She used to be addicted to crack cocaine. Now, she wants to help opioid abusers.

the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Opioid-related deaths have climbed in the District — particularly in Wards 7 and 8, where middle-aged black men are the most likely to succumb to the drug, according to data from the D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office. There are significantly fewer opioid- related deaths in the District than in Maryland or Virginia, but the city’s rate of deaths is higher than in the neighboring states. In 2016, the most recent year for which all three jurisdictions have data, the District reported about 34 opioid-related deaths per 100,000 residents, compared to about 31 in Maryland and 14 in Virginia, according to state data. The District approved a law last year that would allow pharmacies to stock naloxone, a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses, and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) announced that the city would provide community health partners 2,500 naloxone kits in response to shortages. First responders and other D.C. officials will be on hand Saturday to address issues such as naloxone access and overdose prevention. Boecker said the most valuable participants may be people like Johnson — those who lived through their own addiction battle and have come out the other side. In the rehab world, Boecker said, they’re called “peer counselors.” “Obviously, every drug has different effects and a different pattern in how it affects your life. But being stigmatized for your drug use is a pretty universal experience. Being criminalized for your drug use is a pretty universal experience,” she said. “Being able to relate to how other people treat you, how your family treats you, how you’ve dealt with it all — that’s important.” As of Thursday, about 200 people had registered to participate in the 2.7-mile walk, which begins at 9 a.m. near the National Museum of African American History and Culture and is meant to memorialize those who have died from substance abuse. A health fair will follow at noon, featuring more than 30 public health groups, recovery services, emergency response teams and police organizations. “I’m not ashamed of my past or where I’ve been. Sometimes you have to go through that to get to the next level, to get to the point where you can turn around and help other folks,” Johnson said. “And, now, look around. Here we go again with another drug epidemic. If my story can help someone else, if our experiences can help


Community deaths

scientist William Murray, 95, a research scientist who spent more than 20 years as head of the structural mechanics laboratory at the David Taylor Model Basin, a Navy facility in Bethesda, Md., for designing ships, died March 18 at a retirement center in Lake Ridge, Va. The cause was cancer, said a daughter, Caprice Scarborough. Dr. Murray was born in Yonkers, N.Y., and worked in the underwater explosions research division of the Norfolk Naval Shipyard before joining the model basin in 1959. He led the structural mechanics laboratory from 1963 until his retirement in 1985 at what is now the Carderock Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Centers. He received the Navy’s Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 1963. He was a longtime resident of Great Falls, Va. Theodor Kolobow, NIH researcher Theodor Kolobow, 86, a National Institutes of Health researcher who helped improve the artificial lung and developed new dialysis machines and other medical devices, died March 24 at an assisted-living community in Bethesda, Md. He had Alzheimer’s disease and leukemia, said a daughter, Dannielle Torres. Dr. Kolobow was born in Kardla, Estonia, and after spending part of World War II in a camp for displaced people in Germany, he immigrated to the United States for college. He joined NIH in 1962 as a researcher at what is now the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and directed the pulmonary and cardiac assist and devices section before his retirement in 2009. He was credited with developing the spiral coil membrane lung as well as a commonly used artificial-lung system known as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. Robert Nicholas III, military construction specialist Robert Nicholas III, 80, a military construction specialist whose career included stints as a staff member for the House Appropriations Committee and for Defense Department official Robert Komer during the Carter administration, died March 17 at his home in Washington. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his wife, Lynn Nicholas. Mr. Nicholas was born in Providence, R.I., and moved to the Washington area in 1963, shortly before joining the House Appropriations Committee. He was hired by Komer a decade later, when the former Vietnam War pacification chief was undersecretary of defense for policy. Mr. Nicholas went on to work with a NATO committee on military construction, and served in the inspector general’s office in the Defense Department before retiring in 1992. He was a board member of groups including the


Chinese investors and the cult of Warren Buffett

employee was arrested last year for aiding Chinese spies, and some Americans are not welcoming of immigrants. Despite these and other tensions, thousands of Chinese visitors still journeyed to the Coachella of capitalism, a corporate powwow unlike any other on Earth. They came to network with other investors at breakfasts, lunches, dinners, receptions and mini-investing conferences. They came to listen to six hours of entertaining, folksy banter and financial insight from the resident wizards of Berkshire Hathaway: Chairman and chief executive Buffett and Vice Chairman Charlie Munger. News reports indicate that the Chinese contingent at the Berkshire Hathaway meeting has grown toward 5,000 this year, up from roughly 1,000 in 2014. Many are not Berkshire shareholders. They come for the spectacle, the networking and the learning. Yahoo Finance live-streamed the annual meeting to 3 million people worldwide last Saturday in two languages: English and Mandarin. In China, Buffett’s visage has adorned Cherry Coke bottles, mouse pads and phone cases. Two separate Chinese executives gave more than $2 million to a charity to have lunch with Buffett in 2008 and 2015. Buffett’s long-term view, his humility to admit mistakes and his traditional demeanor align with Chinese values. His story of growing wealthy through intelligence rather than inheritance inspires many Chinese. Chinese delegations host their own investment conferences before, during and after the Berkshire shareholder meeting. The Sino-American Venture Capital Summit at the Hilton drew hundreds of Chinese attendees this year. New York firm Pinebase Capital hosted several events, including an “Omaha Investment Forum.” Chinese tech company Tencent and Aegon-Industrial Fund hosted another. A group called the Omaha Dialogue hosted its fifth annual “Omaha Summit” at the DoubleTree Hilton downtown, with 150 Chinese students and business leaders from China and the United States discussing topics such as “Buffett’s Wisdom and Inspiration” and “Thinking of Tomorrow: Questions for Warren Buffett, an incomparable investor and philanthropist.” Half the presentations are in English and half are in Chinese. Started by New York-based investment manager Ming Zhong and now managed by a Chinese event planner in Chicago, the summit has featured Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts and Wall Street veteran Harry Edelson alongside Chinese tycoons. These events function as a home for Chinese who want to latch on to the Buffett magic rather than wander the streets and halls in Omaha, feeling like foreigners. The seminars also try to engage youths, giving


Astronomy site is your guide to the universe, one picture at a time

Have you ever wished for a personal guide to the planets, stars and solar system? A site called Astronomy Picture of the Day has you covered. A service of NASA’s Astrophysics Science Division, the Goddard Space Flight Center and Michigan Technological University, the site offers up mind-blowing photography and mind-boggling explanations of the phenomena it portrays. APOD, as it’s nicknamed, has a simple mission: Post one photo of something in the universe each day, along with an explanation from a professional astronomer. Luckily, there’s no lack of great space photography and neat phenomena to explore. The site wins points for sheer variety — recent pix have included a visualization of the entire observable universe, a 2011 image of the space shuttle Endeavour cutting through clouds and a trippy picture of the Stickney Crater, the largest on the Martian moon Phobos. A robust archive saves the pictures you may have missed. Following APOD gives you glimpses of the heavens from every vantage point and mood. Its layout is comfortably low-tech, with plenty of perks: It’s on social media, too, and is translated into dozens of languages. You can even submit photos if you want to add to the fun. You don’t need to be an expert to get something out of APOD: Its explanations are accessible, and there are plenty of links if you want to learn more. APOD may be simple, but it’s not simplistic. Whether you’re looking for a quick fix of astronomical wonder or an explanation of something you never knew existed, your curiosity will be well rewarded.


Scientists discover new evidence of plumes on Europa, a target in the search for life

data through a sophisticated modeling program that compared the observations with what scientists might expect to see from a plume of the dimensions reported by Hubble. The results were in “satisfying agreement,” Jia said. Kivelson, who hadn't considered such a plume when she collected the data two decades ago, marveled at the new discovery. “It's amazing how hard it is to anticipate something that just hasn't happened before,” she said. The source of the plume is still unclear. The prevailing theory is the water comes directly from Europa's subsurface ocean and is being driven upward by hydrothermal activity much like that which powers geysers on Earth. But the water could originate elsewhere, Jia cautioned. Some have suggested that there might be a subsurface lake hiding between layers of Europa's thick ice sheets. The behavior of the plumes is also unpredictable. Because they were initially seen when Europa was farthest from Jupiter, researchers thought they might be driven by tidal stress — the friction generated by Jupiter's gravitational pull that keeps Europa's interior liquid. But follow-up observations from Hubble were unable to confirm that idea. Jia hopes this paper will inspire fellow researchers to keep looking at Europa's plumes. Perhaps someone else will find further clues by mining years-old data. Or, maybe when the powerful James Webb Space Telescope finally launches (it has been pushed back several times), it will get a clearer picture of what is happening on the alien moon. The Clipper mission — now in the preliminary design phase — is projected to arrive at Jupiter sometime around 2030. There it will perform 45 flybys past Europa, getting as close as 16 miles above the moon's surface. If it finds a plume, Clipper's instruments will be able measure its chemical composition, said Elizabeth Turtle, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and one of the primary researchers involved with the mission. The spacecraft will seek molecules associated with biological activity. “But it's a long stretch to go from being able to measure the specific composition to being able to say, 'There’s life,' ” she cautioned at the news conference Monday. Read more: NASA finds ingredients for life spewing out of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus Deep-sea life on Earth gives us a clue to what aliens would be like Looking for aliens on ocean worlds: 'You'd be in denial to believe there isn't life out there'


China and the U.S.: A clash of techno-nationalists

be able to stem its high-tech catch-up, which is only the tip of the iceberg in China’s inexorable economic rise. China’s enormous reserves of state capital, its substantial pool of ready talent and its huge market will continue to drive it forward. Indeed, the United States may be shooting itself in the foot. U.S. trade hawks fail to grasp the record of contemporary history, which demonstrates that technology bans imposed by the West are more often than not counterproductive when directed at a capable country. For example, China was compelled to go solo on projects such as its manned spaceflight program after being cut off by rigorous exclusion policies imposed by the West. Also, strict technology bans by America have forced China to lay out huge national investments that led to its exceptional performance in building supercomputers that surpass those of the United States. And in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square movement, the full-scale embargo on military technology imposed on China by the West propelled and motivated China to develop independent military weaponry systems. Over recent years, China has registered patents that are competitive in critical industries, from pharmaceuticals to biotechnology, telecommunications and electronics. For the first time last year, it received more patent applications than the United States, the European Union, Japan and South Korea combined. If China-U.S. tariff frictions continue to escalate, America will lose access to the world’s most attractive market and enervate its own technological progress. The likely domino effect of trade protectionism will nullify the rule-based, post-war global economic order that has been the key to American prosperity. The zero-sum approach to trade and technology may well have hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union in the days of the Cold War, but China is an entirely different case. Here the analogy does not apply. By contrast, a more cooperative integration of value chains between China and the United States would undoubtedly tighten their interdependence, nurture their technological competitiveness and thereby benefit the global market economy. China will not abide any effort to thwart its trajectory of bringing its people’s well-being up to world-class standards. If the United States understands “Made in China 2025” in this context, it has no reason to fear that aim. Techno-nationalist troublemakers should stop stoking Western anxieties out of an outmoded inferiority complex — the impetus for which China’s accomplishments have by now erased. This was produced by


See surprising photos of wildlife in one of Hollywood’s favorite settings

LOS ANGELES — Prowling coyotes and bobcats. Nesting great blue herons. Schools of carp, tilapia and largemouth bass. The Los Angeles region, a dense megalopolis of more than 13 million people, does not look like this in the movies. But a different sort of life exists along the Los Angeles River, a 51-mile concrete channel for rain and flood runoff that snakes its way from an inland valley to the Pacific beach. Now, as Angelenos rediscover this backyard waterway via river walks and kayak tours, researchers are attempting to determine just which wild animals live here and in what supply. Graffiti, trash and homeless encampments remain along the canal. Yet nature holds on. The water may not be safe enough to wade in, but for many animals, including more than a dozen types of birds, the river is a sanctuary. “Species like coyotes can persist in these small habitat fragments and find a way,” said Justin Brown, a biologist at the National Park Service’s Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. “They can use these wide varieties of landscapes, and we don’t have a full grasp of what they’re capable of doing.” To find out, a team led by Brown has installed 39 motion-activated remote cameras along 30 miles of the basin and tributaries. It’s step one for what’s being called the L.A. River Wildlife Camera Project, an effort that Brown, who has spent three years tracking coyotes in the city’s core, hopes will eventually influence how residents deal with wildlife and reduce human-animal conflict. The big question that Brown wonders aloud: “What level of urbanization is acceptable for these species? There’s places I see skunks and raccoons and other animals, but there’s no really solid data.” Preliminary images captured in 2016 and a 2017 pilot program revealed photo evidence of a healthy abundance of wildlife along the waterways. Researchers think these patches of habitat may be used as transportation arteries for animals traveling through the city sprawl. “If you keep your eyes open, you’ll see a lot of animals about,” said Charlotte Parry, the executive director of the SAMO Fund, which is funding the camera project with a $23,300 grant from a cosmetics company. “Understanding what the wildlife is and what they’re trying to achieve is what this is all about.” The project will be part of the Urban Wildlife Information Network, a nationwide wildlife monitoring program in major cities


The Daily 202: Trump voters stay loyal because they feel disrespected

other non-tariff remedies. But the talks have not been amicable. Chinese President Xi Jinping has been irate about the sanctions on ZTE, and his top economic adviser, Liu He, has told U.S. negotiators that there is no chance of a deal without the United States removing the seven-year ban on ZTE ...” -- Mike Pompeo said the United States is assuring Kim Jong Un that it will not invade North Korea or otherwise seek his ouster during next month’s summit with Trump — seeking to further incentivize Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program. -- John Bolton described the types of steps Pyongyang would need to take to comply with a denuclearization process. THERE'S A BEAR IN THE WOODS: -- As Bob Mueller’s probe enters its second year, an increasingly agitated Trump is lashing out against his own team with bluster and defiance — heightening the risk of a more direct confrontation with federal investigators. -- The Wall Street Journal has more details on how Cohen sought to capitalize on his relationship with Trump to build a consulting business. -- A former Trump campaign aide is helping a firm controlled by Russian oligarch and Vladimir Putin ally Oleg Deripaska try to shed newly imposed U.S. sanctions ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN: -- Fox News host Sean Hannity is on Trump’s list of cleared callers to reach him at the White House, and the pair sometimes speak multiple times a day, -- Former NSC staffer Ezra Cohen-Watnick searched for ways to surveil White House staffers’ communications as a means of preventing leaks. -- Trump’s White House leaks “like there’s no tomorrow.” But why? -- Bolton declined to apologize on the Sunday shows for White House aide Kelly Sadler mocking John McCain's battle with brain cancer. -- White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow has developed a reputation as “the nicest guy in the West Wing,” TRUMP’S AMERICA: -- Missouri Republican Gov. Eric Greitens’s fight to keep his job points to “a powerful new lesson: The shape of the American sex scandal has shifted,” -- Trump’s presidency may be “the best thing that ever happened” to George W. Bush, who traveled to D.C. to accept the Atlantic Council’s international leadership award last week. -- California’s new sanctuary state law is dividing residents and lawmakers. THE MIDTERMS: -- Lawmakers who sponsored a bill that critics say hampered the DEA’s enforcement of the opioid industry


Do Russian musicians play Russian music better?

Do musicians of any nationality have a special understanding of the music composed by their compatriots? A chance to test this hypothesis came on Sunday with a recital by the Russian American Hermitage Piano Trio, presented by the Phillips Collection at the International Student House. Alexander Goedicke’s arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s “Les Saisons” for piano trio opened the concert. All three musicians approached the piece with a spontaneity of rubato that suited it well, giving the February “Carnival” piece a raucous quality and the avian warblings of the March “Lark” movement a quirky unpredictability. Pianist Ilya Kazantsev has joined the group since its last visit to the Phillips, in 2012, and he tended to dominate too much with an excess of sound and a tendency to rush the tempo forward. As a result the best piece in the set, the June “Barcarolle,” did not pine and yearn enough, unbalanced further by the loud countermelody of cellist Sergey Antonov. Balances were better in Glinka’s “Trio Pathétique,” especially the longing phrases of violinist Misha Keylin and the cello in the first and third movements. Kazantsev reined in his booming sound for the more Chopinesque bel canto flourishes in his right hand. Sadly the best piece on the program, Shostakovich’s mournful Piano Trio No. 2, fared the worst. Antonov was unable to keep the perilous harmonics that open the first movement in tune with Keylin’s violin, set lower than the cello by the composer. Kazantsev hammered so mercilessly at the next banal theme that it lost all its shape and irony. Similarly the rest of the piece was so vicious in its speed and battering attack that it threatened to tear apart under the stress. This “heavy metal” harshness did not line up with the sadness of the piece. Following it with a nutty encore, Rodion Shchedrin’s “Let’s Play an Opera by Rossini,” felt even more disjointed. style@washpost.com


The Cybersecurity 202: Trump’s ZTE reversal flouts warnings from top national security officials

installing its software for the military last year after the project was approved under the Obama administration in 2015. Kushner recommended that the Department of Veterans Affairs choose the same company, according to Allen. — Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has put a hold on the nomination of Christopher Krebs for undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security's National Protection and Programs Directorate to demand that the government provide details about tracking devices known as stingrays, “In a congressional notice Thursday, Wyden said he was objecting to Senate floor consideration of the nomination until the department makes public a presentation it gave to federal employees on Stingrays in February,” Lyngaas writes. The presentation that federal employees received on the issue was marked as “For Official Use Only.” “I remain hopeful that this is an issue we can work through and resolve soon,” Wyden wrote. “However, until the FOUO designation is removed from those slides and they are made available for public release, I will object to the Senate proceeding with the Krebs nomination.” — More cybersecurity news about the public sector: — A group campaigning to protect children from “commercialism,” along with two lawmakers, have questions for Amazon.com and its Echo Dot for kids, “The advocates led by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood said Friday that the presence of voice-activated speakers on children's nightstands is an unwelcome novelty that could prove intrusive or potentially disruptive to their development,” Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) also sent a list of questions about the device to Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon. (Bezos is also the owner of The Washington Post.) — The Council to Secure the Digital Economy, an industry group founded by telecom and tech companies, said on Friday that its focus in 2018 will be on countering botnet attacks and preparing to respond should a major cyber emergency occur, — More cybersecurity news about the private sector: — The personal information of 895 patients at two San Francisco hospitals was breached last year between Nov. 20 and Dec. 9 “The data included patients’ names, dates of birth, medical record numbers and details of their medical conditions, diagnoses, treatment and care plans,” Ho writes. “It did not include Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers or financial account numbers, according to officials with the health department, which runs the health network that includes


Trump’s U-turn on Chinese mega-firm ZTE damages U.S. power and credibility

dollar transactions) and the U.S. financial system. It can threaten to exclude firms from these networks if they don’t comply with U.S. demands. All this enables the United States to unilaterally regulate firms in ways that do not depend on treaties or international organizations. The U.S. used this power to isolate Iran The United States has used this power to try to isolate Iran from the international system. In the past, the United States and its European allies effectively excluded the Iranian banking system from SWIFT and correspondent banks, making it extremely difficult for Iranians to make international financial transactions. The United States also (with European support) imposed “primary sanctions” on U.S. companies, preventing them from doing business with Iran, as well as “secondary sanctions” on non-U.S. companies dealing with Iran, and banning the export of U.S. technology to Iranian customers. Many of these restrictions were lifted as part of the deal that the United States and Iran made over Iran’s nuclear program. The United States imposed enormous fines on foreign companies that breached its sanctions. ZTE, for example, pleaded guilty to having violated U.S. rules concerning equipment exports to Iran. The company was fined $900 million, given a suspended seven-year ban from using U.S. technology and a suspended $300 million fine, and required to comply with several requirements, including dismissing four senior employees and taking action against others. These aggressive actions terrified foreign companies. U.S. regulators such as the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), located in the Treasury Department, imposed enormous fines on foreign companies that breached sanctions. Sometimes those companies had clearly engaged in extensive and egregious behavior. Sometimes, those companies had engaged in transactions that they plausibly believed were permissible under U.S. regulations. Because those regulations were often unspecific, and because the U.S. legal system grants enormous deference to agencies in interpreting their own regulations, these companies had little legal recourse if they found themselves in the crosshairs (although the U.S. oil giant Exxon Mobil is now suing OFAC in a case that many companies are paying close attention to). This had a kind of multiplier effect — foreign companies often didn’t want to have anything at all to do with companies, individuals or countries that had attracted U.S. displeasure, for fear that they would be fined hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. The U.S. has recently become more aggressive again Last month, the Trump


How John Kelly’s family history compares with the immigrants he wants to keep from entering

industry, John’s son John Leo Kelly moved to Massachusetts and went to work for the railroad, holding a position as a brakeman. His father-in-law Coleman Curran (another of Chief of Staff Kelly’s great-grandfathers) also worked for the railroad. (It’s in Boston where the two sides of Chief of Staff Kelly’s family met. Kelly’s father worked as a mail carrier in the Brighton neighborhood.) On his mother’s side, Kelly’s great-grandfathers worked as a wagon driver and fruit peddler, according to Mendelsohn’s research. These were not skilled positions, obviously. It’s not clear that any of Kelly’s immigrant ancestors had significant educational backgrounds. Then there’s the issue of language. This can be trickier to determine, but census forms used to include questions about languages spoken. From one such record, Mendelsohn learned that John DeMarco, the fruit peddler, still didn’t speak English after more than a decade in the country. His wife Crescenza — Kelly’s great-grandmother — lived in the United States for more than 30 years without learning the language. There’s an obvious response to all of this, which Kelly gets to in his initial comments: That was then. Kelly pointedly says that these immigrants cannot assimilate “into our modern society.” But things aren’t so different now from then. At the time that Kelly’s Italian ancestors were living in Boston, there was a large population of both Italian and Irish immigrants. You can see in the census documents that Mendelsohn shared on Twitter that the houses near Kelly’s ancestors were populated with people who’d mostly immigrated from Italy and Ireland. In the 19th century, these were neighborhoods in which one didn’t need to speak English to communicate. Much as there are communities today where the primary language is Chinese or Spanish. Education is more important now than it was then, but there is clearly work to be done by people with less than a high school education. That’s the point, really: Many immigrants come from Mexico and work in the agricultural industry here as laborers. They may not end up as White House chiefs of staff, but then neither did Giuseppe Pedalino. It took Pedalino’s family three more generations before it attained that level of prominence. Even had the Pedalinos and the Kellys and the DeMarcos and the Currans not wound up as the grandparents and great-grandparents of a Marine Corps general or chief of staff, it’s likely that Kelly wouldn’t have judged


ABC confirms ‘Roseanne’ will move ‘away from politics,’ focus more on family

of Tim Allen’s “Last Man Standing” (another comedy starring a 1990s sitcom star as a conservative clashing with a liberal family.) The show’s fate repeatedly “came down to the wire” as the network tried to negotiate with the studio, Twentieth Century Fox Television, Dungey said. Incidentally, “Last Man Standing” was just picked up by Fox for a new season. Dungey reiterated that ABC tries to be “as diverse and inclusive as possible” across metrics including race, gender, religion and economics. “Roseanne,” she said, is “focusing on a family who is in different economic circumstances than some of our other comedies on the air.” Meanwhile, ABC has six new shows this fall, including “The Alec Baldwin Show,” featuring interviews with the actor and podcast host on Sundays at 10 p.m. The series, which aired a preview episode after the Oscars in March, is the first network prime-time talk show since “The Jay Leno Show” debuted on NBC in 2009. No word on whether this will affect Baldwin’s gig as Trump on “Saturday Night Live,” where he appeared two weeks ago. The comedy “The Kids Are Alright,” set in a working-class neighborhood in 1970s Southern California, is about an Irish-Catholic family with eight sons. Drama “The Rookie” stars Nathan Fillion as a small-town guy who has a life-altering incident that inspires him to join the Los Angeles Police Department. “Single Parents” gets the post-“Modern Family” spot on Wednesdays, as the comedy follows a group of single parents who are raising their young children and lean on each other for support. “A Million Little Things” is a drama about a circle of friends from Boston who bond for a surprising reason. And on Sunday nights at 8, spinoff “Dancing With the Stars: Juniors” is exactly what it sounds like, starring celebrity kids. FALL 2018 PRIME-TIME LINEUP ON ABC New shows are in bold MONDAY 8 p.m. “Dancing With the Stars” 10 p.m. “The Good Doctor” TUESDAY 8 p.m. “Roseanne” 8:30 p.m. “The Kids Are Alright” 9 p.m. “Blackish” 9:30 p.m. “Splitting Up Together” 10 p.m. “The Rookie” WEDNESDAY 8 p.m. “The Goldbergs” 8:30 p.m. “American Housewife” * 9 p.m. “Modern Family” 9:30 p.m. “Single Parents” 10 p.m. “A Million Little Things” THURSDAY 8 p.m. “Grey’s Anatomy” 9 p.m. “Station 19” 10 p.m. “How to Get Away With Murder” FRIDAY 8 p.m. “Fresh Off the Boat” * 8:30 p.m.: “Speechless” * 9 p.m. “Child


On Israel’s 70th anniversary, what does the region think?

On the 70th anniversary of Israel’s founding — what Palestinians call the Nakba (or catastrophe) — hundreds are marching in mostly nonviolent protests in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem. Some are calling this “a perfect storm” that could lead to unprecedented instability. The Palestinian cause was once the cornerstone of Arab nationalism across the region. However, recently Arab-Israeli relations seem to be shifting and enthusiasm for the Palestinian issue waning. Regimes long considered staunch adversaries of Israel have begun experimenting with opening up relations. But in these authoritarian regimes, do such policy changes reflect citizens’ attitudes? In a recent survey, we examined Arab opinions toward Israel and the Palestinian cause. We found that, even in the most repressive states, public opinion is overwhelmingly opposed to cooperation with Israel and normalization of diplomatic relations, while the Palestinian cause remains highly salient. How we measure regional opinion The Arab Opinion Index, a project of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, seeks to gauge Arab public opinion through yearly, regionwide surveys to measure and distinguish the position of the Arab citizens from their governments. Respondents are chosen through a systematic, multi-staged, stratified sampling method, giving us a sample that is self-weighted with probability proportional to size (PPS). In the 2017 to 2018 survey, we covered 11 countries by working with local partners and polled 18,830 respondents. The fieldwork was carried out by an overall team of 840 individuals, equally balanced on gender, who conducted 45,000 hours of interviews. Polling in all countries was face-to-face except in Saudi Arabia, where we relied on phone surveys. How do Arab citizens view Israel? Arabs view Israel as a serious threat to their security and stability, with no significant changes since the previous survey. In an open-ended question on which country posed the greatest threat to the region, Israel continues to come in first. Similarly, when asked specifically about individual countries, 90 percent of those surveyed responded that Israel poses a threat to the stability of the region. Despite recent trial balloons from Gulf Cooperation Council regimes and talk of normalization, 87 percent of Arab respondents still disapprove of their home countries recognizing Israel. This has remained consistent over the years of the Arab Opinion Index. When asked to elaborate on reasons for the disapproval in an open-ended question, the majority that opposed diplomatic ties highlighted factors such as Israeli racism toward the Palestinians


MH370 experts think they’ve finally solved the mystery of the doomed Malaysia Airlines flight

All but one of the 239 people on the doomed Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had probably been unconscious — incapacitated by the sudden depressurization of the Boeing 777 — and had no way of knowing they were on an hours-long, meandering path to their deaths. Along that path, a panel of aviation experts speculated Sunday, was a brief but telling detour near Penang, Malaysia, the home town of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah. On two occasions, whoever was in control of the plane — and was probably the only one awake — tipped the craft to the left. The experts believe Zaharie, the plane's pilot, was taking a final look. That is the chilling theory that the team of analysts assembled by Australia's “60 Minutes” have posited about the final hours of MH370. The conclusions have not been backed by any official findings from investigations into the mystery surrounding the March 2014 flight. But the experts on the "60 Minutes” show sought to draw the most likely scenario of the plane's fate from the little that is known. They suspect that the plane's 2014 disappearance and apparent crash was a suicide by the 53-year-0ld Zaharie — and a premeditated act of mass murder. But first, the experts said, they believe that Zaharie depressurized the plane, knocking out anyone aboard who wasn't wearing an oxygen mask. That would explain the silence from the plane as it veered wildly off course: no mayday from the craft's radio, no final goodbye texts, no attempted emergency calls that failed to connect. That would also explain how whoever was in control had time to maneuver the plane to its final location. The wreckage has not been found, though hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into the four-year search. The secret of what happened in the final moments of the ill-fated flight — and the motive behind it all — probably died with its passengers and pilot. But the “60 Minutes” team — which included aviation specialists, the former Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief in charge of investigating MH370's crash, and an oceanographer — put forth what they believe is the most likely theory. “The thing that gets discussed the most is that at the point where the pilot turned the transponder off, that he depressurized the airplane, which would disable the passengers,” said Larry Vance, a veteran aircraft investigator from Canada. “He was killing himself.


Where you live has a bigger impact on happiness and health than you might imagine

the case in my early 20s when I packed my Jeep and headed to California — because we think it’ll make us happier. I still remember standing on a coastal bluff the first day I arrived. The air smelled like jasmine and honeysuckle. Sunlight sparkled like glitter on the Pacific. I tugged off my wool sweater, raised my arms to the heavens and decided on the spot I’d stay until I died. Despite my mental-health boost, the move may have increased my risk of early death. According to the American Lung Association, 70 percent of California residents live in an area with unhealthy air. The jasmine-infused breeze I adored was contaminated with pollutants that have been linked to cancer, asthma, heart attack and stroke. An article published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that when it comes to premature death, genetics has only a 30 percent influence; the other 70 percent is attributed to nongenetic factors such as environment, access to health care and individual behaviors. Although the article separated environment and individual behaviors, research suggests the two are linked. In a recent British study that examined data on more than 400,000 men and women, those who lived near gyms, pools and sport fields weighed less than the others, as did those who lived farther away from fast-food joints. “To help people achieve good health outcomes, we have to take into consideration where they live, work and play,” says Marie Lynn Miranda, head of the National Center for Geospatial Medicine at Rice University. Indeed, geography may soon be routinely included in electronic medical records. “The next generation of health-care providers will be well versed in geospatial medicine,” Blatt says. “Just as you get tested for cholesterol or glucose levels, doctors will ask your place history — all the places where you have lived.” In a 2009 TEDMED Talk, “Your Health Depends on Where You Live,” health and human services expert Bill Davenhall said such an assessment will allow physicians to determine which environmental toxins and stressors a person has been exposed to and for how long. Online tools can help reveal health risks of geographic locations: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maps chronic-disease risk factors for 500 American cities; the University of Cincinnati has a Web page about the quality of drinking water for major metropolitan areas; the Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index ranks the happiest areas of


PM Update: Steady rain continues through this evening. Flood concerns with heavier rain expected late on Thursday.

* Flood watch for D.C. area, except southern suburbs, through Friday evening * As my grandfather used to say, “Today was a good day for the birds.” We are seemingly stuck in a perpetual birdbath as we conclude our fifth consecutive rainy day. And we aren’t done with the string of rainy days yet, not by a long shot. It’s hard to believe that the first 11 days of May in our region were historically dry. Yet here we are. So keep the umbrellas and rain boots on standby. You are most certainly going to need them over the next several days. Listen to the latest forecast: Get our daily forecasts on your Amazon Alexa device. Click here to find out how. Through Tonight: View the current weather at The Washington Post. Tomorrow (Thursday): See Dan Stillman’s forecast through the weekend. And if you haven’t already, join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram. For related traffic news, check out Gridlock. How many consecutive days of rain can we get? If we do have at least 0.01 inch of rain at DCA through Monday, that would mark 10 consecutive days of measurable rainfall. That would be good enough for second place (after 15 consecutive days of rain in 2016) at DCA, with records dating to 1941. It’s interesting to note that in the past two years, DCA has had three independent periods of 15, nine and seven consecutive days of rainfall! Do I sense a trend? Want our 5 a.m. forecast delivered to your email inbox? Subscribe here.


Surprised by the anger toward McCain? Party loyalists can hate apostates as much as opponents.

citizens — tens of millions — do sometimes wish for political violence toward those they oppose. Who holds such extremely hostile views? In general, the individuals most likely to endorse harm against political opponents (whether in their own or the other party) hold strong partisan loyalties; see the other party as an existential national threat; or have aggressive personality traits. Strength of party attachment matters in interesting ways. Among the strongest half, 3 percent wished someone would injure apostate politicians in their own party; no weakly identified partisans said the same. But 7 percent of weak partisans wished injury on opponents in both parties equally, more than the 1 percent with strong loyalties. Of the 20 percent of partisans who strongly agreed that the opposing party is “downright evil,” 10 percent often wished death on disloyal party leaders. That’s more than we found in the 25 percent of those who somewhat agreed, where 6 percent wished for in-party opponents’ deaths, and three times more than the majority who did not see the other party as evil. Seeing the other party as “evil” increased the likelihood of wishing to see opposing partisans injured by 14 percentage points. This group was also 11 points more likely to wish for general harm against both opponent types equally. But the people most likely to support political aggression were those who reported more aggression in their everyday lives. Among those in the top quarter of aggressive traits, 10 percent wished death on disloyal partisans, while 4 percent of the rest did. Aggressive traits also increased support for out-party harm. We also tested partisan differences but found no clear asymmetries between Democrats and Republicans. Of course, we should be cautious interpreting such responses. Some respondents may hide their real, unpopular views. If so, then our results may underestimate the prevalence of extreme attitudes — although the fact that our survey took place impersonally, online, reduces this concern. Conversely, some individuals may show team loyalty even if they don’t truly wish anyone physical harm. Even then, expressive hostility — which appears frequently online — is itself a troubling indicator of extreme political incivility. What does all this tell us? In an era of partisan polarization, we tend to focus, appropriately, on conflict between the two major parties. But when polarization is high, even “disloyal” members of one’s own party may face intense vitriol from their party’s voters.


Humans are causing massive changes in the location of water around the world, NASA says

can also be a major factor. Still, the idea of mid-latitude drying and higher- and lower-latitude wetting is a common feature of climate change models. “We only have 15 years of data from GRACE, but it sure as heck matches that pattern, it matches it now,” Famiglietti said. “That’s cause for concern.” Further data from a new launch of the GRACE “Follow-On” mission will contribute to a longer data record that may help better identify trends, Famiglietti said. And there are other human-induced changes, relating not to climate change but, rather, to direct withdrawals of water from the landscape. In northern India, the northern China plain and the Caspian and Aral seas in Central Asia, among other regions, human withdrawals for agriculture have subtracted enormous amounts of water from Earth. The changes in the Aral Sea region, previously documented by NASA, have been particularly intense. There are also major cases of humans increasing water storage in the landscape, particularly in China, where massive dam construction has created enormous reservoirs. Mainly, though, what’s striking about the map is the way that a combination of human-driven water withdrawals and droughts seem to be punishing the central latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, in particular, but also the Southern Hemisphere to a significant extent. “I think we have forgotten, society has forgotten, how much water it takes to produce food,” Famiglietti said. “We’ve taken its availability for granted. And you know, now we’re at a point in many of these aquifers where we can’t take it for granted anymore. Population is too great, groundwater levels are too low. … we’re at tipping points.” Still, it’s important to bear in mind that, while the GRACE data has given a new panoptic view of the changing distribution of water around the globe, the data remains coarse and the causes behind the trends in many cases remain a matter of interpretation, said Peter Gleick, an expert on climate change and water who is president emeritus the Pacific Institute. “Without a doubt the GRACE system proved that we can see very significant changes in water storage around the planet,” Gleick said. “Figuring out what drives those changes is a harder thing.” The next GRACE satellite mission will provide better data, he said. “We’re in this transition between not really having a global overview and someday having an incredibly high-resolution, sophisticated, remote-sensing overview,” Gleick said. “That’s where we are.”


African athletes disappeared at the Commonwealth Games. Now they’ve surfaced to seek asylum.

In the middle of the weightlifting competition at the Commonwealth Games in Australia last month, Rwanda's coach, Jean Paul Nsengiyumva, said he had to use the bathroom. He never came back. He wasn't the only one: Ernest Jombla and Yusif Mansaray, men's squash players from Sierra Leone, didn't show up to their doubles match on April 12; five boxers and three weightlifters from Cameroon — one-third of the country's delegation to Australia — disappeared in three overnight waves; and at least two Ugandan athletes also vanished. Australian officials did not see the string of disappearances as a mystery. Peter Dutton, Australia's minister of home affairs, assumed the athletes and coaches had run away, seeing the Commonwealth Games as an opportunity to resettle abroad. "If they don’t want to be held in detention or locked up at the local watch house, they’d better jump on a plane before the 15th [of May]," Dutton told Australia's Macquarie Radio, referencing the expiry date on the athletes' visas. Sure enough, the Australian Border Force confirmed Wednesday that some foreign athletes had stayed beyond the time allotted on their visas and applied to stay in the country longer. Australian migration groups say they are seeing coaches, athletes and even foreign journalists coming to them for help. "More than 40 people, including Commonwealth Games athletes, journalists and others, have come in over the last 10 days looking for visas they can apply for and how they can stay in Australia," Jim MacAnally, an office administrator for Ready Migration, told CNN. Australia's Daily Telegraph reported that another group, Refugee Advice and Casework Service, was also consulting with athletes. “It happens at every Games. It’s not a surprise,” Peter Beattie, the chairman of the games' organizing committee, told the Telegraph. “I don’t want to be too blase, but I don’t get too excited about this, because I know there is a system to deal with it.” There is a lengthy history of athletes using international sporting events as an opportunity to leave their home countries permanently. During the 2006 Commonwealth Games, also in Australia, some 40 athletes and officials overstayed their visas or ended up applying for asylum. In 2012, a number of athletes disappeared from the Olympic Games in London. On multiple occasions, soccer players from Eritrea have used trips abroad as an opportunity to defect from the isolated state, including a 2015 mass defection by members


The D.C. area’s most expensive homes for sale in May

be built on the adjacent lots. 4400 Garfield St. NW, Washington $9.95 million Agents: Robert Hryniewicki, Adam Rackliffe and Christopher Leary of HRL Partners of Washington Fine Properties Built in 1930, this Wesley Heights house has recently been renovated and includes more than 12,000 square feet of living space with six bedrooms, eight bathrooms and six fireplaces. The gated garden on this half-acre property includes multiple terraces, a swimming pool, and a pool house with two bedrooms, three bathrooms, a kitchen and an indoor whirlpool tub. The main house includes a family room with a wall of glass doors, a library with built-in bookcases, a wine cellar, and a master bedroom with two bathrooms and two dressing rooms. The house previously sold for $6.6 million in 2014. 607 Oronoco St., Alexandria $8.5 million Agents: Robert Hryniewicki, Adam Rackliffe and Christopher Leary of HRL Partners of Washington Fine Properties Built in 1795, this property is a registered Virginia landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the boyhood home of Robert E. Lee. The completely renovated house sits on a half-acre site with gardens and a detached two-car garage with a studio above it. The house has more than 8,000 square feet with six bedrooms, six bathrooms and six fireplaces. The main level has a formal living room, a formal dining room, a family room and a breakfast room off the kitchen. 1403 30th St. NW, Washington $6.495 million Agent: Michael Rankin, TTR Sotheby’s International Realty The house in Georgetown’s East Village sits on a hill that exposes the interior to natural light. The house has a roof deck with monument views, a rear garden enclosed by brick walls with a fountain, and parking for three cars in a driveway. The four-level house, built in 1865 and renovated in 2014, has approximately 6,000 finished square feet with four fireplaces, five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, and large living and dining rooms, each with 10-foot-high ceilings. The house was previously listed for $7.5 million in February 2017. 2660 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington $6.495 million Agent: Christopher Ritzert and Christie-Anne Weiss, TTR Sotheby’s International Realty This Wardman Tower condo, designed by Darryl Carter, is being sold fully furnished and accessorized. The 4,648-square-foot condo includes three bedrooms, four bathrooms, a fireplace, hardwood flooring and marble bathrooms. The condo fee of $6,201 per month includes concierge services, valet parking, a fitness center and access to


Anne Arundel County and Howard County home sales

BURNIE AREA Baylor Rd., Elvaton Rd., Foxfarm Lane, Mary Ct., Pamela Rd., Range Rd., Thelma Ave., Williams Rd., GLEN BURNIE-MARLEY CREEK AREA Baltimore Annapolis Blvd., Blakistone Rd., Dover Rd., Glenside Way, Lincoln Dr., Mockingbird Cir., Overhill Rd., Warblers Perch Way, Wynbrook Rd., HANOVER AREA Elmcrest Rd., Hardwick Ct., Maple Rock Rd., Richmond Way, Stoney Run Dr., HARMANS AREA Mill Crossing Ct., JESSUP AREA Race Rd., LAUREL AREA Crooked Tree Lane, Lark Pl., Spadderdock Ct., Woodridge Pl., LINTHICUM HEIGHTS AREA Medora Rd., Tulip Oak Ct., MILLERSVILLE AREA Daniels Purchase Way, Helmwood Ct., Nathan Way, Victoria Rd., ODENTON AREA Amber Orchard Ct. W., Cedar Elm Dr., Dragon Fly Way, Hidden Hill Cir., Mericrest Way, Odenton Rd., Railbed Dr., Snowflake Dr., Woodchuck Way, PASADENA-ROCK CREEK AREA Bar Harbor Rd., Brickwall Lane, Carolina Ave. N., Cedar Rd., Dutch Ship Rd., Geneva Rd., Holmespun Dr., Lake Dr., Loblolly Lane, Mansion House Xing., Middlegate Ct., Mountain Rd., Northfield Ave., Patapsco Rd., Sunset Knoll Rd., Ventnor Rd., Willowby Run, 12th St., 212th St., SEVERN AREA Bastille Ct., Canter Ct., Dicus Mill Rd., Dorol Ct., Fitzpatrick Dr., Montreal Rd., Ridgely Loop, Sunhaven Way, Wood Carriage Way, SEVERNA PARK AREA Hendler Rd., Kenmore Rd., Mangrove Rd., Pineview Ave., Spring Haven Ct., SHADY SIDE AREA Bay View Ave., Lerch Dr., Rullman Rd., Howard County These sales data recorded by the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation were provided by Black Knight Inc. For information about other residential real estate transactions, visit washingtonpost.com/homesales. CENTENNIAL-BENSON AREA Breconshire Rd., Catalpa Ct., Dorsch Farm Rd., Folly Quarter Rd., Globe Dr., Greenway Dr., Hearthstone Rd., Ivymede Ct., Leaf Shade Dr., Lowlen Ct., Nashville Ct., Old Ellicott Cir., Pinehurst Ct., Resort Rd., Treyburn Ct., CLARKSVILLE AREA Bragdon Wood, Hallmark Rd., Linden Church Rd., Westcott Pl., COLUMBIA (EAST) AREA Blue Dart Pl., Crowflock Ct., Delphinium Ct., Endless Ocean Way, Hayshed Lane, Ironwood Way, Kilimanjaro Rd., Luckpenny Pl., Old Line Ct., Pound Apple Ct., Shining Oceans Way, Talisman Lane, Tunemaker Terr., Waterloo Rd., Wild Swan Way, COLUMBIA (WEST) AREA Beech Creek Dr., Cedar Lane, Darting Bird Lane, Even Star Pl., Gold Needle Way, Harpers Farm Rd., High Beam Ct., Parchment Rise, Quarterstaff Rd., River Rock Way, Rumcay Ct., Sleepy Horse Lane, Sunny Spring, Thicket Lane, Vantage Point Rd., Willow Bottom Dr., Wooded Way, COOKSVILLE AREA Route 144, ELKRIDGE AREA Arbor Way, Brookview Rd., Coxwold Dr., Deep Falls Way, Green Field Rd., Latrobe Fls., Marioak Dr., Oak Grove Way,


Paleo, keto, fasting, Whole 30: Why food tribes are on the rise

about fad diets that get shared get shared quickly and influence people.” It has become significantly easier to follow a specific diet because of more diet-specific options in the marketplace, from Paleo protein bars to restaurants catering to Whole 30. The “free-from” packaged foods industry is booming, and there are more choices now for diet-compliant meal delivery kits. Diet programs themselves have also been adapted to an enlightened public. “The backlash against ridiculous crazy fad diets is on the move, but the diet industry has realized that people are wise to it,” Foxcroft said. Programs offering recipes and products are now more focused on long-term mindful eating and fresh, whole foods. In her words, “the diet industry has found a way to make money out of common sense.” Part of the expanding marketplace of these products, said Riis, is to whom they get marketed: moms, who still make most of the family food decisions. In fact, the survey found that those with children under 18 in the house were more likely to adhere to a specific eating pattern (44 percent vs. 32 percent) than those who have never had kids or with older kids who might be out of the house. What is it about housing children that makes you a prime target for, say, vegan cupcakes? Fear. Food companies and activist groups spend marketing dollars to make moms “afraid of GMOs, meat, processed foods — anything in traditional diets,” Riis said. As Lewin-Zwerdling put it, “Your own mortality comes front and center once you have kids.” Eight in 10 respondents agreed with the statement, “There is a lot of conflicting information about what foods I should eat or avoid,” which 59 percent said made them doubt their choices. This may lead consumers toward a desire for simplified nutrition messaging, said Lewin- Zwerdling. Instead of the stress and decision fatigue that plagues many shoppers, your grocery list becomes laser-focused. As in: skip the bakery section, or just find all the Paleo stuff. Widespread confusion may also help explain why intermittent fasting was the most popular code of consumption, at 10 percent. It offers the ultimate simplicity. People appear to be drawn to the control and structure it provides, in addition to its straightforward tenets: Eat. Then don’t eat. Like a faucet, you just turn it on and off. Everything else gets to stay the same. So while an array of


President Trump is shaking things up in Asia. And it just might work.

protections for labor unions and the environment. Trump was blasted for his decision by critics who predicted that, as the United States retreated from the world, China would pick up the pieces. But what followed has been surprising. The TPP did not collapse and China did not step into the breach. Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, did. Thanks to Abe’s leadership, the remaining 11 nations are expected to put the deal into place by 2019. Abe’s guidance, bolstered by Australia and even Vietnam, indicated that the values of a more open trading system are not the sole property of the United States. Trump’s willingness to slap tariffs on Chinese goods and punish its mercantilist policies — such as those that force American companies to share their advanced technology with China in exchange for a piece of China’s market — are signs of a more confrontational policy towards Beijing. In December, the Trump administration, in its National Security Strategy, labeled China as a strategic competitor for the first time and vowed that the United States “will no longer turn a blind eye to violations, cheating, or economic aggression.” It is too early to declare this gambit a success. But it is also too early to declare, as some have, that “it’s too late,” and that the United States no longer has any economic clout in Beijing. Just look at what has happened to Chinese technology giant ZTE, which announced last week that it would suspend operations after the Commerce Department banned U.S. companies from selling products to ZTE because the Chinese company was reselling those products to North Korea and Iran. On Sunday, Trump announced that he was working with Xi to save the tech giant. One can only imagine what Trump will demand in return when Liu He, China’s economic czar, visits Washington this week. The United States has always had leverage with China; what’s new is that the Trump administration appears intent on using it. China’s fears about American leverage have forced other changes in Beijing as well. For one, Beijing is paying attention to India. At the end of April, Xi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a summit in the industrial heartland city of Wuhan, capped by a “heart-to-heart” talk. Any improvement in relations between these two Asian giants, whose armies faced off last year along their border, is a good thing. China wants India’s support for


The wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle: Everything to know about the royal nuptials

are keen that as many people as possible benefit from this generosity of spirit,” Kensington Palace announced Monday. “The couple have therefore asked that anyone who might wish to mark the occasion considers making a donation to charity, rather than sending a wedding gift.” The two have identified seven charities that reflect “their shared values” they’d like their well-wishers to support. These organizations focus on “sport for social change, women’s empowerment, conservation, the environment, homelessness, HIV and the Armed Forces.” The palace also made clear that the two “do not have any formal relationships with the charities chosen.” The groups are: Children’s HIV Association, Crisis, Myna Mahila Foundation, Scotty’s Little Soldiers, StreetGames, Surfers Against Sewage and the Wilderness Foundation UK. Floral designer Philippa Craddock will oversee a team to create the displays in St. George’s Chapel and St. George’s Hall. They’ll use seasonal plants and flowers that bloom naturally in May — including beech, birch, hornbeam, white garden roses, peonies and foxgloves — as well as pollinator-friendly plants from the Royal Parks’ wildflower meadows. Flowers will be given to charitable organizations after the big day. “The designs will reflect the wild and natural landscapes from which many of the plants will be drawn,” according to the palace. The pollinator-friendly plants “provide a great habitat for bees and help to nurture and sustain entire ecosystems by promoting a healthy and biodiverse environment.” A lot of the flowers in the St. George’s Chapel displays will come from the gardens and parkland of the Crown Estate and Windsor Great Park. The palace in March that the invitations had been sent, setting off frantic mailbox monitoring for these beauties: About 600 people The official invites feature the “Three-Feathered Badge of the Prince of Wales printed in gold ink,” the palace announced. “Using American ink on English card, the invitations are printed in gold and black, then burnished to bring out the shine, and gilded around the edge.” Barnard & Westwood, the bookbinders and printing press behind the invites, has been making royal invitations since 1985. Lottie Small used die stamping to print the invites, “a process she affectionately nicknamed Maude.” Royal weddings usually mean royal fruitcake, which, gross. Thank goodness this pair is bucking tradition in favor of flavor, because can you imagine actually eating a royal fruitcake during your watch party? Instead, they’ve asked Claire Ptak, a California-born and now London-based pastry chef,


Once again, a Japanese train leaves an ‘inexcusable’ 25 seconds early. Why can’t we have the same problems?

years to try to learn its lessons on punctuality and performance. Within Europe, the Netherlands has some of the most reliable connections, as a visualization of the distances Europeans can travel within 22 hours by train shows. Passengers moving around the Netherlands and neighboring countries will get much farther within a shorter time than Eastern European travelers. Yet the Dutch railway operators won’t be able to match their Japanese counterparts anytime soon — or perhaps ever. While a 2013 study by Didier M. van de Velde for the Delft University of Technology cited a “reduced readiness of the public sector to unconditionally inject money in the railway” in the Netherlands as a core obstacle to becoming more Japanese, another core difference with Japan was the Dutch separation between “train operations and infrastructure.” While the Netherlands’ railway network is managed by one entity, the trains running on it are operated by various private and publicly held companies. Their reliance on the same network makes it difficult for single operators to distinguish themselves by offering speedier or more reliable services. On both points, the U.S. railway system is closer to the Dutch example than to the Japanese. Its publicly owned infrastructure is chronically underfunded, and although the Netherlands relies heavily on private operators — a model U.S. public railway critics have repeatedly advocated for — U.S. Amtrak services rely on a publicly (under)funded infrastructure as much as their Dutch counterparts do. Some other lessons the Dutch tried to learn include “the attitude of the railway personnel, which was perceived by the interviewees to be exemplary precise and dedicated in Japan,” wrote van de Velde. For his research, he interviewed numerous Dutch railway service operators and stakeholders who had been in touch with their Japanese counterparts to exchange lessons learned. “The picture of the Japanese train drivers regularly checking their watch and comparing by the second their difference with the timetable has deeply impressed all participants to the study tours,” van de Velde wrote. There was disagreement over whether Dutch railway operators could overcome such cultural differences, however. When it comes to punctuality, the researcher observed, the differences also may be the result of decades-old practices that are difficult to disrupt. Although the Japanese are focused on allowing more trains to stop at stations in higher frequency, the Dutch are all about flexibility and higher speed in the proximity of stations (that can


Kroger strikes deal with U.K. online grocer for robot-staffed warehouses

GROCERIES Kroger plans robot-staffed warehouses Supermarket chain Kroger struck a deal with British online grocer Ocado to build and deliver from robot-staffed warehouses, upping the ante in Kroger’s battle with Amazon.com and sending Ocado shares rocketing. The U.S. grocery industry is dominated by Walmart and Kroger but has been in upheaval since last summer, when Amazon’s $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods sent supermarkets scrambling to match the online retailer on home delivery. (Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The Kroger deal announced on Thursday was Ocado’s first in the United States and the British company’s fourth major agreement with retailers in six months. Ocado shares soared as much as 80 percent to an all-time high. Kroger said the move would not dampen expected earnings for 2018 and 2019. Kroger chief executive Rodney McMullen in a statement called the partnership “transformative” and said it was a step toward the company’s goal of giving customers anything, anytime, anywhere. — Reuters RETAIL BJ's Wholesale Club files to go public again Warehouse club operator BJ’s Wholesale Club Holdings has filed with U.S. regulators to return to the public market, undeterred by a downturn in the retail sector. The company, which was taken private in 2011 for $2.8 billion by private-equity firms Leonard Green & Partners L.P. and CVC Capital Partners, will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “BJ,” a regulatory filing showed on Thursday. The filing said the offering size was $100 million, a placeholder number given in first preliminary IPO filings. The final size of the IPO could be different. The Wall Street Journal reported in April that the company could be valued between $2 billion and $3 billion, with its private-equity backers raising at least $400 million. The filing did not reveal how many shares the company planned to sell or their expected price. BJ’s IPO will be the second retail listing in 2018 after airport concession operator Hudson and comes at a time when brick and mortar retailers are struggling as consumers spend more of their dollars online. Warehouse club operators, however, have largely bucked the downturn as their business models rely more on recurring membership revenue than just top-line sales. — Reuters Also in Business U.S. household debt The United Nations Ford Motor Co. The Some employees — From news services


Congo confirms first urban Ebola case, raising possibility of ‘explosive increase in cases’

this is the ninth outbreak of the disease there since the 1970s. Last May, a small outbreak resulted in five confirmed cases and four deaths in a province neighboring Equateur. The outbreak in West Africa that started in 2014 was the worst ever recorded. It reached epidemic proportions, infecting more than 28,000 and killing more than 11,000. A concurrent but much smaller and unrelated Ebola outbreak took place in Congo in 2014 as well. The WHO was accused of responding slowly in 2014, and the organization has taken pains to ensure it is acting more quickly — and seen as doing so — this time. The organization’s head, Tedros Ghebreyesus, visited the affected area earlier this week. The disease causes internal bleeding and spreads rapidly through contact with small amounts of bodily fluid. Its early symptoms are not obvious, and the worst effects may take weeks to show. It is often transmitted to humans through the consumption of contaminated meat, but it can also be acquired through any kind of close contact with an infected animal. The international response to the current Congo outbreak has been substantial and is expected to grow in size and urgency after the announcement of a confirmed urban case. On Wednesday, the WHO delivered 4,000 injections of an experimental vaccine with proven efficacy in recent trials, and more batches are expected soon. Persistent rain and lack of roads has hampered the effort to contain the outbreak. Before Thursday, cases had been confirmed only in Bikoro, a small town whose health clinic has “limited functionality,” according to the WHO. Helicopter and motorcycle are the only ways to reach Bikoro from Mbandaka, but an airstrip has been rapidly cleared for small planes to land with supplies. Part of the difficulty in deploying the vaccine is that it must be transported and stored at between minus-60 and minus-80 degrees Fahrenheit, which requires powerful refrigerators. The vaccine, produced by the pharmaceutical giant Merck, is not yet licensed, although the WHO has cleared it for “compassionate use.” Its deployment is being financed by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, based in Geneva. “The remote location of the outbreak hampers both the information about the outbreak and interventions to control it,” said Cyrus Shahpar, director of epidemic prevention at Resolve to Save Lives, a New York-based organization. “This is evidenced by the fact that the current outbreak probably started in early April, but


The Boston restaurant where robots have replaced the chefs

The debate about whether cooking is more art or science is a never-ending one. But at Spyce, the latest culinary experiment in automation, that debate feels pretty well settled. Started by a group of 20-something robotics engineers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology who partnered with Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud, the new restaurant in downtown Boston is founded on the idea that a fulfilling meal can be more science than spontaneity. The restaurant’s founders have replaced human chefs with seven automated cooking pots that simultaneously whip up meals in three minutes or less. A brief description of meal preparation — courtesy of 26-year-old co-founder, Michael Farid — can sound more like laboratory instructions than conventional cooking. “Once you place your order, we have an ingredient delivery system that collects them from the fridge,” Farid said. “The ingredients are portioned into the correct sizes and then delivered to a robotic wok, where they are tumbled at 450 degrees Fahrenheit. The ingredients are cooked and seared. And once the process is complete, the woks tilt downward and put food into a bowl. And then they’re ready to be garnished and served.” Spyce bills itself as “the world’s first restaurant featuring a robotic kitchen that cooks complex meals,” a distinction that appears to reference burger-flipping robots like “Flippy,” who plied his trade in a California fast food kitchen before being temporary suspended — because he wasn’t working fast enough. A prototype of Spyce’s robotic chef was first assembled in the basement of the co-founders’ fraternity house at MIT. The restaurant’s dining experience actually begins a few steps before the robots get involved, when customers create customized, compostable bowls that cost $7.50 using colorful touch-screens. Heavy on vegetables and healthy grains, the bowls include a calorie count and have themes such as Latin, Thai, Mediterranean and Hearth. While meals are cooked, the customer’s name appears on an electronic display above their wok, showing their order. Once finished, hot water jets rinse the inside of woks before another collection of ingredients is dumped inside. Farid said they decided to place the robotic chefs out in the open to remove any lingering mystery. “We didn’t want to create a black box that produces a meal,” Farid said. “We wanted this experience to be exciting.” The restaurant’s motto: “Culinary excellence elevated by technology.” That motto is one that the restaurant industry is beginning to adopt as a whole,


How educational programs in Africa can help counter violent extremism

Somaliland a year earlier. In Somaliland the combination of education and civic engagement opportunities had the greatest impact on reducing support for political violence. However, this new study also highlights the fact that the same program can yield different results. We noted that education reduced support for political violence in South Central Somalia and Puntland, while our survey found that education may increase such support in the relatively peaceful areas like Somaliland. Why do we see these divergent outcomes? As it turns out, context matters — even within the same country. In parts of Somalia where the provision of basic services is limited, increasing access to secondary education improved young people’s perceptions of the government. We think this led to a reduction in support for armed opposition groups. However, in the more developed and stable Somaliland, where people expected their government to provide higher levels of services, it’s a different story. In some cases, the provision of education does not appear to be enough to stop youth from supporting political violence. These studies have important implications for development programs in conflict-affected countries. The full impact that stability programs have on violence is driven in part by the context in which they are implemented. In countries emerging from conflict with few, if any, functioning systems, simply investing in basic services such as education can be a quick win for the government — and for donors focused on promoting stability. In the long term, however, this gain in popular support is not enough. As conflict-affected areas of Somalia eventually stabilize and develop, education alone will likely not address all the grievances that drive youth to support political violence. Education gives young people the chance to gain knowledge and skills, but it also raises expectations and awareness of what citizens are lacking. Young people can grow angry and frustrated if they perceive the government is unable or uninterested in meeting their needs. What does this mean for development strategies, and international partners? These shifting dynamics require the development of both short- and long-term strategies for managing and reducing violence — or risk exacerbating the situation. This means investing in basic post-conflict reconstruction, including rebuilding public services, while laying the groundwork for long-term peace and development by improving governance and providing youth with meaningful opportunities. Beza Tesfaye @bezates87 is a senior researcher at Mercy Corps. Beth Maclin is a research consultant for Mercy Corps.


Walmart is launching online bedding, cosmetic brands in bid for upscale shoppers

Walmart is preparing to introduce two stand-alone online brands in an attempt to capture the upscale shoppers who have long eluded the retail giant. The merchandiser plans to launch two homegrown websites — one selling luxury mattresses and bedding, the other focused on cosmetics — to compete with the success of online start-ups such as Casper, Tuft & Needle and Glossier, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal plans. The strategy comes as concerns grow over Walmart’s online performance. The company reported this week that e-commerce sales grew 23 percent during the critical holiday season, far slower than the 50 percent the company reported in the prior three-month period. Investors responded by knocking shares down by more than 10 percent, the biggest hit to Walmart’s stock in nearly three years. When Walmart bought the e-commerce site Jet for $3.3 billion in 2016, many considered it a transformational transaction, an opportunity for some dot-com mojo. But this week, chief executive Doug McMillon said Jet’s appeal may be more limited. “Walmart is just a really well-known brand for value throughout the country,” McMillon said in a call with analysts. “When you get into Oklahoma, Texas and the middle of the country, it just makes a lot of sense to invest in that brand rather than investing to introduce a brand that’s less familiar.” Walmart’s new brands aim to complement Jet by targeting upper-middle-class women in their 30s and 40s, one person said. Much of the focus is to be on two groups: “Momagers,” mothers who also manage their households and want convenience and quality, and “all the single ladies,” unmarried women who don’t want to put off buying home furnishings. The goal, the person said, is to create enough buzz around the two brands to eventually attract more upscale companies and customers to Jet and Walmart. Representatives for Walmart and Jet declined to comment. Allswell, a mattress and bedding brand Walmart trademarked this year, is scheduled to launch in early March. It will have its own website and will not be cross-marketed on Jet or Walmart.com. The other brand, Co Squared, will focus on cosmetics. Walmart is in talks with Canadian model Coco Rocha to represent the brand, the people said. (Before Rocha, Walmart was also in talks with Sophia Amoruso, founder of the online women’s clothing and accessories store


The shame of Australia’s live sheep trade

whistleblower video shot last year aboard the Awassi Express, a ship operated by Emanuel Exports, Australia’s largest live-sheep exporter. Around 64,000 sheep were transported, of which 2,400 died. The distressing footage — released by Animals Australia — made clear the exhaustion and pain suffered by the animals, and showed dead sheep left to rot among those that were still living. In the video, shot by a crew member, sheep appear unable to reach food and water, or even to lie down. They stand, and then die, in their own feces. Australia’s minister for agriculture, David Littleproud, said the footage left him “shocked and gutted.” He spoke about coming from a farming family in which people took pride in the welfare of their animals. The emotion appeared real, but it wasn’t enough for the government to ban the trade. The industry promised its own reforms: reducing the number of sheep crammed on each ship and assuring an independent observer would be present on each journey. An inquiry was ordered and recommended increasing the required space per animal by almost 30 percent during the hottest months, and reducing the threshold for notifications to anything over a 1 percent death rate. The Australian government said on Thursday it would enact the recommendations — yet it still faced criticism from those who hoped the trade would be banned entirely, or at least paused during the hot summer months. New Zealand effectively banned its live trade in 2003. Saudi Arabia had rejected a shipment of 57,000 sheep, believing them to be diseased. The ship then spent two months at sea while the exporter tried to find a new buyer, leading to the death of nearly 6,000 animals. Following an outcry, New Zealand instead developed a market in what’s called “boxed meat” — which allows New Zealand abattoirs, operating under Halal rules, to supply Muslim buyers in the Middle East. Supporters of Australia’s live trade say it’s not all about Halal certification. Some communities in Asia and the Middle East lack refrigeration; Australia’s live export trade provides protein in places that cannot be served by “boxed meat.” Despite these arguments, the momentum against the trade is growing. In Israel, 60 rabbis have recently condemned live exports, with one leader saying that anyone who buys such Australian meat is “partner to and helps those committing an evil crime.” Australia’s opposition Labor Party — which was initially wary


U.S. watchdog on Afghanistan releases corrected Afghan troop numbers

KABUL — In a rare public airing of recurring differences between U.S. military officials and a U.S. watchdog agency on Afghanistan, the agency reported this week that it had been provided with inaccurate figures about the declining number of Afghan security forces, leading it to publish an excessively negative report on the problem. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, known as SIGAR, said in a quarterly report to Congress last month that there had been an 11 percent drop in the number of Afghan soldiers and police over the past year. The alarming finding cast doubts on progress being made by Afghan and U.S. officials to expand and strengthen the wartime forces. But this week, SIGAR issued a second report saying the drop was much less severe, blaming “erroneous” information provided by U.S. military officials in Afghanistan. It said that the officials had informed SIGAR of the error and that the corrected numbers still showed a “sharp decline” in force strength, “but not as sharp of a decline” as previously reported. Press officers at the U.S.-led NATO mission here, known as Resolute Support, said Wednesday they were “caught by surprise” when the first SIGAR report came out, triggering dramatic headlines about the steep drop in forces. Then they discovered an error in military calculations that had left about 17,000 troops unaccounted for and reported their new finding to SIGAR. Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell, the mission’s chief press official, said the missing 17,000 troops, whose border units had been transferred from the national police to the army, accounted for about half the total decline. He said that when the error was discovered, the correct figures were sent to SIGAR. But SIGAR officials, in a sharply worded news release, said the faulty information was “the latest in a series of problems” the agency has faced with responses from the Defense Department to its requests for information about Afghan forces. The agency also complained that since the middle of 2017, officials at the U.S.-led NATO mission in Afghanistan “have classified or marked not releasable to the public large amounts of data in a seemingly haphazard fashion.” It said the agency has no way to independently verify statistics provided by U.S. military officials. SIGAR said the incorrectly reported force total was 296,409 and the corrected total was 313,728. Aside from the 17,000 transferred border troops, it said the military did not say “what


For years a flag mural at the border has honored deported U.S. military veterans. After Trump visit, agents are looking into taking it down.

are green-card holders who were honorably discharged from service but were convicted of a crime after returning to civilian life. Murillo was deported in 2012 after he completed a three-year sentence for transporting marijuana in Arizona. Murillo often visits the steel mesh fence where the mural is painted to hold meetings through the slats with advocates trying to get him and other deported veterans readmitted to the country. He wears a “U.S. Navy” T-shirt with the word “Deported” on top. Once deported, veterans say they can’t access their benefits for counseling or education. “The mural was never meant to be disrespectful. We are simply saying — and any military member would get it — that deported veterans are in distress,” said Murillo, who has four children and two grandchildren in San Diego and Phoenix. “We love the U.S. We just want attention to our issue and to come back home.” After 14 years of living in Mexico, Army veteran Hector Barajas-Varela, 40, became the first known deported veteran to be naturalized as a U.S. citizen. He was in exile for so long that he started “The Bunker,” a support house for deported U.S. military veterans — currently more than 30 — in Tijuana. There are now others throughout Mexico and one in the Dominican Republic. Last April, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) pardoned Barajas-Varela for the crime that led to his deportation, saying he showed he had worked hard to help his fellow veterans. Barajas-Varela is even featured in a photo standing in front of the upside-down flag, which was used as the cover for “Discharged, Then Discarded,” a report from the American Civil Liberties Union. U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus sponsored a forum on the issue on Capitol Hill last week, pressing to help deported veterans come home. Takano wants recruiters to make it clear that noncitizens who serve in the U.S. military are granted the right to citizenship, but that they must apply for it. He also wants immigration officials to specifically ask those being deported if they are U.S. military veterans, Takano said. “It’s a travesty and it’s heart-wrenching,” he said in an interview after the forum last week, noting he also would be looking into concerns about the mural at the border. “They served their country but now spend their lives in exile from the country they defended. It’s just wrong.”


Pentagon revised Obama-era report to remove risks from climate change

Internal changes to a draft Defense Department report de-emphasized the threats climate change poses to military bases and installations, muting or removing references to climate-driven changes in the Arctic and potential risks from rising seas, an unpublished draft obtained by The Washington Post reveals. The earlier version of the document, dated December 2016, contains numerous references to “climate change” that were omitted or altered to “extreme weather” or simply “climate” in the final report, which was submitted to Congress in January 2018. While the phrase “climate change” appears 23 separate times in the draft report, the final version used it just once. Those and other edits suggest the Pentagon has adapted its approach to public discussion of climate change under President Trump, who has expressed doubt about the reality of a phenomenon that scientists agree presents an increasing danger to the planet. While military leaders have said they see a changing climate as a driver of instability worldwide, they have also sought to stay out of a politically charged debate about its causes. Heather Babb, a Pentagon spokeswoman, declined to comment on the draft report, which outlines the results of the department’s first-ever survey of officials at different installations about the effects of climate change. The Post was not able to verify who made the changes reflected in the two documents. “As highlighted in the report, the effects of climate are a national security issue with potential impacts to missions, operational plans, and installations,” Babb said in a statement. “DOD continues to focus on ensuring its installations and infrastructure are resilient to a wide range of threats, including climate. The Department has a proven record of planning and preparing for such threats.” According to John Conger, who served as a senior Pentagon official under the Obama administration and was among the officials who initiated the multi-base survey that forms the basis of the report, employees from a dozen different Defense Department offices could have made changes to the text as it made its way through the bureaucracy’s clearance process, which often makes for “lowest common denominator” documents. Conger, who is now director of the Center for Climate and Security, said the alterations “change the feeling of urgency in the report, but not its fundamental conclusion – that our military installations are clearly experiencing climate impacts.” The final document, a 32-page report to Congress, was published more than a year after


by a reduction in sea ice and an increase in ice free periods,” since without protective sea ice, large waves can pummel fragile Arctic coastlines during storms. And where the draft report says that shoreline erosion at the site is caused by “reduced sea ice coverage,” the final document instead blames the damage on “sea ice fluctuations.” In another omitted section, the draft document addresses ways in which a changing climate could affect the ability to train troops. “The changing climate could increase risk to the 420 endangered species that live on our installations, potentially leading to training and operating restrictions,” the omitted section reads. “Increased high-heat days limit the training and testing activities our personnel can safely perform without appropriate rest periods,” it continues. The survey at the center of the report, in its various versions, asked military installations a battery of detailed questions about different extreme events that have affected them, along with requesting information about installations’ elevation and vulnerability to sea level rise. Among the questions asked were: — “Has your installation been negatively impacted by wind?” — “Has your installation been negatively impacted by extreme hot or cold temperatures?” — “What might be negatively impacted/degraded with an increase of 0 to 12 feet in mean sea level?” Current and former officials said that the wording and content of the report was unlikely to have a bearing on how the military services respond — or do not respond — to climate change. In some ways, the military has been seen as proactive in its attitude to climate issues, seeking to protect infrastructure in places such as Norfolk from changing weather, producing a massive climate change “road map” and planning for changes in the Arctic. In other ways, however, the military has taken only modest action as it operates its massive network of power-intensive bases and air, ship and vehicle fleets, and provides food and housing to its personnel around the world. “I think in DOD, there is generally a belief, it’s more important what you do than to fight about how you talk about it,” said Jeffrey Marqusee, a former director of environmental and energy research and development at the office of the secretary of defense. “It’s not like they’ve generally been in denial mode,” said Sherri Goodman, who served as deputy undersecretary of defense for environmental security in the Clinton administration. “They’ve generally been pretty forthcoming.”


A D.C. filmmaker practically lived in the kitchens of Rose’s Luxury and Frankly…Pizza! for ‘New Chefs on the Block’

“The crazy thing about the food world is hard work does not necessarily pay off,” says Dustin Harrison-Atlas, director of the documentary “New Chefs on the Block,” which chronicles the birth of two local restaurants. “You can be the hardest worker on the planet and have great food, but you can get off to a really rough start and it can kill you in a matter of months.” On the other hand, sometimes restaurants survive — and thrive. For his film, the D.C.-area resident spent more than 3½ years following brother-in-law Frank Linn, the owner of the wildly popular Frankly…Pizza! in Kensington, Md., and Aaron Silverman, the owner of Capitol Hill’s Rose’s Luxury, which in 2014 was named the country’s best new restaurant by Bon Appetit magazine. The film proves that opening a restaurant is more blood, sweat and tears than it is mozzarella, lobster and caviar. The first non-festival screenings of “New Chefs on the Block” next week will feature post-show discussions with local chefs, restaurant owners and food writers; starting the week of April 17, the movie will be available on iTunes, VOD and DVD. Making the movie almost killed Harrison-Atlas, but he lived to take our questions. So, you’ve got a casual pizza place and a fine-dining establishment. Why those two restaurants? How did the direction of the film change during shooting? That’s similar to how these guys built their restaurants. The most important question: Do you have to stand in Rose’s Luxury’s notorious line? Landmark Bethesda Row Cinema, 7235 Woodmont Ave.; Wed., 7 p.m., $15. Landmark E Street Cinema, 555 11th St. NW; Wed., 7 p.m., $15.


‘A day of gas’ inside a Gaza ambulance

ZEITOUN, GAZA — The first patients don’t come until 5:39 p.m. They crowd around the ambulance, choking on tear gas. Israeli soldiers, just a few hundred yards away on the other side of the boundary fence, had fired a volley of hissing cans at the protesters. Hussein al Sumeiri, a 31-year-old paramedic, hands out cotton wool treated with alcohol and saline for them to wipe their stinging eyes. One 10-year-old in jeans and a yellow T-shirt has tears streaming down his cheeks and is struggling for breath. He is brought inside the ambulance to be given oxygen. Sumeiri logs it as the day’s first injury. Friday was the quietest protest day of the past eight weeks for the paramedics in ambulance No. 414. The “Great March of Return,” as the demonstrations have been dubbed, reached their peak Monday. Then, 62 Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers, according to Gaza health authorities, on the bloodiest day here since the 2014 war between Israel and the militant group Hamas, which controls the territory. As the paramedics worked, the U.N. Human Rights Council was voting Friday to set up a probe of the killings in Gaza and accusing Israel of excessive use of force. Medics like Sumeiri have witnessed the brunt of the violence. His ambulance treated more than 50 patients with gunshot wounds Monday. The medics have been in the line of fire themselves, with one paramedic among those killed Monday. They list the names of several colleagues who have been shot. The crowds are thin Friday, swelling only after late-afternoon prayers, when several busloads arrive. It’s the first day of Ramadan, the holy month when Muslims fast between sunrise and sunset, and temperatures are near a sweat-inducing 100 degrees. The medics are working on empty. At 5:45 p.m., the crowd runs from more tear gas, and Sumeiri gets out saline solution to wash the eyes of those who arrive. A teenager carrying a slingshot, his head wrapped in a traditional Palestinian scarf, is brought in for oxygen. Another man is carried in barely conscious. “Close the door, close the door!” yells Sumeiri, and the ambulance pulls off to a field hospital. After dropping its load, it receives two more men with injuries from tear gas canisters. The ambulance screams though the Gaza streets to al-Shifa hospital, its beds still stuffed with those injured at earlier protests. On previous days, these men


Noseda ends his NSO season with 3 B’s, and a bang

The unifying theme of the evening was Bach, but there wasn’t a single piece entirely by that composer on the program. It was a program by three B’s, but not the three B’s that classical listeners expect: The composers were Berio, Berg and Brahms. Every piece was involving. And the Brahms brought down the house. Gianandrea Noseda went out with a bang Thursday night, at the start of his final subscription program of his first season with the National Symphony Orchestra, and the ensemble banged right along with him. The orchestra had its share of slips. But there was so much going on, and so much audible energy onstage, that a little roughness didn’t spoil the enjoyment. There was a sense of vitality to the playing, befitting the programming, starting with Luciano Berio’s 2001 arrangement of Bach’s Contrapunctus XIX, which handed off lines from one instrument to another, high to low and string to wind across the reduced orchestra, giving a reckless sense of propulsion to this brilliant and intricate music. Bach never finished the piece, and Berio let the music drive off a cliff and hang suspended in a sudden revelation of the utterly unknown: an enigma limned in overtones and the long decay of sustained notes. Noseda has been happy to work with a wide range of soloists this year, some for the first time, but the violinist James Ehnes is one of his preferred collaborators, and Ehnes’s performance of Alban Berg’s violin concerto showed why. This concerto is known as a defiant oxymoron, a ravishingly beautiful 12-tone piece — not only is it beautiful, but it also incorporates a folk tune and, yes, a Bach chorale. Noseda’s fluid line supported Ehnes’s shining one, mounting to big, dark drama and another suspended ending that was more decisive, closing the parenthesis that Berio’s ending had left open. In orchestra programming, the new has to be balanced with the familiar, or so conventional wisdom has it, and thus it was that this concert ended with the Brahms 4th Symphony, which ends with a passacaglia based on a theme from a Bach cantata. But this was a Brahms 4th as vital and fresh as anything on the program’s first half. Although Noseda began with what looked like generic pot-stirring of his whirling arms, and the orchestra had some hitches in the exposition, they achieved a fierce fluidity in a reading that


Do millennials have a savings problem?

American dream cleaving into a million broken pieces. That’s not entirely an accurate picture, of course. The people who responded to MarketWatch aren’t a representative sample of the population; most likely, they were moved to reach out precisely because they’re struggling unusually hard. And yet, it’s not an entirely unrepresentative sample, either. A quarter of millennials and Gen-Xers have nothing in the bank for an emergency. And it’s clear from the data that very few have what financial experts say they’ll need for a healthy retirement: one times your salary by age 30, two times by age 35, and so on, up to eight to 10 times your salary by the age of 65. Why can’t millennials save what they need to? You probably have theories: housing costs, student loans, the poor state of the job market. But it’s hard to make those theories jibe with the data. Millennials do spend a bit more of their budgets on housing than average—35 percent compared to 32 percent. But that’s about what you’d expect, given that they’re new to the housing market and haven’t had time to build up equity. Student loan debt, another favorite culprit, isn’t nearly as large a problem as you may think. The share of people financing education with debt has risen only about 20 percentage points from the baby boom generation. For those with loans, the median debt is $17,000 — nothing to sneeze at, of course, but it’s roughly the cost of a Chevy Cruze. No one thinks Chevrolet is destroying the American Dream with its crippling car payments. Meanwhile unemployment is below 4 percent, and median wages are growing briskly, making it hard to argue they can’t find work. So older generations may well be tempted to tut-tut. But not so fast. Our personal savings rate as a nation is hovering near record lows, and surveys routinely find that a majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, unable to cover even a $500 emergency. It turns out we’ve been asking the wrong question; we’ve been asking what’s wrong with millennials, when we should be asking “What’s wrong with the rest of us?” Great What? That too, is a great question. It’s one I’ll be addressing in my next column, so stand by. In the meantime, don’t lecture millennials for their savings habits. Unless, of course, you’re addressing that lecture to the rest of America, too.