Are there any limits to Paul Manafort’s greed?

rake in millions in return is understandable, if not laudable; it is a bipartisan failing of human nature. But to take the additional, risky step of tax fraud? My colleague Catherine Rampell has noted the dwindling number of prosecutions for white-collar crime, and maybe, absent Manafort’s seemingly reckless decision to go to work for the Trump campaign, he might have gotten away with it. Criminal prosecutions referred by the IRS to the Justice Department have fallen by half since 2013. Still, Manafort should not have been sleeping soundly, in any of his many multimillion-dollar homes — he was being interviewed by FBI agents about his “offshore consulting activities” even as he was allegedly failing to report his income. Finally, the enigma at the heart of it all: What, if anything, does this all have to do with Russia? Perhaps nothing, as Trump constantly asserts. And yet, the evidence presented at his trial demonstrates, by the time Manafort went to work for Trump — for free! — he was a man in dire financial straits. The New Yorker’s Adam Davidson summarized Manafort’s precarious situation and frantic behavior: “By early 2016, the man who previously had been sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to the U.S. each month seemed to be in a self-destructive frenzy, making the desperate moves of a man who needed some cash, right away, and had run out of options.” That raises the question: If Manafort was willing to go to such extreme lengths to keep himself afloat, what might he have been willing to do at the helm of the Trump campaign? We already know that Manafort was eager to use his Trump connection to “get whole,” as he put it, with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who had loaned Manafort $10 million. Manafort, through an associate suspected of ties to Russian intelligence, offered Deripaska “private briefings” on the race. It does not seem far-fetched to ask if there is anything else — or to think that, if there is, Mueller and his team already know it. Which might explain, at least in part, the president’s evident and growing agitation. And which brings us back to the lesser-known ending of Churchill’s quote about divining Russia’s intent. “But perhaps there is a key,” Churchill concluded. “That key is Russian national interest.” ruthmarcus@washpost.com Read more from Ruth Marcus’s archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook.


Time is running out to prevent civil war in Venezuela

FOR YEARS, Venezuela’s democrats have struggled to salvage their country through peaceful means. The South American nation’s social and economic crisis is so profound, and its dictatorship so stubborn, however, that it would have been a miracle if at least a faction of the opposition did not resort to violence. That may be the reason for the bizarre detonation of explosives aboard two drones flying near President Nicolás Maduro as he addressed a military assembly in Caracas last week. Or it may not. Whatever the truth behind the apparent assassination attempt, in which seven people were injured, the relevant — and disturbing — consequence has been to give Mr. Maduro a pretext to clamp down on Venezuela’s already besieged opposition. Responsible for dozens of deaths in a violent crackdown last year, the Maduro regime has unleashed its secret police again in the days since the explosions. Tuesday night, masked men presumed to be government secret police agents seized 29-year-old Juan Requesens, a leading regime opponent who sits in Venezuela’s near-paralyzed national legislature. Also, the government has issued an arrest warrant for Julio Borges, the former president of the National Assembly, who lives in Bogota, Colombia. In an especially clumsy attempt to divert attention from its own failings, Mr. Maduro pointed a finger of blame at the outgoing Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, and the Maduro regime asserted that purported assassins were trained in that neighboring nation as well. He leavened these accusations with similar ones against his “ultra-right” opponents in Miami. Having secured another term in a farcical election on May 20, Mr. Maduro was desperately trying to address his country’s predicted 1 million percent inflation rate, and other symptoms of the economic catastrophe brought about by his own policies and those of his socialist predecessor, Hugo Chávez. “The moment of economic recovery has arrived” were the president’s words before the drone exploded overhead, interrupting his speech. Actually, it is far too late for Mr. Maduro to repair the damage his regime has inflicted, as the continuing exodus of destitute Venezuelans demonstrates. Some 500 Venezuelans cross the border with Brazil in a remote section of the Amazon rain forest every day; the situation in the Brazilian state of Roraima has grown so chaotic and unsafe that a judge recently ordered a suspension of border crossings until adequate humanitarian assistance can be organized. The Maduro regime’s priority is not its people’s


Alex, the National Zoo’s 100-year-old Aldabra tortoise, is euthanized

One of the National Zoo’s oldest and largest animals died Tuesday after caretakers found fluid inside his shell and around his heart. Zookeepers euthanized Alex, a 100-year-old Aldabra tortoise who arrived at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington in the mid-1950s. Aldabra tortoises, among the world’s largest tortoises, have a life expectancy of 100 to 150 years. Alex was considered an “ambassador” for his species, experts said. He was known as a social and personable tortoise who enthusiastically did training sessions. His favorite pastime was “relaxing in a cool and often muddy section of the outdoor yard,” the zoo said. Zookeepers said Alex was a visitor favorite during daily demonstrations at the reptile center. He “seemed to enjoy interacting with the keepers” and volunteers who cared for him, a statement from the zoo said. Alex came to the zoo’s Reptile Discovery Center in 1956 from the wild when he was about 30 years old. His health had recently declined and his behavior started to change. He was sleeping more and seemed lethargic, showing little interest in food or training. Veterinarians kept a close watch on him as he was treated with antibiotics and anti-inflammatory medications. On Tuesday, an exam found he had a “large volume of fluid inside his shell and around his organs, including his heart,” zoo officials said in a statement. Experts tried to remove the fluid, but his condition deteriorated. “Due to Alex’s poor prognosis and quality of life, animal-care staff made the decision to euthanize him,” zoo officials said in the statement. A pathology report will be completed in the coming weeks. Aldabra tortoises are native to Aldabra Island in the Indian Ocean. Considered vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, they typically live in coastal dunes and mangrove swamp areas. A male Aldabra tortoise can weigh up to 500 pounds with an upper shell that can measure four feet long. They like to eat fruits and leaves off small shrubs and trees. The National Zoo has two other Aldabra tortoises — a male named Rulon and a female named Chyna.” dana.hedgpeth@washpost.com


Japan, not Europe, is now the leader of free trade

on Japanese users. It only penalizes businesses that operate within Japan. Japan also acknowledges international certificates that establish privacy standards for cross-border data, such as those developed under regional cooperation forums like the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, a 21 member organization that includes the United States. Japan not only takes privacy seriously but also recognizes that there doesn’t have to be a contradiction between domestic policy that strengthens citizens’ privacy rights and international trade agreements that keep data flowing and protect companies from discrimination in global markets. After Trump pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Japan took the lead in saving the deal. The Obama administration had included a ban on unjustified online commercial discrimination in the original TPP, which Tokyo insisted on keeping intact when renegotiating terms for the updated deal, which is called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement For Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The recent E.U.-Japan trade deal provides another example of Japanese leadership when it comes to open data. Because of the GDPR, Europe sought to soften Japan’s proposed disciplines to maintain open data flows. But the Japanese negotiators stood firm against the E.U., preferring an empty placeholder in the agreement to be revisited at a later stage, rather than watering down the standards it had worked so hard to establish in the CPTPP. Any compromises on non-discrimination rules can be a slippery slope, especially if the ultimate goal of the CPTPP is to encourage China to open up. But Beijing is unlikely to agree to any rules that Western powers could not even agree upon among themselves. Tokyo, however, did not return from its talks with Europe empty-handed. The E.U. recognized Japan’s digital privacy policy as “equivalent” to its own, granting European and Japanese citizens the same digital rights. Personal data can therefore freely flow between Japan and Europe. Despite this recognition, Japan knows that E.U. privacy rules are a foreign policy dead end. The GDPR is not a tool for opening up new markets and incentivizing others to reform. Instead, it provides E.U. states with a means to protect its own markets from outside competition. It may look as if Europe is the master of global trade in America’s absence, but it is actually Japan that has taken the reins. As it turns out, Japan — not Europe — is the one finding the right balance between privacy and protectionism. This was produced by


Five myths about 3-D printing

CNN article predicted that 3-D-printed organs might soon be a reality, since the machines’ “precise process can reproduce vascular systems required to make organs viable.” Smithsonian magazine likewise announced in 2015 that “Soon, Your Doctor Could Print a Human Organ on Demand.” But scientists have yet to crack the fundamental problem of creating life. We can build a matrix that will support living tissue, and we can add a kind of “cell ink” from the recipient’s stem cells to create the tissue. But we haven’t been able to generate a microscopic capillary network to feed oxygen to this tissue. The most promising current work focuses on artificial skin, which is of special interest to cosmetic companies looking for an unlimited supply of skin for testing new products. Skin is the easiest organ to manufacture because it’s relatively stable, but success is several years away at best. Other organs are decades away from reality: Even if we could solve the capillary problem, the cost of each organ might be prohibitive. Myth No. 5 Small-scale users will dominate 3-D printing. In his best-selling 2012 book, “Makers: The New Industrial Revolution,” Chris Anderson argued that 3-D printing would usher in a decentralized economy of people generating small quantities of products for local use from printers at home or in community workshops. The 2017 volume “Designing Reality: How to Survive and Thrive in the Third Digital Revolution ” similarly portrays a future of self-sufficient cities supplied by community “fab labs.” In reality, relatively few individuals have bought 3-D printers. Corporations and educational institutions have purchased the majority of them, and that trend is unlikely to change. Over time, 3-D printing may bring about the opposite of Anderson’s vision: a world where corporate manufacturers, not ordinary civilians, are empowered by the technology. With 3-D printing, companies can make a specialized product one month, then switch to a different kind of product the next if demand falls. General Electric’s factory in Pune, India, for example, can adjust its output of parts for medical equipment or turbines depending on demand. As a result, companies will be able to profit from operating in multiple industries. If demand in one industry slows, the firm can shift the unused factory capacity over to making products for higher-demand industries. Eventually, we’re likely to see a new wave of diversification, leading to pan-industrial behemoths that could cover much of the manufacturing economy.


The U.S. military’s no-good, very bad tweets

the former providing funding and expertise to help developers craft first-person shooters and the latter creating specialized versions of those games for soldiers to train with. The Army has even used games to entice civilians to enlist. “Super Smash Bros.” is no first-person shooter, but Wednesday’s tweet tells its fans that the on-screen battlefield and the real-life one really aren’t so different after all. It’s a specific application of the military’s general goal online to convince users that soldiers are just like them. Then there’s the other reason the military’s humor hits so far off the mark. Instead of sharing straightforward messages of might and majesty, the armed forces’ accounts are borrowing the quirkier conventions of online dialogue. They think it’s okay to attach silly symbols like emoji to such serious subjects despite the mismatch because they see the Internet as a place of lightheartedness, where nothing makes all that much sense. But these military accounts are misunderstanding the world they’ve tried to march into. Yes, Internet humor is full of nonsense and incongruities — “hacks” to make things easier that actually make them much worse, “advice” that conveys a sense of existential dread, tweets funny only for their total outlandishness. Yet satire and absurdism thrive on the Web because, for many of those who spend time in Twitter’s jokier corners, the Internet space exists in its own reality. It operates according to a different set of rules, and it even has a different type of language, full of referential bits and callbacks and recognizable formats and styles. Military messaging, on the other hand, can’t exist only in the land of online. It’s impossible to separate what one of these accounts says on the Web from what those words are actually aimed to achieve: recruiting people to fight for the United States, and perhaps to take others’ lives or risk their own in the process. “Lol nothing matters,” goes the Internet’s consummate meme. The problem is, this does matter, whatever your opinion on the military. And that makes laughing a whole lot harder. Read more: Joshua A. Douglas: Dad jokes on Twitter shouldn’t disqualify a judge from the federal bench Max Boot: President Trump’s ‘jokes’ are no laughing matter Tom Toles: Speaking of humor, does anyone find Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s lies funny? The Post’s View: Twitter walks a fine line on free speech Kathleen Parker: An assassin in Wolf’s clothing


Torture of al-Qaeda suspect described in 2002 cables sent by CIA Director Gina Haspel

The torture of a suspected al-Qaeda terrorist, including waterboarding, is described in meticulous detail in newly-declassified cables that CIA Director Gina Haspel sent to agency headquarters in late 2002, when she headed a secret U.S. detention facility in Thailand. The suspect, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was believed to have been involved in planning the USS Cole bombing in Yemen in 2000, and the CIA was convinced that he knew about other attacks being planned. Nashiri’s treatment during interrogation — forced nudity, shackling, being slammed against walls, being confined in a small box and mock executions, as well as waterboarding — has been previously mentioned in broad terms in official reports, hearings, court cases and news reports. But many specifics about what happened to Nashiri during his several-week stay at the Thailand facility, while Haspel was briefly in charge, have not been made public. They are contained in 11 cables obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive, a private research institute, which plans to release them early Friday. CIA spokesman Timothy L. Barrett said the agency had no comment on the heavily redacted documents or their declassification. In dry, unemotional reports, the cables graphically describe interrogators’ often violent attempts to glean information about possible future attacks against the United States from Nashiri, as he continued to say he had none. On the 12th day of his detention, one cable to the home office reported, “interrogation escalated rapidly from subject being aggressively debriefed by interrogators . . . to multiple applications of the walling technique, and ultimately, multiple applications of the watering technique.” The interrogators, it later said, “covered subject’s head with the hood and left him on the water board, moaning, shaking and asking God to help him repeatedly.” When they returned, they “adjusted subjects head restraint while telling him that all he had to do was tell them everything. Subject said he would.” Nashiri was one of three detainees in the period after Sept. 11, 2001, who was waterboarded by the CIA; the technique, long considered torture, was deemed lawful by the Justice Department at the time. Nashiri’s detention, both in Thailand and after his transfer in December 2002 to a second clandestine CIA site in Poland, was briefly described by the Senate Intelligence Committee in a 700-page report on the detention program released in late 2014. The report quoted a CIA interrogator as saying that


Pence details plan for creation of Space Force in what would be the sixth branch of the military

space.” China also has demonstrated the ability to hit satellites in a much deeper orbit where the military parks some of its most sensitive assets. In his speech, Pence acknowledged the difficulties in establishing a new service, and said the Pentagon would create an assistant secretary of defense for space, a top-level civilian who will report to the defense secretary “to oversee the growth and expansion of the sixth branch of service.” The official must sort out many details, including how the Pentagon would recruit for the Space Force and compete for resources within the Pentagon. Even basic details, such as what uniforms and what rank structure the Space Force would use, must be decided. Some members of Congress advocated last year for creating a Space Corps in the Air Force Department, similar to how the Marine Corps is part of the Navy Department. Elevating the proposal to create a new department will mean additional Pentagon bureaucracy, critics say. Deborah James, who served as Air Force secretary in the Obama administration, said Trump’s decision to create a full new department is “a solution in search of a problem.” Before Trump’s announcement in June that he wanted a Space Force, Mattis and Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson had cautioned against creating a new Pentagon bureaucracy to address space issues. James said she thinks they’re now “stuck because the president announced this by surprise.” Efforts to reach several senior Air Force officials were not successful Thursday. Wilson was traveling on business and not at the Pentagon when Pence made his announcement. Gen. David L. Goldfein, the Air Force’s top officer, and Gen. Stephen Wilson, the vice chief, sat quietly in the Pentagon auditorium as Pence spoke. Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, the Pentagon’s vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a briefing with reporters that the Pentagon is very much in favor of establishing a Space Command as a way to speed up efforts in space. But when it comes to establishing a new branch of the military, Selva said, “there’s an obligation” to present a set of options that can be presented to Congress. “He’s the commander in chief,” Selva said of the president. The White House has pushed for Congress to invest an additional $8 billion in national security space systems over the next five years. The new command and reorganization “should be budget-neutral,” Scott Pace, the


What a previous trade war with China might teach us

century. Flint went on a voyage to map China’s coast, was arrested for sailing into a closed Chinese port and was incarcerated for three years. His Chinese teacher fared even worse: He was decapitated for teaching Flint the language. Flint later resurfaced in London, instructing Ben Franklin in how to make tofu. There’s also Karl Gutzlaff, a polyglot Prussian missionary, who explored China’s coast hawking opium and Bibles, forever planting the belief in Chinese minds that Jesus was an accessory to a drug crime. Platt does especially well depicting the Chinese, portraying them not as one-dimensionally arrogant xenophobes but as profoundly human. From successive emperors Qianlong, Jiaqing and Daoguang, down to officials and advisers, we see them debating how to respond to the challenge presented by opium. Should China, like the scholar Bao Shichen argued, shut off foreign trade completely? Or should it, as a high official named Cheng Hanzhang countered, better enforce the emperor’s edicts against the drug? Should opium be legalized, like a governor-general named Lu Kun wanted? Should the crackdown target opium addicts or, as Lin Zexu, another governor-general, contended, the foreigners who brought the drug to China’s coast? Platt details how the British, too, were torn about opium. Even as Britain’s drug smugglers agitated for war against China, a campaign back home to abolish the drug trade gained supporters among abolitionists who had just succeeded in outlawing slavery. British industrialists also railed against the drug trade, seeing it as an impediment to selling British textiles and other goods to the Chinese. But in the end, war erupted — not because it was preordained, Platt argues, but because of factors that could have been avoided. Charles Elliot, who had been sent to Canton to supervise British trade and was an opponent of opium smuggling, overreacted to Chinese threats to stop the drug trade. And Lin Zexu, the Chinese official making those threats, didn’t realize that he could have worked with Elliot instead of against him. Even then, back in London, the debate raged. In the early morning of April 10, 1840, in Parliament, the vote for war won by only five votes. If any of those factors had gone the other way, Platt notes, “we might be looking back on very different lessons from this era.” Imperial Twilight The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age By Stephen R. Platt Knopf. 553 pp. $35


The fascinating questions of quantum mechanics that perpetually elude answer

Margaret Wertheim is a science writer and author of books on the cultural history of physics, including “Pythagoras Trousers” and “Physics on the Fringe.” Every so often, like cicadas that mass-hatch once in a decade, science books on a specific topic burst upon us in a flock. A few years ago, there was a horde of books about mathematical symmetry and the role it plays in the laws of physics. This year, we are being graced with a flock about quantum mechanics and the meaning it might have for our understanding of reality. We have already in 2018 seen the publication of Adam Becker’s “What Is Real?” and Philip Ball’s “Beyond Weird” (out now in Britain and soon to be released in the United States), both reviewed in these pages. In 2017, we got Paul Halpern’s magisterial study, “The Quantum Labyrinth: How Richard Feynman and John Wheeler Revolutionized Time and Reality,” while next year we can look forward to acclaimed Caltech physicist Sean Carroll’s “Something Deeply Hidden,” about quantum mechanics and “the emergence of spacetime.” Now comes science writer Anil Ananthaswamy’s “Through Two Doors at Once,” which focuses on quantum conundrums by examining the history and many variations of its most canonical experiment, the “double-slit” experiment. It’s not only physicists and science writers who are being inspired by things quantum. September sees the release of “Quantum Economics: The New Science of Money,” by mathematician David Orrell, which argues that our “money system has quantum properties of its own.” (Full disclosure, I’ve written a cover blurb for it.) This year, the prestigious international Biennale of Sydney, which finished up in June, took as its theme “Superposition,” a central quantum term. As the exhibition’s curatorial statement explained: “Microscopic substances like electrons are said to be dualistic in nature: they paradoxically exist in the form of waves and granular particles simultaneously. The state of superposition lies across all conceptual levels: from different climates and cultures to views of nature and the cosmic orders . . . [to] the history of modern and contemporary art, and the meaning of abstractions.” More than a century after its birth, quantum mechanics remains a source of fascination unlike any other field of science. Almost infinitely interpretatively malleable, its veins of mathematical symbolism and embodied wonderment can be minded by artists, physicists, philosophers and just about anyone with a sense of imaginative play. There is still no end


Russia takes economic hit from new U.S. sanctions. That might help Putin.

Russian national airline, which could lose its ability to fly to the United States as a possible consequence of the new sanctions. Aeroflot currently offers flights to New York, Washington, Miami and Los Angeles. The State Department’s surprise announcement of the new sanctions jolted Moscow, where some politicians and analysts had been hopeful that Putin’s meeting with President Trump in Helsinki in July would stabilize U.S.-Russian relations. A 1991 U.S. law, however, mandates sanctions once the president makes a determination that a country is responsible for a chemical or biological weapons attack. The first round of the new sanctions, scheduled to take effect Aug. 22, will include a broad ban on technology exports to Russia. Unless Russia agrees within 90 days to stop all use of chemical weapons and permit inspections to confirm their elimination, the law requires the United States to choose from a range of additional measures, including withdrawal of U.S. support for international loans and U.S. bank loans, prohibition of landing rights for Russian airlines and suspension of diplomatic relations. Analysts in Moscow said it was highly unlikely that Putin would allow inspectors to enter the country to head off the additional sanctions, since doing so would look like succumbing to U.S. pressure. Instead, Russia is likely to respond with its own sanctions. A senior lawmaker, Sergey Ryabukhin, said Russia could halt exports of its RD-180 rocket engines, which the United States largely relies upon to launch government satellites into space. A ban on Aeroflot flights to the United States also could lead to a ban on U.S. airlines traversing Russian airspace. “Mr. Putin’s entire track record shows that he doesn’t back down under pressure but, rather, goes the other direction,” said Andrey Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a Moscow think tank that receives state funding. This week’s sanctions announcement served as the latest instance of whiplash for Russians who have long been trying to make sense of the seeming divergence between Trump’s stated desire to improve ties with Russia and the tough measures enacted by Congress and his administration. Kortunov said the new sanctions had dashed his hopes that last month’s summit would prove a turning point after which Trump’s more conciliatory approach to Russia would set the tone for U.S. policy. “I had certain, mild hopes that the meeting in Helsinki would represent a change in the trend,” Kortunov said. “Unfortunately


Father of N.M. child-abuse suspects speaks out: They ‘cut ties’ and disappeared

Hujrah J. Wahhaj, 37; and Subhannah A. Wahhaj, 35. He said he also is the father-in-law of Lucas Allen Morten, 40, and Jany N. Leveille, 35, who also were suspects taken from the compound. All 11 children found on the compound are his grandchildren, two of them through his daughter-in-law’s previous marriage, Wahhaj said. But he said he had no knowledge of the group’s intentions when they disappeared last December, and that they quickly “cut ties, not only with me, with their brothers and their sisters and their mother,” and that the family has had “no direct contact with any of them” since then. After Siraj Ibn Wahhaj disappeared with his son, Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, the boy’s mother filed a missing-person report in the Atlanta suburb where they live. Hakima Ramzi, the mother, said the boy suffers from a severe brain condition that causes seizures and that his father did not have the boy’s medication. Ramzi’s attorney said Thursday that Siraj Ibn Wahhaj had been acting “differently” and “more argumentative” for a few weeks before his disappearance, but gave no other warning of what was coming. Wahhaj said Thursday that his son was “a little bit high-strung” and sometimes prone to anger, and that he was licensed as a private security guard to carry guns. Wahhaj said he was unaware of any political or religious beliefs, or violent intentions, that could have motivated his son and daughters’ disappearance. “I don’t know what his thinking is, because to do something as extreme as this, it doesn’t make sense,” he said. The idea that his son was plotting school shootings “sounds crazy,” he added. “But I don’t know. I’m not making any judgments yet because we don’t know.” Hints of the circumstances surrounding the disappearances emerge in Facebook posts and message exchanges between relatives over the months, but many details remained unclear. The posts indicate that Ibn Wahhaj and Hakima Ramzi were experiencing marital strife, and that another brother, Mohammed Wahhaj, had been involved in trying to mediate before Ibn Wahhaj’s sudden departure. The group disappeared without warning last December, and Wahhaj and other family members have worked closely with local law enforcement and the FBI ever since in an effort to track them down, he said. “We have been meeting with law enforcement since day one,” Wahhaj said. “They’ve been in my house: FBI, law enforcement from Atlanta, Georgia.” The search came


Brooklyn nail salon brawl over eyebrow wax stirs racially tinged protests

media outlets begins in the middle of the confrontation, when a woman in a manicurist’s smock is already pointing what looks like a broom handle at two black women. The black women and the nail salon employees start pushing and shoving one another, causing the scene to devolve into chaos as one manicurist picks up a chair and begins swinging it. During the ensuing fistfight, the woman now clutching the broom handle is knocked to the ground but doesn’t let go of her grip. Two of the women in the video have since been arrested. According to News12, Hiuyue Zheng is facing charges of assault, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon. Thomas, whom Zheng allegedly attacked with a broomstick, is also being charged with assault. Prosecutors are reviewing additional evidence and may later alter those charges, the station reported. Police told Pix11 that Zheng had been hospitalized and had injuries on her face and body. Thomas declined medical attention, the station reported. According to the New York Daily News Sandwiched between a West Indian grocery store and a sneaker store, New Red Apple Nails is located on the edge of East Flatbush, a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn. Census data shows that East Flatbush is 86 percent black and 1 percent Asian. The incident has inflamed racial tensions and prompted calls for black residents to spend their money elsewhere. “I’m expecting justice, but most of all I’m expecting black people to learn that when these business don’t respect you, you don’t spend your money with them,” one protester, Tionna Smalls, told ABC7 New York. “There is no respect for people in this neighborhood,” Gavin Gibbs, a 49-year-old East Flatbush resident, said to the New York Daily News. “Anytime a store doesn’t respect us, we’re going to shut it down. We will come, we will picket it, and we’ll do whatever we have to close your store down.” On Monday, protesters gathered outside the salon, encouraging neighborhood residents to boycott the business. “Black $$$ Matter,” one sign read. Live-streamed footage “Until they open a soul food restaurant in Chinatown, we ain’t eating over there,” one woman tells the crowd. In another video from the protests, a man waves a pan-African flag over the police barricades. “Every one of these stores don’t like black people,” he says. “They take our money and run.” At one point, an Asian man steps outside the


The Manafort scramble: Raising millions for himself even as he ran Trump’s campaign

time, Jessica Manafort texted her sister, Andrea: “Guess who called Dad last night and asked him to run his convention?” “Trump,” Andrea responded. The texts are part of a cache of more than 285,000 messages hacked from Andrea Manafort’s phone and deposited on the “dark net” in 2016. Manafort has said some of the messages are authentic but declined to comment on individual notes. On March 28, Trump confirmed that Manafort was coming aboard. His first assignment was to manage Trump delegates for the convention, a job he had also done for Gerald Ford in 1976 and later for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Less than two weeks later, Manafort emailed his Russian employee Konstantin Kilimnik, who had managed his Kiev office and served as his liaison with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate with whom he had done business. “I assume you have shown our friends my media coverage, right?” Manafort asked, referring to the many stories in the news about his influential new job. “Absolutely,” Kilimnik replied. “Every article.” “How do we use to get whole?” Manafort asked, according to emails described to The Washington Post last year. The FBI has assessed that Kilimnik has ties to Russian intelligence, which Kilimnik has denied. Some Trump campaign officials say they didn’t see it at the time but now believe that Manafort was using his job in Trump Tower in an effort to resuscitate his business. They believed he leaked news of his hiring and then used his campaign job “to position himself to either get more foreign business or hold foreigners at bay,” Bennett said. “He was desperate.” On April 7, a friend texted Andrea Manafort a link to a story reporting that her father was taking on an “expanded role” in the campaign. “You’re surprised?? I told you this was the game,” Andrea replied. On April 13, the company that provided Paul Manafort’s firm with health insurance sent a cut-off notice: “If we do not receive $16,464.22, your . . . coverage will terminate for non-payment effective 5/1/2016. . . . Partial payment cannot be accepted.” Washkuhn, the bookkeeper, emailed Manafort on April 21 asking for an urgent transfer of funds into the firm’s account so the health insurance could be paid. That same day, Manafort was at a luxury resort in Hollywood, Fla., leading a closed-door briefing for Republican National Committee members. His mission was to


With echoes of Len Bias, Maryland athletic department faces crisis again

eating crabs in his dorm suite — one he shared with teammates — everyone wanted to know why. It was cocaine. Police found white powder in Bias’s car. Driesell, like the rest of university community, was shocked. Bias had passed physical exams from three NBA teams leading up the draft, at least one of which included a drug test. He never failed a university-administered drug test. Driesell swore to Auerbach that Bias had never previously used drugs. “I swear on my life,” Driesell told him, according to Sports Illustrated. “I hope to die if this kid ever used drugs before.” But Bias’s close friend Brian Tribble was known to have sold drugs. Several of Bias’s roommates used, too. Prince George’s County prosecutors charged two of them with cocaine possession and obstruction of justice, charges that were later dropped in exchange for testimony against Tribble. “I don’t think the University of Maryland can handle their problems themselves,” Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Arthur Marshall Jr., said upon announcing the charges. A subsequent university investigation, which looked beyond substance abuse and into the administration of the basketball program, found Bias was 21 credits short of graduating despite exhausting his four years of NCAA eligibility. University Chancellor John B. Slaughter said he was concerned basketball players were steered into remedial classes to satisfy academic requirements and that they moved on from College Park without a meaningful education. By October of 1986, four months after Bias’s death, Terrapins Athletic Director Dick Dull, who assumed the position only a year earlier, resigned. Slaughter declined to say whether the move was related to the basketball scandal. “I accept Mr. Dull’s decision to resign at a time when we are about to undertake some major changes in the athletic department,” Slaughter said. By the end of the month, Driesell had resigned, too. Basketball practice was set to start days later. “It is obvious that the administration wants to make a coaching change,” he said. “I do not want to coach if I am not wanted.” Maryland’s football season begins against Texas in three weeks. Read more from The Post: Who is Matt Canada? A look at Maryland football’s new interim head coach Maryland places athletic staffers on leave in wake of football player’s death Maryland football program under fire in wake of reports on toxic culture Will Muschamp defends Maryland Coach DJ Durkin, calls anonymous sources ‘gutless’


Argentina is selling a Kalorama fixer-upper with literary history for $2.5 million

Argentina is selling a Parisian-style mansion in tony Kalorama (the neighborhood that the Obamas, the Kushners et al. call home) for $2.5 million. Located just one block from Embassy Row, the property at 2136 R Street NW needs some work, according to Curbed. The five-level, eight-bedroom mansion, listed by Washington Fine Properties, has an intriguing D.C. history. Before the property was owned by Argentina, it was the home of publishing tycoon Charles Edward Marsh. The nearly 10,000-square-foot house was the backdrop for many a high-society function. Marsh, who was close with President Lyndon B. Johnson as well as Vice President Henry A. Wallace (who served under Franklin D. Roosevelt), often hosted another notable guest: Roald Dahl. The soon-to-be famous children’s book author lived in Washington while working for the British Embassy (as a spy) in the early 1940s and struck up a close friendship with Marsh, who had recently retired from the newspaper business. Dahl was a regular at the R Street house.


World Digest: Aug. 12, 2018

the Timbuktu region was killed, four election workers were physically harassed and the polling station there was burned, according to the Citizen Observation Pool of Mali, which had more than 2,000 observers. The organization reported several incidents Sunday. More than 50 polling stations in north and central Mali had closed before noon because of the extremist threat, the group said. In the July 29 first-round presidential vote, extremists killed three election workers and destroyed some voting materials. Mali has grown more insecure since Keita beat Cisse in a second-round election in 2013. Extremists are staging more bold attacks that have spread to central Mali, where both Islamic State and al-Qaeda-linked militants are present. Deadly ethnic clashes and accusations of heavy-handed counterterrorism operations have caused even deeper tensions and mistrust of the state. Still, a second term seems likely for Keita, who is 73. He received 41.7 percent of the vote in the first round from a field of 24 candidates. — Associated Press ETHIOPIA Rebels declare truce amid Abiy's overtures An Ethiopian rebel group declared a unilateral cease-fire on Sunday, the latest dissident movement to aim for an end to hostilities in the wake of reforms. The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) launched its bid for secession of the Somali region, also known as Ogaden, in eastern Ethiopia in 1984. In 2007, Ethiopian forces waged a large-scale offensive against the rebels after the group attacked a Chinese-run oil facility, killing 74 people. The ONLF and two other groups were removed from a list of banned movements as part of a policy shift being led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who took office in April and has extended an olive branch to dissidents. In a statement Sunday, the ONLF said it had “taken into account the positive steps taken by the Ethiopian government to lay the groundwork for talks and peaceful negotiations.” The group “will cease all military and security operations to find [an] available and lasting solution to the Ogaden conflict,” it added. Since assuming office, Abiy has acknowledged and condemned widespread abuses by security forces and forged peace with Eritrea, with which Addis Ababa has been locked in a lengthy military standoff that followed a 1998-2000 border war. — Reuters Pakistan detains 8 Chinese over possession of firearms: Brotherhood leader sentenced to another life term in Egypt: Chinese tourist killed in hippo attack in Kenya: — From news services


Seattle hijacker’s plane heist, midair stunts and fiery crash expose gaps in aviation security

to tighten the screening of airport employees and may do so with more urgency now, said Mary Schiavo, the former inspector general of the U.S. Transportation Department. The United States has approximately 900,000 aviation workers, according to the most recent federal data, and Schiavo said screening procedures are “pretty rudimentary.” While pilots undergo periodic medical exams, she noted, airline mechanics and ground crew members are checked on a much more limited basis that does not include mental health exams. Though aircraft mechanics have broad access and routinely taxi planes along the tarmac, Schiavo said, ground crew members are not supposed to be allowed inside cockpits, which have locking doors. But she said those security procedures are not always observed, especially for smaller commuter aircraft such as the Bombardier Q400. “It can be a little more casual and a little loosey-goosey, especially if they are doing overnight maintenance,” she said. Authorities were quick to assure the public that Friday’s incident was not viewed as an act of terrorism. But the apparent ease with which the Horizon employee stole the plane points to the challenge of stopping “inside threat” attacks. Richard Bloom, an aviation security expert at Arizona’s Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said he wasn’t aware of another incident in the United States in which a ground crew member managed to steal an airplane. Incidents of aviation workers attempting to aid terrorists or drug traffickers are far more common globally. But setting up a comprehensive screening system to evaluate the mental health of aviation workers would be difficult, Bloom cautioned, and would risk rejecting large numbers of workers who do not pose a danger. “There are such significant challenges to preventing inappropriate security behavior,” he said. “It’s kind of surprising that these types of things don’t happen more often.” A bipartisan House bill, approved last year, calls for more stringent standards in employee background checks and increased surveillance of secure areas at airports. A Senate version of the bill has yet to come up for a vote. The bill followed a February 2017 House Homeland Security Committee report warning of vulnerabilities that could allow terrorists and criminals to get jobs as aviation workers. Concerns over mental health were not a focus of the report. But those worries have increased in recent years, analysts say, particularly after the 2015 crash of a Germanwings flight, whose co-pilot deliberately steered the plane into a French mountainside,


NASA’s Parker Solar Probe launches on a mission to study the sun and its dangers

other researchers watched as NASA's newest spacecraft embarked on a mission that should take it closer to the sun than any human-made object has gone before. The probe is the culmination of a half-century effort to understand our star, Murtagh says, and it may help us prepare for the hazards the sun may throw at us in the future. Part of the sun erupted on Sept. 1, 1859. English astronomer Richard Carrington noticed a brilliant white solar flare on the sun, brighter than the sunspots he usually observed. Roughly a day later, a blast of charged particles — known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME — arrived at Earth, jostling the planet’s magnetic bubble. People as far south as Cuba saw the sky light up with auroras. Geomagnetic currents sent surges of electricity through copper telegraph wires, zapping operators and setting telegraph paper aflame. If a similar event happened today, it would bring life as we know it to a halt. The energetic particles within a coronal mass ejection can penetrate the walls of spacecraft and pose a radiation risk to astronauts and the technology they depend on. They can interfere with satellites, disrupting radio communication and GPS. And if a CME hits our planet’s magnetosphere at the right angle, it can generate powerful waves of electricity within the Earth. These may then infiltrate utility grids and blow out transformers that provide electricity — like tripping a circuit on a massive scale. The sun exploded again in July 2012, spewing material toward Earth at nearly 6 million miles per hour. This time the coronal mass ejection hit a NASA spacecraft called STEREO-A at full-blast. The spacecraft’s sensors were stressed, but they still managed to measure the solar particles, gusts of solar wind and the strength of the interplanetary magnetic field. A year after the explosion, in a paper published in the journal Space Weather, astrophysicists examined the STEREO-A data to answer a worst-case question. “What if that coronal mass ejection had occurred 10 days earlier, when the Earth was in the line of fire?" said Daniel Baker, a professor of planetary and space physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder and one of the authors of the study. Their conclusion: If it had hit Earth, Baker and his colleagues wrote, there was a “very legitimate question of whether our society would still be ‘picking up the pieces.’" In


if a CME hits our planet’s magnetosphere at the right angle, it can generate powerful waves of electricity within the Earth. These may then infiltrate utility grids and blow out transformers that provide electricity — like tripping a circuit on a massive scale. The sun exploded again in July 2012, spewing material toward Earth at nearly 6 million miles per hour. This time the coronal mass ejection hit a NASA spacecraft called STEREO-A at full-blast. The spacecraft’s sensors were stressed, but they still managed to measure the solar particles, gusts of solar wind and the strength of the interplanetary magnetic field. A year after the explosion, in a paper published in the journal Space Weather, astrophysicists examined the STEREO-A data to answer a worst-case question. “What if that coronal mass ejection had occurred 10 days earlier, when the Earth was in the line of fire?" said Daniel Baker, a professor of planetary and space physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder and one of the authors of the study. Their conclusion: If it had hit Earth, Baker and his colleagues wrote, there was a “very legitimate question of whether our society would still be ‘picking up the pieces.’" In 2008, a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report on the economic and societal impacts of space weather came up with a worst-case estimate for an extreme geomagnetic storm: It could cost North America up to $2 trillion in the first year, and recovery would take four to 10 years. It's said that space weather science lags about 50 years behind terrestrial weather forecasting. Meteorologists know what conditions cause hurricanes, and they can spot the seeds of a storm brewing over the ocean long before it makes landfall. But warning times for space weather events are often measured in minutes, Murtagh said, and there is too much we do not know. “There’s a lack of understanding,” Murtagh said. “It’s science. It’s knowledge of the sun and the physical processes that are likely to produce those energetic particles. We just don’t fully understand the science yet.” Much of our modern understanding of the sun stems from 91-year-old Eugene Parker, for whom NASA's new probe is named. In the mid-1950s, Parker discovered a link between two seemingly unrelated space mysteries. First, bizarrely, the corona, or atmosphere of the sun, is hotter than its surface — scientists liken the sun to a


2008, a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report on the economic and societal impacts of space weather came up with a worst-case estimate for an extreme geomagnetic storm: It could cost North America up to $2 trillion in the first year, and recovery would take four to 10 years. It's said that space weather science lags about 50 years behind terrestrial weather forecasting. Meteorologists know what conditions cause hurricanes, and they can spot the seeds of a storm brewing over the ocean long before it makes landfall. But warning times for space weather events are often measured in minutes, Murtagh said, and there is too much we do not know. “There’s a lack of understanding,” Murtagh said. “It’s science. It’s knowledge of the sun and the physical processes that are likely to produce those energetic particles. We just don’t fully understand the science yet.” Much of our modern understanding of the sun stems from 91-year-old Eugene Parker, for whom NASA's new probe is named. In the mid-1950s, Parker discovered a link between two seemingly unrelated space mysteries. First, bizarrely, the corona, or atmosphere of the sun, is hotter than its surface — scientists liken the sun to a campfire that feels hotter the further one stands from the flames. And second, the dusty tails of comets always point away from the sun, as if blasted by a powerful wind. Parker realized the corona is not a static halo, but a stream of material from the sun itself. It starts slow and dense and zooms up as it escapes the sun’s gravity, eventually exceeding the speed of sound. The pointed tails of comets behave like windsocks caught in the solar wind. The acceleration of the particles in the solar wind remains one of the “fundamental mysteries of the sun,” said Nicola Fox, a heliophysicist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the project scientist for Parker Solar Probe. And it is one of the keys to understanding CMEs — the blasts that pose so much danger to life on Earth. After the National Academies released its sobering 2008 report, "awareness, both at government and in the public, for this hazard really came to the fore," said a Federal Emergency Management Agency official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Trillion-dollar space storms are a rare issue that rallies Republicans and Democrats alike. The Obama administration’s executive order 13744


The firing of Peter Strzok sends an ominous signal about the rule of law

On Monday, the FBI announced that embattled FBI agent Peter Strzok had been fired over his careless series of anti-Trump text messages. In dismissing Strzok, FBI Deputy Director David L. Bowdich overruled the internal disciplinary arm of the FBI, which had recommended a much lesser punishment: demotion and a 60-day suspension. There is no way to be certain whether Bowdich’s intervention and his decision to dismiss Strzok was the right call. Everyone agrees Strzok should have exercised better judgment, and that sending politically charged text messages while engaged in an investigation where objectivity and impartiality were paramount was dumb. It should be noted, however, that there is no public evidence to suggest that Strzok’s personal political persuasions affected his work. And Strzok’s career at the FBI was otherwise an exemplary one; he spent 22 years keeping the United States safe from threats, including Russian espionage. Unfortunately, Strzok’s firing is a much bigger deal than text messages or one FBI agent’s career. This is the latest warning sign that President Trump is politicizing the U.S. rule of law beyond repair. One of the clearest dividing lines between authoritarian regimes and democratic republics is the apolitical functioning of rule of law. The power of dictatorship is not just the power to protect the guilty and prosecute the innocent. It is also the power to punish your political rivals because they are your political rivals. And in a more banal way, it is also the power to get rid of law enforcement officials who don’t march in lockstep with the political vision of the leader. The politicization of rule of law is, therefore, a serious threat to democracy. I’ve interviewed authoritarian heads of state in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and in Southeast Asia. Off the record, they’ll admit that they deliberately politicized rule of law in order to crush dissent and remove constraints on their power. To achieve that goal, they usually launch two parallel campaigns. First, create the public perception that rule of law is already highly politicized against the leader in power. Second, use that pretext to much more aggressively politicize rule of law against the leader’s political opponents. Building public trust in the rule of law as an impartial and apolitical institution can take decades, or even centuries. But that precious public trust can be torn to shreds in a matter of months. And once that happens, depoliticizing the


NASA launches probe to circle the sun and possibly unlock mysteries

A NASA spacecraft hurtled Sunday toward the sun on a quest to unlock some of its mysteries by getting closer than any object sent before. If all goes well, the Parker Solar Probe will fly straight through the wispy edges of the sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, in November. In the years ahead, it will gradually get within 3.8 million miles of the surface, its instruments protected from the extreme heat and radiation by a revolutionary new carbon heat shield and other high-tech wizardry. Altogether, the Parker probe will make 24 close approaches to our star during the seven-year journey. “Wow, here we go. We’re in for some learning over the next several years,” said Eugene Parker, the 91-year-old astrophysicist for whom the spacecraft is named. It was Parker who accurately theorized 60 years ago the existence of solar wind — the supersonic stream of charged particles blasting off the sun and coursing through space, sometimes wreaking havoc on electrical systems on Earth. As Parker and thousands of others watched, a Delta IV Heavy rocket carried the probe aloft, thundering into the clear, star-studded sky. NASA needed the mighty 23-story rocket, plus a third stage, to get the Parker probe — the size of a small car — racing toward the sun, 93 million miles from Earth. Among the mysteries scientists hope to solve: Why is the corona hundreds of times hotter than the surface, which is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit? And why is the sun’s atmosphere continually expanding and accelerating? “The only way we can do that is to finally go up and touch the sun,” said project scientist Nicola Fox of Johns Hopkins University. “We’ve looked at it. We’ve studied it from missions that are close in, even as close as the planet Mercury. But we have to go there.” A better understanding of the sun’s life-giving and sometimes violent nature could also enable Earthlings to better protect satellites and astronauts, along with the power grids society depends on, said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s science mission chief. A mission to get close to our star has been on NASA’s books since 1958. The trick was making the spacecraft compact and light enough to travel at incredible speeds and tough enough to withstand the punishing environment. “We’ve had to wait so long for our technology to catch up with our dreams,” Fox said.


Is Putin going to let this Ukrainian protester die?

Summer Lopez, who previously worked eight years for the U.S. Agency for International Development, is the senior director of free expression programs for PEN America. Oleg Sentsov As his strike enters its fourth month, Sentsov’s cousin, Natalya Kaplan, reports he has lost some 66 pounds off his 6-f00t-2-inch frame, and his heart rate has slowed to 40 beats per minute. Based on a letter she received from Sentsov last week via his lawyer, she posted a message on Facebook saying that Sentsov “wrote that the end is near – and he wasn’t talking about his release.” It is widely presumed that Sentsov’s fate lies in the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin. There have been rumors that negotiations between the Russian and Ukrainian governments might result in a prisoner swap. But people close to the case report those prospects currently look dim; Russian authorities seem to have decided to let Sentsov die as an example to others. Why would Putin elect to follow such a provocative course of action? Obstinacy is one possibility. Sentsov is a native of Crimea, the region Russia illegally annexed in 2014, and Moscow unilaterally declared him to be a Russian citizen. Allowing the filmmaker to be swapped along with other Ukrainian prisoners could be seen as undermining that legal fiction. (It was Sentsov’s outspoken opposition to the annexation that is widely considered to have instigated his arrest and prosecution.) Nonetheless, risking the death by starvation of a man whose plight has garnered global attention is a perilous political choice for any government to make. In 2010, when Cuban activist Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after an 86-day hunger strike, it sparked protest actions in Cuba and was viewed as a significant setback in U.S.-Cuban relations. President Raul Castro took the unusual step of issuing a statement expressing regret over Zapata’s death. One could imagine Sentsov was inspired by the example of Anatoly Tikhonovich Marchenko, a Soviet writer and dissident who undertook a similar hunger strike in 1986 to call for the release of all Soviet prisoners of conscience. Scholars view Marchenko’s death by hunger strike and the resulting uproar as a proximate cause of Gorbachev’s decision to authorize the release of large numbers of political prisoners the following year. Perhaps the best known example is the 1981 hunger strike launched by 23 Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland (most famously Bobby Sands), demanding to be treated


Dragonflies are more active this summer. Blame it on the rain.

Have you noticed a lot of dragonflies skimming over ponds, creeks, yards and even parking lots? They seem to be more active than usual this summer, and weather is playing a role in their behavior. We were first notified about the abundant bugs back on July 23 when Scott Spendolini tweeted: According to wildlife enthusiast Phyllis Carlson, the increased dragonfly activity is probably a result of the abundant rain this summer, which has helped to produce more of the dragonfly’s insect prey, such as mosquitoes. Dragonflies are voracious and agile predators that can catch and eat 30 or more mosquitoes per day. Because of the persistent rain, ground conditions have stayed moist, and mosquitoes and other insects have flourished, providing dragonflies a flying smorgasbord for feasting. Dragonflies catch their prey in the air with their feet and devour them with their strong, serrated mandibles. With four wings, dragonflies can out-fly all of their food sources, which include bees, butterflies, gnats, caddis flies, mayflies and mosquitoes. They fly up, down, sideways, and instantly change direction during flight with amazing speed. They can also hover in air and spin, much like a helicopter. I asked outdoorsman and award-winning fisherman Stephen Miklandric to confirm that dragonflies are more active this summer. He responded: “I can say that I’m seeing a lot more of them this year over last. I don’t know why, but it could be due to how wet this year has been.” So I went out into the field with my camera to verify for myself that dragonflies are active, and to snap a few photos and videos of the big-eyed bug with a long tail. After six photo missions during the span of two weeks, I can safely state that I saw a large number of dragonflies and damselflies buzzing around local ponds and creeks, and even in my own backyard. If you look at the first photo in this post, a dragonfly found me. A blue dasher posed for a photo on my truck’s antenna while it was parked in my driveway, between my photo missions. I will also note that I was chewed up by mosquitoes during my bug shoots, which confirmed that a primary food source for dragonflies is indeed plentiful. Mosquitoes are quite numerous this summer, and those little bloodsuckers made my photo shoots a bit unpleasant. Besides being excellent fliers while hunting mosquitoes and other


Liner Notes: Bruce Hornsby, ‘Levitate’

But did you know he’s also a master of the prank telephone call? At least that’s what he said, after starting our phone interview with a Latin-tinged accent, before dropping into three more unusual voices. It’s not all too surprising — the 54-year-old piano man’s certainly had a long, strange trip of a career. In recent years, the Williamsburg, Va.-native’s dipped his fingers in jazz, with the Bruce Hornsby Trio, scored Spike Lee’s Kobe Bryant documentary, “Kobe Doin’ Work,” and has been penning a Broadway musical, “SCKBSTD,” with Broadway director Kathleen Marshall. Eight of the 12 songs on “Levitate,” Hornsby’s latest album are in the musical, while the title track appeared in “Kobe Doin’ Work” in an alternate form. Another song, “Invisible,” appears in the new Robin Williams film, “World’s Greatest Dad,” in which Hornsby has a cameo. “It all sounds like my music,” Hornsby said, of “SCKBSTD’s” songs, which certainly have a distinct Broadway spin. “Levitate” is also the first studio record to credit The Noisemakers, Hornsby’s long-time backing band. “I really feel that [this] was the first time I made a concerted effort to have [me and the Noisemakers] in the room playing together,” Hornsby said. Hornsby views the album as a natural evolution of his tastes and sound: inserting 20th century classical music forms into a pop structure. “At its core it’s really a record of songs without a real emphasis on the playing aspect, which I’ve been emphasizing for years,” he said. “I see this as a record where I’m sort of reaching.” With so much going on in “Levitate,” we asked Hornsby to take us on a guided tour through latest work. Listen along for yourself here. “The Black Rats of London” “Prairie Dog Town” I [also] just thought it was an interesting idea to try and marry hip-hop and a folk song. Me singing along playing dulcimer and singing with this hip-hop beat. And it stays that way for a bit, but then the drums kick in to make it rowdier. “Cyclone” It’s always been in the air, the possibility of working with Hunter. He said, “Yes, send me the track.” In this case he wanted to write to a track. We cut the track and scatted the melody on the track. Two weeks later, he sent back these lyrics syllable-by-syllable to my melody. It hit me right away. I got chills singing it,


Katie Ledecky picks up more gold — and challengers — at Pan Pacific championships

when she returns to Tokyo for the Olympics in two years. Conditions at the Pan Pacs were not ideal, as the U.S. team decided to land in Tokyo only four days before the competition began, barely enough time to shake off the jet lag and adjust to a 16-hour time difference for those coming from the West Coast, such as Ledecky. She said the travel arrangements put the Americans in a “challenging position.” “It was a little harder than all of us anticipated,” Ledecky told reporters, “but I think we’re learning a lot for 2020. I think we’ll apply what we learned moving forward.” In all, the Americans won 29 medals at the Pan Pacs meet, which featured 19 countries around the Pacific Ocean. By comparison, the U.S. team totaled 33 at the Rio Games and 38 at last year’s world championships, facing competition from far more countries. The Americans posted no major records in Tokyo, and even one of their biggest wins turned out to be a loss. The United States’ men’s 4×100 freestyle relay team was the top finisher in Friday’s race but was later disqualified because two of its competitors swam out of order. Ledecky, a five-time Olympic champion, was the only swimmer, male or female, to win three individual titles in Tokyo, but her three gold medals also marked the fewest she’s brought back from an international competition since she was a 15-year-old competing at the 2012 Olympics. At the Pan Pacs meet four years ago, Ledecky set two world records and won five gold medals. She knows the bigger Tokyo meet is waiting just two years down the road. “Two years is still a good amount of time,” she said. “The exciting thing, I think, for me is that this meet… decided our world championship team for next year. So I really get to train really hard, and I know what I have coming at the end of the season next year without any pressure of qualifying for any meet moving forward.” More on the Olympics: ‘I straight wanted to die’: Michael Phelps wants USOC to help athletes cope with depression Sally Jenkins: The Olympic flame has been extinguished. The U.S. Olympic Committee should be next. Jerry Brewer: For two weeks in South Korea, we were a unified team America’s gay Olympians hope ‘gay Olympians’ won’t be a thing to talk about in 20 years


Stunned, confused, defiant: Maryland football deals with a scandal that isn’t going away

of the school’s investigation but will likely pursue a civil lawsuit in federal court. The school has decided to launch an external review to examine the culture within the program. In a letter to trustees, faculty, students and alumni Saturday evening, Wallace Loh, the school president, said he is “profoundly disturbed by the media reports yesterday about verbally abusive and intimidating conduct by Maryland football coaches and staff towards our student athletes on the team.” Loh wrote that he intended to hire an outside expert “to undertake a comprehensive examination of our coaching practices in the football program, with the goal that these practices reflect — not subvert — the core values of our University.” The review would mark the second external investigation related to the program. The school has already contracted with Walters Inc., an athletic training consulting firm, to examine the circumstances surrounding McNair’s death. That review isn’t expect to conclude before Sept. 15. While the Walters investigation is focused on safety policies and procedures, the second probe would focus on the culture within the football program. “Our responsibility as teachers is to inspire and enable students to perform at their best and expand the boundaries of their potential, in the classroom and/or on the athletic field,” Loh said in his letter. “Humiliating and demeaning a student is not only bad teaching and coaching, it is an abuse of the authority of a teacher and coach.” Hospital medical records indicate that an unidentified Maryland coach had told medical responders that after suffering the seizure McNair was coming around and started to talk before he, according to the medical records, “became agitated and started breathing differently.” Upon arrival at Washington Adventist Hospital, doctors determined, according to the medical records, that McNair had suffered a severe heat stroke, was “altered and has no gag reflex.” At 6:53 p.m., the hospital medical records indicate, he was given an electrocardiogram and recorded a heart rate of 184. Upon arrival to the hospital, he was covered in cold water and ice; by 7:20 p.m, his temperature dropped from 106 degrees to 102 degrees and his heart rate was coming down. By 8:32, doctors noted “patient improving,” according to the medical records, and he was moved to the intensive care unit. Later that night, he was airlifted to Baltimore’s R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, where he would die 15 days later. As investigators


Trump’s proposed Space Force could worsen Earth’s orbital debris problem

to the European Space Agency, a satellite colliding with one of the 29,000 larger objects would be “catastrophic,” while smaller fragments could still penetrate surfaces. That’s one reason nations long agreed to treat space as a largely demilitarized region. After initial experiments during the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin War brought almost two decades in which attacks against satellites were considered a minor risk, if at all. After 2006, however, the Bush administration’s more aggressive approach and similar research activity by other nations resulted in a resurgence of concerns that space attacks could eventually become an element of conventional wars. Neither China nor Russia have destroyed any satellites circling Earth since 2007, but that hasn’t stopped them from continuing to develop more precise weapons. Experts hope that they — and Washington — have learned their lessons from the 2007 incident. “Any country conducting another test would hurt itself, too: In the end, the Chinese increased the likelihood of one of their own satellites being lost to space debris with their 2007 test,” said Metz. There are still few specifics on what a U.S. Space Force would exactly focus on. But in his speech, Pence specifically referenced the decade-old Chinese antisatellite test, saying that it constituted “a highly provocative demonstration of China’s growing capability to militarize space.” To the United States, any threats to its military satellites are unnerving because they provide crucial intelligence during military missions back on Earth. A space arms race would inevitably increase the likelihood of a debris disaster, but there might still be ways out. “The United States should develop effective but limitable forms of space attack, particularly non-kinetic ones that do not result in space debris,” Elbridge Colby, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told AFP back in 2016. In fact, the U.S. military has headed some efforts in recent years to tackle the debris problem, after Washington and other countries treated the orbit as a waste site for more than half a century. NASA and the U.S. military now track objects that exceed the size of four inches to predict their flight paths and move active satellites out of their way. Gen. William Shelton, a commander with the U.S. Air Force Space Command, acknowledged growing concerns at a conference in 2011 when he said the orbit “may be a pretty tough neighborhood . . . in the


Israel eyes a new menace: Stray crocodiles

In the mid-1990s, amid a boom of optimism that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would soon be solved, a group of crocodiles was brought to the remote settlement of Petzael in the West Bank as tourist attraction. Peace has not yet come to pass, nor has the promise of visitors flocking to Petzael to see the huge reptiles. But they’re still there, they’re breeding, and no one knows what to do with them. There have been attempts to figure out a solution for the crocs, which now number in the hundreds. Israeli entrepreneur Gadi Biton purchased the farm years ago, thinking he could sell the animals for their skin, according to the Associated Press. But the venture collapsed in 2012, when the Israeli government made the crocodile a protected animal, banning their sale for meat or clothing. Biton then thought he could get Cyprus — no stranger to territorial disputes — to snap up the scaly beasts. But efforts to relocate them to the Mediterranean island have stalled as residents and officials raise concerns about public safety and the continuous breeding of the animals, according to the Cyprus Mail. Israeli officials in the Jordan Valley, the area of the West Bank where Petzael is located, worry that the animals pose a danger to residents. A full-grown crocodile can be as long as 20 feet and weigh up to 2,200 pounds, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. They can live as long as 75 years, and the strength of their bite has been compared to that of a Tyrannosaurus rex. “I don’t want to think of what will happen if a crocodile manages to escape and reaches the Jordan River, and then we’ll have an international incident,” David Elhayani, head of the regional council in the Jordan Valley, told Sky News. It has happened before. In 2011, according to the Haaretz newspaper, dozens of crocodiles escaped from the farm despite warnings from the Israel Nature and Parks Authority that it should be closed because the animals could endanger the public. It took days to round up the fugitive crocs, but Biton said all of them were eventually captured and returned to the farm. While officials say they are working on a “practical solution” to the quandary, Sky News reports that care for the animals has fallen on “a lone worker” tasked with feeding them a diet of dead chickens each day. Read more: Long-dead


Judge denies request from prosecutors to hold five adults without bond in New Mexico child abuse case

children are relatives of a well-known Brooklyn imam, Siraj Wahhaj, which has ignited allegations from far-right groups that the compound was part of a conspiracy by Muslim extremists. Siraj Ibn Wahhaj is his son, and Hurjah and Subhannah are his daughters. Defense attorneys had argued Monday that prosecutors had failed to meet their legal burden of showing that the five adults posed a risk to the community. Lawyer Tom Clark, representing defendant Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, had argued to Backus before her ruling that the state was treating the defendants unfairly. “These people are not Christian, they are black and they are Muslim,” Clark said. “They look different and they worship different from the rest of us.” The five adults and their 12 children disappeared from the Atlanta suburbs in December 2017. But only Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, 3, was officially reported as missing because his mother told police that his father had taken him, and that the boy suffered from serious seizures and required regular medication. Although a formal identification of the dead child is pending, officials in court identified him as Siraj Ibn Wahhaj’s 3-year-old son, Abdul-ghani Wahhaj. Siraj Wahhaj is wanted by Georgia authorities who allege he had taken the boy from his mother without permission late last year. Taylor, the FBI agent, testified that the older boy that he interviewed told him that Siraj Ibn Wahhaj held repeated rituals at the compound in which he read from the Quran and tried to cast demons out of his young son’s body. Taylor said the boy he interviewed reported that Wahhaj’s son, who had been gravely ill before he came to New Mexico, died such a ceremony in February. Deputy District Attorney Timothy R. Hasson had urged Backus to keep the defendants in jail. He said the evidence suggested the group was on a dangerous mission. “It’s clear from a number of the elements of the evidence that the family as a whole was strongly anti-government in terms of their actions of moving here to New Mexico,” he said. Assistant District Attorney John Lovelace declined comment after Backus’ ruling. Clark said after the hearing that his client will remain in custody on a Georgia warrant. He said the state has to hold a preliminary hearing within 60 days, at which time the judge will determine if there’s sufficient evidence to make them stand trial. Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe has come


Here are the companies that could profit from Trump’s Space Force

A United Launch Alliance spokesman said the company has enough inventory in the U.S. to meet its current mission needs. Space companies contacted by The Washington Post mainly said they would continue to support the government’s work in space regardless of how the new service was structured. In other words, if a new Space Force were to supplant the space-based activities of another service like the Air Force, as some officials fear, the Lockheeds and Boeings of the world would simply follow the money. “Lockheed Martin has played a central role in both commercial and national security space for decades, and we look forward to contributing to this critical effort through the National Space Council and other means,” said Lockheed Martin spokeswoman Maureen Schumann. Boeing concurred: “We will continue to deliver for our partners in government as they stand up a Space Command and consider the path forward for implementing the Space Force,” spokesman Dan Curran said in an email. Northrop Grumman offered something closer to a full-throated endorsement: “We are encouraged by the increased focus on the Space domain and its importance to our national security,” spokesman Tim Paynter said in an email. “Given our deep expertise, legacy and capabilities related to Space, we look forward to supporting the nation’s future needs in this critical area.” Northrop took an aggressive step into the space business last year when it bought a Virginia-based company called Orbital ATK, giving it a broad suite of space-based capabilities including bus-sized communications satellites and experimental robotic spacecraft. Florida-based government contractor Harris Corporation edged further into the industry this year through an unspecified classified contract win, chief executive Bill Brown said in a recent earnings call. Others have pointed out that more than just military might is at stake. With commercial industries like trucking and shipping increasingly reliant on GPS for navigation, securing space could have broader implications for the U.S. economy. “We’re pleased that the White House is focusing on America’s reliance on space, and on the growing threats from Russia and China,” Aerospace Industries Association president and chief executive Eric Fanning said in an email. “As Congress reacts to the Pentagon’s report, we need to be careful not to create increased bureaucracy and complexity that might actually slow us down. We also need to recognize that it’s not just our military, but every aspect of our economy that relies on security in space.”


Hundreds of scholars have signed a statement defending the international institutions that Trump has attacked

What are the arguments for and against the international institutions President Trump criticized in his trip to Europe in July and earlier? Forty-two scholars of international relations published a statement in the New York Times supporting the international order and the accompanying institutions formed under the leadership of the United States after 1945, as well as condemning Trump’s recent attacks. As of Monday, 572 people had signed on. (Disclosure: We led the effort to both publish the statement in the Times and collect additional signatures.) Some readers might think that this was simply liberal academics taking an opportunity to criticize the president. But these are people who have devoted their lives to researching, studying and analyzing how the globe works. Many disagree with one another quite profoundly about a variety of issues. And not every scholar in this discipline signed on; those who objected reveal significant debates among those who study these institutions. Here’s what most scholars agree on about postwar international institutions Four broad points unite the scholars who signed the original statement or have joined our open letter — despite serious differences about how international institutions should be restructured. 1. The postwar order has produced unprecedented peace and prosperity, including the longest period in modern history without war between major powers. What scholars call the “long peace” has been built in part on bipolarity, the competition between the United States and Soviet Union; nuclear weapons, the threat of which has deterred some aggression; and the spread of democracy. But none of these account for the post-World War II growth of economic interdependence and the resulting prosperity, which have also contributed to peace. Most research suggests that such international economic institutions as the European Union, the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund have contributed immensely to the success of this international order. 2. U.S. leadership Peace and prosperity do not arise spontaneously. They require thoughtfully designed institutions, carefully exercised authority and, above all, a vision that inspires nations to cooperate for the common good. The United States has for decades been the keystone in the arches bridging its surrounding oceans. 3. Although the United States has paid a significant portion of the costs of this order, it has also benefited greatly from its rewards. The institutions that Trump criticizes as unfair have, over the long run, generally served U.S. interests around the globe. True, U.S. allies in


Maryland state parks have become so popular, they’re turning people away

park visitors and wildlife, and rising concerns about conservation and preservation. National parks, including Zion in Utah and Rocky Mountain in Colorado, are considering limiting the number of visitors or what areas vehicles can access. Maryland officials said that they are being similarly cautious, and that the frequent capacity closures are proof of that. Bushman said officials won’t add more parking to a park if it would mean more visitors than the site could handle. At Cunningham Falls, Spurrier said, a capacity crowd is 450 vehicles at any one time. That amounts to 3,000 people on a busy weekend. Only 100 of the park’s 5,000 acres are easily accessible to most visitors. In that “day use” area, there are no trash cans — visitors are expected to take out all the waste that they carried in. Still, human effects can be spotted. Near the waterfall that gives the park its name, Spurrier points out a bed of bright green grasses along the trail. They’re an invasive species, carried into the forest on hiking boots. He points to carvings of pairs of names covering one birch tree and spreading to others around it. He said that although he likes to read them and wonder whether the couples are still together, they’re one more sign of human influence on a natural environment. “It’s a very delicate balancing act,” Spurrier said. Some new state parks are planned. Last year, the state announced the purchase of 2,000 acres in Garrett County for a park to include trails for off-road vehicles. And next year, the state Department of Natural Resources expects to begin roadwork that will allow Bohemia River State Park to open in Cecil County, a department spokesman said. There are hopes that more will be added soon. Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and the General Assembly approved a law in 2016 to shore up Program Open Space, which uses the proceeds of the state’s real estate transfer tax to buy land for parks and conservation. Maryland Park Service Superintendent Nita Settina said acquiring new parkland is a long process, and sometimes an unpredictable one, depending on what comes up for sale. It’s guided by a strategy that emphasizes conservation of areas that are ecologically sensitive, historic or culturally important, while also considering popular demand for attractions such as water access and trails. In the meantime, the agency has $10 million worth of renovations and


Maryland apologizes for the heatstroke death of football player Jordan McNair

University President Wallace D. Loh and Athletic Director Damon Evans met privately with the 19-year-old’s family to apologize for the school’s role in his death in June. Afterward, they held a news conference in College Park and said Maryland “accepts legal and moral responsibility for the mistakes our training staff made.” Head Coach DJ Durkin, strength and conditioning coach Rick Court, and two high-level athletic trainers have been placed on leave, and an external investigation into what happened at a May 29 practice is underway. Ensuing reports have indicated an abusive culture within the football program.This is a developing story. It will be updated.


White House press secretary can’t guarantee public won’t hear Trump use n-word on audio recording

came to this tape,” Pierson said, describing the former aide as “a bully” who was incessantly bringing up the topic of the audio recording. Trump’s tweet calling Manigault Newman a “dog” came shortly after she appeared on “CBS This Morning” and released a new recording purportedly of a discussion in October 2016 among campaign aides about how to handle a tape on which Trump is said to have used the n-word. In tweets Monday night, Trump denied ever using “such a terrible and disgusting word,” and his aides have denied having strategized about how to contain the damage if such a tape surfaced. Manigault Newman has said she heard the tape of Trump using the term, which she said dates from his years hosting the NBC reality show “The Apprentice.” Sanders defended Trump’s use of the word “dog” in reference to Manigault Newman, saying that the president was simply exasperated with his former aide. “I think the president is certainly voicing his frustration with the fact that this person has shown a complete lack of integrity, particularly by the actions following her time here at the White House,” Sanders said. During a television appearance Tuesday afternoon, Manigault Newman called Trump “unfit to be in this office and to serve as president of the United States.” “I think that it just shows you that if he would say that publicly, what else would he say about me privately,” she said on MSNBC. “He has absolutely no respect for women, for African Americans.” Some Trump critics have argued that the president’s recent comments attacking the intelligence of Manigault Newman, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), CNN host Don Lemon and others reveal a pattern of race-based insults against prominent African Americans. He has repeatedly referred to Waters as “low IQ” and called Lemon “the dumbest man on television.” At Tuesday’s briefing, Sanders responded that “this has absolutely nothing to do with race” and sought to defend Trump by pointing out that he has attacked all types of people. “The fact is, the president’s an equal opportunity person that calls things like he sees it,” Sanders said. “He always fights fire with fire, and he certainly doesn’t hold back on doing that across the board.” Manigault Newman also disclosed that she has been interviewed by the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is probing Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible


In Florida, a fight over dog racing pits a waning generation of gamblers and trainers against animal rights advocates

testosterone and cocaine. On Aug. 1, the state filed an official complaint against a Palm Beach trainer after a random urine test revealed one of his dogs had tested positive for cocaine. Theil of Grey2K said doping led to heart attacks and, in the case of testosterone and female dogs, serious hormonal imbalances and genital deformities. Trainers insist those accusations are false. “You can’t be unhealthy and run around a track in half a minute,” said A.J. Grant, a trainer in Orlando who cares for 120 greyhounds with the help of four assistants. “My dogs are athletes. They get . . . meat that could go into a burger patty. I give them Big Macs as treats.” “They’re treated like kings,” he said. Grant said he and his partner, Kathy Lacasse, who operates a rival kennel, slept on the concrete floor of his kennel during Hurricane Irma to comfort the dogs. “We chose to be with them and reassure them even when the roof was falling off above our heads,” he said. “They’re great animals, they’re born to race and they love it. Why would we abuse or drug animals that we love?” TOP: Greyhound racing trainers Kathy Lacasse, left, and A.J. Grant work at Lacasse's kennel. ABOVE LEFT: Trainer Art Marcoux prepares meals for the greyhounds at A.J. Grant's kennel. ABOVE RIGHT: One of Kathy Lacasse's greyhounds is led back to a truck kennel after a morning workout at the Sanford Orlando dog track. (Scott McIntyre for The Washington Post) Yet Sonia Stratemann, who runs a dog sanctuary, said greyhounds are treated well only as long as they make money. “The moment these dogs don’t deliver profit because they’re old or injured, the trainers dump them at my farm,” she said. “I’ll never hear from them again. It’s always hush-hush.” Stratemann, 46, pointed to the example of Bart, a 1-year-old dog that snapped his leg during a race last year and was set to be put down before she stepped in and paid $2,600 for three rounds of surgery. She said the trainer has not asked about the dog’s well-being since the incident. Rader, the trainer, said he had given the dog to a veterinarian and had no idea he had been passed to Stratemann. Almost all of his dogs are adopted once they retire from racing, he said. “Sonia’s a little radical for me,” he said. “It’s a


Experts say Maryland may not have acted quickly enough to save football player

of Maryland, reviewed the details available in hospital medical records and the medical responders’ report but urged caution because the full timeline from the day has not been released and is still under investigation by the school. “For patients with exertional heatstroke, time is of the essence,” said John Jardine, an emergency medical physician and chief medical officer of the University of Connecticut’s Korey Stringer Institute. “We know if you get a patient’s temperature down within 30 minutes, we have reported 100 percent survivability.” Maryland officials have not discussed the events surrounding McNair’s death in detail, nor have they divulged the treatment that he received or the efforts made by staff to lower his body temperature. The afternoon’s timeline probably will serve as the crux of the school’s external investigation and a federal lawsuit planned by McNair’s family. While medical experts said heatstroke is easily treatable, hospital medical records reviewed by The Post and the incident report written by medical responders suggest McNair’s temperature had not been sufficiently cooled by the time he was admitted to Washington Adventist Hospital, which is about four miles from campus. The hospital records say McNair initially showed symptoms of heatstroke 45 minutes into the team’s workout, which began at 4:15 p.m. That would have been more than 90 minutes before McNair’s temperature was lowered to 102 degrees by hospital medical personnel. Maryland officials strongly dispute that timeline. “At no point before or during the external review has a student-athlete, athletic trainer or coach reported a seizure occurring at 5 p.m.,” the school said in a statement. “I’m very confident in the personnel we have and the procedures we have in place,” Durkin said at Big Ten media day last month, the last time he addressed reporters before being placed on administrative leave Saturday. “And again we’re looking at those and making sure there’s anything we can do better or do differently, then we’ll be able to do that.” Jardine has treated more than 350 exertional heatstroke patients and said every one of them survived because he used cold-water immersion to cool their body temperature within 30 minutes. That sentiment was echoed by Douglas Casa, the chief executive of the Korey Stringer Institute, which aims to prevent sudden death in sport. The institute was established in 2010 in honor of Stringer, a Minnesota Vikings offensive lineman who died of exertional heatstroke in 2001. “If I


4 myths about ticks, and how to deal with them

containing substances such as lemon grass, citronella, peppermint and rosemary — usually don’t perform as well as those that contain DEET. (The active ingredient in many conventional bug sprays, DEET has an odor so noxious to bugs that many avoid it.) Two non-DEET ingredients have done well in CR tests. One is picaridin, which is modeled after a substance in the black pepper plant. Concentrations of 20 percent are most effective. The other is oil of lemon eucalyptus, which is extracted from the gum eucalyptus tree. While Consumer Reports currently tests repellents only for their effectiveness against mosquitoes, our past testing has shown that repellents that work well for mosquitoes also help keep ticks at bay. It’s important to know that DEET has been extensively studied, and, according to the CDC and the Environmental Protection Agency, the evidence suggests that it’s safe when used as directed. Myth 2: Ticks often fall from trees and onto people. This is unlikely, experts say, given the way ticks search for their food. They do often climb while trying to find food, but generally only to the height of the animal they’re hoping to latch onto, Nicholson says. That means they typically look for meals close to the ground where they may find mice and other rodents, and in bushes or tall grasses, where they can encounter deer and other larger mammals (such as humans). Myth 3: The easiest way to remove a latched-on tick is with a lit match. A tick that has crawled onto you but not yet bitten can easily be brushed away or washed off in the shower. Once a tick has latched on with its mouth, however, getting it off is trickier. Common folk-wisdom strategies for getting that tick to detach include holding a lit match near it, smothering it with petroleum jelly or nail polish, and dabbing the spot with acetone or bleach. All are questionable ideas, experts say. With the lit-match strategy, you may just end up burning yourself. And while you might kill the tick, that won’t necessarily cause the tick to detach, says Durland Fish, a professor emeritus of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. As for the other methods above, even if they do work, they may take long enough to allow a tick to pass on an infection, Fish notes. (To transmit Lyme disease, a tick needs to remain attached for


Côte d’Ivoire’s president announced an amnesty program. Is this the end of a ‘victor’s peace’?

help stabilize countries by fighting recalcitrant armed groups rather than support negotiated pacts. And, as a research report commissioned by the British Foreign Office Stabilization Unit acknowledges, peace agreements often fail to secure peace or end up entrenching dysfunctional governance. But can military victory deliver better outcomes? When negotiations stretch for years and produce repeatedly ignored peace agreements — like the case of Côte d’Ivoire — it is tempting to think so. And, indeed, statistical analysis suggests that conflicts tend to recur less frequently after a decisive military outcome. Some scholars see military victory, especially rebel victory, as a way to break with the past and consolidate state institutions. However, statistics also reveal that military victory is more often accompanied by post-conflict, one-sided violence, in comparison with negotiated settlements. And some military victories fail to achieve basic stability, as the situation in Libya and the Central African Republic illustrates. Why is this the case? I argue that victors need to make a sustained effort to translate a military victory into a strategic victory. But they face three main challenges: maintaining cohesion among the actors who won the war, dealing with the vanquished and implementing the victor’s vision of post-conflict governance. Most conflicts that resume after a military victory are conflicts between former allies, in fact. In contrast, former foes rarely have the material and organizational capacity to start a new fight. They can, however, undermine the legitimacy of the victor in more subtle ways. For instance, former supporters of President Gbagbo have kept alive a counternarrative of the conflict in which the former president is seen as an anti-colonialist hero unjustly persecuted. The need to appease allies with political and material rewards might prevent victors from building a more inclusive peace. Compromises to maintain unity may keep victors with transformative goals from translating these visions into reality. In Africa, rebel groups that were most successful in transforming the state had a history of cohesion and discipline that helped them to overcome the risk of fragmentation. Wartime alliances then collapsed in Côte d’Ivoire Until recently, the Ivorian government has been quite successful in overcoming these challenges. Threats from pro-Gbagbo supporters were deflated, and the wartime alliance that brought Ouattara to power survived at least long enough for the president to be reelected in 2015. With the 2020 presidential election approaching along with Ouattara’s probable retirement, Ivory Coast is at a critical