The next pandemic will come sooner or later. The CDC needs money to prepare.

PICK ANY of the serious infectious-disease outbreaks of recent years, and the chances are it started in one country and spread to others. The swine flu pandemic began in Mexico and soon swept into the United States; severe acute respiratory syndrome began in southern China and soon was in dozens of countries; the 2014-2015 Ebola virus disease outbreak that killed 11,314 people began in Guinea and spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone, and threatened many others. The basic facts, that pathogens don’t stop at passport control and move fast in today’s globalized world, are why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been active in so many places abroad since the Ebola catastrophe. At the time of the Ebola crisis, Congress approved a one-time, five-year emergency supplemental spending package, of which $600 million was sent to the CDC to help countries prevent infectious-disease threats from turning into epidemics. Anticipating that that money will run out in October 2019, the CDC has begun notifying country directors to begin planning withdrawal from 39 of 49 countries. This is not a pullout of all CDC programs — activity abroad will go on in such areas as fighting polio, malaria, HIVand tuberculosis — but it does mean retreating from frontline outposts for preventing, detecting and responding to outbreaks. According to The Post’s Lena H. Sun, the CDC plans to pull out of China, Pakistan, Haiti, Rwanda and Congo, among others, but would remain engaged in 10 nations. A retreat will be counterproductive. The money is a small fraction of what pandemics can cost later on. The CDC programs train front-line workers in outbreak detection and work to strengthen laboratory and emergency response systems. A coalition of groups supporting the program reminded the Trump administration recently that the Ebola outbreak alone cost U.S. taxpayers $5.4 billion in an emergency supplemental appropriation. The CDC program is a good example of a relatively small investment that can pay big dividends and is part of a global health security initiative launched during the Obama years. Congress should not let the CDC effort lapse. We’re not sanguine about the fiscal situation, with big tax cuts now in place and a new budget deal just signed that seems to be opening up the spending spigots. However, if the resources are available, this program merits a claim on them. The next pandemic will come along sooner or later. The United


Climate change could put businesses underwater. Start-up firm Jupiter aims to come to the rescue.

even building level. The foundation is its ClimateScore platform, which leverages cloud computing to run and link multiple prediction models that ingest data from millions of ground-based and satellite sensors. The first two products in Jupiter’s portfolio are called FloodScore and HeatScore. They’re intended to help customers manage the risks associated with intensifying precipitation events and heat waves in a warming world. FloodScore and HeatScore predict not only precipitation and temperature changes, but also simulate their interactions with the built environment and the surrounding landscape and how they’re altered by climate change. In the assessing flood risk in New Orleans, for example, the analytical framework would take into account the convergence of wetlands and concrete and sea level rise, Sorkin said. Jupiter will introduce FireScore, that evaluates the risk of wildfires, and other services later this year. Sorkin believes Jupiter’s use of cloud computing will enable it to expand its products and services at a breakneck pace. “Our ability to chain together multiple models in the cloud in a statistically rigorous way, allows us to go much, much faster — from both a development and deployment perspective,” Sorkin said. “It let’s you go from one customer in one city to hundreds to thousands of customers all over the world fairly quickly.” Its modeling will also employ machine learning to supplement underlying data and improve the representation of physics-based processes like clouds, whose behavior is very difficult to simulate, and interactions between the natural and built environment, a flood at a chemical plant, for example. Sorkin pointed out many available climate information tools furnished by government-led assessments are not updated regularly enough to meet the needs of businesses. He said Jupiter’s simulations will be available on demand and based on the latest science and available data. “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and regional climate panels do an excellent job but run about every 5 years,” he said. “They tend to be academic, they’re often not statistically rigorous, and there’s no consistent methodology across them. They’re not designed for the private sector. We’re taking the same models and people [used in those assessments] and integrating into a regularly run reusable framework and making them available at scale.” Sorkin added this same framework will differentiate it from existing approaches that rely on the “fundamentally flawed” assumption that the climate of the past can simply be extrapolated into the future. Jupiter has already


General Dynamics embarks on $9.6 billion deal to capture new defense spending

IT sector, with a full spectrum of enterprise IT capabilities, including unique depth in Next-Gen offerings in conjunction with our commercial IT alliance partners,” General Dynamics chief executive Phebe Novakovic said in a statement. Such an aggressive move into the government services sector was seen as a surprise move for General Dynamics, which has classically relied on large government contracts for military hardware acquisitions such as the Columbia-class nuclear submarine and the M1 Abrams tank. The company also is a market leader in commercial business jets through its Gulfstream subsidiary. The government IT services industry has seen significant consolidation in recent years, as sequestration put a damper on defense spending and a focus on low-priced contracting arrangements put a damper on margins. General Dynamics’s primary competitors among the “big five” defense contractors have largely exited the government services sector, with Lockheed Martin spinning off or selling its primary services units. CSRA was formed in 2015 as part of that wave of consolidation, through a tie-in of the government services business of Computer Sciences and Fairfax-based government contractor SRA. In recent years, it has focused on new opportunities such as cloud-systems integration in an attempt to double down on subsectors that are growing, winning a $498 million contract for the Defense Department’s milCloud 2.0 program. General Dynamics’s information technology segment, based in Fairfax and known as GDIT, is a $9.3 billion division within the $31 billion General Dynamics business. GDIT’s business has flagged in the last few quarters, with revenue in that segment dropping by 2.8 percent from the previous year. Novakovic has used budget uncertainty and the Trump administration’s failure to fill key government positions to explain the slowdown. Novakovic, who has avoided major acquisitions since she became chief executive, characterized the CSRA acquisition as a bid to strengthen her company’s core business by expanding to new opportunities. In a Monday conference call to discuss the deal, she shrugged off investors’ concerns that she is doubling down on a sector that has seen lackluster growth, saying that last week’s budget deal put an end to concerns about budget uncertainty. “What we’re doing with this transaction is taking our good GDIT business and making it [a] better, stronger, more viable competitor over time — immediately, frankly, we believe — in that IT services space,” Novakovic told analysts. “We’re adding to our core. … [It] makes a lot of sense to me.”


American Jamie Anderson wins gold in women’s slopestyle at PyeongChang Olympics, defending her Sochi gold

After Red Gerard’s U.S. gold in men’s slopestyle Sunday, Anderson followed suit a day later, adding to the country’s medal count. The women’s qualifying round was canceled Sunday in South Korea, so the final was held Monday with all snowboarders competing in a two-run format.This is a developing story. It will be updated.


Officials have settled on 2 possible routes for the high-speed maglev, but project is still years away

right of way and affect some residential properties. About 75 percent of the route would run underground — 80 feet to 100 feet below, project officials say. Northeast Maglev estimates the project will create 74,000 construction jobs during the seven-year building period and 1,500 permanent positions once the system is operational. Maryland transportation officials recently announced progress on the federal environmental review, stressing that the state isn’t funding the project but that it views it as vital to its economy. “Our transportation system in place today in Maryland across the board is inadequate for the people that we have, and it is only going to get worse,” state Transportation Secretary Pete K. Rahn told a Maryland House committee this month. “That is why the administration has been open to the private sector bringing new ideas, new concepts to the state to try to solve some of these transportation dilemmas we have.” The superconducting magnetic levitation train system, already operational in the testing phase in Japan, harnesses powerful magnetic forces that lift and propel trains four inches above a U-shaped guideway at up to 375 mph, much faster than Amtrak’s Acela Express trains, which run up to 135 mph. The maglev isn’t the only high-speed travel concept Maryland is embracing. Last year, the state approved a conditional permit to Tesla founder Elon Musk’s tunneling start-up, the Boring Co., for the construction of several miles of tunnel for his high-speed Hyperloop system that will cart goods and people in vacuum-sealed tubes at high speeds. That decision was challenged by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, which in a recent letter questioned the state’s authority to grant permission for tunneling beneath the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. At a Feb. 6 hearing in Annapolis, Rahn defended the state’s decision, saying it gives access to its right of way for transportation services. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, for example, has nine miles of its rail system beneath Maryland roadways, Rahn said. He said having the maglev and Hyperloop competing in Maryland show the state is at the forefront of new concepts in transportation. Rahn said he anticipates another proposal for innovative transportation in the state to be announced this year, but he declined to elaborate. “Maglev is a phenomenal technology. Is it the only technology? No. Is it the best technology? The marketplace is going to have to decide that,” said Rahn, who rode Japan’s 27-mile Yamanashi


Entire Baltimore Metro system to close for a month for emergency repairs

Baltimore’s entire Metro SubwayLink system will remain closed for a month, the Maryland Transit Administration said Sunday, after safety inspections showed sections of track needed emergency repairs that couldn’t wait until this summer. Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has devoted $2.2 million in emergency funding to run free coach buses for passengers along the subway’s route, in addition to the normal MTA bus routes, the MTA said Sunday. The MTA shut down the system Friday for a safety evaluation after discovering an urgent need for repairs on sections of the aboveground, northwest leg of the system between the Owings Mills and West Cold Spring stations. Sunday’s decision expanded the closure to the entire system. “While I understand the inconvenience, safety will always be our top priority,” MTA chief executive Kevin Quinn said in a phone interview Sunday. “We don’t take any risks with our riders.” The track needed to be replaced sooner than the scheduled replacement this summer, Quinn said. The free shuttle buses, or “bus bridge” as the MTA calls it, will begin at 5 a.m. Monday and run until midnight on weekdays, and from 6 a.m. until midnight on weekends. An “express bus bridge” will make stops at Owings Mills, Milford Mill, Mondawmin, State Center, Charles Center and Johns Hopkins Hospital during weekday peak hours, from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m., and from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. Quinn declined to specifically describe the problems on the deteriorating tracks, but said they were not rusted or cracked. He referred to them generally as having undergone “normal wear and tear.” It’s not clear how much the repairs will cost. “The part that’s above ground, on the elevated sections, it’s exposed completely to the elements, and it has been for 36 years,” Quinn said. “There’s 36 years of wear and tear on it.” The single-line, 15.5-mile, heavy rail system has 14 stations and a ridership of more than 40,000 on a typical weekday. The aboveground section runs from Owings Mills to Mondawmin, then goes underground between Mondawmin and Johns Hopkins Hospital. “We spent Friday and Saturday doing a thorough inspection of the tunnel section because we wanted to do a check of the entire system,” Quinn said. “There were additional sections that have some wear and tear on them as well. We’re going to be replacing them.” Quinn told The Sun on Friday that there are no signs that past neglect


Mikaela Shiffrin’s PyeongChang debut postponed because of high winds

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Persistent high winds caused officials to postpone the women’s giant slalom Monday, delaying Mikaela Shiffrin’s Olympic debut and further squeezing an already dense Alpine skiing schedule at the PyeongChang Games. Officials from the International Ski Federation (FIS) postponed the giant slalom, in which the American is among a small group of favorites, until Thursday, meaning it will be contested on the same day as the men’s downhill, traditionally a marquee Olympic event. The men’s downhill had already been moved from Sunday, when winds tore across the Jeongseon Alpine Centre, making conditions too dangerous to race. The forecast for Tuesday, when the men’s combined is scheduled, also calls for winds that could gust up to 40 mph. “It’s a bummer that we’re not able to race today,” Shiffrin said in a statement. “But with the training block I’ve had, I’m prepared and feeling good. I’ll use this time to continue to train and refocus on Wednesday’s slalom race. We have a great gym and space to eat and take plenty of naps, so I’ll use this time to recharge.” Shiffrin’s first race at these Olympics, should the program not be further disrupted, would now be in her signature event, the slalom. She won gold in the race four years ago in Sochi, and she has five victories in seven World Cup slaloms so far this season. But if the winds don’t stop, there is potential for more upheaval. There are two dates remaining with no scheduled competition — Feb. 19 and 20 — but those are reserved for training runs in the women’s downhill. However, because the Alpine competition here is held at two venues — Jeongseon Alpine Centre for the speed races and Yongpyong Alpine Centre for the technical events — officials can decide to hold two competitions on a single day, as they did with the women’s giant slalom and the men’s downhill. Though Shiffrin, 22, is a heavy favorite in the slalom, she is also a strong contender for medals in other disciplines. She sits third in the World Cup giant slalom standings behind Germany’s Viktoria Rebensburg and France’s Tessa Worley, and she has two giant slalom victories this World Cup season. Shiffrin has not announced her entire program here, though she figures to ski in the women’s combined — one run of downhill and one of slalom — on Feb. 23. She does


Olympic athletes love McDonald’s. But its role in PyeongChang will be the smallest in decades.

for American food. That’s McDonald’s.” As popular as McDonald’s may be among Olympians, however, it has faced head winds from some consumers. Analysts believe that has compromised the company’s willingness and ability to sponsor major events like the Olympics, which also struggled to retain television viewers. Once flush with cash, fast-food franchises have seen their margins squeezed by rising costs and their market share eroded by new competition. McDonald’s has responded by revamping its menu, launching delivery and digital ordering in top markets, and remodeling stores, said Blayne Howser, the director of client development at the restaurant consulting firm Sandelman. The firm's research shows those initiatives have pulled in new customers and increased loyalty among the brand's existing audience. But they also cost millions of dollars. And McDonald’s appears to have sliced some of those funds out of its sports sponsorship and associated advertising reserves, said Laurel Walzak, an assistant professor in Ryerson University’s sports media program. After canceling its IOC contract last June — saving a “conservative” half-billion dollars, Walzak estimates — the company also declined to renew a sponsorship with the National Football League. “To be able to cut spending by that much — that helps earnings per share,” Walzak said. “It all comes down to basic business economics for them.” On top of business economics, McDonald’s also has suffered bad publicity for sponsoring the Olympics. As concerns about obesity and nutrition have grown, groups including the World Cancer Research Fund and the World Obesity Federation have grown more vocal in their criticism of the partnership, which they say has given “a halo of gold … [to] poor nutrition.” During the last two Olympic Games, held in Rio and Sochi, Russia, a coalition of American public health groups sent open letters to U.S. medal winners, asking them to publicly distance themselves from McDonald’s. “McDonald’s has exploited institutions like the Olympics to improve its bottom line,” said Taylor Billings, a spokeswoman for Corporate Accountability — one of the participating organizations — in a Thursday interview with The Washington Post. “Burgers, fries and soda have no place at the Olympics.” McDonald’s and the IOC declined to elaborate on whether these challenges ultimately informed their split, referring questions to statements the two organizations made in June. But experts say there is little doubt that the business environment has made it more difficult for food and beverage companies to sponsor sporting events.


Five major psychiatric disorders have overlapping patterns of genetic activity, new study shows

might someday be good targets for reversal by medication,” Geschwind said. “In [our study] the drugs at least partially normalized gene expression in the brain.” Many studies have identified variations in the genetic code that seem to be more common in people with psychiatric disorders. This approach goes a step further to show how genes are more or less active in the brains of people with various conditions. The study confirmed that genetic variations contributed to the patterns of activity in the brains, but as the authors wrote, “there is undoubtedly a contribution from environmental effects.” Psychiatric disorders have some overlapping symptoms, making them difficult to diagnose. The molecular signatures in the new study suggested that schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism have dysfunctional synapses, the points of contact between neurons where they exchange information. Brain support cells called microglia and astroglia had unusual patterns of activity in some of the disorders, as well. Geschwind credits not only technological advances for the breakthrough but also an extraordinary level of international collaboration made possible by the National Institutes of Health's PsychEncode consortium, which encourages the sharing of information. The drop in cost of sequencing genetic code has also helped. What the research represents, Geschwind said, is the chance to get closer to targeted molecular therapy, much like what's being done with cancer. “This gives us the first road map to what’s really going on with these disorders.” Thomas Lehner, director of the Office of Genomics Research Coordination at the National Institute of Mental Health, called it a “very exciting finding” with the potential “to give us a better understanding of the molecular machinery of neuropsychiatric disorders.” Carol Tamminga, the chair of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern’s O’Donnell Brain Institute, goes further. She thinks the new study will require revising how psychiatric diagnoses are made. In the past, those were derived solely by observing patients and cataloging symptoms. “Now we can go back to the drawing board and decide what are the biological characteristics than can define these diseases,” she said. “This gives us guidance as to what direction to take.” Correction: This article originally stated that there was an overlap in gene activity between major depressive disorder and alcoholism. The overlap was between depression and autism. Read more: A mentally ill woman's harrowing last days ADHD linked to delayed brain development Pregnancy changes the brain for at least two years


PyeongChang is putting the ‘winter’ back into Winter Olympics

After two balmy Winter Olympics — where athletes stripped clothes off to cool down and snow had to be trucked in — PyeongChang is bringing the winter back. It’s been so bitingly cold that athletes’ skis are warping and makeup is freezing to the faces of BBC anchors (to be fair, it’s probably freezing to the faces of other people, as well). Officials have even gone so far as to postpone the women’s giant slalom, primarily because of high winds. In contests not postponed, athletes are facing new and interesting challenges. Biathlon bullets have been blown off-target. Snowboarders attempting to do some pretty epic tricks have been stalled by a brutal head wind before they could even catch air. Chelsea Janes, who’s at the Olympics for The Washington Post, described Sunday night as the coldest night of her life. She was at the luge track to watch Chris Mazdzer race — he was the first U.S. Olympian to medal this year. It was just eight years ago that the Winter Games were mild and snow-starved in Vancouver, B.C., because of the low elevation and the warming effect of the Pacific Ocean. Four years later, Sochi, Russia, suffered the same fate from a similar physical geography; low elevation and proximity to the Black Sea. Although PyeongChang is also close to a warm body of water — the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea — it is downwind from the frigid Asian interior, and the cold Siberian air has been funneling in howling winds. In what is expected to be the coldest Winter Games since 1994, temperatures are falling below zero in the mountains and winds are gusting over 45 mph. Those two factors are pushing wind chills into dangerous territory. The strong winds have made it too treacherous to run the alpine speed events. Conditions are expected to improve slightly at the Yongpyong Alpine Centre and the Jeongseon Alpine Centre midweek, with milder temperatures climbing into perhaps the teens, and a calming of the winds. However, the window will be brief, as the Siberian wind tunnel is expected to crank back up for the weekend. This could cause further disruptions to the outdoor events.


No cheering in the press box? At the Olympics, the norms are different.

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea – I was in our office in the Main Press Centre when Chloe Kim clinched her gold medal Tuesday morning. I had opened the office for the day, and therefore seized control both of the remote and of my first channel-flipping experience in some time. I decided against the channel showing a constant live shot of a tree on the East coast of Korea in favor of the women’s halfpipe final. This was the right choice. Because of that decision, I knew the exact moment when the U.S. had added another medal to its tally – and knew that was the exact moment that the iconic guitar riff at the beginning of Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA” blared from an unknown nearby office. We had heard the song play after an American medal before, but we never felt much need to investigate. The Washington Post’s office is right next to Team USA’s press office, which has couches and big screens from which to keep track of it all. We are bordered on the other side by an office dedicated to the Olympic Athletes of Russia. I made what I felt was the reasonable assumption that the speakers were in Team USA’s office somewhere. I tweeted that conclusion. I was wrong. Team USA’s head press man, Mark Jones, came to correct me. “We don’t know who it is either!” he said before speculating, as I had, that it probably wasn’t the Russians. As of late Tuesday night our time, we still hadn’t solved the mystery, though we didn’t try too hard. With the athletic schedule now in full swing, we don’t spend much time in our temporary office these days. Anyway, I fall into what I hope is a large group of people who would say that playing “Party in the USA” when an American fares well is all in good fun. But most American media outlets avoid showing any kind of alignment with any athletic team at all. Inspired by the Miley mystery, I spent most of my four bus rides today thinking about a subtle but fascinating aspect of covering the Olympic Games: the tug of war between rooting and reporting. This might be obvious, but in the United States, the going theory of sports journalism is this: a reporter is never a fan. A reporter must be an unbiased observer. For example, baseball beat


This is why Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was just awarded the $5 million Ibrahim prize

tensions between the Americo-Liberian elite and the mostly impoverished indigenous Liberians erupted, and indigenous staff sergeant Samuel Doe led a 1980 coup. Sirleaf served in his administration for some six months as president of the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment before fleeing to the United States. Between 1989 to 1997, various Liberian militias vied for power, unleashing terrible violence. Charles Taylor was one warlord, now serving a sentence of life imprisonment for his part in the blood diamond trade that fueled violence in neighboring Sierra Leone. In the late 1980s and early 1990, Sirleaf briefly supported Taylor, raising money for his cause. In 1997, Sirleaf ran for the presidency — but was beaten by Taylor in an election whose results the United States recognized, despite violence and irregularities. Only two years later, civil war returned, scarring the country with sexual violence, the use of child soldiers and horrific suffering until 2003. That’s when women under the leadership of Leymah Gbowee forced the warlords, then meeting in Ghana, to seriously engage in negotiations to end the war. Sirleaf was a controversial president — at times more popular abroad than at home Sirleaf won the presidency in the 2005 election, barely squeaking into office in a run-off against George Weah, a soccer star who has just succeeded her as president. Sirleaf already had a stellar reputation internationally, having held high posts at the United Nations, Citibank and the World Bank. As a result, she excelled at bringing in international development organizations to Liberia, focusing particularly on women’s rights, ending gender-based violence, building “capacity” and furthering reconciliation among former combatants — with help from agencies and NGOs ranging UNIFEM, UNHCR and UNMIL (the UN Mission in Liberia) to The Carter Center, Doctors Without Borders, CARE, The International Rescue Committee and Oxfam. These organizations helped Liberia build the rule of law, social justice and health. Global companies also invested: In 2011, the U.S. State Department noted over $16 billion in new foreign investment in Liberia since 2006. Sirleaf exemplifies all that a certain era of development stood for: calls for fiscal responsibility, economic investment and the promotion of good governance tied to the state. But while international organizations saw in her a trusted collaborator, at home her vision of development and her ties to international capital made her suspect to many Liberians. Sirleaf made deals with international corporations to buy or lease rights


Baltimore’s police problems go beyond just a few criminals in uniform

consequences. In a city reeling from violence and less proactive policing in the wake of riots in 2015, these officers were given carte blanche. When crime goes up, guns and drugs on a table are like catnip to departmental brass. Yet the same people eager to bask in the reflected glory of seized contraband failed to ask how such quantities can be seized through legal and constitutional means. Major police corruption scandals — whether Michael Dowd or the “Dirty 30” in New York City, Rampart in Los Angeles or Jon Burge in Chicago — share a common template. Red flags should make identification and prevention easier. Often, corrupt officers will be highly decorated, rewarded for their arrests and “productivity” without regards to how they did it. These officers will have a lengthy history of complaints against them, both sustained and unsubstantiated. Complaints are not proof of wrongdoing, and active officers interact more often with the public, but claims need to be flagged rather than dismissed by higher-ups or paid for by city taxpayers. Drugs, specifically the futile enforcement of our failed war against them, will inevitably play a central role. Corrupt units tend to be specialized and selective. Once murky rumors begin about a unit or officer, good cops stay away for fear of trouble. The corrupt and brutal cops work together, as I once heard, as if pulled together by some magnetic force. You don’t just randomly get assigned to a plainclothes “gun trace task force.” This unit segregation removes officers from the otherwise corrective influence of the honest rank and file. There is no formal colleague review in policing; perhaps there should be. Honest cops — still the vast majority — avoid trouble, as any citizen should hope. The rank and file cannot be blamed for keeping their noses clean, especially when unresolved questions remain about the integrity of internal affairs and the prosecutor’s office. These officers in Baltimore were guilty, but the systemic problems represent a failure of leadership, the same leadership that absolved itself of responsibility by inviting the Justice Department to investigate after Freddie Gray’s death. The final DOJ report, which had vague methodology and no named authors, provided the legal and political cover to invite a federal consent decree over the Baltimore City Police Department. And yet, not coincidentally, the investigators failed to find fault with any contemporaneous city leaders, nor did they get


U.S. luger Emily Sweeney taken to hospital after crash on final run

DAEGWALLYEONG, South Korea — They walked away from the luge track one after the next, the three leading women of American luge, each disappointed and shaken in her own way. The one who finished in 19th place said her performance was “incredibly devastating.” The one who finished in sixth place, the last Olympic race of her career, said she just wanted to go to bed and sleep. The one who crashed, caromed and didn’t finish the race was the luger most upset of all, evaluated by doctors who detected neither head trauma nor broken bones, but crying nonetheless. Emily Sweeney’s injury cast a pall over this race, a reminder of what can happen on an ice track when going 80 mph downhill. Halfway through the course, near the ninth turn, she skidded and lost control. Her body ping-ponged through several more turns. She flew off her sled and fell backward. Officials rushed over with a stretcher. But Sweeney hobbled away on her own. “I’m fine,” she said 20 minutes later, wiping tears, telling the half-dozen people around her that she didn’t want to go to the hospital. A USA Luge statement said she was taken to a clinic at the Olympic Village for evaluation. “It was a heavy crash and she was feeling sore,” the statement said. Americans are still only on the fringe of the women’s luge world, where Germany again dominated Tuesday night, with Natalie Geisenberger defending her singles Olympic gold medal. But it is nights like these that U.S. lugers pinpoint as the best opportunity to grow the sport — by winning medals, by grabbing the spotlight. Instead, the evening was by turns harrowing and somber — no celebrations, only bruises. Erin Hamlin, the last U.S. luger of the night, finished with her slowest of four runs down the track, coming 0.268 seconds shy of the podium. “This is the end,” Hamlin said not long after. “I’m ready to sleep. I’m ready for pizza and a long time of sleep.” Germany’s Geisenberger won gold in a fashion that shows why she is the unequalled star of the sport. The women’s luge singles event is composed of four runs split over two days, results accumulating with each run, and Geisenberger was ahead of the next-best luger by 0.072 seconds after the first time down the track, 0.120 seconds after the second. That was Monday. By the end of


Will Republicans be able to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?

consumers, making it unique among financial regulatory agencies. Historically, U.S. financial regulators were designed primarily to keep financial institutions stable and profitable. In fact, most were established before 1968, when the first consumer-focused federal lending legislation, the Truth in Lending Act, was passed. At the time of its passage, key financial regulators acknowledged to Congress that they might struggle to carry out this new law given their focus on banks and “very limited” experience in consumer protection. If Mulvaney succeeds in remolding the CFPB, it may remove one of the agency’s most distinctive features: its focus on consumer interests. 4. It’s a popular cause but an unknown agency What’s particularly puzzling about GOP attacks on the CFPB is that Americans from both parties report support for the agency and its major regulations. So why are Republicans willing to risk political backlash? My research suggests an answer. In 2017, I conducted an online survey of 1,500 U.S. adults, asking for opinions about credit and government regulation. Respondents were provided by Survey Sampling International to approximate a nationally representative sample similar to the American National Election Studies. I found that while Americans support the agency when it is described to them, most can’t identify the CFPB and its role without additional information. You can see that in the figure below, which compares respondents’ ability to identify the CFPB to that of more well-known agencies, the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Agriculture Department. Just over half of respondents said there was a federal agency for protecting consumer finances; over 80 percent knew such an agency existed for food and drug regulation. More important, even among those who thought an agency existed, only 5 percent could name the CFPB, while over 75 percent could name either the FDA or USDA. Of respondents who supported the CFPB, fewer than half said they would be willing to email their member of Congress to voice support, and only 1 in 4 said they would call their representative. There were notable partisan differences: 52 percent of supportive Democrats would email and 32 percent would call, versus 34 and 23 percent respectively of supportive Republicans. GOP lawmakers probably realize that they needn’t expect much political backlash. What happens next? In coming months, rule-making will probably slow as Mulvaney seeks information on the CPFB’s current operations. Congress may also work on eliminating or making less accessible the CFPB’s


Will the Olympics go bust?

Whatever the virtues of the Olympics, economics is not one of them. As we enjoy this year’s Winter Games in South Korea, we ought to ponder the possibility that the Olympics will one day price themselves out of existence. It will cost so much to host the Olympics extravaganza that no one will want to do it. Although that may seem far-fetched, the number of cities vying for future Olympics has already dropped dramatically. Here is what Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College, an expert in sports economics, has to say: “Not so long ago, cities lined up to bid the moon and the stars to secure the Games. But daunted by the escalating demands of Olympic organizers and a recent history of huge budget deficits, environmental and social dislocations, and rampant corruption, bids to host both the summer and winter Olympics have sharply declined.” The numbers are (as they say) eye-popping. In 1997, there were 12 cities competing for the 2004 Summer Games, which were ultimately hosted by Greece. By contrast, the bidding for the 2024 Games ended with two contenders — Paris and Los Angeles — after Boston, Toronto, Rome, Hamburg and Budapest dropped out. The story is the same for the Winter Olympics. In 1995, there were nine candidates for the 2002 Winter Games. By 2011, there were only three for the present 2018 Games. What has happened is no secret, writes Zimbalist in the current issue of the Milken Institute Review. To host either the Summer or Winter Games requires massive construction projects for new stadiums, dormitories and local transportation systems. But the prospective revenue from the Games doesn’t come close to covering the costs. As a result, the Games impose a permanent burden on the host country’s taxpayers. Zimbalist roughly calculates the cost of the next Summer Olympics at $15 billion to $20 billion against prospective revenue of $4 billion to $5 billion. While costs are going up, the prestige and long-term economic benefits — in increased tourism and investment — seem to be going down. What about the funds from selling television rights and corporate sponsorships? It turns out that they don’t go primarily to the host cities but to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which channels most of its money to national Olympic committees and international sports federations. Zimbalist says that host cities now get 20 percent to 25 percent of the sales of


The global space race, 2.0

Research Organization agreed to study a joint “lunar polar exploration” mission, to be completed this March. This will lead to a joint expedition that is expected to land a remotely piloted vehicle on the surface of the moon to collect samples and bring them back to Earth. Both India and Japan have undertaken successful lunar missions before, but only to study the moon via satellites that orbited above; neither has sent a craft to land on the moon’s surface. And neither country has carried out a lunar mission in almost a decade. Both are acutely aware of what China has accomplished, with four moon missions between 2007 and 2014 alone. China’s technological dominance weighs on the Asian strategic balance, and both India and Japan are clearly feeling the pressure. One attempt to catch up was a joint India-Japan moon mission that was a finalist for the Google Lunar XPrize competition. TeamIndus, an Indian private aerospace firm, planned to carry a Japanese rover developed by Japan’s Team Hakuto on its spacecraft. But the Google Lunar XPrize competition itself came to an end — none of the teams could meet the launch deadline of March 31, 2018. The emergence of private space research entities in India represents an exciting development. Though the TeamIndus lunar mission was canceled, the team is working on a couple of different projects, including a satellite bus and a solar-powered drone, both of which it seeks to commercialize in the near future. As Rahul Narayan, the founder of TeamIndus, said: “From an investment standpoint, this will be a three-to-five-year journey until we can stabilize as a standalone company. We are looking at equity investors to come in and take the risk of helping us build the product. By year end, we can start to generate revenues from what we do.” Asia’s growing space race is indicative of the larger geopolitical competition in the region. China’s rise and the strategic uncertainties it has created are particularly worrying to India and Japan, leading to surprisingly fast-growing India-Japan strategic cooperation. Though India and Japan have had no history of direct conflict, the two were on opposite sides of the Cold War divide, with Japan formally allied with the United States and India tilting heavily to the Soviet side, leading to cordial but cool ties for decades. But China’s rise has affected both countries and led to an emerging India-Japan consensus on


Granny’s flowers these are not: Two perennials that deserve a revival

The deep freeze of early winter has left my lavender plant truly bedraggled. The slender gray leaves are drooping, and some of the lower ones are black. It’s a reminder that lavenders have a difficult life in the Mid-Atlantic region — the summers are too sticky and the winters too cold — but with some luck and a modicum of care, they will last a few years and do the trick. The trick? Transporting you to Grandma’s garden or the French Riviera, or wherever the sight of those purple flower spikes and their memory-charged fragrance will take you. My current frozen specimen seems to be crying for help, except that with a winter-bashed lavender, the best course is to do nothing. This is a type of intervention because the impulse is to chop back the forlorn lavender in late winter in advance of spring growth. Lavender doesn’t behave like other perennials; it thinks it’s a woody shrub, and a hard pruning will finish it off. The key is to wait until late April or early May to see what grows back. Whatever tidying you do then, don’t cut below the new growth. There are other quick ways to kill lavender. One is to stick the plant in wet clay soil. The other is to give it a thick wood mulch. If my lavender dies, I have an ingenious backup plan: I’ll plant another. Every garden should have one. Find a sunny spot with free-draining soil. You can create the latter condition with a raised bed. I incorporate pea gravel and some lime into my lavender beds and then mulch with another layer of gravel. Chicken grit would work, too, if you can find it. This soil work minimizes wet roots in summer and a wet crown in winter, both of which are lethal. I am thinking about lavender not just because of my bedraggled plant but because the Chicago Botanic Garden recently released the results of an evaluation of lavender varieties. Quite separately, another botanical garden, Mount Cuba Center, in Hockessin, Del., published the results of its own multiyear trials of phlox. Phlox is native and lavender is not, but they share much in common: They are old-fashioned summer perennials that deserve a revival. Fragrant and colorful, they are also magnets for bees, butterflies and other pollinators. First the lavender. The Chicago gardeners tested 40 varieties over seven growing seasons.


A Russian dissident pulls off a virtuoso trolling of the Putin regime

decided not to arrest Navalny but to mock him, belittle him and undermine him. There is no need to take his accusations of government corruption seriously if they can be juxtaposed with video clips of women in fishnet stockings and bondage gear. This time Navalny flipped the story back at them. Studying the photographs of the women who’d visited their office, his team used facial recognition software to identify one of them as Nastya Rybka, author of “How to Seduce a Billionaire” and purveyor of an Instagram account packed with photographs of Deripaska and his yacht. Close reading of both the book and the pictures, plus a search of shipping and flight manifests, produced another discovery: Rybka and Deripaska had not been alone on that yacht. A senior Russian official, Sergei Prikhodko, a man who has quietly served in multiple Russian presidential administrations since the 1990s, was also on the boat. According to Rybka, the two were discussing U.S. politics. This was the summer of 2016. Navalny’s main point was about corruption: By accompanying Deripaska on his plane and his yacht, Prikhodko — who is, behind the scenes, one of the men most responsible for Russian foreign policy — was accepting a de facto bribe. But Navalny also makes a lot of jokes, mocks Rybak’s literary aspirations, and throws in a few speculations, “for the benefit of the conspiracy theorists.” Deripaska, he noted, has a longstanding relationship with Paul Manafort, the ex-Trump campaign manager now at the center of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation. Among other things, we know that Manafort owed Deripaska money; we also know that he offered Deripaska special, private briefings on the state of the campaign. Navalny now suggests that perhaps these briefings weren’t really for the benefit of Deripaska, but for Prikhodko — and of course for his boss, Russian President Vladimir Putin. And perhaps they were the topic at hand on the yacht. Navalny doesn’t prove his case, but he doesn’t claim to either. Instead, he deftly connects people — an American lobbyist, the American president, a Russian official, a Russian billionaire, a pouting call girl and his own blocked presidential campaign — into the same story. Which is where they belong, because they are in fact all connected. Russia is a corrupt dictatorship in part because people such as Manafort helped people such as Prikhodko and Deripaska launder money in the


Russian foreign minister: We’re banned from Olympics because U.S. ‘can’t beat us fairly’

of Grigory Rodchenkov, who ran Russia’s anti-doping laboratory before fleeing to U.S. protective custody in 2016 while fearing for his life. In December, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that U.S. authorities have been giving Rodchenkov “some kind of substances” so he “says what’s required” to harm Russian interests. His comments were echoed Sunday by Lavrov, who said of the Olympics on a state-owned Russian TV channel, “I think it’s a form of competition without scruples because the U.S. team, obviously, are not capable of beating us fairly at sport.” Lavrov claimed (via Inside the Games) that American officials engineered the ban “to find and keep their place as indisputable world leader in sport.” He added, “All rivals must be pushed to one side.” The Olympic ban was part of a broader U.S. campaign against a newly resurgent Russia, Lavrov said, which included what he described as false charges of meddling in the 2016 American presidential election. “They have been investigating this for a year and not a single fact has surfaced to corroborate these speculations,” he said (via RT.com). “If there were any facts, they would have been leaked by now. I know this is how the U.S. system works. Everything gets leaked with so many people involved in all those hearings and investigations.” “Over the past three years, a high-stakes game of chicken has been played between those willing to sacrifice the Olympic ideals by employing a state-directed doping program to cheat to win and, on the other side, athletes unwilling to stand silent while their hopes and dreams were stolen and the Olympic Games hijacked,” Travis Tygart, chief executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, said in December, when the IOC’s ban on Russia was announced. “Today the IOC listened to those who matter most — and clean athletes won a significant victory.” At the PyeongChang Games, OAR athletes have been allowed to compete after being judged as not guilty of doping violations. They are wearing nondescript uniforms, cannot display Russian identification and will hear the Olympic anthem, rather than their country’s, if they top the podium. Read more from The Post: Mirai Nagasu becomes first American woman to land triple axel in Olympics No, Mirai Nagasu does not have a giant ‘USA’ tattoo on her inner thigh Every four years, they come from Norway to plunder your gold Jamie Anderson defends slopestyle snowboarding gold on windy PyeongChang course


Olympics Day 4: U.S. lands more medals and a historic triple axel; plus, what to watch Monday

future and [got] really, really nervous. I remember as I was inspecting the course for the second run, I started to think, “Come on [Barbara Ann], you’ve got to change how you’re thinking because right now, this is not working.” Q: How have the pressures changed since when you raced? It’s a lot different than when I was competing. When I was doing it, we had no sponsorship. We were amateurs, [so] we didn’t receive anything. Q: As TV viewers, what should we watch for in athletes to get a sense of how they might be feeling? When they’re getting ready for the competition, they need to be somewhat relaxed. If you see the tenseness in their body, they’re not going to do well. If they’re looking like they’re really enjoying the whole experience of it, that would be a clue that they’re probably in a good state. If you see someone that’s not happy, they are kind of struggling. I’ve seen a huge difference in Ryan, my son. This year, he seems so much happier. Q: I know you haven’t talked to them personally, but what pressure might skiers such as Mikaela Shiffrin, Austrian Marcel Hirscher or others be facing going into the alpine events? It’s hard to say. I’m sure [Mikaela Shiffrin] is feeling a lot of pressure because she’s so outstanding. People are gunning for her. She’s the person to beat. And I think that’s an entirely different pressure than being a youngster. I’ve been really impressed with Hirscher. The mental piece that it’s life or death for them . . . I don’t get that with Hirscher. I really like what I’ve seen mentally from him. This interview has been edited. Below is a TV roundup for the rest of today and tomorrow, taken from The Post’s comprehensive TV guide. All Olympic events can be also streamed live online at NBColympics.com (Here’s that schedule). Times are Eastern. Monday, Feb. 12 NBC NBCSN CNBC Tuesday, Feb. 13 NBC NBCSN CNBC Read more Post coverage from PyeongChang: Jamie Anderson defends slopestyle snowboarding gold on windy PyeongChang course Barry Svrluga: Mirai Nagasu becomes first American woman to land triple axel in Olympics ‘A human connection’: When a U.S. luger was struggling, a Russian offered his sled Mikaela Shiffrin’s PyeongChang debut postponed because of high winds Jerry Brewer: ‘The whole thing could pop off’: South Korea skater battles wardrobe malfunction


Explosion in Puerto Rico knocks out power, emphasizing grid’s frailty after Hurricane Maria

the hurricane; she had long feared losing perishable foods in power outages. “You don’t know where you’re standing, ever.” Monroig, the PREPA spokesman, said that no one was hurt in the explosion Sunday and that it is unclear what caused the mechanical failure. He said investigators are considering many factors, including the possibility that the breaker was overloaded. The breaker distributed wattage along a line that fed into two substations, where service remained down late Monday. “We are evaluating to see if this was an effect of the hurricane, a maintenance issue or something else,” Monroig said. “The good news is things are returning to normal for most customers. Everyone who had power before the explosion will have it back today.” The explosion and subsequent blackout add fuel to a growing divide between the public utility and its unionized workers, who oppose Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s plan to privatize the organization and sell off its assets in the next 18 months. Union leader Angel Figueroa Jaramillo, who represents PREPA’s electrical workers, spoke to reporters outside the Monacillo power station as the foam from fire hoses spilled down the street. He said events such as the explosion help the central government justify moving toward a private model, accusing leadership of intentionally slowing down power restoration on the island. “If you create a deeper crisis, people will be more outraged,” Figueroa Jaramillo said. “This has nothing to do with the hurricane. It’s been five months without power. We could have made much more progress than this.” That suspicion of the local power authority’s intentions permeates Puerto Rico’s population. It is a constant discussion point on talk radio and drives debates in San Juan’s gathering places. Although residents express constant frustration about the lack of consistency in the electrical grid, Monroig said it is important to understand that outages are going to be part of rebuilding an old, worn-out system. The calls for patience, though, haven’t quelled distrust. Monica Oquendo was sitting outside her secondhand clothing shop on Calle Loiza, a trendy capital-area shopping and dining district, when a woman started yelling down the busy, narrow street: “This is sabotage!” “People here think these blackouts are being done on purpose because of the privatization thing,” the 31-year-old entrepreneur said. “I don’t know one way or the other, but it happens all the time. It’s just one more thing we have gotten used to.” arelis.hernandez@washpost.com


‘So special, so much fun’: Adam Rippon is on an Olympics joyride

“with the twist top.”) Rippon promises to be more than merely entertaining, though. One of two openly gay U.S. athletes in the PyeongChang Games, he prompted headlines after a series of comments about Vice President Pence, calling Pence’s track record in LGBT rights “terrible,” among other things. As the two sides disagreed about their previous interactions, Pence tweeted last week that he is proud of Rippon “and all of our great athletes,” telling the skater not to be distracted by “fake news.” “I personally don’t have anything to say to Mike Pence,” Rippon said on the ABC program. “I’m very lucky because legislation that he’s pushed hasn’t affected my life at all. I spoke out because there are people out there whose lives have been affected by change that he’s tried to make. I spoke out for them because right now I have a voice and I think it’s really important for me to use it.” Rippon, at 28 the oldest American skater to make his first Olympic team in more than 80 years, is likely to continue to bring a voice to the issues he considers important, like bullying and the difficulty of coming out. “I realize now that it’s important that I share my story,” Rippon told The Washington Post’s Chelsea Janes before the Games. “When you’re not hiding anything, it’s just very easy to be yourself — shockingly.” Rippon also said he’d “like to do something positive and not just stay at home” after the Games. The reaction after his star turn won’t discourage such thoughts. “Adam Rippon’s performance last night was a proud moment for our entire country and especially meaningful for LGBTQ Americans. Adam’s visibility as a proud LGBTQ American continues to be a driving force for equality,” the Human Rights Campaign said in a statement on Monday. “Those few minutes on ice just inspired a generation of LGBTQ young people. Even today being an out athlete is revolutionary and athletes like Adam are paving the way for the next generation of young out athletes.” Read more Olympic coverage from The Post: Olympics Day 4: The U.S. lands more medals and a historic triple axel Trying a trick for the first time, a moguls skier says, “Screw it. I’m going to go for it.” How Dr. Dre helped Jamie Anderson to a league of her own NBC dumps analyst after comments about Japan angered Koreans


Metro sends crews to Baltimore to help during subway shutdown

Metro crews labored through an unprecedented emergency 29-hour shutdown nearly two years ago. Now track workers from the agency are lending their experience to a troubled neighbor to the north. Metro said Monday that it sent equipment and about a dozen workers over the weekend to Baltimore to assist in the emergency shutdown of the city’s 15.5-mile MTA SubwayLink system. The agency declined to say who was paying the workers. After a weekend shutdown for emergency repairs and inspections, the Baltimore system’s administrator abruptly announced Sunday that conditions were so dire, the entire subway would remain closed for up to four weeks, through March 11, for urgent repairs. MTA Administrator Kevin Quinn said in a statement Sunday that the subway would need to stay closed “to ensure the safety of all customers.” The repairs are focused on deteriorated tracks, but the exact nature of the work was unknown. The MTA did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but officials said Sunday that the repairs were so critical they could not wait until summer. The shutdown announcement elevated Baltimore’s three-decade-old subway to poster-child status in the conversation about the nation’s decaying infrastructure on the day the Trump administration announced its long-awaited infrastructure plan. Trump’s $200 billion plan cuts a major source of federal mass transit funding. It also pushes federal officials to sell, privatize or otherwise dispose of a broad array of government assets, from Reagan National and Dulles International airports and the George Washington Memorial Parkway to properties held by federal agencies across the country. Rob Puentes, president of the nonprofit organization Eno Center for Transportation, said the abrupt one-month systemwide shutdown of an urban rail system was unprecedented in the United States. Other systems, including Metro, have shut down for a day at a time. And still others have had extended line-segment closures, including a portion of Chicago’s Red Line in 2013 and Metro’s SafeTrack repairs in the Washington region. “It’s the whole system and for a long time,” Puentes said of the Baltimore shutdown. “There’s nothing like it in the country.” Meanwhile, Metro’s decision to send some of its workers to Baltimore to help kicked off another skirmish with its union. The two parties are in a labor dispute after contract negotiations stalled, sending them into binding arbitration last September. Metro spokeswoman Sherri Ly said Metro offered “technical assistance” to the Baltimore system over the weekend and


7 marathons, 7 days, 7 continents and one man with Parkinson’s. Can he make it?

York City Marathon. There was a triathlon along Long Island Sound. There was a jump out of an airplane. Now, there was this. “Parkinson’s has given me the freedom, the liberty to take on these things, even though they seem ridiculous,” Bret, executive director of the New York City Bar Association, said in an interview in November. “It helps me get over a fear of water, it helps me raise money, it gives me a goal. It’s a lot better story when I’m trying to tell people to donate to be able to say I’m doing my part. “Also,” he added, “I don’t want it to be in charge of me.” “That’s the real issue,” his wife, Katharine, chimed in. Bret’s Parkinson’s is often hard to notice. His right hand trembles occasionally, and he often exhibits a roly-poly movement in his arms and shoulders that he said is a side effect of his medication. He knew his symptoms would worsen over the course of the World Marathon Challenge, and they did. Day 2 brought Bret to a beachfront promenade in Cape Town, South Africa. He’d gotten two hours of sleep on the flight from Antarctica. His feet hurt from the first run, and he had decided to walk this race’s four six-mile loops along the Atlantic Ocean. Yet he sounded optimistic as he prepared to start. “One marathon down, 6 to go!” Bret posted on Facebook that day. “Antarctica was wonderful and awful! A little banged up (combination of Parkinson’s and running 26.2), but next one is in Cape Town, less than 12 hours after Antarctica and I’ll be on the starting line.” Embracing a new identity Bret and I met in 1986, when we lived on the same dormitory hallway during our freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania. We worked on the student newspaper together, but after graduation, he went off to law school and I to my first newspaper job, and we fell out of touch, reconnecting only when Facebook came along. I remember when Bret revealed his diagnosis on Facebook, in 2012. He’d been living with a secret that he had shared only with Katharine, his parents and a close friend. Bret and Katharine had hidden his diagnosis — even from their two sons, Ben, now 17, and Matt, 20 — out of uncertainty over how it would change their lives, his career, his ability to


The secrets to making two of India’s most famous dishes, from the family that invented them

No one knows how many Indian restaurants exist worldwide; reportedly there are more than 5,000 in the United States alone. The exact number depends on how you define “Indian” and “restaurant.” And most of them — from a little mom-and-pop shop on the corner to the Michelin-starred Junoon in New York City — serve many of the same dishes, the standard repertoire that diners have come to expect. The menu just isn’t complete unless it contains skewered chicken tandoori in all its chile-hot, bright red glory, and butter chicken with its rich sauce in which to dip your naan. “My grandfather invented both,” says Monish Gujral, 52, sitting in his family’s flagship restaurant, Moti Mahal, in the middle of India’s capital, Delhi. “In fact, I often think that it is hard to imagine Indian food today without my grandfather’s inventions.” He sounds proud and thoughtful more than boasting. Most dishes develop gradually, through a combination of natural conditions, slow adaptation of tradition and the occasional innovative twist. You’d be hard- pressed to say when the dishes we today know as boeuf bourguignon and spaghetti Bolognese were invented; they just gradually came to be, as regional dishes promoted by a collective of home cooks. But according to Gujral — and millions of Indians who have grown up with this story — tandoori chicken was invented in one sudden flash of inspiration by Gujral’s grandfather Kundan Lal. Lal grew up in a poor family in what is today Pakistan. He managed to work his way up from kitchen help to the senior cook at a restaurant in Peshawar in the years before independence. One day, in the late 1920s or early 1930s, he was asked to invent a dish that was a little lighter than the traditional, heavy regional specialties that were normally served at parties and other functions and celebrations. His stroke of genius was this: How about using the tandoor? The cylindrical oven was common in the region, but it was normally used only for breads. “He marinated the chicken in yogurt, lime and spices and baked it in the tandoor. What came out was different than what anyone had ever tasted,” Gujral says. The dish was a success that made Lal famous far outside his community, and after the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, he moved to Delhi and opened Moti Mahal, where tandoori chicken is the


A top al-Qaeda operative is about to be sentenced for killing U.S. troops 15 years ago in Afghanistan

questions about the scope and constitutionality of the military courts’ jurisdiction over domestic laws. Another is the detention facility’s reputation. It has come to be associated with the mistreatment of detainees and a lack of legal and human rights standards. European allies such as Italy, where authorities detained Spin Ghul in 2011, have indicated they would refuse to transfer terrorist suspects to the United States to be tried at Guantanamo Bay. The Italians allowed U.S. agents and prosecutors to interrogate him, obtaining a confession that was key to his conviction. That option would probably not have been available had his case been handled in a military court, officials say. Spin Ghul’s attorneys argue that he should be shown leniency at his sentencing Friday, noting he was tortured while detained in Libya for six years before his arrival in Italy and has mental health problems. In Afghanistan, they say, he was doing what soldiers do — that his offenses did not constitute war crimes. The battle that led to Spin Ghul’s conviction occurred April 25, 2003. The commander of Firebase Shkin, which housed about 100 American troops in eastern Afghanistan, was notified of 15 to 20 al-Qaeda militants approaching from across the Pakistani border, according to court testimony. The group included Spin Ghul. The fighters climbed a hill and observed a vehicle carrying U.S. troops. One of the Americans got out and suddenly, he recalled, “the ground erupted around me” with small-arms fire. Spin Ghul saw he had “a direct shot” at U.S. troops higher up the hill. “I opened my Kalashnikov and started firing,” he recounted, according to court records. As the firefight continued, two Americans moved to call in air support. They were taking fire from all sides and ran for cover toward an armored Humvee. A moment later, Airman 1st Class Raymond Losano slumped against the vehicle’s door. He was holding his face, blood gushing from his mouth. Losano died later that day. Pvt. Jerod Dennis had gone missing. Another soldier found him down a hillside, his pants soaked with blood. Dennis, too, died that day. The battle left Spin Ghul seriously injured. In the fray, he left behind his leather-bound Koran. Back in Pakistan, Spin Ghul asked Abu Faraj al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander, to be entrusted with a more ambitious operation. He wanted to attack the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria. In August 2003, Spin Ghul traveled


This Ethiopian runner was an Olympic hopeful — before he was tortured and fled. Today, he reunited with his family in the U.S.

back to him.” He said Valentine’s Day isn’t much of a holiday in Ethiopia, but he said he is proud to be reuniting with his family on a day that celebrates love, in a nation where he is free to express himself. “I am so happy, I thank God,” said Abebe, 29, who lives in Silver Spring. The past week has been a scramble for Adebe, who has been sleeping on a friend’s couch, as he searched for an apartment and other trappings of home life for his family. He works in food service at St. Elizabeths Hospital and recently left a second job as a clerk at a 7-Eleven. In Ethiopia, Abebe was an elite professional runner and a well-known figure. He won 30 marathons, including the French Reims marathon several years ago in a personal best of two hours, nine minutes. He ran the Ras Al Khaimah half-marathon in the United Arab Emirates in an astounding hour and one minute. Everything changed for Abebe in December 2015, when he was at a peaceful protest of what he described as a land grab by the government directed at his people, the Oromo. The Oromo make up Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group. Police recognized Abebe in a crowd of thousands and detained him for three days. “The security forces tortured me harshly in detention by beating the heels of my feet, since they knew I was a runner,” he wrote in the petition to allow his family to join him. ”They were particularly harsh on me because I am a nationally known figure.” Shortly after the beating, he was scheduled to run in the Houston Marathon. Barely able to walk, he boarded a plane to Houston with his team. But instead of running the marathon, he stayed and applied for asylum in the United States. His petition is still pending. “I was forced to flee to the US in fear for my life,” he wrote in a personal statement seeking asylum. Since settling in Silver Spring, Abebe has been continuing pro-democracy protests in support of the Oromo people. He said his family was not safe at home in Ethiopia, and he has worried for his kids and his wife, Nigat Teferi Mulat. “My family is in grave danger,” he wrote in their petition. “Government cadres have barged into our home without a warrant on various occasions. … I speak with my


Underfunding the State Department could hurt U.S. exports — and U.S. companies

geography and subject,” or TAGS. Here’s what we found: If we exclude records with TAGS related to administration and consular affairs — activities that were not specific to any particular policy or subject of U.S. interest — and we add those on military sales and assistance, communications related to economics and business made up 36.9 percent of State Department activity in the years 1974 to 1979. So how do we know what difference this made? Our research revealed that within the category of economic affairs, about 30 percent — or 307,000 messages — have TAGS that deal explicitly with foreign trade, and four of these subject TAGS are specifically about trade promotion. To measure the impact, we start by summing up these communications for each country beginning with 1974. Second, we include this count in a regression model to explain what influences U.S. exports. We find that if the State Department increased the number of trade promotion cables by 1 percent, U.S. exports to that country increased by 0.356 percent. So if the United States had 100 trade promotion communications with a country and exported $10,000 of products, each additional communication would increase exports by $35.60. To be sure, correlation is not causation. But the effect we measure is consistent with the effect other researchers have found from the mere presence of an embassy or an export promotion agency. The results hold even when we exclude the largest importers, like Canada, that might have had a disproportionate impact. We also find a similar effect for each year when we treat them individually, so it is consistent over time. Also, export promotion communications have no effect on imports, so our result does not just reflect the fact that the United States has more communications about its largest trading partners. Diplomats spend a lot of time pushing U.S. exports Diplomats are often dismissed as “striped pants cookie pushers.” But on a day-to-day basis, they actually spend a lot of time pushing U.S. exports. In one typical cable, the Bangkok Embassy’s commercial attache made the rounds in Seattle, Portland and San Francisco and found “businessmen seemed surprised to be informed that recent dollar devaluation had sharply increased competitiveness of U.S. goods.” Diplomats also serve as go-betweens for foreign and domestic firms, such as when an Austrian national was seeking a U.S. supplier of valves and pipes for Eastern Europe. Conversely, diplomats defended the


Mikaela Shiffrin’s PyeongChang debut delayed by high winds again

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — High winds once again wreaked havoc with the Alpine skiing competition, causing a postponement of Wednesday’s women’s slalom — scheduled to be Mikaela Shiffrin’s first appearance at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. Officials from the International Ski Federation (FIS) delayed the scheduled 10:15 a.m. start of the first run three times before calling it for the day around 11:15. The event, in which Shiffrin is a heavy favorite to defend the gold medal she won four years ago in Sochi, will now be contested Friday. By the end of Wednesday, Shiffrin was supposed to have already completed her two best events. But the giant slalom, which was scheduled for Monday, was pushed to Thursday by the winds that have chilled athletes and created unsafe conditions at the two Alpine venues. “The No. 1 thing is safety, and the next thing is to have a good, fair race,” said Paul Kristofic, the women’s Alpine coach for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association. “And neither of those were really achievable today.” In addition to the wind, snow fell on the slalom course at the Yongpyong Alpine Centre on Wednesday morning, creating visibility problems. Kristofic said FIS forecasts showed the wind was set to increase in the afternoon, when the second of the two slalom runs was slated to be staged. So, five days into the Olympics, the women have yet to ski. “It’s challenging — there’s no doubt about it,” Kristofic said. “You’ve got to get ready physically for a race like this. It starts early in the morning. And then the psychological aspect of getting ready to perform at the biggest event of the year — all that takes time and energy. Everyone’s a little bummed out when a day like this happens.” The schedule for the Alpine events is now compressed, with two events Thursday (women’s giant slalom and men’s downhill, which was originally scheduled for Sunday) and two more Friday (women’s slalom and men’s super-G). Shiffrin, 22, said before the Games that she would definitely ski the slalom and giant slalom, her best events, but would evaluate several factors — her energy level, physical and mental state as well as course conditions — before determining whether she would compete in the speed events: the downhill and super-G. The super-G, which will be Lindsey Vonn’s first competitive appearance at these Games, is set for Saturday, with the


The U.S.’s top spies issue a challenge to Trump’s agenda

had a direct consequence,” noted my colleague Philip Bump. “Trump has shown no interest in investigating what actually happened two years ago and bolstering America’s defenses against it happening again.” But for his top spies, it's deadly serious “Frankly, the United States is under attack,” said Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats to the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Under attack by entities that are using cyber to penetrate virtually every major action that takes place in the United States.” He added that “there should be no doubt that Russia perceives its past efforts as successful and views the 2018 U.S. midterm elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations.” That verdict, my colleagues noted, “was echoed by all five other intelligence agency heads present at the hearing, including CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who two weeks ago stated publicly he had 'every expectation' that Russia will try to influence the coming elections.” In a report released in conjunction with the hearing, Coats cast Russia as a leading destabilizing actor in the West. “Moscow seeks to create wedges that reduce trust and confidence in democratic processes, degrade democratization efforts, weaken U.S. partnerships with European allies, undermine Western sanctions, encourage anti-US political views, and counter efforts to bring Ukraine and other former Soviet states into European institutions,” the report read.The Worldwide Threat Assessment report also saw no signs that Moscow will slow its efforts: “Russia is likely to sustain or increase its propaganda campaigns. Russia is likely to continue to financially and politically support populist and extremist parties to sow discord within European states and reduce popular support for the European Union.” Trump's opponents in the Senate took the opportunity to pounce. “Make no mistake: This threat did not begin in 2016, and it certainly didn’t end with the election,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.). “What we are seeing is a continuous assault by Russia to target and undermine our democratic institutions, and they are going to keep coming at us.” “Despite all of this, the president inconceivably continues to deny the threat posed by Russia,” he continued. “He didn’t increase sanctions on Russia when he had a chance to do so. He hasn’t even tweeted a single concern. This threat demands a whole-of-government response, and that needs to start with leadership at the top.” There has always been some dissonance between Trump's rhetoric and the more sober statements of senior intelligence


How Larry Nassar exploited the system that helps our Olympians win gold

changes would occur during the 1960s. But the 1972 Olympics changed everything. Although remembered primarily for the horrific terrorist attack on the Israeli athletes in the Olympic Village, these Games also revealed what many American sports enthusiasts, administrators and athletes had long feared: Incompetence by coaches and administrators was damaging American prospects for victory. First, a coach misread a schedule so that America’s 100-meter sprinters missed their starting times. A doctor failed to properly file the paperwork for a therapeutic use exemption, costing an American swimmer his gold medal. And maybe most stunning and alarming in the Cold War context — the Soviets managed to manipulate time and the officials to steal the gold medal from the American basketball team. The Munich Games left Americans wondering how these mishaps occurred and how the system could be fixed to prevent them in the future. A congressionally appointed committee sought to find the answer. During hearings, athletes lamented the cost of training and preparation that they and their families had to bear. They complained about often inadequate facilities, pointing out that the only sliding track in the United States was the old bobsled track at Lake Placid, N.Y., and the only speedskating track was in Milwaukee. Athletes competing in high schools and colleges had access to their schools’ facilities, but those in other sports were frustrated by the lack of concern, especially on the part of the AAU, about providing the world-class training and facilities required to improve their chances for excellence. American athletes also pointed to the structural disadvantage they faced because many of the most important competitions in their sports (especially for winter sports) were held in Europe. They argued that they needed funding for those trips, while complaining that coaches and administrators often took the money available to support athletic trips for themselves. And many athletes were angry about their lack of input into the appointment of coaches and support staff. As the hearings progressed, it became obvious that the longtime AAU-NCAA conflict over the governance of amateur sports in the United States was at the heart of the problem. The system allowed an organization such as the AAU to control many sports franchises granted by the IOC, including to such disparate sports as swimming, luge and bobsled — without being equipped to handle the unique governance challenges posed by each individual sport. For example, the challenges of organizing


Winds have caused all kinds of weather mayhem at the Winter Olympics. Here’s why.

Punishing winds have made life miserable for athletes and spectators at the Winter Olympics. As winds howled to 50 mph in PyeongChang, South Korea, on Wednesday, NPR reported emergency alerts buzzed on mobile phones, debris flung through the air, fences toppled, an outdoor tent was blown down and ski races were postponed. “I’m not saying the weather is inconvenient at these Olympics,” quipped Washington Post columnist Barry Svrluga. “I’m saying it blows.” Svrluga So why is it so darned windy at this year’s venue? Meteorology and geography have converged to make PyeongChang a gallingly gusty destination. PyeongChang is located in the Taebaek Mountains, notorious for cold, harsh winds that roar southeast from continental Asia. The wind originates from a feature known as the Siberian High. The air circulates clockwise around this high pressure zone, and the Taebaek mountains intercept the flow blasting in from the northwest. And the air flows faster at its high elevations. This cold and dry air flow is “the most dominant” of five prevailing weather patterns in the region at this time of year according to the PyeongChang organizing committee’s meteorology report. “When the air mass gains strength, high winds and low wind chill temperatures are the most influential factors in particular during the Olympic period,” the report says. Over the past several days, the Siberian High has unleashed relentless winds ramming this mountain range. Because the ski areas and snow venues are located in the highest terrain and/or on the wind-facing side of these mountains, they receive the most extreme conditions. In the unfortunate spots sitting in narrow gaps in the mountain range, such as canyons, the wind is intensified because of channeling effects. Weather models show the Siberian High weakening and shifting south over the next several days, which will allow the winds to relax. However, another one is predicted to form early next week, when windy conditions are likely to become an issue yet again. Additional reading from Marshall Shepherd, a professor of meteorology at the University of Georgia, at Forbes.com: “The Science Of Winds Affecting The 2018 Winter Olympics In PyeongChang, South Korea”


Ignoring human rights at the Olympics is a victory for China

past decade. Last December, Wangchen decided he couldn’t live under those conditions. Denied a passport, he decided to secretly escape Tibet with the help of activists in the United States. He is now living in San Francisco and is working to secure permanent residence in the United States. He will testify that international attention to human rights, especially in China, is falling as countries prioritize economics and trade. “It’s very important for the international community not to let China’s economic power take over,” he told me. “The United States is the country that a lot of Tibetans look to.” Wangchen is working with the International Campaign For Tibet to push legislation calling for foreigners to have the same access to Tibet that Chinese officials who oversee Tibet have here. Wednesday’s hearing, held by the Congressional Executive Commission on China, is titled “Tibet From All Angles.” The title of the hearing refers to a quote from the Dalai Lama, which reads in full: “Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.” Only last week, the Chinese government complained loudly when Mercedes-Benz used that exact quote in an advertisement on Instagram. The company quickly apologized for what it called an “extremely erroneous message” and promised to “regulate our behavior” in the future. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who co-chairs the commission, told me Mercedez-Benz’s reaction was exactly the wrong way to respond to Chinese attempts to export its internal censorship and pressure Western companies to toe the Communist Party line. Marriott came under similar criticism last month when it apologized for a questionnaire that mentioned Tibet and fired an employee for liking a tweet about it. “The Chinese play hardball on these things,” Rubio said. “They most certainly will threaten your business interests even if an individual who works for you promotes a narrative they are sensitive to.” Chinese threats to American companies are only one small piece of a comprehensive, coordinated Communist Party campaign to snuff out any critical discussion of China in other countries. That effort includes funding American academic institutions and working Congress to counter criticism of Chinese policies. “They’re trying to pull in the international community towards the Chinese vision for the world, which is one that plays down Western democratic values, calls alliances into question and steers us away from human rights and universal values,” Rubio said. North Korea may have scored a propaganda


Stop Maryland’s maglev plan in its tracks

Regarding the Feb. 12 Metro article “Options for high-speed train route down to 2”: The Hogan administration in Annapolis is enthusiastic about a maglev train between Baltimore and Washington, and the Federal Railroad Administration is supporting it. While infrastructure in Maryland disintegrates, the state wants to back a rail system that exists in two places in Japan and apparently has been rejected by European countries. Presumably it will be funded by private entities and the Japanese government. What taxpayers will ultimately have to pay is unknown. Seventy-five percent of the line in Maryland is to be underground at a huge cost, if a right of way can even be found. Finding land north of Baltimore to extend the line may be even harder to find. Who will benefit from such a line? Few people or businesses along the way will benefit because it will have only three stations. By the time the train reaches top speed from Washington, it will have to stop at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport, then get up to speed again before it stops in Baltimore. Riding it will feel like a longitudinal yo-yo. And all this is an effort by powerful people who hate railroads and want to divert attention and money from supporting Amtrak and other transit needs in Maryland and throughout the country. The maglev idea should be put to sleep. John Fay


Olympic equation: U.S. snowboarding=Dutch speedskating=Norwegian cross-country

and on — seems more than 1,000 meters long. Same for cross-country skiers in Norway (Bjorn Daehlie, Marit Bjorgen, etc.) and short-track speedskaters in South Korea (Park Seung-hi, even the former Ahn Hyun-soo, who left to compete for Russia as Viktor Ahn). But here’s where that contrived feeling seeps in, and we’ll use Korea to demonstrate, not to denigrate. Two out of the three endeavors mentioned above are of historical significance and trace back to the athletic history of a nation. The medal-winning ways of the Netherlands in speedskating date from 1952. Thorlief Haug won two golds for Norway in cross-country skiing at the first Winter Olympics back in 1924. South Korea, on the other hand, is a short-track power by choice, not by tradition — though, after a quarter of a century of success, you could argue its tradition is now ingrained. But when Kim Ki-hoon won the 1,000-meter race at the 1992 Albertville Olympics, South Korea had no history in Olympic short-track racing because short-track racing had no history in the Olympics. Before Kim’s victory, South Korea had never won a single medal at the Winter Olympics. Now, the South Koreans have 53 — 42 in short track, by far the most of any nation. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s their prerogative to pursue a sport, and the South Koreans’ pursuit of short-track speedskating helped the country land these Olympics that are being held in the mountains a couple of hours from Seoul. It’s not a stretch to think: No success in short track, no Winter Olympics for South Korea. And in a way, that could connect us to snowboarding and to Chloe Kim, to snowboarding in the United States. Much like short-track speedskating, snowboarding wasn’t even a full-fledged sport in the 1980s. It had to be invented, and it was invented in the United States — nurtured in Vermont and New England to start with but then spreading west to the point where a California kid such as Kim could find it cool. So once snowboarding became part of the Olympic program in 1998, the United States was far ahead of other countries, and remains there still. Not only are the Americans’ only three golds thus far in PyeongChang in snowboarding — from Kim, Red Gerard and Jamie Anderson — but the United States has just two medals in all the other sports combined, at least


The media is ignoring ties between the Clinton campaign and Russians

pros do it in the swamp. Anyway, you would think this operation would warrant appropriate news coverage and multiple follow-up questions from the mainstream media. But instead, it is mostly crickets. Compare the coverage of the Blumenthal-Steele-Winer troika and their work to influence the FBI and supply anti-Trump campaign dirt to the media with the coverage of a single meeting that took place with a Russian lawyer and Trump campaign personnel. Ask yourself which is most significant: Donald Trump Jr. — the hapless, amateur son of then-candidate Trump — having a one-off, stray meeting in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer who perhaps promised, but did not deliver, compromising information on Clinton, or Winer, Blumenthal and foreign national Steele all playing a role in getting campaign dirt through Steele’s and State Department channels into the hands of the FBI? With all the breathless scrutiny surrounding Trump Jr.’s meeting, one would think there would at least be a modicum of interest in Blumenthal, Winer and Steele. The idea that the Democrats were the ones who solicited and utilized Russian-supplied, damning information about Trump instead of Trump using Russian-supplied, damning information about Clinton is something that Trump’s opponents cannot process. So, today, when the Democrats and their allies in the media insist that we need to know what the Russians did to influence the election and interfere in the democratic process, it is fair to ask which Russians are they talking about? Are they talking about the Russians who were solicited by Steele and his Democrat paymasters? What were the Russians’ interests and were any of them paying Steele? (A new story links Steele to Putin ally Oleg Deripaska.) And what about the sources that Shearer solicited for the anti-Trump dossier he gave to Blumenthal? It seems that there were a lot more meetings with Russians and information collected from Russians on behalf of the Clinton campaign than there ever was on behalf of the Trump campaign. It may be difficult for Democrats to accept this, but their outrage towards the president doesn’t change the fact that neither he nor his campaign colluded with the Russians. And it must be difficult knowing that more evidence or downright admissions keep surfacing pointing to Democrats facilitating Russian influence in the 2016 campaign. Russian fingerprints are all over the work of Blumenthal, Winer and Steele. Exploring their actions must be a priority for the media.


Two Red Line stations to shut down for 45 days this summer; major work to affect nearly every line in 2018

Metro will conduct several maintenance projects this summer and fall that will dramatically affect service on almost every line — including the shutdown of two Red Line stations for 45 days, the transit agency announced Tuesday. For a 45-day stretch starting July 21 and lasting through Labor Day, Metro will shutter Rhode Island Avenue and Brookland stations on the Red Line. Buses will provide shuttle service from Fort Totten to NoMa, as there will be no train travel between those stations. Workers will use the shutdown to tackle the long-term structural issues on the platform at Rhode Island Ave. station. The problems became glaringly apparent in September 2016, when the station was closed for several days after a chunk of ceiling concrete fell inside the station. Later that year, the station was included as part of a SafeTrack surge that targeted both the station structure and the tracks between Fort Totten and NoMa stations. “Metro engineers stabilized the structure and advanced as much remediation work as possible during a SafeTrack surge in 2016,” Metro said in a statement. “This 45-day project will allow crews to complete structural repairs at Metro’s oldest outdoor station, including addressing deteriorating platform conditions that affect the ADA-accessibility of the station.” In the midst of the Red Line project, there also will be disruptions in the downtown core, with 16 days of “significantly reduced service” on the Blue, Orange and Silver lines between McPherson Square and Smithsonian stations. That project is scheduled to start Aug. 11 and continue through Aug. 26, and will entail several lengthy bouts of continuous single-tracking. “Working around the clock, crews will rebuild the track infrastructure, including installation of new rail, new fasteners, and repairs to the concrete pads that support the rails,” Metro said. “Crews will work on each track for approximately one week at a time so that single-track service can be maintained.” Additionally, Metro also is planning work on the Yellow and Blue lines on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, which will impact riders’ access to Reagan National Airport. During one project, Nov. 2 through 5, National Airport and Crystal City stations will be closed. Buses will provide access to those stations. Then, Nov. 26 to Dec. 9, Metro will conduct extensive track rehabilitation work on the Yellow Line. During that time, the Yellow Line will run only between the airport and Huntington station. Riders seeking to


Rape in the storage room. Groping at the bar. Why is the restaurant industry so terrible for women?

story to two colleagues at the time, and they confirmed that account to The Post. Later, he “put his groin against my butt and pushed really hard,” she said. “ I said, ‘Don’t f---ing touch me.’ He was like, ‘Oh, I’m the bad guy now?’ ” She told her manager that either the customer had to leave or she would, and he was escorted out. But before long, he was back. “One of the managers was very into what the guys with money were into. He knew that I was upset that night, but he let him come back in, and I remember looking at him and thinking, ‘Are you f---ing kidding me?’ ” A recipe for a toxic culture Restaurant kitchens are a man’s world. The Brigade de Cuisine, the division of kitchen labor famously developed by chef Auguste Escoffier in the late 19th century, was based on the French military structure he observed while in the army. Home cooking has historically come from women, while high-status restaurant work was until a few decades ago the domain of men. As French chefs began to rise in stature in the late 1800s, “a lot of work was done to sort of denigrate women’s cooking and uphold and elevate men’s cooking,” said Deborah Harris, co-author of “Taking the Heat: Women Chefs and Gender Inequality in the Professional Kitchen.” “The women were kept out, and over the years that kind of crystallized in these very hypermasculine work cultures.” Some women view the sexual harassment as an outgrowth of Escoffier’s system. When Liz Vaknin graduated from culinary school and went to work in a fine-dining restaurant in Manhattan in 2012, she came to see the kitchen as a place where higher-ups bullied underlings, no matter their gender, and sexual harassment was an expedient form of abuse. “It’s easier to make a woman feel bad about herself by touching her than just yelling that you’re not cutting your parsley right,” Vaknin, now 28, said. The rough talk so common in kitchens is a result of those jobs being historically blue-collar. But that does not mean elite restaurants are immune. Two women who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they still work in the industry said a male manager at the Alinea restaurant group, which includes the Michelin three-star restaurant of the same name in Chicago, harassed them in 2013 and 2016. “He would


Railroad officials tell Congress many won’t meet deadline for lifesaving automatic braking systems

“Not only do you have to install it, you have to make sure it works,” Hamberger said. “All class 1 railroads will be fully implemented by 2020.” Hamberger said the system would be operative on 80 percent of the required route miles by year’s end. Though the NTSB had long recommended the system known as positive train control (PTC), Congress began to debate the need for it in 2008. In the midst of that debate, a head-on collision between a Metrolink commuter train and a Union Pacific freight in Chatsworth, Calif., killed 25 people and injured more than 100. When the NTSB said automatic braking would have prevented the crash, Congress passed legislation setting a Dec. 31, 2015, deadline for railroads to have the system up and running. “The NTSB is extremely concerned about any further delay to this lifesaving technology,” testified NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt, who has been an active participant in several major train crash investigations. “From a safety perspective, that delay is unacceptable.” Thursday’s hearing came after four train wrecks in the past two months, two of which could have been prevented if PTC had been operative, investigators say. It also would have prevented the two deadliest crashes since Chatsworth: the 2013 crash of a Metro-North commuter train in the Bronx that killed four and injured 61 and the 2015 derailment of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia that killed eight and injured 185. The railroad industry has been generous with campaign contributions to members of Congress, giving them almost $64 million since 1990. More than $2.3 million of that has gone to current members of the House subcommittee on railroads. The industry was able to exert pressure when the original deadline neared in 2015, and the head of the Federal Railroad Administration, Sarah Feinberg, refused to grant an extension unless Congress acquiesced. Congress did, voting to extend the deadline to 2018. It also said if railroads had the required hardware installed, had trained workers and acquired radio spectrum and had the system ready on 50 percent of the required lines, they could wait until the end of 2020 to flip the switch. The most recent FRA report, released in September, showed some major railroads — notably BNSF Railway — were well down the road to completion, while other major railroads, and some transit systems, were well behind. Union Pacific has equipped a fraction of its trains, the


Leonard Silverstein, Washington tax lawyer and arts patron, dies at 96

in the 1980s on the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, where he promoted corporate philanthropy. He was board president of the National Symphony Orchestra Association at a time when the NSO was beset by multimillion-dollar shortfalls. He helped management and musicians reach an agreement that included a one-year moratorium on wage increases and secured a line of credit for the orchestra from American Security Bank, where he was a director. Washington, he lamented, was a city with no Brahmins (like the Cabots of Boston) and few philanthropists (like the Meyerhoffs of Baltimore) who channeled their wealth into first-class symphony orchestras in their respective communities. “There was a fellow named Cabot who lived in Georgetown for 30 years, died a while ago and left a million dollars to the Boston Symphony,” he told The Washington Post in 1982. “Naturally, that breaks my heart.” Mr. Silverstein also lamented the NSO’s lack of landmark recordings that might have generated greater ticket sales, as well as the lukewarm support it received from city government and businesses. But the orchestra, he noted, had a formidable asset in Mstislav Rostropovich , the Russian-born cellist who had been hired as music director in 1977. His star power and international stature were credited with revitalizing the NSO during his 17-year tenure. The Kennedy Center took the NSO under its auspices in 1986, helping rescue the orchestra from continued fiscal woes. “Slava is terrific in lending himself to any sort of legitimate promotional activity,” Mr. Silverstein told The Post, using the musician’s nickname. “Not all star conductors are like that. Von Karajan, they tell me, you can’t even talk to.” Leonard Lewis Silverstein was born in Scranton, Pa., on Jan. 21, 1922; his father, a lawyer, became city solicitor. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 1943, he served in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1948 and, in Washington, briefly worked for the IRS and as special tax counsel to the Small Business Administration. He opened his law practice with Richard A. Mullens, who died in 2010. In 1951, he married Elaine Wise. Besides his wife, of Bethesda, survivors include two children, Thomas Silverstein and Susan Scott, both of Washington; a sister; and four grandchildren. Mr. Silverstein served at points as board vice chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing