Thomas Bopp, whose name was memorialized in a comet, dies at 68

On the night of July 22, 1995, the stars aligned for Thomas Bopp. A 47-year-old parts manager living in Glendale, Ariz., he worked for an asphalt and concrete supply company and had taken to stargazing on Saturday nights, traveling to a remote patch of desert with a telescope-owning friend, Jim Stevens. Although Mr. Bopp had been marveling at the heavens since childhood, when his father took him outside to see the Perseid meteor shower, he was still a hobbyist, unfamiliar with the locations of many deep-space galaxies, nebulae and star clusters. Stevens, a telescope maker who had become something of an astronomical mentor for Mr. Bopp, urged his protege to step up to the lens to gaze at a prominent cluster of stars in the constellation Sagittarius. A few minutes after 11 p.m., however, Mr. Bopp saw not just the cluster but also "a little fuzzy glow," he later told the Canadian magazine Maclean's. "I thought I had a faint galaxy or something." Rather, Mr. Bopp — within minutes of another Southwest astronomer, 37-year-old Alan Hale — had discovered what is officially known as C/1995 O1, a dirty snowball of dust, rock and ice that went on to inspire a California death cult and light up the sky for hundreds of millions of observers around the world. Mr. Bopp, who received a flurry of international attention and a form of scientific immortality from the Hale-Bopp comet that bears his name, died Jan. 5 at a hospital in Phoenix. He was 68. The cause was liver failure, said his daughter, April Esch. Mr. Bopp had never seen a comet before the summer of 1995, missing Halley's in 1986 and the disappointing smudge of Comet Kohoutek in 1973. But he and Hale, unusually similar in appearance, became the balding, portly faces of comet science for several months in 1997, when the Hale-Bopp comet came within 122 million miles of Earth, sported a tail millions of miles long and landed the two astronomers on an episode of the TV show "Bill Nye the Science Guy" and on ABC News with the shared title of person of the week. "I don't do much," Mr. Bopp told the Phoenix New Times, still taken aback at his newfound fame. "I have my work, my family, and I like to look at stars." At various times on that night in July 1995, the stargazers believed they had


‘A Message to Paulina’ shines a beam on an undersung artist who believed in UFOs

at a seance in Long Beach. Lacamo worked through her, Peavy claimed, and she often wore elaborately festooned masks when painting to disguise her self and vanish more completely into her muse's consciousness. Peavy's singular worldview is not apparent from her paintings, which usually combine geometric and biomorphic forms in vivid hues and crisp lines on black backgrounds. They display the influence of cubism and surrealism, and in places resemble the work of such contemporaries as Georgia O'Keefe and Diego Rivera. The canvases also seem to anticipate the Hubble Space Telescope's photographs of a brilliantly colorful cosmos, yet they feel as much Tex-Mex as intergalactic. In fact, Peavy and Rivera painted murals at the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition. Peavy's 14-foot effort, "Eternal Supper," was among her most prominent works; she later painted over it. She is now classed as an "outsider" artist, but she didn't start that way. Her undated canvases are not outside the mainstream of mid-20th-century American art. There's much more than painting, though, here. It may be the most extensive Peavy show ever mounted, and is certainly the broadest since 2014, when items were pulled from the cache Andrew Peavy had preserved of his grandmother's artwork. In 2016, a New York gallery displayed a few drawings and masks. "A Message to Paulina" offers paintings, drawings and a whole wall of fanciful masks, ornamented with tassels and costume jewelry. There also are films, poems (one of them the source of the show's title) and a recording of a 1958 appearance on a WOR radio talk show. Gallery visitors will hear the masked Peavy, supposedly in a trance, declaim wisdom from outer (or perhaps inner) space. In New York, Peavy's neighbors included TV professionals who helped her make several short films. In Reston, four roughly half-hour ones play on a video monitor. They superimpose Peavy's art over pictures of Stonehenge, Angkor Wat, Hindu temples, ancient Egyptian artifacts and, at one point, footage of a cat. New-agey music underpins voice-over commentary (much of it delivered by a male voice, although Peavy does speak) whose message is antiwar as well as anti-sex. These video curiosities help explain the vision Peavy intended to capture and convey. But they seem quaint next to the paintings, whose energy and invention transcend their maker's now-musty ideas of an ideal tomorrow. Paulina Peavy never escaped her life, but the best of her pictures do. goingoutguide@washpost.com


How to save the ‘tropical rainforests’ of the ocean

complex instructions encoded in every coral’s DNA that control its response to unusually warm conditions. Her team is also exploring the immensely complex cascade underlying this adaptive response, including the expression of genes, the release of chemical compounds and even communication between cells. This is the level of mechanistic understanding required to eventually design super corals in a lab. Although this work could lead to fundamental insights about the evolutionary biology of corals, I’m skeptical about the practical value. Optimizing one characteristic usually comes with a cost and making corals immune to warming would likely make them more sensitive to other challenges and less able to compete in the wild. Moreover, warming affects many corals indirectly — for example, by benefitting the microorganisms that cause disease outbreaks. And the seas aren’t just warming; they’re becoming more acidic, less productive and the amount of oxygen in seawater, which is required by animals like corals and fishes to breathe, is decreasing. Meanwhile, sea levels are rising, and storms are becoming more intense. Then comes the matter of the creatures that inhabit reefs — fish, turtles, crabs, worms and countless other animals. They are also sensitive to temperature and other aspects of climate change. Preserving their habitat won’t help much if they suffocate or if their shells are dissolved by ocean acidification. One of the oldest solutions is to restrict fishing to decrease the sensitivity of coral populations to climate change. The idea is that more intact food webs are more resilient to human disturbances. Unfortunately, tests on dozens of reefs indicate fishing bans don’t measurably help. The most striking example is the northern Great Barrier Reef off northeastern Australia. The reef is remote, protected from local impacts and has an abundance of top predators. But summer temperatures only about 3 degrees Fahrenheit higher than normal wiped out nearly half the reef’s corals in 2016. In the end, these remedies — most untested and all unproven — are expensive and challenging and ultimately just a Band-Aid, a temporary fix. Transitioning the global economy to renewable energy sources, on the other hand, will not only save coral reefs — it will remove the threat to the rest of the world’s ecosystems and species as well. I support the search for short-term solutions for coral reefs. But the only way this ends well is if we radically reduce our carbon emissions. This was produced by


Astronaut apologizes for ‘fake news’ claim he grew 3½ inches in space

got a rare opportunity in 2015 when astronaut Scott Kelly spent a year on the ISS, a record, providing researchers a wealth of metrics. His twin brother, Mark, a retired astronaut, was studied so scientists could compare notes on terrestrial and extraterrestrial effects on the mind and body. There are a host of concerns, such as plaque buildup in arteries and how shifts in bodily fluids affect eyesight. Vision problems are a common issue among astronauts — gravity on Earth tends to draw fluids downward, but that does not occur in space, and scientists believe those fluids fluctuate and build in the skull and inflame the optic nerve. An exam of John Phillips, an astronaut on the ISS in 2005, determined that the backs of his eyes were flatter and pushed his retinas forward. In six months, his eyesight went from 20/20 to 20/100. His vision later improved to 20/50 and remained there, even years later. It’s a battle against biology: “Your body wasn’t made to pump blood away from your brain,” Polk said. But research yielded from the Kellys and others aboard the ISS suggest a resiliency in the human body, Polk said. Loss of bone density and vision issues appear to plateau after some time as the body, as with all life, bends toward homeostasis. And yet, some dangers will always be present and risks only reduced, chief among them radiation from the sun and galactic cosmic rays. A radiation detector aboard the Mars rover Curiosity concluded that a human would be bombarded with a minimum of 0.66 sieverts during a round-trip excursion to Mars, or the equivalent of receiving a CT body scan every five to six days. That would bolster the risk of cancer and other ailments. Earth’s magnetic field helps protect humans from the sun’s radiation. Earthlings on average are subjected to a perfectly tolerable 10 microsieverts (0.00001 sieverts) daily. But that isn’t true for space, or for Mars. Cosmic rays penetrate just about every object, including astronauts, and the best way to reduce exposure is to get to your destination sooner, with bigger and faster engines. So plan accordingly. Read more: China’s 9½-ton space lab will soon crash to Earth. No one knows where it will hit. Nearby asteroid is surprisingly big, as seen by telescope that survived Hurricane Maria A ‘UFO sighting’ briefly freaked out the West Coast. There was an earthly explanation.


North Korea agrees to send athletes to Winter Olympics, South says

Korea and also the people of North Korea," Goldstein said. "We want to see their athletes participate and be part of the community of nations." Washington will send a delegation, but Goldstein said there are "no plans" for the Americans to have any direct contact with the North Koreans attending. Trump had tweeted over the weekend that his "firm, strong" position toward North Korea had created the environment for Tuesday's talks. Moon, at a news conference Wednesday, diplomatically agreed that Trump deserved a "great deal" of the credit. "I would like to thank him for that," Moon said. Moon hailed the results of the talks but said that the nuclear issue was separate and that Pyongyang has made it clear this is not an inter-Korean issue. He also expressed a willingness to talk directly with Kim but said he would not have a meeting for its own sake. Christopher Green, senior adviser for the Korean Peninsula at the International Crisis Group, said the question now is, what is North Korea's long-term strategy? "If they want to drive a wedge into the alliance between the United States and South Korea, this could just be their opening gambit," he said. At the talks, the two sides agreed to "actively cooperate" for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. The North will send athletes, cheering and performing-arts squads, press and a "high-level delegation" to the Games, according to a joint statement. North Korea is hardly a Winter Olympics powerhouse, having won only two medals in its history — a silver in 1964 and a bronze in 1992, both for speedskating. But International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach hailed Tuesday's agreement as "a great step forward in the Olympic spirit." The IOC has been supporting the North Korean athletes with training, equipment and travel costs, and will now work out which of them can compete. Although two North Korean figure skaters qualified for the Olympics, they did not register in time. They and others are likely to be included as "wild card" entries. South Korea's government, led by the progressive Moon, has been eager to secure North Korea's participation in the "peace games" next month and to find a way back to engaging with Pyongyang. The Olympics have provided that opportunity, and Seoul has shown a willingness to move mountains to accommodate the North — even persuading the United States to postpone annual military exercises, which usually


Saving the world with carbon dioxide removal

stone — it mineralizes rapidly because of the type of rock and the pressure. The carbon dioxide, turned to stone, is out of the planet’s energy system for millions of years. This is an enormous breakthrough. Even in Houston, the home of the oil industry, climate innovation is taking place. In October, using an approach called the Allam cycle, a company called NET Power opened a plant that burns natural gas to produce power, but it captures all the carbon dioxide produced because the carbon dioxide is itself the working fluid — a new concept. This is not carbon drawdown but is a totally renewable energy source based on a fossil fuel. In theory, cooling air so as to liquefy its carbon dioxide content could also be used to remove it. This could involve setting up plants on high polar plateaus such as Antarctica or Greenland but has yet to be investigated. A compelling criticism of carbon removal is that it discourages us from even trying to reduce our carbon dioxide emission levels and instead shifts our focus to unproven “emit now, remove later” strategies. It doesn’t help that the unfortunate reality is that as a global population, especially in the West, we are reluctant to give up the comforts and conveniences of a fossil fuel world. Climate change will not wait for us to become more enlightened. Effective and impactful carbon dioxide removal operations will need to be in place by around 2020. To keep global temperature rise within acceptable limits, we’ll need to remove half the current human emissions, which means extracting about 20 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, indefinitely. If we can manage this, we can save our society and our children’s futures. After all, if carbon dioxide is the chief cause of climate change, its removal would be our salvation. This is an exciting time. The Iceland and Houston plants show us that man’s ingenuity, when turned loose on the problem of getting carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, can achieve success and maybe save the world from the plight into which our misapplied technology of the past has cast us. We just need to spend more — a lot more — on helping this process along. If we don’t, then in 20 or 30 years, the world will be a different and much nastier place than it is now. This was produced by


At 47, the Pied Piper of U.S. speedskating is making one last run at the Olympics

a chance at the recognition and sponsorship money available in an Olympic sport. In speedskating, athletes push and glide, short bursts of strength. Inline skaters constantly push, like runners. Coaches realized inline skaters brought better cardiovascular strength. Boutiette's conversion led to a talent infusion. "These coaches for Team USA, it's almost like they've landed one Michael Jordan after another right in their lap," said Chad Hedrick, a Boutiette convert who won gold in the 5,000 meters in Turin. And they still have Boutiette. He had always raced marathon events, and the addition of mass start to the Olympic program provide his skills a perfect platform. It allows him to use his tactical expertise and experience. His times have remained static over the years, better form making up for a lack of fitness. When Boutiette told Fredricks he wanted to skate again, Fredricks was surprised at first. The more he thought about it, though, the less surprised he was — Boutiette still had the athletic ability, and his knowledge was unmatched. Still, his run at another Olympics is incredible to those in the sport. "It's not a sport that's kind to older gentlemen," Fredricks said. "It's such a taxing sport. It's an awkward, unnatural position you need to be in. It takes a toll on the body. It's incredible what he's been able to do already." "When I was 32, I was done," Hedrick said. "For me to look at KC at 47 and say, man, this guy is still doing it, it just blows me away." Boutiette maintains his passion, Fredricks said, for a simple reason: "Having fun." Boutiette has always brought levity to his training, "the class clown," Hedrick said. If a 25-year-old skater teases him about his age, he will counter with an off-color joke about his mother's travel plans 25 years and nine months ago. As a younger skater, Boutiette would wait until a teammate was holding a cafeteria tray, then pull down his pants. "I don't consider myself an old guy," Boutiette said. "When I'm around the kids, I act like a kid." The comeback has not always been easy, the rigors of life ever-present away from the ice. When he started, Boutiette had a young son. Two years ago, his wife got pregnant. Already, Boutiette had to manage his cycling footwear business, Rocket7, and the typical demands of middle age. He owned two houses. He


Pentagon investigating video that appears to show a service member opening fire on a civilian

The U.S. military is investigating a video posted to YouTube that appears to depict a U.S. service member opening fire on a civilian driving a truck in Afghanistan, U.S. military officials said. The video, apparently recorded on a camera attached to a service member’s helmet, shows a service member holding a shotgun as his military vehicle passes the truck. The side window of the truck shatters, though it is not clear that a round from the shotgun was fired. The clip, first reported by Politico on Wednesday night, has prompted an investigation by U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations across the Middle East and parts of South Asia. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is aware of the case, said Dana White, a spokeswoman for the secretary. “We actually have very good procedures for this, as you know,” Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the director of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, told reporters Thursday. “We take these allegations very seriously. . . . This is not something we look at lightly, and it’ll receive all the serious attention that it deserves.” Centcom said in a statement that the video is not official, not authorized and does not represent the professionalism of U.S. troops. “I have reviewed the video and I am disappointed and also concerned that the American people, our Coalition partners, the Afghan government, and the Afghan people will believe that American service members are callous and indifferent to the horrors of war or the suffering of innocent people trapped in conflict,”said Army Gen. Joseph Votel, the chief of Centcom, in the statement. “I can assure you that this video does not represent the professionalism or humanity of the men and women of U.S. Central Command. We reject the unprofessional and callous message this video conveys.” Politico reported that the video was initially posted anonymously under the title “Happy Few Ordnance Symphony” and quickly removed. It could mark yet another in a long line of instances in which U.S. troops have photographed or recorded video of themselves or their colleagues misbehaving in war zones, only to face criminal or administrative discipline afterward. The video shows the service member carrying the shotgun wearing a pattern of camouflage often associated with Special Operations troops, though it isn’t clear whether any were involved in the incident. It also isn’t clear whether the shotgun was loaded with lethal ammunition or a nonlethal alternative


Wine bars are popping up all over D.C. — and they’re refreshingly unpretentious

D.C. is experiencing a wine-bar boom. Cocktail lounges, craft-beer joints and neighborhood hangouts have steadily opened in recent years, but fewer arrivals have been dedicated to sipping a glass of pinotage or discovering a weirdly tasty Eastern European grape — until now. In the past year, more than a half-dozen wine bars have opened their doors. The best part: While their menus are all on-trend — expect buzzwords such as "natural wine," "pétillant-naturel" and "skin-fermented" — each of the newcomers is forging its own identity. "You're seeing completely different takes on what a wine bar is," says Brent Kroll, the founder of Maxwell Park in Shaw. These bars eschew the stereotypical intimidating-sommelier attitude for something far more user-friendly, employing staff members who are happy to chat about the differences between two choices and offer free splashes of wine for customers who can't make up their minds. "We're all working with such small wines, we have to be open to doing that," says Sebastian Zutant, the owner of Primrose in Brookland. "I'm selling things that I've never even heard of before, so there's no way that people who just drink chardonnay are familiar with it." Is it a coincidence that this many wine bars have opened recently? Maybe, says Lauren Winter, Zutant's wife and business partner, but this spurt has been years in the making. "Most of these owners, in the last decade, were servers or sommeliers in the D.C. restaurant scene and have been part of its growth," she says. "They have taken time to travel, to make wine, to explore other regions, and have settled down here to open spaces that exemplify what they've learned." Here's a guide to the best of the crop. The Dabney Cellar This gem of a bar, hidden below the Dabney restaurant inside a 19th-century rowhouse's brick-walled basement, meets all the criteria for a date-night destination. It's cozy, but not too crowded. Lively, but not so loud you can't have a conversation. Dabney chef Jeremiah Langhorne and partner Alex Zink were inspired by trips to Paris and Montreal, where cellar bars act as a waiting area for restaurants or as a place to grab a late-night snack. Upstairs, at the Michelin-starred restaurant, Langhorne works his magic cooking regional ingredients over an open hearth. Downstairs, plates are covered with gorgeous, paper-thin slices of Tennessee ham from Bob Woods's Hamery; seasonal, regional cheeses; and expertly shucked


Russian tycoon sues former Trump campaign manager Manafort

The billionaire Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska filed suit in New York State Court Wednesday against President Trump's former campaign manager Paul J. Manafort and his partner Rick Gates, claiming the two had defrauded him of $18.9 million. The case was filed by Surf Horizon, a firm controlled by Deripaska. It alleged that Manafort and Gates had used as "their personal piggy banks" a web of partnerships financed with funds invested by Deripaska in 2007 and 2008. The lawsuit refers often to the indictment brought against Manafort and Gates by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. The lawsuit said that "the dealings of Manafort and Gates with Surf mirror the pattern of corporate dealings alleged in the Indictment" and that the special counsel's case "provided further support" for the allegations. Deripaska also says that bank records obtained May 2017 in a Cyprus lawsuit showed that Manafort and Gates moved funds in and out of accounts "without any apparent business reason, but ultimately making payments of millions of dollars to them individually or to their personal vendors or creditors." Surf Horizon also alleges that Manafort and Gates gave false testimony in the Cyprus case. The lawsuit asks for legal fees, $1.1 million in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages. A similar case was filed in the Cayman Islands in 2014. "We are surprised by this filing," said Jason Maloni, president of public relations firm JadeRoq and a spokesman for Manafort. "This is a commercial matter which we thought had been addressed and resolved years ago. We will respond, if we must do so, in the appropriate manner." Gates could not be reached for comment. Manafort and Gates in 2006 had wooed Deripaska to invest in a $200 million fund to make private equity deals, primarily in Russia and Ukraine. Manafort and Gates formed a Cayman Islands partnership called Pericles Emerging Market Partners. Deripaska knew Gates, who had helped arrange meetings for him with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He invested $18.9 million through Surf Horizon and paid $7.35 million in management fees. However, the lawsuit says, there were no other investors and the fund's sole investment was a Ukrainian cable TV station called Black Sea Cable. It adds that Manafort and Gates overstated the cost of the station. The suit says that Manafort and Gates "had siphoned for themselves millions of dollars." During the 2008 credit crunch, Deripaska had asked for


New marijuana crackdown policy could become election-year headache for GOP

an additional 22 states. Sessions's directive, issued last week, overturns an Obama-era policy discouraging federal enforcement in states where marijuana is legal. The attorney general said prosecutors should use their own discretion, taking into consideration the department's limited resources, the seriousness of the crime and the deterrent effect that they could impose. Over the past two decades, public opinion has swung dramatically toward decriminalizing pot. A survey conducted in October by the Pew Research Center found that 61 percent of U.S. adults support marijuana legalization, which is nearly double the percentage favoring it in 2000. Among Republicans overall, 43 percent were in favor — although that number reached 62 percent among GOP-leaning voters younger than 40. "Cannabis is a totally different political issue now than it was 50 years ago," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a leading advocate for allowing states to decide the question for themselves. "Politically, none of the old analysis is holding true." Among Republicans, the topic is a particularly treacherous one, because it pulls at the seams of the party's coalition — pitting social conservatives against those who stand most strongly for states' rights, libertarians and fiscal hawks who see the burgeoning marijuana industry as a major source of tax revenue. "The attorney general is going to find out pretty quickly he's in a distinct minority, not only among the American public, but in the United States Congress," said John Hudak, deputy director of the Brookings Institution's Center for Effective Public Management and author of the 2016 book "Marijuana: A Short History." "This is one more headache," Hudak said, "and one more issue that they do not want to be on the defensive about with the voters." Many of the places where marijuana legalization is most popular — in California, for instance, where it has just taken effect — are also areas where Republicans are struggling the hardest to hold onto House seats. Some insist that GOP candidates will not suffer from the new policy if they make clear that they disagree. "Republican candidates for Congress will answer that question based on what fits their district or state," said Ralph Reed, head of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, an evangelical political group that has campaigned against legalization. "Will it really hurt us among young voters? It could," Reed acknowledged, but he added: "You cannot ignore a federal law on the books. It breeds cynicism. It undermines


Injured owl rescued from busy Maryland highway

An injured owl was rescued Wednesday from a Maryland highway during the morning rush hour. Just before 8 a.m., officials said drivers headed east on MD 100 near Arundel Mills Boulevard in Hanover called with reports of an injured owl near the right-hand lane. Within three minutes, officials said, Cpl. Michael Lathroum — a Maryland Natural Resources Police officer who happens to be an avid birder — arrived. A detective with the Anne Arundel County police department also came to the scene. The adult barred owl started in the right lane, police said, but managed to cross traffic and get almost to the median. The Anne Arundel County police detective went to the left side of the road and turned on her emergency lights to protect the owl from traffic. The bird was “spreading its wings and popping its beak to hold off the perceived threat of the human rescuers, but it did not attempt to fly,” NRP officials said. Lathroum placed his coat over the bird to calm it so he could secure the wings and feet, officials said. The owl gave Lathroum a small bite as he placed it in the carrier. He held the owl in his patrol car until another NRP officer arrived to take it to a veterinarian. The owl was taken to Frisky’s Wildlife and Primate Sanctuary in Howard County. Traffic slowed only briefly, officials said. NRP spokeswoman Candy Thomson said the owl was likely struck by a vehicle. Officials said they believed the owl is a “good candidate for release” into the wild. It is not uncommon for bald eagles or other birds to be struck by vehicles, wildlife experts said. It is becoming one of the biggest killers of many types of birds. As development encroaches on their habitat, birds are doing more scavenging. They often are hit by vehicles as they eat carcasses on roads or hunt for small animals near roads, according to experts. On Thursday, officials said the barred owl was showing signs of improvement and was “feisty.” Experts had also determined that the owl is a female. She was being coaxed into eating and put in an area with two other owls at the rehab center. She will get another physical exam soon and will continue to be watched, experts said.


Foreign spies are watching — and probably targeting — Fox News Channel

in Islamabad to account for Trump’s tweet bashing what he called the country’s “lies & deceit.” Understanding what the U.S. president is going to say or do is important for any foreign intelligence analyst trying to determine America’s next steps. As my former CIA colleague Nada Bakos wrote last June, Trump’s unfiltered Twitter feed provides world intelligence operatives with “a real-time glimpse of a major world leader’s preoccupations, personality quirks and habits of mind” — traits to be exploited in further dealings on the global stage. And what better way to determine what the president thinks — for the price of basic cable — than to watch selected Fox News programming? A truly aggressive intelligence effort would not just monitor what’s being said on the network. It would target the on-air talent, as well as the folks behind the scenes who make the network’s programming possible: producers, bookers, associate producers, production assistants and the like. This might range from opening friendly contacts with these employees to outright recruitment. Another avenue for exploitation: Trump reportedly calls Sean Hannity after his show. If hostile foreign services compromise Hannity’s phone (or place a listening device in the room where Hannity takes his private calls), that could provide real-time intelligence on the American president and his thoughts. For Russian intelligence, a systematic effort to threaten, coerce and co-opt journalists is a decades-old practice. Former KGB general Oleg Kalugin mentioned in his memoirs how his service had “several good agents” at the U.S. government-funded news service that broadcast to the Soviet Union, Radio Liberty, including the head of its Russian service, Oleg Tumanov. The copious files of another KGB defector, Vasili Mitrokhin, indicated that the French news service Agence France-Presse had at least six Soviet intelligence agents on staff through the decades. It’s not just the Russians; Chinese intelligence tries to recruit Western journalists, and the Iranians have tried as well. That’s just intelligence gathering. What about carrying out actual influence operations? Kalugin wrote that the KGB’s Tumanov helped spread rumors and disinformation within Radio Liberty for years, turning staff against each other and identifying further potential targets for recruitment. He even had a hand in the bombing of Radio Liberty’s headquarters in Munich in 1981. The Mitrokhin files noted that France’s Le Monde newspaper — code-named VESTNIK, or “Messenger” by the KGB — had “sympathetic” journalists and editors who allowed the Soviets to disseminate


Immigration agents target 7-Eleven stores in nationwide sweep

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents blitzed dozens of 7-Eleven stores before dawn Wednesday to interview employees and deliver audit notifications, carrying out what the agency said was the largest operation targeting an employer since President Trump took office. ICE said its agents showed up at 98 stores and made 21 arrests, describing the operation as a warning to other companies that may have unauthorized workers on their payroll. "Today's actions send a strong message to U.S. businesses that hire and employ an illegal workforce: ICE will enforce the law, and if you are found to be breaking the law, you will be held accountable," said Thomas D. Homan, the agency's top official, in a statement. Homan characterized the operation as a new front in the Trump administration's broader immigration crackdown and its effort to increase deportations. ICE agents have made 40 percent more arrests in the past year. "Businesses that hire illegal workers are a pull factor for illegal immigration and we are working hard to remove this magnet," Homan's statement said. "ICE will continue its efforts to protect jobs for American workers by eliminating unfair competitive advantages for companies that exploit illegal immigration." ICE said it sent agents to deliver audit notifications and conduct interviews at 6 a.m., temporarily shutting down 7-Eleven stores in the District and in 17 states: California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington. Irving, Tex.-based 7-Eleven has more than 60,000 stores worldwide, according to its website. In a statement, the company said it was not responsible for the hiring decisions of individual franchise owners. "7-Eleven Franchisees are independent business owners and are solely responsible for their employees including deciding who to hire and verifying their eligibility to work in the United States," the company said in an emailed statement. "As part of the 7-Eleven franchise agreement, 7-Eleven requires all franchise business owners to comply with all federal, state and local employment laws," the statement continued. "7-Eleven takes compliance with immigration laws seriously and has terminated the franchise agreements of franchisees convicted of violating these laws." ICE described Wednesday's sweep as a follow-up enforcement operation that built on a 2013 raid resulting in the arrests of nine 7-Eleven franchise owners and managers. They were charged with "conspiring to commit wire fraud, stealing identities and concealing and harboring illegal aliens employed at


The irrationality of modern drug laws, in one chart

The treaties and laws governing how drugs are regulated by nations were, for the most part, written a half-century or more ago. And while the science surrounding drugs and drug use has advanced rapidly over that time, the laws have barely evolved. As a result, there is little correlation between the dangers of various drugs and the stringency of laws regulating their use. That disconnect is abundantly clear in the diagram below, which comes from a new report on world drug use by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, a group that advocates for less-punitive drug laws. In a 2007 Lancet study, drug policy experts assessed the potential harms associated with using various drugs, using the latest available research to come up with a total measure of “risk” for each drug. Cannabis (marijuana), for instance, is a relatively low-risk drug: There's no chance of overdose, and rates of addiction are relatively low. Heroin, on the other hand, is extremely dangerous: deadly in high doses and very addictive, to say nothing of the dangers posed by potential adulterants that dealers and traffickers often add to their products. In a purely rational world, you'd probably regulate cannabis and heroin very differently: One is quite deadly and damaging, the other much less so. But under international law, as set by the 1961 U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the two substances are for all intents and purposes equivalent: They fall under the strictest category of regulation, reserved for substances with no medical use and a high potential for abuse. The U.N. Single Convention sets the terms for how countries regulate drugs within their borders. Generally speaking, the countries that are party to it — nearly every country in the world — abide by it. If the treaty says that cannabis and heroin are equivalent drugs, that becomes the de facto position of most of the world's governments — regardless of what the science says. Here in the United States, for instance, the Drug Enforcement Administration didn't officially acknowledge until 2015 that marijuana is less dangerous than heroin (the drugs do, however, remain classified the same under federal law). On the other hand, alcohol and tobacco are much deadlier substances than we usually acknowledge. Excessive drinking kills upward of 88,000 people in the United States each year, while tobacco is implicated in nearly half a million fatalities — most because of long-term health issues


A U.S.-backed plan was supposed to fix Mexico’s justice system. It has resulted in chaos.

It is hard to overstate the significance of the restructuring. It seeks to turn the notoriously ineffective police into professional investigators. It strengthens the independence of judges. It provides more rights to defendants in a country where authorities have been known to demand bribes, extract confessions under torture and doctor evidence. The U.S. government is deeply invested in the project, contributing more than $300 million since 2008 to equip courthouses and train police and legal personnel. Even in rural outposts such as Ocotlan, the system has ushered in many trappings of high-tech justice: courthouses with surveillance cameras and fingerprint sensors; forensic investigators at crime scenes in latex gloves and protective footwear. But the exacting new procedures have been grafted onto feeble, corruption-plagued institutions created decades ago by an authoritarian state. Judges are demanding the kind of legal precision found in Washington or London, from police who sometimes can barely read and live in places that can feel like war zones. "This is a baby that has just been born," Rubio Gutiérrez said in an interview. "We are asking the system to run, and it is not possible." 'We are weak' The western state of Jalisco is home to the most dangerous drug cartel in Mexico, a network of traffickers and assassins who have shot down an army helicopter, ambushed federal police and sent a pig's head to the former attorney general's home. Cartel Jalisco New Generation represents the ultimate test of the fledgling legal system. This year, crime has been winning. The state has recorded 1,218 homicides through November, putting it on pace for its deadliest year in the past two decades of available statistics. In Ocotlan, home to many cartel gunmen, traffickers and police have clashed. Not far away, bodies have been discovered in mass graves. It was in this unnerving atmosphere that Rubio Gutiérrez began his job last year in the state's fourth judicial district. A youthful jurist with a quick stride and confident air, Rubio Gutiérrez, 37, was quick to embrace the new system. He wrote a 385-page book about it. He has opened an institute to teach lawyers about the big legal shift underway: from written proceedings to oral trials, with an explicit presumption of innocence. The first person in his family to graduate from college, Rubio Gutiérrez began as an unpaid courthouse aide. As he rose through the judicial ranks, he witnessed a system in


He saw a dazed woman put out in the cold by a Baltimore hospital. He started filming.

The man hurried up the Baltimore sidewalk with a camera in his hand as four black-clad hospital security guards walked toward him, then past him. One of them was pushing an empty wheelchair. "So wait, y'all just going to leave this lady out here with no clothes on?" said Imamu Baraka, referring to a dazed woman wearing only a thin hospital gown and socks whom they had left alone at a bus stop Tuesday night in mid-30s temperatures. Her face appeared bloody, her eyes empty. It was the latest incident of "patient dumping," which has sparked outrage around the country — and one that, according to an expert, probably violated a 1986 federal law that mandates hospitals release those in their care into a safe environment. "This kind of behavior is, I think, both illegal and I'm sure immoral," said Arthur L. Caplan, founding head of the division of medical ethics at the New York University School of Medicine. "You don't just throw someone out into the street who is impaired and may have injuries. You try to get them to the best place possible, and that's not the bench in front of the hospital." The phenomenon was pervasive two decades ago, when the law was largely unenforced, Caplan said, but it remains a problem from California to Virginia. On Tuesday, the woman left outside the University of Maryland Medical Center Midtown Campus could barely walk and seemed unable to speak. Baraka, a licensed counselor, had just left his office across the street to run an errand, he said in a phone interview Friday, when he spotted her being wheeled out. A gust of wind revealed that she had nothing on beneath her gown. Shocked, Baraka rushed back to work to get his cellphone, then returned and began filming as he followed the guards back to an entrance. "That is not okay," he shouted. "Due to the circumstances of what it was," one of them said. "Then you all need to call the police," Baraka replied. At the doorway, Baraka asked for a supervisor, demanding to know why hospital staffers were leaving her outside. "She was . . . medically discharged," one of the guards said, before the camera captured them walking into the hospital, their backs turned. What Baraka filmed next — the woman, staggering and screaming into a night so cold that the sidewalk remained speckled with salt


him. Citing privacy laws, an Inova spokesman declined to comment on this specific case but said that patient "safety and quality of care is our top priority." His daughter, Tabatha Ryberg, said she spent the final years of her high school career caring for her father, who suffered a skull fracture and remained in a coma for weeks after the accident. He continues to have mobility and memory problems, she said, and he lost his job as a laborer at an engineering firm. "My dad has just lost everything," she said. "I want to bring some attention to this because this is ridiculous. . . . They didn't contact us. If they had, we would have had a ride for him. This has ruined so many people's lives." In Washington, Howard University officials fired two campus police officers and their supervisor last year after after someone filmed campus police officers dumping a female patient from the school's hospital out of a wheelchair and onto the ground near a bus stop. Last month, in California, a 78-year-old man, disoriented and suffering from arthritis, was discharged from a Sacramento hospital and sent in a taxi to a homeless shelter that had no room for him, the Sacramento Bee reported. A year ago, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, former patients at a state-run hospital in Nevada filed a federal lawsuit after they and others were allegedly placed on Greyhound buses and sent out of state. In Baltimore, the video's release was just the latest in a string of painful moments for the city, still struggling to move past the 2015 death of Freddie Gray and the riots that followed. The city endured 343 homicides last year, making it the bloodiest, per capita, in its history. Last week, amid a stretch of frigid weather, images spread of Baltimore students bundled in coats in unheated schools. One teacher described students shivering and able to see their own breath. "Things are so broken here, so broken," said Bronwyn Mayden, a Baltimore native and executive director of Promise Heights, an initiative established by the University of Maryland School of Social Work. "It's like dominoes — one just knocks down the other. Can it get any worse, y'all?" The city's troubles have reached a point where there's no outrage, she said. Instead, there's simply acceptance. "I think," Mayden concluded, "people are numb in Baltimore." john.cox@washpost.com theresa.vargas@washpost.com justin.moyer@washpost.com


Baltimore can do better. Here’s how.

As with many residents of Baltimore, I closed 2017 with a sense of loss, regret and deep frustration. At Huber Community Life Center in northeast Baltimore, the family, peers, teachers and many admirers of Jonathan "Johnny" Tobash consoled one another in aching sorrow, confronting yet another senseless tragedy of a young, promising life snatched by random gun violence on a Baltimore street. Jonathan was doing everything right. Just 19 years old, this impressive young man embodied the best qualities we want for our young people. A 2016 graduate of Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and a sophomore engineering student at Morgan State University, Jonathan was bright, ambitious, hardworking and determined to make something special of his life. He was thoughtful, humorous and respected by his peers and older adults alike. But his ambitions were snuffed out because he simply happened to wander upon a robbery outside a neighborhood food market on a cold night just before Christmas. Jonathan was Baltimore's 335th murder of 2017. Before the year's end, there would be eight more. For too long, Baltimore's narrative has been defined by murder and the conditions of hopelessness and desperation that fuel violence on our city's streets. Wherever they travel, Baltimoreans are confronted with questions about crime and violence first. The tremendous civic, cultural, medical and educational assets that also define this city of charm are mere afterthoughts. These sad realities are legitimately part of our narrative. But we are working hard to write a new narrative, one that reflects our progress and determination to end violence by ending the conditions that are its undeniable cause. Admittedly, this isn't happening as fast as our citizens rightly demand. But progress is happening. Community, business and religious leaders, neighborhood associations, educators, nonprofits, city agencies and police officers are closing ranks to effect change that's real, change that lasts. Violence reduction is our highest priority. Improving the trust of our citizens in their police is essential. This is why we forged ahead with the Justice Department's consent decree early last year in the turbulent wake of Freddie Gray's death. We are reforming policies and practices, while hiring and training more police officers who will work and live in our city. Roughly 2,000 active Baltimore City police officers work on behalf of some 620,000 citizens; that's an insufficient number of officers. The decision to freeze the hiring of new officers in recent years to accommodate budget


Trump warns he will withdraw U.S. from Iran nuclear deal if fixes not made

States can rapidly resume sanctions if Iran is ever found to be cheating. Rep. Eliot L. Engel (N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the demands are unattainable. "The Trump administration's policy announced today sets impossible standards that would ultimately isolate the United States rather than isolating the regime in Tehran," he said. "Like it or not, we need to uphold our end of the bargain so that we can hold Iran to its obligations and crack down on the regime's other destabilizing activities." Some of the new sanctions announced by the Treasury Department are a response to crackdowns on anti-government protests and blocking access to social media sites. The entities sanctioned include Iran's Supreme Council of Cyberspace and its subsidiary, the National Cyberspace Center, which police the Internet, restricting access to websites that challenge the regime. The sanctions with the most political repercussions are against the administrative head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Amoli Larijani. A hard-line cleric appointed by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Larijani is a highly influential member of Iran's most powerful political family. His older brother, Ali Larijani, is the speaker of Iran's parliament. Iran's judicial system is notoriously repressive, and the country remains one of the world's leading executioners. According to the European Union, which placed its own sanctions on the judiciary chief in 2012, Sadegh Larijani has "personally signed off on numerous death penalty sentences." "Naming and shaming Sadegh Larijani is one small way the U.S. can bring its human rights policy and coercive economic strategy against Iran into greater alignment," said Behnam Ben Taleblu, Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. Other sanctions target companies accused of conducting prohibited transactions with Iranian entities. Malaysia-based Green Wave Telecommunications was named for providing U.S. technology to Iranian companies. The Treasury Department also listed several Chinese individuals and companies for breaking similar rules to provide materials to Iran that could be used in navigation and weapons systems. Two Iranian companies that build and maintain the nation's military helicopters also are on the list. "The designations today politically go to the top of the regime and send a very strong message that the United States is not going to tolerate their continued abuses, continued violations of the rights of their citizens," said an administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under rules for briefing reporters. anne.gearan@washpost.com carol.morello@washpost.com


States require doctors to use prescription drug monitoring systems for patients

directors. A growing number of states also send unsolicited alerts to doctors, pharmacists and law enforcement when a patient starts receiving dangerously high doses of prescription opioids, has been taking opioids for longer than recommended or is taking opioids in combination with other drugs that could cause dangerous interactions. In a handful of states, new laws give public health departments access to some information on patients who receive opioids to help identify geographical hot spots where residents are receiving large quantities of opioids and other controlled substances and to analyze relationships between prescription drug use and overdose deaths. In addition, 30 states make drug monitoring data available to coroners, toxicologists and medical examiners to help determine which drugs may have been involved in an apparent overdose death. Mandatory use In 2010, Colorado, Delaware, Louisiana, Nevada and Oklahoma were the first states to require doctors and other prescribers to search patients' drug histories before prescribing opioid painkillers, sedatives or other potentially harmful and addictive drugs. By December 2016, at least 31 states were requiring prescriber use of PDMPs. In 2017, eight more states — Alabama, Alaska, California, Florida, Michigan, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin — implemented policies requiring doctors not only to log in to the state's tracking system before prescribing a controlled substance, but also to analyze each patient's history of drug use and, if necessary, limit prescription renewals for opioids and certain other medications, according to the Brandeis center. The CDC, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Bureau of Justice Assistance are encouraging all states to require PDMP use. The same agencies are also providing grants to help states upgrade these programs to make them more effective at identifying patients who may be at risk of addiction, overdose and illicit sales of controlled substances. Although the American Medical Association supports physician use of drug-tracking systems to identify potential addiction and drug diversion to the black market, some state medical societies have argued against mandatory rules they say interfere with the practice of medicine. Patients' privacy and legitimate pain needs, they argue, could be jeopardized by requiring busy physicians to investigate potential patient abuse of pain medications. Despite such objections, more states are imposing the requirements. "Comprehensive mandates are incredibly important and valuable," said Pat Knue, director of the Brandeis center. "But it would be better if practitioners used the prescription monitoring systems voluntarily." — Stateline


Dear Democrats: Shut it down

If Congress cannot agree on a budget plan by Jan. 19, the government will shut down. This isn't the outcome anyone wants. But Democrats ought to start steeling themselves now: If the Republican majority's budget plan leaves the "dreamers" in limbo, fails to supply desperately needed aid to Puerto Rico and coastal states battered by natural disaster, or allows the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to wither away, Democrats need to be ready to shut the whole thing down. It is necessary to recognize the damage a shutdown could cause in the course of recommending, as I am, that the Democrats prepare to let it happen. If the outcome were sure to be harmless, the possible costs would be small. But the moral stakes of this budget negotiation are extraordinarily high. Taking a stand for dreamers, children and disaster-stricken citizens will come with a price. Trump has said a shutdown could be politically useful for him, and Democrats seem nervous. It's hard to predict, at this point, which party (if either) a shutdown would benefit: Republicans could wind up with the blame, but they could also gain from underscoring the notion that government is broken. As Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a Post contributor, warned me on Wednesday: "These government shutdowns feed into a narrative that is not politically neutral." There are practical concerns, too. "The biggest impact tends to be on people who work for the government [and] are nonessential employees," Bernstein said. During past shutdowns, nonessential employees have been paid after the fact, but there is no guarantee Congress would elect to do the same this time. Bernstein added that a shutdown would be "a ding to the economy" and "massive inconvenience," putting all kinds of activities — from sorting out Social Security questions to visiting national parks to getting passports renewed — on hold. A shutdown wouldn't grind daily life to a halt. But it would affect millions, with serious ramifications for many. But there are potential strategic upsides for Democrats. For one, triggering a shutdown could demonstrate that Democrats take the interests and desires of the American people seriously. "The public wants CHIP, Puerto Rico and Texas to get relief, and wants to protect dreamers," said Ben Wikler, Washington director of MoveOn.org. "Keeping all these priorities on hold in a perpetual game of kick-the-can doesn't actually line


Why the Brexit referendum might not be the last word on Britain's E.U. membership

of Britain exiting the EU. Legally, Britain leaves the E.U. when the British government triggers Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. To be very clear, the results of the Brexit referendum do not automatically trigger Article 50. Therefore, the referendum itself does not legally produce a British exit from the E.U. And ironically, one of the very first things David Cameron did after the referendum was announce that his government would not trigger Article 50; instead, he said would resign — in a few months — and let the new government trigger Article 50. But again, we can see that referendums don’t trigger opt-out clauses in treaties: Governments trigger opt-out clauses in treaties. 2. In Britain, Parliament is sovereign. If and when it happens, the decision to trigger Article 50 will ultimately be made by a British government. Under the British parliamentary system, the “government” is ultimately responsible to Parliament, and more specifically to the lower house of Parliament, the House of Commons. If a majority of Parliament no longer has “confidence” in the government, there are mechanisms by which the government can be replaced. This raises a conundrum. What happens if a majority of the House of Commons opposes Brexit, and a future British government seeks approval to trigger Article 50 from the House of Commons? Similarly, what happens if a new election to Parliament is held, and members specifically run on opposition to Brexit? Would they feel obligated to support Brexit because of the referendum — or would they feel obligated to honor their election pledges? More generally, could some members of Parliament conclude that the principle of parliamentary sovereignty — “the most important part of the U.K. constitution” — trumps the results of a referendum supported by 52 percent of voters? 3. Sometimes constitutional changes require more than a majority to pass Constitutional change could instead require a “supermajority” of, say, 60 percent of the vote, or even two-thirds or three-quarters of the vote. For example, in the United States. if members of the legislature want to propose an amendment to the Constitution, a two-thirds vote in favor is required. In many European countries, supermajorities are in fact necessary to amend the constitutions. Clearly, Brexit was not pitched as requiring a supermajority to proceed, but this question might nevertheless be raised as a way of questioning its legitimacy. An online petition that was launched before


How many Russians will be at the Olympics? No one knows, and that’s a problem.

zero. Now, you might be of the mind that doping isn't cheating and presuming guilt without due process is decidedly un-American and that there were flaws in the IOC's decision-making in the first place and that Russian athletes who can show they have not doped should be invited warmly. Fine. But what's unarguable is that the current limbo affects not only the Russians but athletes from almost every other country in a wide array of sports. That's true in a couple of ways. First, depending on the sport, Olympic qualification can depend on an athlete's world ranking. Take skeleton. A male skeleton athlete must be ranked in the top 60 in the world, a woman in the top 45, to be considered for the Olympics. Follow a simple what-if: an athlete from, say, Canada sits 62nd in the world rankings headed into the final World Cup race before qualifications are set, which happens to be this weekend in St. Moritz, Switzerland. This is hypothetical, but play along. Say there are five Russians sitting ahead of this particular Canadian in the world rankings. The Canadian doesn't — can't — know whether those Russians will be cleared by Fourneyron's committee, thus moving the Canadian into the top 60. So how does he approach the upcoming race? Aggressively, to try to move up the rankings? Or conservatively, to protect a spot he already has? Complicating matters further: Some sports have quotas — based on a country's collective performance — that dictate how many athletes each nation can send in a particular endeavor. Many Russians, including those who have been banned by the IOC from these and future Games, are competing on their worldwide tours anyway — legally, because the IOC's ban pertains only to the Olympics. So a problem arises: Russian athletes who might be prevented from participating in the Games could be earning spots that increase the Russian quota and then "clean" athletes from Russia could fill those spots. But should the performance of Russian athletes who are going to be barred from PyeongChang be used in determining how many Russian slots there are in a given sport and, by extension, have a role in keeping athletes from other countries out? Of course not. These are the conversations that are happening within and among national Olympic committees and anti-doping agencies — and athletes — worldwide. This week, Canadian speedskater William Dutton tweeted


Treasury secretary says new Iran sanctions are coming as administration faces another deadline on nuclear deal

The Trump administration said Thursday that it plans additional sanctions on Iran that are separate from those covered under the international nuclear deal with Iran, an indication that President Trump is unlikely to break the 2015 deal now. The president's top national security advisers met with Trump on Thursday afternoon at the White House ahead of a deadline Friday for the president to again exempt Iran from a suite of tough economic sanctions imposed years ago. Announcement of the decision was expected Thursday night or Friday morning. If those sanctions are reimposed, the United States would violate the deal brokered by his predecessor that lifted sanctions in exchange for a rollback of Iran's nuclear development program. “You're going to be finding out very soon,” Trump said Thursday when asked about Iran. “You'll be finding that out very soon.” U.S. officials and others have said Trump is expected to take the recommendation of senior advisers that he keep the old nuclear-related sanctions in suspension, while announcing new ones that would target other aspects of Iran's behavior, including mass arrests during anti-government protests this month. “I am expecting new sanctions on Iran,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters Thursday. “We continue to look at them, we've rolled them out, and you can expect there will be more sanctions coming.” He did not say when, but other officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said they expect the announcement of additional sanctions to be coordinated with what, to Trump, is the distasteful task of granting a waiver under the Iran deal he has blasted as weak and a giveaway to Iran. He also faces a deadline Friday to say whether he will “certify” to Congress that Iran is complying with the deal and that it remains in U.S. interests to adhere to it. Trump declined to make that certification in October, throwing the deal into limbo but not breaking it outright. “The president has been very clear, okay, that many aspects of the Iran deal need to be changed, that there are many activities outside of the Iran deal, whether it be ballistic missiles, whether it be other issues, that we will continue to sanction that are outside the JCPOA,” Mnuchin said, using the acronym for the deal's formal name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. “Human rights violations. We couldn't be more focused,” he said. “We have as many sanctions on


Scientists zoom in on fast radio bursts, the most mysterious signals in space

Nobody knows what causes fast radio bursts — brief, bizarre radio-wave beams that emit more energy in a fraction of a millisecond than the sun does all day. Scientists just got closer than ever to the source of one of these enigmatic signals. In research presented Wednesday at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, an international team of astronomers traced a repeating fast radio burst to a region of star formation in a dim dwarf galaxy 3 billion light-years away. There, they said, the high-energy beam is being savagely twisted by a powerful magnetic field amid a dense cloud of hot, ionized gas. The finding helps illuminate the extreme environment these radio bursts call home. Scientists are still scratching their heads over what could cause such a mighty blast. “It's a mystery,” said Cornell University astronomer Shami Chatterjee, one of the co-authors of a study on the findings published Wednesday in Nature. Then he laughed. “I say that as if I am disappointed, but let's be real — there is nothing like a good mystery to try to figure out. And this is such a tantalizing mystery, and as time goes on, we’re getting more clues.” Scientists have been befuddled by fast radio bursts, or FRBs, since the first one was discovered in 2007. They are far more powerful than anything in our own galaxy and so fast and focused that they seem to have shot out of the barrel of some cosmic gun. They are also dispersed — high-frequency wavelengths arrive earlier than lower-frequency ones, indicating the bursts travel long distances across vast expanses of space to reach Earth. Research suggests as many as 10,000 of these bursts occur every day, but so far, astronomers have spotted only a few dozen. Of those, just one has gone off more than once: a signal called FRB 121102, captured in 2012 by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. In research published last January, astronomers described how they took advantage of the repeating nature of FRB 121102 to trace the burst back to its host galaxy. Many of those same astronomers have been gazing at that galaxy ever since, ready to catch FRB 121102 whenever it flares. On Dec. 25, 2016, in a space of about half an hour, the telescope at Arecibo witnessed more than a dozen bursts. “We called it our Christmas present,” said Jason Hessels, an astrophysicist


For the first time, the three best-selling beers in America are light beers. Can craft brewers catch up?

play: For the first time ever, the three best-selling beers in America are all light, reduced-calorie domestic lagers. Even for our diet/calorie/Crossfit-obsessed nation, that seems odd. Craft beer fans, of course, have long mocked macrobrews as watery and flavorless, and that quest for beer with more intense flavors and aromas is what has propelled craft beer to a $23 billion industry. While IPAs still make up a disproportionate amount of craft sales, accounting for more than a quarter of all dollars in the category, one of the fastest-growing segments is decidedly less hoppy and in-your-face — two characteristics that describe why a majority of Americans prefer big corporate lagers to strong, bitter IPAs. Golden ales — also known as blonde ales — have been tipped to be “the next big thing” for years, thanks to astonishing year-on-year growth rates, including a 62 percent increase in 2015, and a 41 percent gain in 2017. Some of craft’s biggest names have been jumping in: 2017 saw the releases of Green Flash’s GFB blonde, New Belgium’s Dayblazer golden ale, and Uinta’s eye-catching Park Series Golden Ale, which featured outdoorsy illustrations of National Parks on its cans. These are refreshing, easy-drinking ales, with alcohol-by-volume percentages hovering around 5 percent or less. While they have a similar ABV to Budweiser, the craft options have comparatively more hops and flavor than macrobrews — though noticeably less than other beers from the same brewery. They’re also pricier than Big Beer: At stores around D.C., a six-pack of Michelob Ultra frequently runs $1.50-$2.50 less than GFB or Dayblazer. Is that worth the cred of drinking a local, independent beer? Bart Watson, the economist for the Brewers Association trade group, thinks it is. “I think we’ve reached the point where craft consumers are aging a bit, and so want more sessionable offerings, and where craft companies have enough brand equity to get people excited about lighter-style offerings that they can sell at a premium over the big light lager brands,” he says. One of the biggest success stories in craft beer over the last few years has been Firestone Walker’s 805. This sweet, lightly hopped honey-colored ale began life as a taproom exclusive, named after the local area code. Initially distributed only within 100 miles of the Paso Robles, Calif., brewery, it became one of the fasting-growing craft beers in the whole country without leaving the Golden State. Now


Burma prosecutes two for the ‘crime’ of investigative journalism

"WE ARE not doing anything wrong. Please help us by uncovering the truth." Those words on Wednesday from Kyaw Soe Oo, on the steps of a courthouse in Rangoon, Burma, are an apt description of a test case for the nation's democratic aspirations. Mr. Kyaw Soe Oo is a Reuters reporter and, with a colleague, Wa Lone, has been imprisoned and charged with carrying out the "crime" of investigative journalism. They must be freed if Burma, also known as Myanmar, is to sustain even a shred of respect for democracy. The two journalists were investigating reports of a mass grave in Rakhine state, where the Burmese military has conducted a scorched-earth campaign against the Muslim minority Rohingya population. Long marginalized by the majority Buddhists, the Rohingya have in recent months been subject to ethnic cleansing from their villages, propelling about 650,000 into exodus in neighboring Bangladesh, where they are crowded into camps. Human rights monitors say the campaign brought murder, rape and destruction to the Rohingya villages. The journalists were looking into reports of a mass grave in the village of Inn Din. Reporting such as this has been extremely difficult because of government restrictions on journalists and independent investigators. The journalists were arrested Dec. 12 after being invited to meet police officials on the outskirts of Rangoon, where they were first given some documents, then almost immediately taken into custody. The government has said the reporters "illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media." On Wednesday, they were formally charged with obtaining state secrets and violating the Official Secrets Act, a British colonial-era law with a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. Later Wednesday, the military released results of its investigation into the mass grave the journalists were probing. A statement said that 10 bodies there were of Muslims who had been killed by villagers and security forces "because they were terrorists." The Burmese military campaign was triggered by an August attack on security posts by a small Rohingya militant group, but the military's statement about terrorism should be viewed with acute skepticism. The truth is still elusive. The Reuters journalists were chasing it, and putting them in jail was to prevent them from finding it. Burma's military remains a powerful force in the country, even though it has passed partial control to civilians, now under the leadership of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate


Time for some 21st-century trains

Regarding the Jan. 7 Metro article "Enthusiasm, opposition grow for maglev train plan": The proposed Baltimore-Washington high-speed rail project would complement our existing rail and mass transit systems, especially if completed to New York City and Boston, and perhaps south to Richmond and major urban areas of North Carolina. Our nation needs to upgrade and improve our infrastructure, and this project can be just one of these efforts. A vibrant regional economy depends on diverse modes of transportation. New businesses and companies will consider a region's diversity of transportation when deciding where to locate their headquarters. The magnetic-levitation system, or maglev, is much greener than conventional fossil-fuel-based rail systems, such as Amtrak and MARC, which mostly use diesel. We must begin to implement non- fossil-fuel-based rail transportation, similar to the newer high-speed trains in Japan, China and Europe. The United States should develop proven new modes of transportation. Such projects also create employment opportunities for college students specializing in engineering and the sciences. The Baltimore-to-Washington portion of the maglev could produce more than 70,000 jobs in planning, design, engineering and construction. More than a thousand jobs would be filled with the operation and maintenance. And spinoff industries could arise from this project. High-speed maglev from city center to city center has advantages over air travel and traffic-laden freeways, saving people time, wear and tear. We need to give the 21st-century, green, high-speed rail transportation that maglev offers a try. Robert Snyder


Lost in space? Questions mount over fate of secret satellite as SpaceX pushes ahead

and the satellite manufacturer, Northrop." While he said he did not know who was to blame, he indicated that the dispute might lead to litigation. "Those two companies are going to have a long and, I suspect, very expensive discussion," he said. SpaceX's resolve and relentless drive were unchanged by the mystery surrounding Zuma (which included the possibility that nothing went wrong and that the satellite was, indeed, in orbit). Last year, the company launched 18 times successfully, a record for SpaceX. This year, it plans to break that record, continuing its disruption of an industry Musk first targeted when he founded SpaceX in 2002. As critics were quick to call SpaceX's reliability into question, the company rolled its new powerful rocket, the Falcon Heavy, onto the same launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center that hoisted the Apollo astronauts to the moon. An engine test fire had been postponed earlier in the week and was scheduled for Saturday afternoon. Despite the Zuma mystery, SpaceX vowed to continue with its manifest without delay. That in itself was a statement: "They're not going to launch again if they think there's a chance it was their fault," said Todd Harrison, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Matt Desch, the chief executive of Iridium, a communications satellite company that is one of SpaceX's biggest customers, said in an interview that he "absolutely" had full confidence in SpaceX and that he had no qualms about proceeding with the four launches Iridium has on the Falcon 9 this year. "We're moving forward with plans for our next launch," he said. "I know there are people who would love SpaceX to be taken down a few notches. And I'd be glad to hold them accountable for things they should be held accountable for. But this isn't one. I believe they weren't really responsible." Meanwhile, SpaceX's chief rival made a statement of its own on Friday. After a couple-day delay, the United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, launched a Delta IV rocket carrying a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. After a successful liftoff, the rocket was traveling at Mach 1, the speed of sound, within 49 seconds, as it burned through propellant at a rate of 1,950 pounds per second. "Delta is ripping the sky at incredible speed," Tory


U.S. military history is rich with immigrants who left the countries Trump disparaged and sacrificed in combat

In a rocky valley in Afghanistan eight years ago, Taliban fighters opened fire on U.S. forces from three sides, pinning the Americans and the Afghan troops they were training in a kill zone. Chaos erupted immediately. One group of U.S. Marines was pinned down under a hail of fire alone, and other American soldiers and Marines tried to fight their way to them. The bloody Sept. 8, 2009, battle in Kunar Province’s village of Ganjgal is one of the U.S. military’s most traumatic in the long war in Afghanistan. Five U.S. service members were killed, prompted soul-searching about whether the U.S. troops in the field were adequately supported, and led to two Medals of Honor — the nation’s highest award for valor in combat. But the battle also is something else: A lesson in how the U.S. military is a kaleidoscope of cultures, races and religions, with units pulling together to meet common goals under occasionally brutal circumstances. That reminder seems timely following a Washington Post report Thursday that said that during an Oval Office meeting with lawmakers focused on immigration reform, President Trump asked of people from African countries, El Salvador and Haiti: “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” The White House did not deny the report Thursday night, and other media outlets subsequently confirmed it. Trump took to Twitter on Friday morning and said that the language he used in the meeting was “tough,” but “this was not the language used,” but Sen. Dick Durbin (D.-Ill.), who was present during the meeting, decried Trump’s comments a short time later as “hate-filled, vile and racist.” In Ganjgal, the Medal of Honor recipients were then-Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer, of Greensburg, Ky., and Army Capt. William Swenson, of Seattle. But they were greatly assisted by two other service members who were immigrants. Marine Maj. Ademola Fabayo — a Nigerian-born American citizen — earned the Navy Cross — second only to the Medal of Honor in recognizing combat valor — for maneuvering through a kill zone on foot, “effectively engaging the enemy at close range with his M-4 rifle.” Then a first lieutenant, he moved under heavy fire to assist in the the recovery of a wounded U.S. soldier who later died, Sgt. 1st Class Kenneth Westbrook, and drove back into the kill zone in an unarmored truck with Swenson in an attempt to find the


forward to serve. In one recent example, Pfc. Emmanuel Mensah, a member of the Army National Guard who immigrated from Ghana several years ago, was killed in a Dec. 28 fire in New York’s Bronx section while attempting to rescue others. He was credited with saving four lives. Army Times reported Wednesday that he will receive the Soldier’s Medal, his service’s highest award for valor outside combat. In 2016, the image of a tearful Haitian immigrant at his commencement ceremony at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., 2nd Lt. Alix Schoelcher Idrache, went viral after the Army published it. The soldier, who went on to train to fly helicopters, later thanked people for their support, and said he was overwhelmed in the moment the photograph was taken. “Knowing that one day I will be a pilot is humbling beyond words,” Idrache wrote in an Instagram post. “I could not help but be flooded with emotions knowing that I will be leading these men and women who are willing to give their all to preserve what we value as the American way of life. To me, that is the greatest honor. Once again, thank you.” There are more than 511,000 foreign-born U.S. veterans, according to the Migration Policy Institute. That represents about 3 percent of the 18.8 million veterans in the nation. Additionally, 1.5 million veterans have at least one parent who is in an immigrant, according to the institute. About 5,000 non-citizens join the U.S. military each year, with about 25,000 non-citizens across the force, U.S. military officials have said. U.S. service members are allowed to apply for citizenship and can obtain it if they show good moral character, knowledge of the English language, understanding of U.S. civics and a willingness to take an oath of allegiance to the United States, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The agency said it naturalized more than 109,000 people between October 2001 and October 2015. The number of non-citizens in the military during the early salvos of the Iraq War was even higher — about 38,000, according to several published reports. One of the very first military fatalities in that war was Marine Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala. He was granted his citizenship after his death. This story was initially published Friday at 12:08 p.m., and updated Saturday at 4:57 p.m. with reaction from Dakota Meyer.


Beijing wins battle for blue skies — but the poor are paying a price

the country were given a much stronger mandate, competing among themselves to see how many offending factories they could close. Huge numbers of small factories were shut down, while larger ones were forced to switch from coal to natural gas and to use filters to clean emissions. Major construction projects were halted, and coal-fired stoves in millions of homes were demolished. All over Hebei, signs announce "coal-free" zones. "The central government tapped into public pressure, the public's aspiration for clean air, to crack local resistance," said Ma, of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. In their zeal to please the central government, some officials overstepped the mark, demolishing millions of coal heaters before installing replacements. Other residents had the new systems installed but found no gas in the lines; factories making the same coal-to-gas transformation had sucked up all the available supplies. As millions of people shivered through freezing conditions and took to social media to express their anger, the government changed course in early December, relaxing its ban on coal. The reversal came too late for restaurant owner Jiao Changguo, 47, in the village of Xijiao, whose coal stove was demolished two months ago. One lunchtime last week, his restaurant stood cold and empty. He has a gas cylinder and a patio-style heater, but it is too expensive to operate unless he has customers. And with all the glue factories in the neighborhood closed by the inspectors, he has very few. "Since the environmental protection policy started, people's income — well, there is simply no comparison with the past," he said. "When it comes to the future, for ordinary people, especially in the villages, they can't see any prospects." In nearby Zuogezhuang township, the Langfang Xinsitong Wood Industry Co., which normally has about 100 employees making plywood and blockboard, stood idle last week. It spent two months and 1 million yuan ($150,000) last year demolishing its coal-fired boilers and installing natural gas, said saleswoman Zhang Caihong, but now there is no gas after that two-month loss of production for the conversion, and the workforce has been sent home ahead of Chinese New Year in February. "Zuogezhuang is in a mess," she said. Her company lost another four months' production to various government-mandated shutdowns last year — sometimes to ensure that the sky was blue during "important meetings" in Beijing — and is likely to struggle to survive if


Five things you should know about this year’s very bad flu

The nation is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad flu season. Flu is widespread in 46 states, according to reports to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nationally, as of mid-December, at least 106 people had died of the infectious disease. In addition, states across the country are reporting higher-than-average flu-related hospitalizations and emergency room visits. Hospitalization rates are highest among people older than 50 and children younger than 5. In California, which is among the hardest-hit states, the virus struck surprisingly early this season. The state's warmer temperatures typically mean people are less confined indoors during the winter months. As a result, flu season usually strikes later than in other regions. Health experts aren't sure why this season is different. "We're seeing the worst of it right now," said Randy Bergen, a pediatrician who is leading the anti-flu effort for Kaiser Permanente Northern California. "We're really in historic territory, and I just don't know when it's going to stop." Here are five things you should know about this flu season: 1. It's shaping up to be one of the worst in recent years. The influenza A subtype H3N2 that appears to be most prevalent this year is particularly nasty, with more-severe symptoms including fever and body aches. Australia — whose experience U.S. public health officials follow closely in making their flu forecasts, in part because Australia's winter is our summer — reported a record-high number of confirmed flu cases in 2017. Another influenza B virus subtype also is circulating, "and that's no fun, either," Bergen said. Flu season in the United States typically starts in October and ends in May, peaking between December and February. 2. This season's flu vaccine is likely to be less effective than previous versions. U.S. flu experts say they won't fully know how effective this season's vaccine is until the season is over. But Australia's experience suggests effectiveness was only about 10 percent. In the United States, it is 40 to 60 percent effective in an average season. Vaccines are less protective if strains are different than predicted and if unexpected mutations occur. 3. You should get the flu shot anyway. Even if it is not a good match to the virus now circulating, the vaccine helps ease the severity and duration of symptoms if you come down with the flu. Children are considered highly vulnerable to the disease. Studies show


Hawaii missile alert: How one employee ‘pushed the wrong button’ and caused a wave of panic

surrounding emergency alerting, responsibility for sending those messages typically falls to emergency management officials. Part of what worsened the situation Saturday was that there was no system in place at the state emergency agency for correcting the error, Rapoza said. The state agency had standing permission through FEMA to use civil warning systems to send out the missile alert — but not to send out a subsequent false alarm alert, he said. Though the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency posted a follow-up tweet at 8:20 a.m. saying there was “NO missile threat,” it wouldn’t be until 8:45 a.m. that a subsequent cellphone alert was sent telling people to stand down. “We had to double back and work with FEMA [to craft and approve the false alarm alert] and that’s what took time,” Rapoza said. That has since been remedied, he said, with a cancellation option that can be triggered within seconds of a mistake. “In the past there was no cancellation button. There was no false alarm button at all,” Rapoza said. “Now there is a command to issue a message immediately that goes over on the same system saying ‘It’s a false alarm. Please disregard.’ as soon as the mistake is identified.” The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency said it has also suspended all internal drills until the investigation is completed. In addition, it has put in place a “two-person activation/verification rule” for tests and actual missile launch notifications. On Saturday, Ripoza said, the employee was asked in the computer program to confirm that he wanted to send the message. In the future, a second person will be required for confirmation. The agency said it would issue a preliminary report of findings and corrective actions next week. The employee in question has been temporarily reassigned, Rapoza said, but there are no plans to fire him. “Part of the problem was it was too easy — for anyone — to make such a big mistake,” Rapoza said. “We have to make sure that we’re not looking for retribution, but we should be fixing the problems in the system. . . . I know that it’s a very, very difficult situation for him.” The errant alert had sparked angry responses by state and federal officials for more accountability over the emergency alert system. On Saturday, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) blasted the false alarm as “totally inexcusable” and called for the process to be


Change is afoot in Trump country

fertile and carbon-rich organic compounds. The gardens of early horticulturalists were essentially half-wild forests of edible and medicinal plants, not barren fields on which a single crop is grown for a few months of the year. Some hybrid between ancient and modern forms of agriculture — modeled on natural ecosystems, yet productive enough to feed 7.5 billion people and counting — could pave the way toward a carbon-neutral global economy. It may sound like a pipe dream, but carbon farming proponents argue that it is vastly more realistic than carbon capture and storage schemes or geoengineering the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. Toensmeier has spent more than a decade sifting through all the data he can find on the carbon balance of different food production systems, which he details in his 2016 manifesto, “The Carbon Farming Solution.” The good news, he said, is that what’s healthy for the climate is healthy for the soil: “Soil conservation and carbon sequestration are basically the same thing.” It is well understood that tillage and synthetic fertilizer, though they may boost yields in the short term, degrade the soil in the long term and make farmers more dependent on costly chemical inputs. Conservation agriculture — commonly defined as a combination of no-till cultivation, crop rotation and growing cover crops to replenish soil fertility naturally — emerged in the Dust Bowl era as a means to reduce soil erosion and maintain yields. Now practiced on an estimated 9 percent of farmland globally (more than 125 million hectares), Toensmeier said that employing this trio of interrelated practices usually sequesters enough carbon to cancel out other on-farm emissions and potentially results in a net gain of up to 20 metric tons of soil carbon per hectare. A related set of practices, collectively known as enhanced nutrient management, aims to prevent nitrogen fertilizer from oxidizing into the atmosphere and is already employed on more than 70 million hectares, or about 5 percent of farmland globally. Over lunch at Cracker Barrel, as I eyed the bacon cheeseburger in front of me while trying to imagine the carbon emissions involved in producing it, Grantham preached on the need to “translate these ideas about sustainability into the real world. It’s like a pyramid: I help farmers put the basic building blocks into place that will make them more efficient economically but also environmentally. Once we get the foundations done — simple things


Change is afoot in Trump country

major rebranding, introducing a new website with foodie-esque aesthetics and the tagline “Good Food. Responsibly.” One of the first things you find on their website is a corporate sustainability report, with large icons for sections on “animal care” and “environment.” Monast didn’t care where Smithfield’s motivation came from. Her job was to hold the company to it and make sure the emissions are accounted for in a legitimate, scientifically valid way. No, the Environmental Defense Fund doesn’t accept donations from Smithfield or any corporation it partners with, she said. And no, EDF didn’t sign a non-disparagement agreement with the company. I asked her if it was strange, as a tofu-loving environmentalist, to devote her waking hours to helping the world’s largest pork producer become slightly more environmentally friendly, when for Smithfield it was mainly a marketing move. “I realize the whole world is not giving up its bacon,” she replied. “They exist, so why not help them mitigate their impacts?” Westerbeek, Grantham and Monast have endured many long car rides and airport layovers en route to meetings and sustainability conferences, during which personal politics have boiled over and vegetarian dining options were slim. But being cooped up in a rental car has a way of blending ideologies and growing bonds. “The more we communicate on these issues, the more we figure out that we are not that far apart,” said Westerbeek, who sees this sort of bridge-building as the key to harnessing agriculture as a climate change solution. Nationally, Smithfield’s grain suppliers have adopted conservation and nutrient management practices on about 300,000 acres since 2014, which represents roughly 45 percent of the company’s grain-sourcing acreage. I had made plans to visit one last farm before departing North Carolina. I’d seen the agribusiness approach to climate-friendly meat. But I also wanted to see what a livestock farmer who modeled his practices on natural systems, rather than factories, could do about greenhouse gas emissions. The first thing I noticed when I got out of the car at Piney Woods Farm was the almost deafening sound of crickets and cicadas, which were absent from the chemically treated fields of corn and soybeans I’d been traipsing around in with Grantham. Also missing: the stench of manure. Buron Lanier, the third generation in his family to farm this land, raises 150 head of cattle here. They are grass-fed, but it wasn’t the cattle that drew


Three lunches, a hotel bar and late night snacks: How restaurateur Rose Previte would spend a perfect day in D.C.

little recharge.” One of my favorite peaceful spots in D.C. that’s walkable from my home [across the street from Compass Rose] is the National Portrait Gallery courtyard, where I might have a coffee and read a newspaper. I would have a New York Times and a Washington Post. From there I’d walk to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, bringing myself a little lunch that I’d picked up from Union Market — this is a long walk. I am a TaKorean, Arepa Zone and DC Dosa fan. I’m getting all three. Those are all really heavy, but I’m not afraid. I’d go to the FDR Memorial and read all the [engravings and] things I’ve already read a hundred times. I love the layout — it inspires me. It makes me feel like, “He got through that terrible time, we can get through this terrible time.” I love hotel bars. With most of the bars and restaurants I go into in town, I see friends, which is great, but I’m recharging. So I’m going to a hotel bar where I don’t know many people. I would definitely do The Willard’s Round Robin Bar to have a martini. Just a little bit dirty — and it’s always gin. I really appreciate their bar nuts selection. Hotel bars can be counted on for this. My first adult experiences drinking were when I studied in Spain, and that’s part of the tapas culture: Every drink you have with food. So now I always eat when I’m drinking. So many friends support Compass Rose, so I would love to thank everybody with dinner. I rarely cook anymore, so I would have everybody over for a proper dinner party at my house. I learned to cook with my mom; it was all Middle Eastern and Lebanese, which you’ll be having at Maydan — but Italian is easier and faster. I’d want to have tons of wine, and we’ll sit around the table for hours. I probably won’t do the dishes. I’m one of those people who throws them in the sink and says, “I’ll get to you tomorrow.” One of my favorite spots for late drinks is Copycat Co. It’s out of the neighborhood, so it gets me off 14th Street. That’s a place where I can get — again — a snack if I want because they serve dumplings super late. I love the energy there:


VA says it won’t study medical marijuana’s effect on veterans

failed to answer our simple question, but they made a disheartening attempt to mislead me, my colleagues and the veteran community in the process” by stating that the VA is restricted from conducting marijuana research. Walz, a veteran, said he plans to send another letter to Shulkin asking for further clarification. A spokesman for Shulkin pointed to the secretary’s past comments on medical marijuana. Shulkin said in May, “My opinion is, is that some of the states that have put in appropriate controls, there may be some evidence that this is beginning to be helpful. And we’re interested in looking at that and learning from that. But until the time that federal law changes, we are not able … to prescribe medical marijuana for conditions that may be helpful.” Shulkin said VA is offering a suite of alternative treatments for patients with PTSD, including yoga, meditation, acupuncture and hypnosis. The letter also said VA has a program to reduce the amount of opioids prescribed to patients with chronic pain; since 2013, Shulkin wrote, 33 percent fewer patients were receiving opioids. There has not been much research into marijuana for medical purposes, in large part because of regulatory hurdles and the fact that marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 drug along with substances including heroin. Until 2016, only researchers at the University of Mississippi were allowed to grow marijuana for scientific use; the DEA relaxed the rules and let other institutions apply to do so, though none have yet been approved. President Trump said during the campaign that he supports making medical marijuana available to the very sick. His attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is a staunch opponent of marijuana. Sessions this month made it easier for prosecutors to enforce federal law in states that legalized marijuana. Eight states and the District allow the recreational use of marijuana. Shulkin cited a VA analysis of existing research, which found “insufficient evidence” that medical marijuana helps patients with chronic pain or PTSD and could increase harm in some areas, including car crashes. A study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that reviewed studies on the health effects of marijuana and associated products found they can provide a “significant reduction in pain symptoms” for chronic-pain patients. But many say there has been a paucity of research. “There has been no meaningful clinical research conducted on PTSD and brain injuries,” Etten said.