The Daily 202: Trump’s children become bigger liabilities for the White House, complicate damage-control efforts

“In China, where three activists investigating factories making her line were recently arrested, assembly-line workers produce Ivanka Trump woven blouses, shoes and handbags. Laborers in Indonesia stitch together her dresses and knit tops. Suit jackets are assembled in Vietnam, cotton tops in India and denim pants in Bangladesh … And in Ethiopia, where manufacturers have boasted of paying workers a fifth of what they earn in Chinese factories, workers made … Ivanka Trump-brand shoes … “Trump [who last weekend sat in her for her father during a meeting at the G-20] still owns her company … “The Post used data drawn from U.S. customs logs and international shipping records to trace Trump-branded products from far-flung factories to ports around the United States. The Post also interviewed workers at three garment factories that have made Trump products who said their jobs often come with exhausting hours, subsistence pay and insults from supervisors if they don’t work fast enough. … ‘My monthly salary is not enough for everyday expenses, also not for the future,’ said a 26-year-old sewing operator in Subang, Indonesia, who said she has helped make Trump dresses. The 4,800-word piece by my colleagues, which includes a lot of quotes like that, is well worth your time. Here is one especially memorable vignette: All the labels on Ivanka Trump’s newest denim collection, showcased at Lord Taylor, brandish her #WomenWhoWork slogan: “In December, thousands of workers seeking higher pay went on strike outside Dhaka (the capital city). Welcome to the Daily 202, PowerPost's morning briefing for decision-makers. Sign up to receive the newsletter. WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING: -- Trump attended the military parade for France’s Bastille Day in Paris. -- Overruling the Trump administration, a federal judge in Hawaii ruled that grandparents should be exempt from the travel ban. Prosecutors charged two men with homicide and a host of other crimes in the killings of four people who went missing in Pennsylvania. GET SMART FAST: - A Pennsylvania man confessed to participating in the slaying of four young men in Bucks County — all of whom were between the ages of 19 and 22, and vanished in the past week from the Philadelphia suburb. The suspect was arrested one day earlier after authorities found one of the bodies in a 12-foot grave on his parent’s property. (Joel Achenbach, Mark Berman and Samantha Schmidt) - Nobel Peace Prize winner and Chinese dissident


China’s only Nobel Peace Prize winner died in state custody. Hours later, Trump praised Xi Jinping.

A pro-democracy activist mourns the death of Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo outside China's Liaison Office in Hong Kong on July 13. (Bobby Yip/Reuters) Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo died Thursday at age 61. Liu was one of his country's best-known dissidents and became the only Chinese national to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. But his activism against one-party rule came at a huge personal cost: When he won the Nobel, he was in the middle of a lengthy prison sentence for his promotion of democracy. Liu was granted medical parole in late June as the Chinese government revealed that he had late-stage liver cancer, but he died under the close guard of authorities. He is the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to die in state custody since 1938, when German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky died after years in Nazi Germany's concentration camps. The circumstances of Liu's death drew commiseration from around the world. However, the response from the leader of the United States was comparatively muted. The White House released a short statement Thursday that said President Trump was “deeply saddened” by the news of Liu's death, noting that he was a “poet, scholar and courageous advocate” who had “dedicated his life to the pursuit of democracy and liberty.” Many activists said that the White House statement was undercut by comments Trump himself made earlier in the day. The president had been holding a news conference in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron when a reporter asked him what he thought personally of Xi Jinping, the Chinese president. “Well, he’s a friend of mine,” Trump responded. “I have great respect for him. We’ve gotten to know each other very well. A great leader. He’s a very talented man. I think he’s a very good man. He loves China, I can tell you. He loves China. He wants to do what’s right for China.” Xi has been leader of China since 2013 and oversaw the country during four years of Liu's detention. Activists say that under Xi, the Chinese state has grown more repressive and activists more threatened. “The future for human rights in China gets ever bleaker under the leadership of President Xi Jinping,” Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said this year. “The authorities have targeted rights-promoting groups and boldly strengthened efforts to control them.” Though Trump has frequently criticized China for its trade policies and


House wants to link North Korea sanctions to measure on Russia and Iran sanctions

tactic. This is moving the goal posts again.” The Russia and Iran sanctions bill, which the Senate passed last month on a vote of 98 to 2, stalled as lawmakers argued over technical changes House Republicans leaders insisted were necessary to get the measure through their chamber. At issue was an alleged “blue slip” violation — arising from the fact that bills affecting revenue must originate in the House — and a disagreement over how lawmakers would be able to bring up measures to block the president should he ever try to scale back sanctions against Russia. The bill codified existing sanctions against Russia, while stepping up punitive measures over its interference in Syria, Ukraine and the 2016 U.S. election; it also increases sanctions against Iran for recent ballistic missile tests. But critically, the bill would give Congress a 30-day window to check the president before he could make any changes to existing sanctions policy against Russia, including scaling back the punitive measure the United States has against Moscow. The Trump administration has vocally objected to this provision, though they say they are otherwise comfortable with the increased sanctions under the bill. But lawmakers have been wary of the president’s warm approach to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Trump’s reticence to endorse the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia was behind a series of hacks and disinformation campaigns to swing the outcome of the 2016 election in Trump’s favor. Many lawmakers are concerned that absent a congressional check on his authority, the president might try to scale back sanctions against Russia — particularly by returning control to Moscow of two compounds that the Obama administration wrested from Russia in late 2016 as punishment for alleged meddling in the 2016 campaign. Earlier this week, Democrats objected that House Republicans were trying to prevent the minority from ever bringing up a resolution under the bill to block President Trump from making changes to sanctions policy, absent Republican approval. But as of Friday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Democrats were ready to let their complaint go. “I don’t like that, I want to protect the prerogatives of the minorities in the House, but weighing the equities, what was more important was passing the Russia-Iran sanctions bill,” she said. “So we are on board to just proceed.” House Democrats, who also voted overwhelmingly for the North Korea sanctions package this spring, could decide


The Magnitsky Act, explained

assistance resulted in the deliberate infliction of severe pain and suffering, and ultimately his death.” The law The Magnitsky Act was signed by President Barack Obama in December 2012 as a retaliation against the human rights abuses suffered by Magnitsky. The law at first blocked 18 Russian government officials and businessmen from entering the United States, froze any assets held by U.S. banks and banned their future use of U.S. banking systems. The act was expanded in 2016, and now sanctions apply to 44 suspected human rights abusers worldwide. Its official title is a mouthful — the Russia and Moldova Jackson-Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012. In most news stories and accounts, the shorthand is simply — the Magnitsky Act. Bill Browder, an American hedge fund manager who hired Magnitsky for the corruption investigation that eventually led to his death, was a central figure in the bill's passage. How does adoption factor in? When pressed on the details of his meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016, Donald Trump Jr. appeared to downplay its significance by linking it to concerns over an issue that appears uncontroversial on its surface: adoption. But the barring of U.S. adoptions of Russian children is a flash point of tense diplomatic relations and tied directly to the Magnitsky Act. Two weeks after Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a bill that blocked adoption of Russian children by parents in the United States. Russia then also imposed sanctions on Browder and found Magnitsky posthumously guilty of crimes. Supporters of the bill at the time cited mistreatment of Russian children by adoptive U.S. parents as the reason for its passage. But it was widely viewed as a retaliatory act, and the issues have been linked since. Trump Jr. said that despite assurances that Veselnitskaya would come bearing incriminating information about Hillary Clinton in their 2016 meeting, the topic quickly shifted to the Magnitsky Act and U.S. adoptions from Russia. Browder described Veselnitskaya in an NPR interview as a longtime foil to him in her efforts to repeal the Magnitsky Act. She represents a member of the Katsyv family, whose company is under investigation by the Justice Department in connection with the laundering of real estate money in New York. Denis Katsyv has lobbied to overturn Magnitsky and to end Russia's American adoption ban.


Why the death of Liu Xiaobo fills me with rage and sadness

A woman mourns late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo outside the Chinese liaison office in Hong Kong. (Kin Cheung/Associated Press) Chen Guangcheng is author of “The Barefoot Lawyer: A Blind Man’s Fight for Justice and Freedom in China.” The Chinese Communist Party has killed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, who was imprisoned for more than eight years for his wish to see a free and humane China emerge from decades of violence and destruction. The news of his death fills me with a burning rage and a profound sadness, built on years of watching the CCP destroy lives with impunity, and leaving violence and blood as its prevailing legacy. In this time of grief and mourning, we must not only honor Liu’s life and work, but also act swiftly in his memory to end the continued wrongdoings of the Chinese Communist Party regime. Liu was a gentle man. A writer and intellectual, he became involved in the democracy movement in China in the 1980s, participating in the 1989 Tiananmen movement and spending time in prison with multiple terms in “re-education through labor” camps as a result. In 2008, he was one of the drafters of Charter 08, a document signed by activists and intellectuals calling for peaceful political reforms. To celebrate Liu’s lifetime of human rights work, the Norwegian Nobel committee awarded him the peace prize in 2010. But by then he was already in prison, unable to receive the prize in person. The authorities placed his wife, Liu Xia, who is guilty of no crime, under permanent guard. Liu Xiaobo once said, “I have no enemies,” and he took this as the basis for his peaceful confrontations with the Communist Party. Though an elegant concept philosophically, the practical fact is brutally clear: However you choose to regard it, the dictatorship still sees you as its enemy, and will stop at nothing to punish you. This is the stark, physical reality that human rights activists fighting tyranny must face, every single day. This brutal dictatorship is not beholden to its people or its own laws, and disregards international conventions as it pleases. It is imperative that the outside world act swiftly and decisively to demand justice for Liu and his wife and to establish new norms in dealing with this violent, cash-flush dictatorship. In doing so, democratic nations need to remember that Western markets are extremely valuable to


Ryan Lochte cleared of false-report charge after incident at Rio Olympics

did not break Brazilian law. The three-judge panel, in a 2-1 ruling, noted that Rio police, not Lochte, had initiated the investigation and that the story he first told NBC did not meet the standard of a false report. Prosecutors could still challenge the ruling, and they have 15 days to do so. Lochte’s lawyers have been pressing for a dismissal of the case, but a lower court had ruled 2-1 to uphold the charge. “We are pleased that the court has finally dismissed the criminal prosecution against Mr. Lochte, while at the same time, appropriately recognizing that he committed no crime,” Jeff Ostrow, a Florida-based attorney for Lochte, told USA Today. “It has been a long year, but in the end, justice prevailed.” Lochte had said that he and three other U.S. swimmers, Jimmy Feigen, Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger, were on their way back to the Olympic Village from a party when their car was pulled over by gun-toting robbers pretending to be police officers. Citing surveillance video footage and eyewitness accounts, Brazilian authorities claimed that Lochte and his teammates vandalized and urinated on a gas station, after which security guards pointed a gun at them and demanded recompense before they left. Lochte subsequently said that he “definitely had too much to drink” that night, adding that he was still intoxicated when he provided false details to NBC’s Billy Bush the day after the incident. While he was able to leave Brazil quickly, his three teammates were detained, with Feigen agreeing to pay a fine of nearly $11,000 to expedite his departure. In the wake of the firestorm, which overshadowed the second week of the Olympics, Lochte lost several sponsors. His suspension left him unable to compete at last month’s U.S. nationals, making him ineligible for the world championships later this month in Budapest. The notoriety Lochte earned from the incident resurfaced at the ESPY awards this week, when host Peyton Manning joked that last year’s host, professional wrestler John Cena, “is an athlete the same way that Ryan Lochte is a reliable witness.” Lochte’s suspension ended on July 1, and he had planned on competing this week at the Los Angeles Invitational, but he pulled out, citing the birth last month of his first child. The 32-year-old has said he wants to return to top-level competitions, though, and represent the U.S. at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.


Winners and losers of the biggest state political battles of the year so far

Melissa Rooker (R) told my colleague Max Ehrenfreund. 3) Gay rights (Matt Rourke/Associated Press) Gay rights advocates have been playing whack-a-mole in state legislatures for several years, trying to knock down bills restricting what public bathrooms they can use, where they can live, and what businesses and even hospitals can refuse to serve them. This year, the battle shifted to adoption. Texas, South Dakota and Alabama passed laws allowing some religious adoption agencies to refuse to place children with same-sex couples. In Texas and South Dakota, the agencies can also refuse to provide reproductive services or counseling to gay children. Gay rights groups take comfort in the reality that it could have been worse. In 30 states, 135 bills they deemed hostile were introduced. Only eight passed, though that could soon rise to nine: The Texas legislature may reconvene this summer and pass a law restricting which public bathrooms transgender people can use. “It has been another challenging year,” said Cathryn Oakley with the Human Rights Campaign, “and it's not over yet.” WINNERS: Marijuana, gun control, Democratic politicians, social conservatives 1) Marijuana legalization Another year, another round of slow-but-steady victories for the marijuana legalization movement. In 2016, voters in eight of nine states with ballot measures on marijuana restrictions opted to ease them. This year, Vermont came close to being the first state to legalize pot with a legislative vote. West Virginia continued the trend of conservative states legalizing medical marijuana, with hardly any prodding from the marijuana industry. Now more than half the nation has legalized marijuana in some form, with eight states allowing recreational marijuana. “It's starting to be more apparent this is a noncontroversial issue,” said Karen O'Keefe with the Marijuana Policy Project. But all their forward progress at the state level could be wiped out by the Trump administration. Smoking pot for any reason is still illegal under federal law. The Obama administration largely looked the other way, but Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants to restart the war on drugs, especially on marijuana. And, after this story was published, anti-legalization advocates reached out to dispute the characterization marijuana had a good year at the states: Marijuana Policy Project-supported legislation failed in nine states. "It was a pretty bad year for pot," said Kevin Sabet, of Smart Approaches to Marijuana. 2) Gun control Gun-control advocates count their victories by how many gun rights laws they stop. And


Why this group is trying to stop Amazon from buying Whole Foods

could put small and medium shops out of business and hike up prices for shoppers — a consequence of limited competition, he said. The company’s AmazonFresh service, which is separate from the Whole Foods deal, delivers groceries to customers in Seattle, New York, Boston and D.C., among other markets. (Amazon has not released the number of subscribers.) “I’ve got concerns, and our organization has concerns, about what technology does and at what cost to society,” Perrone told The Washington Post. “We don’t want to be Luddites about technology, but we’ve got real concerns about what happens to America in the future.” The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union has roughly 1.3 million members across North America, working for retailers at a typical wage of about $18 an hour, including benefits. Members are employed at stores such as Kroger, Safeway and Albertsons. Whole Foods, for contrast, isn't unionized. The union, Perrone said, is worried that America’s shifting shopping preferences will spark a crisis in its industry the same way automation and trade with China and Mexico has wiped out factory work. Seventeen years ago, less than a quarter of Americans had ever shopped online, Pew data shows. Today, 80 percent do. As of Friday, there have been 5,369 announced store closures in the United States, up 162 percent from last year, according to data from Fung Global Retail and Technology, a retail think tank in New York. Grocery stores lost 11,000 jobs since last year, and supermarkets are down 3,000 workers from this time last year. That's partly because online food shopping has crept into the market, taking away a small slice of business so far — but one that is expected to keep growing, said David Livingston, a grocery chain analyst in Wisconsin. It's too early too tell whether or how Amazon could transform the Whole Foods model or take it online. The deal has not yet been approved. “The biggest thing the Amazon and Whole Foods deal has done is creating uncertainty,” Livingston said. Labor unions aren't the only people nervous about the potential marriage. Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill have raised issues with the merger. Last week, Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.), the ranking Democrat on the House’s Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel, requested a hearing on the deal. In a letter to his colleagues, Cicilline said the panel should explore how such a move would affect the


do. As of Friday, there have been 5,369 announced store closures in the United States, up 162 percent from last year, according to data from Fung Global Retail and Technology, a retail think tank in New York. Grocery stores lost 11,000 jobs since last year, and supermarkets are down 3,000 workers from this time last year. That's partly because online food shopping has crept into the market, taking away a small slice of business so far — but one that is expected to keep growing, said David Livingston, a grocery chain analyst in Wisconsin. It's too early too tell whether or how Amazon could transform the Whole Foods model or take it online. The deal has not yet been approved. “The biggest thing the Amazon and Whole Foods deal has done is creating uncertainty,” Livingston said. Labor unions aren't the only people nervous about the potential marriage. Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill have raised issues with the merger. Last week, Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.), the ranking Democrat on the House’s Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel, requested a hearing on the deal. In a letter to his colleagues, Cicilline said the panel should explore how such a move would affect the future of grocery stores and prices. Some farmers have expressed concern that Whole Foods under Amazon’s rule could shift its sourcing emphasis away from small, local producers — a tradition the store has baked into its brand but has admitted is more expensive than buying supplies from larger outfits. (An Amazon spokesman told The Post that Amazon “remains committed” to Whole Foods’s producers.) The FTC and the Justice Department are tasked with reviewing transactions worth more than $78 million that would affect commerce in the United States. Under the law, either agency can pursue legal action to block deals they believe would strangle competition. That last happened two years ago, when the FTC argued that Staples’s proposed merger with Office Depot would Jon Leibowitz, a former Democratic chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, said the agency has a duty to challenge any deals that could end up hurting shoppers. “Think about the Amazon business model — that’s typically bringing down prices and enhancing innovation, which is a benefit to consumers,” said Leibowitz, now a partner at the law firm Davis Polk. “But the FTC is a very professional agency, and they’re going to pay attention to any substantive concerns raised


Foreign-born recruits, promised citizenship by the Pentagon, flee the country to avoid deportation

across the recruit population that their path to citizenship would abruptly end. Then he received a letter from Kurdish officials warning of sweeps targeting Kurds for deportation and watched as news reports of the program’s struggles mounted. Rafeeq’s student visa was set to expire on Aug. 1. He faced a decision: wait for the Pentagon’s bureaucracy to untangle itself as the Trump administration seeks to expand deportation powers, or flee. He chose to flee. On June 11, Rafeeq went to Vancouver to apply for asylum in Canada. His biggest fear with deportation is the chance that Islamic State militants would prize his capture if they uncovered his attempt to enlist. “I can’t go back to Kirkuk,” he said. “They would kill me.” Pentagon proposals spark fear On June 26, The Post first reported on the Defense Department’s internal recommendations to shutter the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest program, which has naturalized 10,400 troops since 2009, and to cancel the contracts of 1,800 of recruits like Rafeeq who are waiting to train. About 1,000 of those recruits have waited so long that they have fallen out of legal immigration status. An internal Defense Department memo obtained by The Post acknowledges that canceling these contracts would expose the recruits to deportation. In response, lawmakers urged Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to honor the contracts of those recruits. The recruits, who have already sworn allegiance to the United States in their oaths of enlistment, could potentially face harsh interrogations or jail time if they are deported to countries such as China or Russia, said Tom Malinowski, former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor in the Obama administration. “These are not rule of law societies, and if they want to put pressure on [recruits], they will,” Malinowski told The Post. Malinowski said public announcements and photos of enlistments on social media could easily be exploited by adversarial intelligence agencies, in a potential propaganda victory attacking not just the United States but its most revered institution — the military. Those governments could force the recruits to “tell the honest story of how America betrayed them,” he said. “The basic purpose of Russian propaganda is not to extol Russia, but to convince people that America is amoral,” Malinowski said. The Chinese government’s charge of treason, which it finds in cases threatening to national security, ranges from 10 years of confinement to death,


Are you ever curious? Here’s why.

Curiosity matters to our society. When we look to improve our lives, curiosity compels us to overcome inertia and to seek something better. But the big question is: why are we curious at all? Last week I spoke with Mario Livio, an astrophysicist who lives in the D.C. region. Recently, he immersed himself in learning about curiosity and just released a book on the topic. (Photo courtesy of Jonathan Aberman) Why would an astrophysicist study curiosity? Livio explained that by examining his life and interests more closely, he realized that he had come a long way from being a scientist involved in the Hubble Telescope project to being someone with an eclectic range of interests, including art and music. As he looked at his diverse interests and the happiness he got from pursuing them, he found himself asking, “Wait a second, what do we actually know about curiosity?” Through reading on his own and by talking with scientific experts, Livio learned that there are two main types of curiosity. The first is perceptual curiosity. Perceptual curiosity causes a person to seek to learn something to solve an immediate problem, like finding food, combating bad breath or trying to remember the name of the wonderful actor in that otherwise awful horror movie. Perceptual curiosity is primal and exists on a continuum between fear and satisfaction. Broadly speaking, the fear of a negative outcome motivates us to act. This means that the role of fear in our behavior is double edged: one level of fear motivates us to be curious, but too much fear causes us to shut down. Perceptual curiosity is also driven by novelty. This is true regardless of our age, although the bar for finding things that are novel gets higher as we get older. These attributes of perceptual curiosity may explain why as people get older they tend to favor the status quo, why a boring job tends to wear people down and why we ask fewer questions when we are frightened. The second type of curiosity is epistemic curiosity. This curiosity is much less driven by external events and emotion than is perceptual curiosity. It is based on the process of satisfying a curiosity for the pleasure that comes from mastery. Epistemic curiosity is the desire for knowledge in its own right. This is the curiosity that drives scientific discovery, philosophy and people asking big questions that


Spreading fake news becomes standard practice for governments across the world

vendors that specialize in influencing opinion through social media. Though Russia leads the world in the sophistication of its online propaganda efforts, Howard said that efforts to support Republican Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign broke ground for using social media to shape political opinion. Howard’s group and others have previously reported that Twitter bots supporting Trump were far more vocal and organized than bots supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton, particularly in the closing days of the election. “It’s the presidential election cycles that put tens of millions of dollars into these innovations,” Howard said. “The big-money innovations happen in the United States and then get adopted everywhere.” Other researchers have documented the power of social media to bolster Trump’s surprise electoral success and shown that some of those social media resources are spreading to other nations. The spread of unflattering documents about French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron — now debunked as phony — got key support in the final days of the May election from Twitter bots that also had supported Trump in the U.S., according to Emilio Ferrara, a researcher at the University of Southern California. He analyzed 17 million tweets, finding that bots based outside of France focused on different issues than human Twitter users in France. His latest report, published this month, suggested the possibility of “a black-market for reusable political disinformation bots.” The use of these techniques is growing rapidly as bots and other techniques for manipulating opinion on social media become cheaper and easier to use, and as evidence grows of their effectiveness. Many companies now sell bot accounts by the thousands and, for a fee, will manage them for customers, Ferrara said. He and other researchers said that the social media platforms do not do enough to combat the spread of bots and the resulting propaganda. The impact goes beyond electoral politics to hot-button issues such as climate change and the safety of vaccines. “The vast majority of people … they would be surprised at the extent to which these platforms are used for political manipulation,” Ferrara said. “Especially with nobody doing anything about it.” Howard’s group also has detected bots that supported Trump working on other issues globally, often in concert with bots supporting alt-right causes and Russian propaganda campaigns. “They generate so much content — and they share each other’s content — that it’s hard to disaggregate the networks,” Howard said.


These haunting animal photos aim to make you reconsider a visit to the zoo

Free Foundation) A jaguar at a French zoo. “This is another image about us, more so than about the animal at the center of the photograph — a commentary about how we fail to really see the individuals who are presumably central to our zoo experience, which is about us, not them.” (Jo-Anne McArthur/Born Free Foundation) A brown bear at a German zoo. “The bear traced the same circles across the exhibit over and over, making the exact same turns and bodily movements, pausing in the exact same way at this corner to look beyond the bars, before circling again. For me, the image asks whether the price that animals like this bear have to pay is worth our being momentarily and mindlessly entertained.” (Jo-Anne McArthur/Born Free Foundation) A trio of arctic wolves at a zoo in Germany. “This image asks the question of whether the boredom, lack of choice, and lack of autonomy that animals in zoos experience day in day out for their entire lives can justify our fleeting entertainment.” (Jo-Anne McArthur/Born Free Foundation) This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What was your experience with zoos before this project? It’s clear you’re not a fan of zoos now. Was there a turning point? Did you go behind the scenes at the zoos you photographed or stay on the visitors’ side? How do you think that affected the portrayal of zoos in your book? You’re pretty dismissive of zoos’ wildlife conservation efforts. Why? Isn’t there a range of commitment to these programs? You single out the Detroit Zoo as worthy of praise. What makes it so different? Zoos know they are in the spotlight, and not in a good way. Many zoos are interested in meaningful reform, where others are looking at how they can spin things to look like they are. Zoos are neither immutable nor inevitable and, in their current form, most are archaic. Zoos need to evolve to suit the more compassionate ethics of our time. What do you want people to take away from your book? Read more: What Harambe’s death means for a critically endangered species of gorilla Detroit Zoo director: Zoos will ‘look and act radically different in 20 years’ A rhino at a French zoo was killed for his horn. Could that happen here? To save rhinos, half of this African country’s elephants are being airlifted to U.S. zoos


Goodnight, Too-Large-to-Be-Astronomically-Accurate Moon

invention of the wristwatch or the spring chronometer — one of the serious proposals was to develop these lunar tables,” he said. “Ships would carry a lunar table and then make an observation of the position in the sky and then referring back to the tables they were able to work out their longitude.” For our purposes, though, it’s less helpful. Here, for example, is how the moon traverses the sky at the South Pole during the part of the year when the region experiences night 24 hours a day. Time Lapse of the Moon over South Pole Station Where you are matters. There are other complicating factors that make it tricky to figure out where the moon will travel and how quickly, Lynam said: The speed of the moon’s orbit (which picks up as it moves closer to the Earth), the wobbling motion of the moon itself (which means that we actually see a bit more than half of the moon’s face as it moves through the sky) and even continental drift, which can affect where we expect the moon to be over a much longer time period than one evening. (You may have heard that astronauts planted reflectors on the moon during one of their visits. The point of those reflectors was to measure that drift. By aiming lasers at the reflectors and measuring how long the beam of light took to return to Earth, scientists could measure the distance between points on Earth and the moon and, they thought, measure how the tectonic plates were moving.) “I don’t want to sound flippant,” Lynam said about the complexity of the calculations, “but there’s probably an app that would potentially be able to do this.” So there is. Sun Surveyor This is what the sky above my back yard looked like Tuesday morning, viewed through Sun Surveyor. I’ve marked the actual moon with an arrow; it sits next to Sun Surveyor’s estimate of where the moon will be based on the geographic data it picks up from my phone’s sensors. If we had access to the rabbit’s room in the book, we could point our phones at the window and actually scrub through the year to figure out when the moon in the app lined up with the moon in the window. Ratana likes to do this with Google Street View, he said when we spoke by phone Monday,


How the Pentagon ending its deal with immigrant recruits could hurt the military

Scharre served in Afghanistan as an Army Ranger and worked with both local translators and Afghan-born contractors who lived for years in the United States. While he has not worked with MAVNI program recruits specifically, he said translators with American insight are “far and away” the most valuable on the battlefield. “They can bridge cultural divides and explain why locals are behaving in a certain way that U.S. troops can understand,” Scharre said, describing one translator born in Afghanistan who had lived in San Francisco for many years. An Air Force Special Operations information page listing vital languages overlaps with global military operations. Slots in fiscal years 2015 and 2016 for French, Arabic, Korean, Polish, Swahili and Somali are listed as filled, dovetailing with ongoing missions against the Islamic State and reinforcing NATO allies against mounting Russian aggression. The need for native speakers of Dari, another language spoken in Afghanistan — where Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will soon unveil a new strategy for the nearly 16-year old war — is listed as unfilled. Dental clearances for deployment Dental work is not typically in the national security conversation. But it’s among a checklist of health-related issues all troops must pass to receive orders for combat deployments, and physician shortages have the potential to affect the amount of troops the military can send to war. The MAVNI program filled an immediate need addressing vacancies in the Army Reserve Dental Corps, with nearly half of empty slots filled the first year of the program in 2009, said Margaret Stock, a retired Army officer who led the program’s design and implementation. Now two-thirds of all Army Reserve dentists are program recruits, according to NPR, which points to a quiet reliance on a pipeline of trained medical professionals with one big incentive to sign up that U.S.-born recruits do not need: citizenship. Personnel funds dipping into operations While program recruits are a fraction of the military’s roughly 2.2 million active troops and reservists, the potential of losing access to their highly specialized skills could have outsize security consequences, said Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Rising personnel costs means it is generally more expensive to recruit new troops than to retain those already in service. Recruitment of U.S. citizens with critical skills is particularly difficult and expensive when competing with the private sector, Harrison said. “If


2009, said Margaret Stock, a retired Army officer who led the program’s design and implementation. Now two-thirds of all Army Reserve dentists are program recruits, according to NPR, which points to a quiet reliance on a pipeline of trained medical professionals with one big incentive to sign up that U.S.-born recruits do not need: citizenship. Personnel funds dipping into operations While program recruits are a fraction of the military’s roughly 2.2 million active troops and reservists, the potential of losing access to their highly specialized skills could have outsize security consequences, said Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Rising personnel costs means it is generally more expensive to recruit new troops than to retain those already in service. Recruitment of U.S. citizens with critical skills is particularly difficult and expensive when competing with the private sector, Harrison said. “If you’re going to avoid skills shortfalls, it might mean siphoning resources from other accounts,” Harrison said. “The Defense Department will often pull money out of operations and maintenance accounts” to cover personnel costs, he said, leaving, for instance, less funds for replenishing stocks of munitions drained from counter-Islamic State operations and repairing vehicles damaged in combat. Program recruits have also been a reliable way to inject motivated troops into the force. The Pentagon’s review of the program found the recruits have a lower attrition rate than U.S.-born service members, which would save the military recruiting funds down the road. And linguists who stay in uniform would blunt costs of finding third-party translators, Harrison said. “When you lose a linguist, you end up buying them back at a higher rate through a contractor,” he said. The MAVNI program has not always worked as intended. The program, which is renewed on a yearly basis, has been suspended several times since 2009 for security reviews and internal questions about its efficiency. Pentagon reviews of the program point to dissatisfaction with some recruits over their specialties being underutilized, or by being placed into jobs unrelated to their skills. But that’s an agencywide issue, Scharre said. “The military has a problem of thinking of people as interchangeable cogs rather than looking at individual skill sets,” he said. Read more U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan are at levels not seen since Obama troop surge It could take more than a decade to clear Mosul of explosives, U.S. officials say


Afghan soldiers are using boys as sex slaves, and the U.S. is looking the other way

Jawed, now 19 and working as a dancing boy, sits with his face covered during an interview with Agence France-Presse at a house in Kabul on May 23. (Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) Anuj Chopra is the outgoing Kabul bureau chief of Agence France-Presse (AFP). His next posting for AFP will be Riyadh. He tweets at @AnujChopra. KABUL – Last summer, an Afghan police commander invited me to his post for tea — and to view his “beautiful” boy sex slave. I stumbled through a farm of chest-high opium poppy stocks to reach his mud-and-wattle outpost on the outskirts of Tarin Kot, the capital of southern Uruzgan province that is teetering in the face of a Taliban upsurge. On its open roof, a slight teenager sat next to his hulking captor, stealing sad glances at me as he quietly filled our tea glasses. A shock of auburn curls jutted out of his embroidered pillbox hat and his milky eyes were lined with kohl. The commander flaunted him the way a ringmaster exhibits an exotic animal. “See my beautiful bacha (boy slave),” he said, blithe and casual, a gun dangling at his side. The commander, an ally of the United States in the war against the Taliban, is not an anomaly. Hundreds of such outposts of the Afghan Local Police (ALP), a front-line force armed and funded with U.S. taxpayer dollars, and other pro-government militias are believed to have enslaved young boys for dancing and sexual companionship, many of them kidnapped. Freedom from the Taliban’s puritanical regime in 2001 also brought freedom to do “bacha bazi,” the cultural practice of sexual slavery and abuse of boys who are often dressed effeminately and whose possession is seen by Afghan strongmen as a marker of power and masculinity. As the United States sinks deeper into the Afghan quagmire, preparing to send additional troops into a seemingly endless war, it is glossing over this hidden but pervasive abuse of children by its local allies. U.S. tolerance of this egregious inhumanity sends out the message that it is acceptable for U.S.-backed forces to keep child sex slaves. It also has strong security implications. I reported last year how the Taliban are exploiting entrenched bacha bazi to infiltrate Afghan security ranks, effectively using child sex slaves — many of them brutally abused and hungry for revenge — as Trojan Horses to mount deadly insider attacks.


Climate change will force today’s kids to pay for costly carbon removal technologies, study says

that even 1.5 degrees is “unrealistic.” Hansen is no stranger to controversy. In 2015, he and more than a dozen colleagues published a highly contested paper in the open-access journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, suggesting that sea level rise may occur more rapidly in this century than previously predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In the new study, the researchers suggest that allowing temperatures to creep into the Eemian range once again could eventually trigger the onset of certain slow-developing climate processes that may ultimately enhance global warming, once again inducing catastrophic ice melt, sea level rise and other harmful climate effects. For instance, continued loss of ice may reduce the Earth’s reflectivity, they suggest, allowing more solar radiation to warm the planet’s surface and melt more ice. But to keep temperatures lower, the paper finds, would require not only significant emissions reductions efforts, but also the use of “negative emissions” technology, or special methods for pulling carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere. Using models, the researchers suggest that if immediate and significant emissions reduction efforts are undertaken — amounting to a decline in global carbon output by at least 3 percent annually starting in the next four years — then less carbon extraction will be needed. A majority of it could be accomplished through basic changes in agricultural and forestry practices to promote greater storage of carbon in vegetation and soil. On the other hand, the longer global greenhouse gas emissions are allowed to remain at high levels, the more carbon extraction will be needed to reach this target, requiring additional, costlier forms of technology. These may include the burning of biomass for energy, accompanied with carbon capture and storage technology, or technology that directly sucks carbon dioxide out of the air. If humans immediately began reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by a relatively high rate of 6 percent each year, the researchers estimate that the carbon extraction technology needed to get down to 350 parts per million could cost anywhere from $8 trillion to nearly $18.5 trillion. And if no emissions reductions occur, these costs could rise above $500 trillion through the end of the century. “Some consequences [of climate change] are already becoming inevitable, but as yet it could be moderate if we begin to reduce emissions rapidly,” Hansen said. “ But Trenberth said of the paper that while “it is a good point


Senate Republicans’ hard lesson: No women, no health-care bill

Senate coalitions formed for Republican lawmakers to vie for their health-care interests in the overhaul effort. One of the more controversial groups included the GOP's Senate leadership - and no women. Just last year, Collins had told researchers for a report about women in Congress that as a woman in this nearly all-white-male world, she has to fight harder to get recognized. “My experience has been, and sadly I think this is still true today, that when a woman is elected to the Senate, she still has to prove that she belongs there, whereas when a man is elected to the Senate, it’s assumed that he belongs here,” she said. But leaving out women soon turned into a political problem for Republican leaders, too. McConnell retreated behind closed doors to write the legislation, and soon, even the members of the original working group didn't know what was in the legislation. They unveiled a bill in June that received immediate skepticism from about a dozen senators, including Collins, Murkowski and Capito. Republican leaders felt they had no choice but to negotiate the bill in secret to try to find a delicate balance between the party's conservative and moderate factions, which have very different ideas about government's role in health care. But in leaving senators out, they also left out their opinions. And men and women made clear they couldn't vote for a bill that didn't have X, Y or Z. In the end, it was women who publicly killed it. But but but. We have to be careful not to conflate these senators' gender with why they opposed the health-care bill, as conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh seemed to do Tuesday night: Limbaugh on Collins, Murkowski, Capito: "Three female leftists" are now running the Senate. https://t.co/Erz6iqD4mS Female Republicans' concerns were much the same as their male colleagues' concerns about the legislation: It would have cut Medicaid too much. It raised premiums on the elderly and sick. It left rural hospitals without a safety net. Murkowski and Collins said they wouldn't vote for a bill that defunded women's health-care through Planned Parenthood. “This bill would make sweeping and deep cuts in the Medicaid program, which has been a safety-net program on the books for more than 50 years,” Collins told ABC News on Sunday. If there's a lesson in all this, it's that when trying to overhaul a major social program, perspectives matter.


More on the insulting sandwich, and the hypothesized fragility of the non-college-educated class

to a fancy deli counter either). So yeah, it was awkward and I felt completely out of place. And yes, I would have much rather gone to a normal grocery store (even if some products there also used foreign names for things). Brooks’s point is that those little things become social messaging that tells the poor that they are out of place. As communities become more economically homogeneous, those messages get louder and become more pronounced. That people can’t get this shows me just how isolated and blind to this issue they are. So here’s my understanding of how many restaurants function: Food is one of those goods (unlike, say, toothpaste) in which many people appreciate variety. Because of this, many restaurants try to pitch their food as being interestingly different from others’ food. Some of the pitches are overstated (same thing under a different name, being used to justify a higher price). Some of the pitches are accurate — prosciutto tastes different from ordinary ham, and many people (like me) think it tastes better and actually does justify a higher price. (Indeed, even someone who isn’t well-off can splurge and enjoy some prosciutto every so often.) And some pitches have a you’re-our-kind-of-person quality: You’re the sort of person who loves food; you’re worldly and knowledgeable about food; you have our kind of attitude about animal rights or the environment or trade or spirituality or whatever else; or (though this usually doesn’t involve claims of variety) you are a straightforward, no-nonsense person who appreciates simple, unaffected things. But — and I think this is the key point here — adult Americans of all social classes have vast experience dealing with marketing pitches like this. (I say “social class” because I think that’s what Brooks’s column is about.) We’re open to the possibility that there’s some substance to the pitch (we’ve all come across some products that really are better than the alternatives), but we’re also jaded enough to recognize that the pitch is often mostly puff. It doesn’t generally cause us to “freeze up” (Brooks’s description) or make us feel insulted or awkward. (Perhaps a college student, such as the commenter I quote, might have less experience and less self-confidence, but older adults have been around the block enough not to feel similar awkwardness.) Even if we think there’s a bit of “this is super-elite stuff” to the labeling, (1)


Ringling’s circus tigers finally have a retirement home

to Haddad. Each group has its own raised deck and room to run, she said, and those that enjoy it are treated to water play with a hose on hot days. Like other former traveling felines, the Ringling cats often snooze in a pile in their “den box,” she added. “I think it’s what they’re used to — bunking in together,” she said. “They seem pretty darn comfortable.” Tiger Haven’s cats receive medical care from University of Tennessee, Knoxville, veterinarians, in a relationship that goes back about 15 years, said Edward Ramsay, a professor of zoological medicine. The university’s vet school now has a dedicated “tiger room” for treating the sanctuary’s animals, with a garage door to facilitate their entry and exit. Ramsay said he speaks to sanctuary staff members regularly and visits there about once a week, and he frequently recommends it to zoo managers who are seeking a retirement home for their cats. Tiger Haven’s chain-link enclosures “are not exhibits like you would see at the zoo. That said, a lot of the things you see in zoo exhibits are really done for people’s aesthetics as much as [for] the animals,” said Ramsay, whose other primary client is the Knoxville Zoo. “They’re treating their animals every bit as well as the average zoo, and in many cases, I think, better. The animals get a lot of attention.” The sanctuary was for years engulfed in battles with neighbors, who sued it more than once over what they alleged was contaminated runoff, foul odor and noise. County commissioners also took aim at the refuge, recently over a fence permit. Those disputes are over, Tiger Haven’s February meeting minutes reported. Timothy Barringer, a neighbor who set up a website critical of Tiger Haven, said the sanctuary seems to have made efforts recently to address neighbors’ concerns. The facility has a “noble cause,” he added, though he is still not a huge fan of having hundreds of wildcats nearby. “Have you heard a tiger lately?” Barringer said. “They’re really loud. You can live a half-mile away, and they’re still pretty loud.” Read more: Thunderous applause, tears as the ‘greatest show on Earth’ takes a final bow One problem with shutting down the circus: Where will the animals go? America’s shockingly huge tiger population is finally getting more oversight Two lions survived a circus, only to be killed and mutilated in a sanctuary


Seeking clear skies for the solar eclipse? Use this map as a guide.

a few days before. But researchers at the University of Idaho have attempted to come to the rescue by developing a map which shows — based on historical data — what areas will most probably have clear skies. “[T]his map is unique because we have added information on the probability of clear skies — meaning how well you will actually be able to see the eclipse from where you are located in the U.S.,” said Luigi Boschetti, an associate professor of remote sensing at the University of Idaho. A map shows the likelihood of clear skies on Aug. 21, along the path of totality during the solar eclipse. (University of Idaho) Boschetti and Andrea Melchiorre, a PhD student, used 16 years of cloud data from NASA’s Terra satellite, to develop the map which shows clear skies probabilities for the entire United States. Along the path of totality, where the moon will completely block out the sun’s face, the map shows locations in the interior West having the highest chance of clear skies (shaded in blue) and lower chances (shaded in yellow) as you head east. It is generally consistent with a similar map showing historical cloud cover on Aug. 21 developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Via NOAA: “The darker the dot, the greater the chance for cloudiness at the hour of peak viewing during the total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017. Dots represent automated weather stations that reported the cloudiness data and show the 10-year cloudiness average for August 21, 2001-2010.” To develop its map, NOAA incorporated just 10 years of data and relied on cloud cover information from ground observations, rather than satellite data. The NOAA map is also different in that it indicates the average percentage of cloud cover across the nation over the years whereas the University of Idaho map conveys how frequently skies have been totally clear. For example, the University of Idaho map shows Rexburg, Idaho has a 60-70 percent chance of clear skies, while Nashville, Tenn. has a 30-40 percent chance of clear skies. But skies don’t have to be totally clear to see the eclipse, as long as cloud cover is only partial so don’t be too discouraged by the lower chances in the Southeast. To download high-resolution versions of the University of Idaho map, visit this website: Researchers Show Locations of Clearest Skies for Solar Eclipse Link:


Trump just nominated a climate change skeptic to USDA’s top science post

is confirmed by the Senate, is worth about $ 3 billion, with $ 2 billion devoted to research and $ 1 billion to education, according to Catherine Woteki, a nutrition scientist who held the job before Clovis. The person holding the position administers the Agricultural Research Service, the Economic Research Service, the National Agricultural Statistics Service, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The undersecretary also serves as the USDA’s chief scientist. The 2008 farm bill specifies that appointees to the post should be chosen “from among distinguished scientists with specialized training or significant experience in agricultural research, education, and economics.” The measure noted that the job is “responsible for the coordination of the research, education, and extension activities of the Department.” “There’s a huge amount of science that goes into the setting up of the programs, implementation of various policies, and the chief scientist role is to coordinate those policies across the entire department and to represent agricultural science in the decisionmaking that goes on with other departments and is coordinated with the white house science office,” said Woteki. Furthermore, the Agriculture Department’s chief scientist is also tasked with administering its policies to ensure “scientific integrity” in the department, which means examining whether any abuses or misuses of science may have occurred in the agency. Climate change is a major issue in the agricultural sector, as shifts in both temperatures and precipitation have a major impact on food production. Agricultural operations also rank as a major emitter of greenhouse gases linked to climate change, because of methane emissions from livestock and carbon emissions from heavy farm equipment. Under the Obama administration the Agriculture Department had elevated the issue of climate change, seeking to curb agricultural emissions as well as help farmers adapt to changing conditions by creating regional “climate hubs” across the United States. Then-Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack sought to enlist farmers, ranchers and forest owners in the effort to capture and store carbon nationwide. Since Trump took office, the agency has shifted the description of some of these efforts. On Wednesday, for example, the department’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture announced nine grants totaling more than $8 million “to study and develop new approaches for the agriculture sector to adapt to and mitigate the effects of changing environmental conditions.” But the same press release noted that four of them were directed toward “climate outreach and extension”


A big win for bears and a big loss for bear farmers

has increased 3.2% in comparison with 2010.” Bear farms reportedly first cropped up in the mid-1980s in China and quickly hopped the Red River south into Vietnam. The practice technically became illegal in the latter country in 1992, according to Animals Asia, when the government passed a law requiring state approval to keep bears. A loophole, however, allowed people to have bears as household pets. The legal gray area, coupled with the state’s inability to enforce the laws, led to a proliferation of bears in captivity on farms. Animals Asia determined that between 1999 and 2005 the number of bears on farms in Vietnam jumped from 400 to 4,000. In 2005, the government again passed legislation, this time outlawing bile extraction. But the agreement again allowed farmers to keep the bears they already had, and the industry continued. The 2016 Traffic report In 2015, when Vice News visited a bear farm in the northern Vietnam “bears sat hunched over in cramped, rusty cages, panting from the heat and humidity. Their excrement sat in piles below each of their cages. The bears were thin and some were missing patches of hair.” A year earlier, Animals Asia toured a facility in Halong City, they found 20 percent of the bears emaciated, many severely malnourished, 20 percent missing a limb, 100 percent suffering from paw injuries from standing on bars. A worker extracts bile from a bear at a facility owned by Guizhentang Pharmaceutical in Huian, southeast China’s Fujian province in 2012. (AP) Wednesday’s agreement between Animals Asia and Vietnam is the second major score for the group in as many years. In 2015, the Vietnamese Traditional Medicine Association promised to stop prescribing bear bile products by 2020. This week’s agreement with the government outlaws the private ownership of bears and calls for the confiscation and resettlement of the 1,000 animals living on farms. The parties next must move forward on securing funding for sanctuaries for the rescued bears. Animals Asia does have a location in Vietnam, but the relocation will take more space for the bears. Meanwhile, expert worry the bile market will simply move to nearby Laos or continue to flourish in China. “This, of course, doesn’t end the work,” Animals Asia Founder and chief executive Jill Robinson said in a statement. “Quite the opposite, but it now means we work together with a common goal — to end this cruelty.


Do military veterans really win more elections? Only in ‘purple’ districts.

not long after “swiftboat” and “chicken hawk” entered our lexicon, Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party explicitly recruited military veterans to run. That year, about 50 veterans won their primaries. The media called them the “Fighting Dems.” But they mostly lost that November, with Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania and Tim Walz in Minnesota among the few exceptions. Ultimately, nominating veterans in long-shot races might help pick up a few more votes, but as one of my mentors used to say, that’s like saying that a tall man has a better chance of hitting his head on the moon than a short man. Because of gerrymandering and incumbents’ visibility, any challenger — veteran or non-veteran — will have a hard time unseating a sitting House member in a district that leans toward the incumbent’s party. So even if there were a slight electoral advantage to nominating veterans, it would only matter in races when a challenger is within striking distance. And even that’s a big “if.” Research in my forthcoming book suggests that veterans don’t always have an advantage in the general election. There are occasional years and races in which veterans do hold an edge over commensurate nonveterans. But usually veterans do about as well as similarly situated nonveterans in general elections. That conclusion flies in the face of conventional wisdom. But think of it this way: If there were a clear and systematic advantage for veterans in general elections, political parties and primary voters would nominate candidates with military experience more often than they do. If there were a substantial veteran advantage — let’s say a 5 percent bump — we would probably have 435 veterans in the House. There are plenty of very good reasons for parties to nominate military veterans to hold political office. Veterans are often seen as leaders who patriotically sacrificed years (or more) for their country with experience in one of our government’s most important departments. A nonpartisan nonprofit in Washington called VeteransCampaign.org is dedicated to helping veterans become civic leaders in their community and beyond. But if the Democrats want military candidates in 2018 to display competence on security and defense issues as a face for their national efforts to win more seats, they will need to cultivate, fund and support compelling veteran challengers in purple districts. Otherwise, the veterans are likely to fade just as quickly as other challengers. Jeremy M. Teigen


The Finance 202: Big budget problems stand in way of tax overhaul

pedestrians walking past the New York Stock Exchange in New York. (Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images) — Maybe not the most surprising news, but a new Bloomberg poll reveals that most Americans hold unfavorable views of Wall Street banks and corporate executives, and they distrust billionaires more than they admire them. Bloomberg's Tom Metcalf and John McCormick: "Despite efforts by Wall Street firms to regain trust since the 2008 financial crisis, fewer than a third of Americans view the industry positively -- unchanged from 2009, according to the latest Bloomberg National Poll... The CEOs have sought to rehabilitate their banks’ brands in the wake of a crisis that left more than 8 million Americans out of work and cost shareholders tens of billions of dollars in fines and legal settlements. Blankfein, for example, created a business standards committee and responded to public outrage over Goldman Sachs’s compensation practices by taking $500 million from bonuses to provide money and advice to budding entrepreneurs through the firm’s 10,000 Small Businesses program." THE REGULATORS — The Trump administration wants to continue an Obama-era initiative to issue national banking licenses to financial-technology firms. Acting Comptroller of the Currenct Keith Noreika laid out the case Wednesday: “We all need the federal banking system to be more inclusive, to accommodate new banks, and to adapt to the changing needs of the marketplace, customers and communities,” he said, the Wall Street Journal's Rachel Witkowski reports. — The White House is rolling out its plan for scrubbing hundreds of regulations from the books, though the project already risks falling short of the Trump team's goals for it. More, from The Post: "On Thursday, the White House's Office of Management and Budget is planning to release a list of rules it plans to weaken or eliminate. The list will note that 469 proposals that were in the works during the Obama administration have been scrapped, and another 391 have been slowed. The administration is not releasing a full list of which regulations it's targeting until Thursday, but they will run the gamut from significant policy measures to minor procedural measures, said Neomi Rao, who heads the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs...Trump has promised to jettison 80 percent of all federal regulations, a vow that likely means eliminating many thousands of existing policies across the federal government." CHART TOPPER From The Post's Mike DeBonis and Emily Guskin: Even


The Energy 202: Jon Huntsman's Russia connections run through Chevron

strike new deals with sanctioned Russian oil firms. As it stands now, those sanctions, issued by executive order after Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea, could be done away with by the stroke of President Trump's pen. “We continue to monitor developments regarding the legislation," Chevron spokesperson Morgan Crinklaw said in a statement. "Chevron abides by a stringent code of business ethics, under which we comply with all current applicable laws." As chair of the Atlantic Council, a foreign-policy think tank, Huntsman oversaw initiatives that scrutinized Russia's role as an energy supplier to Europe and advocated for Ukraine's territorial integrity. Vriddhi Sujan, associate director of board relations and business development at the Atlantic Council, said Huntsman "will resign from all boards" once confirmed by the Senate. So far, the White House has raised concerns over a Russian sanctions package that passed the Senate last month in a 98-2 vote — a position actually not out of line with previous administrations. Traditionally, the executive branch usually prefers to have the discretion to apply or remove sanctions freely as negotiation chips rather than have Congress tie its hands. "Normally, you want to allow the executives, those that are responsible for foreign policy, to have the ability to lift sanctions as a way to encourage Russian better behavior," Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia under the Obama administration, said in an interview last year before the election. That Russia sanctions bill that passed the Senate is currently stalled in the House over oil concerns. You are reading The Energy 202, our must-read tipsheet on energy and the environment. Not a regular subscriber? SIGN UP NOW POWER PLAYS Statement regarding my father @SenJohnMcCain: https://t.co/SMte9Hkwkq -- Sad news: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), has been diagnosed with brain cancer, his office said Wednesday night. The Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix said in the statement that following a procedure on Friday to remove a blood clot above McCain’s left eye, a pathology report “revealed that a primary brain tumor known as a glioblastoma was associated with the blood clot.” “The Senator and his family are reviewing further treatment options with his Mayo Clinic care team,” the statement continued. “Treatment options may include a combination of chemotherapy and radiation.” Glioblastoma is an aggressive cancer with a generally poor prognosis. It’s the same type of cancer that killed Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Beau Biden, the son


of former vice president Joseph Biden. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke talking to National Park Service Rangers in Boston. (REUTERS/Brian Snyder) -- A six-month check-in at the Department of the Interior: The Post's Juliet Eilperin has a great overview of everything that's happened at the department that manages a fifth of the nation's land. With Trump's efforts to reform the tax code and health-care law so far stalled, rolling back environmental regulations is one of the few areas of real progress Trump has made in enacting his agenda. In the past few weeks alone, Trump and his Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke have: - lowered the price companies must pay the government for offshore drilling - acted to accelerate approval for onshore drilling permits; approved exploratory drilling in the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea - and scheduled lease sales on Western lands the Obama administration had deemed off limits. Eilperin's conclusion: "Zinke is taking concrete action to deliver on one of Trump’s most important campaign promises." -- Al Gore's new climate documentary, "An Inconvenient Sequal: Truth to Power," screened at the Newseum on Wednesday evening with over 400 people in attendance, organizers say. Among the moviegoers "I know this is a bipartisan group — maybe barely bipartisan. So I'm going to transgress on some toes by saying, I really hope you become speaker again," Gore said to Pelosi to applause in a speech before the screening. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday, March 21, 2017, officially designated the bee an endangered species. It is the first bee species in the continental U.S. to receive federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. (Sarah Foltz Jordan/The Xerces Society via AP) -- Law endangered? Committees in the House and Senate considered bills on Wednesday targeting the 1973 law. One of the bills would allow economic factors to be considered, the Associated Press reported, when deciding whether a species will be added to the endangered list. What Republicans say What Democrats say Inertia is on Democrats' side -- Whistle blown: An Interior Department employee says he believes he was reassigned to a job in an accounting office for speaking out about the effects of climate change on Alaska Native communities. He calls his transfer retaliation. “During the months preceding my reassignment, I raised the issue with White House officials, senior Interior officials and the international community, most recently at a U.N. conference in June," Joel Clement


it works now -- With Congress and the White House weighing whether to open more of the Alaskan Arctic to drilling, it's worth asking: Are we ready to clean up a potential oil spill in the Arctic as the region thaws from climate change? The U.S. Coast Guard's answer: No, we are not. -- Not something to expect the head of a major coal hauler to say: "Fossil fuels are dead,” Hunter Harrison, chief executive of the freight-railroad company CSX said, according to the Financial Times. "That’s a long-term view. It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s not going to be in two or three years. But it’s going away, in my view." Why he is saying it THERMOMETER This animation summarizes the production and fate of all plastics ever made. -- Satellite image of what was previously Tropical Storm Don Wednesday morning. (NOAA) -- Capital Weather Gang’s Jason Samenow writes that the tropical storm Don “perished” in the tropical Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday evening. Another tropical depression, that could have developed into Tropical Storm Hilary, failed to gain enough strength in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Samenow quips: “The near-simultaneous emergence of Don and Hilary is mere coincidence. Storm names are designated for both the Atlantic and eastern Pacific Ocean basins years in advance. But it does prove the weather has a sense of humor.” -- A novel comparison to climate change worth reading: "It was a problem that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to fix, whose technical basis was not immediately obvious to most non-specialists and which some even doubted was real at all," writes New York Times technology columnist Farhad Manjoo. "It was also a fight that we won — and that we ought to be proud of winning, since it offers a blueprint for combating the many catastrophes that may arise from the technologies underpinning civilization, including a warming planet. "I speak, of course, of Y2K." -- The outlook keeps getting worse and worse and worse: A new study says climate change will force today’s kids to pay for costly carbon removal technologies, Chelsea Harvey reports in The Post. "The longer humans continue to pour carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the closer we draw to leaving the next generation with an unmanageable climate problem, scientists say. A new study, just out Tuesday in the journal Earth System Dynamics, suggests that merely reducing greenhouse gas


The Washington Post joins Nextdoor as its first news provider in the Washington, D.C. area

The Washington Post today announced it has started sharing its local news coverage on Nextdoor, the private social network for neighborhoods. As one of the first news providers in the Northeast and the first publisher on the social network in the Washington, D.C., area, The Post aims to deeply integrate with more local readers providing access to news of neighborhood interest. “Fostering conversations and growing lasting relationships with our local readers continues to be a key focus for us at The Post,” said Greg Barber, director of digital news projects. “We’re excited to experiment with Nextdoor to bring our journalism to their engaged communities.” Through its Nextdoor page, The Post will connect directly with D.C.-area residents to help source its local coverage, request tips, and encourage discussions about posted stories. Members will find stories about, but not limited to, neighborhood-specific breaking news, social issues, local crime, and dining and entertainment. Members will also be able to respond to posts, polls, and questions shared by The Post on Nextdoor, and reach out directly to The Post through private messages. The Post’s Nextdoor page can be found on the web or in the Nextdoor mobile app by searching The Washington Post. To sign up for Nextdoor, please visit www.nextdoor.com.


This could be the next big strategy for suing over climate change

or subjected to greater flooding risks, for a given level of rising seas. Bookbinder said there could be a time when the science is powerful enough to try to assess blame for other climate related changes, such as droughts, but that sea level rise is a stronger and simpler case right now. “What’s different about these lawsuits is the way in which they rely on the current state of climate science and the current state of information about what these companies knew, when they knew it and what they did with their knowledge,” added Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “Over the last several years, a lot of information has come to light … What we know now is fundamentally different from what we knew years ago.” But there are clear legal hurdles, too. The companies will surely point out that each individual corporation contributed only a small fraction to climate change, or resulting sea level rise. In addition, the companies themselves did not directly emit carbon into the atmosphere, but rather sold gasoline and other products that consumers used to power their cars and homes. “The litigants misunderstand nuisance law,” said Scott Segal, an attorney with Bracewell LLP who represents energy companies in D.C. “Commentators have suggested that nuisance law, a relative backwater in property law, is based upon conditions in which there are distinct producers and recipients of pollution. However, in the case of global climate change, a molecule of carbon is literally around the world in seven days. The requisite causation needed for nuisance suits is missing and unprovable.” “It’s possible the suits will go nowhere, that they will be one offs that end in dismissal,” added Burger. After all, he said, there have been a number of previous lawsuits filed against the fossil fuel industry, raising public nuisance and other common law claims, and none have been entirely successful. “But I think the potential here is that it becomes a first-of-its-kind set of lawsuits,” he said, agreeing with Bookbinder that other local governments are likely to pursue similar claims. “And you wind up with a groundswell of litigation that puts real pressure on the fossil fuel industry and on the government.” Still, he added, “These are not easy cases to win. The plaintiffs will certainly have their work cut out for them convincing a judge, or perhaps


Witnessing the indescribable: Why I’ve chased solar eclipses all over the world

The total solar eclipse in Russia, August, 2008. (Jason Ryan) The author Bob Ryan was a broadcast meteorologist for 45 years, including 33 in Washington. He is now a consulting meteorologist and honorary member of the American Meteorological Society. If you were a young professional living around Boston in the 1960s, chances are you didn’t set your alarm for 5 a.m. on a Saturday unless it was for something special. For me it was not only special, but it was and still is — wonderful. Philippine stamp commemorating eclipse of 1955. I had a moonlighting job as a broadcast meteorologist on the 10 p.m. news on UHF Channel 56 in March 1970 and had talked about a partial eclipse of the sun, visible in Boston, earlier that week. But in Nantucket, it would be a total eclipse of the sun. I had seen pictures in magazines and on TV of what a total eclipse looked like (remember this was 25 years BI … before the Internet) and I forecast a rare early March clear skies over Boston. So I decided to set my alarm and head to Nantucket. My girlfriend, now wife, knew I was nuts. She had put up with me trying to catch snowflakes in plastic on our second date. But getting up at 5 a.m. on a Saturday morning? “No thanks, tell me about it,” she said. I told her — and we’ve shared four eclipses since and a fifth coming Aug. 21. Nantucket, March 1970 The morning of March 7, 1970, I drove to Hyannis and bought a round trip ticket to Nantucket. I think it was a morning flight on Cape and Islands air. I was one of maybe six passengers. No pre-booking, no Internet, no TSA, no cellphone, no selfie. We landed 30 minutes later in Nantucket joining passengers from one other flight. There were maybe 10-15 of us there. “Okay, where do we go?” I wondered. Off we walked from the “airport” to a beach facing the open Atlantic. By about 11 a.m. there we were, on a sunny March day, light breeze on Nantucket, waiting for something none of us had seen. Bring it on! NASA data path of total eclipse of March 7, 1970. (Google map) At 12:31 p.m., it started. Special eclipse glasses? Hey, it’s 1970 — I think I had sunglasses! Cameras clicking away? I don’t remember a single


The strange legal battle that is pitting Trump’s secretaries of the Treasury and State against each other

separatists in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea. When the measures were announced, Treasury said Sechin in particular “has shown utter loyalty to Vladimir Putin — a key component to his current standing.” The sanctions applied only to Sechin, not his company. Rosneft and the Russian Embassy did not respond to a request for comment. ExxonMobil didn’t deny that it entered into the business agreement with Sechin, but it says that guidance from the Obama administration at the time allowed such an arrangement. It also argued that it reached agreements with Sechin in his role as the head of Rosneft and not in a personal capacity. "Tillerson as a major CEO almost certainly know Sechin was on the blacklist," said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, which analyzes business risk. "The question is whether OFAC issued clear guidance on whether deals with Rosneft were off limits." In the company’s legal complaint against Mnuchin and the Treasury, ExxonMobil also called the Treasury’s allegations “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and otherwise not in accordance with law.” Treasury had instituted the sanctions against Sechin on April 28, 2014, when it said “transactions by U.S. persons or within the United States involving the individuals and entities designated today are generally prohibited.” At the time, Tillerson told reporters that the new U.S.-imposed sanctions would not impact Exxon’s relationship with the Russian oil giant. “There has been no impact on any of our business activities in Russia to this point, nor has there been any discernible impact on the relationship” with Rosneft, Tillerson said at the time, according to the Associated Press. “The organizations continue to work business as usual.” President Trump selected Tillerson to serve as his first secretary of state, even though the two had no history together. Tillerson faced scrutiny from lawmakers in both parties because of his close ties to Putin and past business dealings in Russia, but he was confirmed for the cabinet position by a 56-to-43 vote. In 2013, Tillerson won an award from the Russian government called the “Order of Friendship” after signing deals with Rosneft that began a drilling program in the Arctic’s Kara Sea. Trump selected Tillerson to be his only adviser during a two-hour and fifteen minute meeting with Putin earlier this month in Hamburg, Germany, and Tillerson said both men had immediate chemistry during the conversation at a briefing later with reporters. At


The death of Liu Xiaobo marks dark times for dissent in China

Want smart analysis of the most important news in your inbox every weekday along with other global reads, interesting ideas and opinions to know? Sign up for the Today's WorldView newsletter. It has been a week since the death of Liu Xiaobo, the famed Chinese dissident who was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for Peace while imprisoned. Late last month, Chinese officials announced that the prominent writer, who had been detained since 2009, was being moved to a hospital to receive treatment for late-stage liver cancer. Despite the entreaties of his family, friends and foreign governments, Beijing refused to release him to seek care overseas. He died July 13, becoming only the second Nobel laureate to perish in custody (Carl von Ossietzky, an anti-Nazi pacifist, died in 1938). In a move that sparked the ire of Chinese activists, authorities apparently ensured that his ashes were buried at sea and not on Chinese soil. Acclaimed artist Ai Weiwei, who lives in Germany, said the move was aimed at denying Liu’s supporters “a physical memorial site” and that it “showed brutal society can be.” “It is a play,” said Ai. “Sad but real.” Liu Xiaobo’s wife, Liu Xia, prays as his ashes are buried at sea off the coast of Dalian, China, on July 15. (Agence France-Presse/Shenyang Municipal Information Office) Indeed, for China’s authoritarian leadership, what Liu represents is all too real. “Liu Xiaobo was a representative of ideas that resonate with millions of people all over the world, even in China. These ideas cannot be imprisoned and will never die,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, in a statement. Ironically Liu’s legacy and oeuvre are more visible abroad than at home, where even Internet searches of his name are censored and tributes to his life were hurriedly erased from social media. But what further underscores the tragedy of his life was the nature of his politics. “Inevitably, some in the West will think that honoring Liu Xiaobo is an act of offense against China (or, more practically, a potential risk to relationships with the government). That’s a mistake,” wrote Evan Osnos, author of the National Book Award-winning “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China.” “Honoring Liu is an act of dedication to China at its best. He was, to the end, unwilling to renounce his principled commitment to China’s constitution — to the


Iraq’s elite special forces struggle to regroup after bloody fight for Mosul

training and equipping mission in Iraq for the 2018 fiscal year. The counterterrorism forces were established by U.S. Special Forces in 2004 to tackle the violent insurgency unleashed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The relationship between the two commando forces remains until today. Some 100 U.S. Special Forces work with their Iraqi counterparts to mold recruits into elite soldiers that “look like us, are mentally agile and conduct operations like we do,” said Brig. Gen. Patrick Roberson, a U.S. Special Operations Forces commander involved in the training of new counterterrorism troops. Roberson said that Iraqi officers have taken over about 95 percent of the 30- to 40-month training of new troops, but that the United States maintains a close quality-control role — a testament, he said, to the rapid maturation of the officer ranks. “There’s nothing we can teach them that they can’t teach themselves,” he said. Their importance to the fight against the Islamic State, coupled with the high rates of casualties they suffered, makes getting troops trained and quickly assigned to units in the field a critical priority. But the lengthy training program may not be able keep up with battlefield losses. Since July, only 500 recruits joined units in the field. Roberson said that about 2,000 troops graduate from the academy each year. That pace is well below the U.S. Department of Defense's goal of growing the force to 20,000 troops over the next three years. The U.S. military said there haven't been and will not be any changes to the counterterrorism service training program to accelerate getting new troops into the field. Roberson said the challenge is maintaining the high standards of the counterterrorism service through periods of dramatic attrition like the fight for Mosul and the fierce battles that preceded it in Fallujah and Ramadi, in which the group also acted as the leading force. One idea was to open recruitment to the general public, transitioning from a model that hand-picked promising troops from the ranks of the Iraqi security forces to one that looks for “high quality people” on the street, he said. While the first attempt at that strategy drew massive interest in May, only 0.3 percent of those who signed up will likely be sworn in, underscoring the immense job ahead. Read more: The force leading the Iraq army’s fight against ISIS went from ‘dirty division’ to golden boys


Why champagne sorbet might be illegal

Under European law, “champagne” can only come from a specific region of France and be made using traditional techniques. (Pete Seaward/Getty Images) The powerful trade association that represents champagne makers has sued bloggers, water bottlers and haute couture fashion brands. They warned Apple against calling the gold iPhone “champagne” and spent three years making sure that no one but French producers could snag champagne-related wine URLs. But on Thursday the Comité Interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne scored an even more significant victory, when Europe’s highest court suggested in a nonbinding ruling that even products containing the French sparkling wine may not be able to use the name “champagne.” The opinion from the European Court of Justice — on a product sold by the discount grocer Aldi as “Champagne sorbet” — reinforces and expands the reach of European Union laws that dictate that only Portuguese dessert wine can be called “port,” and that only the British-made blue cheese can be called “Stilton.” While the opinion is not final, experts say it furthers the Champagne region’s effort to protect its brand. “Champagne is fighting this battle in Europe, and they seem to be winning,” said Bernard O’Connor, a managing partner at the European law firm Nctm who specializes in trade and agriculture law. “It seems logical that they’ll next take the fight to global markets.” The case in question involved “Champagne sorbet,” which Aldi sold at a number of its German stores in 2012. The dessert contained 12 percent champagne — the real kind, from France — but the Comité Champagne claimed the use of the protected name on a non-wine product risked cheapening it. Under long-standing European law, hundreds of traditional foods, wines and spirits that are closely linked to a specific region enjoy special protections: They’re granted exclusive use of the regional product name, and legally guarded against a range of infringements. Stilton cheese must be produced in the counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire or Nottinghamshire in Britain, using pasteurized local milk. (It cannot, ironically, be made in the nearby town of Stilton.) Port specifically describes a fortified wine produced in Portugal’s Douro Valley. Feta, Manchego, Roquefort and Asiago must come from Greece, Spain, France and Italy, respectively. Even indirect or passing uses of protected names are illegal, in many instances. Food producers cannot “misuse, evoke or imitate” a protected name, which has been interpreted in several national and EU-level cases


Getting someone’s goat: State officials love their work ethic when it comes to mowing highways

goats to do the dirty work of removing weeds and mowing grass on the nation’s highways. (Graphic courtesy FHWA public affairs) Maryland, which has been using goats and sheep since 2009 on a patch of highway in Carroll County, is open to the idea of expanding their use. Pittsburgh set them loose them in city parks last year as an alternative to herbicides, stateline.org reported. It’s an idea that’s probably been around as long as goats, too. President Woodrow Wilson brought in sheep to trim the White House lawn in 1918. The beauty of using goats, of course, is that they’re cheap and environmentally friendly. They even have a taste for invasive plants and noxious weeds. Give them a bunch of English ivy or porcelain berry vines to gobble up and, by goodness, they’re eager for more. Some become so keen on the task at hand that their minders don’t have to worry about them wandering off the job site, Hecox said. “Goats have a special talent,” he said. “They are really, really focused.” Maryland began using them as a way to mitigate the environmental impact from the Hampstead Bypass project on Route 30 in 2009. During the planning of the roadway, officials discovered that construction would affect bog turtles living in a three-acre wetland. The species was already endangered, so the project was temporarily halted. The Maryland Department of Transportation’s State Highway Administration then altered the road design to avoid the bog turtles’ habitat. The area was fenced off below ground to protect the turtles, and the roadway went through. But the state still had to maintain the area and find a way to keep the grass down without using poisonous chemicals in the wetland or heavy-duty mowers that would hurt the turtles. So they brought in goats and sheep from a local farmer, who turns them loose in the enclosed area. “It’s kind of an innovation,” MDSHA spokesman Charlie Gischler said. He said the cost to the state per year is about $6,300, including veterinary bills. The program has worked so well that state officials might use the animals elsewhere. “It’s an option that’s on the table,” Gischler said. So to speak. Read more of Tripping: Bicyclists fear Oregon’s controversial bike tax could spread Everybody stop: N.J. town finds simple way to cut crashes involving pedestrians Yet another child has died after being left in a hot car


Nick Miroff wins Maria Moors Cabot Prize

The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism has awarded The Washington Post’s Nick Miroff a 2017 Maria Moors Cabot for his reporting in Latin America. The Cabot Prizes honor journalists for career excellence and coverage of the Western Hemisphere that furthers inter-American understanding. From Columbia’s announcement: Nick Miroff’s lively and eloquent stories show how people in Latin America are being buffeted by violence and political change. In the Amazon lowlands of Ecuador, he revealed how the construction of an oil pipeline fueled deadly rivalries among indigenous tribes. In northern Mexico he observed, through the eyes of an American priest, the ravages in rural villages caught between feuding drug cartels. His prescient reporting foretold the rush of migrants from Central America to the United States and the rising death toll in illegal border crossings. More recently, he followed guerrillas in Colombia emerging after decades in the jungle to an unfamiliar condition called peace. While based in Mexico City and Havana, Miroff had a uniquely close view of the twilight of Castro rule and the opening with the United States. In bittersweet detail, he conveyed Cubans’ longing for change and their lingering attachment to a faded revolution. Now starting in a new role at the Washington Post in Washington, he brings with him years of experience covering Latin America. For stories that made the region’s transformations vivid and important for American readers, Nick Miroff will be awarded the 2017 Maria Moors Cabot Award. View the full announcement and list of winners here.


Google Street View’s latest destination: The International Space Station

In a blog post about his experience “Working with Google on my latest mission, I captured Street View imagery to show what the ISS looks like from the inside, and share what it’s like to look down on Earth from space,” he added. The virtual tour allows users to peek into areas where astronauts eat, exercise, work and even bathe. Pesquet’s imagery reveal an environment that may look a bit cramped and chaotic — if not altogether dizzying — to humans anchored on earth, but some of the scenes from inside the ISS are downright mesmerizing. The images were captured using DSLR cameras and then “stitched together” back on earth to create panoramic views. Pesquet noted that the ISS is a “busy place” with six crew members working and researching 12 hours a day. “There are a lot of obstacles up there, and we had limited time to capture the imagery, so we had to be confident that our approach would work. Oh, and there’s that whole zero gravity thing,” he wrote. Floating through the ISS online, you’ll notice clickable dots with detailed descriptions of the space and its objects to help viewers understand what they’re looking at. Pesquet noted that this is the first time annotations — “helpful little notes that pop up as you explore the ISS” — have been added to Street View imagery. A Google Street View image from the Joint Airlock, an area contains space suits also known as Extravehicular Mobility Units. They provide crew members with life support that enables extravehicular activity. (Courtesy of Google Maps) The ISS is a “large spacecraft” that orbits around Earth at more than 17,500 miles per hour and is home for astronauts from around the world, according to NASA. The ISS is made up of many pieces that were constructed by astronauts beginning in 1998. By 2000, as more pieces of the station were added, the station was ready for people, according to NASA. Portions of the station are connected via modules known as “nodes,” according to NASA. “The first crew arrived on November 2, 2000,” NASA wrote. “People have lived on the space station ever since. Over time more pieces have been added. NASA and its partners around the world finished the space station in 2011.” NASA compares the inside of the station to the inside of a house, noting that the structure — which weighs almost


Update: This mysterious space signal is definitely not from aliens

about,” Méndez said with an exasperated laugh. “I have that experience even with my family.” The impulse to attribute any odd astronomical phenomena to extraterrestrial intelligence is so compelling it's practically its own law of physics. But jumping to “aliens” at the slightest mention of a strange signal kind of misses the point, Méndez said. Not everything has to come from aliens to be important. On Friday, Méndez and his colleagues got confirmation that the emission — which they called the “Weird! signal” in tribute to the “Wow! signal” that's been unexplained since 1977 — was nothing out of the ordinary. Follow-up observations revealed that it most likely comes from a geostationary satellite — a craft with an orbit that matches the rotation of the Earth, so that it appears motionless in the sky. The result is admittedly mundane, but the path to it was an important one. Space is full of sights we don't yet understand, sounds we haven't quite explained. Clearly, humans don't even fully recognize the signs of our own presence in the skies. Astronomical mysteries, even ones with Earthly solutions, are a reminder of how much of our universe is left to understand — and motivation for scientists like Méndez to keep probing for answers. “Unexplained … does not mean inexplicable,” Méndez wrote in a blog post Friday. The Weird! signal was initially detected during a campaign to observe nearby red dwarfs — very cool, dim stars that are widespread in our galaxy. Several of these stars are thought to be candidates to host planets that may be hospitable to life, so scientists are interested in knowing more about them. A few months ago, Mendez and his colleagues spent an evening surveying several red dwarf stars at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico — the world's largest fully operational radio telescope (China's 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope is still undergoing testing). Arecibo also happens to be the observatory where fictional astronomer Ellie Arroway first looked for extraterrestrial signals in the movie “Contact,” and where real astronomers, like Jill Tarter and Frank Drake, have sought signs of alien life — but Mendez doesn't let that go to his head, and you shouldn't either. Picture of the star field around #Ross128 (near center) that I generated from @AAVSO for @EliBonora https://t.co/RbWBW7EmXl The signal arrived while Arecibo was pointed at Ross 128, a small star in the constellation Virgo that's