become clones of the parent plant. The 310-page inventory is a snapshot of the heirloom fruit and nut universe in 2015, and shows that a total of 251 nurseries together offered for sale 7,945 varieties. The team that compiled it logged 256 varieties of pear and 21


Virtual reality helps U.S. Olympic ski team prepare for PyeongChang’s great unknown

ski team officials paired the headset with other movement — often a balance disc or a simulator that mimics some of the movements and forces presented in a race — to keep the athlete moving with video. "It actually ended up better than I thought it would be," Belch said. " … It's all about what the stomach can endure. I think one thing we actually underestimated was how solid the stomachs of these athletes are." Most of the ski team has tried it but while some have utilized virtual reality dozens of times, others didn't feel as comfortable. "You watch it and you get pretty sick and dizzy," said Ganong, who tore his anterior cruciate ligament earlier this month and will miss out on PyeongChang. Resi Stiegler, who's entering her fourth Olympics, specializes in technical events and says it might be more beneficial for downhillers. She's tried it several times but always falls victim to motion sickness. "I think the speed girls can really, really benefit from it," she said. "And younger girls who haven't skied the course before, they can learn what to expect before they get there." Officials were encouraged by the feedback and quickly expanded their use of the technology beyond the Olympic mountain. They now travel with a 360-degree camera and have built up a library of World Cup courses that allows skiers to train for a race in Switzerland, for example, from a hotel room in Spain. And they've especially found that it can be a valuable tool for injured athletes. The virtual runs allow those who can't physically get on the mountain to mentally practice racing any of the dozens of courses the U.S. ski team has recorded. At the USSA's Center of Excellence in Park City, Utah, the team also utilizes a giant simulator, housed in the organization's gym. A skier steps into bindings and faces a huge screen that displays a course either via video or computer-generated imagery. As the racer appears to move down the course, the simulator whirs to life, creating movement and generating forces that mimic the sensation of skiing. Steven Nyman, who missed most of the past year with a torn anterior cruciate ligament and is hoping to make his fourth Olympic team, said the simulator is a good bridge to returning to the mountain. "When it comes to downhill, there's nothing like it obviously. But when


U.N. troops told to fight back, use force as peacekeeper deaths surge

to change the way we are doing business,” the study of peacekeeper deaths was commissioned by U.N. Secretary General António Guterres in November, after a spate of high-profile attacks on U.N. troops. Cruz, along with retired U.S. Army Col. William R. Phillips and other figures in the U.N. peacekeeping department, visited missions in the Congo, Central African Republic and Mali to better understand the operational issues. These locations represent some of the new challenges being faced by peacekeepers. In Mali, for example, U.N. forces have found themselves increasingly engaged in counterterrorism rather than more traditional peacekeeping operations, making it one of the organization's deadliest ongoing operations. Meanwhile, just last month at least 15 peacekeepers were killed and dozens wounded in eastern Congo — a country where the U.N. mission has a rare mandate to pursue offensive operations against armed groups, making it a frequent target for attacks from rebels in the country's civil war. Along with an increased willingness to fight, the United Nations is told that it should provide better leadership for peacekeeping forces, as well as better predeployment training and equipment while in the field. Cruz and his fellow writers also lay some of the blame on the forces provided by contributing countries. These countries “may seek to participate in peacekeeping for different reasons and interests. This is normal and acceptable, but they must perform. The United Nations should not accept caveats, because they weaken integration and mutual protection within missions,” the report states. The report's authors did not, however, look closely at the expanding mandates for U.N. peacekeeping forces. Critics have argued that sending peacekeepers on offensive or counterterrorism missions can make them a target for violence, rather than a solution to it. “Peacekeepers are only meant to use deadly force to protect civilians or to stop spoilers from threatening a peace process, not to pursue any group’s military defeat,” Aditi Gorur, director of the Protecting Civilians in Conflict program at the Stimson Center, told The Washington Post last year. The expanding scope of U.N. peacekeepers' activities around the world has brought with it a variety complications. In a number of cases, the force has been accused of recruiting from militaries with a history of repression or abuse and lacking the measures to exclude human rights violators from its ranks. There has also been a growing crisis in recent years because of allegations of sexual abuse by


‘Democracy in America?’: An interview with authors Ben Page and Martin Gilens

Wrong and What We Can Do About It,” and the authors agreed to answer some question I posed to them. JB BP/MG If democracy means government responsiveness to what majorities of citizens want, we present strong evidence that in recent years, the United States has not been very democratic at all. Our analysis of some 2,000 federal government policy decisions indicates that when you take account of what affluent Americans, corporations and organized interest groups want, ordinary citizens have little or no independent influence at all. The wealthy, corporations and organized interest groups have substantial influence. But the estimated influence of the public is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Moreover, if you simply look at how often ordinary Americans get policy changes they want, you see that they are frequently thwarted. Even big majorities — 60 to 80 percent of Americans — get the policy changes they want only about 40 percent of the time. This has real consequences. Millions of Americans are denied government help with jobs, incomes, health care or retirement pensions. They do not get action against climate change or stricter regulation of the financial sector or a tax system that asks the wealthy to pay a fair share. On all these issues, wealthy Americans tend to want very different things than average Americans do. And the wealthy usually win. JB BP/MG JB BP/MG JB BP/MG JB BP/MG The most urgent job is to get clean election laws and public funding of campaigns. Then we can begin to escape the political tyranny of money. Along with that, we need automatic universal registration of voters, while also making it easier to vote — with Election Day a national holiday. We need to get our political parties depolarized and listening to ordinary citizens by curtailing the power of big donors and extremist party activists in low-turnout, unrepresentative primary elections. The best way to do that would be more competitive and less money-dominated elections, forcing politicians to respond to the needs of ordinary citizens as opposed to campaign donors, partisan activists or interest groups. But smaller measures could help, too, such as reform of the one-party House of Representatives so that a few extremists can no longer block legislation Americans want. Those things could be done fairly quickly and easily if people insist on them. Some other crucial reforms, such as getting a more democratic Senate, will take longer. JB BP/MG


While Yellowstone’s staff was furloughed, a snowmobiler got way too close to Old Faithful

been able to turn those around.” Yellowstone is not the only national park to have experienced unauthorized activities since Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke directed his deputies to make public lands as accessible as possible during the partial shutdown. At Pennsylvania’s Gettysburg National Military Park, a family with metal detectors and a drone — both of which are prohibited — entered the park over the weekend. Rangers intercepted them and used it as “an educational opportunity,” said NPS spokesman Jeremy Barnum in a phone interview, and let them go without a citation. They did not damage the park’s resources, Barnum added. Shane Farnor, an online advocacy manager for the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), said in an interview that during a weekend visit to California’s Joshua Tree National Park, he saw dogs roaming without leashes, which is not allowed, and running on trails where they are not allowed. Speaking to reporters Monday, Zinke said he wanted to preserve access even if there was reduced staffing for a period of time. “The public lands are for the public,” he said. “They’re not for special interests.” Trump officials were particularly focused on keeping the federal government’s most visible operations, such as national parks, running during the budget impasse. Office of Management and Budget General Counsel Mark Paoletta sent an email Saturday evening, obtained by The Washington Post, to deputy secretaries and general counsels across the government suggesting they use carry-over funds “to minimize the shutdown’s disruption.” “If your agency expects that one of its public-facing programs or services will experience a significant disruption due to the lapse in appropriations,” Paoletta wrote, “please consult your Office of General Counsel (OGC) to consider carefully the legal necessity of ceasing key services and to evaluate alternatives, consistent with the law, that will minimize the impact of this unfortunate situation.” Some conservationists said the shutdown, which ended Monday after Congress passed and Trump signed a short-term funding bill to reopen the government, highlighted the risks associated with the Trump administration’s strategy. “Looting and damaging recreational use were at the top of our concerns when you don’t have park rangers and staff on the ground,” said Kristen Brengel, NPCA’s vice president of government affairs. “So it’s really disappointing that it actually happened, but it also says why we need staff there.” While critics questioned whether leaving public lands understaffed made them temporarily vulnerable, at least someone had stepped


Why Democrats need to stand with working Americans vs. big banks

far as the extreme legislation to dismantle Wall Street reform that House Republicans advanced last June, the Senate bill is terrible policy. Under current law, banks with more than $50 billion in assets are considered "systemically important financial institutions" and therefore are subject to extra scrutiny. The Senate bill would lift that threshold to $250 billion, relaxing oversight of 25 of the 38 largest banks in the country. According to Americans for Financial Reform, those banks are collectively responsible for $3.5 trillion in assets and received nearly $50 billion in bailout money during the financial crisis. The bill would also roll back mortgage-lending protections and weaken the so-called Volcker Rule that prohibits banks from making certain reckless bets — some of the same careless behavior that led to the last recession. Not only is Crapo's bill reprehensible policy, but also its Democratic supporters — six of whom are running for reelection this year — are also committing political malpractice. Polls show that the vast majority of voters want more regulation of big banks, not less. By endorsing a deregulation scheme that nobody outside the financial industry is asking for, Democrats are lending credibility to the Trump administration's broader push to loosen restrictions on Wall Street, including the gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This self-defeating strategy would be shocking if only it weren't so sadly consistent with the party's recent past. After all, Clinton-era deregulation of the financial industry helped create the conditions that led to the 2008 crisis. "The only thing that the Clinton administration got really wrong was the repeal of Glass-Steagall. But at the time nobody saw what that was going to do," former Clinton adviser Elaine Kamarck told The Post earlier this month. But progressives did see it. Just days after the repeal was enacted in November 1999, the editors of the Nation warned, "History will record this bill as a landmark in the march toward the consolidation of financial power in America." Today, progressives are again trying to dissuade their colleagues from compromising the interests of working Americans at the behest of the banks. "This bill increases the risk of another taxpayer bailout, and I will continue to challenge supporters of this bill — from both parties — to explain why they stand on the side of big banks instead of working families," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) recently asked,


Hugh Masekela, South African trumpeter and a leading voice in the anti-apartheid movement, dies at 78

forces from the apartheid regime conducted a raid in the area, killing 15 people. With South African playwright Mbongeni Ngema, he composed and arranged the music for "Sarafina!," which opened in New York in 1987 — transforming "the oppression of black townships," New York Times theater critic Frank Rich said in a review, "into liberating singing and dancing that nearly raises the theater's roof." The show received five Tony Award nominations, including for best musical and best original score, and was adapted into a 1992 movie starring Whoopi Goldberg and Makeba. Mr. Masekela was by then in the midst of a late-career resurgence, buoyed by a collaboration with Paul Simon. Simon had recorded parts of the 1986 album "Graceland" in South Africa with local musicians, breaking a United Nations boycott and infuriating anti-apartheid groups who argued that he was implicitly condoning the white-only government. Mr. Masekela, however, saw the album as an opportunity to broaden the appeal of South African music. He organized a group of South African musicians who performed in stadiums worldwide during Simon's "Graceland" tour. With Makeba, guitarist Ray Phiri and the choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, he played hits such as "You Can Call Me Al" alongside protest anthems and the Pan-African liberation song "God Bless Africa." "South Africa has become a spectator sport," Mr. Masekela told the Los Angeles Daily News in 1987, dismissing "Graceland" critics who argued that South African musicians shouldn't show support for Simon by playing with him on tour. "If these people are prevented from playing with us overseas," he continued, "and they are prevented from playing over there in South Africa because of the color of their skin, then I don't know what the people who want to help us are aiming at. It is as if they are saying, 'We must deprive you in order to help you.' " Ramopolo Hugh Masekela was born in the coal-mining town of Witbank on April 4, 1939. The son of a health-inspector father and social-worker mother, Hugh (as he became known) was raised mainly by his grandmother, who ran an illegal drinking house known as a shebeen. Alcohol sales were prohibited for black South Africans, and "drunkenness to a great extent was a form of defiance," Mr. Masekela told NPR in 2013. He acknowledged addictions to "drinkin', cokin', smokin' — you name it, all the 'kins," before seeking treatment in the 1990s.


Six photographers take us behind the scenes of Washington’s shutdown showdown

The federal government shut down in Saturday’s early morning hours, after Senate Republicans and Democrats failed to reach a deal on a short-term budget resolution. The government, including some national parks, monuments and federal agencies, remained closed on Monday, until a continuing resolution was passed — but The Washington Post’s photojournalists never stopped working. Melina Mara, who photographs Capitol Hill on a daily basis, said the mood on Capitol Hill was quite unique. “Different mood, different circumstances, different players than the last October 2013 shutdown,” she said. “The 2018 shutdown began with the new-normal: Increased partisanship, angry faced Democrats, Republicans grumbling with frustration down hallways full of questioning journalists, and leadership unsure of what they could do differently.” From Thursday morning, as the shutdown loomed, up to Friday’s 11:59 p.m. deadline, through the weekend and into Monday, Post photographers feverishly documented the chaos on Capitol Hill, the White House and the Washington area. Fridays on the Hill are typically quiet, with lawmakers heading home to their constituencies for the weekend, but not this time. President Trump, who had been involved in the sticking points of budget negotiations — border security and a resolution for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, otherwise known as the “Dreamers, ” or DACA — canceled his weekend trip to Mar-A-Lago. “A brighter Monday comes with Senate moderates appearing from the Senate floor with smiles,” Mara said. “Hugs and announcements of kumbayah cooperation and working together once again. Government is back open. … But for how long?” More on In Sight: Inside the theater of Moscow’s metro What 7 Post photographers discovered after having 102 conversations with people in all 50 states plus D.C. How one woman is putting the spotlight on her Latin American photo peers In Sight is The Washington Post’s photography blog for visual narrative. This platform showcases compelling and diverse imagery from staff and freelance photographers, news agencies and archives. If you are interested in submitting a story to In Sight, please complete this form.


‘A huge pain’: Government shutdown briefly idles federal workers before reprieve

we set aside to cope with that risk. It makes me less inclined to think about federal employment in the long run." In the hours before the Senate came to its tenuous resolution, uncertainty over how long the shutdown would last had left people throughout the area both angry and anxious. "It is a huge pain in the ass," said a researcher on his way into the National Institutes of Health on Monday morning. The man, who declined to give his name, had come in to stop a stem-cell experiment designed to determine the cause of a disease that affects facial bones. He worried about the effect on the NIH Clinical Center, where many people are treated with last-ditch experimental therapies. "Nobody can be recruited to clinical trials" during a shutdown, he said. "We're talking about cancers and pediatric cancers. So now we're talking about children who won't get treatment if it goes on." In Foggy Bottom, the sidewalks outside the State Department building were packed with employees walking in both directions. The furloughed workers, many with a look of grim resignation on their faces, left carrying sheets of paper outlining the furlough rules. "I'm going to go home and go back to sleep," said one Foreign Service officer who declined to provide her name or the bureau where she works. She had arrived at 8:30 a.m. and spent two hours fulfilling the orderly shutdown protocol before heading out. Some of her furloughed co-workers, she said, spent part of the morning trying to sneak in a last bit of work. "Everyone's itching to work," she said. "It shows how dedicated everyone is. Some people got on their computers, and colleagues said: 'Stop it. You're not allowed to work.' " Opinions varied on who was to blame for the shutdown, which began Saturday. "It depends on your political leanings," she said. "It's something that surely could have been averted." For Margaret McDaniel, this was her third, and shortest, shutdown. "What, they couldn't have done that on Friday?" said the 27-year Agriculture Department staffer after the Senate announced its deal. "It blows my mind, it's so damned irresponsible." This shutdown, though, was easier to prepare for than the previous two. McDaniel, a senior adviser in the Foreign Agricultural Service, is more financially stable than she was in 1996 or 2013, but she still worries about her more-junior colleagues. Even though she appreciates


As it turns 40, the Inn at Little Washington pulls out all the stops

A thought occurred to Patrick O'Connell the morning after the Inn at Little Washington served its maiden dinner, for $4.95 on Jan. 28, 1978, in tiny Washington, Va. "Geez, I think we have to do this again!" the chef recently recalled — 40 years, five James Beard awards, two Michelin stars and countless tins of sin (caviar-carpeted crab) after the fact. Over the decades, the brand has grown from an auto garage to occupy 21 buildings in the hamlet. The inn, decorated by a British stage-set designer, has also fed a host of luminaries, including "three queens and a king," O'Connell says of the inn, my No. 1 favorite restaurant in last year's fall dining guide. (For crown counters, the royal guests were the queens of England, Jordan and Spain and the king of Spain.) Leave it to the over-the-top dining destination, whose debut menu trumpeted "A World Premiere Grand Opening," to toast its anniversary with four celebrations, starting Jan. 28, with a "friends and family" dinner to which anyone is welcome who can pony up $375, not including tax or tip. The event, nearly sold out as of press time on Monday, will start with horse-drawn carriage rides around town and Dom Pérignon and Petrossian caviar — "all we can eat and drink of their products," promises the host — served in the inn's Tavern, where George Washington is said to have danced. O'Connell's "pre-tweezer" menu will feature some of the earliest dishes he served, including a crab-and-spinach timbale and foie gras with black-eyed-pea vinaigrette, plus a trio of the most popular desserts from the restaurant's four decades. Never one to take himself too seriously, O'Connell is searching for a Marilyn Monroe to coo "Happy Birthday" when the main cake is presented. On June 16, O'Connell will hold a fundraiser for his new charity on the lawn at Mount Vernon, the co-beneficiary of proceeds from a garden party that will re-create the experience of dining at the table of George Washington, who laid out the streets of "Little" Washington as a young surveyor. (The Patrick O'Connell Foundation supports culinary arts and education, along with historic preservation.) Historians are helping curate the dinner for 350 attendees, who will dine inside antique-looking tents and enjoy some of the fruits of Mount Vernon's 250-year-old-plus gardens, including turnips and radishes, but not tomatoes, which were considered more ornamental than edible way back when.


Combating homelessness through the power of running — and encouragement

newest: Founded at Penn North Recovery, a residential rehabilitation center, it's the first branch to open in Baltimore since 2010 and the first one in West Baltimore. Participants say the later classes and training are essential to recovery, but it's the running — and the positive camaraderie that goes with it — that creates the foundation for change. Pearly Blue III, 60, joined Back on My Feet in 2012 after spending years battling heroin addiction and living on the street. He now lives in a house on Lexington Street, works as a security assistant at the Weinberg Housing and Resource Center on Fallsway, owns a car and spends off hours with the grandchildren he says he once neglected. Blue has run five half-marathons, including the Baltimore Running Festival, and is training for a sixth, the Oldfields Half Marathon and Relay on April 7. "It's about the wellness," he said, clouds of his breath visible in front of his face. "It's about getting those neurons fired up early in the day. The positive physical feeling just gives you this feeling you can do whatever you set your mind to." "And it's about these great people who hold your hand, in so many ways," he said. "Back on My Feet has been one of the rocks in my life." In Baltimore, Back on My Feet has built a healthy momentum at its five sites in the city: the Baltimore Station residential treatment program in South Baltimore, Christopher's Place Employment Academy on Fallsway, the Helping Up Mission on East Baltimore Street, the Maryland Center for Veterans Education and Training on North High Street, and Penn North, the chapter Owens helped launch last September. "I see this neighborhood, and I don't see the 'bad.' I see the good that is being overshadowed," Owens said. "I enjoy helping bring to others what Back on My Feet gave to me." The organization served 130 members in Baltimore in 2017, nearly twice as many as the year before; helped 46 gain employment, six more than in 2016; and for the first time raised more than $500,000, through an annual banquet, several running events and hundreds of private and corporate donations. For those who make it to the "Next Steps" phase, Accenture and PNC Bank donate job-readiness classes and personal finance training, and several corporations with a local presence, including Marriott, have hired graduates. About half the runners


Pentagon and watchdog at odds over efforts to prevent sexual abuse of children by Afghan troops

A government watchdog suggested that Congress might want to prohibit the Defense Department from spending money on Afghan military units whose members sexually abuse children or commit other human rights violations. But the Pentagon disagreed with that idea, saying such incidents must be weighed against U.S. national security interests. The suggestion was made by the office of the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) in a previously classified report released Tuesday. It highlights the challenges the U.S. military faces in partnering with forces abroad that do not always adhere to the same codes of conduct. U.S. troops have long complained that some Afghan commanders sexually abuse boys. Ninety-three members of Congress requested that SIGAR investigate the issue after a 2015 New York Times report alleged that sexual abuse of children was "rampant" in Afghan units, putting U.S. troops in emotionally charged and challenging situations. The review focused on the implementation of the Leahy law, which restricts the U.S. government from assisting a foreign security unit found to be in gross violation of human rights. The law allows for exceptions when the defense secretary determines that continuing support to a problematic unit meets a national security concern. SIGAR suggested that Congress might want to eliminate that exception, and the Pentagon balked when it viewed a draft of SIGAR's report. "The draft report does not fully convey the unique and difficult challenges of implementing the Leahy law in Afghanistan consistent with both the U.S. commitment to human rights and U.S. national security objectives in Afghanistan," Jedidiah Royal, a Pentagon official, wrote in a May 2017 response included in the report. "In particular, the draft report does not reflect an understanding of the challenges faced by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in developing and sustaining the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces." The Pentagon resisted when lawmakers asked SIGAR to launch the investigation, an aide to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the namesake of the Leahy law, told The Washington Post in November. The Defense Department argued that SIGAR did not have the jurisdiction to examine the issue, even though SIGAR has routinely dissected U.S. work in Afghanistan, said the aide, Tim Rieser. A Defense Department inspector general report released in November concluded that U.S. troops have been inadequately trained to report sexual abuse in Afghanistan for years. The Pentagon watchdog made several recommendations, including building a central database of gross violations


Inside Amazon Go: The camera-filled convenience store that watches you back

school. “Powerful companies like Amazon don’t just have what you bought at the grocery store, but they’re also connected with and combined with nearly every aspect of your life,” including where people live and what they buy, read and watch. Shoppers walking into the store scan their phone on a subway-station-like turnstile, connecting their presence in the store (as well as their family members or other fellow shoppers) with their Amazon profile. (Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos also owns The Washington Post.) The boxy, black cameras in the ceilings don’t have the look of classic surveillance cameras — a benefit, some said, given that hundreds of them blanket the 1,800-square-foot space — but they operate in a similar way, tracking shoppers’ movement and what items they pick up or put back down. The store’s cameras include infrared sensors, but the company says it does not employ facial recognition. Some items have large, camera-friendly codes to help the cameras understand which items have been grabbed; the computers combine that information with data from weight sensors installed in every shelf. When shoppers are done, they simply walk back out through the porcelain-white turnstiles — and their phone updates with a receipt, along with a “trip timer” telling them how many seconds they spent on the shopping trip. The process was so breezy that first-day shoppers like Harriet McClain said it felt “like shoplifting.” “Even in a small town, people shoplift,” McClain said, before motioning toward the overhead cameras. “But a local grocery store could never afford to put in this kind of stuff.” Amazon has not shared details on the methods involved in its “Just Walk Out” technology, but says it mimics some of the techniques seen in self-driving cars, including machine-learning systems that improve over time, as well as computer vision, the image-processing technology used in Facebook photo tags. “The majority of sensing is from above,” said Kumar, the Amazon Go executive. “Cameras figure out which interactions you have with the shelves. Computer vision figures out which items are taken. Machine-learning algorithms also determine which item it is.” John Verdi, the vice president of policy at the Future of Privacy Forum, a think tank that counts Amazon among its corporate donors, said the data collected by Amazon’s store is no more than what most people give away at other supermarkets by using their loyalty and credit cards. “Are consumers comfortable


Monarch butterfly migration was off this year and researchers are worried

climate change, which manipulated the monarchs' instincts and pushed their migration back. "It was the warmest fall we've ever had, at least in the last 123 years," Taylor said. Average high temperatures in the Northeast exceeded 60 degrees in September and October for the first time, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Those temperatures were part of a 30-year trend of increasing heat that has more or less paralleled a precipitous decline in monarch populations. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the number of monarchs has dropped from a billion in their heyday to about 33 million in 2014 — or more than 80 percent since the mid-1990s. For decades, scientists have focused on two main causes to explain what was happening to the monarchs: loss of their habitat to development in the United States and in the Mexican winter grounds and widespread agricultural use of pesticides, which destroy milkweed, their favorite plant. The tangible nature of these threats has long helped turn monarchs into one of our most accessible and unifying symbols of conservation. Thousands of volunteers are attracted to monarch conservation efforts each year, according to the Fish & Wildlife Service, in part because of the butterflies' aesthetic but also because the ways to help them — by planting milkweed, for instance — tend to dovetail with popular hobbies such as gardening. Saving threatened whale species requires a herculean effort in far-off and inaccessible places. Helping monarchs, for many people, means planting milkweed and then noticing if one fluttered into your living room. "But nobody ever looks at the weather part of the system. Unless you understand the nuance created by the weather, your data will be completely full of noise," Taylor said. And "if you look ahead to 2040 — oh my God, you don't want to look ahead to 2040," given the projections for future temperature rises. At first, things were looking promising for monarchs in the autumn of 2017. The butterflies appeared to breed well in the Northeast. Then they arrived en masse along their Atlantic Coast flyways in substantially higher numbers than in the Midwest, where milkweed is being lost more rapidly. Don Riepe, who has counted monarchs along New York's barrier beaches for nearly four decades, reported seeing 35,000 butterflies on Oct. 10. "It reminded me of a huge flight in the late 1970s," he said. "Back then, they


Five myths about exercise

Timothy Noakes, the author of "Waterlogged: The Serious Problem of Overhydration in Endurance Sports," the body is more than equipped to tolerate mild dehydration, while overhydration may pose more severe risks. In several high-profile cases, overdosing on liquids has led to dangerous and occasionally fatal outcomes. As a consequence, the 2007 American College of Sports Medicine position recommended a more cautious approach: People who exercise for long periods should avoid losing more than 2 percent of their body mass, and within that very broad parameter, fluids containing carbohydrates can be helpful during longer endurance activities. Still, all sports drinks have calories, and consuming them when water will suffice can contribute to fat gain. Myth No. 2 Crunches and abdominal exercise will trim belly fat. Popular magazines and websites suggest that a six-pack is just a few maneuvers away. Shape magazine calls planking the "secret to amazing abs." And Health magazine says you can eliminate your "muffin top" with "fat-burning ab exercises," such as crunches and "donkey kickbacks." Fat is generally categorized as subcutaneous (under the skin) or visceral (around organs); love handles are the former kind. Fat stores are burned from all areas evenly when you eat less and exercise more. A six-pack does not emerge when you target the fat in your abdominal area; it comes from bulking up those muscles, which can grow strong enough to show through the layer of subcutaneous fat — they simply appear more pronounced with a lower percentage of overall body fat. As it happens, women tend to maintain fat around the hips and upper thighs, while men keep it around the lower abdomen. An exercise regimen that burns off body fat generally will help slim down all areas, including the subcutaneous and visceral abdominal regions, narrowing the waist and flattening the belly. Myth No. 3 Protein powders are a good way to bulk up. Weightlifters Yes, you need to consume more protein than your muscles degrade, but the optimal intake for resistance training varies based on your diet, your metabolism and your training. According to a study I conducted in the late 1980s, the amount of mixed protein needed by very-well-trained weightlifters is only about 50 percent above that needed by sedentary folks. Varsity-level strength athletes training six days a week and weightlifters during the early stages of a very intensive program need, at most, 100 percentabove the requirements for sedentary people.


Inside the D.C. area’s most expensive homes for sale

than 11,000 square feet and sits on a nearly one-acre lot. The home has a ballroom-size living room with high ceilings and an Italian fireplace mantel. The master suite includes two bathrooms. Buyers also have a right of first refusal for the adjacent 26,700-square-foot lot. The home was listed last year at $9.995 million. • 2404 Wyoming Ave. NW, Washington $5.7 million Agent: Michael Rankin, TTR Sotheby’s International Realty The Colonial Revival-style mansion in Kalorama has been renovated by Jim Gibson and includes 8,241 square feet with seven bedrooms and 10 bathrooms on four levels. The house, built in 1921, has high ceilings and classic architectural details, an open kitchen and family room with an exposed-beam ceiling, a home theater, four fireplaces, an elevator and a wine cellar. Two sets of French doors open onto a terrace that overlooks gardens and a heated swimming pool. Three sets of French doors open from the lower level onto a shaded brick patio. This house was listed at $5.95 million last year. • 1805 Hoban Rd. NW, Washington $4.995 million Agent: Ted Gossett, Washington Fine Properties Built in 1932, this brick home was renovated and expanded in 2016. The 7,800-square-foot home has six bedrooms, eight bathrooms and three fireplaces on four levels. The main level has a formal living room, a large dining room and a family room with a coffered ceiling and a wall with several sets of French doors. The kitchen includes two dishwashers, a professional-grade stove and a wine chiller, and there is a second kitchen on the lower level. The master suite has two bathrooms and two walk-in closets. The property has two terraces and a garden. • 3611 R St. NW, Washington $3.695 million Agents: HRL Partners: Robert Hryniewicki, Adam Rackliffe and Chris Leary with Washington Fine Properties This contemporary home in the Burleith neighborhood adjacent to Georgetown, built in 2004, has 6,100 square feet on four levels. Each level has its own terrace, and a 1,250-square-foot roof deck provides more outdoor living space. The modern rooms include floor-to-ceiling walls of glass, a two-story living room with a fireplace, high ceilings and a master bathroom with a steam shower, a whirlpool tub and heated floors. The lower level of the house is an apartment with a second kitchen, four guest bedrooms and two bathrooms. Last year, the house was priced at $4.25 million. • 10231 Leesburg Pike, Vienna


Why DARPA and NASA are building robot spacecraft designed to act like service stations on orbit

and then never inspect it, never maintain it and never repair it?” said Gordon Roesler, the program manager at DARPA. “But that’s what we do in space.” That may be changing as a wave of innovation takes root in the space industry, much of it driven by private billionaires and commercial enterprises. There are companies building lunar landers and others developing probes that could lead to the mining of celestial bodies. Still others are working on 3-D printers designed to build things in space. “Everything that we now do on Earth we will eventually do on-orbit,” said Richard White, president of SSL Government Systems, which is working with DARPA on the program. “The satellite-manufacturing facility of the future could be located in space.” DARPA’s program to service satellites comes at a time when the Pentagon is increasingly worried about, and planning for, war in space. Citing the advancements of Russia and China, the White House’s recently released National Security Strategy cited space as one of the Pentagon’s top priorities and issued this warning: “Any harmful interference with or an attack upon critical components of our space architecture that directly affects this vital U.S. interest will be met with a deliberate response at a time, place, manner, and domain of our choosing.” DARPA is focused on fixing satellites in what’s known as geosynchronous equatorial orbit, or GEO, more than 22,000 miles away. At that altitude, the orbit of satellites matches the rotation of Earth. GEO is where the Pentagon keeps classified satellites used for tasks such as detecting nuclear missile launches, guiding precision weapons, conducting surveillance and managing communication. “The U.S. has some extremely important national security satellites in that region, and they are very concerned about those satellites breaking down, having problems or being attacked,” said Brian Weeden, a director for the Secure World Foundation, an advocacy organization focusing on space security. In 2007, China fired a missile that blew up a dead satellite in what’s known as low Earth orbit. A few years later, it demonstrated that it could hit satellites in GEO by firing a rocket there. In response, the Pentagon is moving toward putting up constellations of much smaller satellites, so if one is damaged another can take its place. But it also wants the ability to be able to repair its large and most capable satellites and to check to see whether they’ve been tampered with.


There’s no endgame in sight in Afghanistan. But maybe that’s okay.

In lower Manhattan, near the place where twin skyscrapers once towered over the scurry and noise of a great city, stands a bronze statue depicting a modern American serviceman astride a rearing stallion. It is a monument to the so-called Horse Soldiers, elite commandos who were among the first troops into battle during the long, grim war on terrorism. Through them, the statue honors all the Special Operations forces whose service — both overt and covert — has been the tip of the U.S. spear. The film "12 Strong" depicts the story of the Horse Soldiers as only Hollywood can, and it is a story that needs no exaggeration. Seeking a rapid response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon and the CIA inserted 12-man teams into northern Afghanistan that October to link up with anti-Taliban warlords. Leveraging U.S. technology and air power (not to mention duffle bags stuffed with cash), the intrepid warriors galvanized a quick victory over the ruling Taliban, which had given safe harbor to al-Qaeda terrorists as they plotted and trained. A quick victory, but not a lasting one, alas. Audiences made "12 Strong" the No. 2 film at the box office last weekend, and the real-life heroes at the heart of the tale deserve the thanks of a grateful nation. But if those moviegoers were also watching the news, they would have seen images of desperate people on the balconies of Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel, trying to escape from the Taliban gunmen waging a massacre inside. These clashing realities — America's ability to drive the Taliban from power alongside our inability to pacify Afghanistan — perfectly sum up the unappealing choices facing President Trump as violence escalates in the nation's longest war. As my Post colleagues Greg Jaffe and Missy Ryan reported this week, the U.S. Army is finalizing a proposal to add 1,000 troops to the 14,000 already in the country, and to put those troops closer to the front lines. When Trump took office, the United States was down to about 8,500 troops and the Taliban controlled about one-third of the country from havens in neighboring Pakistan. The new president was understandably unhappy to find such a robust enemy after more than 15 years of war — years that included the exploits of the Horse Soldiers, the killing of Osama bin Laden and a 33,000-troop "surge" ordered by President Barack Obama


The Ticker: Why the Warriors could lose

Olympics as one of the most exciting American speed skaters, competing in the 500- and 1,500-meter races. It’s not because the Ghana-born high schooler is poised to be an inspirational figure to young black girls around the world. And it’s not because her father, one of her heroes, will be sitting in the stands. Biney’s got a naturally carefree outlook on life. Here’s why. — Read the full story, by Rick Maese When Larry Nassar allegedly put his fingers inside Chelsea Markham, she was 10. After her visit, her life spiraled into bouts with drug problems and depression before she committed suicide at 23. At the former Michigan State sports physician’s sentencing hearing, Markham’s story was just one of the many harrowing accounts told. — Read the full story, by Will Hobson The level of destruction in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria is historic. Houses were swatted down. Millions of people are without basic necessities, like water and electricity. Spirits are low. But just down the road from the FEMA Disaster Recovery Center, you can faintly hear a reassuring sound: that of baseball being played, once more, inside Evaristo “Varo” Roldán Stadium. — Read the full story, by Jorge Castillo The Overwatch League christened its inaugural season similarly to other professional sports leagues’ opening day, with fans packing an arena while hundreds of thousands watched from home. The twist? The competition was video gaming, which owners of the NFL’s Patriots, NBA’s Grizzlies and NHL’s Flyers have already bet big on. — Read the full story, by Noah Smith He had a distinguished soccer career behind him, an uncommon broadcasting career ahead of him, an actress wife by his side and a perfect head of hair, but when the U.S. men’s national team shockingly failed to qualify for the World Cup, Kyle Martino suddenly had something entirely new: a mission to save his sport. — Read the full story, by Steven Goff • Gonna fly now: Things got a little out of hand in the City of Brotherly Love. • Concussion protocol: Rob Gronkowski took a hit to the head. The look on his face says it all. • A touching moment: Julie Ertz was overwhelmed hearing that her husband is going to the Super Bowl. Zach Ertz was overwhelmed hearing that his wife was overwhelmed. • Predictions? Pain: The Patriots want to play Clubber Lang to The Eagles’ Rocky Balboa.


The Energy 202: The conservative backlash to Trump’s solar tariffs begins

our economy," he said. Cohn said that Trump allowed an "enormous amount of latitude" in the solar panel decision, the full details of which have not been announced. "We're protecting our panel makers because we do make panels here in the U.S.," he added. One place where there did not appear to be much lamenting was among Republicans in Congress. "Here's something Republicans used to understand: Tariffs are taxes on families," Sasse said. "Moms and dads shopping on a budget for a new washing machine will pay for this — not big companies. You don't fix eight years of bad energy policy with bad trade policy." More Trump tariff fallout: — Pre-Pruitt hearing huddle — Meanwhile at the EPA — Pruitt's Superfund approach flips the script "In pressing for aggressive, accelerated cleanups, he is butting heads with companies while siding at times with local environmental groups. His supporters, and Pruitt himself, say it is evidence he is reinvigorating a core function of the agency. His critics see it as a political move, an effort to protect himself against charges that he constantly favors corporate interests," The Post's Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis write. "Yet Pruitt's attention is shifting the conversation in some beleaguered communities. Residents say they don't care what his motivations are — if those bring the results they've long sought," my colleagues write. "Scott Pruitt is probably the most important person right now in the lives of the people in this community," said Dawn Chapman, who lives with her husband and three children near a controversial site northwest of St. Louis" where a cleanup of Westlake landfill, filled with thousands of tons of radioactive waste from the Manhattan Project, is occurring, — Pruitt's plan to visit an ultra-efficient coal plant, scrapped: — Scientists sue Pruitt — FERC to Congress: We would have been okay without coal during the last cold spell. — Zinke's Sunshine State burn: — More sexual harassment at Interior — The offshore oil plan in pictures: — "I damn near got eaten by a grizzly bear:" — What does a 620 ton boulder have to do with climate change? — Fighting climate change? We're not even landing a punch — Sierra Club to Ford: Cut ties to Trump. Today Coming Up A super blue blood moon that coincides with a lunar eclipse will rise on Jan. 31. The last time that happened was in 1886:


U.S. imposes sanctions on North Korean ships suspected of smuggling goods

from each other. "The government strongly suspects the two engaged in offshore delivery which was banned by U.N. Security Council resolutions," the ministry said in a statement. The sanctions by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control listed six ships that sail under the North Korean flag — the Goo Ryong; the cargo ships Hwa Song, Un Ryul and Ever Glory; the tanker Kum Un San; and the cargo ship Ul Ji Bong 6, which loaded coal at a North Korean port and delivered it to Russia in September. Under the sanctions, the vessels are blocked, which imposes a ban on transfers or dealings of any kind. Americans are prohibited from dealing with the companies that own them, and international banks that do any kind of transactions with them are subject to U.S. sanctions. Several of the 16 individuals hit with sanctions work in China near the North Korean border at the Korea Ryonbong General Corp., which the Treasury Department already has imposed sanctions on. According to the Treasury Department, Ryonbong supports North Korea's military, helping it acquire chemicals, drilling equipment, hoses, metal and machines. Some work for Ryonbong in Russia or Georgia, including one said to arrange jobs overseas for North Korean laborers whose salaries largely go to the North Korean government. Other sanctioned individuals work for banks in China and Russia that are linked to a North Korean bank. The sanctioned companies are from China and North Korea — Beijing Chengxing Trading Co.; Dandong Jinxiang Trade Co.; Hana Electronics, which is one of North Korea's few electronics manufacturers; and the owners of the six North Korean ships: Gooryong Shipping, Hwasong Shipping, Korea Kumunsan Shipping, Korea Marine and Industrial Trading, and CK International. According to the Treasury Department, Chengxing Trading Co. has sold two tons of high purity metals to a subsidiary of Ryonbong. The Dandong Jinxiang Trade Co. exported more than $500 million of used computers and other goods to North Korea. "Pursuant to UN Security Council Resolutions, the U.S. government is targeting illicit actors in China, Russia, and elsewhere who are working on behalf of North Korean financial networks, and calling for their expulsion from the territories where they reside," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. "We are sanctioning additional oil, shipping, and trading companies that continue to provide a lifeline to North Korea to fuel this regime's nuclear ambitions and destabilizing activities." carol.morello@washpost.com


Trump exemplifies the Ugly American. Davos will accept him anyway.

what matters at Davos is not the speeches given by world leaders, much less the panels with worthy titles such as "Rethinking Climate Change and Work-Life Balance in the Sixth Industrial Revolution." It is the meetings behind the scenes, in the well-guarded private rooms of the resort's main hotels: meetings like the ones that changed Mandela's mind on state ownership of the economy. The really interesting question is whether or not Trump and his entourage will be taking such meetings — and with whom. The media will probably focus their coverage on handshakes and other body language with the other world leaders on this year's Davos list. Will he and the French President Emmanuel Macron reenact the longest handshake in Franco-American diplomatic history? Will he do the opposite with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose hand he declined to shake last year? Will Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi get some Trump time? None of this will matter. The real issue is the message Trump chooses to communicate to a global business elite that has an embarrassing little secret they would rather not say too much about: They may hate his tweets and his politically incorrect rhetoric, but they have spent the past year loving his economic policy to bits. Deregulation plus corporate tax cuts have helped to drive the price of nearly every stock represented at Davos to record highs. Forget the public handshakes; it's the private high-fives that will matter. As I prophesied two years ago: Trump was always going to come to Davos if he was elected president, in order to remind his fellow billionaires that, when all is said and done, he is really one of them. The reason Obama never went to Davos is that, aside from raising campaign funds from them, he had little real use for businessmen. Trump, by contrast, is a businessman, whose network of business ties — not least to Russia — remains a focal point of an investigation that may yet determine the fate of his presidency. That is not to say I expect him to turn up at Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska's legendary Davos party. But he would not be wholly out of place there: After all, Deripaska employed Paul Manafort before Trump did. One of my favorite lines about Davos comes from JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon: "Davos is where billionaires tell millionaires how the middle class feels." The events


A fierce flu season pummels Washington region

immediately available, Gayles said. But "anecdotally, it looks like this is much worse than in the past several years," he said. Across Maryland, a total of 208 people tested positive for the flu during the second week of January — the highest week of flu activity this season — according to the state's Department of Health. In some cases, the outbreak appears to have put a strain on supplies of flu vaccines. A pharmacist at a CVS in Bethesda said her branch ran out of flu shots in December, after having given a total of 1,000 shots since August. The pharmacist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to talk to a reporter, has sought additional vaccines but has been unsuccessful. "A lot of places have run out," said the pharmacist, referring to grocery stores as well as pharmacies. "And now that flu season is in full swing, unfortunately I don't even know where to send people other than their doctor's office." In Fairfax County, a quarter of all patients visiting emergency rooms in recent days have suffered from flulike symptoms, said Benjamin Schwartz, the county's director of epidemiology and population health. Two long-term care facilities for seniors experienced outbreaks of the flu this season in Fairfax, prompting health officials to request that people experiencing flulike symptoms not visit nursing homes or assisted-living facilities. "Every flu season is different, but this season is tracking pretty similarly with a couple of recent seasons that have been bad," Schwartz said. Across Virginia, there were close to 160 confirmed flu cases during the second week of January, the highest number of cases this season, according to the Virginia Department of Health. School officials in Fairfax and Loudoun counties said they have not received reports of increased absences of students or staff. The Eastern Mennonite School in Harrisonburg, Va., a town two hours southwest of the District, closed for two days last week because so many students were out sick with the flu. School staff spent the time sterilizing handrails, chairs, tabletops and other surfaces. Paul Leaman, the head of the school, said that in his 31 years as an educator, he has never seen so severe an outbreak. "It seemed extraordinarily contagious," he said. In the District, Mai Abdo, 50, said she was bedridden for five days even though she had gotten her flu shot before her diagnosis


has been unsuccessful. "A lot of places have run out," said the pharmacist, referring to grocery stores as well as pharmacies. "And now that flu season is in full swing, unfortunately I don't even know where to send people other than their doctor's office." In Fairfax County, a quarter of all patients visiting emergency rooms in recent days have suffered from flulike symptoms, said Benjamin Schwartz, the county's director of epidemiology and population health. Two long-term care facilities for seniors experienced outbreaks of the flu this season in Fairfax, prompting health officials to request that people experiencing flulike symptoms not visit nursing homes or assisted-living facilities. "Every flu season is different, but this season is tracking pretty similarly with a couple of recent seasons that have been bad," Schwartz said. Across Virginia, there were close to 160 confirmed flu cases during the second week of January, the highest number of cases this season, according to the Virginia Department of Health. School officials in Fairfax and Loudoun counties said they have not received reports of increased absences of students or staff. The Eastern Mennonite School in Harrisonburg, Va., a town two hours southwest of the District, closed for two days last week because so many students were out sick with the flu. School staff spent the time sterilizing handrails, chairs, tabletops and other surfaces. Paul Leaman, the head of the school, said that in his 31 years as an educator, he has never seen so severe an outbreak. "It seemed extraordinarily contagious," he said. In the District, Mai Abdo, 50, said she was bedridden for five days even though she had gotten her flu shot before her diagnosis and taken Tamiflu afterward. Her symptoms included a 102-degree fever, a sore throat and a severe headache that lasted four days despite regular doses of Advil. "I felt the worst I've ever felt in my entire life," she said. Her husband, Jim Abdo, a prominent developer, ordered her quarantined to their bedroom to keep him and their two teenage children from getting sick. At one point, he fled to Florida to play golf with his son only to find himself come down with a severe cold. "Having the flu is like heartbreak," Mai Abdo said, laughing. "No one loves you. No one wants to be around you. You're shunned." As of Monday, she was feeling better. And so was Mr. Abdo. rachel.chason@washpost.com paul.schwartzman@washpost.com


Russia says Olympic boycott isn’t on the table even after top athletes are barred from PyeongChang

The Russian Olympic Committee announced Tuesday that three of that country’s top medal hopes at next month’s Winter Olympics — six-time speedskating gold medalist Viktor Ahn, cross-country skier Sergei Ustyugov and biathlete Anton Shipulin — have been left off the International Olympic Committee’s pool of eligible athletes from Russia, meaning they will not be allowed to compete in PyeongChang, South Korea. Nonetheless, the country isn’t thinking about skipping the Games in protest. Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said Wednesday that “right now it is important to avoid words like ‘boycott,’ ” according to the Associated Press. Figure skaters Ksenia Stolbova (a two-time medalist at the 2014 Sochi Olympics) and Ivan Bukin also were excluded from the list of eligible athletes by the IOC, drawing a stern condemnation from the Russian Figure Skating Federation, which said in a statement that it was “deeply disappointed in this baseless IOC decision which is reminiscent of a provocation with the aim of forcing Russian athletes by any means possible to decline to participate in the games.” After determining that Russia employed a state-sponsored doping operation for many years, the IOC banned the Russian delegation from this year’s Olympics and said only carefully vetted athletes could compete under the Olympic flag as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.” Stanislav Pozdnyakov, a senior vice president of the Russian Olympic Committee, said Ahn, Ustyugov and Shipulin should have been allowed to compete. Ahn, Ustyugov and Shipulin “have never been involved in any doping cases and all of the many samples they have given during their careers testify that they are clean athletes,” Pozdnyakov said in a statement, per the Associated Press. “Regardless, their names are currently missing from the list of potential participants in the games.” Former NHL players Sergei Plotnikov, Valeri Nichushkin and Anton Belov also were barred from competing for the Russian hockey team. The IOC told the AP that it would not comment on individual cases. Mikhail Degtyarev, chairman of the Russian parliament’s sports committee, told the AP that he wasn’t in favor of a boycott but that the country needed to “defend our honor.” “There was an attempt to take the Russian athletes’ flag, anthem, to push Russia toward a boycott . . . And now this is the second attempt, tyranny, an attempt to drive a wedge between athletes who had managed to keep their good name,” Degtyarev said. “I’m not personally


New chemical attacks reported in Syria, and Trump administration blames Russia

Medical staff in the enclave said they had treated four women, seven children and 10 men with breathing difficulties and other symptoms consistent with exposure to the chemical weapon. Photos from the area circulated by local activists showed at least two infants breathing with the help of respirators as anxious parents watched. Hours later, pro-government media said that rebel forces responded by shelling the Old City of Damascus, killing nine civilians, including a 3-year old child. Separately, doctors from the Syrian American Medical Society, a nonprofit supporting hospitals across opposition-held parts of Syria, reported another attack on the northern province of Idlib. "Four people were treated in our hospital in Idlib with symptoms indicating exposure to chlorine," said Mohamed Katoub, a Turkey-based spokesman for the organization. Violence has intensified in Idlib as the Syrian government presses an offensive against al-Qaeda-linked rebels there. "When you hear the bombs, you brace yourself and wait. It is hard to describe the horrors we have seen coming through our doors this week," said a doctor in Idlib city, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of concern for the security of relatives living in government-held areas. "There was a little girl whose brain had fallen onto her pink T-shirt. And now we have the chemical victims, again. No one wants to stop this." Tillerson said Russia's failure to rid Syria of chemical weapons violates a 2013 disarmament agreement it made with the United States. "There is simply no denying that Russia, by shielding its Syrian ally, has breached its commitments to the United States," he said. Russia is a key backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government, providing both financial and military support, and has used its U.N. Security Council veto to block efforts to subject most alleged chemical assaults to U.N.-backed investigations. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov called the allegations that Russia was obstructing the investigations into chemical attacks "dirty and mendacious," according to Russian news agency Interfax. "This is a blatant and, by any standard, outrageous example of the American side's manipulating facts and ignoring what we've been saying for several years," Ryabkov told Interfax. Russia proposed Tuesday that the Security Council create a new inquiry to establish blame for chemical attacks in Syria, a move condemned by the United States as an attempt to distract from previous U.N. findings that Assad's military had carried out the April sarin attack. "When


Nigerians return from slavery in Libya to thriving sex-trafficking industry back home

In June, the U.S. State Department downgraded Nigeria in its annual trafficking report. In 2015, the Nigerian government passed a series of changes to strengthen anti-trafficking efforts, including requiring judges to give convicted traffickers jail time instead of fines. The restructuring has allowed the agency "not only to bark but to bite," said Joseph Famakin, NAPTIP's Lagos zonal commander. Nigeria cannot do it alone, he said. Even for local traffickers, "guiding" women and girls north is good business. An older Benin City man named Sonny described how for almost a decade he had smuggled Nigerian girls into sex slavery in Libya. He insisted he had stopped some 15 years ago, leaving the lucrative trade to younger men. "In Nigeria, the girl is free, but there is no food," he said, grinning. "In Libya, she eats chicken every blessed day." Asked how long it would take girls to pay off their debt, he responded: "They don't." When trafficking victims are returned to Nigeria, Famakin said, the government can do little to prevent them from being lured back into the business. While many are given a small stipend and access to job training, they commonly say they are worse off than before. After a November ceremony in Lagos hosted by NAPTIP, one 29-year-old returnee could not afford a taxi to transport the hairdressing start-up kit she had been awarded. In Libya, she had been forced to pay her madam about $600 — at $3 per client — before she was rescued and came back with nothing. The Nigerian government and the IOM are aiming to return tens of thousands more Nigerians in the coming months, but the effort is already strained. Last month, hundreds of Nigerians in matching tracksuits stepped off a flight from Libya to crowding news cameras, and some yelled at officials about their haphazard reintegration. Most were taken to the motel in Benin City, where the state governor recently criticized the federal response. In early December, Loveth sat crying in a plastic chair outside the motel with her small, round belly bulging from her thin frame, a pregnancy resulting from the rape in Libya. Later, doctors told her it was too late for an abortion, and she decided to put the baby up for adoption. She said she was happy to have left Libya but not to be back in Nigeria "because I have no place to go." foreign@washpost.com


Will millennials kill Costco?

There's a Costco to one side of Gwendolyn Hammer's house and a Sam's Club to the other. But when the 28-year-old needs 12-packs of paper towels, or 36 rolls of toilet paper, she heads online instead. Once a month she uses her smartphone to place a bulk order on Boxed.com, a website founded five years ago as a millennial-friendly alternative to warehouse wholesalers. There is no membership fee, and most orders arrive within two days. Other times, she stocks up using Amazon Prime. "I've never had a Costco membership, even though I knew shopping there would likely end up saving me money," said Hammer, who lives in Utah Valley, Utah, and grew up shopping at Costco with her parents. "I do like not having to haul my kids to the store." Warehouse clubs such as Costco, Sam's Club and BJ's Wholesale Club have for decades been an American staple: a place where families can stock up on bulk items, try free samples and spend the better part of a weekend morning meandering through aisles filled with 26-packs of canned salmon and king-size mattresses. But as more of Americans' buying shifts online, some retail analysts say warehouse clubs may largely be left behind. "The core club customer is older: It's generally someone with a family and a house," said Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at the research firm Forrester. "Costco has been one of the least digitally forward companies out there. This segment has had its head in the sand when it comes to competing with Amazon." Warehouse retailers, she added, have been among the slowest to shift their business online, offer home delivery or make other sweeping changes to compete with the likes of Amazon.com. (Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.) There are signs that the sector is falling behind: Warehouse clubs and supercenters cut an average of 2,500 jobs each month in 2017, reversing a longtime trend of steady growth, according to a Post analysis of Labor Department data. Between 2009 and 2016, warehouse stores had added an average of 3,000 workers each month. The sector received more bad news this month, when Walmart announced it would close 63 Sam's Club stores, affecting an estimated 10,000 workers. In a tweet, the company said the closures would help "better align" its physical locations with its strategy. (Ten locations will reopen as e-commerce fulfillment


Why it costs so much to be poor in America

Sirrea Monroe never expected her electricity to get shut off — she was only $70 behind, and she planned to pay it off after her next paycheck. What happened next shocked her: “I called to get it turned back on, paid the $70 with what was supposed to be my rent money, and then the lady says, ‘Great, thank you for your payment! Now I need $250 for the ‘new customer’ deposit.’” Monroe, a convenience-store manager who has a child with special health needs, was in disbelief. “I’m like, ‘Look, I couldn’t afford $70. Where am I going to get $250?’ Now I’ll be more in the hole than I was before.” Monroe had been a customer of the electric company for more than a decade, and the power had been off for less than an hour. It did not matter: She had to pay it. It took more than six months to pay off. It has never been easy to be poor in America, but decisions made in company boardrooms about seemingly modest financial matters — about fees, fines, interest rates, minimum balances — make life far harder than it has to be for low-income families. This week, Bank of America announced its free, no-minimum-balance checking account, popular with many low-income customers, will require a $1,500 minimum daily balance or $250 in direct monthly deposit (totaling $3,000 per year). If customers fall below that threshold, they will be forced to pay a monthly fee. The optics are breathtaking, considering Bank of America made more than $21 billion in profits last year and will receive a multibillion-dollar present from Congress every year from now on, courtesy of the newly slashed corporate tax rate. To celebrate their profits and congressional largesse by putting the squeeze on their poorest customers puts even more icing on their already well-iced cake. Perhaps to the executives who make these kinds of decisions, the fines and fees seem negligible, especially if you, like Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan, received $20.2 million in personal compensation last year. More than 40 percent of Americans say they struggle even to make ends meet each month and would be unable to cover an unexpected $400 expense without real hardship. No amount is small if you cannot afford it. For low-income families, these kinds of costs are everywhere. Let’s say you clean houses or offices or hotel rooms for


Alan Sipress named Middle East editor

Announcement from Foreign Editor Douglas Jehl and Deputy Foreign Editor Mary Beth Sheridan: We’re thrilled to announce that Alan Sipress will become Middle East editor, overseeing one of the world’s most troubled regions – and one that lies at the heart of our foreign coverage. Alan is one of the newsroom’s most gifted story editors, and he has spent the last decade in pivotal roles on the Financial and National desks, beginning with the financial crisis of 2008 and continuing through the last year as he coordinated National’s day-to-day coverage through President Trump’s first 11 months in office. He is also a former foreign correspondent with postings in Cairo (for the Philadelphia Inquirer, in the 1990s) and in Jakarta (for The Post, with Ellen Nakashima, from 2002 to 2006). He also served as diplomatic correspondent based in Washington for The Post in 2001 and 2002. He understands implicitly what is required at every stage of the journalistic process, including the alchemy that is sometimes involved in helping reporters deliver their best and most memorable work. His rigor, energy and knowledge (he still speaks some Arabic) make him particularly suited to leading our Middle East team, which includes eight correspondents spread across bureaus in Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo, Jerusalem and Istanbul – as well as responsibility for a story that never relents. Alan is a graduate of Princeton University, and he did a postgraduate year at the Delhi School of Economics in India. He began his career in journalism as a $25-a-story freelance reporter for his hometown newspaper, the Daily Register in Red Bank, N.J. He moved to the Inquirer in 1987 and to The Post in 1998. He took over the Middle East editing portfolio on an interim basis last month; his appointment as Middle East editor takes effect immediately.


Marijuana-based anti-seizure drug could hit U.S. market in 2018 after strong study results

A new class of epilepsy medications based on an ingredient derived from marijuana could be available as soon as the second half of 2018 in the United States, pending Food and Drug Administration approval. Officials from GW Pharmaceuticals, the company that developed the drug, on Wednesday announced promising results from a study on 171 patients randomized into treatment and placebo groups. Members of the group, ages 2 to 55, have a condition called Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and were suffering from seizures that were not being controlled by existing drugs. On average they had tried and discontinued six anti-seizure treatments and were experiencing 74 “drop” seizures per month. Drop seizures involve the entire body, trunk or head and often result in a fall or other type of injury. The results, published in the Lancet, show that over a 14-week treatment period, 44 percent of patients taking the drug, called Epidiolex, saw a significant reduction in seizures, compared with 22 percent of the placebo group. Moreover, more of the patients who got the drug experienced a 50 percent or greater reduction in drop seizures. Elizabeth Thiele, director of pediatric epilepsy at Massachusetts General Hospital and lead author of the study, said the results varied depending on the patient. “For some, it does not do a whole lot. But for the people it does work in, it is priceless,” she said. “One child who comes to mind had multiple seizures a day. She had been on every medication possible,” said Thiele, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. Then the patient tried the cannabis-based treatment and has been seizure-free for almost four years. “She is now talking about college options. She would have never had that conversation before. It has been life-changing.” Epidiolex is based on a purified cannabidiol, an oil from marijuana plants that has made headlines in recent years. Interest in the substance, one of many components of marijuana plants, began to take off when Paige Figi, a Colorado mom, began writing about how an extract — nicknamed “Charlotte's Web” from the special strain it was taken from — had nearly stopped her daughter's seizures. Numerous families moved to the state, where marijuana is legal, to try to get the treatment, and others mobilized in their own states to try to get permission to import it. Despite its apparent effect, Charlotte's Web has been controversial because of the lack of oversight


Panera is calling for a federal crackdown on the eggs in its competitors’ breakfast sandwiches

And chain restaurants, including Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks and Taco Bell, commonly disclose their ingredient lists on websites and in-store handouts. “We couldn’t agree more with Panera that ‘people deserve to know what’s in their food and make the best choices for them based on this knowledge,’” Taco Bell said in a statement to The Washington Post. “That’s why Taco Bell was one of the first restaurant brands to voluntarily provide complete nutritional and ingredient information on our website 13 years ago.” Experts say Taco Bell and the other companies have a point: There is no real mystery surrounding their eggs, since they already disclose the ingredients. While their egg products may include additives, they are still mostly eggs, Crosby said. Mitchell Cheeseman, a former official in the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition who now advises food companies at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson, is skeptical the agency would take action on a petition like this one. “The agency generally moves pretty slowly on these issues, because they have other public health issues to deal with,” said Cheeseman. “It’s not a priority if it doesn’t have a public health consequence.” At the same time, FDA watchers acknowledge a larger issue: The agency's definitions for food products are increasingly out of date, and do not align with many new food products. Egg products, such as processed liquid eggs that can last for six months or more, are one such example. But there are others: Recently, the dairy and plant-based food industries have locked horns over whether new soy, almond and rice beverages can call themselves “milk,” with both sides turning to FDA to clarify its dairy definitions. Other commodity groups may push FDA for a new definition of “meat,” said Glynn Tonsor, an agricultural economist at Kansas State University, as companies develop lab-grown and plant-based versions. The agency is also under pressure to regulate the health claims that food-makers put on product labels: FDA has never regulated the term “natural,” and the definition for “healthy” is so old that it excludes foods like almonds, olives and avocados. FDA is in the process of updating both, following years of petitions and lawsuits. “Most of the standards of identity are decades old, but there’s never been a real consensus on them,” said Mel Drozen, who advises companies on FDA compliance as a partner in the law firm Keller and Heckman.


I never met Paul Bocuse, but he inspired me to become a chef

thrilling too: shopping at a market for ingredients, then transforming them into delicious meals and interacting with the diners who might cherish their meal as an experience of a lifetime. Bocuse represented that possibility for countless American middle-class kids looking for alternative career paths. We didn't have to go into law, medicine or finance. He brought prestige to work that had been viewed, in this country at least, as a service job. The article was enough to motivate me to begin pursuing a culinary career. After a few fits and starts in the French Midtown restaurant world, I traveled to France in 1980 for study with Madeleine Kamman. Kamman upended my construct of fine food and fine dining. She told me that the treasures of French cuisine were to be found in regional kitchens, many of which were helmed by women, and not in the "gros bonnets" male kitchens of haute cuisine. We learned to cook food of people in their place, not food of the aristocracy who preferred to dine on exotic and faraway ingredients. When I told Kamman that I intended to eat at chez Bocuse on one of my weekends off, she directed me instead to La Mere Brazier, where Bocuse had trained under Eugenie Brazier, the first female chef to garner three stars (she held six stars, three each at two restaurants). When I began bicycling through France, I traded my red Michelin guide for Kamman's dog-eared copy of Waverley Root's "The Foods of France" as my companion guide. Root organized the regional cuisines of France by which fat was used for cooking: butter in the north, duck and goose fat in the northeast and southwest and olive oil in the south. Root was my Virgil on my search for the old, the traditional, the disappearing. These quests indelibly shaped the cuisine I developed when I opened Savoy, one that reflected my interest in the regional flavors and dishes of the broader Mediterranean. I never looked back at the more traditional French fine dining found in Midtown. Recently, while working on a memoir, I searched online for that original Times Magazine piece about Bocuse. The article was titled "The Restoration of French Cooking," and was written by none other than Waverley Root. Here was my French back roads guide turning up as the author of my culinary genesis moment. Rereading it, the text revealed an even


market because he knew what a qualitative difference it ultimately made to the food eaten in his dining room. I had come to the same conclusion. That's why I spent many days a week for many years moving food by bicycle from the Union Square Greenmarket to my SoHo restaurant and developing direct relationships with farmers and producers. Root wrote that Bocuse also enjoyed the community that came with shopping in the public market, chatting with farmers, fellow cooks and other shoppers. Bocuse talked about the direct impact scale has on the quality of freshness and the food. "All the mass wholesaler, who pours all his produce into the same hopper, is able to sell is the average," he told Root. The quote raised questions of scale and quality in our food and agriculture that I grapple with to this day. Bocuse went on to leverage his image into an international brand, a cooking school in Tokyo and a 2,000-meal-a-day restaurant at Disney World. He was the first chef to get out from behind the stoves and build associated businesses in other cities, even countries. Ever the showman, he cooked a pumpkin soup in a whole pumpkin, inspiring me in 1980, when working in a New American restaurant, to scour the farmers market to find small pumpkins we could serve as single-portion soups. An army of American farmers who grow Jack-Be-Little pumpkins have Bocuse to thank for their popularity. The culinary Olympics he helped organize, called the Bocuse d'Or, serves to keep French as the preeminent cuisine in the world, but it is not my thing; the food is over-manipulated, overthought. It has strayed far from the market cuisine he once promoted. But it doesn't tarnish the gift I received from him long ago, when the younger me came upon that 1972 article. The farmers market photo provided the spark, but Bocuse's commitment to cook from the market, to dedicate himself to "la cuisine du marche," was a philosophical building block right from the start. It took me several decades to adapt those principles to my time and my place, but Bocuse's dependence on seasonality as a source of inspiration and his reliance on small farmers for quality ingredients became my "very foundation" as well. I never met Bocuse, but I continue to honor him by passing along this philosophy to the next generation of cooks. Thank you, chef. food@washpost.com


Paramedics said her 6-year-old had common flu symptoms and left, she claims. Now her daughter is dead.

February, the outbreak is already one of the worst on record, as the flu has touched every U.S. state, with 32 of them reporting severe flu activity. Physicians are insisting people get their flu shots, as 85 percent of the children who died were probably not vaccinated, CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald told Reuters. While the flu vaccine does not guarantee no illness, experts say data suggests the vaccinations make the flu milder. According to the CDC The public health agency notes that “people who have the flu often feel some or all of these signs and symptoms that usually start suddenly, not gradually”: The CDC adds that “not everyone with flu will have a fever.” Emily died Friday after she was rushed by an ambulance to WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh. She had tested positive for the flu three days before at an urgent care center in Cary, according to ABC11. He mother was handed a prescription for Tamiflu and told to keep her hydrated, ABC11 reported. The fever appeared to normalize Thursday, but on Friday, Emily began having difficulty breathing. Her mother called an ambulance and said a paramedic told her the labored breathing was a common symptom of the flu. Emily's breathing worsened a few hours later, and when her mother called paramedics a second time, they couldn't save her daughter, she told ABC11. WakeMed Hospital, Rhonda Muth and her husband, Nathan Muth, could not be immediately reached for comment. While young, healthy people have died of the flu, those most at risk are the elderly and young children. A 10-year-old boy in New Canaan, Conn., whose mother said was healthy as 'an ox,' died after he was rushed to a New York hospital. The mother of a 12-year-old girl in Visalia, Calif., who died of a bacterial infection that entered her bloodstream claims that doctors, overwhelmed by the rise in flu cases, misdiagnosed her daughter with the flu. As The Washington Post's Lena Sun reported, a particular concern for health experts is the sharp increase in people hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed cases. Nearly 6,500 people were hospitalized since the season began Oct. 1, and the overall hospitalization rate for the week ending Jan. 6 — 22.7 per 100,000 — was almost double that of the previous week. Seven children died in just the first week of January. According to Sun: What makes the threat of the flu worse is


Former Maryland schools superintendent indicted on four counts of perjury

accept payments for outside work. Baltimore County school employees submit annual financial disclosure forms in which they affirm under penalty of perjury that the information is accurate. White has not been charged with a crime. In a statement Tuesday, White said, "We are surprised and saddened to hear about the charges against former superintendent Dallas Dance. It is important to note, there are no accusations of wrongdoing by the current administration or me. I have full confidence in the integrity of our staff and organization as a whole." Dance, 36, abruptly resigned as superintendent of the nation's 25th-largest school system on April 18, citing the toll of the job on his family. It later emerged he was under investigation at the time by the state prosecutor. The young, charismatic leader took over Baltimore County schools in July 2012 with a mandate for change. He quickly disrupted the status quo by imposing uniform high school schedules and rewriting the curriculum to include the use of laptops, among other changes. He also focused more attention and funding on the lowest-performing schools. His contract was renewed in 2016, and Dance was in the first year of the four-year pact when he resigned last spring. He was earning $287,000 annually. The school board appointed White, the chief academic officer, as interim superintendent. "I, personally, am saddened to learn of the State Prosecutor's actions against Dr. Dance," Baltimore County School Board Chair Edward J. Gilliss said in a statement. Other officials responded differently to Dance's indictment. "These allegations, if true, are not only extremely disappointing, but inexcusable," Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, who supported the superintendent during his tenure, said in a statement. Gov. Larry Hogan's press secretary Shareese Churchill said the governor "has made very clear: Corruption and the lack of accountability in our school systems will not be tolerated." The county teachers union president, Abby Beyton, said she will assume Dance is innocent until he is proven guilty. "If it is true, then he deserves whatever comes his way," Beyton said. "We have never had anything like this in Baltimore County and I don't want to ever see it again." Baltimore County PTA President Jayne Lee expressed concern that the controversy will distract district leaders from addressing classroom issues. "It is disheartening because our school system is going to be dragged through the mud," she said. Ann Miller, a member of the county


How an undercover female reporter exposed sexual misconduct at a London charity bash

LONDON — Wanted: attractive young women wearing short, tight dresses and black underpants to serve as hostesses for British business bigwigs at a drunken old-boys-only charity affair. In 2018. When tabloid-style news of this event broke in the usually decorous Financial Times on Wednesday, the recoil was immediate. The story of well-heeled men acting badly was not exactly Britain's #MeToo moment. London has been the scene of alleged acts of sexual misconduct by Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, while the government has been roiled by "sex pest" scandals, including the resignation late last year of Defense Secretary Michael Fallon, accused of repeatedly putting his hand on a well-known radio journalist's knee at a dinner in 2002. But the newspaper investigation into harassment doled out at a London charity event last Thursday has delivered a fresh jolt. The report alleged that women who served as hostesses, some of them college students, were groped and propositioned. One elderly attendee asked one of the hostesses whether she was a prostitute. The undercover reporter who wrote the piece told The Washington Post that she, too, was pawed and subjected to lewd comments. The House of Commons announced investigations and the prime minister her extreme discomfort. Meanwhile, attendees, donors and charity recipients scurried to distance themselves from the event — and late Wednesday the trust itself announced that it would shut down immediately. Each year, for 33 years, the Presidents Club Charitable Trust has organized a fundraising dinner at London's Dorchester hotel to benefit "worthy children's causes." The attendees last week, as in the past, hailed from Britain's business, finance, fashion, entertainment and political establishment — an "esteemed" group, according to the club's website, and highly exclusive. Among the excluded: women, as guests or patrons. But 130 "hostesses" were hired to cater to the needs of the roughly 360 male guests. The women were encouraged to drink with the guests, at the main event and at more-discreet "afterparties." One thing was different this year. Among the hostesses were two infiltrators, a female journalist from the Financial Times named Madison Marriage and a woman working with her who secured hostess jobs and went undercover to report on the event. The FT scoop quickly became the lead story in Britain on Wednesday, dominating the afternoon front pages, news websites and social media spheres. The two children's hospitals that received donations from the event announced that they were


The planet just had its hottest 4 years in recorded history. Trump is dismantling efforts to fight climate change.

2017 was among the hottest years ever recorded, government scientists reported Thursday. The year was the second-hottest in recorded history, NASA said, while scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported 2017 was the third-warmest they have ever recorded. The two government agencies use different methodologies to calculate global temperatures, but by either standard, the 2017 results make the past four years the hottest period in their 138-year archive. “The planet is warming remarkably uniformly,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told reporters Thursday. The renewed evidence of climate change, driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases, comes as the Trump administration moves to open new areas for oil drilling and rolls back regulations that sought to reduce global warming, most prominently by moving to repeal the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. The administration said it would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement last year. This has prompted a counter-reaction — with some states, like California, doubling down on climate policies, such as the state’s cap-and-trade system — but the fact remains that it is far from clear at the moment whether a recent trend of slowly declining U.S. greenhouse gas emissions will continue. In 2018, the U.S. Energy Information Administration just predicted, emissions should actually rise by about 1.7 percent. “The climate has changed and is always changing,” said White House principal deputy press secretary Raj Shah in a statement in response to the new temperature findings. “To address climate change as well as other risks, the U.S. will continue to promote access to affordable and reliable energy and support technology, innovation and the development of modern and efficient infrastructure in order to reduce emissions and effectively address future climate related risks.” “To answer your question, no this report does not affect [Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s] beliefs on climate change,” said Shalyn Hynes, press secretary at the Department of Energy. “He is already on record saying that he believes that the climate is changing and that man is having an impact. As the Secretary of Energy he is focused on the ways we can use innovation and technology to expand American energy production in a cleaner way so that the United States can continue to lead the world in our reduction of emissions.” The Environmental Protection Agency referred the Post to a recent interview with Reuters in which administrator Scott Pruitt also acknowledge that


D.C.’s constellation of local news sites has dimmed

The Current Newspapers, the tetrad of hyperlocal printed newspapers in Northwest D.C., is in bankruptcy. The Gazette newspapers in Maryland closed in 2015. Washington City Paper almost met its end but was rescued by local businessman Mark Ein. Local news website DCist closed in November (because its owner was unwilling to let sister site Gothamist unionize). Reston Now and ARLnow in Arlington are providing local coverage in those communities, but similar sites in Capitol Hill, Bethesda and Dupont/Logan Circle fizzled. The AOL-supported Patch network of hyperlocal websites is almost defunct. We still have The Post, the Washington Times, WAMU, Washingtonian, the Capital Community News family of papers, the Connection newspapers in Northern Virginia, Bethesda Magazine and others, including the site I founded, Greater Greater Washington. Still, our constellation of local news sites has dimmed mightily. The Post, of course, is winning (well-deserved) awards, but they've come for coverage of Donald Trump, national police shootings and the Secret Service. In the movie "The Post," Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) tells Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep) that after publishing the Pentagon Papers, it won't just be a local rag in D.C. anymore. He's mostly talking about going beyond the White House cocktail party circuit rather than actual coverage of the District, but that's because the latter kind of reporting never comes up in the movie. The Post had considerable metro reporting at that time, and it has some great people reporting locally now, of course. But it's a smaller operation than it once was, especially in Maryland and Virginia. This region has by far the most reporters per capita of any metropolitan area, but most pay little attention to the city and are sometimes shockingly ignorant of it. Editors know you click obsessively on the latest outrageous act or tweet from Trump. So do the algorithms that push things to your news apps and Facebook. The economics of the news business are tough. Widely shared national stories can pull in decent ad dollars, but it's a lot harder for a local story, even the most amazing one, if its potential audience is just the 6 million or so people in our metro area (or tens of thousands in a particular neighborhood) rather than the 320 million in the nation. Print still commands higher advertising prices per reader, but it's shrinking, as the Current's woes prove. So is the audience for print, as more and