The best photos of the biggest supermoon in 68 years

bigger and brighter than normal due to its proximity, especially just as it hung over the horizon. We won’t see the moon this big and this bright again until 2034. (Monday night, the moon will also be nearly full, but clouds are likely to obstruct viewing.) Below are around 30 of the best shots among hundreds shared with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. Thanks to all who submitted photos. The District and Mall area Supermoon, Nov. 13, 2016. (Angela Pan via Flickr) Supermoon, Nov. 13, 2016. (Jim Havard via Flickr) Supermoon, Nov. 13, 2016. (Michelle Fettig via Facebook) @capitalweather supermoon from Rosslyn. https://t.co/d7HMIBdpnx Hey @capitalweather I think you left out this one I got at the #washingtonmonument last night #supermoon https://t.co/YaJnSjbT2n Pac-moon. #supermoon #beavermoon https://t.co/uMAuCkGurZ @capitalweather @KathrynProciv @JimCantore @PoPville Supermoon setting over DC #supermoon @capitalweather @StormHour @JimCantore @angelafritz @washingtonpost @DCist… https://t.co/0jTbPiDpGA Super moon rising @capitalweather @PoPville https://t.co/ZlaXhTKxO7 Capitol Supermoon, Nov. 13, 2016. (Jenn Vogel via Flickr) #supermoon over #Washington DC tonight @uscapitol - @nbcwashington @fox5dc @ABC7News @capitalweather @PoPville https://t.co/HhK3bviV4z Lincoln Memorial Supermoon, Nov. 13, 2016. (Christopher Fukuda via Flickr) Moonrise yesterday evening #WashingtonDC #supermoon @capitalweather @yourtake @JimCantore @StormHour https://t.co/Q9rYOOYiMO Just as the #supermoon peeked above the horizon. @nbcwashington @PoPville @TomKierein @capitalweather https://t.co/FfDWIdf3Rt The supermoon sets beside the Lincoln this morning @ABC7Alex @SteveRudinABC7 @capitalweather @JimCantore… https://t.co/qUqd7pfka8 Jefferson Memorial Supermoon, Nov. 13, 2016. (Jim Knapp via Flickr) Supermoon, Nov. 13, 2016 (Carol Jean Stalun via Flickr) U.S. Air Force Memorial Finally caught the full moon setting behind the USAF Memorial. #supermoon #AirForce #Astrophotography… https://t.co/L8YpmzNiTO Virginia Supermoon, from Stafford, Va., Nov. 13, 2016. (Cindy James via Facebook) Supermoon, from Blue Mountain in Linden, Va., Nov. 13, 2016. (Steve Ross via Facebook) Tonight's #supermoon as seen from Dulles. @capitalweather https://t.co/UE6eSop5VB @capitalweather @hbwx Fairfax Super Moon https://t.co/roPlcRBKLO @capitalweather @WHSVnews Tonight's Full Moon Rising over Shenandoah Valley https://t.co/OMOEpqILe2 Maryland Supermoon, Chancellorsville, Va., Nov. 13, 2016. (Theresa Rasmussen via Flickr) Supermoon, Mt. Airy, Md., Nov. 13, 2016. (Alexis Adam Gerard via Facebook) The #supermoon rising near Baltimore, MD @JustinWeather @capitalweather https://t.co/XxJpDJ7wz8 @capitalweather Supermoon full moon rising over Frederick Airport tonight as a plane was taking off... https://t.co/s2Ci9c9Glo River and Bay Supermoon over the Chesapeake Bay, Nov. 13, 2016. (Carol J Newbill via Facebook) Supermoon, Nov. 13, 2016. (Chris Keyser via Facebook) Supermoon over Ft. Washington, Nov. 13, 2016. (Tom Hamilton via Flickr) @capitalweather @WTOP images from the Supermoon rising over the Potomac https://t.co/GKt1mHe9Gz


Flournoy to Trump: Let women serve in combat roles

“Some of the things that they’re asking you to do and be politically correct about are ridiculous.” In September, Trump defended a 2013 tweet in which he seemed to blame gender integration in the military for a rise in sexual assaults. “26,000 unreported sexual assaults in the military — only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?” Trump tweeted. Flournoy, who was widely expected to be named as the first female defense secretary if Clinton had won, said the Trump team should look at all of the research, develop a deeper understanding of the issue and then make decisions based on what the actual implications would be of rolling back military personnel reforms, rather than treating it as a political issue. “I would hope the new administration would take a fact-based, data-informed approach to this issue, understand it for all of its potential implications and ultimately choose to stay on the trajectory that’s been set by a couple of administrations now,” she said. Setting standards and then allowing members of the military to try to meet those standards regardless of gender or gender identity is the right approach socially and militarily, she argued. “Ultimately, having a military that is a truly a meritocracy, that has the diversity that looks like America, that leverages all our strengths across the full range of human capital and people who are willing to serve, that’s in our interest as a nation,” she said. If Trump does decide the new policy based on the views of the uniformed military leadership, the current reforms could very well be reversed. According to reports, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, opposed the decision to allow women to serve in combat roles and tried to exempt his service, the Marine Corps, from the policy. The GOP platform explicitly calls for keeping women out of combat units and infantry battalions and proposes a review of the Obama administration’s “ideology based personnel policies.” “We reject the use of the military as a platform for social experimentation and will not accept or continue attempts to undermine military priorities and mission readiness,” the platform states. “Military readiness should not be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.” The incoming Trump administration is pledging to strengthen and expand the size of the U.S. military, but it risks weakening that very effort


Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s court-martial trial has been delayed once again

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is seen leaving a courtroom after a pretrial hearing in Fort Bragg, N.C., on Nov. 14. He faces charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy after walking off his post in Afghanistan in 2009. (AP Photo/Jonathan Drew) The court-martial trial of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier who was held captive for five years after being captured by the Taliban, has been delayed for a second time as defense officials grapple with how to review reams of evidence in the case, Army officials said Monday. Bergdahl, 30, will now face trial beginning May 15 at Fort Bragg, N.C., Army officials said in a statement. The trial had been scheduled for August, and then for February. The decision to postpone was made after the prosecution asked last month for a continuance to May 1. The defense team, which has been unable to review some of the evidence in the case because it is highly classified, argued that the trial should be delayed until June. Bergdahl faces charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy in a general court-martial, the most serious form the U.S. military convenes. He could be sentenced to up to life in prison for disappearing from his infantry platoon’s base in Afghanistan’s Paktika province on June 30, 2009, spawning a five-year manhunt that ultimately resulted in the Obama administration swapping five Taliban officials for him in a controversial trade in May 2014. Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban within hours of leaving his base. He was ultimately held captive and tortured over the border in Pakistan for most of the next five years by the Haqqani network, a group affiliated with the Taliban, U.S. officials have said. Bergdahl has said he left his base with plans to run 19 miles to a larger base and report what he believed was poor leadership in his unit. The decision to delay the trial was made at Fort Bragg during a pretrial hearing that will continue Tuesday. The defense team is working to obtain computer hardware and software that is capable of handling classified records. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl arrives for a pretrial hearing at Fort Bragg, N.C., in January 2016. (Ted Richardson/Associated Press) President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly bashed Bergdahl during his campaign for the White House. Trump has called Bergdahl a “dirty, rotten traitor” and suggested that he should be dropped off in Afghanistan


Should dogs be guinea pigs in government research? A bipartisan group says no.

the Appropriations Committee that funds these agencies, I certainly welcome more analysis on what federal agencies are doing in terms of testing on dogs and other animals. I look forward to collaborating with a bipartisan group of my colleagues in Congress to address this problem.” Supporters of animal testing say it saves people’s lives. Animals’ biological similarity to humans makes them indispensable models for developing life-saving treatments, they say — for people and animals. Vaccines for polio, tuberculosis and hepatitis have relied on animal research, as have medical devices including pacemakers and life-support machines for premature babies, according to Speaking of Research, an advocacy organization. Researchers today use animals to study treatments for diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and other illnesses. “Animal research is vital to the study of disease, and it is the primary reason why scientists have hope that they’ll be able to cure Ebola and other emerging infectious diseases,” Frankie L. Trull, president of the Foundation for Biomedical Research, wrote in the Baltimore Sun in 2015. The body of a 12 year-old boy who had died from Ebola was buried without ceremony in Bong County, Liberia, in 2014. (Michel du Cille/The Washington Post) Critics say the findings of animal tests often are not applicable to humans, and they say technological advances are increasingly providing alternatives. Their cause gained traction when, after years of controversy, the NIH announced last year that it was ending invasive research on chimpanzees. That came two years after Director Francis S. Collins said “new scientific methods and technologies have rendered [chimpanzees’] use in research largely unnecessary.” White Coat Waste was mostly unable to find information on the breeds of dogs used in federal labs, although it said most dogs used in research are beagles, citing NIH materials. In one NIH study the group found, researchers induced septic shock in beagles with pneumonia, sometimes causing hemorrhaging and lung problems, to compare transfusions of fresh and old blood. The report also includes information from some contracts published on a government spending website. One 2015 NIH contract listed a cost of $13,795 for a “Beagle canine (male) 10-13 kgs, 2 years old.” A line item on a 2016 VA contract was $4,207 for “three male mongrels.” Read more: Scientists just can’t stop studying falling cats This face-planting fox is a winner we can all get behind Massachusetts voters say no to tight quarters for hens, calves and pigs


Scientists are building a telescope to seek another Earth — and you can help

have already been on various NASA missions, according to Project Blue's lead scientist Supriya Chakrabarti, an astronomer at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The project's most important and most expensive challenge will be developing a high-performance coronagraph — a device capable of blocking light from the two stars so that scientists can detect the much fainter reflections of their nearby planets. If those planets exist, that is. In theory, this can be done with a deformable mirror that manipulates and refocuses light from the center of an image, so that the doubled reflections from a star cancel each other out. But such a coronagraph is incredibly difficult to build on Earth and has never been tried in space. The telescope also must be able to remain focused on Alpha Centauri even as it whizzes around Earth at a speed of 5 miles per second. “Think of a lighthouse which is illuminating a marble, where the lighthouse is at Cape Cod and you are trying to image it from San Francisco,” Chakrabarti said. “That will give you an idea of how challenging it is.” The best images of the binary stars Alpha Centauri A and B taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. (ESA/NASA) Once aloft, the telescope would image blue wavelengths of light coming from Alpha Centauri; this region of the visible spectrum is most likely to indicate whether a planet has liquid water and an atmosphere. If the Project Blue telescope finds anything, Morse and Marty are certain that NASA or other research organizations will leap to develop instruments and telescopes capable of investigating the planet further. That said, it's well within the realm of possibility that the project never gets to that point. The telescope is barely a concept yet — it may be thwarted by funding or engineering problems before it ever reaches a launchpad or derailed by an instrument malfunction once it reaches space. Environmental factors — for example, clouds of dust surrounding the Alpha Centauri system — could make any planets hard to image. And it may well be that the stars have no planets at all. “It’s pretty ambitious,” Steve Howell, a member of NASA’s Kepler science team who is not involved with the effort, told Popular Science when Project Blue was first announced last month. “But that’s okay, we should do ambitious things.” Project Blue is the not the only space exploration effort to


The Daily 202: Obama in a state of denial about Trump, as Democrats work through the stages of grief

news sites from its advertising network, seeking to prohibit misleading and deceptive information from generating revenue on the site. The decision came hours after a similar move from Google. (Wall Street Journal) - The FAA temporarily restricted flights over New York City until Trump is sworn in as president at the behest of the Secret Service. (Mark Berman) - Columbia University announced it is suspending its wrestling season after discovering sexually explicit, homophobic and racist text messages sent by members of the team. In a statement, Obama’s alma mater said team members will not compete until an investigation on the incident is complete. (Scott Allen) - Hate crimes against Muslims in the U.S. spiked by 67 percent in 2015, according to new FBI data, reaching their highest levels since the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. (New York Magazine) - Former Army private Chelsea Manning is petitioning Obama for clemency after she was convicted in 2013 of leaking a trove of classified documents to WikiLeaks. Manning, who pleaded guilty to the charges, has served more than six years in federal custody – longer than any other convicted leaker in U.S. history. (Ellen Nakashima) - Meanwhile, Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s court-martial trial has been delayed for a second time, as the defense team grapples with how to review “reams” of classified case information. Bergdahl, who faces charges of desertion and misbehavior after walking off his post in Afghanistan in 2009, will now be tried in May. He could face life in prison if convicted. (Dan Lamothe) - The International Criminal Court is considering launching a war-crimes investigation in Afghanistan, after a prosecutor said there is “reasonable basis” to believe U.S. soldiers committed war crimes, including torture. (New York Times) - A federal judge ordered the release of Brendan Dassey, the Wisconsin man featured in the Netflix series “Making a Murderer,” after his homicide conviction in the 2005 death of Teresa Halbach was overturned. (WTMJ-Milwaukee) - New Zealand rescue workers are using military helicopters and a navy ship to evacuate tourists and residents from a coastal town, after a powerful earthquake Monday night left thousands stranded. Officials said the 7.8-magnitude quake killed at least two people and triggered a small tsunami. (AP) - Russian Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev was detained overnight for bribery charges, following accusations that he received $2 million in connection with a huge oil deal. Ulyukayev is the


Target gets some of its momentum back heading into the holiday season

the holiday season,” said Brian Cornell, Target’s chief executive, during a conference call with investors. Target said it saw especially strong sales of items such as clothes and home goods as parents sent their children off to school and college. For example, the kids’ apparel department saw a 6 percent increase in sales during the quarter, executives said. These types of products — clothing and decor — are ones with particularly high profit margins, so it was especially beneficial for Target’s bottom line that it saw strength in these areas. This is part of why Target has been investing heavily in sprucing up its offerings, most notably with the launch of Cat & Jack, a private kids’ clothing label, and Pillowfort, a house brand of furniture, decor, and bedding for kids’ rooms. The retailer said it has also benefited from a recent change to its marketing tactics, in which it has moved to put a bigger spotlight on value and low prices. Grocery continued to be a challenging area for Target, with comparable sales in this department down slightly. Some of that simply reflects a broad-based deflation in food prices, but executives also said they have significant work to do to improve the presentation and selection in this department. Target’s online sales grew 26 percent in the latest quarter, and yet e-commerce still accounts for a tiny sliver of the big-box chain’s overall sales: In the quarter, just 3.5 percent of sales came from the Web. During the busy holiday period, the retailer is planning to rely heavily on its stores to help it flex more muscle online. Target, like many of its industry counterparts, has invested in click-and-collect programs that allow shoppers to make purchases online and pick them up at a local store. It is also aiming to ship more orders from its stores to your doorstep. John Mulligan, Target’s chief operating officer, said he expects that stores will fulfill more than half of digital demand during the holiday rush. Target recorded a profit of $608 million ($1.06 per share) for the three months ending Oct. 29, up from $549 million (76 cents per share) a year earlier. Target’s revenue slipped to $16.4 billion a 6.7 percent decrease from the same period last year. However, the decline largely reflects Target’s decision to sell its pharmacy business to CVS. The company’s stock jumped some 9 percent in early trading.


Robert Miller and Dudley Brooks named Deputy Directors of Photography

From Director of Photography MaryAnne Golon: I am delighted to announce that Dudley Brooks and Robert Miller will become deputy directors of photography effective Monday, November 21. Dudley will be the deputy for Features and Sports and will work with me to manage 8th floor photography needs for Style, Sports, Arts & Style, The Washington Post Magazine, Food, Travel, Local Living, and Weekend with me. Dudley’s creativity and visual thinking have contributed greatly to the success of our newly redesigned magazine. He will now bring his ideas and energy to the rest of our features colleagues and to coaching our staff photojournalists. Dudley was a staff photojournalist at The Post for 20 years before becoming AME of Photography at The Baltimore Sun and later the Director of Photography for Ebony and Jet magazines at Johnson Publishing in Chicago. Dudley has been married to his wife Diane for more than 30 years and they are the parents of three sons Dorian, Destin, and Donavan. He also loves American muscle cars and almost anything Harley-Davidson. Robert Miller will be the deputy for News on the 7th floor and will work with me on the photography needs for National, Foreign, Financial, Real Estate, Metro, Investigative, Outlook and the Hub. Robert has deftly handled the last eighteen months of the presidential campaign and national enterprise coverage with grace, dedication, and endless stamina. He is looking forward to coaching our newest photo editing staff members and our staff photojournalists in his new role. Robert was a staff photojournalist at The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., and rose to Director of Photography and Multimedia there before joining the Post in 2008. Robert is an avid runner and loves to people-watch through his street photography. He has many loyal followers on Instagram. He loves to spend time with his wife Yuko Miller; their son Jacob is about to graduate from engineering school at Virginia Tech. Please join me in congratulating them both.


This is where Obama’s hugely ambitious climate policies were headed — before Trump came along

economy, and ensuring a just transition for Americans whose livelihoods are connected to fossil fuel production and use.” The document outlines a suite of strategies to reduce emissions, including the potential adoption of futuristic technologies. Not only must the U.S. cease “nearly all fossil fuel electricity production” (except for coal or gas combined with carbon capture and storage), electrify its vehicles, and phase down other greenhouse gases — methane from oil and gas and agriculture, nitrous oxide from agricultural operations and other sources, hydroflurocarbons from refrigerants–it must expand the areas of the country covered by forests by 40 to 50 million acres. On top of that, the document also speaks of potentially implementing a technology called “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage,” or BECCS, which would actively subtract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It would do so through a process that combines together burning trees or plants for energy, storing the carbon released in the ground, and then growing more plants and pulling more carbon from the air. BECCS is controversial, however, in part because the technology does not exist at a large scale. It also could require enormous amounts of land in order to grow and regrow the required plants or trees. The White House document both holds the technology out as a possibility but also says that 80 percent reductions in greenhouse gases are available without a reliance on it. If the U.S. were to achieve this 2050 goal, then we would move from emitting some 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalents each year down to well below 2 billion tons. Eventually, emissions in all countries will have to decline to zero in order to meet long range climate goals. But the entire edifice appears to builds upon the U.S.’s more near term goal of 26 to 28 percent reductions by 2025, which in turn relies on Obama policies, like the Clean Power Plan. That’s a policy that Trump has pledged to reverse. Several climate policy experts in Marrakech nonetheless argued Wednesday that an ambitious goal for 2050, like the one unveiled by the administration, is not necessarily lost simply because of Trump’s election and professed policies. “At least for the next 5 years, a lot of the things that need to happen are already being driven forward,” said David Waskow, who heads the international climate initiative at the World Resources Institute and spoke from Marrakech, citing


Scottish politician says Brexit changed Toblerone and government should fix it

Beattie, a member of the Scottish Parliament from the Scottish National Party, has put forward a motion calling for the British government to investigate and rectify an unorthodox issue: the weight of Toblerone bars. The iconic chocolate bar, known for its triangular shape, became the center of political discussion in Britain last week after news spread that some versions would have wider spaces between the peaks in a bid to lower the bars' weight. In his motion, Beattie linked the change to Britain's recent vote to leave the European Union, suggesting: That the Parliament notes with concern Mondelez International's recent decision to widen the gaps between the segments of the iconic Swiss chocolate bar, Toblerone, in the U.K.; understands that this was made in order to allay rising costs for numerous ingredients; believes that this is emblematic of the devastating consequences that Brexit could bring; offers its condolences to those mourning this change to the bar; calls on the U.K. Government to take speedy action to rectify the change, but wishes the company the best possible success with the lighter bar. Many social media users have suggested that the new design could be linked to Britain's vote to exit the European Union, or Brexit. #toblerone #brexit I told you that leaving the EU would have serious consequences. Now I' m really upset. https://t.co/w81cWYpNl4 In a post on Facebook in October, Toblerone's producers had acknowledged that some bars would be downsized because of “higher costs for numerous ingredients.” However, Mondelez executives told the Wall Street Journal on Monday that the change had been planned long before the June Brexit vote and was not related. According to the BBC, Beattie's motion sparked a snack-related debate that included numerous puns. “Given the grief Mr. Beattie is suffering over the scaling down of Toblerone, the Scottish Conservatives pledge today to buy him some good Scots chocolate, like a pack of Tunnock's tea cakes, which — regardless of Brexit — remain as delicious and substantial as always,” responded Murdo Fraser, a lawmaker from Britain's ruling Conservative Party. Notwithstanding the levity of the Toblerone situation, the price of popular goods in a post-Brexit Britain has become a serious issue, with the devalued British pound prompting some companies to raise prices. BuzzFeed recently published a list of items that have become more expensive since the vote, including the stereotypical British staples Marmite, Walkers Crisps and Typhoo tea.


There’s actually a way for Trump to help coal and still help the climate

Construction in 2014 on Southern Co.’s Kemper County power plant near Meridian, Miss. (Gary Tramontina/Bloomberg) Environmentalists are terrified of a Trump presidency. So are climate campaigners. But some observers say Trump’s peculiar campaign promises — and in particular, his pledge to help rescue the ailing coal industry — could, ironically, help to deliver one of the key missing pieces that researchers say is needed to fix climate change. That piece is called “carbon capture and storage,” or for short, CCS. It actually refers to a nascent bevy of technologies that would allow for the stripping of carbon dioxide from various industrial processes, ranging from steel manufacturing to coal burning, and then sequestering it beneath the ground. In many cases, the pure streams of carbon dioxide can actually be used to help push more oil out of the earth in a procedure called “enhanced oil recovery,” potentially improving the economic value of the entire process. “If coal is to have a future, it needs to have CCS,” said Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman who has tried to convince fellow conservatives that climate change is the real thing. Yet CCS has been struggling in recent years. The Energy Department has withdrawn funding from several massive projects, and the Kemper project in Mississippi, being managed by the large utility Southern Company, has been faulted for cost overruns. Currently there are 38 major projects underway around the world, including three in the United States that are just about to come online. But renewable energy has received massively more investment than CCS in recent years, notes a recent report from the Global CCS Institute. None of that, however, changes the fact that CCS is a technology that is believed to be essential to battling climate change, not only because it can take the climate bite out of coal but because it can also strip carbon from many other industrial processes, like the production of ethanol, cement, and steel. August bodies like the International Energy Agency and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have underscored this conclusion. Indeed, there are visions of pairing CCS together with biomass burning, and thereby creating a “negative emissions” technology called “BECCS” (bioenergy and carbon capture and storage) that would burn plants or trees for energy, capture and bury the resulting carbon dioxide, and then let subsequent plant regrowth stow away even more. The result would be a


People are outraged that a school official wore blackface — and they can’t make him resign

offensive,” said Carolyn Barber-Pierre, assistant vice president for multicultural affairs at Tulane University. At the University of Oregon, a law professor missed that lesson: The professor was placed on administrative leave after wearing blackface to a Halloween party attended by faculty and students. A faculty member of the School of Law @ UO dressed up as blackface for a Halloween party... HOW IS THIS OKAY!!??! Blackface minstrel acts were popular in the 1800s, when white audiences weren’t interested in seeing real black entertainers and instead preferred performers who were pretending to be black. “The audience for these shows was largely working-class whites, and at first the blackface character was actually a smart and sympathetic one,” “The Tavis Smiley Show” once observed. “But as time went on, the minstrel show took on a more racist tone.” These shows “presented the black character as being stupid, as being comical, as being basically a frivolous character,” cultural critic Mel Watkins told PBS. “Now, how that impacted upon society itself was that they embraced it. They loved it. This was what people had thought about blacks all along. So [that] characterization of blacks then reaffirmed what mainstream America had been thinking all along.” “Minstrelsy desensitized Americans to horrors of chattel slavery,” wrote Blair L.M. Kelley, an associate professor of history at North Carolina State University. “These performances were object lessons about the harmlessness of southern slavery. By encouraging audiences to laugh, they showed bondage as an appropriate answer for the lazy, ignorant slave. Why worry about the abolition of slavery when black life looked so fun, silly, and carefree? Even the violence of enslavement just became part of the joke.” Noting that “blackface became a mainstay of stage and later film performance,” Kelley wrote that “most often blackface was used as a comic device that played on the stereotypes of black laziness, ignorance, or crass behavior for laughs.” She added that “the history of blackface minstrelsy isn’t talked about regularly today, but its cultural residue is all around us. . . . Until we actively remember the ugliness of this history, people will continue to blacken their faces without recognizing the horror hidden beneath the paint.” Read more: Slavery is a tough role, hard sell at Colonial Williamsburg White supremacist stabs interracial couple after seeing them kiss at bar, police say ‘Go back to Africa’? This man will — if racists pay his way.


Walmart sees sales rise, profits fall as it heads into holiday shopping season

stores open more than a year. The uptick came as the retailer did a better job of keeping store shelves stocked, and as its online sales heated up. This time around, e-commerce accounted for a greater share of the growth on this metric than in any previous quarter. “It’s great to see an improving e-commerce business compliment the momentum we have in our stores,” said Doug McMillon, Walmart’s chief executive, in remarks to investors. Worldwide, Walmart’s e-commerce sales were up 20 percent. In part, these results reflect the company’s recent acquisition of Jet.com. But that online site was only part of the Walmart portfolio for the last several weeks of the quarter, not the entire period. One challenging area of the business was the grocery department, where Walmart draws more than half of its total sales. Broad-based deflation in food prices once again created drag on the retailer’s revenues. Walmart is now turning its attention to the crucial holiday season, where it has put strong emphasis on offering speedier service in its stores. The retailer is talking up its addition of special team of workers known as “holiday helpers,” who are charged with keeping checkout lanes moving quickly. The employees, recognizable by their bright yellow vests and Santa hats, will direct customers to open registers, or even run back into the store to grab items they may have forgotten. And the retailer is trying for a second straight year to offer a simplified slate of discounts. With the exception of a blitz of Black Friday deals, Walmart’s offers will largely be in place for the duration of the holiday season. Executives have said customers found a barrage of limited-time promotions to be frustrating. On a conference call with reporters, executives were asked whether they thought the results of the presidential election might impact how the holiday shopping season shaped up. “We haven’t really seen any noticeable change in sentiment in our customers,” said Greg Foran, Walmart’s U.S. chief executive. Foran’s comments echo what Brian Cornell, the chief executive of Target, said Wednesday when asked a similar question. “We remain very optimistic about the holiday season,” Cornell said, referencing economic factors such as a low unemployment rate. Walmart’s revenue was $118.2 billion, up 0.7 percent from the same period last year. (Adjusting for currency fluctuations, revenue was $120.3 billion.) Profit slipped 8.2 percent to $3.03 billion, or 98 cents a share.


The family-style restaurant dinners that are perfect for big groups

by Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post) Compass Rose 1346 T St. NW. 202-506-4765. compassrosedc.com. Expect: Price: Duration: Talk about an escape: The first sign that you’re in for a special evening is the setting itself. The Bedouin Tent at Compass Rose was created from a back patio that owner Rose Previte enclosed and made to look like the place she slept on a Sahara Desert trip. Think pillows, throws, dim lights — and a really chill soundtrack. You’re completely separated from the rest of the restaurant. The dinner kicks off with a celebratory wine toast. From there, sit back, loosen your belts and be prepared for a seemingly endless parade of dishes culled from the globally inspired street food menu. Your meal may include everything from a Lebanese fattoush salad and African curry goat to Indian bhel puri chaat and Spanish fried potatoes. There are usually a few specials or dishes the kitchen is trying out. No dinner at Compass Rose would be complete without khachapuri, the Georgian bread filled with egg, cheese and butter. Want a second? No problem. Servers are good about trying to gauge your hunger and interest in certain dishes. (Meat-free fare wasn’t as forthcoming as we would have liked for the vegetarian in our party.) The evening ends with a bit of a show. You’ll be provided with Moroccan mint tea, over which you position a sugar cube that you saturate with drops of lavender absinthe. Set the cube on fire, watch it flame blue and drip into the tea. It’s a fitting end to a very cool night. DBGB chef Michael Martin carries a whole roasted suckling pig through the restaurant for presenting to the table before it's sliced. (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) DBGB 931 H St. NW. 202-695-7660. dbgb.com/dc. Expect: Price: Duration: This is a dinner you’re not likely to soon forget. That’s mostly because of the dish at the center of it all: a roasted suckling pig. Chef Ed Scarpone starts by deboning a 14-pound young pig, then fills it with a sausage stuffing made from the loin and a separate shoulder, plus such seasonal touches as apples and grilled leeks. The pig is sewn back up, poached and roasted to get a perfectly crackly skin, boosted from a glaze of foie gras fat. Before it’s sliced, the finished product comes out to the table whole — good for


Legal pot won big at the ballot box last week. Now the real challenges start.

NORML, a pro-pot lobbying group, called it “inordinately high” and predicted that it would “encourage a lot of black-market activity for the foreseeable future.” Steep local taxes could compound this problem, as cities in California passed levies ranging from 3 to 20 percent, which, on top of the state tax, means that for some the cost of medical marijuana will rise by 27 percent. In Montana, where voters originally approved medical marijuana in 2004, voters chose to reform the law this year after a Republican-controlled legislature repealed the original act and replaced it with a far more limited version in 2011. While state Democrats at the time agreed that the original program was too permissive and sponsored the replacement, Republicans added restrictive provisions such as a rule limiting medical marijuana providers to three patients each, suddenly leaving 93 percent of registered patients without any legal means of procuring their medication. The new program voters passed this month is eventually expected to restore access for those temporarily dislocated from a legal supplier. Aside from the legislative and social growing pains of legal pot, municipalities have ethical issues to consider — namely, who stands to benefit from these new laws. California, recognizing that people of color were most affected by racially biased enforcement of cannabis prohibition, made history with its answer: It’s the first legalization initiative to allow drug offenders to participate in the sector from the start, as well as to include reparations for communities torn apart by drug policy. The pro-64 campaign explicitly argued that it’s unethical to permanently disenfranchise previous offenders for an act that a majority of voters now deem acceptable. Relatedly, Maryland’s Legislative Black Caucus has raised concerns about the fairness and diversity of license distribution for that state’s developing medical marijuana program. As these cases demonstrate, legalization often raises surprising social and economic complications that can elicit new resistance. Cannabis consumers and others in legalized communities have good reason to pay attention to these challenges, as they will probably be called on to vote on cannabis regulations again as the industry matures and new concerns crop up. Cases like Pueblo and Montana serve as reminders that policy regression can be as easy as progress. It’s also important for the voting public not to merely settle for marijuana legalization as presented, but to put political pressure on their representatives to ensure that cannabis policy mitigates potentially harmful


Germany’s new military recruitment strategy for the Trump era? A reality show.

12 young Bundeswehr soldiers for three months. The YouTube series has been surprisingly popular among Germans, with some episodes reaching up to 900,000 viewers. Young recruits film themselves doing push-ups. Others talk about their tattoos. Most popular so far? A video titled “culture shock,” in which one of the soldiers, Julia, has to take the jewelry from her piercings upon arrival at the barracks. It’s an unusual PR strategy, for unusual times. DIE REKRUTEN | Offizieller Trailer German President Joachim Gauck called for the country to focus more on its own security this week. Those were unusual words for a German president: Most of his predecessors had advocated disarmament instead of more military spending. Even before his inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump has already forced Germany, and other European nations, to rethink their security measures. So far, Europe has mainly relied on the United States to defend it as part of NATO. Trump’s contradictory statements on that matter have raised worries that the United States might no longer be a reliable military ally. “The Recruits” was produced at a time when Germans could still laugh about the prospects of a Trump presidency, assuming it would never become reality. Despite its reality TV show origins, it would be too easy to dismiss the idea of the video series as a cheap advertising campaign. Some of the episodes allow recruits to reflect on somber issues, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and the risks associated with missions abroad, for instance. But in many other ways, the video series reveals more about why Germany lacks young recruits, rather than how it seeks to change that. None of the episodes focus on what would be the most central argument for joining the military in other countries: serving the nation. Since World War II, Germans have historically refrained from showing too much (or any) national pride. German flags can only rarely be seen in public — although this has changed a bit in recent years, especially during soccer championships. Germans’ unwillingness to show too much national pride has affected the Bundeswehr more than any other organization. Soldiers have long complained about a lack of respect and support from politicians, as well as from the wider public. “The Recruits” might be the biggest effort so far by the German military to change that. Read more: Germany’s army is so underequipped that it used broomsticks instead of machine guns


Trump victory has Ireland worried about its undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

has always been a concern, and I think in the light of [Trump's victory] it will continue to be," Ireland's European affairs minister, Dara Murphy, said earlier this week. He went on: "We have very strong relationships with Irish American politicians in particular, and we will stress the point that these people (illegal Irish immigrants) have made their homes in America and are in many ways American. They want to stay there and contribute to their country and their way of life." The status of these undocumented Irish workers is an emotive issue at home. Skype phone calls and video conferences for funerals, weddings and other family events are now a familiar phenomenon in parts of Ireland, with relatives in the United States unable to leave out of fear of being barred re-entry. Anne Anderson, Ireland's ambassador to the United States, told Politico earlier this year that undocumented Irish citizens “are in the shadows but they get on with their daily lives. But of course one of the biggest costs is that they can’t travel back to Ireland.” Before the U.S. election, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny deemed Trump's populist views "racist and dangerous." But he has been more circumspect in the wake of Trump's victory and was one of the first world leaders to speak with the president-elect. Kenny has no plans to meet Trump on a visit to the United States later this month. Last week, Brendan Howlin, the leader of the social-democratic Labour Party, bemoaned the consequences of Trump's proposals. "[Trump] said that one cannot obtain legal status or become a citizen of the United States by illegally entering that country,” Howlin said. “He has said that he would deport illegal immigrants from the United States within 100 days of taking office. That clock is ticking." Irish Sen. Aodhan O'Riordain, another Labour politician, was more blunt with his criticism, denouncing the election of a "fascist" in the United States and arguing that Trump's success brought the world to "an ugly international crossroads." He also worried for the Irish undocumented across the pond. "There are 50,000 Irish people illegal in America who I'm quite sure are fearful for their futures," O'Riodain said. More on WorldViews Trump may be a 'natural ally,' says Syria's Assad ISIS calls for holy war find an echo in pro-Trump movement Trump's biggest ally in Britain warns him not to grope the prime minister


U.S.-born panda twins return to China, but struggle with the language and food

Giant panda cub twins Mei Huan, right, and Mei Lun celebrate their first birthday with specially prepared ice cakes at Zoo Atlanta on July 15, 2014. The pair, who were born to mother Lun Lun and father Yang Yang on July 15, 2013, were treated to bamboo, bananas and vanilla flavoring in the ice cakes. (EPA/Erik S. Lesser) Two young giant-panda twins born in the United States have returned home to China, but are struggling to adapt to the language and food, according to Chinese state media. The 3-year-old sisters, Mei Lun and Mei Huan, were the first surviving panda twins to be born in the United States, and were returned to China from Zoo Atlanta on Nov. 5. But the pair still understand English better than Chinese, and prefer American crackers to Chinese bread, according the People’s Daily. Luo Yunhong, a breeder at the Chengdu Giant Panda Research Base, told the paper that his main concern is that the pair are so addicted to American crackers that everything they eat — from bamboos to apples — has to be mixed with crackers. They even want to snack on crackers when drinking water. Luo is trying to wean them off their cracker habit, gradually replacing the American food with Chinese bread. Mei Huan is adapting, but Mei Lun doesn’t want to touch the unfamiliar bread. Twin cubs Mei Lun, left, and Mei Huan in 2013, in Atlanta. (Jason Getz/AP) The twin’s parents are on loan to Atlanta Zoo from China, and under that agreement any cubs born in the United States are supposed to return to their native country before age 4. Mei Lun is the livelier of the two, often jumping onto the roof and hanging upside door from a rail, but her slightly younger sister Mei Huan is calmer, preferring to sit still, observe her new environment and occasionally snack on bamboo. Luo also reported a language barrier. While the pair respond to their own names, and understand some English phrases such as “come here,” they don’t understand the Sichuan dialect of Chinese used on the base. Luo said he is trying to teach them, starting with simple phrases such as “Chi le mei de?” (Have you eaten yet?) The news provoked some mirth on Chinese social media, with some users commenting that the pandas would soon get used to Sichuan’s famously spicy cuisine. Others wondered about the


We really need to figure out how to stop a killer asteroid, scientists say

Last month, NASA performed a simulation of what might happen if an asteroid was on a collision course with Earth. (NASA) Imagine if scientists found out that a massive asteroid was on a collision course with Earth and would strike somewhere near Los Angeles by September 2020. What could humanity do? Not much. At least, that was the result of a day-long tabletop exercise coordinated by NASA and FEMA late last month. In their hypothetical scenario, the space agency concluded that the 330-foot space rock was approaching too quickly to mount a deflection mission. The team from FEMA was left to figure out how to evacuate millions of people from Southern California. This was a purely fictional exercise. NASA has discovered some 17,000 potentially hazardous near-Earth objects, but none of them is projected to come close to Earth in the next hundred years. No human that we know of has been killed by a meteorite or the effects of an impact, and the likelihood that this could happen to any of us is very, very slim. The chance of an impact big enough to destroy our planet is even smaller. Remember that Earth has suffered only one mass extinction-inducing impact that we know of in its 4.6 billion-year history, and even that asteroid didn't end life entirely. Our planet is pretty resilient. Still, plenty of researchers don't want to simply wait around and see what happens. This week, more than 100 planetary scientists, physicists and engineers published an open letter in support of a joint European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA mission to survey a near-Earth asteroid and attempt to deflect it. “Unlike other natural disasters, this is one we know how to predict and potentially prevent with early discovery,” the letter reads. “As such, it is crucial to our knowledge and understanding of asteroids to determine whether a kinetic impactor is able to deflect the orbit of such a small body, in case Earth is threatened. This is what AIDA [an Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission] will help us assess.” In early December, ESA's council of ministers will meet to decide on funding for the first half of the AIDA mission. While there are no known asteroid threats, @NASA & @FEMA held an exercise to plan for a hypothetical event… https://t.co/dcDlM7ut4u ESA's half of the joint project with NASA is called the Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM). It would


telescope of near-Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos and its moonlet, taken on Nov. 24, 2003. (NASA) The timing of the mission is important, AIM supporters say, because the Didymos pair's orbit won't bring it this close to Earth's again for another 100 years. “It is a very unique opportunity,” Cornelius Schalinski, deputy head of business development for OHB, a German private space company helping to implement AIM, told Space.com. “It has to go in 2020. Otherwise, the opportunity is lost. It is an asteroid that gets pretty close to Earth, so we can, with comparatively small cost and effort, test technologies that we need for future missions that are farther away.” At 250 million euros (about $265 million), AIM is considered a low-cost mission. But it faces some technical challenges. For one thing, scientists barely know anything about Didymoon's shape or composition, because its small size makes it difficult to image. The (relatively) tiny rock also has barely any gravity — according to Space.com, if you jumped on it you wouldn't come back down, but instead float off into space — making it hard to ensure a lander stays put on its surface. But ESA's recent Rosetta mission, which ended earlier this year, demonstrated that the space agency could plop a lander down on a very small body. Granted, the comet visited by Rosetta was about two miles across, not 550 feet. But the authors of the open letter say Rosetta was a big step toward what AIM hopes to achieve. Beyond demonstrating the potential for deflection, the joint ESA-NASA mission will also help scientists better understand asteroids — ancient chunks of material left over from the earliest days of the solar system. “We want to make sure that the heritage of Rosetta, in terms of technology and expertise, continues — leading to new missions and further innovation,” the letter said. “As citizens of our solar system, we need to expand our body of knowledge of the universe in which we live.” Read more: At the ‘Crater of Doom,’ geologists dig up rocks from the day the dinosaurs died Ancient Swedish space rock may be a whole new kind of meteorite Asteroids splashed into the young moon — and they may be the source of its water This strange, tailless comet could teach us about Earth’s origins This asteroid almost certainly isn't going to crash into Earth and kill us all


Italian celeb chef kicks off culinary tour with VIP-packed dinner at ambassador’s residence

Italian celebrity chef Massimo Bottura, right, and his culinary team. (Frances Stead Sellers/The Washington Post) Italian Ambassador Armando Varricchio and his wife launched what they are billing as the “First Italian Culinary Week in the World,” and where else but in Washington to start? The week-long eat-athon began with a five-course meal Wednesday prepared by celebrity chef Massimo Bottura for 60 VIPs, including some of the city’s restaurant owners and fellow diplomats, at the ambassador’s Villa Firenze residence. Guests included Japanese Ambassador Kenichirō Sasae, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, and restaurateur Maria Trabocchi of Fiola and Fiola Mare. Americans might not have heard of Bottura, but the chef is a rock star in his home country, where he owns Osteria Francescana in Modena, which has three Michelin stars and was named No. 1 in the “World’s 50 Best Restaurants list 2016.” If each course looked more like a work of art than a meal, Bottura insisted that it was all grounded in basic Italian fare. The lasagna? That multicolored sheet of pasta is suspended over the meat ragu because Bottura recalled as a child the joy of stealing the crunchy, burned corners of his grandmother’s dish. And that broken lemon tart? It reflected the “poetry of imperfection,” Bottura explained, and his feelings about his country — “a place that is broken but never without emotion.” Bottura and his American wife, Lara Gilmore, packed up that night and boarded a midnight coach to prepare supper for 60 New Yorkers the following evening. Photo courtesy of the Embassy of Italy.


They may save us yet: Scientists found a way to turn our carbon emissions into rock

next step for the research will now be to scale up and start injecting even larger quantities of carbon dioxide into basalts, in volumes more representative of an industrial scale operation. The new study is impressive, said Klaus Lackner, a researcher at Arizona State University who directs its Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, where he is developing technologies to capture carbon dioxide from the ambient air all around us — a process that would have to be complemented by some form of long-term storage of the gas. Lackner knew the project was ongoing but was not involved in the work. “Taking this study together with the Icelandic study, you see real progress toward making in situ mineralization a high quality affordable carbon storage technology,” Lackner said. “Sure, there are more questions to answer, but these papers represent immense progress. The two studies complement and reinforce each other.” Lackner added that “basalts on land and below the ocean floor are so abundant that if they can be pulled in, we have indeed unlimited storage capacity.” McGrail’s vision appears slightly different, though. He believes that much of the time, CO2 will be sequestered in geological repositories that contain it safely, but that do not react with it to form rock. However, he thinks that in key locations where basalts are available but other repositories are not, basalts will be used. But Lackner stressed the advantage of having the carbon dioxide permanently become rock. “There is a real value in being sure that storage is permanent on a geological time scale and that the carbon does not need any further monitoring,” he said. “Once you made carbonate there is no reason why it would revert again. You hit the thermodynamic ground state and it is very difficult to dislodge it from there.” Either way, the new research appears to be another step along the way to a world in which, even if our industrial processes necessarily produce lots of carbon dioxide, we have other options than to just let it spill into the atmosphere. Read more at Energy Environment: Trump taps climate-change skeptic to oversee EPA transition Obama’s government just released a new oil and gas rule — and Trump’s may not like it much Scientists say climate change wiped out an entire underwater ecosystem. Again. For more, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter here and follow us on Twitter here.


Virginia’s unemployment rate jumped in October for the third consecutive month

say an increase in the ranks of the unemployed is probably due to an influx of workers into the labor market, and not to any underlying weakness in hiring. The size of Virginia’s labor force has been steadily declining for years, a trend that mirrors what’s happened nationally. But in October, the state added a whopping 27,000 new job-seekers, according the data, by far the largest month-over-month increase in the size of the labor force since the survey began in 1976. Previously, the largest increase was about 15,000. “Even though a lot of people are coming into the labor force and finding jobs, some people are coming into the labor force and not finding jobs and that’s having an impact on the unemployment rate,” said Andy Bauer, a regional economist with the Richmond Fed. The state’s unemployment rate bottomed out at 3.7 percent in July, causing some economists to question whether the region had reached full employment. Economic indicators suggest hiring is still strong in Virginia, Maryland and D.C. The D.C. metropolitan area added 70,200 jobs in the one-year period ending in October, a healthy 2.2 percent growth rate that exceeded the national average of 1.7. The gains came in a broad selection of industries with the largest increases in professional and business services, health care and retail. And Virginia is adding jobs at a faster rate than the nation as a whole, a 2 percent growth rate compared to this time last year. Bauer says wage increases are also having an effect. Economists have noticed pay rates are starting to edge up for certain high-skilled jobs across the state, giving idle workers a stronger incentive to rejoin the labor market. At the same time, hiring is much stronger locally than at was a few years ago, giving new job-seekers reason to be confident that they will find work. “We’re hearing from different businesses that in order to attract and retain workers they’re thinking about putting in place wage gains in response to less availability of labor,” Bauer said. Unemployment rates in Maryland and the District in October held steady at 4.2 percent and 6.1 percent respectively. Economists caution that monthly trends can reverse themselves quickly and are frequently revised downward as the Bureau of Labor Statistics collects new data. But Virginia’s unemployment rate increase was statistically significant, suggesting the higher numbers were probably not the result of survey error.


Trump’s pick for attorney general: ‘Good people don’t smoke marijuana’

been consistent throughout his career. As far back as 1986, he joked that he thought the Ku Klux Klan “was okay until I found out they smoked pot,” according to the New York Times. The 2016 election has proved to be the biggest victory for marijuana reform since 2012, with voters in California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Maine approving recreational marijuana initiatives. At the Senate hearing in April, Sessions spoke approvingly of the “progress” made on drug use, starting with the harsh anti-drug policies of the 1980s. “I can't tell you how concerning it is for me emotionally and personally to see the possibility that we would reverse the progress that we’ve made and let it slip away from us,” he said. “Lives will be impacted, families will be broken up, children will be damaged.” He added, “I believe the Department of Justice needs to be clearer” on marijuana legalization. Whether an Attorney General Sessions would bring such clarity to the office is an open question at this point. President-elect Trump has said that he believes marijuana legalization should be an issue left to the states. Under Obama, the Justice Department explicitly adopted a hands-off approach to marijuana enforcement in states that have legalized the drug, allowing those laws to proceed without interference provided that a number of enforcement priorities, including keeping pot out of the hands of minors, were met. The announcement of that stance in 2013 played a key role in allowing Colorado and Washington to move forward with their marijuana markets. “A lot of people forget that [recreational marijuana markets in] Colorado and Washington were pretty much on hold until the governors there received guidance from the Department of Justice,” John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said this month. Even simply reversing that guidance could have a chilling effect in states like Maine and Massachusetts that recently approved legalization. Without a tacit green light from the federal government, governors in those states may be hesitant to move forward with legalization policies that remain at odds with federal laws on the books for more than 40 years. “I’m still hopeful the new administration will realize that any crackdown against broadly popular laws in a growing number of states would create huge political problems they don’t need and will use lots of political capital they’d be better off spending on issues the new president cares a lot


U.S. launches next-generation weather satellite that will revolutionize forecasting

of atmospheric science at the University of Michigan. “The U.S. was originally the only global network, and then the Europeans, Japan and India all started launching their own satellites. We had to develop a data-sharing agreement.” The U.S. relies on a global network of satellites to provide critical weather data for its forecasts. The international Space Age prompted WMO leaders from the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to create a World Weather Watch program that allows any country to receive any meteorological data it needs to protect life and property. Global satellite data is critical to that objective. It is the backbone of forecast models, or numerical weather prediction. More than 90 percent of the data ingested by the models comes from satellites around the world. “People don’t think about why forecasting has improved,” said Cliff Mass, a professor of meteorology at the University of Washington. “If you look at the revolutions that made forecasting possible, numerical weather prediction is one of them and satellites were the other.” They measure how the atmosphere is flowing — its wind speed and direction — based on how clouds move over time. They can see long-wave radiation escaping from the ground and oceans, which is directly related to the temperature and moisture through the depths of the atmosphere. That information, along with “ground-truth” observations from thermometers and weather balloons, is used as a starting point for the forecast. And it can be used to nudge the model back to reality if it gets off-track. Perhaps the most significant recent example of the satellite network’s role in weather forecasting was Hurricane Sandy. After the storm took a disastrous left turn onto the East Coast, researchers at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts sought to determine how critical satellites were to its accurate prediction. Without the information from polar-orbiting satellites, which can observe the entire globe in 24 hours, the forecast would have been severely degraded. It “would have given no useful guidance 4–5 days ahead that the storm would make landfall on the New Jersey coast,” the study concluded. “This goes beyond simply forecasting for the public,” says Rob Masters, the director of external relations for the WMO. “It’s a key source for long-term forecasting, and in various sectors of our economy, the environment, health and transportation of all kinds.” There have been times when nations have threatened leave the partnership, said Rood, who’s been


Shiites are participating in the world’s largest pilgrimage today. Here’s how they view the world.

and devotion. We focused on securing a regionally representative sample based on Shiite distribution in each country, rather than pursuing a representative sample of all the pilgrims. This was also a unique opportunity to sample practicing religious women outside their homes, as religious women are active participants in the procession. Why we survey pilgrims The pilgrimage’s unique processional nature facilitated this regional targeting during the survey process. Able-bodied Iraqi pilgrims walk from their homes across Iraq to Karbala, with some traveling as far as about 300 miles from Basra in the south. Iranians usually travel via bus to the city of Najaf, 50 miles south of Karbala, then walk from there. During the procession, tents, or mawakib, stationed beside the path provide rest and refreshment for pilgrims. For Iraqis, these mawakib are unofficially organized by region. Iranian mawakib are less specifically targeted but still often have broader regional trends. By visiting different tents, we were able to gain a geographically representative sample. Because our survey asked about sensitive topics, we used experimental methods to try to measure latent perspectives on sectarian tensions, Iran’s nuclear program, and attitudes toward the West, China and Russia. In addition to conjoint analysis, endorsement primes and memory primes, we also examined non-response as a way to understand topic sensitivity and knowledge. When no response can be an important response On the issue of sectarianism, respondents were quick to give inclusive answers to direct survey questions. About 90 percent stated they supported Sunni-Shiite dialogue to mitigate conflict and would support Sunnis and Shiites praying together in the same mosque. Yet when given choices between hypothetical neighbors and spouses in a conjoint experiment, sect was more important than religiosity, race and even prior marital status. Only alcoholism was viewed less favorably than Sunni neighbors or spouses. Participation in the survey hovered at about 85 percent, with the primary reason for declining being that individuals were traveling with a group and did not have time. Though the median rate for question-level non-response was in the single digits, it jumped as high as 50 percent for some questions. This variation in non-response creates an alternative method of measuring sensitivity to certain topics. The highest non-response rate was for a question asking whether Sunnis and Shiites had similar interpretations of the role of violence in Islam, to which nearly half of Iranians and Iraqis did not respond. Other topics with


Why legal pot is suddenly in big danger

marijuana industry out of business? In the case of medical marijuana, the answer is almost certainly yes. The prior Congress used the power of the purse to prevent any federal enforcement against medical marijuana sellers and users, and the next Congress will probably be of a similar mind. The Department of Justice therefore couldn’t even pay the postage on a letter from the attorney general ordering federal prosecutors into action against medical marijuana providers, no matter how egregiously they flout federal law. The recreational marijuana industry does not enjoy comparable protection because it’s concentrated in a smaller number of states and is tied to the political party that was thrashed on election night. The four newly legalizing states (California, Massachusetts, Maine and Nevada) backed Clinton, and the one state to reject legalization (Arizona) plumped for Trump. With the exception of Alaska, the places that previously legalized recreational marijuana are Democratic Party strongholds (The District of Columbia, Oregon and Washington State). Given those realities, and the fact that political donations by marijuana legalization lobbying groups and the industry go overwhelmingly to Democrats, any political collateral damage of a crackdown may be seen more as a feature than a bug by a Republican-controlled federal government. More generally, although a majority of Americans say they support marijuana legalization when asked by a pollster, that doesn’t mean consider it a political priority. Former marijuana policy lobbyist Dan Riffle describes support for legalization as “a mile wide and an inch deep.” He adds “voters don’t care enough to march in the streets about it.” Could the federal response to legal recreational marijuana be something other than Obama’s hands-off approach or an industry-wide shutdown? Drug policy analyst Jonathan Caulkins proposes a third way: “Trump and Sessions could announce national standards for acceptable industry behavior and condition nonenforcement on compliance by marijuana sellers. For example, Sessions could effectively ban marijuana products that are combined with alcohol or tobacco, or which are packaged to look like candies and sodas. Aggressive marketing tactics, such as giving away free grams to entice new customers, could also be blocked.” Caulkins’s vision of the federal government’s enforcement role honors the voters’ wish to have recreational marijuana legalized while at the same time limiting corporate profit-seeking tactics that could harm public health. Few people expect Sessions to be that Solomonic, but then again not many people expected Nixon to go to China either.


Two teen prostitutes escaped through a bathroom window, and a sex ring began to unravel

advertisements were posted under Detroit’s escort section. One was listed under “Kitty” and told potential customers to “ask about the 2 girl specials Text or call about prices and incall info.” Sometimes, customers would come to the house on South Electric Street for “incalls.” The two back rooms on the first floor were used for sex. The room upstairs was a de facto cell. “Jackson took 100% of the girls’ money,” the criminal complaint says. “Each girl gave Jackson the money after each date.” If the women refused to work or didn’t perform well as prostitutes, they were beaten, according to USA Today. Things reached a boiling point on Nov. 7. The woman who ultimately called 911 told Jackson she didn’t want to have sex for money anymore. Jackson broke her arm. The injury was so bad that she had to go to a hospital and needed surgery. After the woman returned from the hospital, court documents say, Jackson broke the same arm again. The interview with police that implicated Jackson was given after the prostitutes were examined by doctors. The woman who called 911 had a healing scar from the broken arm. Another had a knot on her head and an open wound behind her ear. Officers obtained a search warrant and interviewed Jackson, then arrested him. He denied being involved with prostitution or drugs. His attorney could not be reached Saturday. He made his first court appearance on Friday, according to the Detroit News, and has a bond hearing scheduled for Monday. But the investigation turned up evidence that backed up the 911 caller’s claims. On Jackson’s cellphone, investigators saw several “text messages, discussing prices, sex acts and locations to meet” for paid sex. They also searched the house and discovered cellphones, laptop computers, used condoms and hypodermic needles “very common with narcotic use, primarily heroin use.” At the top of the stairs, court documents say, officers saw “a large black/metal steel gate … along with a large padlock.” Read more: They met on a dating site and went bowling. It was a setup, police say, and now he’s dead. ‘A vile and disgusting act’: Officer accused of giving fecal sandwich to homeless man is fired Infertile couples came to this ‘baby god’ for help. Now, they’re accusing him of betrayal. He wanted to kill his ex-wife. So he murdered her family to use their funerals as bait.


Poor oversight of a student loan benefit may be hurting military borrowers, GAO says

student loans against the Defense Department’s database of active-duty troops to automatically grant the benefit. But banks, credit unions and other private education lenders are under no obligation to follow suit, even though some have voluntarily adopted the practice, according to the GAO. As a result, active-duty borrowers with private student loans have the burden of supplying proof of their military status to receive the interest-rate cap. And some may be unaware of their eligibility because of inaccurate information provided by the Defense Department, a charge the agency officials disputed in their response to the GAO report. Researchers at the GAO say federal agencies can clear up these problems by directing all education lenders to automatically apply the benefit, which would require changes to the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA). The Department of Justice, which along with four banking regulators and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau oversees private lenders’ compliance with the relief act, has asked Congress to simplify the process. A year ago, the department proposed eliminating the requirement that military personnel provide private loan servicers a copy of their orders, but the GAO recommends officials take it a step further. Justice officials, in a response to the GAO report, said they would consider the recommendation. Until recently, men and women in uniform had to provide proof of active-duty status to receive the interest rate cap on all student loans. That all changed after the government fined Sallie Mae and its former subsidiary Navient Solutions $60 million in 2014 for unlawfully charging active-duty service members high interest rates on student loans. To prevent future violations, education officials insisted all contractors servicing federal student loans adopt the automatic match. Because those contractors applied the benefit retroactively the number of servicemembers who received the interest-rate cap on their federal student loans skyrocketed. Reviewing the records of 10 federal servicers, the GAO found an increase from 107 in October 2008 to 108,710 in December 2015. Researchers also found the number of military personnel who benefited from the cap on at least one of their private student loans more than doubled from 14,970 to 33,309 between September 2014 and March 2016 because of lenders voluntarily matching their files. Want to read more about the student loan servicing? Check out these stories: Education Department misled public about investigation of loan servicers, says watchdog Senate Democrats press Education Department to rescind reviews of loan servicers


Jeff Sessions’s ridiculous anti-drug crusade

play huge role in deadly car accidents. Sessions has also denounced President Obama for steering America away from the glory days when every state locked people up for a drug that is safer than alcohol. “I think one of [Obama’s] great failures, it’s obvious to me, is his lax treatment in comments on marijuana,” Sessions said at the hearing, The Post reported. “It reverses 20 years almost of hostility to drugs that began really when Nancy Reagan started ‘Just Say No,’ ” Sessions said of the president’s approach to pot. But won’t Sessions be too busy railing against the NAACP to focus on rolling back drug policy reform? That’s unlikely. “He’s a nightmare for drug policy reform,” Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group that lobbies for drug reform, told the Watch. “He looks to have been one of the worst Republicans in the Senate on issues of marijuana reform, sentencing reform, rolling back the drug war. All of it.” Because Trump has said that marijuana legalization should be left to the states, people in the industry may have been complacent about a Trump win, but they shouldn’t be. “There are all sorts of ways the federal government can hobble marijuana policy reform in the states,” Nadelmann said. A Sessions-led Justice Department could jettison the Cole memo, a 2013 Justice Department declaration that signaled the federal government wouldn’t crack down on marijuana sellers in states where it is legal. The administration could appoint U.S. attorneys who are against drug reform. David Friedman, the previous chief executive of the Marijuana Index, doesn’t see the federal government going after legal pot given how popular marijuana is. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t concerns. Sessions is “certainly no friend of the industry,” Friedman told the Watch. The biggest fear he says pot sellers have is that they’ll be “made an example of” by the federal government. “Asset forfeiture is what scares people the most. Having a federal agency come in, shut you down, take your inventory and freeze all of your cash and put you out of the industry,” Friedman said. Nadelmann points to other worrisome signs. Both Sheldon Adelson and Mel Sembler, big GOP fundraisers who have thrown around their millions to thwart medical marijuana, are on Trump’s inauguration team. And Sessions’s appointment signals the crash of bipartisan efforts to reform drug policy and sentencing, Nadelmann says.


‘Marathon’ is an essential movie about the repercussions of terrorism

despite her surgeries. “Marathon” is unflinching about how graphic their injuries were, and how difficult and complex it can be to treat blast injuries. Ultimately, the couple managed to win admission to Walter Reed Medical Center after demonstrating that they had exhausted their effective treatment options. And even there, at the institution with the most knowledge about how to treat blast injuries, there were no medical cures. The climax of “Marathon” involves Downes running the Boston Marathon on a blade. But Kensky was still struggling to walk on her prosthetics. For her, and for Paul and J.P. Norden, brothers who both lost legs in the bombing, terrorism isn’t a crime that’s over in a moment: it continues to do damage, day after day, for years. “Every single one of our good friends have had a baby since the bombing,” Kensky explained of the permanence and cost of what she’d suffered. “For me, it’s the most dagger to the heart subject. This is our reality. This is our real life.” Because terrorism is a crime, “Marathon” explores how the law enforcement agencies charged with investigating the bombing ultimately cracked the case. Among the things the omnipresent footage captured was the initial investigative effort, as people in protective suits chalked the street where the bombing took place off into grids and sorted through the huge amounts of debris. A documentarian’s blessing was a law enforcement curse: the police and federal law enforcement agencies had to sort through 70 terabytes of video evidence. “What’s an anomaly in a crowd of 10,000 people? Somebody who’s wearing a hat that says ‘I’m a terrorist’?” one Boston Police Department investigator asks. But they did identify the Tsarnaev brothers. And despite the fact that none of the Watertown police officers who zeroed in on the boat where Dzhokar Tsarnaev was hiding had ever fired their weapons while on duty, they apprehended him safely. The Tsarnaevs are, to a certain extent, the ghosts of “Marathon,” which gives precedence to the victims. To a certain extent, they remain enigmas. “We failed, because we didn’t get the moment when he said ‘Okay, I’m going to blow up the Boston marathon,” David Filipov, now the Moscow bureau chief of The Washington Post, said of the Boston Globe’s investigation into the family. If the choice not to focus “Marathon” on the perpetrators of the bombing is deliberate, there’s another area where the


The Democrats can’t stop digging

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Capitol Hill last week. (Andrew Harnik/Associated Press) As I have said before, the Democrats’ resounding 2016 defeat will appear and feel worse to them in January 2017 than it does now. The Democrats seem to be on a path that will compound their problems. They are in the proverbial hole, and they can’t seem to stop digging. It sounds simple, but in politics, one must always try to avoid doing what your opponents want you to do. If I, as a partisan Republican, could somehow collectively hypnotize the Democrats and have them do my bidding, here is what I would have them do to continue their march into the abyss. During an interview on CBS News' This Morning, former presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) claimed the Democratic Party is out of touch with ordinary people. Sanders said, "I am deeply humiliated that the democratic party cannot talk to the people from where I came from." I would tell the Democrats to keep Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as their House minority leader. More of the same from her would be great. And if they really want to exile someone, I would say they should get rid of the able, media-savvy Donna Brazile as head of the Democratic National Committee and elect another member of congress, a la Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to serve as a part-time, conflicted chairman. I would order them to elect a real leftist, such as uhh . . . Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), who was a Bernie Sanders supporter and who has been associated with both the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Louis Farrakhan. On the outreach front, I would encourage the Democrats to maintain their obsessive focus on identity politics and assorted grievances, and continue highlighting the flawed Black Lives Matter movement and their inane protests-to-nowhere as a featured cause of the Democratic Party. They should double-down on political correctness, from instituting more “safe spaces” and stifling free speech on college campuses to drilling down on bathroom rules for public schools and keeping up the war on pronouns. And, while they are at it, it wouldn’t hurt for the Democrats to exaggerate the rise in the number of hate crimes during a Donald Trump presidency while ignoring the increase in the murder rate as a result of the Democrats’ anti-police crusades and shielding local, Democrat-led governments from any accountability.


Exploring a new frontierExploring a new frontierExploring a new frontier This is a developing story. It will be updated.


What a sweltering Earth and plummeting wildlife populations have in common

A white rhinoceros moves across grassland at the Imire Rhino and Wildlife Conservation Park near Marondera, east of the capital Harare in 2014. (Reuters/Philimon Bulawayo) Wildlife populations around the world are in serious decline, and it’s mostly due to human activities, scientists say. Many experts believe that habitat loss, over-exploitation and the increasing effects of climate change have launched a mass extinction, the sixth such event known to have occurred in the Earth’s history. Now, a group of researchers from China and the United States may have figured out the point in history when these population declines really began to accelerate — and their findings further implicate humans as the primary driving force. Using genetic data and mathematical modeling, the researchers have suggested that vertebrate wildlife all over the planet began to experience rapid population declines starting about 123 years ago, coinciding with a period of widespread human industrialization and profound changes in the earth’s natural habitats, as well as the beginning of major human-caused climate change, which scientists have also linked to the industrial revolution. The The project, started about a decade ago, was motivated in part by a desire to understand the genetic differences — and the reasons for these differences — between threatened or endangered wildlife species and species that are still thriving, said “Eventually, we developed a novel population genetic approach that helped us understand the evolutionary question,” he said. The researchers reviewed thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers containing information on the genetic diversity of various vertebrate species. Eventually, they gathered data on more than 2,700 species in total. Using information from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, they classified each species as either non-threatened or threatened, meaning a species was in some danger of extinction. The researchers then analyzed the genetic data to figure out if there were any major differences between threatened and non-threatened species. Overall, they found that threatened species were less genetically diverse than non-threatened ones. “The key question is how can we explain this difference,” Fu said. To tackle that question, the researchers turned to a mathematical model designed to investigate the effect of population changes over time on genetic diversity. Population size is a well-established factor in the genetic diversity of any given species. In general, larger populations are often more diverse — and populations that experience sudden, significant losses often lose genetic diversity in the process. The researchers’


Bei Bei, the zoo’s ‘baby’ panda, is growing up

Bei Bei, the giant panda cub at the National Zoo. (National Zoo) The National Zoo’s widely popular attraction — the giant “baby” panda, Bei Bei — is growing up. In a recent update on the panda’s health and personality, the zoo said the bear is “becoming more and more independent” from his mother, Mei Xiang, whom keepers said has been an “exemplary panda mom.” “It is hard to believe, but the time is rapidly approaching when he will live separately from her,” wrote giant panda keeper Nicole MacCorkle. The report on Bei Bei gives details on his diet and interactions with keepers. He has a “voracious appetite,” eating biscuits, apples, sweet potatoes, pears and of course, bamboo. At a year old, he weighs 90 pounds, which makes him the largest of Mei Xiang’s three cubs at this same age, zoo keepers said. Bei Bei’s name is pronounced “bay bay” and means “precious treasure” in Mandarin. He was born Aug. 22 at the zoo, along with a twin. His twin died a few days later. One of Bei Bei’s most recent milestones includes working with a “variety of different” keepers, each with a different personality and different way of going through his daily routine. This, zookeepers said, has taught him to be “more flexible.” Bei Bei eats an apple at the National Zoo. (National Zoo) “This empowers him to go into new situations without being stressed or anxious,” MacCorkle wrote. He is also starting to wean from his mother, and zookeepers are preparing them to be separated. Once they are separated, zookeepers said, they will spend more time “interacting with Bei Bei one on one.” He will have training sessions that will give him “extra enrichment.” As part of a breeding agreement with China, the zoo sends giant pandas to a wildlife conservation group there by their fourth birthday. One of Mei Xiang’s other cubs — Tai Shan — has been living in China since 2010 and is reported to be “thriving,” the zoo said. And another one of her cubs, Bao Bao, who will turn 4 in August, is expected to be moved to China early next year.


Even Matthew Centrowitz was shocked he won gold in Rio. Now he craves more.

Olympic gold medalist Matthew Centrowitz plans to compete in both the 2020 and 2024 Olympic Games. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post) Matthew Centrowitz was not always certain he wanted to be a runner. Long before the Olympic gold medalist made history at the Rio Olympics in August by becoming the first American since 1908 to win the 1,500-meter race, Centrowitz had his mind set on conquering another sport — soccer. He grew up dreaming of becoming an international star and idolized Brazil’s Pelé, widely regarded as one of the sport’s all-time greatest players. The fact that Centrowitz was a small, skinny kid from Beltsville, Md., did not dampen his lofty ambition. “My screen name at the time was danextpele39,” the 27-year-old said Monday morning, drawing laughs at the National Press Club, where he spoke about his journey to becoming an Olympic champion. “That just shows me, at 10 years old … how I was always goal-oriented, always putting my goals where I can see them. And that was something this past summer that was pretty key for me and my confidence going into Rio.” With an Olympic gold medal in his possession, Centrowitz has his sights on cementing his status as one of the best American middle distance runners ever. If all goes to plan, he will finish his career as the U.S. 1,500-meter and mile record holder. He also said he intends to compete in the 2020 and 2024 Olympics in distances from 1,500-meters up to 10,000-meters. “That’s kind of my next goal, just to be the best American miler ever,” he said. “I think in order to do that, I have the hardware for sure, but I definitely need the times to come with that. That’s on the to-do list, just kind of moving on to the next piece.” My story began in Annapolis, MD where I faced the best in my elementary. Now I face the worlds best @Nike #JustDoIt https://t.co/YMcGND60mT Even though Centrowitz had gravitated toward soccer as a child, it was impossible for him to avoid being immersed in the sport of running. His father, Matt, was a two-time Olympian and all-American at Oregon who now coaches cross-country and track at American University. His mother, Beverly, ran for Hunter College and was inducted to the school’s athletic hall of fame. And his older sister, Lauren, was a standout runner at Stanford. The bar was set at


This rocket engine breaks a law of physics. But a NASA test says it works anyway.

An image of a globular cluster taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA) NASA scientists have been daydreaming about a new kind of rocket engine that could carry astronauts to Mars in 70 days without burning any fuel. Now, in a new paper published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Propulsion and Power, they say that it might really work. The paper, written by astrophysicists at NASA's Eagleworks Laboratories, tested a electromagnetic propulsion system, or “EM drive,” that generates a small amount of thrust simply by bouncing microwaves around a cone-shaped copper chamber. No propellant goes in, no exhaust comes out, and yet, somehow, the engine can make things move. If you think that news sounds too good to be true, you've got good instincts — it just might be. This “impossible” fuel-less engine appears to violate one of the fundamental laws of physics. Say what? Hark back to your high school science classroom. Avert your eyes from the unfortunate hair styles and acne, if necessary, and try to focus on what's written on the blackboard: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That's Newton's third law of motion. It's the principle that explains why pushing against a wall will send an ice skater zooming in the opposite direction. It also explains how jet engines work: As hot gases are expelled out the back of the plane, they produce a thrusting force that moves the plane forward. But the EM drive doesn't work that way. Its thrust seems to come from the impact of photons on the walls of the copper cavity. That would be like moving a car forward by just banging against the windshield. And that works? According to the new paper, yes. The Eagleworks scientists report that their machine generated 1.2 millinewtons of thrust per kilowatt of electricity pumped in. (That electricity could come from solar panels in a hypothetical spaceship.) That's a fraction of thrust produced by the lightweight ion drives now used in many NASA spacecraft, National Geographic noted, but it's a lot more than the few micronewtons per kilowatt produced by light sails, a proven technology that generates thrust using radiation from the sun. Where did this idea come from? The idea for an EM drive was first published a decade ago by British engineer Roger Shawyer. He argued that the drive isn't really “reactionless” — instead, he argued, the thrust comes


present them to your peers, and revise and refine as you conduct more tests and gather more data. The authors of the paper list nine possible sources of error in their experiment, and indicate that they need to do more tests to try to rule those out. “The issue involved here is whether the experiment is seeing something real or not,” Jim Woodward, a physicist at California State at Fullerton, told Motherboard. “I know [co-author Paul March] does clean work and, to be honest, I suspect there may really be something there.” But, Woodward added, there's no theoretical explanation for the phenomenon that March and his colleagues report. That's not necessarily disqualifying — evidence is evidence — but it is a good reason to stop and take a second look. “The result they're seeing can't actually be explained in terms of the theory they're proposing,” he said. “So the question is: What is causing it?” Yeah, what he said! This National Geographic piece does a great job walking through some of the proposed physics explanations for how the EM drive could generate thrust (if it in fact does). The Eagleworks scientists propose that the microwave photons are pushing against something called “quantum vacuum virtual plasma” — something that hasn't been proven to exist. Physicist Mike McCullough of the University of Plymouth has proposed a new (also unproven) kind of radiation experienced by accelerating objects could be at work. The phenomenon might be evidence of a hypothesis developed by Woodward, called the Mach effect, in which the energy generated by the accelerating body is actually stored within the body. Or, it's possible that this whole idea is poppycock, a dead-end project fueled by fantasy and just enough evidence to convince scientists that they should keep going. That would be nothing new. Isaac Newton himself was a dyed-in-the-wool alchemist who wasted years trying to turn lead into gold. The allure of achieving the impossible is incredibly powerful, and not even the best scientists in history are immune. It's too soon to make a call either way about EM drives. But the Eagleworks paper will likely provide a tiny nudge toward credibility. Writing in Forbes, astrophysicist Brian Koberlein said, “Even as a skeptic I have to admit the work is valid research. This is how science is done if you want to get it right. Do experiments, submit them to peer review, get


The Daily 202: Deficit Hawks May Not Be Part of Donald Trump's Washington

the Daily 202, PowerPost's morning newsletter.With contributions from Breanne Deppisch (@b_deppy) and Elise Viebeck (@eliseviebeck) Sign up to receive the newsletter. WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING: Nikki Haley gestures while speaking at the Federalist Society's National Lawyers Convention in Washington. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen) -- South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) accepted Trump’s offer to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Robert Costa reports. The move indicates that Trump may be willing to look past old grievances in forming his new team Haley, 44, is also the daughter of Indian immigrants, although she has very little foreign policy experience as a governor. Watch Haley's State of the Union response speech below: Watch S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley deliver GOP response to State of the Union GET SMART FAST: - Facebook has quietly developed internal software to suppress posts based on geographic location – a censorship tool reportedly created to help the company get back into China. (New York Times) - Dow Jones closed above 19,000 for the first time ever -- a 120-year high that puts the index on track to post a stronger yearly performance than the S&P 500 for the first time since 2011. (Wall Street Journal) - Hurricane Otto gained strength as it continued to move towards Central America, becoming the seventh hurricane of the season and the latest one on record in the Caribbean. Forecasters say Otto could be the first hurricane to make landfall in Costa Rica since records began in 1851. (Angela Fritz) - A federal judge blocked Obama’s overtime pay rule expanding mandatory overtime to more than four million salaried workers, delivering a major blow to one of the president’s signature initiatives just one week before it was set to take effect. (Reuters) - A new CDC study in Brazil found that some babies with Zika-linked microcephaly appeared to be born healthy and did not develop symptoms until five months to a year later, raising a brand-new set of questions and concerns over the mosquito-borne virus. (Lena H Sun) - The driver of a school bus that crashed in Tennessee this week and left at least five elementary school students dead was arrested and charged on multiple counts of vehicular homicide and reckless endangerment. Arrest documents say the 24-year-old was driving “well above” the speed limit when the bus careened off-road and slammed into a tree. (Sarah Larimer, Samantha Schmidt and Amy B Wang)


If you’ve ever described people as ‘white working class,’ read this

members of the white working class work traditional manufacturing jobs. Most of them are employed in white-collar or service occupations, according to the Brookings Institution. According to a Post analysis of Census data, white workers with less than a four-year degree most commonly hold jobs as store managers, cashiers, salespeople and administrative assistants. Many work in food service as servers or cooks. Some are nurses. There are a number of blue-collar workers in trades outside of manufacturing, such as trucking and construction. White workers who do have bachelor's degrees are more likely to be teachers, accountants and lawyers. 4. A few use opioids, but far more use marijuana A study published last year by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton focused national attention on opioid abuse among the white working class. The study showed that the number of white Americans with no more than a high-school diploma dying from poisonings, including drug overdoses, increased five-fold from 1999 to 2013. These numbers are troubling, but opioid use remains relatively rare among the white working class despite the increase. Only about 2 percent of white respondents between the ages of 25 and 54 without a bachelor's degree use heroin or prescription painkillers not for medical purposes, according to a Post analysis of a Department of Health and Human Services survey. About half as many whites with a degree used these drugs. Marijuana is more popular, especially among the white working class. About 11 percent of respondents without a bachelor's degree reported getting high at least once in the past month. The figure was 7 percent among white respondents with a degree. Alcoholism is also a greater danger among the white working class. Those with no more than a high-school diploma are nearly six times more likely to die of chronic cirrhosis of the liver than those with at least a bachelor's degree, Case and Deaton report. Again, however, these figures might be more representative of the few who seriously abuse alcohol than of the white-working class as a whole. The Post's analysis also shows that those both with and without a bachelor's degree report drinking about nine or 10 days out of the month. Respondents without a bachelor's degree are somewhat more likely to binge on booze, but the difference is small in the context of the overall population. 5. They are not culturally conservative While Donald Trump's marital history and crude