Ten people were killed in Kashmir over the weekend, including a professor-turned-militant

S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. Rafi's recruitment is a particularly alarming sign of that trend, said Omar Abdullah, a chief minister of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, speaking to reporters in Ladakh on Sunday. "When educated and gainfully employed young men choose the path of militancy, it should serve as a wake-up call for those who have turned a deaf ear towards repeated pleas for initiation of dialogue with all stakeholders to find a solution to this quagmire,” he said. Abdul Rahim Bhat, Rafi's father, said he had feared his son would be recruited by terrorist groups after two of his cousins died attempting to join the militants in the early 1990s. He said he had hoped giving his son an education and career prospects would keep him away from such organizations. "But I think somehow my efforts failed,” Abdul Rahim said, speaking to Indian news website FirstPost. Rafi delivered his last lecture on Friday morning and told his students he was leaving to take up a new teaching job. The students gave him a wristwatch as a parting gift that he posted about on Facebook. "Gift from my students. I will remember your love and respect ... Allah bless you all," he wrote. The next day, he went missing. Then, on Sunday morning, Rafi called his father and told him he had become a militant. He was trapped with others in the village of Badigam, where a standoff with security forces was underway. Abdul Rahim also reportedly received a phone call from authorities, asking if he could convince his son to surrender. Police told local media Rafi wanted to surrender but was unable to because of the other militants with him, who included top commanders of terrorist group Hizbul Mujahideen. Rafi and four other militants were killed by Indian army troops. Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a Kashmiri analyst, said Rafi's decision to join the militancy reflected deep-seated resentment against the Indian government among Kashmiri youth. "There has been a change in the minds of youth," he said. "They think mass mobilization can't work. It is the gun that will get freedom." Read more: Teen girls with stones are the new threat in India's Kashmir Everything is lost: a poet in conflict-torn Kashmir laments the destruction of his life's work To control crowds in Kashmir, authorities use pellet guns. Now this 16-year-old will never fully see again


Video shows a Md. deputy shooting a groundhog that was ‘acting oddly’

The video shows traffic backed up in both directions on a two-lane road in Carroll County, Md., as a deputy with the local sheriff’s department appears to walk around and watch the groundhog. Eventually, he pulls his gun and shoots the animal twice. A day after the incident, the video of it unfolding has gained popularity on social media in a Facebook post. In the video, the deputy appears to back away at times from the groundhog and then approach it. The animal walks one way and then stops. The deputy backs up as the groundhog comes toward him, then kneels down on one knee and shoots it twice. The incident unfolded Sunday afternoon along Liberty and White Rock roads in Eldersburg, Md., about 50 miles north of the District. Cpl. Jon Light, a spokesman for the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, said the deputy believed the groundhog was “acting oddly.” He said it was not known whether the groundhog was rabid. The video of the deputy encountering the groundhog has been viewed more than 39,000 times on Facebook. The Baltimore Sun was among the first to report on the incident. Justyna Olkowska, who noticed the commotion when she was driving home from work, posted the video to Facebook. She said, “it started out as a cute encounter where I thought I was trying to help the little fella. I obviously did not think that it would take this turn and was kind of shocked.” She said she believed the deputy did “the best thing in this situation.” “It is not for me to judge,” she said. Light said the deputy got out of his patrol car when he came upon the traffic jam and saw the animal in the roadway creating a traffic hazard. He said the deputy tried several times to guide the groundhog to the side of the road, but the animal wasn’t “acting as you would expect a wild animal” to act. Usually, Light said, a “normal, nonaggressive animal will turn and go away.” Light said the animal was believed to be sick or injured. “He put it down for public safety,” Light said, adding that it’s within the department’s policy to do so. Light said the incident is under review. He did not provide details about the deputy or identify him. In Carroll County, Light said the sheriff’s office gets “a lot of complaints” about animals.


Hawaii’s silent danger: Volcanic smog, otherwise known as ‘vog’

coughed and wheezed for two weeks in 2016 before finally going for medical treatment. He was told he had all the symptoms of a bad case of pneumonia, thanks to vog. According to the Hawaii Interagency Vog Information Dashboard, short-term symptoms could include eye, nose, throat and skin irritation; coughing and phlegm; chest tightness and shortness of breath; increased susceptibility to respiratory ailments; and in some cases, fatigue and dizziness. Exposure is especially dangerous for people who have respiratory conditions such as asthma or emphysema, because they are more sensitive to the effects of vog, Jeffrey Kam, head of allergy and immunology at Straub Medical Center in Honolulu, told The Post. When vog occurs, Kam said he sees an influx of patients. Studies have shown increased health risks stem from higher-than-usual amounts of sulfur dioxide emissions. According to an article published in 2010 in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, researchers found that a local clinic saw “three times as many headaches and twice as many severe sore throats” after Kilauea erupted in 2008. The researchers also reported a “six-fold increase in the odds of having acute airway problems,” which are more serious respiratory issues usually requiring immediate breathing treatments or transfer to the nearest hospital for emergency care, according to a news release. Concentrations of sulfur dioxide, of course, are highest near fissures and immediately downwind, Babb said. In some areas, the acidic gas has exceeded 100 parts per million, she said. “That’s in the dangerous zone,” she said. “That’s a very high concentration.” Breathing the gas for even a short period of time can lead to long-term irritation and damage to a person’s nasal passages, throat, and even lungs and breathing tubes, Kam said. Given these health effects, it would seem surprising anyone would choose to stay near sources of volcanic gases, but Hawaii County spokeswoman Janet Snyder told The Post there are at least a dozen people in the affected area who have yet to evacuate. She added that authorities are continuing to urge these people to leave. However, leaving areas where there are high concentrations of volcanic gases can only do so much since the noxious fumes can be spread by wind, Kam said. “These poor people are stuck down there,” he said. “You try to evacuate, but some of these evacuation centers are now getting inundated with the chemical smells and stuff and they


Community deaths

The cause was complications from diabetes and kidney disease, said a daughter, Elena Davis. Mrs. Davis was born Coral Perren in Jersey City and moved to Washington in 1956. She maintained a home in the District after moving her primary residence to Columbia, Md., in 2007. She was a longtime member of the Petworth and Mount Pleasant Jehovah’s Witnesses congregations and volunteered with Bible studies, home visits and community service activities. Chalmers 'Chuck' Marquis Jr., Chalmers “Chuck” Marquis Jr., 91, a public broadcasting executive who from 1981 to 1991 was congressional liaison and lobbyist for what was the National Association of Public Television Stations, died March 24 at a senior care center in Alexandria. The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, said a son, Brian Marquis. Mr. Marquis, a resident of the Lake Barcroft area of Falls Church, was born in Bloomington, Ill. A former programming director of WTTW-TV, an educational television station in Chicago, he settled in the Washington area in the mid-1960s to work for the National Association of Educational Broadcasters and then the Public Broadcasting Service, where he became vice president of national affairs. He was a recipient of a Corporation for Public Broadcasting award for outstanding achievement, noting his work helping shape the CPB and the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. For more than two decades, he played bagpipes and marched in parades as a member of the Northern Virginia Firefighters’ Emerald Society Pipe Band. He was a member of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington and did volunteer work with Meals on Wheels. Irene Tamagna, GWU medical professor Irene Tamagna, 102, who became an emeritus clinical professor at George Washington University’s medical school in 1985 after a long career as a specialist in hypertension research, died March 25 at an assisted-living center in Potomac. The cause was a stroke, said a daughter, Jane Tamagna. Dr. Tamagna was born Irene Gorski to a Jewish family in Vienna. She left medical school in Austria amid the Nazi rise and also studied medicine in Italy before coming to the United States as a refugee; she taught herself Italian and English to keep up her studies. She received a degree from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and joined the GWU medical center faculty in the late 1940s. She spent many years as director of the hypertension research clinic and as director of the rehabilitation division. — From staff reports


Scientists warn against losing a crucial research ship: The National Science Foundation ‘has betrayed us’

Marine scientists are bracing for the loss of the world-class research vessel Marcus G. Langseth. The National Science Foundation plans to sell the 235-foot ship in 2020, according to a "Dear Colleague" letter published on the agency's website last month. Without a vessel to replace the Langseth, ocean seismologists fear their field will suffer. “We’re not trying to save the Langseth at all costs,” said James Austin, a geoscientist at the University of Texas at Austin. “We’re trying to save deep-ocean crustal imaging.” Deep-ocean crustal imaging is where the Langseth excels. It is no ordinary ship. Its sophisticated array of pneumatic guns generates a blast that bounces off the Earth's crust and penetrates dozens of miles into the planet. Unspooled behind the ship, miles of cables strung with microphones capture the blast's reflection. This sonic bounce creates maps of mid-ocean-ridge magma chambers and tectonic plate edges, features that are otherwise difficult, if not impossible, to survey. “There really aren't any comparable vessels that are available to academic scientists,” said geophysicist Douglas Wiens, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis and chair of the Iris Consortium, a network of 100-plus universities that collect seismological data. This ship has propelled “huge scientific advances” in marine seismology, he said. Marine imaging, for instance, helps scientists identify where underwater earthquakes could occur. Recent research conducted on the Langseth found a fault near the Alaskan coast similar to the fault responsible for the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan and other areas across the Pacific. In 2004, the NSF purchased the ship from a contractor for the drilling industry, which uses ships like the Langseth to locate oil and other natural resources. Over the next three years, dockworkers in Nova Scotia modified the vessel into a research platform, able to support a host of sensors and gadgetry. The academic community had grand ambitions for the ship, said Sean Higgins, director of marine operations at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which runs the Langseth on behalf of the NSF. The ship, which accommodates 55 or so people, can make observations as varied as the salt content in seawater and the detection of nearby marine mammals. Researchers do not fire the ship's air guns when whales or dolphins are close, Austin said, to avoid harming the animals. The ship generates 3-D views into the Earth's crust, peering deeper than the Langseth's retired predecessor, the Maurice Ewing. The


scientific advances” in marine seismology, he said. Marine imaging, for instance, helps scientists identify where underwater earthquakes could occur. Recent research conducted on the Langseth found a fault near the Alaskan coast similar to the fault responsible for the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan and other areas across the Pacific. In 2004, the NSF purchased the ship from a contractor for the drilling industry, which uses ships like the Langseth to locate oil and other natural resources. Over the next three years, dockworkers in Nova Scotia modified the vessel into a research platform, able to support a host of sensors and gadgetry. The academic community had grand ambitions for the ship, said Sean Higgins, director of marine operations at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which runs the Langseth on behalf of the NSF. The ship, which accommodates 55 or so people, can make observations as varied as the salt content in seawater and the detection of nearby marine mammals. Researchers do not fire the ship's air guns when whales or dolphins are close, Austin said, to avoid harming the animals. The ship generates 3-D views into the Earth's crust, peering deeper than the Langseth's retired predecessor, the Maurice Ewing. The Langseth has buoyed the careers of scientists who never set foot aboard it. The marine science community shares seafloor data collected by the Langseth, similar to the way astronomers over the world can access images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. But financial problems plagued the Langseth from the start. Its planned $4.4 million refit in Canada ran over budget by $600,000. An agreement between the NSF and the international Integrated Ocean Drilling Program to support the ship fell through during the 2008 recession, Higgins said, leaving the NSF holding the check. Rising fuel prices drove up the cost of research excursions. The ship remains docked more often than not. The Langseth sails only about 150 days a year. And an operational day at sea costs $70,000, give or take, Austin said. Despite the high price tag, the Langseth has traveled from the Arctic to the Pacific to the Atlantic over the past decade. It recently weathered 30-foot swells south of New Zealand. But a 200-page document may have sealed its fate. In 2015, the National Research Council published an influential report called “Sea Change: 2015-2025,” a map of the next decade of marine science. This report was a “game changer,”


Miners’ families pursue reinstatement of lawsuit

RICHMOND — Nearly half a century after an explosion tore through the Farmington No. 9 mine in West Virginia, the families of the 78 men who died there are still looking for justice. Many of the children of the lost miners are now grandparents and older than their fathers ever were. Some have given up hope of holding anyone accountable for the disaster. But others are looking to a federal appeals court for some measure of closure. On Wednesday, the families will ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit to reinstate a lawsuit they filed in 2014. A judge ruled the lawsuit was filed too late, but the families argue that the case should be allowed to move forward because they claim the mining company concealed the cause of the explosion for decades. James Matish, then 14, remembers saying goodbye to his father, Frank, the same way he always did before his dad left to work the “cateye shift” — midnight to 8 a.m. — on Nov. 20, 1968: “So long, Dad, don’t work too hard and be careful.” Matish remembers his father’s reply — “See you tomorrow” — and then, the next day at school, being called out of class and seeing his mother standing in the hallway crying. Five decades later, Matish is a 64-year-old Circuit Court judge whose voice still catches in his throat when he talks about his father. “It’s something that’s never ended,” he said. “There’s always a question — at least in my mind — how long were they able to survive, whether they were killed outright — those are questions that will never be answered.” The families say they tried for years to find out what caused the explosion and whether the mining company, Consolidation Coal, was responsible. They accuse the company of fraudulently concealing information that would have allowed them to file a wrongful-death lawsuit years earlier. Last year, a federal judge threw out their 2014 lawsuit, saying the “suit, brought forty-six years after the explosion, is late by more than forty-four years.” According to the lawsuit, it was not until 2008 when the families learned about a 1970 memo by an investigator who wrote that an alarm on a ventilation fan used to flush explosive methane gas from the mine was disabled the night of the explosion. The alarm was supposed to shut off power to the mine


Alzheimer’s cure is being pursued with the help of an online game

Want to cure Alzheimer’s? Get in line. Researchers have long been puzzled by the disease and vexed by how long it’s taking to unravel its mysteries. One group of scientists is helping speed up that process with assistance from the public. “Stall Catchers,” a game created by the Human Computation Institute in Ithaca, N.Y., turns the hunt for a cure from frustrating to fun. In the game, players watch short movies — made using a multiphoton microscope — that show blood flowing through the brains of living mice. Players work on a data set of thousands of images to point out “stalls” — areas of reduced blood flow caused by white blood cells accumulating on the sides of the vessels. The films might seem far removed from the experience typical of people with Alzheimer’s disease: difficulty concentrating, jumbled speech and confusion. But they may be closely linked: It’s thought that reduced blood flow in the brain is at least partially responsible for Alzheimer’s symptoms. When a blood vessel in the brain gets stalled, blood doesn’t flow as it should. A single stalled capillary might seem like no big deal, but in mice with Alzheimer’s disease, up to 2 percent of brain capillaries can be stalled. Because vessels in the brain are so interconnected, that can restrict overall brain blood flow by up to 30 percent. Reduced blood flow has been found in the brains of humans with Alzheimer’s disease, too. When scientists prevent stalls from occurring in mice, some Alzheimer’s symptoms go away. Might the same be true for humans? To find out, researchers at Cornell’s Schaffer-Nishimura Lab need to know more about stalls, but without “Stall Catchers” it could take decades for them to learn enough to develop an effective drug that’s safe for humans. Computers can’t reliably perform the work — but people can. Players get points for “catching” stalls and can participate in challenges and marathons. They can form or join teams and leagues, and compete to point out the most stalls. So far, they have been right about stalls more than 99 percent of the time. Join the fun via phone or computer: Sign up at stallcatchers.com. — Erin Blakemore


A CVS store might be coming to the neighborhood. These D.C. residents are trying to stop it.

In Mount Pleasant’s ongoing battle against chain stores and big-box brands, nearly 2,000 residents have signed an online petition opposing the latest perceived threat to the neighborhood’s folksy, mom-and-pop spirit: CVS. The pharmacy, which is exploring opening a store on the Northwest Washington neighborhood’s main street, would be an “eyesore” and “completely out of scale,” the petition says. Residents opposed to the CVS worry about a pharmacy across the street that has served the community for more than 35 years and the locally owned supermarket in the building that CVS is eyeing. They also worry about what a CVS in this idiosyncratic neighborhood might bring: more chains, less character, a washing away of who they are. “They let Subway come in, and ever since then, it’s been like open season,” said Carlos Toledo, an artist who works at the western-wear shop El West. “Mount Pleasant is more like a little village. It’s got character and heart. We don’t need a CVS to make us more like everywhere else.” Residents and business owners said the storefront in question is at 3178 Mount Pleasant St. NW, now occupied by Bestworld Supermarket. A spokeswoman for CVS Pharmacy, which is based in Rhode Island, said the company is “evaluating the opportunity to add a new location” to the area. The nearest drugstore, the Mt. Pleasant Care Pharmacy, is across the street. A CVS is about a half-mile away, in Columbia Heights. Michael Choi, owner of the building that houses Bestworld, did not respond to requests for comment. Young Suk Pak and In Suk Pak, who are married, have owned the Bestworld grocery store in Mount Pleasant for more than five years. In the supermarket, marked by an old yellow and red sign, the couple stock hard-to-find grocery items, produce and homemade kimchi. They’ve watched as name-brand supermarkets pop up around them — a Target and a Giant in Columbia Heights, a Safeway on Georgia Avenue NW. Now, they’re worried that they will be pushed out to make way for another big-name store. “We didn’t even know about this CVS. Other people told us,” In Suk Pak said. “I guess if we’re pushed out, we’ll have to get out. What are we going to do? But I hope that doesn’t happen. I really like it here. This neighborhood is really, really good. It’s like a friendship.” According to In Suk Pak and the couple’s attorney,


She read about a 4-year-old’s mysterious death. A year later, it saved her own daughter’s life.

could see him lying there; they were still working on him,” his mother, Tara Delgado, told CBS affiliate KHOU. “I'm screaming, ‘Let me just touch my baby! Maybe he needs his mama's touch.’ ” Family members (and reporters who talked to them) initially attributed his death to dry drowning, although others said his symptoms seemed similar to a bacterial infection. Recently, doctors have shied away from the terms “dry drowning” and “secondary drowning,” preferring to specify the circumstances of someone's death to improve resuscitation treatments. In dry drowning, a person's larynx closes in an attempt to stop water from seeping into the respiratory system, according to the Cleveland Clinic. But air can't get through, either, depriving the body of oxygen. In secondary drowning, water is trapped in the respiratory system. It causes the lungs to spasm, making it difficult for a person to catch a breath. The lungs can also get irritated and fill with fluid. Even if her daughter wasn't a victim of "dry drowning," the situation was still petrifying, Grace said. One day, her 4-year-old was fine, coloring on what appeared to be an unnecessary sick day from preschool. Twenty-four hours later, doctors were telling her she couldn't breathe without an oxygen mask. But those doctors might not have been there in time, Grace said, if she hadn't read Frankie Delgado's story, horrified. Now, the story of her daughter's sudden sickness is forever linked to Frankie's. So with her daughter on the mend, she reached out to Frankie's mother, Tara Delgado, and other family members, to express her gratitude. Grace heard back this week. “Frankie's sister has reached out to me,” Grace told The Post, relaying the message the woman sent: “Something with your story is making us cry. We miss Frankie every day. We do everything we can to get his story out there to prevent this from happening. We’re glad to see it’s making a difference.” An earlier version of this post included an incorrect suffix for Frankie Delgado Sr. This post has been corrected and updated. Read more: A 4-year-old dies days after going swimming. Was ‘dry drowning’ to blame? She loved the river. A ‘brain-eating amoeba’ lurking in the water ended up killing her. An airline tried to get a musician to check her 17th-century violin. A ‘wrestling match’ ensued. ‘Drug tourists’ keep overdosing at this library. Here’s how employees are saving their lives.


Trump just accelerated Iran’s implosion. He won’t like the results.

risk by spending money in a country living under imminent threat of U.S. sanctions. Iran sells approximately 2.62 million barrels of crude oil per day. Approximately 38 percent of these sales are to European companies, with the majority of sales going to patrons in Asia, according to the Financial Tribune, an Iranian economic publication. As foreign investors divert away from new investments in Iran, the country may be able to make up some of its lost sales by selling to China and India. (Before the nuclear deal was signed, it shipped just under 1 million barrels per day to Asia.) But Iran would be forced to do so at a discount. A reduction of oil sales, and thus a decline in foreign currency reserves, will make it difficult for Iran to meet its balance of payment obligations. The European Union has suggested that it could put in place regulations to protect its firms doing business in Iran amid a new U.S. sanctions regime. France and Germany, also signatories to the deal, indicated this week that they would remain in the deal regardless of the U.S. decision. But even if they stay in, there is a significant debate in the international business sector over whether companies should continue to buy oil from Iran if there are U.S. sanctions. The so-called extraterritoriality of U.S. sanctions applies to firms carrying out transactions in U.S. dollars, even if these transactions are with non-U.S. firms or branches. These sanctions allowed U.S. authorities to fine French lender BNP Paribas nearly $9 billion in 2014. (The companies can carry out transactions in euros, but they have U.S. subsidiaries that would be blocked.) With new U.S. sanctions, banks that did business with the Islamic republic or its trading partners around the world would be at risk of losing their accounts in the United States. As Richard Goldberg, former lead Republican negotiator for several rounds of congressionally enacted sanctions against Iran, wrote in February: “Blocking regulations [by the European Union] might shield a company from American-levied fines, but they cannot shield a British bank from losing its access to the U.S. financial system. This time around, the downside of U.S. sanctions would far outweigh the upside of Iranian trade.” A further squeeze on the Iranian economy could have an unpredictable consequence, but more social unrest is almost guaranteed. In recent demonstrations, Iranians have blamed the regime for military spending


Bill to roll back post-financial-crisis banking rules gets clear path to passage

delicate compromise would end up killing the bill. In the end Hensarling backed down, leaving the legislation a clear path to passage. It has moved through the Senate and appears to have plenty of support to pass the House. The House will vote on the Senate’s version of the bill unchanged and likely send it to President Trump for his signature. “I had a good meeting with the majority leader over break on this, and so we’ve got an agreement,” Ryan said, referring to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). To satisfy Hensarling’s demands, the House will also vote on — and almost certainly pass — a separate package of bills passed by the Financial Services Committee that makes additional changes to banking rules. In a statement noting the months of work that went into the negotiations, Hensarling said he was confident that combined legislation would “create regulatory policy that will help us achieve sustained 3% economic growth.” The legislation passed by the Senate in March with a rare bipartisan vote amounted to the biggest rollback of banking regulations since the financial crisis. It left in place major provisions of Dodd-Frank but would exempt about two dozen financial companies with assets of between $50 billion and $250 billion from the toughest banking regulations. These banks would no longer have to automatically undergo a yearly stress test to prove they could survive economic turmoil. The legislation also delivers relief to small banks from mortgage and other rules put in place after the financial crisis. Supporters say the legislation is aimed at helping community banks and credit unions that have struggled under a regulatory yoke that has forced them to pull back from lending and as a result has harmed consumers, particularly in rural areas. Opponents contend that the bill would inject greater risk into the financial system, possibly increasing the likelihood of a repeat of the economic crisis that convulsed the nation in 2008 and forced a taxpayer bailout of Wall Street. The legislation’s passage in the Senate was a significant victory for the banking industry and spoke to the lobbying power of the local banks that are a presence in every community. Since then, banking groups have been pushing Hensarling to yield and allow the House to take up the legislation unchanged, rather than amend it, which would require sending it back to the Senate — where another messy fight would await.


The mystery of Trump’s fake Nobel Peace Prize nomination

If things go well on the North Korea front, some have suggested that President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize — for his push for talks with Kim Jong Un. Whatever happens, however, Trump will not win in 2018: Submissions for the prize had to be sent in by Jan. 31, some time before a potential summit with the North Korean leader had been announced. Trump had, in fact, been nominated before the deadline ended — twice, according to Olav Njolstad, who is director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute and secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. But, mysteriously, there was a problem: Both nominations appeared to have been faked, and they were subsequently withdrawn by the committee. Exactly who was behind these alleged forgeries is not publicly known; it now appears it may never be known. On Tuesday, a Norwegian law enforcement official told Agence France-Presse that a criminal investigation into the suspected fraud had been closed because "police lack information about the culprit." The nomination process for the Nobel Peace Prize is notoriously opaque. Nominations are allowed by a limited but varied group of people, including lawmakers, legal experts, academics and previous recipients. The nominations, which can be awarded to an individual or a group, are supposed to be kept secret for 50 years. Those offering the nominations can opt to disclose their picks, however. In February, the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), a body that monitors nominations that have been publicly revealed, said that Trump had been nominated for "his peace through strength ideology, and for restarting President Reagan’s SDI-BHB secret weapons system, to neutralize nuclear weapons and make them obsolete." PRIO said the nomination had been confirmed by a "U.S. nominator." The language used to describe the nomination was the same as that used the year prior, when Trump was also nominated, according to PRIO. But details soon emerged that suggested all was not as it seemed. The next month, Njolstad told AFP that "we have good reason to believe that a nomination we received concerning Trump has been falsified." Njolstad later told the New York Times that the nomination the prior year appeared to have been faked, too, and that the discovery had been confirmed after the alleged nominator said he or she had not nominated the U.S. president. Norwegian police had been in contact with the FBI since fall 2017, the Times reported, suggesting


ISIS murdered her son. But she wasn’t going to let that be his only legacy.

of all, she was determined not to yield to her unfathomable grief. She knew that some would see her response — her leap into action, her refusal to retreat into mourning — as cold and remote. But “we’re all different,” she says. “We all react to horror in different ways.” A devout Catholic, Jim was the firstborn on both sides of the family, his arrival “a cause of great celebration.” The Foleys moved around a lot as John completed his medical training, and by the time they settled in New Hampshire, their rowdy household included five kids. Jim was 15 years older than the youngest, Katie, who sometimes jokingly called him “Uncle Jim.” Three of the children joined the military, but Jim was a pacifist, always “passionate about the underdog,” according to Diane. The other boys were more traditional. Jim was closest to Michael, the second-born son, who aimed for a career in business. The two older brothers liked to tease middle child John, the straight arrow who became a U.S. Air Force commander and cared about things like job security and benefits, things that meant little to a free spirit like Jim. (A photo of John in uniform on Jim’s laptop reportedly enraged his captors, and Jim condemned John at knifepoint as a tool of the U.S. military in the gruesome beheading video. John, who acknowledges that he and his brother were very different, bears no resentment. His brother’s death, he says, “has challenged me to be better.”) Jim earned a master’s degree in creative writing but then pursued a second master’s in journalism from Northwestern University before embedding as a reporter with the Indiana National Guard in Iraq and Afghanistan. He wanted a full-time reporting job, but as the Arab Spring dawned in the Middle East, he saw freelancing as an opportunity. Media companies knew “how dangerous it was in those areas and were reluctant to send their staffers there,” Diane says. Freelancers flooded into Libya and Syria. Jim earned about $350 for each video report he filed — not enough, his mother points out, to stay in secure hotels or hire the most trusted translators. The first crisis came in 2011, when Jim and three other freelancers were captured by Gaddafi forces in Libya. For his family, it was an awful time. “Here I had worried about my kids in the military, and here Jim was really


North Korea’s Kim wants to talk to Trump about mutual nuclear issues, says Chinese media

the country’s airwaves to announce the visit. Her appearance — she delivers only the most important news — underscores the Kim regime’s emphasis on the current efforts at detente. The news of another visit, complete with photos of Kim and Xi walking in the sunshine and looking relaxed on an outdoor deck, highlights China’s desire to be right in the middle of the burst of diplomacy surrounding North Korea. For his part, Kim could be trying to improve ties with Xi — which have been frosty, to put it mildly — in case his outreach to Trump falls flat, analysts say. As it did with Kim’s train trip to Beijing in March, speculation had been rife ahead of the announcement that he had traveled to Dalian, after citizens reported tightened security and traffic controls in the surrounding area. Then Kim’s personal jet and another plane belonging to North Korea’s state airline were spotted at an airport near the city. This visit is part of a remarkable series of events over the past few months. On Jan. 1, Kim was threatening to send nuclear-tipped missiles to the United States, and Trump was warning of military options for dealing with the North Korean leader. Then, precipitated by talks held during the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February, North Korea started responding to the outside world’s overtures. Kim traveled to Beijing in March, his first journey abroad since becoming leader in late 2011, for a red-carpet visit accompanied by his wife and top members of his regime. Late last month, Kim crossed the demilitarized zone into South Korea to meet President Moon Jae-in for a summit during which they signed a statement agreeing to the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula. That summit was considered a warm-up act for the meeting with Trump. The U.S. president has said that Kim’s sudden interest in talking is the direct result of the United States’ “maximum pressure” policy toward the North Korean regime. Many analysts agree that this is at least part of the reason for Kim’s sudden about-face. But they say it is also because the 34-year-old, having achieved his goal of developing a credible nuclear weapons program, is turning his attention to the economy. Kim in 2013 announced a “simultaneous push” policy of developing the nuclear program and the economy at the same time. Last year he demonstrated he had missiles that could


Another top official says Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize (unless he messes things up)

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has become the latest foreign politician to advocate for a Nobel Peace Prize for President Trump — unless he makes a mess out of things. “If he can fix North Korea and if he can fix the Iran nuclear deal, then I don’t see why he’s any less of a candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize than Barack Obama, who got it before he even did anything,” Johnson told Sky News on Monday. It’s the second time within two weeks that a leading foreign politician has mentioned the possibility of a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump. At the end of April, South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, rejected suggestions that he should win the prestigious award himself for his negotiations with Pyongyang, instead crediting Trump. “President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize. The only thing we need is peace,” Moon said. Trump’s nomination for the prize by a dozen and a half House Republicans last week may have come less as a surprise, but why are foreign officials of nations, many of them wary of Trump, suddenly so full of praise? Both Moon and Johnson appear to believe that crediting Trump is essential to have the president work with them. And when the British foreign secretary says he hopes that Trump will “fix” the Iran deal, what he really means is that he hopes Trump won’t do what he has very publicly said he will do: withdraw from it. Trump has alternately called the agreement negotiated by the Obama administration and a number of other nations “bad,” “terrible,” “ridiculous” and “insane.” Despite his criticism, he has reluctantly certified Iran’s compliance in the past. That may change on Tuesday, with an expected announcement by Trump on future U.S. support for the deal. A U.S. decision to withdraw would not come as a huge surprise to its European allies. Trump had already announced a withdrawal of presidential “certification” of the Iran nuclear deal in October, ahead of a prior deadline. His decision did not automatically result in the United States leaving the agreement, however. This time — as a supposedly final U.S. deadline Trump set himself is quickly approaching — the stakes are much higher, even though all other signatories of the deal said they want to stick to it. France, Britain and Germany have urged the president to drop his resistance and have threatened to stay


White House will host Amazon, Facebook, Ford and other major companies for summit on AI

to accelerate toward success and leave that slow start in the rearview mirror.” Beyond public research funding, tech firms believe Washington could play a critical role in helping educate American workers on the ways AI will reshape jobs and create new ones — including in factories, where AI and robotics have helped drive a resurgence of domestic manufacturing. “There are a lot of people who say that AI is going to be about job destruction. It is not. It is going to be about job movement,” said ITI’s Garfield. “So I think the White House is actually in a unique place to mobilize a movement that’s necessary to prepare the American workforce for what will be here in the next 20 years, and that needs to be comprehensive and strategic.” For many in the industry, though, AI sits at the center of a high-stakes technological duel between the United States and China. In July, leaders in Beijing announced a plan to incubate a local AI industry valued at about $150 billion by 2030, relying in no small part on government investment. To that end, recent reports have suggested the White House is exploring policy options to restrict U.S. firms from partnering with China on research in artificial intelligence. Some companies are emboldened by the assertive steps the Trump administration has taken toward China in criticizing intellectual-property theft and the restrictive rules tech companies must follow to operate in the country. "They think, 'Hey, we are competing with these Chinese companies, and they're getting an unfair kind of help from the government that we're not getting,’ ” Domingos said. A spokesman for the administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy declined to comment on the reports. In December, though, the president’s official National Security Strategy warned that "risks to U.S. national security will grow as competitors integrate information derived from personal and commercial sources with intelligence collection and data analytic capabilities based on artificial intelligence and machine learning." For now, a source familiar with the White House’s event said the administration is considering a different set of proposals, including efforts to make more data available for AI research. Many companies long have asked the government to make more of its information available. “Our free-market approach to scientific discovery harnesses the combined strengths of government, industry and academia, resulting in the most successful innovation machine the world has ever known,” Kratsios said.


The secret, jet-setting life of a world-famous conductor

is principal conductor of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. For a music director of stature, having more than one ensemble is the norm. Once conductors attain such a position, and the better their work is known, they become all the more sought-after by other ensembles. Yannick Nézet-Séguin is now the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Rotterdam Orchestra, as well as his home orchestra in Montreal, and is about to take over at the Metropolitan Opera. This season, Andris Nelsons assumed the chief post at the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, Germany, a role he already holds with the Boston Symphony Orchestra; the two orchestras have launched a new collaboration, in part to reassure audiences and donors of the maestro’s continued commitment to each. Jaap van Zweden, the music director designate of the New York Philharmonic, is music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic. And Noseda, until recently, was the music director of the Teatro Regio in Turin, an opera house with orchestra, a position in which he invested 11 years. In April, however, the regional government appointed a new general director to head the Teatro Regio — European orchestras and opera houses are for the most part subsidized by the state, and subject to state control — and after a planned U.S. tour was canceled (which was to have brought the ensemble to the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall), Noseda regretfully resigned. He remains the principal guest conductor of the Israel Philharmonic and the prestigious London Symphony Orchestra. And now that he’s no longer with Turin, it’s likely, given his current level of acclaim, that some other institution will grab him up. Orchestral seasons were shorter in the 1950s: It’s hard to expect someone today to stick around for an entire year. Too, with the plethora of music and musicians out there, variety is more appealing: Audiences want to see more than one conductor, and it’s good for musicians to be exposed to different styles. However, this has led to a multicity, jet-setting lifestyle for major musicians that’s difficult to sustain. It’s up to the individuals to figure out how they are going to survive it. “The crucial thing,” Noseda says, “is to build up a team that you trust.” Noseda’s main team numbers three people. There’s Lucia, whom he met when they were music students. She oversees the practical concerns of their daily life, but she is often


Jupiter reaches opposition tonight. Here’s when and how to see it.

king of the planets stays very bright throughout this month and reaches “opposition” on Tuesday, which means the planet with the big red spot will be very bright in the southeast sky. Opposition occurs when Jupiter and the sun are opposite one another from our earthly perspective. Essentially, we revel in a “full” Jupiter — just like a full moon — which can be seen throughout May at -2.5 magnitude (very bright) in the constellation Libra in the southeast after sundown. Jupiter ascends the southeast sky beginning around 8 p.m., while the sun sets in the west. As the night grows darker, the large gaseous planet becomes an exceptionally bright spot. Like working the overnight third shift, the planet now stays up all night. Throughout the night you will see Jupiter climb higher toward the south (it’s due south at 1:10 a.m., according to the Naval Observatory) and then descend toward the west, where the large planet sets at 6:18 a.m. — about 17 minutes after sunrise. If you’re an early riser, you can find Jupiter in the western sky before dawn. From Earth, Jupiter appears as a muted bright spot in the sky, but this giant planet sports a titanic personality. NASA’s Juno probe is on tour around the planet and sending back images once unimaginable. It captured scenes of massive cyclones from the planet’s south and north pole region — which look like a caffeinated version of Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.” Last month, NASA released a 3-D flyover of Jupiter’s north pole region taken by the spacecraft’s Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper instrument. The tool captured light from deep inside Jupiter, as it studied the weather 30 to 45 miles below the gassy planet’s cloud tops. In March, Juno scientists published results in the journal Nature, which provided gravity measurements and explained the planet’s mysterious zones and belts. “Galileo viewed the stripes on Jupiter more than 400 years ago,” said Yohai Kaspi, Juno co-investigator from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, who led research for the Nature paper. “Until now, we only had a superficial understanding of them and have been able to relate these stripes to cloud features along Jupiter’s jets,” Kaspi said. “Now … we know how deep the jets extend and what their structure is beneath the visible clouds. It’s like going from a 2-D picture to a 3-D version in high definition.”


The one best idea for ending sexual harassment

term. But is it really too much to ask that an industry that brought the economy to its knees, was bailed out by our government and yet continues to exclude most of the population from its plum jobs get with the program? If these companies become more inclusive of gender and other types of diversity, the research indicates that risk will be reduced and performance improved. And that is good for all of us. Sallie Krawcheck is chief executive and co-founder of [Back to top] IN THE HOME: Protect workers in the gig economy With sexual harassment and assault revealed to be prevalent in public workplaces, imagine what is happening to workers who labor behind closed doors in homes around the country. Domestic workers — those who care for our children as nannies, clean our homes and support the elderly to live at home as they age — are some of the most at-risk and invisible workers in the nation. Not only is their workplace the private home, but also they have faced a long history of exclusion from basic protections afforded workers in other industries. We need to rewrite our harassment and discrimination policies to include all working people, regardless of field or employment classification. Some of our most progressive labor protections exclude domestic workers, by design or default. During the negotiations surrounding the New Deal, Southern members of Congress, in exchange for their support, insisted on the exclusion of farm workers and domestic workers from labor protections afforded others. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act requires a threshold number of employees for workers to be protected from discrimination and sexual harassment. Because they typically work in settings with only one employee, the vast majority of domestic workers are excluded. We live in an age in which work itself is changing. As more people work as freelancers, independent contractors or in temporary, part-time settings, they are failed by our inadequate legal protections against discrimination and harassment. How many female Uber drivers have faced harassment from male passengers at night? How many housecleaners, the original gig workers, have been manhandled by the “man of the house”? “Non-traditional” work is becoming the norm, and more women are falling through the cracks of our written rules of conduct. The rules of the new economy are being written at this very moment. We have a unique opportunity to write them in a


The Cybersecurity 202: Now that Trump’s out of the nuclear deal, Iran may flex cyber muscle

Romm and Drew Harwell write. “The Trump administration intends to ask academics, government officials and AI developers about ways to adapt regulations to advance AI in such fields as agriculture, health care and transportation, according to a draft schedule of the event. And they’re set to discuss the U.S. government’s power to fund cutting-edge research into such technologies as machine learning.” It’s a change of tone for the administration. Last year, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said AI was “not even on my radar screen.” “Among those expected to be in the room for that private gathering Thursday will be representatives from tech giants like Microsoft, Nvidia and Oracle, as well as other businesses like Ford, Land O’Lakes, MasterCard, Pfizer and United Airlines, according to the White House,” Romm and Harwell write. — The House yesterday passed legislation seeking to improve small businesses’ cyberdefenses. The Hill’s Morgan Chalfant writes that the measure would direct the Small Business Administration to create a mechanism for employees of small business development centers that receive federal grants to undergo cybersecurity training. “The legislation would also mandate that the Small Business Administration reimburse development centers for costs associated with cyber training, though the price tag could not exceed $350,000 in any given year,” Chalfant writes. Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho) has introduced similar legislation in the Senate. More government cybersecurity news: — Amid the fallout from Russia's interference in the 2016 election, Facebook will change the way it runs issue ads on the social network, Politico's Ashley Gold reports. “Viewers of the issue ads on Facebook will eventually see a label with the disclosures about the identity, location and funder of the ads, as well as a link to other ads from the same funder, according to the company,” Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was “glad to see Facebook introducing transparency requirements for issue ads.” More cybersecurity news on the private sector from The Post and elsewhere: — Sweeping regulations to strengthen data privacy across the European Union take effect in less than three weeks, but regulators say they don't have enough funding or powers to do the job, Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, the head of France’s data protection watchdog, told Reuters that her organization lacks the means to enforce the E.U.’s General Data Protection Regulation. “We’ve realized that our resources were insufficient to cope with the new


‘Everyone thinks so, but I would never say it’: Trump weighs in on whether he’s deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize

President Trump said Wednesday that “everyone” thinks he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to rid North Korea of nuclear weapons — but added that it’s not something he would say out loud. Trump was asked by a reporter at the White House if he’s deserving of the prize after news broke Wednesday that three American men who had been imprisoned by North Korea were on their way home to the United States. “Everyone thinks so, but I would never say it,” said Trump, who is preparing to meet face-to-face with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in coming weeks, as part of a bid to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. “You know what I want to do?” Trump said to reporters. “I want to get it finished. The prize I want is victory for the world — not for even here — I want victory for the world. Because that’s what we’re talking about, so that’s the only prize I want.” Talk about Trump’s worthiness of the prize has swelled in conservative circles, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in gave life to the notion last week as well. “President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize,” Moon told local reporters. “The only thing we need is peace.” It was mere months ago that Trump threatened “fire and fury” and to “totally destroy” North Korea if the rogue nation threatened the United States. Trump said Wednesday that he is hopeful his meeting with Kim — whom he not long ago was mocking as “Little Rocket Man” — will be successful. He said the logistics of the meeting should be announced within three days and ruled out a summit in the demilitarized zone with South Korea, an idea he floated last week. john.wagner@washpost.com


Walmart’s new foothold in India has as many customers as Amazon Prime

Amazon.com revealed a stunning statistic last month when it announced that its Prime service had hit more than 100 million subscribers worldwide. Its largest American competitor, Walmart, may have just captured as many new customers in India alone. The retail giant announced Wednesday that it would make a 77 percent stake in Flipkart, which since its founding more than a decade ago has evolved from a modest startup into one of India’s leading e-commerce site. The $16 billion acquisition keeps Walmart in step with Amazon as the two behemoths look to expand in India, with 1.3 billion people and a fast-growing economy. The deal all but assures an ongoing global rivalry between Walmart and Amazon. (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) And the move comes less than two years after Walmart stepped up its online game in the United States by buying Jet.com for $3.3 billion. In an interesting twist, this time Walmart is snapping up a company started by none other than two former Amazon employees. “For Walmart, this is the only way left to enter the Indian market and they are paying a premium for the access,” said Satish Meena, a Forrester analyst based in New Delhi. “This will provide them around 54 million active online buyers and a company with 40 percent of the Indian online retail market.” In March, Meena forecasted that India’s online retail market remained the fastest-growing market in the world. At that point, Meena wrote that Amazon was closing the gap with Flipkart to become the single-largest online retailer in India in terms of sales. Fashion was the only category in which Flipkart maintained a significant edge. The report noted that as Amazon focused on fashion and grocery in 2017 and 2018, “Flipkart will find it difficult to retain its edge in 2018.” Walmart’s acquisition changes that dynamic. Now, the retailer can help launch Flipkart’s grocery services to compete with Amazon’s. And Walmart can give Flipkart a boost in its fashion and clothing category, especially for low-to mid-priced products. “But the overall question of customer experience will be the key factor,” Meena said. Walmart arrived in India in 2007 as it sought to debut brick-and-mortar stores in its major cities. But local regulations on foreign retailers hampered plans for Walmart’s massive expansion. Meanwhile, the two former Amazon employees, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, steadily grew Flipkart from the book-selling company they


When banks abandoned American Samoa, the islands found a solution nobody had used in a century

When former Celtic Bank president and chief executive Phil Ware heard their pitch to help start a government-owned bank on a tropical archipelago, he thought the consultants were crazy. “[But] I made a few calls and found out the great need that there is down there,” said Ware, who first encountered Samoan language and culture on his mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New Zealand. “We need to help them get banking. How do you operate an economy without a bank?” When Roberts first arrived in the territory and drove past an ANZ branch, he saw cars parked at the drive-through and a line of customers stretching far out the door. “The first thing we thought was that it was a run on the bank,” Roberts said. Only it wasn’t an old-school bank run. It was just payday, when everybody scrambled to turn their paychecks into cash before the bank ran out of bills. American Samoans, Roberts and Ware found, had no access to credit cards, loans or the other financial tools that other Americans take for granted. Islanders living on the mainland faced wire-transfer fees over $150 to send money home. When Ware agreed to become the first chief executive of the Territorial Bank of American Samoa, he thought it would be a “piece of cake.” “I had no idea,” he says now. The Territorial Bank of American Samoa (TBAS) served its first customers in October 2016 out of a leased office handed over by the Bank of Hawaii. It was soon lending money and opening accounts. But it couldn’t offer basic services such as direct deposits or bank transfers until the Federal Reserve signed off on its routing number. That usually takes a couple of weeks. This time, it took a couple of years. Few federal regulators had approved a new bank in a U.S. territory before, let alone one owned by a territorial government. They fretted about TBAS oversight and its political independence. The team behind the public bank pressed their case all the way up to the vice president's office, but it took a meeting with the freshly appointed Federal Reserve vice chair for supervision, Randal Quarles, who came from the Utah-based Cynosure Group, to break the logjam. “He understood completely,” Roberts said. “All of a sudden, we get a call [from regulators] saying ‘we got the green light, let’s get


Is Russia interfering in Guatemala’s anti-corruption commission? The real story might surprise you.

On April 27, the U.S. Congress’s Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the U.S. Helsinki Commission, held a hearing about alleged Kremlin pressures on the U.N. Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a hybrid legal body that investigates and tries high-level corruption cases. The backstory here involves the CICIG’s conviction of three Russian nationals — Igor Bitkov, his wife Irina and their daughter Anastasia — for identity fraud. The Bitkovs claim they face Russian government persecution. Some members of Congress seem to agree that the CICIG has become a tool of Russian President Vladimir Putin. On May 4, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) announced a hold on $6 million in U.S. contributions to Guatemala’s CICIG. The twists and turns of this case illustrate the unintended consequences of heightened concerns about Russian interference. There is little evidence to suggest the CICIG has become part of the Russian state’s “long arm.” But the allegations of Russian interference may effectively doom the CICIG’s anti-corruption mission altogether, by flipping its most consequential source of foreign support: the U.S. government. The Bitkovs run afoul of Russia — and the CICIG In 2008, the Bitkov family fled Russia following threats from the Putin-allied VTB Bank, which was pressuring Igor Bitkov to sell shares of his business, North-West Timber Co. The family sought refuge in Guatemala. In January 2015, Guatemalan authorities arrested the family, along with 36 others, for utilizing a criminal network to obtain fraudulent passports. CICIG and the Guatemalan public prosecutor’s office led the anti-corruption investigation. The trial resulted in a 19-year prison sentence for Igor, and 14 years each for Irina and Anastasia. Last month, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court ruled that one of the country’s high-impact criminal courts will rehear their case. The case has gotten a great deal of U.S. attention as well. Wall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady implied that the CICIG is doing Putin’s bidding against the Bitkovs. Rubio and Bill Browder — a U.S. businessman who lobbied for the passage of the Magnitsky Act, to curtail human rights abuses against Russia’s whistleblowers — also suggest a Kremlin-CICIG connection. Where’s the evidence that Russian government forces involved the CICIG, though? U.S. and European donors have provided some $90 million, but the CICIG has never received any funding from the Russian government. One critic points out that VTB’s Guatemalan representative is an alternate judge on the Constitutional Court. Yet


Emails show EPA turned to climate skeptics to craft ‘red team-blue team’ exercise

Emails and other documents from the Environmental Protection Agency shed new light on internal deliberations behind one of the most colorful proposals to come out of the agency during Administrator Scott Pruitt’s tenure — an ill-fated attempt to set up opposing teams to debate the science of climate change. Pruitt pitched the so-called “red team-blue team” exercise as a way to suss out the truth of scientific claims that the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities are pumping greenhouse gases into the air and are warming the planet. A new cache of emails show that EPA staff primarily sought out conservative advocates who have worked for years at the fringes of mainstream climate science for advice on the debate, rather than the staffers who traditionally identify scientific research priorities for the agency. The emails were provided to The Washington Post by environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council which obtained them as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. They show Pruitt’s schedulers, press aides and other political appointees were collecting information from outside conservative groups — even putting it in binders for Pruitt to read. “[T]he ‘Red Team’ idea is superb,” Rodney Nichols, a science and technology policy consultant for the CO2 Coalition, wrote in an May 2017 email to Pruitt aide Lincoln Ferguson. “We will be glad to help the initiative in any way we can.” It wasn’t until last June that Pruitt began publicly floating a red team-blue team debate. Nichols, whose group argues that additional atmospheric carbon dioxide aides plant growth and boost farm productivity, passed along a paper titled “Carbon Dioxide Benefits the World” for Pruitt’s perusal. By February, Pruitt appeared to latch onto that idea. “We know humans have most flourished during times of what, warming trends,” Pruitt told a Las Vegas television station Pruitt and his staff pursued the two-sided debate format, popular with military planners, despite the existence of multiple scientific assessments at home and abroad that have concluded man-made climate change is real and poses substantial risk. Many within the climate science community countered that staging such an exercise was unnecessary because scientists already have plenty of forums, such as academic journals and scientific conferences, where ideas are debated. After months of back-and-forth with conservative advocates, the White House ultimately stopped the plan. The EPA declined to comment for this story. The emails show parts of the EPA were


I like running and dislike litter. So I decided to try a fitness trend called plogging.

were picking up trash to avoid crashing into one another. The amount of waste we collected surprised Nick Hake and Rumiko Ito of Alexandria, who had heard about the event in a radio ad. “I expected some, but didn’t expect all the small pieces,” Hake said. Hake, 37, said he and his wife run frequently but were first-time ploggers. To Ito, 38, the event, which was hosted in partnership with the Washington-based gym Vida Fitness, sounded like a “good mix of exercise and helping clean the community.” Marcus Markle, a program analyst with the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation, said plogging dovetails perfectly with FitDC, an initiative by D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bower (D) to link community members with nutrition and fitness resources, and his department’s efforts to make Washington the fittest city again. The American College of Sports Medicine and the Anthem Foundation named Minneapolis the fittest city in its annual American Fitness Index last year after the District was No. 1 the previous three years. “Plogging helps people take ownership of their own community,” Markle said. “I think it has that sense of community, and people can come out and feel like they’re helping make their community a better [place].” It can also help runners work on muscles they typically don’t focus on, and the slower pace can serve as the “perfect recovery day,” Horowitz said. “We were squatting, bending and activating the glutes,” added Horowitz, a 53-year-old personal trainer for Vida Fitness who said he has completed more than 190 marathons. “It’s movement outside of the regular plane of running. The risk of injury in running is that you’re maintaining weaknesses in the muscles you don’t use directly.” By the time we reached the Francis L. Cardozo Education Campus past the midway point, I had emptied my bag of trash twice. I picked up pizza boxes, plastic bottles, bandages, candy wrappers and what appeared to be a stack of counterfeit Capitals playoff tickets. (No, I did not keep them.) Even though we were going at a leisurely pace, with plenty of waiting, I still got in thousands of steps and worked up a light sweat. And I felt as if I was making a difference. On the way back to my car, I kept spying trash on the ground that I wouldn’t have noticed before the run. As I wiped sweat from my forehead, I bumped


The harsh interrogations of al-Qaeda detainees: Was it ‘torture’ and did it help find bin Laden?

the policies. With President Trump’s nomination of Gina Haspel to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the debate will be replayed. Haspel, currently deputy director, ran a “black site” prison in Thailand where the techniques were used and was involved in the decision to destroy tapes of the waterboarding sessions. Here’s a guide to how both sides make their case, using the two sentences in Cheney’s tweet as a basis for discussion. We will consider them in reverse order for purposes of clarity. SERE is an acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, a program that helps U.S. military personnel in survival techniques if they are captured by an enemy. The military’s use of techniques such as waterboarding and being placed in a confinement box were cited in a 2002 memo from the Justice Department to the CIA approving the use of waterboarding on Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein (better known as Abu Zubaida), an al-Qaeda facilitator. Waterboarding is intended to simulate drowning. A person is strapped to a board with the upper part of his body on a downward incline. Then, a cloth is placed over the person’s mouth, and water is poured over his face, causing the person to have difficulty breathing and to feel as though his lungs are filling with water. The DOJ memo, quoting from a memo provided by the CIA, said that only the Navy continued to use the waterboard in training. “You have informed us that other services ceased use of the waterboard because it was so successful as an interrogation technique but not because of any concerns over any harm, physical or mental, caused by it,” the memo said. “It was also reported to be almost 100 percent effective in producing cooperation among trainees.” “Of the 26,829 students trained from 1992 through 2001 in the Air Force SERE training, 4.3 percent of these students had contact with psychology services,” the memo added. “Of those 4.3 percent, only 3.2 percent were pulled from the program for psychological reasons.” James Mitchell, a former Air Force psychologist who under contract with the CIA oversaw the interrogations, told The Fact Checker that there are several levels of SERE courses, which has led to confusion. “Most people think references to ‘the same techniques’ being used are referring to the techniques used in the basic resistance to interrogation courses, but the techniques used in advanced courses were the


To resume human spaceflight, NASA and SpaceX need each other

The May 6 front-page article “SpaceX rockets come under safety experts’ glare” presented an ongoing debate between the safety-obsessive NASA and the avant-garde SpaceX regarding the risky “load- and-go” propellant filling maneuver slated to be used on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. NASA’s primary concern with this innovative but daring operation is the human lives that are at stake, since the rocket could instantaneously erupt in flames if any small mishap were to occur. SpaceX, however, asserts that these risky ventures are necessary if the United States hopes to ever reemerge as the leader in human spaceflight. Once again, the media and American public are trying to create unnecessary drama between these organizations that are working toward the same goal: resuming human spaceflight from the United States. NASA’s penchant for caution is important in checking SpaceX’s daring and impulsive tendencies, while SpaceX is expanding the realm of possibilities for space travel that NASA seems too afraid to do. Neither organization could accomplish the daunting task on its own; SpaceX would not be benefiting from massive federal grants, and NASA may never have mustered up the courage to reembrace the uncertainty inherent to human space travel. Irene Kim


Agencies are told to step up use of special powers to hire military spouses

President Trump has issued an order aimed at boosting hiring by federal agencies of spouses of military personnel, who often face career difficulties as a result of being relocated frequently. Military service “often impairs the spouse’s ability to obtain and maintain employment, and to achieve career goals. Multiple and frequent relocations make it challenging for military spouses to maintain the home front, to comply with licensure and other job requirements, and to obtain adequate childcare,” says the order, issued Wednesday. The order stresses the use of an existing authority for agencies to hire without competition the spouse of a member of the military who has been assigned a new duty station. The authority applies to either temporary or permanent positions that otherwise would require competition, although only to jobs within a reasonable commuting distance and only for two years after the relocation. Agencies are to “actively advertise and promote the military spouse hiring authority and actively solicit applications from military spouses for posted and other agency positions,” according to the order. They also must make clear in job vacancy announcements that they will consider candidates under that authority in addition to other candidates. Also, the central personnel agency, the Office of Personnel Management, was told to emphasize use of the policy, recommend potential ways to strengthen it and annually report on its use. “The purpose of the President’s order is to provide significantly greater opportunity for military spouses to be considered for Federal competitive service positions. While the order promotes the use of noncompetitive hiring authority for military spouses, it does not require the hiring of a military spouse for an open position over other applicants” and does not override hiring preferences for veterans, according to a White House fact sheet. The authority also applies, without a time or geographic limit, to spouses of those killed or totally disabled while on active duty. The order further requires a report on how state-issued professional licenses could be transferred more readily after relocations.


Two new developments are coming to Capitol Hill’s Buchanan Park

The developers of new townhouses at Buchanan Park and condos in the former Buchanan School clearly like the neighborhood. While those two projects are nearly sold out, Ditto Residential, the developer of the Buchanan School condos, and Insight Property Group, the developer of the townhouses along with Federal Capital Partners, are starting new residential development in the neighborhood. Insight Property Group is building the Lockwood Apartments at 13th and E streets SE, a 145-unit building on a one-acre parcel of land that formerly held a trash truck depot and an auto repair shop. The apartments are located across the street from the Buchanan Park development and less than two blocks from the Potomac Avenue Metro station. The rent will average $2,900 per month, and the building will include 13 inclusionary zoning apartments for income-qualified residents. The apartment development is named after Belva Lockwood, a 19th-century suffragist who was the first woman to argue in front of the Supreme Court. The apartments, designed by SK+I Architecture and Edit Lab/Streetsense, are anticipated to be ready for occupants in mid-2019. Construction is set to begin soon on a 44-residence development called Watkin’s Alley at 1309 E St. SE by Ditto Residential. The development, a joint venture with OPaL, will include 29 townhouses, 14 condos and a carriage house, along with one level of parking. These residences, financed in part with an investment from Grosvenor Americas, are anticipated to be completed by late 2019. Residents of these developments can walk to Eastern Market and Barracks Row and live close to Trader Joe’s and Harris Teeter grocery stores, as well as across the street from a Safeway that is undergoing a major renovation. Nearby Watkins Elementary was recently renovated. For more information, visit dittodc.com/watkins-alley and insightpropertygroupllc.com/project/lockwood-apartments.


Transcript: The Energy 202 Live

even use the term grid. And so all of that has to be accommodated operationally in addition to policy-wise. It’s going on right now. It’s a good thing, in my view. We recently took action at the FERC to direct the operators of our nation’s wholesale electricity markets to remove any undue barriers that they can identify to the full participation in our energy markets of storage resources. In other words, to treat storage as if it were what we call bulk power transactions, the same as a sale of a chunk of wholesale power from one entity to another or into an organized market. So the ball is currently in the court of the operators of the nation’s wholesale energy markets to come back to us and tell us exactly how they’re going to do that to really open the door wider for storage as a valid resource that may participate in our markets. Mufson: Do you think it’s a legitimate goal for those who want to de-carbonize the grid and to make it a greener thing? That would be, of course, the whole idea of having electric cars. There’s not as much point if there isn’t a greener grid. McIntyre: Well, FERC itself is not an environmental regulatory agency. So that’s not really a matter for our decision. It certainly is something we’re seeing in state decision-making. And, as I’ve noted, that’s something we must accommodate in our own FERC role. Mufson: So I also want to ask you a bit about cyber security. There have been warnings about Russian campaigns to insert malware onto the energy infrastructure. And I was wondering what you’ve seen in this area and what sort of strategy you might have for combatting that kind of intrusion. McIntyre: I think in your prior segment Senators Hoeven and Heinrich did a real nice job of laying out some of the basic concepts on this topic. And I agree with something that was said by Senator Heinrich, that the day is not going to come when we may declare victory, at least in our lifetimes, over cyber problems. It is a matter that commands constant vigilance. We at FERC are constantly vigilant on the matter. We are in increasingly close coordination with other federal governmental counterparts including most importantly the Department of Energy itself. And we monitor this stuff all the time because the threats


Elon Musk’s latest innovation attempt: A SpaceX rocket that can fly twice in one day

The latest version of the Falcon 9 rocket that SpaceX was to launch from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center Thursday afternoon is designed to be reused so quickly that it would eventually mimic a commercial airliner, according to SpaceX’s founder Elon Musk. In a call with reporters before the launch, which was postponed until Friday after a last-minute abort, Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder, said that if all goes well with the upgraded version of the rocket, the company intends to attempt to fly it twice within 24 hours as soon as next year, a monumental achievement that Musk said “would be a very exciting outcome.” The latest version, known as “Block 5,” would be able to fly at least 10 times with no scheduled maintenance in between flights, Musk said, allowing the company to fly more efficiently and at a lower cost. “It’s designed like a commercial airliner, and getting all those details right was immensely difficult,” he said. Typically, companies go weeks or even months in between launches. But flying the same rocket to orbit twice in a single day would be unprecedented and, as Musk said, “a ridiculously hard thing.” “It has taken us, man, since 2002 — 16 years of extreme effort and many, many iterations and thousands of small but important design changes to get to where we think this is even possible,” he said. “Crazy hard. And, of course, we still need to demonstrate it. It’s not like we’ve done it. But it can be done.” For decades, the first stages of rockets were launched and then ditched into the ocean, never to be used again. But since 2015, SpaceX has been flying its boosters back to land so that they could be reused. Going into Thursday’s launch of a communications satellite for Bangladesh, which was aborted a minute before launch, SpaceX has recovered a total of 24 boosters, Musk said. It did not immediately say what caused the company to delay the launch. Block 5 is the version of the rocket, and the one that SpaceX plans to use to fly NASA’s astronauts to the International Space Station, with test flight beginning as soon as this year. For all its triumphs, SpaceX has never even attempted to fly human beings before. But it and Boeing are under contract with NASA to fly crews to the station. The latest version of the Falcon 9 is a


The Cybersecurity 202: How Colorado became the safest state to cast a vote

$51,000. The city did not pay the ransom. “Atlanta has gradually been able to restore its systems, but the recovery has been costly,” — Online activists and several tech companies started a public push to restore the net neutrality rules the Federal Communications Commission voted to end last year, “The senators are putting forward the resolution on Wednesday under what’s known as the Congressional Review Act, a law that permits Congress to review — and reject — administrative decisions by federal agencies,” Fung writes. “In this case, the resolution (or CRA, for short) would overturn the FCC’s repeal vote, effectively bringing back the net neutrality rules and making it harder for the agency to attempt to repeal them again.” “Today, we enter this historic final stretch here in the Senate in the battle to save net neutrality,” Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said. “This is a fight for the most powerful platform for commerce and communications in the history of the planet: the Internet.” Tumblr was among those supporting the move to restore net neutrality rules and tweeted that the survival of “free and open internet as we know it” is at stake: More government cybersecurity news: — Chinese tech company ZTE announced yesterday that it has terminated “major operating activities” following sanctions from the Trump administration, “One of China’s most internationally successful technology suppliers, with about $17 billion in annual revenue, ZTE is facing a death sentence,” Zhong writes. “The Commerce Department has blocked its access to American-made components until 2025, saying the company failed to punish employees who violated trade controls against Iran and North Korea.” More in cybersecurity news from the private sector: — Iran may respond to Trump’s decision to pull out of the nuclear deal with cyberoperations against Western banks, governments, and energy providers, Here are some of the report’s assessments: — And BuzzFeed's Kevin Collier has a good read on another kind of confrontation in cyberspace: — After Copenhagen's electric bike-sharing system was hacked last week, the company that maintains the bikes sent employees to manually restore its approximately 2,000 bikes around the Danish capital, “In a Facebook post, Bycyklen wrote that its entire database was deleted in a ‘primitive’ hacking scheme that seemed to be carried out by someone with intimate knowledge about the system’s structure,” Cole writes. Today Gina Haspel, Trump’s nominee for CIA director, said she would not restore the agency’s


Exotic pet trade linked to invasive fungus that’s killing frogs globally

marketing of exotic pets likely propelled it. The genetic signals point to a common ancestor in East Asia, possibly on the Korean Peninsula. Fisher said the surge in activity in East Asia during World War II and the Korean War, and the increased movement of people and cargo, could have played a role in distributing fungus-infected frogs and toads to other parts of the world. “When you globalize trade, you globalize unexpected secondary consequences of trade,” Fisher says. Karen Lips, a University of Maryland biologist who has documented declines in amphibian populations in Central America, said the report shows that the chytrid fungi are more widespread and diversified than previously known. Such fungi are an invasive species and have a devastating impact on biodiversity, yet they don't get the kind of attention given to more charismatic alien species — such as Burmese pythons, brown tree snakes, Northern snakeheads, feral hogs and rabbits. Lips, who was not involved in the new study, said it shows there are many lineages of fungus, and “these things can hybridize. ... The impacts are global and much larger than we've seen before.” In fact, not just frogs and toads are threatened by the chytrid fungi. Salamanders in Europe have been slammed by a chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), that emerged in Vietnam. Its arrival in the United States would imperil this country's huge salamander population. It was in the 1980s that field researchers noted a global decline in amphibian populations. No one could explain it. One hypothesis pointed to the thinning ozone layer. Only in the 1990s did the fungus explanation surface. Some frog species have already gone extinct in the wild, including the mountain chicken frog, said Simon O'Hanlon, a research associate at Imperial College London and the lead author of the new report. There are roughly 7,800 species of frogs and toads globally, and only about 1,400 have been tested for the fungus. About half showed signs of infection. Frogs and toads are marketed globally as exotic pets, a food source and for use in scientific research. They can also be stowaways. Asian toads, for example, recently invaded Madagascar by remaining hidden within imported mining equipment. The new report notes that it's probably not a coincidence that the estimated dates for the emergence of the chytrid pandemic is roughly the same period as the “big bang” in international trade. “We’re shipping whatever around


Groundhog terrorizes a woman and her co-workers days after a deputy fatally shot one ‘acting oddly’

Days after a sheriff’s deputy in Maryland opened fire on an aggressive groundhog, another groundhog terrorized a woman a few miles away, authorities said. On Tuesday morning, the Humane Society of Carroll County, the county’s contractor for animal control services, received a call that a groundhog had “come after” a woman when she arrived at work in Eldersburg, Md., said Karen Baker, the organization’s executive director. The woman took refuge in her car, Baker said. When other people at her office came out of the building to help her, the groundhog menaced them, leading them to retreat inside. The groundhog was gone by the time animal control officers arrived at the scene, Baker said, so they set a trap. The trap was empty in the afternoon, but the groundhog was later found at the scene, ready to fight. Officers removed the animal and euthanized it. Baker said the animal would be tested for rabies, but officials don’t think there is a rabies outbreak. Though groundhogs don’t typically attack people, groundhog-human interactions are common. “We do this every single day with groundhogs,” she said. “It’s not an uncommon occurrence.” Baker said the attack occurred a few miles from Liberty and White Rock roads in Eldersburg, where a sheriff’s deputy fatally shot an aggressive groundhog on Sunday. District Cpl. Jon Light, a spokesman for the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, said the deputy believed the groundhog was “acting oddly.”


Facebook, Google limit ads in effort to prevent interference in Irish abortion referendum

DUBLIN — An upcoming vote on abortion has turned Ireland into ground zero in the global reckoning with how foreign interests can deploy social media to distort democratic politics. With the May 25 referendum just over two weeks away, Facebook announced Tuesday that it would stop accepting related advertisements from groups based outside Ireland. The restriction testifies to the depths of concern that foreign advertising could skew the outcome. And it highlights the technology company’s tortured attempt to move past criticism that it became a conduit for misinformation and outside interference during the Brexit and U.S. presidential campaigns in 2016. “We understand the sensitivity of this campaign and will be working hard to ensure neutrality at all stages,” Facebook said in a statement, adding that it is asking political parties, campaign groups and an unaffiliated transparency initiative to flag advertisements, which the company will then investigate. It is also using machine learning to identify inappropriate content. “Our goal is simple: to help ensure a free, fair and transparent vote on this important issue,” the company said. Google on Wednesday went a step further in saying it would put a moratorium on all referendum-related advertising, of both foreign and domestic origins. The measure will take effect by Thursday, a spokesperson for the Internet giant said, and will wipe paid messaging aiming to tip the vote from Google as well as YouTube. The referendum will decide the fate of the eighth amendment to the Irish constitution, one of the most severe prohibitions on abortion in the Western world. Approved by Irish voters in 1983, the law gives a mother and unborn child an equal right to life and proscribes termination even in cases of rape, incest and fatal fetal abnormality. Debate over the eighth amendment has bitterly divided the Irish public; opinion polls suggest a slight majority for repeal. But it also has drawn the attention of international interest groups, lent a megaphone by social media as the influence of the Catholic Church has waned. While Ireland forbids foreign spending in campaigns and prohibits political advertising on television and radio altogether, its election law is virtually silent on digital activity. As a result, individuals and groups from outside Ireland — primarily from the United States, Britain and Canada — have been waging an online campaign to influence the vote, according to the Transparent Referendum Initiative, a nonpartisan organization tracking paid online advertising.


Tech can help save endangered plants. But sometimes what you really need is luck.

It was a frosty early morning at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London, and I stood facing the greenhouse bench. In front of me was a café marron plant, a gorgeous shrub that never stops blooming, with dark green leaves and snow-white jasmine-like flowers. It had been grown from cuttings taken from a plant on Rodrigues, an island in the Indian Ocean. I should say the café marron plant: It was the last of its kind. The species could be propagated artificially by cuttings, but the last lonesome specimen had failed to set seeds for decades, and the plants grown from cuttings didn’t, either. Technically, it was extinct — a specimen could be kept artificially alive, but it would never reproduce in the wild. It was a textbook definition of what conservationists call a “living dead” species. I’m the tropical senior botanical horticulturist at Kew. I decided to use my free time to see if a kind of artificial insemination would save the plant: Take a scalpel, cut across the female parts of the flower and insert some pollen. In hundreds of attempts, one grain of pollen might produce a seed. It was the summer of 2003, and though my first cut did not yield any immediate result, it gave me a clue that enabled me to find success. Why bother trying to recover one plant species? For starters, 60 percent of our calorie intake comes from just three species of plants: rice, maize and wheat. If that crop production were to collapse, humankind would face starvation, with our only hope being that some of the 50,000 species that have recorded uses for consumption could come to the rescue. An additional 28,000 species have recorded medicinal uses. So with the extinction of each species, our food palette and our pharmacy become poorer and smaller. Yet we take plants for granted; we too often dismiss their benefits. Kew’s “State of the World’s Plants” reported that 1,730 new species were discovered in 2016 — an encouraging number. But roughly 80,000 species — 1 in 5 — are believed to be at risk of extinction. There are 60,000 more that we believe we have not yet discovered. You can’t protect what you don’t know; you can’t use a plant that you can’t find, whose home you can’t observe, whose prevalence is uncertain. We’re in danger of losing our biodiversity. Saving plants represents


This is the most important tech contest since the space race, and America is losing

advantage of quantum physics to manipulate atoms and subatomic particles in new, potentially powerful ways. For example, the speed and power of today’s computers are physically limited to the transistors that carry out their functions. That’s because transistors are basically on-off switches for the flow of electrons in computers (typically represented in values of zeros and ones, or “bits”). But quantum computing promises a way around this limitation through the quirks of quantum physics. Specifically, the bits in quantum computers can exist in more than one state at a time, can influence each other instantaneously from great distances, and can act as particles and waves simultaneously. These new bits — known as quantum bits or “qubits” — create the potential to process data much faster than traditional computers. This technology holds immense promise. It could allow us to communicate faster, more accurately and more securely than ever before — meeting not only the security challenges of tomorrow but also revolutionizing everything from code-breaking to cybersecurity to climate modeling, and opening new frontiers in medicine and materials science. Whoever gets this technology first will also be able to cripple traditional defenses and power grids and manipulate the global economy. The surest way to deter such behavior is to win this race. Yet, many suspect that China is already pulling ahead. Although the country’s total investment is unknown, the Chinese government is building a $10 billion, 4-million-square-foot National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences, due to open in two years. China has already launched into orbit the “Quantum Experiments at Space Scale” satellite. Using quantum communications technology, the satellite successfully sent “unbreakable” code from space last year. In comparison to China’s investments, U.S. government-funded research in quantum technology, stood at just $300 million a year as of 2016. In 1958, the year after America was jolted into action by the launch of Sputnik, NASA was given an initial annual budget of less than $800 million in today’s dollars. By 1962, after the United States once again came in second — this time in the race to human spaceflight — NASA’s budget jumped to more than $10 billion. America never looked back. A similar misfire in the race for quantum technology would not be as easy to overcome. If the United States is to lead, immediate investment is needed to fund advances in quantum encryption, quantum computing and quantum communication. Some of this is


way to deter such behavior is to win this race. Yet, many suspect that China is already pulling ahead. Although the country’s total investment is unknown, the Chinese government is building a $10 billion, 4-million-square-foot National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences, due to open in two years. China has already launched into orbit the “Quantum Experiments at Space Scale” satellite. Using quantum communications technology, the satellite successfully sent “unbreakable” code from space last year. In comparison to China’s investments, U.S. government-funded research in quantum technology, stood at just $300 million a year as of 2016. In 1958, the year after America was jolted into action by the launch of Sputnik, NASA was given an initial annual budget of less than $800 million in today’s dollars. By 1962, after the United States once again came in second — this time in the race to human spaceflight — NASA’s budget jumped to more than $10 billion. America never looked back. A similar misfire in the race for quantum technology would not be as easy to overcome. If the United States is to lead, immediate investment is needed to fund advances in quantum encryption, quantum computing and quantum communication. Some of this is already underway, but we are only scratching the surface. The National Science Foundation has listed quantum technology as one of its 10 big ideas and has made multimillion-dollar investments in secure communications research. And the U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, which operates under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, recently selected my university, the University of Southern California, to lead a consortium of institutions to build and test 100-qubit quantum machines. The largest quantum computer currently operating is a 72-qubit system built by Google. Other institutions are breaking important ground in this area as well, including Harvard University and the University of Maryland. But these efforts will only mark a watershed if our nation prioritizes quantum research as it did aerospace and defense in the mid-20th century. Like then, critical partnerships between academia, government and the private sector can build the human capital we need to lead in the quantum era. But if we do not take the appropriate action, America’s dominance in a technology-driven world will be short-lived. Congress should use the 2019 budget debate to form a national quantum strategy and to ensure it is funded appropriately not only next year but also in the


Maryland wants to put a limit on bow-hunting antlerless deer

appropriate mind-set for deer population control in suburban neighborhoods. These hunters are already harvesting large numbers of deer over the long archery season. Forcing them to reduce the number of deer they harvest in suburban areas will do nothing to improve hunter satisfaction in rural counties, but it will limit hunters’ ability to reduce deer populations in suburban counties. Some of the deer these hunters harvest are donated to programs such as Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry, providing thousands of meals every year. The Montgomery County Civic Federation strongly supports efforts to cull the deer herds. Overpopulation of deer severely degrades our natural environment. In parks from the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park to stream valleys and regional and community parks across the county, deer have browsed vegetation from the ground up to five feet. A lack of ground cover or saplings deprives small mammals and ground-nesting birds of habitat. Rain on bare soil causes soil erosion, further degrading the natural and healthy environment. Some environmental scientists believe that the environmental damage caused by deer overpopulation is second only to climate change as a cause for concern. In Montgomery County, we have more than 2,000 reported deer-vehicle collisions each year; insurance companies estimate an equal number go unreported. This poses a significant public-safety problem. Then there is the risk to public health. Deer and deer ticks carry Lyme disease, tularemia, ehrlichiosis, babesiosis and Powassan virus. Our county spends significant funds annually related to deer. Montgomery Parks conducts managed hunts within more than two dozen parks, costing $459,971 in 2016. In that year, the county paid an additional $100,047 to collect and dispose of roadkill, plus $20,000 to have surplus deer taken by hunters, professional and amateur, processed and distributed to help feed the hungry. In 2016, the DNR thanked us for our “ongoing commitment to facilitating hunting as a primary tool for managing our suburban deer populations.” Why is it now proposing regulations that will undermine the very management tool it has championed? The DNR should reinstitute the old Suburban Deer Archery Zone in Montgomery, Prince George’s, Anne Arundel, Howard and Baltimore counties, which allowed for unlimited harvest of antlerless deer during archery season. This will allow bowhunters to continue to help reduce deer overpopulation in these counties, and allow the DNR to apply lower limits in rural areas as it sees fit to benefit hunter satisfaction.