affected care across the board, Bhadelia said. Facilities may also have been reluctant to send uninfected residents to hospitals for fear of exposure, she said. “They just didn’t get timely care,” Bhadelia said. And as with other diseases, experts said, some of those Alzheimer’s deaths may have been missed cases of covid-19. The Post’s analysis found that cerebrovascular diseases — stroke and other conditions that involve blood flow to the brain — accounted for more than 170 excess deaths in New York City and more than 120 in New Jersey. In New York state and Illinois, the numbers were smaller, well below 100 each. Massachusetts and Michigan saw about the same or fewer deaths from strokes than would have been expected over the same period. Though covid-19 was originally believed to be primarily a respiratory illness, Eriksson noted its ability to attack blood vessels and form blood clots. That virus-related complication could have created stroke symptoms in some patients, he said, but there also almost certainly were patients who delayed stroke treatment out of fear of exposure to the virus. Analyzing deaths by cause underscores the severity of the pandemic, its cascading effects and the deadliness of the novel coronavirus, Weinberger said. “It’s useful to see the magnitude of those increases in relation to the magnitude of the epidemic overall,” he said. “It tells us even if there are deaths due to these other causes, it’s probably much smaller than the deaths we’re seeing due to the virus.” Lenny Bronner contributed to this report. The Washington Post gathered historical data on select causes of death by state between 2014 and early 2020, published by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), and used a model previously developed by a research team led by the Yale School of Public Health to estimate the number of deaths that would normally be expected each week from March 1 to May 30. The estimate takes into account seasonal variations as well as year-to-year variations in mortality levels but did not adjust for the flu. The mortality data are collected from state health departments, which report deaths at different rates. It usually takes about three weeks for death data to stabilize, but even then, they are still not complete. As a result, it is expected that the numbers of deaths in the period The Post analyzed will increase as states continue reporting additional data to


Transcript: Race in America: Stacey Abrams on Protests, Policing and Voter Access

behavior doesn't exist. If he loses the election it will be because people actually participated and they chose not to elect him. MR. CAPEHART: Speaking of COVID--you mentioned COVID-19 before. Has the pandemic had an impact of any kind on your anti voter suppression efforts? MS. ABRAMS: It has, but we anticipated that there would be a catastrophe in 2020, which is why we launched Fair Fight 2020 in 2019. We knew we would need to use the primaries as learning opportunities, to understand across these 18 states what voter suppression looked like in real time. And we've been able to gather those learnings. We knew there would be something catastrophic. We did not anticipate a pandemic. But we were nimble and we were able to shift our responsibilities and shift our approach. For example, we had helped build up voter protection departments and voter protection volunteer systems in Florida and Arizona, for example. Well, their ability to go to polling places was diminished because of COVID-19, but they were able to shift and do their work not only virtually but to make certain they were providing access to voters, so they had the information they needed. We know that in the state of South Carolina, because of our voter protection teams, we were able to get a law passed in the primary. That voter protection team made certain that people could vote by mail, in June and in the runoff. We know that in New Hampshire we were able to secure the right for people to say that COVID-19 was an acceptable excuse in order to request an absentee ballot. And here in Georgia, we sent out more than 900,000 texts, to make certain that people understood what their right to vote was, how to turn in that mail-in ballot, how to vote in person, and how to get help if they need it. And so, we have been--you know, we were all surprised by the pandemic but we were prepared for it. MR. CAPEHART: Let's talk about voting machines, and I'm going to bring up a question from Lawrence Berger from New Mexico. And Lawrence is asking, "How can hacking of voter machines be prevented?" MS. ABRAMS: The most effective way to prevent hacking a voter machine is to go with the safest, gold standard which is paper ballots. It is nearly impossible to hack a piece of


The Path Forward: Future of Train Travel

service, growth in ridership, and particularly ever-increasing scores on customer satisfaction. And I mention that foundation because it is important to have that in mind as we think about not only this fiscal year but as we think about OUR mid- to long-term future as a company. So clearly ridership was affected in 2020, much the same as virtually every industry was, as a result of the pandemic. Our ridership dropped to just 3 percent of what it would have been at a normal rate. In other words, we were carrying about 3,000 passengers a day in April of this year when we would have been carrying something north of 90,000. Ridership has begun to gradually improve but we really have a long way to go to recapture the level of ridership that we experienced in 2019. MS. SELLERS: Right. So, you-- MR. FLYNN: If I may, Frances, just one thing I want to underscore before we go further in our discussion today is I just want to recognize the people of Amtrak, and in particular our frontline people, our people who are at the stations, our people working, you know, Red Caps handling our customers' baggage, our conductors and onboard service people, our locomotive engineers, and our people who report to our dispatch centers, mechanical engineering. The largest part of our company, the largest part of our team can't work from home. MS. SELLERS: Right. MR. FLYNN: They are essential workers. They have to show up, at some risk. And they have done a great job in providing this essential service throughout this pandemic. And we just couldn't do it without them, and I want to make sure they are really recognized, you know, for the courage they have in the workplace. MS. SELLERS: Right. You have moved, during your 34-year career cargo and people around the world on almost every form of transportation--by air, by freight, by train, by ship, by boat--but I guess nothing could really prepare you for the coronavirus pandemic. MR. FLYNN: Well, I don't think we've ever experienced anything like a global pandemic that we have now. I did live in Asia when we had the outbreak of SARS, and saw the impact of that, and swine flu, volumes in business activity when I was living in Japan and later on in Hong Kong, when I was in the ocean shipping business. Certainly, from


Asian trains and European trains that we know about. Will we ever have trains traveling at those sort of comparable speeds, several hundred miles an hour? MR. FLYNN: Well, those are--the speeds you're talking about are maximum speeds. That doesn't necessarily mean that's the average speed that the trains run, because particularly in Europe they're running over relatively shorter distances, if we're thinking, you know, about taking a train from Frankfurt to Bonn, or taking a train from Tokyo to Nagoya. So, I think 165 miles an hour, looking at the length of haul that these trains have and the distance between stops, they are indeed comparable to what one might find on similar distances between cities in both European and Asian train operation. MS. SELLERS: So, I'm going to read a question. This is from Perry Seton [phonetic] and I'm going to read it to you, Perry Seton in Missouri, who says, "What will be needed in terms of infrastructure and funding to bring high-speed rail to large parts of the U.S.?" So, he is thinking, obviously, beyond the Northeast Corridor. MR. FLYNN: Well, it's going to take a substantial investment, a sustained investment over many years to bring high-speed rail to areas of the country that could actually--would be able to support high-speed rail in terms of levels of ridership. But it is a substantial investment in infrastructure, and it will require, as we are today, our ability to reach agreement with our freight railroads, our host railroads, to be able to operate long distance, high-speed rails across that network. So, a lot of work to be done. MS. SELLERS: This year Congress gave you $1.4, $1.5 billion, I think, from the CARES Act. Will you be needing more? Where will that take you and what is it allowing you to do at this point? MR. FLYNN: So, under the CARES Act this year we received just over $1 billion, and that was to address the impact that COVID has had on the business, or on our company, I should say, between March and the end of the fiscal year, in September of this year. In February of this year, we submitted our request for FY21 funding, just a little bit north of $2 billion was the request, and we amended that request just recently to ask for an additional $1.475 billion to address the shortfall in revenue


VA backs down from plan to suspend University of Phoenix and other colleges from accessing GI Bill benefits

The Department of Veterans Affairs on Thursday retreated from plans to bar five schools, including for-profit behemoth the University of Phoenix, from enrolling new students using GI Bill benefits, delivering a blow to veterans groups that wanted the agency to crack down on deceptive recruiting and advertising practices. Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie had threatened in March to impose sanctions against the schools following investigations by the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general that claim they used misleading sales tactics to lure veterans and their families. The colleges — the University of Phoenix, Colorado Technical University, American InterContinental University, Bellevue University and Temple University — were given 60 days to address the problems or lose access to the GI Bill benefits of new enrollees. On Thursday, VA spokeswoman Christina Noel said the agency believes the five schools have taken “adequate corrective actions to avoid suspension,” including restitution to affected students, improved oversight of communications with students and changes in university leadership and marketing practices. “VA will continue to act in the best interest of our nation’s servicemembers, veterans and taxpayers, and we look forward to working with these schools to ensure they fulfill the requirements for GI Bill enrollments,” Noel said in an email. Education funding earned by men and women who serve in the U.S. military has become a stable source of revenue for many colleges. But veterans groups say that some schools have failed to provide a high-quality education and that the federal government has shirked its responsibility to act. Veterans groups had hoped VA would step up but began to lose faith when the agency issued guidance in May dialing back its requirements for the five schools to remain in good standing. At the beginning of May, career staff at VA provided the schools a list of steps they could take to prevent future problems, including hiring an independent auditor to routinely review advertising material and recruiting practices. Weeks later, the agency told the schools those recommendations were not requirements. As long as they stopped engaging in abusive practices and took steps to comply with regulations, the GI Bill funding could continue to flow. Noel denied speculation that VA was pressured to relax its standards, insisting that its actions were “based on application of governing statutes and regulations.” “The only winners today are the schools that used their money and political influence to evade the law


Mexico City deaths spiked to three times normal during covid-19 outbreak, official says

still refining, is about three times more,” he said. The exact number of deaths is not yet available. The most complete study released to date, an analysis published by the magazine Nexos, found that 27,394 people died in Mexico City from late March to the end of May. That’s more than twice the usual level. The government reported only around 4,000 coronavirus deaths in that period for the capital, the epicenter of Mexico’s outbreak. López-Gatell said the excess-mortality data included people with problems such as heart attacks who couldn’t get good treatment because hospitals were swamped with coronavirus patients — but “it’s probable that the majority are covid.” They include cases that were diagnosed and those that were not. The death toll has become a divisive political issue in Mexico; critics claim the government has hidden the true number. Authorities have denied that. Mexico is similar to many countries — and U.S. states — in officially counting only those covid-19 deaths that are confirmed with laboratory tests. Still, the undercount appears unusually high. Hospitals here are required to test patients with serious symptoms, but López-Gatell said some lacked the personnel to do so quickly. In addition, many people apparently die at home or shortly after arrival at the hospital without being tested. Officially, 28,510 people in Mexico have died of covid-19. On Wednesday, the country passed Spain for sixth place in the world, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Mexico City has reported 6,642 deaths. The country’s first wave of infection is far from over — although authorities say the increase in cases is slowing. López-Gatell said the excess-mortality estimate was significant compared with even the most virulent flu outbreaks in Mexico. “Of course,” he said, “it’s high or extremely high compared to what we wanted.” Mexican authorities have attributed the death toll to several factors. Many coronavirus victims have put off going to hospitals until they’ve become severely ill. Mexico has extraordinary levels of hypertension, diabetes and obesity — chronic illnesses of the sort linked to around 80 percent of the country’s coronavirus deaths. “The relative contribution [of such conditions] to the lethality of the epidemic is a disaster,” said López-Gatell. He blames the soaring popularity of junk food and sugary drinks. Authorities have struggled against serious limitations, including a chronically underfunded, understaffed medical system, and a workforce heavily concentrated in the informal sector — construction workers,


slowed the pandemic’s velocity by around half compared with countries such as Italy or Spain, buying time so hospitals weren’t overwhelmed. But instead of a quick, explosive outbreak, they’ve wound up with a long, slower-moving one. If there’s one thing on which all sides agree, it’s that the public health message wasn’t clear. Early on, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ignored recommendations on social distancing, and he’s been eager to open the country back up as it sinks into a profound recession. López-Gatell has warned repeatedly of the dangers of the virus. But he acknowledges that the government’s public health messaging has failed to convince many Mexicans. The country’s deep political polarization has further complicated matters. Samuel Ponce de León, an infectious-disease specialist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said the president’s critics have mocked López-Gatell’s strategy so relentlessly that the public is confused. “Citizens don’t know what actions to take,” he said. Some say it’s the coronavirus czar who’s to blame. López-Gatell’s early, upbeat predictions about containing the pandemic — and the lack of information on its scale — raised suspicions in a country where governments have long fudged the data on disasters. Weinberger said that in most nations, it’s extremely difficult to adopt widespread contact tracing at the height of a pandemic. But up-to-date death statistics, he said, are a different matter. “It’s really important for the public to have an accurate picture of what’s going on, and the severity, as they weigh these different measures in terms of closings and various restrictions on freedoms,” Weinberger said. Normally, it takes a year or more for Mexico’s slow-moving bureaucracy to produce complete death data. But after the national and foreign media began to question the coronavirus fatalities, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum spearheaded an effort to determine excess mortality for the capital. The committee, which includes federal health officials, plans to further break down the numbers to determine how many deaths are from covid-19, López-Gatell said. A separate team is looking at the rest of the country. Similar efforts are gradually getting underway around the world. A new study done by three scholars at the MIT Sloan School of Management estimates total covid-19 deaths for 84 countries at roughly 600,000, well above reported figures. And that’s through mid-June. According to the researchers, if there’s no vaccine or treatment by next spring, the death toll could hit 1.75 million.


California rejected Chinese company’s push to help with coronavirus testing. Was that the right move?

to set up high-speed testing labs, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. And testing centers in Sweden and Kansas — and in California’s Santa Clara County, despite the state’s cold shoulder — have purchased supplies from the company, saying they didn’t fear data breaches. Santa Clara officials took the security concerns into account before buying one piece of equipment but are “100 percent confident that no private information would be made available to the company," said deputy county executive David Campos. China is spending billions on high-tech development, aiming to dominate technologies that will shape the future of business and defense. Those ambitions have concerned not only the Trump administration and Congress but also U.S. business leaders such as former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, who have warned that the United States cannot afford to cede critical innovation to China. Tension has already come to a head over Chinese telecom giant Huawei, the world’s largest provider of mobile network gear — a field from which U.S. companies are largely absent. The United States calls Huawei a security risk, which the company denies, and has undertaken an international lobbying campaign, with mixed results, to persuade other countries not to buy from Huawei. The Trump administration has targeted other Chinese companies, restricting trade with more than a dozen it accuses of supplying surveillance gear in the western province of Xinjiang, where U.S. officials and human rights groups say China’s ruling Communist Party is holding Muslims in mass detention camps. And the United States has blocked Chinese investors from buying U.S. technology companies deemed strategic to economic growth or national security. Last year, the Trump administration forced a Chinese company founded by BGI’s former chief executive to sell its majority stake in a U.S. health-care-data company, PatientsLikeMe. At the same time, Chinese companies, often backed by significant government financing that critics say can sometimes represent an unfair subsidy, are cranking out a slew of high-tech products. Their growing output, including industrial drones, electric buses and more, makes Chinese tech harder to avoid or contain. “One and a half billion people are going to come up with a lot of cool stuff,” said Rod Hunter, a trade lawyer at Baker McKenzie and a former national security official in the George W. Bush administration. “If it’s something with the potential to save human lives, are we going to say we don’t want it?


Marseille, the site of Europe’s last plague, has escaped the worst of this one

half the residents of Marseille and 20 percent of Provence had died. But the city and region have so far escaped the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. In March, long lines formed outside a Marseille hospital, as people sought to be tested and treated for the virus. Relatively few, though, tested positive. Bouches-du-Rhône, the department in which Marseille is located, has reported just over 4,000 hospitalizations and 558 deaths out of a population of more than 2 million. Now, as the photographer Emilienne Malfatto has captured, the city is returning to its bustling self, a diverse blend of French, Italian, North African and Mediterranean cultures. Small weddings are allowed once again. People are welcome to sunbathe at the old port of Vallon des Auffes. Diners are packed into the cafes — talking, laughing and at least pretending to social distance. Anglers are back on the rocks of the calanques, and the sardines and sea bream they catch can be found in the stalls of weekly markets. | At least for Marseille, 2020 is not 1720. And yet the coronavirus has left its mark on the city. | Local microbiologist Didier Raoult brought worldwide attention to Marseille and himself with his claim that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine could effectively treat covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. French President Emmanuel Macron came for a chat. President Trump touted hydroxychloroquine variously as a miracle cure and a prophylactic. | Subsequent studies have suggested there is no treatment benefit to taking the drug, and that it may exacerbate the risk of complications. But as someone who likes to challenge the medical establishment, Raoult maintains a devoted following. In Marseille, he is seen as a hero, even a saint, depicted Christ-like on candles that were supposed to be a joke but have sold by the hundreds. The fallout of the pandemic will probably mean economic pain for Marseille, one of Europe’s poorest major cities and home to sizable working-class and immigrant populations. After eight people died in a building collapse in November 2018, many residents blamed local authorities for ignoring dilapidated housing conditions in low-income neighborhoods. | In a sign of growing political frustration, in the second and final round of France’s municipal elections on June 28, delayed by three months because of the coronavirus, voters rejected the conservative government that has controlled the city for 25 years and embraced a green-left coalition.


The Daily 202: 10 reasons Trump should not be spiking the football after today’s good jobs report

and was likely back in Russia. What they did find in one of his homes, in Kabul, was about half a million dollars in cash.” “The Supreme Court dealt a significant blow to House Democrats’ efforts to have access to secret grand jury material from Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, saying it would decide next term whether Congress is authorized to see the material,” Robert Barnes reports. “The decision to hear the case next fall means the House Judiciary Committee cannot have access to the material before the election. A lower court ruled this spring that the committee was entitled to see the previously withheld material from Mueller’s probe.” “Lorance had been in command of 1st Platoon for only three days in Afghanistan but in that short span of time had averaged a war crime a day, a military jury found. On his last day before he was dismissed, he ordered his troops to open fire on three Afghan men standing by a motorcycle on the side of the road who he said posed a threat. His actions led to a 19-year prison sentence. He had served six years when Trump, spurred to action by relentless Fox News coverage and Lorance’s insistence that he had made a split-second decision to protect his men, set him free,” Greg Jaffe writes in an in-depth report on the platoon’s troubled history. The unit has been plagued by suicides, suicide attempts, hospitalizations, depression, cancer, car crashes, alcoholism and early deaths since its return from Afghanistan. “The president’s opponents described the pardon as another instance of Trump subverting the rule of law to reward allies and reap political benefits. Military officials worried that the decision to overturn a case that had already been adjudicated in the military courts sent a signal that war crimes were not worthy of severe punishment. For the men of 1st Platoon, part of the 82nd Airborne Division, the costs of the war and the fallout from the case have been profound and sometimes deadly. Traumatized by battle, they have also been brutalized by the politicization of their service and made to feel as if the truth of what they lived in Afghanistan — already a violent and harrowing tour before Lorance assumed command — had been so demeaned that it no longer existed.” “Hundreds gathered to watch crews dismantle the statue, one of


Unprecedented fireworks boom spreads across D.C. ahead of July 4

until 2 a.m. “I guess they got an early jump on the Fourth this year,” he said. “But it’s not a police call issue to me, just a nuisance.” Without aggressive efforts from law enforcement, neighborhoods have become largely responsible for managing their own conflicts over the fireworks. In Capitol Hill, a tense exchange unfolded on Nextdoor, a neighborhood social network. “Fireworks on weeknight evenings is the neighborhood equivalent of putting your seat back on a plane,” one neighbor wrote. “For a tiny bit of enjoyment for yourself, you make other people uncomfortable/sleep deprived.” Other residents on the platform defended the fireworks as celebratory and urged their neighbors to refrain from calling law enforcement at a moment when the nation is reckoning with police violence. “Please do not send the cops and jeopardize someone’s life and livelihood over some fireworks,” one user wrote. Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), the D.C. Council member who represents Capitol Hill, said he has received a record number of emails, texts and calls about fireworks, which prompted him to work with the city on its new initiative. “There is something different this year when it comes to the time and intensity of fireworks,” he said, as loud bangs went off just outside his living room. “I like fireworks as much as the next person, but when we are talking about blocks with rowhouses, you are having an impact on your neighbors.” While Bowser has said she will not issue any permits for Fourth of July parades in light of the pandemic, President Trump has orchestrated an elaborate demonstration with military displays, speeches and fireworks on the Mall. Bowser cannot dictate what the federal government does on federal land, but she has repeatedly suggested that residents refrain from attending the federal fireworks show to avoid contracting and transmitting the coronavirus. On Wednesday, Bowser told reporters that she has discouraged the Trump administration from discharging the fireworks. It will be harder for D.C. residents to obtain legal fireworks to celebrate Independence Day this year. The fireworks vendors who typically appear on city streets were denied licenses this year, leaving Costco and Capitol Works warehouse as the two locations able to sell fireworks legally. Meanwhile on Tuesday night, another firework exploded as fire inspectors wrapped up an evening of door-knocking, folding their safety literature and collapsing their tent on Morton Street. “Seriously, we are sitting right here,” said Kristina


Chef Jonny Rhodes built a revered Houston restaurant. His next mission: Fighting ‘food apartheid.’

was typically the spoiled or otherwise unwanted remains — so they had to find ways to improve flavor and to make what they had last. If you’re lucky, another product you might find at Broham is clabbered milk ice cream, a subversive interpretation of the spoiled leftover milk that black people were limited to during slavery. To fill the gaps of what they don’t produce on-site, Broham uses its space to amplify local, black-owned purveyors such as Me & the Bees Lemonade, which features a photo of the brand’s young founder, Mikaila Ulmer, on the label. “Imagine walking into a grocery store in your own community with people on the containers who look like you… Now a possibility,” says the caption on an Instagram post showcasing the lemonade’s shelf in the store. For Rhodes, this moment is ripe with possibility: Earlier this year, he and his team purchased six acres of land just outside the city so they can start farming on a larger scale. (Always resourceful, they’re repurposing the wood they’re clearing for cooking, building fencing and growing mushrooms.). The farm and the community it serves, Rhodes says, are the foundation for the real mission, so he’s going all in. “I write this with so many tears in my eyes. This all started with an idea & a dream of simply being free,” he wrote recently on Instagram, reflecting on the past two years of running the restaurant. He went on to announce that Indigo will close permanently next year as the team prepares to focus their efforts on the future of the farm and grocery store. In the meantime, as the restaurant prepares to possibly reopen later this month (with covid-19 cases surging in Houston, delays are likely), Broham is temporarily operating solely as a community kitchen serving free food to the neighborhood. Real success for Rhodes may ultimately mean putting himself out of business entirely — but running a business was never the goal. “In my perfect world, my idea is to empower people to grow their own food, on their own land. Because if we can feed ourselves, that’s freedom.” Marin is a Brooklyn-based reporter, writer and digital content producer. More from Voraciously: This Juneteenth, I don’t feel like celebrating. Instead, I’m cooking barbecue in memory of Black lives lost. With a new series of her own, Padma Lakshmi is at the top of her game


A new deal could ease Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis. The international community must get behind it.

Kathleen Page is a physician and associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Tamara Taraciuk Broner is Americas acting deputy director for Human Rights Watch. Imagine being a health worker trying to keep covid-19 at bay in a country where the health system has collapsed. “It’s Dantesque, as though we are in a war but not a single bomb has fallen,” one doctor in Venezuela told us in December, before the pandemic even hit. Long before Venezuela confirmed its first case of covid-19, the country was facing a humanitarian emergency: Malnutrition was on the rise; vaccine-preventable diseases that had been eradicated, like measles and diphtheria, returned; and infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis spiked. Health professionals struggled, as basic utilities blinked on and off at health-care facilities and many colleagues emigrated, driving a steady decline in health-care operational capacity. And then the novel coronavirus arrived. As of July 2, Venezuela was reporting more than 6,000 confirmed cases of covid-19, with 54 deaths. But the statistics coming out of Venezuela are not reliable. The real numbers are almost certainly much higher, our recent research has revealed, given the limited availability of reliable testing, a lack of transparency and the persecution of medical professionals and journalists who report on problems. Overcrowding in low-income areas and prisons, as well as limited access to water and sanitation in hospitals and homes, make prime conditions for the virus to spread rapidly. Venezuelan doctors and nurses, true to their professional and ethical commitment to medicine, keep showing up for work because, as one of them said, “If we don’t care for these patients, who will?” They do this at their own risk, often lacking even basic protective equipment. Some use half their monthly salary to buy a single bottle of hand sanitizer. They told us about nauseating smells, rodent infestations and broken-down bathrooms. One doctor said he washed his hands with water dripping from an air conditioner. The collapse of Venezuela’s health system is not the consequence of a natural disaster. It is largely due to irresponsible and repressive measures by the government of Nicolás Maduro. The authorities have made heavy-handed attempts to deny and conceal epidemiological data and the severity of a years-long humanitarian emergency. They have also persecuted those who question the government, including health workers. Venezuelan authorities typically put all the blame for the humanitarian emergency on U.S. financial and oil


Roger Whiteside, photographer for National Museum of the American Indian, dies of covid-19

executives. He went on to work for the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. Bell said Whiteside would often turn on classical music when developing pictures in a dark room in their home and would later “run out and say, ‘What do you think? What do you think?’ ” “He was like a kid at Christmas,” she said. In 1999, Whiteside began working for the National Museum of the American Indian. During his time at museum, he traveled with a small team of curators to a variety of places, from the West Coast to the Florida Everglades, as well as Mexico, the foothills of the Peruvian Andes and the outskirts of the Brazilian rainforest. He documented Native people, their reservations, villages and surrounding landscapes. His work was a part of the District museum’s “inaugural exhibitions,” according to colleagues. He retired from the museum in 2014. Cécile Ganteaume, a curator at the museum who worked with Whiteside for 14 years, said he was “very adept at moving from different situations.” She said she remembers Whiteside “clinging to the side of a mountain” in Mexico’s Sierra Madre range to get the view he wanted. “His work at the museum was hugely important,” she said. “He chronicled the museum’s creation, and he did it so well.” After Whiteside’s death, his family received condolences from people he had photographed in Native American communities. Many commented on “how respectful he was,” Bell said. Mike Winston, Whiteside’s friend and next-door neighbor for 12 years, said they often talked politics and history. “You could ask Roger a question about history on World War I or World War II, and he knew it,” Winston said. “He could tell me stories like a camp counselor and just keep your attention.” After retiring from professional photography, Whiteside began driving for Uber about four years ago to earn extra money. When the pandemic hit the Washington region in March, Winston said he told Whiteside he should consider a pause on driving customers. “He was trying to get Uber to make people he was picking up have to wear a mask,” Winston said. Winston said Whiteside wiped down his car after his Uber shifts. When Whiteside ended up in the hospital, he called Winston to say he had contracted the coronavirus and developed covid-19. “He was the first person I lost to covid,” Winston said. “That hurt me


Everyone will be affected by the U.S.'s withdrawal from the WHO

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is director-general of the World Health Organization. The United States has been a vital partner to the World Health Organization since its creation in 1948. Together, we have worked to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. If the United States steps back on that essential work, we shouldn’t just think in terms of who will be hurt but also what will be lost. Why? Because the consequences affect everyone. The covid-19 pandemic has starkly revealed how we need more international cooperation to address global health crises, not less. Not only are we far from addressing all the risks that this insidious virus presents, but the vast majority of people remain susceptible to infection. Consider the vital role that international cooperation is already playing around the development of a covid-19 vaccine. This began almost as soon as the coronavirus’s sequence was shared online, and there are now 141 vaccines in development. Leading candidates may be only months from success. Of course, there is no guarantee of full protection, but we are hopeful. Additionally, the world remains highly vulnerable to the next emerging threat. We are already fighting the less-visible pandemic of antimicrobial resistance. This causes nearly 50,000 U.S. deaths annually and half a million more globally. Within 15 years, without effective antibiotics, we face the prospect of a world without open-heart surgery or hip replacements given the risk of life-threatening sepsis. The WHO has proudly played a leading role in several public health achievements over the past 72 years. Smallpox has been defeated, and polio faces imminent eradication. Many countries have eliminated measles and halted mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Innovative partnerships have led to vaccines against meningitis and Ebola. In today’s interconnected world, responding to public health emergencies — from Zika in Brazil to Ebola in eastern Congo — remains a top priority. The United States has been with us at the forefront of these outbreaks. Without U.S. participation, this progress will undoubtedly be slowed and vital programs decimated. Consider the WHO’s program on neglected tropical diseases, which the U.S. Agency for International Development funds at $6 million annually. Since 2002, tens of millions of people have been treated for trachoma — and spared blindness. Elephantiasis, which afflicts 120 million people in 72 countries, was eliminated in Yemen and Kiribati in 2019. And for nearly 900 million children infested with worms, deworming


resistance. This causes nearly 50,000 U.S. deaths annually and half a million more globally. Within 15 years, without effective antibiotics, we face the prospect of a world without open-heart surgery or hip replacements given the risk of life-threatening sepsis. The WHO has proudly played a leading role in several public health achievements over the past 72 years. Smallpox has been defeated, and polio faces imminent eradication. Many countries have eliminated measles and halted mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Innovative partnerships have led to vaccines against meningitis and Ebola. In today’s interconnected world, responding to public health emergencies — from Zika in Brazil to Ebola in eastern Congo — remains a top priority. The United States has been with us at the forefront of these outbreaks. Without U.S. participation, this progress will undoubtedly be slowed and vital programs decimated. Consider the WHO’s program on neglected tropical diseases, which the U.S. Agency for International Development funds at $6 million annually. Since 2002, tens of millions of people have been treated for trachoma — and spared blindness. Elephantiasis, which afflicts 120 million people in 72 countries, was eliminated in Yemen and Kiribati in 2019. And for nearly 900 million children infested with worms, deworming is the most important factor in enabling children to receive an education and for girls to graduate from secondary school. The community fighting these diseases is much bigger than the WHO. But without the WHO, it cannot access the drugs that are the foundation of the program. This is because only the WHO can operate the global drug-review process — a prerequisite for six pharmaceutical companies across 31 countries to donate to countries in need. To date, these drugs yielded nearly 3 billion treatments, valued at nearly $26 billion. Moreover, only the WHO has the ability and institutional authority to certify the elimination of infectious diseases such as smallpox. How else can we know — and trust — that a disease is finally gone and move on to other priorities? Trachoma, still affecting 142 million people, is on target to be wiped out within 10 years — but we cannot just press the pause button and resume play when funding comes back. We risk backsliding on years of progress. More broadly, the WHO is working to ensure the world does not repeat the experience of this pandemic. That requires making people healthy rather than simply keeping diseases at bay. We


I’ve watched in alarm as my fellow Republicans shun masks. It’s selfish.

curbside grocery pickups in the weeks before Texas reopened, most customers I saw wore masks and were careful to maintain safe distances. In the weeks after reopening, things changed shockingly quickly: More than half the people I saw walking in and out of stores, both young and gray-haired, failed to wear masks. The people most at risk from those without masks are not the individuals themselves. The risk is highest for grocery workers in the store, those who are keeping America fed by stocking shelves, operating checkout registers and slicing deli meat. These front-line workers spend long hours in contact with hundreds and sometimes thousands of people; these interactions are indoors, where health experts say the coronavirus can most readily spread. Texas grocery chain H-E-B stepped up and did the right thing for its employees by instituting precautions: installing plastic shields at registers, strictly enforcing social distancing guidelines and requiring employees to wear masks. But government failed to do its part to protect these employees from the customers who eschewed masks. In recent days, as covid-19 cases have spiked, local government mandated businesses to require all customers to wear masks, but the damage may be done. Many mask-free weeks and the back-to-normal cavalier attitude appear to be driving the skyrocketing number of cases in Texas and many other states. When local news showed crowds at public events, beaches, bars and restaurants, with most attendees neither social distancing nor wearing masks, one could practically see the virus spreading. With some infected individuals, the coronavirus can lurk undetected, for days or weeks, without any sign or symptom that they are carriers. Wearing a mask is not about protecting you; it protects others from the possibility that you are exhaling virus particles at them. A recent University of Washington study projected that 33,000 fewer people will die by October if 95 percent of us wear masks in public. That is reason to label failure to wear a mask as what it really is: an incredibly selfish act that puts other people’s lives at risk. Like yelling “fire!” in a packed theater or brandishing a loaded gun in a crowd, failing to don a mask greatly increases the risk that one person will endanger others. Wearing a mask is also an important reminder that life is not normal and that a deadly disease stalks our society and we all need to take other precautions,


The virus didn’t stop a Washington socialite from throwing a backyard soiree. Then the tests came back positive.

This is a Cautionary Tale featuring well-intentioned people making poor choices. It is also the tale of a socialite with an Instagram habit who recently held a fabulous backyard soiree during a pandemic. The upside of living on social media is the admiration and envy of your friends. The downside is when your dinner party goes viral. Literally. Ashley Taylor Bronczek, one of Washington’s social stars, decided to throw a party after the Washington Ballet’s online fundraiser, which she co-chaired. The June 18 gala was a huge success, raising more than $800,000 — the top sponsors were her generous in-laws, David and Judy Bronczek. To celebrate the occasion, she hosted a catered dinner for a couple dozen friends in the backyard of her Spring Valley home. It was, by all accounts, a picture-perfect night chronicled on (per usual) her Instagram account. Then Bronczek, 37, was diagnosed with covid-19, along with a few other guests at the event. The news spread quickly through the wealthy young families in her social circle because their small children play together. Friends begged her to take down photos of the party, which she eventually did. But details of the evening — some true, some exaggerated — were already all over town. This summer everyone is struggling to balance their yearning for normality with the risk of catching this virus. Young is safer than old. Outside is better than inside. Masks are better than no masks. And a handful of people are wiser than a lot of people. And so we make the calculation to attend or skip drinks on the patio, a backyard barbecue, a socially distanced birthday party. Most of the time it’s fine. Unless it isn’t. Citing health issues, Bronczek originally offered to answer questions for this article via email, then changed her mind and declined to comment. Some guests who attended the party also declined to comment or claimed they were, in fact, not at the event. Ten others in Bronczek’s circle were willing to discuss details of the evening only if they were not named. People are finally social distancing, in every sense of the word. The Washington Ballet's The ballet followed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and D.C. Department of Health guidelines for safety: Married dancers sheltering in place performed together; others performed at a safe distance and all the choreography was crafted with that in mind. All


As Europeans embark on summer holidays, Americans have fewer options

recommendations. In the United States, a State Department “Do Not Travel” advisory remains in place, advising “U.S. citizens to avoid all international travel due to the global impact of COVID-19.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters last week that the United States is considering a return to U.S.-E.U. travel. “We’re working on finding the right way to do that, the right timing to do it, the right tactics to have in place,” he said. “We certainly don’t want to reopen a plan that jeopardizes the United States from people traveling here, and we certainly don’t want to cause problems anyplace else." Travel during a pandemic presents health and ethics concerns, alongside logistical challenges — a reality his remarks appear to reflect. Who can go where under what conditions during the pandemic can be difficult to ascertain. Egypt, for instance, scheduled the resumption of international arrivals for July 1 and was set to require coronavirus testing for travelers from high-risk countries, but the National, a newspaper in Abu Dhabi, reported Wednesday that those plans had been abandoned. The website of Cairo Airport showed arrivals from cities including Paris, Milan and London on Wednesday, and several Egyptian resorts said they had reopened. Flight connections to cities including New York and Washington were set to resume Wednesday as well, EgyptAir, the state-owned flag carrier, said on its website. The first flight from New York is slated to arrive in Cairo on Thursday, according to the airport’s online schedule. Holiday resorts in Egypt say they have taken all necessary precautions to keep tourists safe. But the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the country has remained at a relatively high level, with more than 1,500 new confirmed infections reported Tuesday. Whistleblower doctors have been arrested and silenced in Egypt, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, raising concerns over the country’s level of transparency as travel resumes. Some tourism has also begun to return in Mexico, where new cases are on the rise and testing continues to lag. Even though land border crossings remain restricted, U.S. travelers can still make their way to Cancún or other tourism hotspots by plane. Hotels in Cancún are gradually reopening. For some tourism-reliant destinations, keeping the door closed to Americans, however severe the U.S. outbreak, would pose steep economic challenges. Poor countries, however, are in many cases ill-prepared to handle an influx of infections, which travel from the


The pandemic stranded Palestinians abroad. Politics kept them there.

Aseel Bader set off for Prato, Italy, in January, traveling under a passport bearing the eagle emblem of the Palestinian Authority to pursue a master’s degree. Then the novel coronavirus hit — and rendered the document nearly useless. Bader, 27, reached out to Palestinian envoys in Italy. “They kept telling me they have no solution for me,” she said. Months later, she is still stuck in a hostel in Prato, waiting to return to her hometown, Hebron, in the West Bank. She has watched the departures of nearly all the other foreign students in her program, often with the help of their governments. In recent days, more than three months later, the Palestinian Authority has finally attained the right authorizations for a series of repatriation flights as international travel picks up. At last, her tentative flight date is set for next week. “It’s really hard to see that everyone had a country and everyone knows what their country is doing for them, but for me I don’t,” said Bader, speaking by phone before the arrangement for her flight. “You feel like you’re not treated like everyone else in the world.” The semiautonomous Palestinian government in the Israeli-occupied West Bank does not control any airport or border. It must coordinate travel with Israel, usually via neighboring Egypt or Jordan, which closed crossings and restricted borders in March and prioritized seats on flights for their own citizens. Coronavirus-related travel restrictions have stranded people around the world. Many residents of African countries have struggled to get home, with flights to their countries still cut off. But as a Palestinian traveling on documents issued by an entity that’s not officially a state, Bader is in a predicament, as are others in similar situations, that sits at a particular nexus of international politics and the pandemic. For decades, Israelis and Palestinians have been locked in conflict over efforts to create a Palestinian state. Israel’s government, emboldened by support from the Trump administration, has said it would soon move ahead with plans to formally annex more disputed land in the West Bank, which the Palestinian leadership says would be the final blow to its aspirations of statehood. Bader was born in the early 1990s, when Israelis and Palestinians first signed the Oslo accords that created the Palestinian Authority as an interim government, on the road to a two-state solution. Nearly three decades later, the pandemic has


served to illustrate how little power the Palestinian Authority holds, said Tareq Baconi, an analyst for the London-based International Crisis Group. “It demonstrates the facade of what the PA is,” Baconi said. “It has all the symbols of statehood. But it’s not a state. It’s under occupation. … In the covid-19 era, it very starkly shows that we are living in a one-state reality.” Saad Amira, 31, a doctoral student in South Africa, is stuck in a limbo similar to Bader’s. Like other Palestinian Authority passport holders, he would ordinarily travel home to the West Bank city of Ramallah by flying to Jordan and crossing an Israeli-controlled border checkpoint. But the pandemic barred that route. Still, he criticized the Palestinian Authority for moving slowly to provide a solution as situations worsened. “We really understand the whole complex situation, where they don’t have sovereignty over borders and so on,” he said. “But then I think that shouldn’t be an excuse for them.” Amira helped organize a student-led campaign, “Bring us back home,” publicizing cases and pressing for repatriation. Rather than saying their hands were tied, he said he wished the embattled Palestinian leadership had made cases like his a political priority and showed support for the next generation. Instead, in one case, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs threatened legal action against a student stranded in Ireland who criticized it online. Ahmed Deek, a senior Foreign Ministry official in the Palestinian Authority, said he sympathized with those stranded and invited the campaign organizers to talk. But he denied that the ministry was the source of the problem. Instead, he blamed the need to coordinate evacuations with neighboring countries because of life under Israeli restrictions. “We don’t have airports or control over the borders or crossings because we are under the Israeli occupation,” he said. Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories declined to comment. Students stuck abroad are far from the only problems for the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority. It is facing a deep malaise at home after decades of corruption allegations, repression and a stalemated peace process that has been its basis for power. In recent months, though, it has gained goodwill among the public, Baconi said. Many Palestinians have been impressed with its decisive handling of the pandemic at home (carried out in coordination with Israel). Support also remains widespread over its standoff with Israel and the United States over


Virginia enters third phase of pandemic recovery, while Maryland’s Six Flags reopens

Natural Nails was still hopeful. Addison Sobonya, 8, was on her first “girl date” of the pandemic. She sat, cat and rainbow mask on, a few tables over from her former kindergarten teacher, Jillian Maenza, who has since become her best friend. “I feel so happy and excited and blown away to be here,” Addison said, admiring her light pink nails through the plexiglass. It had been a hard few months for Addison, who has been out of school since March. First, she had to avoid seeing her friends. Then, her parents were worried her younger brother had covid-19. But finally, Wednesday morning, she got good news from her mom: She was able to see her favorite teacher and get her nails done. “She just started screaming,” said Ashley Sobonya. The best friends exited the nail salon, fresh coat of paint drying, and discussed when they could go on a shopping trip together. “She wants to get matching outfits,” said Maenza, who teaches in Sterling. “And now that stores are more open, maybe we will.” In Maryland, officials reported 359 new coronavirus infections and 15 additional covid-19 deaths Wednesday. That news didn’t stop families from venturing to outdoor pools, water parks and the Six Flags America amusement park in Prince George’s County — all of which reopened Wednesday at reduced capacities. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) urged residents to be “vigilant” about social distancing, citing a surge in confirmed coronavirus cases among people under 35. While the state’s daily case count remains flat and Maryland has avoided spikes experienced elsewhere, Hogan said the current infection rate among Maryland residents under 35 is 52 percent higher than other groups. “This crisis is not behind us,” the governor said. “Younger people seem to be acting and feeling as if they’re bulletproof, and many of them are unfortunately ignoring the public health guidelines.” Prince George’s, which has been hit harder by the pandemic than any other Maryland locality, reported 73 new infections and four covid-19 fatalities Wednesday. Nonetheless, families from across the region journeyed to Six Flags for a taste of summer. After closing its doors in March, the amusement park reopened Wednesday for members and season-pass holders. The public will be allowed to enter Friday. Those who arrived Wednesday were greeted by an array of safety precautions. Their temperatures were taken before they could enter, and those with temperatures above 100.4 degrees


This coronavirus mutation has taken over the world. Scientists are trying to understand why.

When the first coronavirus cases in Chicago appeared in January, they bore the same genetic signatures as a germ that emerged in China weeks before. But as Egon Ozer, an infectious-disease specialist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, examined the genetic structure of virus samples from local patients, he noticed something different. A change in the virus was appearing again and again. This mutation, associated with outbreaks in Europe and New York, eventually took over the city. By May, it was found in 95 percent of all the genomes Ozer sequenced. At a glance, the mutation seemed trivial. About 1,300 amino acids serve as building blocks for a protein on the surface of the virus. In the mutant virus, the genetic instructions for just one of those amino acids — number 614 — switched in the new variant from a “D” (shorthand for aspartic acid) to a “G” (short for glycine). But the location was significant, because the switch occurred in the part of the genome that codes for the all-important “spike protein” — the protruding structure that gives the coronavirus its crownlike profile and allows it to enter human cells the way a burglar picks a lock. And its ubiquity is undeniable. Of the approximately 50,000 genomes of the new virus that researchers worldwide have uploaded to a shared database, about 70 percent carry the mutation, officially designated D614G but known more familiarly to scientists as “G.” “G” hasn’t just dominated the outbreak in Chicago — it has taken over the world. Now scientists are racing to figure out what it means. At least five laboratory experiments suggest that the mutation makes the virus more infectious, although only one of those studies has been peer-reviewed. That study, led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory and published Thursday in the journal Cell, also asserts that patients with the G variant actually have more virus in their bodies, making them more likely to spread it to others. The mutation doesn’t appear to make people sicker, but a growing number of scientists worry that it has made the virus more contagious. “The epidemiological study and our data together really explain why the [G variant’s] spread in Europe and the U.S. was really fast,” said Hyeryun Choe, a virologist at Scripps Research and lead author of an unpublished study on the G variant’s enhanced infectiousness in laboratory cell cultures. “This


is not just accidental.” But there may be other explanations for the G variant’s dominance: biases in where genetic data are being collected, quirks of timing that gave the mutated virus an early foothold in susceptible populations. “The bottom line is, we haven’t seen anything definitive yet,” said Jeremy Luban, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The scramble to unravel this mutation mystery embodies the challenges of science during the coronavirus pandemic. With millions of people infected and thousands dying every day around the world, researchers must strike a high-stakes balance between getting information out quickly and making sure that it’s right. SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes the disease covid-19, can be thought of as an extremely destructive burglar. Unable to live or reproduce on its own, it breaks into human cells and co-opts their biological machinery to make thousands of copies of itself. That leaves a trail of damaged tissue and triggers an immune system response that for some people can be disastrous. This replication process is messy. Even though it has a “proofreading” mechanism for copying its genome, the coronavirus frequently makes mistakes, or mutations. The vast majority of mutations have no effect on the behavior of the virus. But since the virus’s genome was first sequenced in January, scientists have been on the lookout for changes that are meaningful. And few genetic mutations could be more significant than ones that affect the spike protein — the virus’s most powerful tool. This protein attaches to a receptor on respiratory cells called ACE2, which opens the cell and lets the virus slip inside. The more effective the spike protein, the more easily the virus can break into the bodies of its hosts. Even when the original variant of the virus emerged in Wuhan, China, it was obvious that the spike protein on SARS-CoV-2 was already quite effective. But it could have been even better, said Choe, who has studied spike proteins and the way they bind to the ACE2 receptor since the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in 2003. The spike protein for SARS-CoV-2 has two parts that don’t always hold together well. In the version of the virus that arose in China, Choe said, the outer part — which the virus needs to attach to a human receptor — frequently broke off. Equipped with this faulty lock pick, the virus had a harder time


Hunt for Biden tapes in Ukraine by Trump allies revives prospect of foreign interference

the tapes with Giuliani during their meetings, Derkach did not answer directly. “We discussed available information on international corruption and the need to investigate it in the United States,” he said. The hunt by the president’s allies for the Biden tapes and their subsequent release have echoes of the 2016 campaign, when Trump publicly asked Russia to find emails of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Trump later said the comment was a joke, even as GOP operatives mounted a serious but unsuccessful operation to obtain her emails from hackers claiming to have them. Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers were ultimately released through WikiLeaks, as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III detailed in his report. The sequence of events sparked a nearly two-year investigation, multiple congressional inquiries and federal charges against 12 Russian military intelligence officers. U.S. intelligence officials have warned that Russia could reprise its 2016 efforts to influence the race for the White House in 2020. In January, the Ukrainian gas company whose board used to include Biden’s sonsaid that it had been hacked by Russian spies, raising fears the Kremlin could be intending to release stolen material to sway U.S. voters in coming months. Giuliani said he would welcome new material about Biden in Ukraine, but he said he wasn’t aggressively seeking it, as he had been last year. Any new revelations, he added, should not be dismissed even if Russia may be involved. “The strange thing is what the Russians put out last time — it may have been illegal how they obtained it, but it was all true,” Giuliani said. Michael Carpenter, a Biden foreign policy adviser and former senior Defense Department official, called the tape snippets that Derkach is releasing “a KGB-style disinformation operation tied to pro-Russian forces in Ukraine whose chief aim is to make deceptive noise in the U.S. election campaign to advance the interests of their oligarchic backers, the Kremlin, and the faltering Trump campaign.” Ukrainians with a variety of competing political and personal agendas have claimed to be releasing or publicizing the Biden tapes,moves critics say align with both Russia’s and Trump’s interests. In addition to Derkach, they include former Ukrainian prosecutor Kostiantyn Kulyk, former Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Telizhenko and Ukrainian gas tycoon and former lawmaker Oleksandr Onyshchenko, who all have interacted with Giuliani or his associates. Some have promised more leaks are coming to help Trump later in


Amid the pandemic, a writer finds inspiration in century-old travel stories

boat was just putting off, with a parting salute, as we dismounted; by the time the last echo of our return guns had died away among the mountains, I was asleep. When the lamps and supper came from the boat, I found the tent was literally swarming with hideous insects; winged centipedes, horned dragonflies, monstrous ants, livid-looking beetles, moths, and locusts, were crawling, as if the butterfly were giving her celebrated ball upon my cloak. They had probably been attracted by the smell of the mummies and their cerements, that lay strewn about the tent. When again I fell asleep, I was suddenly awakened by the cold, slimy pat of a bull-frog falling on my cheek. Such are some of the consequences of sleeping amongst Pharoahs.” Tales of extreme peril are many, as travelers and explorers set out to lands whose geographies, animal populations and native citizenry were unknown to them. One narrative, “Besieged by Peccaries,” written by explorer James W. Wells, tells of a particularly frightening encounter when his camp was attacked by hordes of wild pigs in the far interior of Brazil (1886). A short time after bedding down, “suddenly, from all around us, came a blood-curdling sound of the simultaneous snapping of teeth from vast numbers of the enemy, followed by the appearance of a crowd of charging black animals, rushing with wonderful speed towards a common centre, the fort.” And, further on, “ . . . the extremely disagreeable and nauseous odors of the animals, their snapping of teeth, like musketry file-firing, the reports of the firearms, the shouts of the men, the howling and barking of the dogs, and the dim light, created an indescribably strange and exciting scene.” This modern-day reader couldn’t help visualize the whole scene (and several ensuing attacks by other peccary herds) as some sort of modern-day horror film. Or maybe the next Indiana Jones? In another riveting account of danger, Viennese world traveler and explorer Ida Pfeiffer writes (circa 1851) from Petropolis (north of Rio de Janeiro): “We had no arms, as we had been told that the road was perfectly safe, and the only weapons of defence which we possessed were our parasols, if I except a clasp-knife, which I instantly drew out of my pocket and opened, fully determined to sell my life as dearly as possible.” She goes on to describe an attack on the road by


Biden just slammed Trump on a new and hidden vulnerability

The extraordinary news that the European Union has banned American travelers as a self-protective public health measure should draw scrutiny to another appalling dimension of President Trump’s spectacular mishandling of the pandemic, one that has eluded extensive discussion. In a new statement sent to this blog, Joe Biden is opening up a new front along these lines, arguing that the E.U. ban shows that Trump has transformed the U.S. “into a global health risk.” When the E.U. announced its ban on U.S. travel — based on our ballooning coronavirus cases, relative to much of the rest of the world — it placed us in a rarefied category of other countries that are also banned: Russia and Brazil. Which shows that Trump’s disastrous failures haven’t just helped cause tens of thousands of needless U.S. deaths. They aren’t only helping to cause new coronavirus spikes in many states that could prolong our economic calamity. They’ve also turned us into a kind of global pandemic pariah. And that will carry all sorts of other destructive consequences. In the new statement, which was sent to me in response to my inquiries about Biden’s views of the E.U. ban, Biden says: Biden notes that all this is the direct result of Trump’s serial failures to take the coronavirus seriously — which also includes Trump’s urging of a too-rapid reopening, leading to a resurgence — and adds: And Biden concludes: What’s notable is the casting of Trump’s role in bringing about the E.U. ban as another form of deep damage to our international relationships — damage, of course, that Trump himself did on many other fronts. The monumental botching of the coronavirus pandemic, then, is both extension and exacerbation of that Trumpian damage. The E.U. is reopening borders to 15 countries, but it excluded the United States, Russia and Brazil. The metric the E.U. used was the number of new cases in the past two weeks per 100,000 people. As the New York Times notes, “the average among the 27 European Union countries was 16 in mid-June; in the United States, it was 107.” The Times further reports on the consequences and deeper significance of this: Taken together, all this serves as an indictment not just of Trump’s presidency but also of his illiberal populist nationalist worldview (as well as our woefully underfunded and piecemeal public health system and welfare state). It shows us parting ways


Discussion of Russian bounties thrusts deaths of three Marines into spotlight

tower and a mass grave that is marked as the final resting place of Afghans who died during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The deployment was part of an ongoing collaboration that goes back more than a decade. Georgians, seeking membership in NATO and American backing against Russia, deployed alongside U.S. troops in the Iraq War and pivoted to deploying a battalion of soldiers at a time to Afghanistan, beginning in 2009. The joint U.S.-Georgian unit’s operations included manning security checkpoints at Bagram and patrolling outside the base in search of evidence of Taliban operations such as rocket attacks on the air base. The Pentagon has long watched warily as Russia has expanded its involvement in Afghanistan. Russian officials have accused the United States of supporting the Islamic State to undermine the Afghan government, a baseless accusation at odds with years of U.S. raids and airstrikes against the group and tens of billions of dollars of American aid sent to Afghanistan. Senior U.S. officials have accused Russia of supplying the Taliban with weapons, including machine guns. Military officials saw the Russian activity at the time as mainly aimed at building relationships with actors who could play a prominent role in Afghanistan’s future rather than posing a direct threat to American forces. Russia has denied the accusation of offering bounties, saying it has supplied weapons only to the Afghan government. On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said that the Defense Department “has no corroborating evidence at this time” to validate the allegations against Russia in Afghanistan, but he said he wanted to assure service members that the department takes seriously “any and all” threats against U.S. troops. That stood in contrast to the reaction of the president, who dismissed the significance of the reports, citing the lack of Pentagon corroboration. “Do people still not understand that this is all a made up Fake News Media Hoax started to slander me & the Republican Party?” Trump tweeted on Wednesday. “I was never briefed because any info that they may have had did not rise to that level.” Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and other political opponents have said that the situation shows that Trump either read his briefing about the alleged Russian plot and did nothing, or didn’t read the intelligence reports. “Either way, it’s an unjustifiable dereliction of duty,” Biden tweeted. “The American people deserve answers.” Despite the president’s dismissal


U.S. moves to seize Iranian petroleum aboard four tankers bound for Venezuela in sanctions escalation, push to extend arms embargo

to permit the United States to seize the ship, its oil and $1 million, alleging U.S. sanctions violations. U.S. authorities in May charged two Iranian men and seized $12 million used to purchase a now-detained Liberian-flagged oil tanker, the Nautic, in what was then billed as the largest seizure of funds used to support the Quds Force. Washington also hit the five captains of the Iranian-flagged tankers that successfully delivered oil to Venezuela with sanctions. A State Department official said the sanctions have been effective in depriving Venezuela of its major source of revenue. “The global shipping community is moving out of doing business with Venezuela in the face of U.S. sanctions,” said Elliott Abrams, the special envoy for Venezuela, in an emailed statement. “The most reputable firms, including the largest Greek shipping companies, have been cooperative and have shown that they value their reputations and their global businesses.” The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the U.S. disruption of the other Venezuela-bound deliveries of Iranian oil products, has also reported that the Trump administration is preparing to add as many as 50 tankers to U.S. commercial blacklists for working with Maduro’s government. Wednesday’s court filings state that Madanipour and Mobin International worked with the National Iranian Oil Co. and entities associated with it and the Guard Corps. Madanipour took steps to conceal the involvement of Iranian entities in previous shipments or potential deliveries to China and Malaysia, prosecutors asserted. For example, the filings state the UAE company, identified only as “Company 1,” in January asked the owner of the Pandi to carry gasoline from Iran to the UAE but that Madanipour changed documents to show that Mobin International was responsible for the voyage. The UAE company then invoiced for $14.9 million an entity that the Guard Corps has publicly said was operating on its behalf and that ran the Grace 1 last year, the filings said. Prosecutors said Mobin International in March 2019 described setting up a new Persian Gulf country joint venture “to be secured of any risk of sanctions” and “handle all our transshipments of risky oil business.” According to the court filing, an associate in 2017 also asked Madanipour — allegedly on behalf of proposed Chinese buyers — whether Iranian oil could be provided through other countries with payments made through other countries to avoid U.S. sanctions. “We can get payment in Oman, UAE, Turkey, Italy


Officials urge caution over holiday weekend as virus cases flatline in D.C. region

As the holiday weekend approaches, health officials are warning the public to remain vigilant amid concerns that the Washington region could see an increase in coronavirus cases as numbers skyrocket nationwide. The District, Maryland and Virginia reported 1,062 new cases Thursday, on par with the region’s daily average in mid-June, while marking the highest daily total since June 20. The daily caseload in the Washington area has flatlined in recent days after a steep drop that began in late May. Officials urged residents to avoid large crowds, wash their hands, practice social distancing and wear masks during celebrations over the Fourth of July weekend. After warnings to take similar precautions amid demonstrations over police brutality, officials say holiday gatherings pose the latest threat to keeping a lid on coronavirus case numbers. While many local fireworks displays have been canceled this year, the Mall will host a 35-minute fireworks display, as well as flyovers by the Air Force Thunderbirds and Navy Blue Angels jet demonstration teams. Federal officials urged social distancing and said 300,000 cloth face coverings will be available to visitors. But D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said conditions will be favorable for the spread of the virus as he urged residents to avoid the Mall on Saturday. At a news conference, Newsham said it would be unwise to gather in large crowds, noting that a 53-year-old police officer died last month of covid-19 complications. “This is a dangerous situation,” he said, echoing concerns expressed by D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) a day earlier. “I hope the residents of the District of Columbia will use their good judgment and watch the fireworks from home.” Newsham added: “Covid-19 is real. Real people can die because of our behavior. We urge you not to come down. Please don’t come down to the Mall to the fireworks show.” In an interview Thursday on Fox 5, Bowser suggested that residents skip celebrations this Fourth of July and resume them next year. For those shunning fireworks and hosting a gathering in their home, the mayor cautioned that anyone who is positive for the virus could infect other guests. “We’re certainly in an unprecedented time with our response to the pandemic,” she said. “I’m actually concerned about people having events at their home or going to family events. We want them to be super careful.” Costi Sifri, director of hospital epidemiology at UVA Health in


urged residents to avoid the Mall on Saturday. At a news conference, Newsham said it would be unwise to gather in large crowds, noting that a 53-year-old police officer died last month of covid-19 complications. “This is a dangerous situation,” he said, echoing concerns expressed by D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) a day earlier. “I hope the residents of the District of Columbia will use their good judgment and watch the fireworks from home.” Newsham added: “Covid-19 is real. Real people can die because of our behavior. We urge you not to come down. Please don’t come down to the Mall to the fireworks show.” In an interview Thursday on Fox 5, Bowser suggested that residents skip celebrations this Fourth of July and resume them next year. For those shunning fireworks and hosting a gathering in their home, the mayor cautioned that anyone who is positive for the virus could infect other guests. “We’re certainly in an unprecedented time with our response to the pandemic,” she said. “I’m actually concerned about people having events at their home or going to family events. We want them to be super careful.” Costi Sifri, director of hospital epidemiology at UVA Health in Charlottesville, said it will be critical to see how the public responds over the holiday weekend and whether case numbers stay in place. “There’s been a leveling off of cases,” he said. “The question is, if we move too fast, are we at risk of backsliding?” Sifri, who specializes in infectious diseases, said the trend of who is getting sick has changed in the Washington region. Earlier outbreaks often originated in congregate settings, such as nursing homes, chicken processing plants and prisons, but those conditions have improved significantly with safety measures in place, he said. The region recently has seen virus transmissions through community spread as jurisdictions lift restrictions and more people venture into public settings. Sifri urged leaders in the Washington region to monitor states in the South and West that have seen spikes in caseloads. Recent numbers nationwide have far eclipsed those recorded weeks ago — surging above 50,000 the past two days. “There is a risk for a rebound,” he said of the Washington area. “The virus has momentum.” With more people likely to be out over the holiday weekend, Fairfax County sent text alerts to its residents Thursday, encouraging them to get tested if they are


experiencing symptoms. The county said there are nearly 30 testing sites that will accept patients who don’t have insurance. In Maryland, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Thursday announced a new Maryland Department of Health order that instructs health-care providers to provide a coronavirus test for anyone who requests it, regardless of symptoms. The state also added testing sites in Ocean City and at Deep Creek Lake because of increased summer activities. Montgomery County announced Thursday that it will open seven outdoor pools and three indoor aquatic centers to pass-holders beginning Monday. Swimming will require a reservation for a two-hour session with several safety protocols in place. The District on Thursday recorded 25 new coronavirus cases and one death. Maryland saw 505 new cases and reported seven deaths. Virginia reported 532 cases and 30 fatalities — the highest number of daily deaths in the state since May 27. The positivity rate of tests in Virginia has also ticked up from 5.8 percent about a week ago to 6.2 percent — a figure that stands at 7.8 percent in Northern Virginia. The greater Washington region has recorded 142,548 known cases of the virus since the start of the pandemic, with the death toll reaching 5,582. The number of daily hospitalizations on a seven-day average has been below 100 in the region since mid-June, while the average number of daily deaths has changed little since that time. The pandemic continues to take an economic toll. More than 58,000 people filed for unemployment benefits in the District, Maryland and Virginia last week as parts of the region moved ahead with lifting additional restrictions. Numbers released Thursday by the Labor Department show that 58,017 claims were filed in the three jurisdictions for the week ending June 27, down slightly from 60,915 claims filed a week earlier. In the District, the number of claims hovered near 3,000 for the second week in a row. Marylanders filed 21,929 claims, down from 32,549 the week before. In Virginia, 33,062 claims were filed, up from 25,293. Since the pandemic hit the Washington region and stay-at-home orders were issued in March — forcing many businesses to shut their doors for weeks — more than 1.5 million jobless claims have been filed in the region. After an initial surge in claims, the number of people seeking benefits has leveled off in recent weeks. Nationally, 1.4 million people filed unemployment claims for


Five kinds of health appointments you should consider keeping, despite the pandemic

Most Americans made a lifestyle U-turn several months ago because of the potential risks posed by the coronavirus pandemic. Activities that once were a given in our day-to-day lives have become less common or have disappeared altogether — such as going out to dinner, taking in a movie or shopping for something other than food. But we’ve also stopped doing tasks that can affect our health and well-being — such as keeping appointments with doctors, dentists, physical therapists and more. Now that it’s clear that the coronavirus waves are going to keep coming, here are five health practices that experts say you might want to reconsider delaying. Perhaps you were due for a mammogram, a colonoscopy or a Pap test but put it off. In fact, health experts from the American Cancer Society, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the Susan G. Komen organization and more have encouraged Americans to delay routine cancer screenings to minimize everyone’s exposure to the coronavirus (and to maintain health-care facilities’ needed supplies of masks, gloves and the like). The response has been significant, according to data from two health-care technology companies. By mid-April, the number of colonoscopies (to screen for colorectal cancer) had dropped by about 90 percent compared with the previous year, according to Komodo Health, a San Francisco-based company that collects and analyzes health-care data. In addition, according to a report from the Epic Health Research Network, mammograms to screen for breast cancer and Pap tests to screen for cervical cancer each declined by 94 percent in that time, compared with the average for that period in the preceding three years. Over the short term, health experts generally agree that delaying these screenings is probably okay for most people. But your risks rise as time goes on. If a problem does exist, diagnosis gets delayed, which could mean a poorer prognosis because the cancer has had more time to progress. Treatment options for a more advanced cancer are often fewer and more invasive. Also keep in mind what the success rate of routine screenings has yielded. For instance, deaths from breast cancer have declined by about 20 percent in the past three decades, attributable to early detection by mammography screening as well as improved treatments, according to an American Cancer Society report. It also notes that, in those three decades, the incidence of cervical cancer, as well as its mortality rate, has


How has the coronavirus pandemic affected global poverty?

when women and girls are forced out of school early or experience unplanned pregnancy, it can have long-term effects on their finances. Globally, “women earn less, they save less, they’re more likely to be in precarious jobs with little security or protections if they do work, or in the informal sector, with no protections at all,” Valji told the Times. “And that means that they have less buffer to economic shocks, such as the ones we are experiencing.” In March, as the coronavirus spread, airlines started cutting flights and furloughing staff. Some shut down entirely. Border restrictions put in place to keep people from spreading the virus meant even travel between many neighboring countries became impossible. Now, experts are trying to measure the full impact tourism losses will have on the global economy. On Wednesday, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD) warned that the global tourism industry is on track to lose at least $1.2 trillion due to pandemic-related disruptions. If travel continues to be affected for an entire year, the losses could reach $3.3 trillion. Millions of jobs rely on tourism, which connects to sectors including food and entertainment. UNCTD warned that because so many women work within the tourism industry, many in informal jobs, as well as in service jobs tied to related industries, they are at particular risk of losing work due to the impact of shutdowns. Countries that rely on tourism for crucial income are at serious risk of fiscal trouble. Jamaica, for example, looks set to lose 11 percent of its gross domestic product from losses in the tourism industry, even in the best-case scenario, UNCTD said in its report. Thailand would lose 9 percent. “The global contraction in tourism arrivals could have devastating economic consequences as some developing countries are highly dependent on tourism,” the report said. “In some countries, such as several small island developing states, tourism accounts for more than half of the GDP.” The jobs will affect workers in formal and informal sectors, and the lost wages could push workers who previously enjoyed steady work into dangerous financial uncertainty. Lockdowns can also take a disproportionate toll on the most vulnerable. Strict shutdowns “carry a much higher human price in the developing world,” where the absence of social safety nets can make survival without work nearly impossible, economist Julian C. Jamison said in an essay published by The Washington Post.


Coronavirus tests from Chevy Chase assisted-living facility were sent to lab shut by Md. health department

some testing at our community in the past, Advanced Pain Medicine Institute (APMI), is no longer certified to provide COVID-19 testing and that prior results conducted by APMI may have been invalid, according to the Maryland Department of Health,” the letter said. “We are taking this seriously and have been in contact with the lab company, Cian Dx, that contracted this work to APMI.” Jay Gonchigar, a former owner of CIAN who continues to volunteer there, spoke on behalf of the lab in a phone interview Thursday in which Mullapudi was also on the line. Mullapudi was contacted by the state Monday asking about the link with APMI, Gonchigar said. Mullapudi told the state that his lab did not subcontract any coronavirus testing work and had no relationship with APMI, Gonchigar said. On Tuesday, Gonchigar said he and Mullapudi confronted CIAN’s two salesmen by phone to ask whether they had turned any work over to APMI. “They were asked point blank ’Did you ever send any samples in the name of CIAN to APMI?’ ” Gonchigar said. “They wouldn’t confirm it. They wouldn’t deny it.” Dowd, the men’s lawyer, said “they are deeply concerned about the misrepresentations being made.” “At all times,” his clients “were operating with one interest in mind: to ensure rapid and accurate COVID-19 testing for individuals in the DC area,” Dowd said in an email. “At no time” were they “ever aware of the alleged improprieties associated with APMI, prior to what has been reported in the news.” A spokeswoman for Sunrise declined to answer questions about who Brighton Gardens dealt with in connection with the testing that was processed by APMI. She also did not respond to questions about how many people might have been affected or whether samples from other facilities run by the company went to APMI. When it shut down APMI’s operation Saturday, the state said the lab had gathered samples at three pop-up clinics held at churches in Baltimore and Anne Arundel County. The facility was about to hold a fourth at a church in Howard County when the state’s order was issued. Ghorbani, who was educated at Tufts University and practiced in the Boston area before moving to the Washington region in 2007, said in an interview Sunday that he saw an opportunity to use his lab to help the community and expand the reach of testing for the virus.


Sports can’t restart safely right now

sick and others don’t. We also know that some people who have mild illness can still have symptoms and difficulty breathing for months. Even those who never develop symptoms show signs of lung inflammation on CT scan imaging, and it is still unclear whether there is lasting damage. Beyond these obvious concerns, the nuances are relevant, too. Sports encompass more than the minutes on the field or the court — players spend extended periods indoors training and weightlifting, in team meetings, in locker rooms and in media sessions. This might explain why baseball and tennis players and even golfers have gotten infected. Furthermore, all three seasons for America’s most popular sports — football, basketball and baseball — overlap to differing degrees with the flu season, which brings a feared dual epidemic of covid-19 and the flu this year. It’s true that not all sports are created equal (full disclosure — we are both serious basketball fans). Indoor sports with sustained close contact and heavy breathing will be the least safe, while those that inherently require distance and are outdoors will be safer. This creates a spectrum of safe sporting. Basketball, football and ice hockey are on the end of the spectrum of sports that are least safe for players. Soccer occupies a somewhat middle ground, while tennis and golf might account for the opposite end of the spectrum. People want sports back, but we have a continuing and uncontrolled epidemic in this country, where countless citizens are vulnerable. But if sports do resume, serious steps will have to be taken to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The key one is driving community transmission down through public health measures, such as universal mask-wearing, testing, contact tracing, and isolating the sick. Countries that have done this successfully are in a much better position to resume sports than we are: South Korea is set to have real fans back in the stadiums for their baseball league as of this week. A number of European countries have resumed soccer leagues, although many without fans in place, and we have yet to see any publicly reported cases from these a few weeks out. But it’s important to remember that it was, in fact, a Champions League soccer match that may have set off a massive outbreak in Italy — and that the same could happen in any of these European countries. Players and other


When a community in Utah was hit by the coronavirus, a network of volunteers went into action

On a recent Thursday evening, Liz Villegas began receiving the flood of calls, each one full of questions and concerns. Earlier that week, in the days after a local meatpacking plant tested its employees for the novel coronavirus, she answered a few calls each day, but that was manageable. This night was different, because around 7 p.m., the workers, mostly members of the Latino community, received their test results. Villegas works at a nonprofit organization and spends the rest of her time volunteering. She is well connected and trusted in the community. She calls herself “the Hispanic Google.” So when a coronavirus outbreak hit Cache County, Utah, concerned families reached out to her. Until about 2 a.m. that night, she answered calls and Facebook messages, one after another. Those who tested positive worried about infecting others and how they would feed their families. Those who tested negative were unsure whether they should continue going to work. “Usually, I would say, ‘I've got this,’” Villegas said. But with the urgency of need and the number of households affected, “the best way we can do this is all organizations jump on it together.” Nearly as quickly as those affected by the virus began calling Villegas, organizations and community members reached out asking how they could help. Nearly 300 employees at the JBS beef plant tested positive, which meant the virus disproportionately affected the Latino and refugee communities in the county about an hour north of Salt Lake City. By that Friday, volunteers had begun delivering Clorox wipes, hand sanitizer and other household supplies to the self-isolating families. By Saturday, food arrived at their doorsteps, too. Those days in early June began a weeks-long, and still ongoing, showcase of support and empathy — driven by organizations working together, individuals distributing deliveries, and families committing to keep others safe by staying home. Crescencio Lopez, another respected figure in the Latino community, orchestrated a decentralized network of donation drop-off locations throughout the county. Multiple churches joined the grass-roots effort. Cache Refugee and Immigrant Connection (CRIC) had a volunteer base eager to help. Together, they have served more than 350 households in the past month. When Jenny Willmore heard about the outbreak, she asked Lopez, one of her colleagues at Utah State University, how she could help. Lopez said they needed building space, so Willmore suggested the Spanish-language ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of


began calling Villegas, organizations and community members reached out asking how they could help. Nearly 300 employees at the JBS beef plant tested positive, which meant the virus disproportionately affected the Latino and refugee communities in the county about an hour north of Salt Lake City. By that Friday, volunteers had begun delivering Clorox wipes, hand sanitizer and other household supplies to the self-isolating families. By Saturday, food arrived at their doorsteps, too. Those days in early June began a weeks-long, and still ongoing, showcase of support and empathy — driven by organizations working together, individuals distributing deliveries, and families committing to keep others safe by staying home. Crescencio Lopez, another respected figure in the Latino community, orchestrated a decentralized network of donation drop-off locations throughout the county. Multiple churches joined the grass-roots effort. Cache Refugee and Immigrant Connection (CRIC) had a volunteer base eager to help. Together, they have served more than 350 households in the past month. When Jenny Willmore heard about the outbreak, she asked Lopez, one of her colleagues at Utah State University, how she could help. Lopez said they needed building space, so Willmore suggested the Spanish-language ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Logan, where she is president of the Relief Society. Rooms suddenly resembled makeshift grocery stores where donated food could be packaged and distributed. Shannon Rhodes saw Lopez’s social media post asking for donations, but she noticed there weren’t any drop-off sites near her home in the northern part of the county. She reached out, and soon her garage filled with food and supplies. She ran out of shelf space and had to borrow a folding table from her parents. “I wish every community had a refugee center like the one that we have here,” Rhodes said. “I wish every community had churches that all work together for one greater good. I think what's been the most inspiring thing is just everybody working together.” As the coronavirus spread across the United States, meatpacking facilities became major centers of outbreaks. President Trump signed an executive order in late April compelling meat production facilities to remain open. In about nine of every 10 households CRIC serves, at least one family member works at processing and production plants. Those are the people “who are really going to work every day, risking their lives to feed America and to feed our community,”


Khashoggi murder trial begins in Turkey, without the accused

A trial in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi opened Friday in a Turkish court, though none of the 20 defendants charged in the killing, all nationals of Saudi Arabia, were in attendance. Turkey’s trial is the first public legal inquiry into Khashoggi’s death at the hands of Saudi agents in Istanbul, a killing that sparked global outrage and focused attention on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s pursuit of his critics. Saudi Arabia held its own trial, behind closed doors. Saudi officials have refused Turkey’s request to extradite the suspects in the 2018 slaying. “The Saudi process was anything but justice. It was a travesty of justice in my opinion,” Agnès Callamard, a United Nations human rights expert who conducted a separate investigation into the killing, told reporters Friday after the hearing in Istanbul. The Turkish trial, despite its many limitations, is still an “important judicial process,” she said. “Here we have a space where the victims are heard in a way they have never been heard before. We have a space where witnesses are asked to speak under oath.” Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 by a team of Saudi government agents who were sent to Turkey from Riyadh, the Saudi capital, to confront the journalist. At the time of his death, Khashoggi, who contributed columns to The Washington Post, was a prominent critic of the crown prince, the kingdom’s day-to-day ruler. Khashoggi went to the consulate to collect documents that would allow him to remarry and was killed while his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, waited for him outside. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government quickly publicized details of the Saudi plot, sparking a rift with the kingdom’s leadership that has continued to the present. The CIA concluded with “medium to high confidence” that Mohammed had ordered the killing, a conclusion the crown prince has denied. Saudi officials have portrayed the slaying as the work of rogue operatives. The Saudi public prosecutor announced in December that five suspects had been sentenced to death in Khashoggi’s killing, after a trial that lasted nearly a year. The prosecutor did not identify the suspects. In March, Turkish prosecutors indicted 20 people on murder charges, including two senior Saudi officials: Saud al-Qahtani, a close adviser to Mohammed, and Ahmed al-Assiri, a former deputy head of Saudi intelligence. The two officials, who were earlier cleared of wrongdoing