Trump administration denounces attack on Russian dissident, hints at sanctions

to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, James S. Gilmore III, confronted his Russian counterpart at a meeting in Vienna on Thursday. “We urge Russia to cooperate fully with the international community’s investigation into the poisoning. Those responsible, both those who committed this crime and those who ordered it, must be held accountable,” Gilmore said. National security adviser Robert C. O’Brien said last week that Navalny’s illness was of deep concern to the United States and could affect U.S.-Russian relations. “He’s a very courageous man. He is a very courageous politician to have stood up to Putin inside Russia, and our thoughts and our prayers are with him and his family,” O’Brien said in an interview on Fox News. Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called on the Trump administration to determine whether Russia was responsible for the poisoning, and if so, invoke the same 1991 law used in the Skripal case — the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act — to impose sanctions. “The president of the United States must coordinate a strong international response to this latest aggression along with our partners and allies. Silence will be interpreted as a tacit approval for these types of attacks to continue,” Menendez said in a statement. On Thursday, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said that any poisoning of an individual through a nerve agent is considered a use of chemical weapons. “Such an allegation is a matter of grave concern,” the organization said. “States parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention deem the use of chemical weapons by anyone under any circumstances as reprehensible and wholly contrary to the legal norms established by the international community.” Andrew Weber, a senior fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks and a former top Pentagon official overseeing chemical and biological weapons defense during the Obama administration, said the limited use of chemical weapons in assassinations and tactical warfare was weakening international norms and the United States must take a leading role in defending them. “Russia’s repeated use of chemical weapons makes it urgent to strengthen the Chemical Weapons Convention,” Weber said. He said the United States should send a strong signal of support for Merkel’s announcement and stand against the creeping usage of these weapons. “That is extraordinarily dangerous and we need to fight back against that,” Weber said.


The U.S. military builds a bulwark against Trump

military will not help him. The poll of 1,018, conducted with Syracuse University, is somewhat limited because respondents, from Military Times’s readership, skew older and tend to be career-military types. But they were more than twice as likely to identify themselves as Republicans than Democrats — reflective of the military’s traditional conservatism. Still, more than 59 percent of officers said they have a dim view of the president, with more than half saying they strongly disapprove. Among enlisted respondents, 47 percent said they have an unfavorable view, and under 39 percent have a favorable view. Officers tended to be more disapproving of Trump, and more opposed to Confederate symbolism, than enlisted personnel. But the opinions were fairly uniform. Among the near-majority who favored renaming Confederate-named bases (49.2 percent to 36.8 percent, with 14 percent expressing no opinion), pluralities of all groups — women, men, White, non-White, officer, enlisted — favored renaming. Same among the 69.3 percent (to 22.2 percent) who favor the ban on Confederate flags. The troops also have a realistic view of threats to U.S. security. China (86.5 percent think it a significant threat) and Iran (57.7) topped the list of most dangerous countries, followed by North Korea and Saudi Arabia. As for other threats, 85.9 percent thought cyberterrorism significant, followed by the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other foreign Islamist terrorists (48.1 percent), white nationalists (47.6 percent), domestic terrorists with no connection to Islam (47.3 percent) and Islam-connected domestic terrorists (45.8). Lower down were racial unrest (42), the protest movements (33.1), civil disobedience (25.9) and immigration (21.4). What has brought us to this place? Maybe it’s his protection of accused or convicted war criminals from military justice. Maybe it’s his abandonment of allies in Syria (sorry, Kurds) and Germany or his friendships with Vladimir Putin (what Russian bounties on U.S. troops?), Kim Jong Un or Mohammed bin Salman. Maybe it’s his disparagement of John McCain and Gold Star families. Maybe it’s his use of the military for parades and spectacles the way dictators do. Maybe it’s his siphoning of military funds for pet projects such as the border wall. Maybe it’s his attempt to extend racial conflict to military bases through his support of Confederate icons. Veteran Jon Soltz, who runs the left-leaning group VoteVets, says Trump “completely misread” racial views in the military, which is multicultural and not tied to base names assigned during Jim Crow. “The


Tokyo Olympics organizers say Games can proceed without a coronavirus vaccine

an influx of Olympic visitors — the government had hoped for 10 million — could cause a surge in infections and overwhelm the health system unless effective vaccines are widely available. Indeed, Japan now restricts entry to travelers from more than 140 countries, and Muto said the decision on whether, how and from which countries overseas spectators could come was ultimately up to the government. “I believe it is possible the restrictions will be eased by then,” Muto said. “Assuming they are coming, even so they would have to go through testing on their entry into the country. In addition, as to whether or not there will be a need to test them at the venues, this is not something that has been decided, but it is an issue that will be discussed.” Japanese soccer and baseball leagues started allowing limited numbers of spectators inside stadiums in July, capping attendance at 5,000 and banning cheering, singing and shouting, as well as high-fives and alcohol sales. The J-League will allow clapping starting Monday, but it postponed plans to increase spectator numbers as coronavirus infections surged. “We will refer to those examples and examine to what degree we can have spectators for the Olympic Games,” Muto said. “I don’t think it’s ideal to hold the Games with no spectators, but we need to discuss how to go about limiting the number of spectators.” If restrictions are imposed and some ticket holders are not allowed to attend certain events, they will be refunded, he said. Muto said it would be an “utmost priority” for organizers to establish a safe environment for athletes, while special consideration would be given to ensure the health of Paralympic competitors. Asked how Tokyo 2020 would restore public enthusiasm for the Games, Muto argued that most people still favor holding the Olympics, even if some wanted a postponement. But the tone of the event will be different. “We believe it is not appropriate to try to hold the Olympics next year in a highly festive mood as we would have done when there were no infections of the new coronavirus,” he said. “Instead, we think that if we overcome the coronavirus pandemic based on our experiences and host an Olympics that will serve as a model of how a global-scale event should be held, Tokyo 2020 will be remembered as historically very significant and leave a great legacy behind.”


Maryland football pauses practices after spike in coronavirus cases in athletic department

The Maryland football team paused practices Thursday after a spike in novel coronavirus cases in the athletic department, multiple people with knowledge of the situation said. Those people attributed the spike in cases to sports outside football. Maryland announced Thursday evening that 46 athletes, spanning 10 teams, tested positive for the coronavirus. The athletic department tested 501 athletes this week. Athletes will be tested again Sept. 8, the statement said, and all athletics activity has been suspended. Classes at Maryland began this week, but most are being held virtually. After the Big Ten postponed the 2020 football season, Maryland players had a bit of a break before the staff planned to return to a routine for the fall once classes began. The NCAA’s Division I Council recently approved a plan that allows the teams not playing this fall to practice 12 hours per week. Five hours can be spent on the field for non-contact drills, while the rest of the time can be used for strength and conditioning workouts and meetings. The Maryland athletes who take part in those team activities will continue to be tested for the coronavirus. Without preparing for a season, it is easier for the team to limit contact at practices and work out in smaller groups. Maryland hadn’t announced a new case of the coronavirus since July. During screening that took place July 7-8, nine athletes and staffers tested positive, the athletic department said. At the time, Maryland temporarily suspended voluntary football workouts. During screening July 14-15, another three people tested positive. Until Thursday, Maryland had previously announced only 12 positive results. Maryland releases test results as a combined number for the entire athletic department, so it is not clear how many of the positive results are tied to football. When the Big Ten postponed the season, the conference said that it hoped to give fall-sport athletes the opportunity to compete during the 2020-21 academic year. The conference has not announced any plans for a postponed football season. Some parents and players have criticized the conference for not playing this fall, especially with the ACC, Big 12 and SEC set to kick off this month. President Trump spoke with Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren on Tuesday, and Trump tweeted that they talked “about immediately starting up Big Ten football.” The Big Ten confirmed the call in a statement and said it will resume competition “at


Three years since their genocide began, the Rohingya remain desperate for help

to the ground, and some 750,000 people fled for their lives to Bangladesh. The violence included massacres. On Sept. 2, 10 Rohingya men from the village of Inn Din were roped together and killed. At least two had been hacked to death by Buddhist villagers, and the rest were shot by Myanmar’s security forces, according to Reuters, which interviewed witnesses to the massacre and exposed it. Later, the Myanmar authorities cleared away the Rohingya homes and paved over the Rohingya villages to create new government barracks. Today, the Rohingya plight remains desperate. There are now about 1 million people living in five refugee camps of bamboo and plastic shelters over an area equivalent to about a third of Manhattan. Children make up about half of them. The refugees fear resettlement in Myanmar would subject them to more deprivation and violence, and efforts to negotiate a return to Rakhine state have failed twice, in 2018 and 2019. The refugees have followed closely as their case was taken up by the International Court of Justice, which ruled in January that Myanmar must implement emergency measures to protect them against violence and preserve evidence of possible genocide. The ruling came after Myanmar’s leader, Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, personally argued before the court in The Hague that the Rohingya exodus had not been mass murder. The Myanmar government has rejected the court’s ruling, which is only the first step in a process that will probably take years. It is time to call the Rohingya destruction what it is: a crime against humanity, and genocide. The definition of “genocide” in international law is: “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Using the word “genocide” won’t bring the Rohingya home. But it will serve as a reminder to Aung San Suu Kyi — and to the world — of what happened. It will help the struggle of memory not to forget — neither the crime nor the urgent need for redress.


A rural wedding led to dozens of coronavirus cases. Officials see it as a cautionary tale.

This story was updated since its Aug. 30 publication to include additional deaths and cases that health officials linked to the wedding. The setting was rustic, romantic: a lakefront inn in rural Maine at the height of summer. Inside, the bride smiled in a lace-covered V-neck dress. There was a three-tier cake, a flower garland strung up by the entry and a crowd of about 65 family and friends gathered to celebrate Aug. 7 outside the rural town of Millinocket. They clustered together in the restaurant of the Big Moose Inn and spilled into the small lobby, their numbers exceeding the state’s 50-person cap for indoor events during the coronavirus pandemic, state health officials would later declare. They weren’t keeping much distance from each other, other hotel guests noticed, or wearing masks. It wasn’t until the next day that one of them reported having symptoms of covid-19. Soon others did, too. By early September, officials with the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention had linked at least 147 cases to the wedding — including outbreaks at a jail and a nursing home in York County, more than 200 miles away. And the outbreak turned deadly. Like a biotech conference in Boston, a college bar in Michigan and a choir practice in Washington state, the wedding became what’s known as a “superspreading event” — probably sparked by a single, highly infectious individual who showed no signs of illness and unwittingly shared an enclosed space with many others. The phenomenon occurs when one infection spawns a disproportionate number of others. Maine CDC Director Nirav Shah described it as “a series of concentric rings that get built out, all emanating from this one Aug. 7 event.” The wedding outbreak is especially resonant in America’s rural communities, where gatherings are a lifeline and where, some public health experts fear, the lack of significant virus transmission may have lulled residents into a false sense of complacency. Fewer health-care resources mean that if an outbreak strikes, it can be especially devastating. “All the things that make rural America more vulnerable to any kind of disturbance of the equilibrium are magnified tenfold when you’re thinking about covid-19,” Shah said. “People tend to congregate in small groups in rural areas where they know each other, and that’s one of the things that makes rural areas great. But when it comes to covid, it means that it can


As U.S. air war in Afghanistan surged, investigations into civilian harm plunged

U.N. data on civilian casualties. For 2019, U.N. data on civilian casualties from American bombs is more than five times as high as that collected by the Pentagon. Ninety-eight civilians were killed by U.S. airstrikes in 2019, according to the Pentagon’s annual report submitted to Congress. For the same period, U.N. reporting found 546 civilians were killed in airstrikes by “international military forces.” The United States is the only international military force that carries out airstrikes in Afghanistan. Resolute Support is less transparent about civilian casualties than other U.S. military commands. In Iraq and Syria, for example, the command overseeing operations against the Islamic State releases monthly updates on civilian casualties. In Africa, the command established a public website where allegations can be logged. In Afghanistan, the U.S. military doesn’t regularly release any information regarding civilian harm. Civilian deaths at the hands of U.S. forces have been a powerful rallying cry for anti-American and anti-Afghan government sentiment during the two decades of war. The Taliban capitalizes on such incidents to win support, and as allegations soared over the past two years, so did their use in Taliban propaganda. In one tweet, the picture of a small child wrapped in a funeral shroud is captioned “martyred by the savage soldier of the enemy.” In another, a report titled “War crimes of the foreign occupying forces and their internal mercenaries” is accompanied by a photograph of bodies wrapped in blankets. Weakened U.S. accountability mechanisms only gave that propaganda greater traction, undercutting the Afghan government ahead of formal talks with the militants expected to begin in the coming weeks, according to local Afghan officials. The U.S. air war in Afghanistan ramped up in 2018, when American planes launched 7,362 weapons from the air, more than the previous three years combined, according to Air Force summaries. The next year, the total number of U.S. munitions dropped on Afghanistan inched higher, to 7,423. The ramped-up air campaign coincided with the arrival of Miller, who assumed command of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in September 2018, and with the appointment of Zalmay Khalilzad as the U.S. envoy charged with securing a peace deal with the Taliban that would lead to the withdrawal of U.S. forces. The violence was in full swing in September 2019, when a U.S. airstrike on al-Qaeda targets struck the district of Musa Qala in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province. A month after the strikes,


White House threats could put U.S. Olympic athletes in middle of anti-doping funding fight

in the form of clean sport, fair play, effective administration of the world anti-doping system and a proportionate voice in WADA decision-making.” Lawmakers haven’t publicly commented on the ONDCP report, but the funding threat sent shock waves through the international doping community. Dick Pound, the WADA founder and the longest-serving International Olympic Committee member, called it “inexplicable.” In a statement Friday, Banka said he “will never let clean athletes become hostages of political games.” “This matter has been raised by some concerned Governments, not by WADA’s leadership, and as is the case with any proposal raised by a stakeholder, WADA has an obligation to consider it carefully,” Banka said. “We will examine the rules to see if they need to be strengthened in light of the current situation. As always, due process will be followed and this will be a matter for discussion and consultation.” While Banka and WADA previously rebuked the ONDCP report, this week’s warning was the first time the organization suggested American athletes might be negatively affected. “Their priorities are obviously backward,” Travis Tygart, chief executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and an outspoken WADA critic, said in a telephone interview. “They’re threatening U.S. athletes not to compete without legal basis yet allowing athletes from a Russian state-sponsored doping system to compete. We’re living in a twilight zone.” “Nobody wants the money to be cut,” he continued, “but throwing good money after bad into WADA’s pocketbook makes no sense until reform is achieved that allows them to be a strong and independent regulator and not the political monster that they’ve become.” The ONDCP provided a statement, attributed to an unidentified official, pushing back against WADA’s “threats.” “ONDCP is committed to work with WADA to foster organizational reform that includes increased transparency and greater accountability to the nations like the United States that finance WADA’s operations,” the statement reads. “It’s a goal shared by athletes and athletic organizations around the world, and one that should be shared by WADA. Threats from WADA to exclude athletes from competition who train their entire lives for the privilege of engaging in Olympic sport does not advance these goals, and only reinforces the perception that WADA puts politics over players.” While many international competitions have been canceled or postponed this year in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Olympics are scheduled to take place July 23 to Aug. 8, 2021,


It’s uncertain when Maryland will play football again or what its roster will look like

conference said it hoped to find opportunities for fall sport competitions later in the academic year. But coaches and athletic directors don’t know when that day will come, and their bosses — university presidents and chancellors — ultimately will make that decision. At Maryland, anything that resembles a 2020 season will mark Year 2 for Coach Michael Locksley, who was hired in December 2018 and tasked with rebuilding a program that has played in just three bowl games in the past 10 years. Though it’s still early in his tenure, around 70 percent of Maryland’s scholarship players never competed for the previous staff. The Terps’ roster is heavily lopsided with freshmen and sophomores who committed to Locksley. The NCAA has attempted to reconcile the loss of a typical season by offering extra eligibility to all fall-sport athletes. While that’s seen as a fair solution, it also prompts questions about how programs will manage their rosters moving forward. Here is where Maryland’s program stands heading into the fall. The NCAA’s Board of Directors approved the Division I Council’s recommendation that fall-sport athletes receive an extra season of eligibility and an additional year to use that eligibility. All athletes receive this relief, regardless of how many games they play this academic year. Typically, athletes have five years to use four seasons of eligibility, but now they could play five seasons over six years. The seniors who return for an extra season during the 2021-22 school year will not count toward the team’s scholarship limit, which is 85 for football. This means teams next season could have vastly different makeups. A program with many seniors on its roster this season could have more than 100 scholarship players on the roster in 2021. Maryland falls at the lower end of that spectrum with only nine scholarship seniors on the roster. The Terps also have four senior walk-ons. That class of 13 players is the second-smallest group of seniors in the Big Ten. Not all seniors will want to stay on campus another year. Even if they did, some schools can’t afford to support a larger squad. “That creates another issue on campus from a fiscal standpoint,” Locksley said of eligibility relief after the Big Ten postponed the season. “Say you have 25 seniors graduating and you’re bringing in 25 guys, and the NCAA allows you to do both, so now we find ourselves in


Tuesday with Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren While coaches and athletic directors can advocate for certain return-to-play models, the decision lies with the university presidents and chancellors. That group of leaders voted 11-3 to postpone the season last month. Those people climbed to their current posts through a variety of academic fields. The University of Michigan’s president, Mark Schlissel, is a physician-scientist who has taught immunology courses. Others have expertise in areas such as economics and aerospace engineering. Six Maryland players decided to opt out of the fall season last month, including three starters: quarterback Josh Jackson, offensive lineman Johnny Jordan and offensive lineman Austin Fontaine. Defensive lineman Jalen Alexander, defensive back Vincent Flythe and linebacker TJ Kautai also chose to sit out. They made that decision when the Big Ten planned to play a 10-game conference schedule. With the postponement, Maryland players are instead spending the fall on campus and attending noncontact practices, workouts and meetings. Some of these players, Locksley said, were content with ending their football careers. (Before the Big Ten announced its postponement, Locksley said Jackson, who transferred to Maryland as a graduate student before last season, had “probably played his last football.”) When asked whether these players who opted out would have the ability to opt back in and potentially play in the winter, Locksley said Aug. 13: “The way I see it, whether we were playing a season or not, the guys that opted out chose to opt out [of] the preseason workouts, so that’s not an area that I’ve even thought about just yet. Obviously we’ll handle a lot of them on a case-by-case basis.” A team spokesman said this week the staff hasn’t had discussions with players who opted out now that the circumstances of the season have changed. The spokesman reiterated Locksley’s comment about those situations being handled on a case-by-case basis. It is unclear whether those athletes would be guaranteed the opportunity to return to team activities for the fall. The NCAA requires schools to honor the scholarships of athletes who opt out and said they should remain in good standing with their team. However, some athletes across the country have expressed concerns about what opting out could mean for their future in the program because of the power imbalance in college sports. At most programs, a few recruits arrive on campus in January to enroll for the spring semester.


Oracle lost its JEDI court battle. Its campaign against Amazon may have succeeded anyway.

Oracle suffered yet another defeat last week in a years-long legal dispute over a controversial military computing technology contract known as JEDI, as an appeals court rejected its latest legal challenge. But the company’s repeated failures in court masked more subtle victories in its broader campaign to undermine the Pentagon’s winner-take-all approach and damage its rival, Amazon. Although Amazon itself was once again cleared of wrongdoing, the court concluded that two former defense officials “disregarded their ethical responsibilities” by negotiating employment with the e-commerce giant while they worked on JEDI as government officials. And a long-running influence campaign led by Oracle spurred President Trump’s involvement at a critical moment last summer, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post at the time. The president’s alleged intervention prompted still more litigation and controversy, as a bid protest brought by Amazon has centered on Trump’s antipathy toward Jeff Bezos, Amazon and The Washington Post. (The Post is owned by Bezos.) As a result, a military technology project that top defense officials say is critical to the United States’ artificial-intelligence arms race with China remained bogged down in lawsuits more than two years after it was announced. In response to a request for comment, Defense Department spokesman Russ Goemaere pointed out that the courts had once again ruled that “none of the alleged conflicts of interest had an impact on the integrity of the procurement.” Representatives from Oracle and Amazon declined to comment. Wes Hallman, a vice president for policy with the National Defense Industrial Association, said he is worried that bid protests in general have slowed down the military’s efforts to acquire new technology. “Delaying this by two years is not the right answer,” Hallman said. “The Chinese are not having this same issue, are they? They are not being hamstrung through any bid protests. Let’s be expeditious about this, because we as a nation need to move on and iterate faster with this great power competition mentality." The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, better known as JEDI, is meant to create a massive, centralized computing system for U.S. military agencies operated by a single tech company. If implemented, it could help lay the groundwork for the military’s eventual use of artificial intelligence to enable weapons systems, intelligence gathering and other pursuits. The contract, which the Pentagon has insisted should go to a single tech company, is worth up to $10 billion


Advocates, inmates memorialize ‘overlooked’ lives lost to coronavirus behind bars

California at Berkeley, is one of those looking. The search isn’t simple — the information available about prisoners who die of the coronavirus varies greatly depending on where they were incarcerated. Some departments of corrections make no public announcement when someone dies of coronavirus complications in custody, Pickering said. Others, like the Federal Bureau of Prisons, release names of victims and sometimes a short narrative that sketches out the circumstances of their deaths. Even when official information is available, advocates say news releases aren’t proper obituaries. The bureau’s death notices detail crimes that virus victims were convicted of, but don’t mention families or their lives before incarceration. “We are trying to honor everybody,” Pickering said. “We know that we won’t succeed — at least not for a long time — but that’s the idea. Everyone deserves to be remembered as a person.” The website’s style guide prohibits mentioning convicted crimes. The site also avoids using mug shots and focuses on positive information about a person, like interests or hobbies, to make memorials a “celebration of life,” according to the style guide. Eliza Kravitz, a college student from D.C. who recently completed her first year at Yale University, became interested in prison reform after hearing Kauffman speak at her high school last year. She was active with the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project but, with sophomores unable to live on campus because of the pandemic, she is taking a semester off partly to work with Mourning Our Losses. “These people — their lives — are often overlooked and not honored,” she said. “They’re often portrayed as less than human. Our mission is to humanize them — to celebrate their stories.” Kravitz and others collect information about prisoner deaths from media reports or family members and mail it to people in prison so that they can write memorials for fellow inmates. When Madonna Watson died of covid-19 at age 44 in June, little was done to mark her passing. She was serving time at a prison near Los Angeles, but her name was not released when she died. Her friends posted a memorial to Mourning Our Losses. “Madonna grew tremendously here behind these walls,” April Harris, who is incarcerated at the California Institution for Women, wrote on the site. “. . . The thing that sticks with me the most is her attitude. She wasn’t afraid. Of nothing or no one. She lived


Quarantine concerns slim the doubles field, but Frances Tiafoe keeps winning at the U.S. Open

Although singles matches went off without a hitch as the round of 16 fell into place, the first week of the U.S. Open did not roll to a close quietly Saturday at Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York. Behind the scenes, public health officials intervened again at the year’s second Grand Slam. A day after talks between the U.S. Tennis Association and health officials over a player’s quarantine status delayed a match for three hours, the top-seeded women’s doubles team was withdrawn from the tournament because of concerns over exposure to covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Kristina Mladenovic and Timea Babos were removed from the doubles draw because Mladenovic was in a group of people who spent time around Benoît Paire, a French player who tested positive Sunday and was withdrawn from the tournament. On Friday, New York public health officials had attempted to prevent No. 32 seed Adrian Mannarino — also one of the people who had close contact with Paire — from playing his third-round singles match against No. 5 seed Alexander Zverev. After a wait of nearly three hours, they took the court, and Zverev won the match in four sets. Why Mannarino was permitted to play and Mladenovic was not is unclear. Both players were determined to be part of the potentially exposed group earlier in the week. Mannarino played three singles matches before being eliminated; Mladenovic played two singles matches and a doubles match. “Public health officials of Nassau County, N.Y., have issued quarantine notices for all individuals who had prolonged close contact to a person who previously tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus,” the USTA said in a statement. “As the players are staying in Nassau County, the quarantine notices prevent any of these individuals from commuting to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York City. The USTA is obligated to adhere to government guidance at the State, City and County level. All persons who were identified as having prolonged close contact with the infected player will quarantine in their rooms for the remainder of their quarantine period. Kristina Mladenovic is one of these individuals, and as the Women’s Doubles competition has begun, the women’s doubles team of Kristina Mladenovic and Timea Babos has been withdrawn from the US Open.” As for the matches that went on uninterrupted, Frances Tiafoe won his bout with


People of color are disproportionately affected by covid-19. Yet they are underrepresented in vaccine trials.

Karen Bass, a Democrat, represents California’s 37th District in the House of Representatives and is chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. Six months into our battle against covid-19, the disease has killed more than 181,000 Americans, and the pandemic continues to disproportionately affect communities of color. Black Americans, Latinos, Asian Pacific Islanders and Native Americans are significantly more likely than White Americans to be diagnosed with covid-19, be hospitalized over it and die of the disease. Despite these appalling trends, the most promising covid-19 vaccine trials are reportedly failing to recruit participants of color. This threatens the trials’ validity, since vaccine candidates can vary in effectiveness across different racial and ethnic groups. It is also potentially catastrophic for people of color, who are disproportionately represented among front-line and essential workers — and who are suffering the worst health and economic effects of this pandemic. Facing criticism, pharmaceutical executives appear to be scrambling to assure the public that people of color will be well represented in vaccine trials. Too much is at stake to not get this right. The National Institutes of Health and the companies working on stage-three vaccine trials must urgently recruit Black, Latino, Native American and Asian Pacific Islander participants, using strategies endorsed and supported by the communities they are targeting. Pharmaceutical companies must not be allowed to hide data by lumping racial and ethnic groups together: Disaggregated data on enrollments by age, gender, race and ethnicity should regularly be made available to Congress and the public before the trials begin. And vaccines should only be made available to the public if they have been proved effective for everyone, in trials that represent the true diversity of our nation. Americans of color have reason to be wary of participating in medical research. For centuries, medical researchers and practitioners experimented on patients of color without their consent. The four-decade Tuskegee experiment misled poor Black men in Alabama into believing they were being treated for syphilis while researchers were merely keeping tabs on them until they died, so their bodies could be autopsied. Even after the discovery of penicillin, U.S. Public Health Service doctors and nurses administered only aspirin and placebos. There are other, less infamous examples of racist medical experimentation. As many as 1 in 4 Native American women and girls were sterilized without their consent by the Indian Health Service in the 1960s and 1970s — going under


hometown of Los Angeles, researchers gave Black and Latino babies as much as 500 times the approved dosage of the experimental EZ measles vaccine between 1989 and 1991 — even though the vaccine had been linked to hundreds of deaths in developing countries. Parents were not told that the vaccine was experimental or that their children were intentionally being given overdoses. The only way to overcome this history is for medical researchers to meaningfully involve communities of color at every stage of the process. Black Americans and Latinos are still significantly less likely than non-Hispanic Whites to be enrolled in clinical trials. Those running the covid-19 vaccine trials must break down the social and economic barriers that can keep people of color from taking part. The NIH and pharmaceutical companies must partner with trusted community organizations; those messengers can take the lead on recruiting and enrolling more Black, Latino and Native American trial participants. Targeted outreach includes providing meaningful funding for the community organizations to hold information sessions and answer questions. Provisions to support and fund aggressive, targeted outreach and interventions for testing, treatment and any eventual vaccine for the communities of color suffering most from covid-19 were included in the Heroes Act that the House passed in May. The Senate has yet to take up the legislation. Pharmaceutical companies and NIH can make it easier for people of color to enroll in vaccine trials by extending clinic hours to evenings and weekends, reimbursing or providing vouchers to help cover transportation costs, and providing consent forms and other enrollment materials in languages other than English. At every step, researchers must counteract our nation’s legacy of medical abuse by being utterly transparent: clearly communicating risks and making sure patients understand how the data collected is being used. Until covid-19 is under control, lives will remain disrupted — with kids out of school, parents out of work, and thousands falling ill and dying. Since the Trump administration has failed to contain the spread of the coronavirus — and shows no interest in learning from its mistakes — the pressure is on to develop vaccines that are safe and effective for everyone. If vaccines are not effective for those most at risk from covid-19, we will have failed all over again. There’s still a chance for the NIH and pharmaceutical companies to get it right. We are watching to make sure they do.


Mass testing has its problems. They’re nothing compared to not testing.

thinking might be harder than shifting Trump. No test is perfectly accurate; all generate false positives and false negatives. How many varies by the test — the new Abbott Labs test, for example, has a false negative rate of about 3 percent and a false positive rate of about 1.5 percent. For mass testing to work, people will need to understand that even an event where all attendees just tested negative isn’t necessarily covid-free, because some false negatives might have slipped through. If we don’t make that clear in advance, the inevitable high-profile “failures” will make people lose faith in the tests altogether. Giving hundreds of millions of citizens this crash course in elementary statistics would be very difficult. Teaching people how to think about a positive result would be even harder — especially if mass testing does its job of reducing caseloads. Because as case numbers fall, false positives will become a bigger and bigger problem. Say we’re testing 200 people, 10 of whom have covid-19. Given its rate of false negatives, the Abbott test would probably catch all 10. But with false positives, it could also tell one or two people who don’t have covid-19 that they’re infected. That’s not ideal — as good citizens, they’d have to go home and quarantine. But a more sensitive follow-up test could substantially mitigate this problem, shortening such quarantines to a day or so. It would be worth it to get those 10 true positives out of circulation. Doing this, we might eventually reduce the share of the population that’s infected to, say, 0.5 percent from 5 percent. Unfortunately, the false positive rate won’t budge, so now for every one true positive uncovered, roughly three false positives would still be generated. That’s inherently costly: Every false positive means skipping your flight, rehearsal or birthday party. But it would be catastrophic if people didn’t understand that a positive covid-19 test is a guideline, not a guarantee. People who think that they’ve had covid-19, when they haven’t, are apt to go out and engage in risky behavior, maybe a lot of it. And if mass testing ever becomes common, there could be a lot of those people. So mass testing isn’t just a matter of getting a test that is cheap enough and plentiful enough; the administration and the public must be educated to use this bounty wisely. That’s a hard messaging problem.


Welcome to college. Now get tested for the coronavirus — again and again.

they arrived on the Fairfax County campus. Students received test kits at home and were asked to collect specimens using throat swabs. The specimens were sent to labs, and proof of a negative test result was required for more than 3,000 undergrads who moved into the dorms. Faculty critics said the test kits lacked authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for home specimen collection — a charge that an associate dean of research for the university’s college of science later confirmed was true. The critics also contended that vials within the kits labeled “for research use only” had created confusion and that, overall, quality controls were inadequate. “This isn’t a strep test,” Bethany Letiecq, president of George Mason’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, wrote in an email to The Washington Post. “It’s a Covid test. This is about public health and safety. People are fearful and deserve more than this.” George Mason President Gregory Washington said the testing had delivered reliable information, including positive results for a few students who were thus kept off campus while infected. “Clearly, this is not a perfect solution,” he acknowledged in an email to the campus. “Perfection simply does not exist. We have no relevant precedent, and we are doing everything we can to safely operate this university while delivering the best educational experience possible.” But Washington pledged improvements. After the first day of classes Aug. 24, the university switched to on-campus testing with closer oversight. Of 390 students tested in the first week of the semester, the university found seven infections. Officials plan to ramp up to 850 tests a week in an effort to help the school continue to offer a mix of face-to-face and online classes. At College Park, U-Md. officials delayed in-person teaching for undergraduates two weeks, until Sept. 14, to allow expansion of viral testing. The fall term launched Aug. 31 online at the 40,000-student public university. U-Md. required all students living on campus to get tested before and after arrival. It also mandated testing for students who live nearby and come onto campus for classes or events. One sign of the upside-down nature of the pandemic semester: The Terrapins won’t be playing football this fall at Capital One Field at Maryland Stadium. But plenty of students queued up there Tuesday at a makeshift testing center next to the concession stands. Shamar Jackson, 23, a


Saudi Arabia hands down ‘final’ rulings in Jamal Khashoggi murder, sentencing 8 to prison terms

to Turkey from Saudi Arabia in October 2018 before killing and dismembering Khashoggi, a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The rulings came after a trial that was closed to the public and the news media and that was criticized by human rights groups as lacking transparency. “These verdicts carry no legal or moral legitimacy. They came at the end of a process which was neither fair, nor just, or transparent,” Agnès Callamard, a U.N. human rights expert who conducted an investigation into the killing, wrote on Twitter after the sentences were announced. Saudi Arabia’s leaders have been desperate to move past the killing. Grisly details had fueled global outrage, as did Saudi Arabia’s initial denials that it had anything to do with Khashoggi’s disappearance. And the Saudi ruling on Monday failed to answer the most urgent questions about the murder, including who had ordered it and the whereabouts of Khashoggi’s remains. The CIA concluded with “medium to high confidence” that Mohammed, who effectively rules Saudi Arabia, had ordered the killing, which he has denied. Turkey is holding a separate trial and has indicted 20 Saudi citizens on murder charges, though none of the defendants is in Turkish custody. Khashoggi, 59, was a veteran Saudi journalist who contributed opinion columns to The Washington Post. He had visited the Istanbul consulate intending to collect documents that would allow him to remarry while his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, waited for him outside. In a statement posted on Twitter, Cengiz said: “The Saudi authorities are closing the case without the world knowing the truth of who is responsible for Jamal’s murder. Who planned it, who ordered it, where is his body?” Five of the eight defendants were spared the death penalty after Khashoggi’s sons announced in May they had forgiven their father’s killers. The Saudi justice system allows families of victims in some capital cases to grant clemency to convicted killers. Instead, the five received 20-year prison terms, according to the statement on Monday. Three other defendants received sentences between seven and 10 years, the statement said. Two senior Saudi officials — Saud al-Qahtani, a powerful royal media adviser, and Ahmed al-Assiri, a former deputy head of intelligence — were exonerated by the Saudi court late last year, even after Saudi prosecutors said the two men played central roles in the plot that led to Khashoggi’s death.


World Digest: Sept. 7, 2020

SOMALIA Three Somali special forces soldiers were killed, and a U.S. officer was seriously wounded in a car-bomb attack on Monday outside a base in the country’s south, a regional Somali government official said. Al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab said it was behind the attack and put the number of dead at 20. A Somali soldier was also wounded in the attack in Jana Cabdalle village, some 37 miles from the port city of Kismayo, which is also the Jubaland region’s capital. “Two soldiers of Danab [special] forces died and two others were wounded. A U.S. officer was seriously wounded,” Mohamed Ahmed Sabriye, director of communications for the Jubaland state palace told Reuters by phone. He later said one of the wounded Danab forces soldiers had subsequently died. He said the suicide car bomb had exploded outside the special forces base. Air Force Col. Christopher Karns, a U.S. Africa Command spokesman, said one U.S. soldier had suffered injuries that weren’t life-threatening and was in stable condition. Al-Shabab said it had killed U.S. personnel. The government and al-Shabab often give different numbers of casualties. — Reuters BRITAIN The European Union told Britain on Monday that there would be no trade deal if it tried to tinker with the Brexit divorce treaty, raising the prospect of a tumultuous end-of-year finale to the saga. In yet another twist to the four-year negotiations since Britain voted to quit the E.U., Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government was reported to be planning legislation to override parts of the Brexit withdrawal agreement it signed in January. That could jeopardize the whole treaty and create frictions in British-ruled Northern Ireland, where special arrangements had been made to avoid a hard border with Ireland to the south that could be detrimental to the 1998 peace agreement, which ended three decades of conflict in the province. Britain said it would honor the deal and was simply offering clarifications to avoid any future legal difficulties. But the Financial Times newspaper cited three people as saying the proposed internal market bill was expected to “eliminate the legal force of parts of the withdrawal agreement” in areas including state aid and Northern Ireland customs. — Reuters U.S. sailor missing from Nimitz: 300 Rohingya refugees land in Indonesia: — From news services


The postmaster general’s alleged straw-donor scheme

Post Reports is the daily podcast from The Washington Post. Unparalleled reporting. Expert insight. Clear analysis. Everything you’ve come to expect from the newsroom of The Post. For your ears. Martine Powers is your host, asking the questions you didn’t know you wanted answered. Listen online. The postmaster general faces new allegations of campaign finance violations. Why the pandemic is making it so hard for people to sleep. And your questions about immunity, answered. Read more: Investigative reporter Aaron Davis has discovered that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s prolific campaign fundraising was bolstered for more than a decade by a practice that left many employees feeling pressured to make political contributions to GOP candidates –– money DeJoy later reimbursed through bonuses, former employees say. Health and science reporter Karin Brulliard has noticed that the pandemic is making it harder for her (and a lot of other people) to sleep. Experts say this “coronasomnia” could imperil public health. General assignment reporter Meryl Kornfield recently asked immunologists all your immunity-related questions. Some of their responses are encouraging. Subscribe to The Washington Post: https://postreports.com/offer


Congress needs to weigh in on expanding Main Street loan program to more businesses, Boston Fed chief says

“steady uptake” for the program over the next three or four months. But it’s unclear how many banks are interested in issuing loans or how many businesses can afford to go into further debt. The destruction wrought by this recession is piling up, and the novel coronavirus is still spreading, with outbreaks in new places. At a Congressional Oversight Commission hearing last month, the Fed faced questions over whether changing the program’s rules would lead to more loans or whether an entirely new approach is needed. Lauren Anderson, senior vice president and associate general counsel of the Bank Policy Institute, said at the hearing that she wasn’t “sure that loosening the criteria is necessarily the right answer.” Gwen Mills, secretary-treasurer of Unite Here, a North American hospitality union, testified that “Congress needs to come up with a new approach” to ensure that companies don’t lay off workers when the money comes in. Another hurdle for the Main Street program is that many of the country’s biggest banks — including those with more than $50 billion in assets — aren’t taking part. Smaller-scale or community banks might have closer relationships with borrowers, know their value in the community and therefore be willing to take more risk, Rosengren said. “The fact that [larger banks] are not participating is definitely a limitation to seeing widespread availability of these loans,” he said. Of the country’s banks with at least $1 trillion in assets, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase are enrolled in the program and are issuing loans to new customers. Citigroup is also registered but is working with existing clients only, a spokeswoman said. Wells Fargo is also registered. Established jointly with the Treasury Department, the Main Street lending program is meant to reach companies that might have been too large to receive a grant under the Paycheck Protection Program and too small to be helped by the Fed’s corporate credit facilities. Businesses with fewer than 15,000 employees or less than $5 billion in annual revenue can apply for a loan from a participating bank. The Fed can then buy 95 percent of that loan, leaving the bank with some skin the game. But the program clearly hasn’t reached everyone. Tim Skoog has worked in the travel industry for 50 years and has run his company, Centrav, for more than 30. The Minnesota-based business gives travel agents access to millions of discounted airfares.


TSA recorded America’s busiest travel day since March over Labor Day weekend

An August survey of 7,000 travelers by Skyscanner found that “positivity around travel remains,” particularly in the United States, as 32 percent of American respondents said they thought it was “currently safe to travel domestically” and 33 percent said they believe the global travel situation was improving. The latest data from Skyscanner has also shown that searches and bookings for travel from the United States have increased steadily for five weeks. The record high came just days after the TSA announced it would be testing new facial recognition technology in at least one airport, D.C.'s Reagan National Airport, as it is “exploring rapid testing and deployment of this touchless, self-service technology.” The self-service scanner uses a camera to scan and confirm a passenger’s face, photo ID and flight details in seconds to reduce person-to-person interaction. “As passenger volumes continue to steadily rise, the agency wants to ensure that the traveling public is mindful of what they can expect to see at checkpoints to help reduce the spread of covid-19, including TSA officers always wearing face masks and gloves at all airports, as well as face shields in certain locations in the screening process,” the TSA said in a pre-Labor Day news release. The spike in traffic also comes as health experts project that the United States will see a rise in covid-19 cases. A model by the University of Washington is predicting daily death tolls will double this fall, The Washington Post reported. By the end of 2020, the model predicts, the total covid-19 death toll will exceed 400,000 — more than double the current number of fatalities. In the days leading up to Labor Day, an official from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Maine, which has seen a rise in cases linked to a wedding, warned of a potential surge following Labor Day celebrations. The virus “likes holidays,” Maine CDC Director Nirav Shah said in a news conference. “I am concerned that if we do not get a grip on what’s going on … it has the potential to spiral and start affecting adjacent parts of the state in the not-too-distant future,” he said. Read more: The summer of canceled plans: How 14 pro travelers sent the season A long-haul move is hard enough. A pandemic and racism make it even harder. Costa Rica is now allowing U.S. visitors — but only from these 12 places


With the Khashoggi ruling, MBS doubles down on a dark path for Saudi Arabia

Iyad el-Baghdadi is an Arab writer and activist. He is the founder of the On Monday, Saudi authorities said that eight people had been sentenced to prison terms between seven and 20 years for the killing of journalist and Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018. But international observers immediately slammed the verdicts as a parody of justice. Agnes Callamard, the United Nations’ special rapporteur for extrajudicial killings who led an independent investigation into the murder, said the sentences “carry no legal or moral legitimacy,” having come “at the end of a process which was neither fair, nor just, nor transparent.” Callamard’s 2019 report directly implicated Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder; her findings match the CIA’s formal assessment, delivered in November 2018. But Saudi authorities consider the case closed. The sentences are supposed to be the “final” rulings. As we approach the second anniversary of Jamal’s murder, MBS, as the crown prince is known, is eager to put the episode behind him. It’s not very difficult to see why — there seems to be a growing anxiety among Arab dictators that President Trump may not be around to cover up for them for four more years, and Mohammed bin Salman knows that come January, he may face a much more hostile White House. It’s clear that MBS thought that he’d manage to make Khashoggi’s disappearance a mystery forever. The assassins went to great lengths to cover up their tracks, from bringing along a forensic expert and a body double to sending an experienced cleanup team afterward. But thanks to Turkish intelligence, and the sheer brazen recklessness of the crime itself, what we got was a proven crime with incontrovertible evidence directly implicating MBS’s most loyal lieutenants and, therefore, the crown prince himself. One would think that after such a fiasco, MBS would have understood the severity of his own position. But for months he proceeded as though the international outrage will only last a few more days. There are even reports that his attempts to kidnap or kill dissidents continued after Khashoggi was murdered, such as the case of the former top Saudi intelligence officer Saad Aljabri in Canada, and that of Abdulrahman Almutairi in Los Angeles. In 2019, Norwegian intelligence officers warned me that I, too, am a target. It took months before MBS realized that the ghost of Khashoggi will not stop chasing him.


Two Australian journalists flee China after tense standoff

Friends and colleagues of Bill Birtles, the Australian Broadcasting Corp.’s correspondent in Beijing, gathered in his apartment last Wednesday for a final round of drinks before his departure from China, at the advice of Australian diplomats, amid mounting tensions between the two countries. At midnight, state security officers arrived. Michael Smith, the Australian Financial Review’s correspondent based in Shanghai, received a similar visit that night. The officers informed the reporters they could no longer leave China, the ABC reported. Authorities wanted to question them about the case of Cheng Lei, an Australian news anchor for Chinese state broadcaster CGTN who was detained on Aug. 14 for reasons that remain murky. The reporters sought refuge in the Australian Embassy in Beijing and the consulate in Shanghai while diplomats negotiated their departure, the ABC reported. Four days later, they were cleared to leave the country. Birtles and Smith were the last reporters for Australian outlets remaining in China, leaving the Australian media without any foreign correspondents on the ground for the first time in decades. The incident could increase discord between the two countries. The relationship was already strained by Cheng’s detention last month amid Canberra’s criticism of Beijing’s efforts to revoke Hong Kong’s autonomy, its military activity in the South China Sea and human rights violations targeting the mostly Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang province. It was the latest step by Beijing to detain, expel or restrict the activities of foreign journalists. Just hours after the reporters landed in Australia, Chinese authorities announced that Cheng, an Australian citizen who was born in China, had been arrested last month on charges of “carrying out illegal activities endangering China’s national security.” They provided no further information. China this week delayed the renewal of visas for several journalists working with U.S. news outlets, including Bloomberg, CNN and the Wall Street Journal, Reuters reported. In March, Beijing effectively expelled from the country U.S. journalists from The Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, pulling their credentials. The move was seen as retaliation for the Trump administration’s limits on U.S.-based Chinese state media. On Wednesday, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China issued a statement condemning “the Chinese government’s unprecedented harassment and intimidation of two Australian journalists” and denounced what it called the use of “foreign journalists as pawns in wider diplomatic disputes.” “Such actions by the Chinese government amount to appalling intimidatory


The Khashoggi verdict is meant to provide a fig leaf. Democratic leaders shouldn’t take it.

SAUDI CROWN PRINCE Mohammed bin Salman expects to be the first Arab leader to host a summit meeting of the Group of 20 nations, in November. But there’s a problem: In many of those countries, he is still regarded as a pariah because of his military’s systematic bombing of civilian targets in Yemen and the brutal repression of his domestic critics. Hence, on Monday came another step in the crown prince’s attempt to whitewash his reputation: the reported sentencing of eight people for the murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist and Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. The supposed ruling by a court in Riyadh was utterly lacking in transparency. The identities of those convicted were not reported, nor was the crime they committed detailed. Two senior officials identified by a Saudi prosecutor as organizers of the 15-member hit team that assaulted Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul — deputy intelligence chief Ahmed al-Assiri and Saud al-Qahtani, a senior adviser to Mohammed bin Salman — were cleared. It is not even clear that those convicted, who were said to have been sentenced to terms of between seven and 20 years, are actually imprisoned. Nearly two years after Khashoggi entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018, the location of his remains has not been disclosed to his fiancee. The manner of his death — suffocation, followed by dismemberment with a bone saw — is known only because of an investigation carried out by a United Nations rapporteur, Agnes Callamard, who was given access to Turkish surveillance recordings. Ms. Callamard reported that the murder was premeditated and that Mohammed bin Salman was culpable for it; the CIA concluded with “medium to high” certainty that the Saudi ruler ordered the hit. Ms. Callamard tweeted Monday that the reported verdicts were “a parody of justice” that “carry no legal or moral legitimacy,” because “the high-level officials who organized and embraced the execution . . . have walked free from the start.” But the supposed punishments were not meant to satisfy her. Instead, they are intended to provide a fig leaf for democratic leaders such as Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Britain’s Boris Johnson, allowing them to honor Mohammed bin Salman with their presence in Riyadh without appearing to condone the cold-blooded butchering of a renowned journalist. President Trump requires no such excuse; he long ago absolved Mohammed bin Salman


D.C. adds two states, removes two others from list of places that require quarantine

more per 100,000 residents. Anyone who arrives in the nation’s capital after traveling to one of the 29 states for nonessential reasons must self-quarantine for two weeks. As those two states were added, Alaska and Arizona were removed from the list. D.C. reported 47 new coronavirus cases and no deaths on Tuesday, while the city’s seven-day average of new cases has fallen to 45 — a level last seen two months ago — amid a steady drop in infections. Across the greater Washington region, health officials recorded 1,239 new infections and five deaths Tuesday. Virginia added 836 cases and two deaths, while Maryland had 356 cases and three deaths. The region’s daily caseload was the smallest in a single day since Aug. 19, even as the seven-day average of 1,640 cases is up from August lows of fewer than 1,500 daily cases. Maryland, which moved to the third phase of recovery on Friday, has seen its seven-day average increase from 511 at the end of August to 625 on Tuesday. Caseloads in Virginia have generally held steady in recent days. In Arlington County, residents who live in areas disproportionately affected by the coronavirus will get new services aimed at controlling the spread of the pandemic, officials announced Tuesday. The county government, public schools and the state Department of Emergency Management will bring testing, information and personal protective equipment to areas identified as having an increased risk of transmission of the virus. Schools will distribute about 11,000 informational kits that will include cloth face coverings, hand sanitizer and multilingual information about coronavirus-related support for rent and food assistance. A sample testing and collection site will be set up at Arlington Mill Community Center along Columbia Pike, starting Sept. 14, on the second and fourth Monday of each month from 1 to 7 p.m. It will also be open from 8 a.m. to noon on the first Saturday of each month. The county also plans to distribute information, hand out mask kits and offer a one-day testing event to vulnerable communities, although other details weren’t released Tuesday. “We will not beat this pandemic without providing equitable access to the conditions needed to control and prevent covid-19 spread,” Reuben Varghese, director of the county’s Public Health Division, said in a statement. “Our residents most at risk for covid-19 exposure need this further increase in testing access to identify cases and their close contacts.”


FAQ: Why Assange is on trial in London for extradition to the United States

on a 2003 treaty with Washington. Analysts say the terms of the agreement favor the United States, which must mainly prove there is reasonable suspicion that the crimes of which he is accused were committed. The extradition hearings began in February and were then adjourned until May to allow the sides more time to prepare arguments. In April, the trial date was pushed back to September because of the coronavirus pandemic, as London’s lockdown prevented lawyers from reaching the court. Once the arguments end, the judge is expected to deliberate for several months. The losing side could then appeal, possibly even to the European Court of Human Rights. The Trump administration wants Assange, an Australian citizen, to stand trial in a federal court in Virginia on charges of violating the U.S. Espionage Act, among other alleged violations. In the initial hearing in February, U.S. government lawyer James Lewis told the court that Assange endangered the lives of informants when in 2010 he illegally obtained and published classified information related to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The charges include accusations that he helped Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning hack government computers and attain and spread the classified documents. “These are ordinary criminal charges, and any person, journalist or source who hacks or attempts to gain unauthorized access to a secure system or aids and abets others to do so is guilty of computer misuse,” Lewis told the court, according to NPR. In 2013, the Obama administration considered whether to prosecute Assange but ultimately declined because of concerns that it could set a precedent for prosecuting journalists who share state secrets. The Trump administration consequently took the case back up and requested extradition. Assange and his lawyers have pointed to this shift as support for their claim that the charges are political retaliation for having published unflattering information about Washington and its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They argue that the case is a precedent-setting assault on freedom of speech and media rights. “President Trump came into power with a new approach to freedom of speech and a new hostility to the press amounting effectively to declaring war on investigative journalists,” Assange’s lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald, told Reuters in February. Assange and his team also have argued that he wouldn’t receive a fair trial in the United States. London-based Amnesty International has urged Britain to reject the request. “The UK must


Pandemics, international relations and covid-19

Back in March, the hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts made the counterintuitive case that covid-19 would not fundamentally alter the fabric of international relations. That claim was made at the very early stages of the pandemic, however. Six months, 27 million cases and nearly 900,000 deaths later, does that argument still hold? The editors of International Organization, the leading scholarly journal in international relations, thought that was a good question to solicit tentative answers. As they explain: “It is much too soon to answer these questions with the rigor we typically require in social science journals. Yet international relations scholars have studied the politics of crises and their consequences for a long time. We therefore asked scholars with varied expertise to weigh in on what theory, history, and early data tell us about the politics and implications of the covid-19 pandemic.” You can access the online issue here. I was one of the international relations scholars who participated. The result is “The Song Remains the Same: International Relations After Covid-19,” which is accessible to all. Here is the abstract: PRI’s Sam Ratner summarized it as follows: “Drezner … gazes down from the heights of wherever it is that political scientists consider the basic interactions of states (Walnut Hill, in Drezner’s case) at a disease that has killed over half a million people worldwide and says, basically, ‘enh.’” This is a fair summary! But let me unpack it a little bit. Here is my argument, condensed. First, for most of human history, pandemics have had a pronounced effect on international affairs. From before the Peloponnesian War to the Napoleonic age, disease has affected the balance of power on multiple occasions. In some cases, such as Spain’s encounter with the Aztecs and Incas, the effect was to aid the more powerful actor. Diseases like measles were far more effective than muskets in aiding and abetting the territorial conquest of the New World. In other instances, such as Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, disease was the great leveler. Typhus and dysentery overwhelmed the Grande Armée; Napoleon lost 120,000 troops to disease just in the weeks leading up to the seizure of Moscow, tipping the balance. Second, beginning 150 years ago, a series of societal and technological gains muted the effect of disease on world politics. In the 19th century, dramatic improvements in urban sanitation, food preparation and living standards began to constrict multiple


far more effective than muskets in aiding and abetting the territorial conquest of the New World. In other instances, such as Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, disease was the great leveler. Typhus and dysentery overwhelmed the Grande Armée; Napoleon lost 120,000 troops to disease just in the weeks leading up to the seizure of Moscow, tipping the balance. Second, beginning 150 years ago, a series of societal and technological gains muted the effect of disease on world politics. In the 19th century, dramatic improvements in urban sanitation, food preparation and living standards began to constrict multiple disease vectors. Simply put, it became harder for a pandemic to break out in urban settings. The germ theory of disease acted as a further damper through the development of vaccines and therapeutics for major infectious diseases. Note that all of this was before the microbiological revolution and the development of antibiotics. Third, my claims from March continue to hold up: Covid-19 has not fundamentally altered the distribution of power and interest. The pandemics likeliest to have society-altering effects are those that incapacitate and kill working-age populations. This coronavirus does neither. Both the United States (finance) and China (manufacturing) have exercised leadership in their areas of strength. It is difficult to identify any foreign policy outcome over the past six months that would not have happened in a counterfactual world of no disease. Finally, there are still ways that covid-19 can have system-altering effects. It is relatively straightforward to detect shifts in power and interest. Ideas and identity are different matters entirely. It is possible that the pandemic could, say, cause policymakers to focus far more on economic resilience than efficiency. That would have dramatic effects on the way that world politics proceeds. Similarly, covid-19 might be viewed as a harbinger of more serious threats to come: a more virulent pathogen, or other threats that could trigger systemic collapse. The problem is that we will be uncertain whether lasting effects like these will stick for at least a decade. My essay is the contrarian one, and I urge readers to check out the others that have been published by David Stasavage on regime type and disease, and Michael Kenwick and Beth Simmons on border politics during a pandemic. More will be coming in the next month or so. One reviewer described my paper as “ornery.” As intellectual epitaphs go, I could do a lot worse.


Publisher locks Capital Gazette staff out of their building in Annapolis

It learned of the rally and locked the Capital Gazette staff out of the building, saying that the event “raises important Covid-related health concerns,” according to a text message from a labor relations executive. So, many staff members, former staffers and supporters from the Baltimore Sun gathered in the building’s parking lot Monday, painted protest messages on their cars and then drove down to the Annapolis harbor, where a group of about 200 people expressed their hope that the Capital and the Gazette would keep covering local news, even without a central home from which to do it. “I guess the Tribune didn’t learn after 2018,” said environment reporter Rachael Pacella, who survived the shooting, “that the community here loves these journalists and we’re not going to give up easily. We’re not going to let our newspaper be damaged anymore, and we’re not going to let it be closed down easily.” “You watched people die while you hid under a desk,” recalled features reporter Selene San Felice, also a shooting survivor, “then you’re supposed to get better. Then you take that desk away from me. That’s how this feels. We’re not better. This isn’t better.” The company announced last month that it would also close the newsrooms of the New York Daily News, the Orlando Sentinel, the Allentown Morning Call and the Carroll County (Md.) Times. In Annapolis, the Capital publishes daily and the Gazette twice a week. The company also publishes the Bowie Blade-News once a week. Max Reinsdorf, chief of staff for Tribune Publishing, said in an email Monday night that Tribune was “sensitive to how challenging this decision is for our Annapolis-based employees.” But the company was “consolidating some of our real estate as we navigate revenue declines that have been worsened by the economic impact of the pandemic,” Reinsdorf said. He said Capital Gazette employees would work out of the Baltimore Sun newsroom when the staff there returned. About one-third of Tribune Publishing is owned by Alden Global Capital, which has been accused of purchasing news outlets, then stripping their assets. There was no notice given the staffs before the announcement. Pacella said that the announcement “did cause some of the survivors of the shooting to be retraumatized, to have our space suddenly ripped away like that.” The reporters expressed frustration that they already could not afford to live in Annapolis — they said only four


Britain has just admitted that it’s breaking its word on Brexit

The British House of Commons just saw the unprecedented spectacle of UK government minister Brandon Lewis admitting that proposed legislation will “break international law, in a very specific and limited way." This follows on a report in the Financial Times on Monday describing how the new legislation, forthcoming tomorrow, would break the U.K’s initial withdrawal agreement with the European Union, by introducing new legislation that would undermine parts of the agreement that affect Northern Ireland, and the dramatic resignation of the head of the U.K. government’s legal department. The U.K. is breaking an agreement it made with the European Union last year, at the same time as it is trying to negotiate a much bigger new agreement with the E.U. If that sounds perplexing, here’s the explanation. Britain agreed how it would withdraw from the European Union but now wants to take it back The background to the new crisis is that the U.K. and E.U. already agreed on the broad terms under which Brexit would happen. This “withdrawal agreement” was supposed to have resolved uncertainties that might destabilize peace in Northern Ireland. Brexit might have meant (and might still mean) the introduction of a “hard border” between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That, in turn, might have undermined the fragile peace between Northern Ireland republicans (who want a United Ireland) and loyalists (who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the U.K.). A protocol attached to the withdrawal agreement was supposed to ensure that peace could be maintained in Northern Ireland, no matter what else happened in the U.K.-E.U. relationship. The withdrawal agreement was a necessary condition for the beginning of more wide-ranging negotiations, which are taking place right now between the E.U. and U.K. over what their future relationship will look like. Now, however, the U.K. is going to break this agreement — less than a year after it was reached. On Wednesday it is publishing new legislation, which will effectively override the Northern Ireland protocol on the issues of Northern Ireland’s customs arrangements and state aid decisions. At the same time, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has suggested that the United Kingdom would be able to do perfectly well without any deal with the E.U. on its future relationship. This is probably a bargaining ploy Commentators agree that Britain is trying to influence the current negotiations with the E.U. These negotiations are stuck on the


Two ‘naive’ English soccer players sent home after breaking coronavirus guidelines in Iceland

England’s Football Association removed midfielder Phil Foden and forward Mason Greenwood from the national team roster ahead of Tuesday’s Nations League match at Denmark after they violated the team’s novel coronavirus quarantine guidelines following Saturday’s 1-0 win at Iceland. England Manager Gareth Southgate told reporters Monday that “the two boys have broken the covid guidelines in terms of our secure bubble” and had been sent home from Iceland without further contact with the rest of the team. He denied an Icelandic media report that Foden and Greenwood had invited women from outside the team’s bubble back to the team hotel after Saturday’s game. “Nothing has happened in the areas we occupy in the team hotel,” Southgate said, per Sky Sports. “We are still getting to the depths of all the information because it was only brought to my attention only a couple of hours before training. I am still getting to grips with some of the detail. What is clear is that there was a breach of the coronavirus guidelines. We spent such a long time getting those measures in place; the whole squad followed that together.” Foden issued an apology later Monday on Twitter. “On this occasion I made a poor decision and my behaviour didn’t meet the standards expected of me,” he wrote. “I breached COVID-19 protocols put in place to protect myself and my England colleagues. As a consequence I will now miss the opportunity to travel to Denmark with the squad, and that hurts. I will learn a valuable lesson from this error in judgment and I wish Gareth and the team good luck this week.” Foden, 20, and Greenwood, 18, made their international debuts in Saturday’s match. Manchester City, Foden’s professional team, called his actions “totally inappropriate” in a statement. Manchester United, Greenwood’s club team, said it was “disappointed” in him and will wait to see whether he must enter a 14-day quarantine period. United opens its Premier League season Sept. 19 against Crystal Palace, and City faces Wolves on Sept. 21. “They have been naive, and we have dealt with it appropriately,” Southgate said. “I recognize their age, but of course the whole world is dealing with this pandemic and there is a responsibility on all ages that they do their part. We are not underestimating how important it is we keep the bubble the way we have.” Iceland’s pandemic travel rules mandate that


Coronavirus update: New York’s infection rate has been below 1 percent for 30 days

the virus. New York has more than 439,000 confirmed virus cases and over 30,000 deaths, according to Washington Post data, and it has seen its entire region enter Phase 4 of reopening, which allows places of higher education, gyms and malls to reopen for education and business. The push forward has not been completely smooth, with Cuomo sending out a “SWAT” team focused on testing to Oneonta in Otsego County after a cluster of infections started on the State University of New York Oneonta campus, closing in-person instruction for two weeks. A total of 91 positive cases were identified, for a positivity rate of 4.6 percent from three testing sites, according to the governor’s office. Testers discovered that cases appeared to be connected to the ongoing spread among college students, with 85 of the 91 cases being among people ages 18 to 24. Other colleges and universities across the country have also been grappling with how to hold a fall semester during an active global pandemic. On Monday, President Trump said that his administration will end the pandemic through Operation Warp Speed, which seeks to produce a vaccine in record time, though his stated timeline clashes with that described by experts in his administration. “This could’ve taken two or three years, and instead it’s going to be done in a very short period of time. [We] could even have it during the month of October,” he said, criticizing his political rivals Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.). “The vaccine will be very safe and very effective and it’ll be delivered very soon. You could have a very big surprise coming up.” The lead scientific adviser for Operation Warp Speed told NPR that a vaccine for the virus was “possible but very unlikely” to be available by October or November. Former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb told “Face the Nation” on Sunday that a vaccine for widespread use is likely to be a 2021 event. If a vaccine was created before the end of 2020, it would probably be used for targeted populations, such as health-care workers and nursing home residents, according to Gottlieb. The country could see the end of the more acute phase of the virus because more people are likely to be infected between now and then, he said. Here are some other significant developments: Derek Hawkins and Marisa Iati contributed to this report.


Trump, under fire for alleged comments about veterans, has a long history of disparaging military service

“than the generals do, believe me.” As president, defense spending rose each of the first three years he was in office, with more than $2 trillion in overall spending and $738 billion approved for 2020. The Pentagon greeted the money warmly after facing cuts during the Obama administration that included a reduction in the overall size of the military, smaller pay raises of 1 percent and a shortage in spare parts. Trump’s criticism of “endless wars” has resonated with voters, including a majority of veterans, who believe that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth it, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. But Trump’s relationship with the military sometimes has fractured over his abrupt decisions. For example, while Trump has reduced the number of U.S. troops under his watch in Afghanistan by about 4,000 as part of negotiations with the Taliban to end the war there, violence has remained high, and there is no clarity on whether a full peace deal will be reached. Trump’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from northern Syria last year triggered a period in which Russian forces took over American bases, and some veterans decried what they saw as an abandonment of Kurdish forces who have partnered with the United States against the Islamic State. Trump has had a series of fights with the generals he put in power, some of whom left in anger and dismay. In a 2017 meeting at the Pentagon, he called his top generals “losers” and “a bunch of dopes and babies,” according to “A Very Stable Genius,” by Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig. Among those who have departed include his chief of staff, retired general John F. Kelly, and his defense secretary, Jim Mattis, a McCain favorite. Mattis said earlier this year that “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us.” In response, Trump, who had once lavished praise on Mattis, tweeted: “I didn’t like his ‘leadership’ style or much else about him. . . . Glad he is gone!” Correction: An earlier version of this story, citing inaccurate information provided to The Post, said that Fred Trump Jr. was a member of the Air National Guard. He was a member of the Army National Guard. The story has been corrected.


Records shed light on online harassment of Jamal Khashoggi before his killing

A few months before he was killed, dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi witnessed an ominous change in the kind of attention he was getting from his estranged homeland. The usual critiques of his essays on Arabic social media became harsh and personal, and occasionally threatening. Influential Saudis reviled him on Twitter as an “extremist,” a “criminal” and a “donkey,” attacks that were instantly repeated and amplified by scores of other Twitter accounts, some of them linked to Saudi officials. “It’s the beginning of the end, Khashoggi,” read one posting in December 2017. “Every word you said against the nation is tallied and will be punished soon.” Ten months later, Khashoggi was dead, his body hacked into pieces by Saudi operatives who lured him to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, allegedly on orders of Mohammed bin Salman, the powerful Saudi crown prince commonly known as MBS, according to a U.S. intelligence assessment. But even as criminal proceedings gather steam in Turkey, investigators elsewhere are showing renewed interest in the nonviolent attacks that preceded the journalist’s death. Nearly two years after the killing, a review of Twitter records by U.S. experts is shedding new light on the pattern of allegedly coordinated abuse and intimidation during Khashoggi’s final months, when he was living in Virginia, a campaign that some officials say may have violated U.S. laws, with potentially serious implications for the relationship between Washington and Riyadh. Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor on Monday announced what officials said was the final ruling The government has denied any involvement by Mohammed or other top leaders in the journalist’s killing, or in any organized attacks on his character. A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington said any threats made on social media would run counter to Saudi laws. “Saudi Arabia takes these crimes seriously and prosecutes violators to the full extent of the law,” said the spokesman, Fahad S. Nazer. A Saudi-directed campaign against Khashoggi, if proved, could constitute a breach of the chief statute regulating weapons sales to foreign countries, U.S. officials and legal experts say. The Arms Export Control Act explicitly prohibits commerce with governments that harass U.S. citizens or residents — a provision intended to protect foreign dissidents and asylum seekers in the United States. Saudi Arabia is one of the U.S. defense industry’s biggest foreign customers, purchasing billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware every year. In Congress, some lawmakers are


Bigger hauls, fewer choices: How the pandemic has changed our grocery shopping habits forever

Contactless shopping and the elimination of free samples. Less browsing and “product discovery” and more focus on the expediency of repurchasing. These are ways the novel coronavirus has changed how Americans buy groceries. The pandemic has altered what products people purchase, when and where, who is buying them, and how much time is devoted to the endeavor. Americans are spending more, yet increasingly they are being offered fewer choices, both online and in person, slowing a years-long trend toward innovations that put “good for you” and “environmentally friendly” spins on established and much-loved products. The winnowing — what one expert calls a “Sovietish” reduction of choice — is also solidifying eating patterns, for good or for ill. With customers’ selections reinforced by online advertising, repeat ordering and other algorithms, the food system is becoming bifurcated as consumers who have expressed enthusiasm for healthful or artisanal foods are offered more of the same, while those with a penchant for highly processed comfort foods are inundated with opportunities to restock. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and dean of Tufts University’s nutrition science school, says the pandemic has heightened disparities in shopping patterns and health between high- and low-income Americans. “There are two different reactions to covid — a small number who are getting health conscious and reacquainting themselves with real food, and a larger group that is going with comfort food that is cheap and shelf-stable,” he says. The great eating divide is an unexpected result of changes set in motion by the shutdown of restaurants and the retreat to home kitchens, which have led consumers to spend significantly more money on groceries than they did last year. The monthly grocery bill for the average American household spiked to $525 in March, up 30 percent over March 2019, according to census data, as dollars pivoted from restaurant meals to home and people snapped up items in bulk. By July it had settled to about $455 a month, still up 10 percent over the same month last year. Based on research conducted for the food industry trade group FMI by an analytics firm, FMI Senior Vice President Mark Baum says many consumers are increasing the amount of money spent per trip and simultaneously decreasing the amount of time spent in the store. Shoppers are more likely to have a list of critical tried-and-true items and are less inclined to browse and let serendipity guide


book “Grocery,” writes that the number of items offered in U.S. supermarkets went from 9,000 in 1975 to a staggering 40,000 to 50,000 by the beginning of 2020. The pandemic has not only halted that growth, it’s reversed it. Food manufacturers are focused on producing more of the top-selling varieties of a particular product, pushing off the launch of different flavors or spinoffs until sample stations can return. Giants like General Mills, Conagra, Kellogg’s and Campbell’s, seeing a rise in sales of their dominant brands, are making more of those at the expense of new products. Meanwhile, budget-minded shoppers have embraced more-affordable private-label store brands, squeezing out shelf space for independent and rookie brands. The contractions are most visible in the beverage aisle, specifically in a reduction in the array of sugar-sweetened and sugar-free sodas on the shelves, according to Signals Analytics chief marketing officer Frances Zelazny. On-the-go snacks like granola bars are also being squeezed out as working from home is normalized. And while Americans’ enthusiasm for sustainability has waned, reducing sales of items such as personal-hygiene products or cooking oils that make environmental claims, interest in products touting immune-health benefits such as probiotic yogurts and garlicky foods has increased, Zelazny says. This “narrower range” is not just a brick-and-mortar constriction. As the pandemic accelerates the shift to online shopping, the number of packaged food products available to purchase on the Internet fell 21 percent globally from January to May, according to Euromonitor International, a London-based market research company. It found that nine out of the 10 biggest countries by retail sales saw a drop in the number of unique SKUs available online. The uptick in online shopping is expected to further reduce choices. “Four years ago, online shopping was embryonic,” Baum says. “We projected then there would be $100 billion in online sales by 2025, and we’ve revised it twice since then. In January we revised the number to $143 billion, and that was pre-covid, so obviously we will have to revise that projection again.” Max Pedro, co-founder of Takeoff Technologies, which develops hyperlocal robot automation for grocers, says online shopping may “stifle innovation,” with boxed, canned and other shelf-stable items, typically stocked in the center aisles of grocery stores, narrowed to fewer choices — or even disappearing as they move from stores to e-commerce. “The boring center aisles may go virtual so that the more exciting fruits,


increased, Zelazny says. This “narrower range” is not just a brick-and-mortar constriction. As the pandemic accelerates the shift to online shopping, the number of packaged food products available to purchase on the Internet fell 21 percent globally from January to May, according to Euromonitor International, a London-based market research company. It found that nine out of the 10 biggest countries by retail sales saw a drop in the number of unique SKUs available online. The uptick in online shopping is expected to further reduce choices. “Four years ago, online shopping was embryonic,” Baum says. “We projected then there would be $100 billion in online sales by 2025, and we’ve revised it twice since then. In January we revised the number to $143 billion, and that was pre-covid, so obviously we will have to revise that projection again.” Max Pedro, co-founder of Takeoff Technologies, which develops hyperlocal robot automation for grocers, says online shopping may “stifle innovation,” with boxed, canned and other shelf-stable items, typically stocked in the center aisles of grocery stores, narrowed to fewer choices — or even disappearing as they move from stores to e-commerce. “The boring center aisles may go virtual so that the more exciting fruits, vegetables, meat and seafoods will be in person,” he predicts. “No one gets excited about roaming the supermarket for paper towels.” Baum says that the purchasing of some items — coffee, water, pet food — will pivot to auto-replenishment or online subscriptions, and that there has been “a tremendous slowdown of new product introductions” in stores. “Esoteric things,” niche items for which retailers might have a hard time justifying shelf space, can have a much more avid audience online, says Daniel Lubetzky, founder of snack company Kind. Franklin Isacson, founding partner of Coefficient Capital, a consumer package goods venture capital firm, likens online shopping to spearfishing, while in-store shopping is more akin to net fishing. “If you go stand in the salty-snack aisle of Kroger, there is probably a sampling station. You pick up a bag, read the nutritional panel,” he says. “Whereas on Amazon, you’re typing in ‘Heinz ketchup.’ You’re not going to discover Sir Kensington. People that buy groceries online tend to buy the brands that they know, the brands that have highest unprompted awareness. Seventy-five percent of repeat online shoppers start shopping in their previous basket, so if you’re a new brand it’s hard.” In other words,


The summer of canceled plans: How 14 pro travelers spent the season

For many, summer 2020 was a season of canceled plans. While the pandemic destroyed lives, it also disrupted countless others in less severe but still painful ways. “I just can’t stop thinking of all the dreams and all the creative adventures that have been put on hold or are upended by this,” Rick Steves told us earlier this summer. “Whether it’s people’s graduations or weddings or once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to do their thing, it’s kind of heartbreaking.” For people who travel for a living, the pandemic has been jarring. Some skipped travel altogether, like Helena Rizzo, a chef who runs Maní in Sao Paulo, which was named one of the best restaurants in the world in 2014. Instead of traveling extensively for projects like Netflix’s “The Final Table,” which she judged last year, this summer she stayed home. Others began to venture out once lockdowns lifted, navigating travel under new restrictions. Writer Jake Emen had already ended his lease in San Diego so he could live out of a suitcase full-time when coronavirus hit the United States. After months of staying with family in Arizona, Emen set off on a road trip alone. We asked avid travelers, many of whom are writers, how they shifted gears this summer. IG: I’ve been sitting this summer out in my father-in-law’s country cottage — a burgundy house deep in the Swedish countryside. A house over 100 years old, it’s quaint and cozy, but lacks certain modern amenities like a shower and a laundry machine. My husband and I love it though; we’ve been taking long walks in the forest in search of chanterelles, and swimming in the neighboring lake when our scalps begin to itch. There’s a sauna in one of the barns, and we’ll boil a pot of water and clean ourselves in there if the lake is too cold. We’ll be leaving this Swedish oasis soon to settle down in Taiwan, but these past three months of self-isolation have been wonderful. Pandemic or not, we’ve decided that we’re doing this every summer. IG: After riding out the first four months of the pandemic sitting at home, as we all did, I decided it was time to take advantage of that all-American birthright — the road trip. Two months later, I’m still moving, with 20 national parks and monuments under my belt, and 12,000 miles on the odometer. Even in a pandemic year,